Following a marked decline in the appearance of new saints in the twelfth and early thirteenth centuries (Magdalino 1981), and a concomitant decrease in the production of hagiographical texts, the Palaiologan era (1261-1453) saw a resurgence of Byzantine holy men and the composition of vitae celebrating their exploits (Laiou-Thomadakis 1980). For reasons that are still not fully understood, virtually no female saints were recognized in the late Byzantine era; the latest firmly attested holy woman was St Theodora of Arta, who died in the 1270s (Talbot 1996: 323-33). Among the likely explanations for the noticeable increase in saints at this time are: (1) the rise in religious controversies related to the Union of Lyons and hesychasm, which led to persecution of supporters of Greek orthodoxy and Palamism; (2) the flourishing of monasticism in Constantinople (with the reconstruction or new foundation of monasteries after the Byzantine recovery of the capital in 1261), Thessalonike, Mt Athos, and Meteora; (3) the development of a formal procedure of canonization (Macrides 1981; Talbot 1983: 21-30). Thus, the majority of the thirty-two new saints of this era were opponents of Union, hesychasts, wandering monks or neo-martyrs killed by Turks or Egyptians.
The authors of their vitae tended to be monks or ecclesiastics, very often disciples of an older ascetic monk about whom they wrote at the remove of one generation. One of the most distinguished Palaiologan hagiographers, the patriarch of Constantinople Philotheos Kokkinos (d. c.1377-8), composed four biographies of hesychast saints, including his fellow patriarch Isidore I Boucheir (1347-50) and Gregory Palamas, metropohtan of Thessalonike (1347-50). His compositions were in part motivated by pride in his birthplace, since all four of his subjects were connected with Thessalonike, and he incorporated panegyrics of the city in his vitae. Many Palaiologan vitae of new saints are longer than those of earlier eras, and are written in high style with extensive passages of rhetoric. Some of the authors were quite erudite, despite their monastic background; Philotheos Kokkinos was a student of Thomas Magistros, Makarios Chrysokephalos was a
Professor, and Theoktistos the Stoudite had access to an excellent library at the Stoudios monastery.
The Palaiologan era also saw a renewed interest in the composition of separate accounts of miracles, such as Maximos the Deacon’s miracula of Sts Kosmas and Damian (c.1300), Nikephoros Kallistos Xanthopoulos’ miracula of the Pege monastery (c.1308-20), Theoktistos the Stoudite’s account of the posthumous miracles of the patriarch Athanasios I (1330s), and John Lazaropoulos’ collection of the miracles of St Eugenios at his monastery in Trebizond (1360s). The final three of these texts are characterized by an unusual fascination with the aetiology and symptoms of human disease, and suggest that their authors were familiar with medical literature (Rosenqvist 1995).
Another prominent feature of Palaiologan hagiography was intense interest in rewriting the vitae of earlier saints (Talbot 1991). About 80 per cent of hagiographic production in this era, or approximately 125 works by forty-five different authors, is devoted to holy men and women who lived before the thirteenth century (excluding the apostolic age). The hagiographers of the saints of olden days came from the ranks of secular literati, as well as monks and churchmen. Especially noteworthy is Constantine Akropolites, an imperial official under Andronikos II, who wrote twenty-eight works on holy men and women of earlier eras. For his heroic efforts he was compared to Symeon Metaphrastes and earned the epithet of ‘the new translator’. Motivations for metaphrasisy the rewriting of older vitaCy were various; they included gratitude for miraculous healing by a saint’s relics, a commission to produce an oration for a saint’s feast day, civic loyalty (numerous enkomia of St Demetrios were produced by natives of Thessalonike), promotion of the cult of a saint at the monastery that held his/her relics, the desire to improve the style of an earlier version, and replacement of a lost vita.
The composition of hagiographical texts continued until the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Very few new holy men appeared in the fifteenth century, however, so production focused on vitae and enkomia of older saints.
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