Medieval Slavic Lives of Saints and Princes

The advent of Christianity ushered in a new biographical hero, the saint, as classical secular biography yielded to hagiography. This form of life-writing arose in connection with the persecution of Christians; the first stories were those of martyrs. The earliest examples were simple, unembellished dialogues between the accused and their judges. In time, however, as Christianity became the primary religion in Europe, many "Lives" were produced; a large number of them were based on legends which had grown up around martyr-saints. As the persecution of Christians abated, new saintly heroes appeared: ascetics, church-builders, monks, orators, and so on. But many of their "Lives" had as little basis in fact as did the passions of their predecessors. Hagiography in time had become a highly conventionalized and stylized kind of biography. It abounded in repetitious themes, commonplaces, and supernatural elements. All of these features combined to produce a work which some critics have viewed as essentially a type of "anti-biography," inasmuch as all the basic tenets of historical biography are violated. As a result, the hero of the "Life" lost his individuality and became a generalized type. Nevertheless, the saint remained virtually the only acceptable subject for life-writing until the time when the prestige of secular rulers began to rival that of Church dignitaries. This was the ninth century, which marked the beginning of an era that once again would appreciate secular achievements and virtues, which in turn would lead to a revival of secular biography and a new phenomenon—biographies that combined elements from the latter and hagiography.