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Hagiography of the Palaiologan period
The chapter provides a reassessment of the two interpretative models used for the analysis of Palaeologan hagiography, the ‘old saints’ paradigm and the ‘metaphrasis’ paradigm. After a concise description of the sources, the argument develops in three steps. Firstly, a distinction is drawn between the two dichotomies—‘old’ vs ‘new’ saints and ‘rewritings’ vs ‘original compositions’. The texts featuring the saints of the past are not necessarily ‘rewritings’; conversely, newly established cults might inspire multiple successive hagiographers to refine each other’s work. Secondly, four differences between the corpus in question and the Metaphrastic Menologion are discussed: 1. manuscript transmission in authorial collections (rather than Menologia); 2. occasional (rather than pre-meditated) character of the texts; 3. individual (instead of collective) authorship; 4. high diversity and depth of reworking techniques. Particular attention is drawn to the authorial personae of the two most idiosyncratic authors, Nikephoros Gregoras and Konstantinos Akropolites. Thirdly, in a more speculative vein, I propose to read Early Palaeologan hagiography as a specific type of historical literature, which allowed secular literati to make statements about their past in a free and psychologically persuasive way without the generic constraints of conventional history-writing
