Hagiography

A hagiography is a biography of a saint or an ecclesiastical leader, extended by usage to any adulatory and idealized biography of a preacher, priest, founder, monk, nun or venerated figure within any of the world's religions. Early Christian hagiographies typically combined a biography, or vita, an account of the subject's deeds or miracles, and an account of the subject's martyrdom, called a passio, and such works focus especially on the miracles ascribed to men and women canonized by the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox and Church of the East traditions. Other religious traditions, including Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Islam, Sikhism and Jainism, maintain comparable hagiographical literatures concerning their own saints, gurus and sacred figures, such as the Sikh Janamsakhis. Hagiographic works, especially those of the Middle Ages, often preserve valuable records of institutional and local history and evidence of popular religious cults and customs, though the term is also used today, pejoratively, for a modern biography or history whose author is judged uncritical or excessively reverential toward its subject.