life
life, life, cf.
1. The story of the life of a man recognized by believers as a saint ( lit. church). Lives of the Saints.
| Same as ( books. obsolete).
2. Same as ( books. obsolete, now joke.). Prosperous and peaceful life. Carefree life.
Terminological dictionary-thesaurus on literary criticism
life
a genre of ancient Russian literature that tells about the life of people ranked by the church as a host of saints.
Rb: genera and genres of literature
Genus: genres of ancient Russian literature
Example: "The Life of Theodosius", "The Life of Alexander Nevsky"
* "The 11th century dates back ... the first Russian lives (of princes Boris and Gleb, hegumen of the Kiev-Pechersk monastery Theodosius). These lives are distinguished by literary perfection, attention to the pressing problems of our time, and the vitality of many episodes" ( encyclopedic Dictionary young literary critic). *
Dictionary of forgotten and difficult words of the 18th-19th centuries
life
, I, cf.
1. Lives of saints or some persons canonized by the church.
* Agafya tells her[Lise] not fairy tales: in a measured and even voice she tells the life of the Blessed Virgin, the life of hermits. // Turgenev. Noble Nest // *
2. Life.
* [Pimen:] And his son Theodore? On the throne, he sighed about the peaceful life of the Silent. // Pushkin. Boris Godunov // *
Bible Dictionary to the Russian Canonical Bible
life
life (Gen.6:9; Gen.37:2; Jer.32:37; 1 Pet.3:1,2,16; 1Tim.4:12; 2Tim.3:10) - life, way of life.
Aesthetics. encyclopedic Dictionary
life
a religious and moral genre of medieval Christian literature, one of the earliest forms of applying the biographical method to compiling the biographies of saints - martyrs for the faith, passion-bearers, miracle workers, especially pious, virtuous, statesmen and learned men, outstanding church leaders who left an indelible mark on Christian culture. Athanasius the Great, Gregory 1 the Great, Gregory of Tours, Bede the Venerable, Peter Damian and others left their mark on the genre of hagiography. The prehistory of the hagiography genre is rooted in the ancient biographism of Plutarch and Tacitus. Its immediate basis is the Four Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, which tell about the earthly life of Christ and the ascetic activity of the Holy Apostles. Starting from the 5th c. hagiographic collections began to be widely distributed - patericons. The hagiographical genre was an integral part of Christian, Western and Eastern (Byzantine) literature. Its religious mission was to promote the widespread veneration of Christian saints.
The problem of achieving the state of holiness and how it was covered in the lives was considered in the works of the Russian culturologist P. M. Bitsilli. “Those who are familiar with the hagiographic literature of the Middle Ages,” the researcher wrote, “know what an insignificant role in the lives of the saints - at least until the period of arousal of historical understanding under the influence of mysticism - is played for hagiographers by the problem of achieving sainthood. The saint either immediately enters the historical field as a "completely ready" saint, or his sudden "conversion" is mentioned dully. Partly this truth follows from the conditions of knowledge about the saint: he is recognized only from the moment when he begins to act as a saint; however, we are well aware that the lack of material has rarely been considered by hagiographers as an obstacle: at worst - and this is a constant phenomenon - the missing information is replenished ready-made templates. If the "prehistory" of the saint was usually omitted, it was because they simply did not think about it ”(Bicilli P. M. Elements of medieval culture. - St. Petersburg, 1995.-S. 159).
The results of the cognitive efforts of writers - hagiographers(from Greek. hagios- holy and grapho- describe) allow us to identify the typical features of the Christian consciousness in its most striking manifestations. At the same time, the author's "I" completely dissolved in the narrative, did not reveal itself in any characteristic manifestations. This fact was one of the most important distinctive feature of this genre: the author considered his work a service to God, perceived his “I” as an insignificantly small amount, unworthy of attention and mention. Compared with the figure of the depicted saint, she seemed to him completely insignificant.
