The legends of the saints

The Legends of the saint–facts about the saints. How often these two are thought to be the same thing, and everything which we read in saints’ biographies we take to be unadorned truth. But this is simply not so–the lives of the saints have from the earlier times been a mixture of fact, legend, fabrication and confusion.

As Fr. Delehaye says: ‘The conditions in which many accounts of martyrs and lives of saints were composed are too little known to people in general to allow of a ground of understanding…We therefore believe we shall be doing a useful work by trying to set out, more clearly than usual, the various kinds of writings our pious authors produced, by outlining the origins of their compositions and by showing how far they were from being protected from making errors that exact history is bound to point out. The aim of this book is to briefly show the spirit in which hagiographical documents should be read, to sketch the method for discriminating between materials that the historian can use and those that he should leave to poets and artists as their property, and to put readers on their guard against being led away by formulas and preconceived ideas. There is no question of our waging war on legends. It would be a senseless thing to do…The work of legend can be numbered amongst the great unconscious natural forces. As such one cannot ignore it. Only, do not mistake it for history.’

Since 1905, when it was first published, Delehaye’s study has been acclaimed as a classic example of impartial scholarship. His great learning, the balance of his mind, the economy of his style, the wit and humanity which inform the whole – these make a fascinating book, a delight to read for sheer enjoyment, and an invaluable source of information.

The new translation, by Donald Attwater, does full justice to the original, so that the flavour of Delehaye’s personality and style are conveyed in the English. The text used is that of the revised edition of 1955.