ABSTRACT
The present book is a cross-cultural investigation of the hagiographical process. As such it is primarily concerned with the study of the life narratives of saints from religious traditions pertaining to independent cultural contexts, separated in time and space. Critically, the term saint is here adopted as a metalinguistic category, with an emphasis on its broadest etymological connotation as an identifier of the moral and spiritual incorruptibility of particular human beings, especially in light of the public recognition of their exceptional spiritual achievements.2 Similarly, hagiography, literally “the writing of the divine/ holy,” or “sacred writing,” and its related terms are here employed as a metalinguistic category referring to sources that offer a codified rendering of the life, deeds, and teachings of saints, both as a testimony, which preserves their memory and their cult, and as a relationship with an incorruptible human being in the form of a written discourse.3 Yet, in view of the fundamental Christian character and history of terms such as saint, holy, and hagiography, of their historically acquired essentialist connotations, and of the consequent post-modernist critique both of the comparative method and of universalizing projects, this book also wishes to offer a possible methodological solution to place religions in dialogue with each other effectively and meaningfully in a post-post-modernist perspective.4