Another feature was the uniqueness of the moral and psychological drawings depicting the spiritual metamorphoses of Christian saints. This stemmed not from the weakness of the intellectual resources of the authors of biographies and not from their indifference to the unique that is present in each individual fate, but from the desire to identify and designate the most important and most characteristic in those metamorphoses that occur in a person under the influence of the Holy Spirit.
A person in life appears, as a rule, in three main states - ordinary, everyday, ordinary, then transitional, crisis, turning point, and, finally, in a state that meets the criteria of holiness. The high drama, complexity and difficulty of the ongoing transformation are emphasized. Ultimately, before the feat of faith in the glory of God, all the worldly attachments of the passion-bearer, his love for parents, home, wealth, if any, etc., recede. Through asceticism and prayer, the imperfection of human nature is overcome.
Through hagiographic writings, an ethical paradigm is formed, an ideal type representing the highest normative sample Christian attitude. In this type, the tone is set by the New Testament paradigm of the transformation of the Pharisee Saul into the Apostle Paul, which, however, is significantly modified. In the New Testament, there is virtually no information about the psychodynamics of the transformation of Saul into Paul, but there is a story of two polar types - a fanatical persecutor of Christians and a fearless apostle. The hagiographic genre, focused on the plots of transfiguration, carefully writes out the trajectories of the future saints' ascents from their "natural", pre-Christian state to enlightenment. But these are, for the most part, external signs and evidence of transformation, and not an internal struggle of motives. The reader is left with the impression of inner rebirth as an instantaneous act that takes place, as it were, outside of physical time.
Another characteristic difference of the ongoing spiritual transformation is found in the fact that if the transformation of Paul took place as if against his will, then the transformations with hagiographic heroes are most often a metamorphosis that occurs in accordance with their free decision, driven by their free will.
Early Christian hagiography is distinguished by a number of significant features:
Replication of several typical models of dianoia (restructuring of the soul) - metanoia (restructuring of the mind):
1) the transformation of a pagan into a Christian, permeated with the pathos of the struggle against pagan temptations;
2) the transformation of an ordinary Christian into a righteous man;
3) the tireless struggle of the righteous with many temptations and temptations of the flesh, which continue to confuse him even in solitude and distance from worldly fuss;
Normative idealization, which assumes the "laying" of all empirical material under the canon of hagiography;
The interest is not so much in the external and internal life of the saint's personality, but in the extent and in what forms its involvement in the Christian idea, in the world of religious duty, in the ideal of holiness is revealed;
The predominance of a tone of harsh normativity, pious didactics, moralizing edification, with the goal of "delighting the soul striving for virtue";
The cross-cutting nature of the antitheses between the existent and the proper, the earthly and the heavenly, the carnal and the spiritual, the vanity of worldly goods and the greatness of heavenly bliss;
The presence of folklore motifs that connect the biography with the deep cultural traditions of the pre-Christian past and the stereotypes of the people's worldview;
The extremely serious tone of the narration, excluding any signs of a laughable beginning;
The phenomenology of intentional anti-aestheticism of descriptions, emphasizing the frailty of everything earthly, carnal, devaluing the latter, pointing to its incomparability with the beauties of Christian spirituality and supreme piety; The result of the anti-aestheticism strategy turned out to be paradoxical, but, at the same time, quite consistent with the biblical tradition of “extracting the precious from the insignificant” (Jer. 15, 19): the Christian virtue of humble self-denial grew from the dust of the earth, reaching a degree of dazzling holiness. Through hagiographic writings, a philosophical and ethical paradigm was formed, an ideal type was formed, representing the highest normative model of the Christian attitude to the world.
Ancient Russia, which adopted Orthodoxy from Byzantium, treated hagiographic works with great attention: numerous translations of the Byzantine biographies of saints began to appear. Subsequently, the first Russian church writers and chroniclers began to work in this genre, creating lives about the murdered princes Boris and Gleb, about the Christian thinker Theodosius of the Caves, Alexander Nevsky, Sergius of Radonezh, and others. The suffering and moral deeds of the saints were regarded as evidence of their chosenness, as signs marked by God's protection.
