ABSTRACT
Most of the written material relating to John's life appears in works of hagiography, and as hagiographers are rather more concerned with creating 'a literary vehicle for the fulfilment of a didactic or propagandist aim' than to reconstruct a factual record of past events, these texts must be treated with caution when seeking to establish historical actuality. 1 The vita of a saint is constructed according to the perceptions and expectations of his/her biographers and it is extremely difficult, and sometimes impossible, to differentiate between those elements in the narratives which might be an accurate representation of the person and of the world in which s/he lived, and those which are a reflection of the world in which the biographers lived and their conception of the saint. 2 However, despite these difficulties, it is still possible to obtain some information about John's life and career.
