Editing Hagiography (section)

=== Eastern Orthodoxy ===
[[File:Vita icon of St Paraskeve of Trnovo (Patriarchate of Peć, 1719-20).png|thumb|upright|left|Visual hagiography of [[Parascheva of the Balkans|St Paraskeva]] ([[Patriarchate of Peć (monastery)|Patriarchate of Peć]], 1719–20)]]
[[File:Hagiasophia-christ.jpg|thumb|upright|Example of Greek Orthodox visual hagiography. This is one of the best known surviving Byzantine mosaics in [[Hagia Sophia]] – [[Christ Pantocrator]] flanked by the [[Virgin Mary]] and [[John the Baptist]] made in the 12th century.]]

In the 10th century, a [[Byzantine Empire|Byzantine]] [[monk]] [[Simeon Metaphrastes]] was the first one to change the genre of lives of the saints into something different, giving it a moralizing and [[panegyric]]al character. His catalog of lives of the saints became the standard for all of the [[Western world|Western]] and [[Eastern world|Eastern]] hagiographers, who would create relative biographies and images of the ideal saints by gradually departing from the real facts of their lives. Over the years, the genre of lives of the saints had absorbed a number of narrative plots and poetic images (often, of pre-Christian origin, such as [[dragon]] fighting etc.), mediaeval [[parable]]s, short stories and [[anecdote]]s.

The genre of lives of the saints was introduced in the Slavic world in the [[First Bulgarian Empire|Bulgarian Empire]] in the late 9th and early 10th century, where the first original hagiographies were produced on [[Saints Cyril and Methodius|Cyril and Methodius]], [[Clement of Ohrid]] and [[Saint Naum|Naum of Preslav]]. Eventually the Bulgarians brought this genre to [[Kievan Rus']] together with [[writing]] and also in [[translation]]s from the Greek language. In the 11th century, they began to compile the original life stories of their first saints, e.g. [[Boris and Gleb]], [[Theodosius of Kiev|Theodosius Pechersky]] etc. In the 16th century, [[Macarius, Metropolitan of Moscow|Metropolitan Macarius]] expanded the list of the Russian saints and supervised the compiling process of their life stories. They would all be compiled in the so-called ''Velikiye chet'yi-minei'' catalog (Великие Четьи-Минеи, or [[Great Menaion Reader]]), consisting of 12 [[volume]]s in accordance with each month of the year. They were revised and expanded by St. [[Dimitry of Rostov]] in 1684–1705.

The ''[[Life of Alexander Nevsky]]'' was a particularly notable hagiographic work of the era.

Today, the works in the genre of lives of the saints represent a valuable historical source and reflection of different social ideas, world outlook and [[aesthetic]] [[concept]]s of the past.