In the XV century. in Moscow, under the leadership of Metropolitan Macarius, a set of hagiographic narratives "Great Menaion-Chetii" was created. It collected the lives of a number of Latin (Catholic), Greek (Byzantine) and Russian saints. At the turn of the XVII-XVII centuries. Metropolitan Dmitry of Rostov prepared a multi-volume set of biographies of the saints.
Old Russian hagiographic works dispersed among handwritten collections of the 15th-18th centuries. and grouped in special editions - this is not only a genre of soul-saving reading and one of the components of the historical and literary process, but also an important source of non-religious and non-literary information. The study of hagiographic creations led researchers to the conclusion that the historical evolution of hagiographic literature was carried out in accordance with the same logic with which the transition of painting from the icon to the portrait took place: the normative role of the canon gradually weakened, and the factual side of the content became more and more representative. As a result, the appearance of works of such a kind as "The Life of Archpriest Avvakum" became possible. This is already a marginal work, in which the genres of life, confession, sermon, adventure novel are mixed. A thread of continuity stretches from him already to a purely works of art, the authors of which used elements of hagiography as a literary device that made it possible to give the narrative a special, sublimely archaic orientation. The literary works of this kind should include the novel by F. M. Dostoevsky “ Brothers Karamazov" (1880) as part of the intended "superchroman" " Life of the great sinner Father Sergius"(1898) L. N. Tolstoy," Cathedral"(1872) N. S. Leskov," Life of Basil of Thebes"(1904) L. N. Andreeva," Saint Eustathius" (1915) and " Matthew the Perspicacious"(1916) I. A. Bunin," chopping block” (1986) Ch. Aitmatova and others. In Western literature, elements of hagiography were used in their work by T. S. Eliot, K. G. Chesterton, R. Brandstetter and other writers.
In the 19th century secular scholars drew attention to the ability of these literary monuments to serve as a source of scientific and theoretical, socio-humanitarian, historical knowledge about the founding of monasteries, the construction of churches, important church-state, political events, tragic collisions of princely strife and the fight against enemy invasions. Russian philologist, researcher of ancient icon painting F. I. Buslaev considered hagiography an extremely important source, giving valuable information on the history of ancient customs and manners.
The master's thesis of the Russian historian V. O. Klyuchevsky " Ancient Russian Lives of the Saints as a Historical Source» (1871). Klyuchevsky's university teacher, historian S. M. Solovyov, suggested that his student consider the ascetic activity of Russian saints, hermit monks, as one of the manifestations of the internal colonization of Russia. The sketes and monasteries that arose in the northern forests constituted one of the lines of colonization by Russia of its own, undeveloped geographical spaces. Klyuchevsky formulated a number of theses regarding the use of hagiography for research purposes: “1. In the literary part of the life, biographical facts serve in it only as ready-made forms for expressing the ideal image of the ascetic. 2. From the described life, life takes only such features that go towards the designated task. 3. Selected features are generalized in the life so that the individual personality disappears in them behind the features. ideal type. 4. The hagiobiographer and the historian look at the described person from different points of view: the first one looks for reflections of an abstract ideal in it, the second - individual distinguishing features. 5. The abundance and quality of biographical facts in the life are inversely related to the development of the honoring of the saint, to the solemnity of the occasion that caused the life, and to the chronological distance between the death of the saint and the writing of the life. Klyuchevsky managed to see in hagiography not only material for the historian, but also broader cognitive possibilities of a sociological and anthropological nature. He wrote: “Reading the lives, we are present at two main processes of our ancient history: we meet face to face with old Russian man, who, always moving with a cross, an ax and a plow, in a jacket and a monastic cassock, did one no small thing - he cleared a place for history from the banks of the Dnieper to the banks of Northern Ocean and at the same time, despite such extensibility, he knew how to gather strength to create a state that would hold back both invasions from the East and propaganda from the West.
