HAGIOGRAPHIC LEGENDS
HAGIOGRAPHIC LEGENDS

Summary/Abstract: In the first part, the article is begining with the definition of legend, opposite of the word’s etymology: a purpose explanatory narration or a comment about people and a relevant issues, as Ovidiu Barlea affirmed, in „Romanian folklore”, the first volume. The legend is supported on the popular curiosity, as old as people, who like to know everything that’s going around, how you brouch the cosmos. The legends are born incessantly in various way after the degree of evolution of mentality of the creator. Often, as it happens in case of hagiography and religious legends, the subjects are borrowed from the biblical backgroung.Having them as characters in God the Father, the Son, the devil, the Virgin and the saints, religious legends throughout the Middle Ages enjoyed considerable success. Of all the characters, the audience agreed was the devil and the saints. In such an important place legends miraculous, which is located in a higher position as the legend is more civilized and less universalistic religion. There are two forms of power represented by God and the devil. The old legend then enters the upper literature and religion, Christ for genuine hero or god must have suffered; human civilization as a whole is the result of personal redemption through suffering. Saint is a Christian character the subject of a cult and lives in Paradise, with God and the angels. Saints have strenght localized, hagiographic legends aiming to justify local cults whose object is to them. The particularity of hagiographic legends consist, not the formation mechanism and change themes, but the use of certain sources and collective orientation defined mental activity. In the Romanian repertoire there are about six hundred types of hagiographic legends, populated by characters such as: Mother of God, St. Peter, St. Toader, St. Alexie, St. Andrew, St. George, St. Demetrius, St. Paraskeve, Sf. Sisoes; covers other holidays of the year and prescriptions/prohibitions related to the celebration of this day, which can be called legendary class calendar. Subcategories of hagiography as martyrs and legends or cultic legends, the latter makes the transition from heroes religion to saints religion. Many of hagiographic legends were born in the sixteenth century, when the cult of the saints had an unusual swing. Localities which housed relics have become places of pilgrimage, and the faithful wanted to know the details of biography, especially his miracles. To satisfy the curiosity of pios pilgrims at the same time to respond to the needs of the cult doomed commemoration day were made hagiographic legends.

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