PEOPLE KNOWN FOR: hagiography

St. Athanasius ; feast day May 2) was a theologian, ecclesiastical statesman, and Egyptian national leader. He was the chief defender of Christian orthodoxy in the 4th-century battle against Arianism,...

St. Gregory of Tours ; feast day November 17) was a bishop and writer whose Ten Books of Histories (often wrongly called The History of the Franks) is the major 6th-century source for studying the Merovingian...

Adso of Montier-en-Der was a Benedictine monk and abbot whose treatise on the Antichrist became the standard work on the subject from the mid-10th to the 13th century. Born of a noble family, Adso was...

Perpetua was a Christian martyr who wrote The Passion of Saints Perpetua and Felicity, a journal recounting her trial and imprisonment that was continued by a contemporary who described Perpetua’s death...

Sulpicius Severus was an early Christian ascetic, a chief authority for contemporary Gallo-Roman history, who is considered the most graceful writer of his time. Well trained as a lawyer, Sulpicius was...

Venantius Fortunatus was a poet and bishop of Poitiers, whose Latin poems and hymns combine echoes of classical Latin poets with a medieval tone, making him an important transitional figure between the...

Saint Adamnan ; feast day September 23) was an abbot and scholar, particularly noted as the biographer of St. Columba. Nothing is known of Adamnan’s early life. In 679 he was elected abbot of Iona, the...

Callistus was the patriarch of Constantinople, theologian, and hagiographer, an advocate of a Byzantine school of mystical prayer that he upheld by the authority of his office and by his writings. A monk...

Jean Bolland was a Jesuit ecclesiastical historian known for his major role in the compilation of the Acta Sanctorum, a vast collection of lives of the Christian saints, and as the founder of the Bollandists,...

John Capgrave was a historian, theologian, and hagiographer who wrote an English Life of St. Katharine, vigorous in its verse form and dramatically energetic in its debate. His work illustrates well the...

Hippolyte Delehaye was a Belgian scholar who was the foremost exponent of biographical church history based on archaeological and documentary work. He became a Jesuit in 1879 and was ordained priest in...

Alban Butler was a Roman Catholic priest and educator renowned for his classic Lives of the Saints. Butler was educated at the English College in Douai, France, where after ordination in 1734 he held successively...

Paul Sabatier was a French historian and educator who is chiefly remembered for his biography of St. Francis of Assisi. A Calvinist from birth, Sabatier began his studies at the Protestant faculty of theology...

Johannes Jørgensen was a writer known in Denmark mainly for his poetry (Digte 1894–98, 1898, and Udvalte Digte, 1944) but best known in other countries for his biographies of St. Francis of Assisi (1907)...

Simeon Metaphrastes was a Byzantine hagiographer whose Mēnologion, a 10-volume collection of the lives of early Eastern saints, achieved wide popularity. Of Simeon’s life it is known only that he held...