Народная агиография: к постановке вопроса
Towards the problem of folk hagiography

Summary/Abstract: There exist many texts of folklore containing not only information about the lives of saints but also about other aspects of their sainthood, such as posthumous miracles, events connected with the discovery of their remains, histories of the churches and chapels connected with the saints, etc. The totality of texts of different genres concerning a saint may be considered as that saint’s folk life. The texts are characterized by a profound respect of the saint; they contain multi-aspectual information about his or her life or explain the rituals connected with the saint. Some folk text, especially legends, are based on religious texts (canonical or apocryphal texts, prayers) translated into the language of folklore. Literary hagiographical texts may be passed orally from one generation to the next and as a result become folk legends; they may also be based on folk orally-transmitted legends. Some of these transformations are presented in the article, e.g. the reduction of written texts to short episodes, a selection of literary hagiographic motifs, a description, containing folk terms, of events from the saint’s life, etc.

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