In the literature there is a clear definition of what life is. This is a story about the life and deeds of the leaders of the Christian church, who were awarded the title of saints. Over time, life has changed, but main point-glorification of a worthy person, remained in them.
Stories about saints were included in collections and appeared in Russia at the same time as the new religion - Christianity. They immediately fell in love with the circle of literate people and began to be read with great interest.
The task of living
The stories were structured in such a way that the reader could understand why the historical person was called a saint. What is life, it is clear, if you understand what tasks the authors of the writings set for themselves.
The main task of the life - the glorification of the saint, was realized by chanting his courage, courage, ability to cope with difficulties. For example, in the life of Alexander Nevsky, you can read a colorful description of the famous Battle of the Neva, when Alexander rode his horse directly onto the deck of an enemy ship.
The structure of the scriptures
Each life is built according to a single pattern. Be sure to describe information from the history, geography, and sometimes the economy of the place where the saint lived. Therefore, life is a source for historians from which they can draw various information days of the past.
There are cases when saints recognized ordinary people who have done nothing heroic in their lives. They were credited with performing miracles that occurred after their death. They also wrote about fictional characters.
Over time, stories about the life of a person were also added to the genre of life, which practically overshadowed the stories about the exploits of the saints. The writers tried to show that life common man who helps others is no different from the life of martyrs killed in the distant past and this person deserves due respect.
what is life
- Life#769; (bios (Greek), vita (lat.)) a literary genre of biography, biographies of famous bishops, patriarchs, monks-founders of monasteries, less often biographies of secular persons whom the church considered saints. The life was created after the death of the saint, after canonization.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifelife; lifestyle, behavior; subsistence.
sobor.vinchi.ru/pages/ostrov/chram_5.html - biography
- Biography, often about saints
- Description of the existence of the human race since the appearance of Jesus Christ
- If Zh. is mine, then this is what is around, and if Zh. is theirs, then it is fantastic.
- LIFE, in Christianity, is a genre of church literature that tells about the life of people who are canonized by the Church as saints. Lives were created according to rigid canons. A saint is born into a pious family, from childhood he avoids playing with children, prefers prayer, goes to a monastery, spends time in prayer, performs feats of piety, achieves love and recognition from the brethren and laity. He is marked by the Holy Spirit, he begins to work miracles, speaks with angels, then tells about his death and posthumous miracles.
Lives appeared in the Roman Empire in the first centuries of Christianity. Numerous lives told about the martyrdom of those people who, during the persecution of Christians, recognized the one God - Jesus Christ. Other lives told of Christians who voluntarily put themselves to the test.
The appearance of original lives in Russia was associated with political struggle Russia for asserting its ecclesiastical independence. In 1051, Prince Yaroslav the Wise began to insist on the canonization of his brothers Boris and Gleb.
Lives dedicated to prominent figures of the Church began to appear, for example, "The Life of Theodosius of the Caves", in which he spoke about an ascetic monk who went to the monastery against the will of his mother, who has a strong and unyielding character. Theodosius overcomes all trials and devotes himself to serving God.
An outstanding monument is "The Tale of the Life and Death of Euphrosyne". An unknown author glorifies the persistent ascetic, her desire to achieve knowledge and spiritual perfection.
The period of the struggle against the Mongol-Tatars and the Swedish-German intervention is marked by the writing of the lives of Alexander Nevsky, Dmitry Donskoy and others. The scribe of the Vladimir Nativity Monastery wrote "The Life of Alexander Nevsky". The acts of the prince are comprehended in comparison with biblical history, and this gives the biography a special majesty and monumentality. The image of a courageous warrior prince, a valiant commander and a wise politician is created in his life, the most significant events from his life are shown - the battle with the Swedes on the Neva, the liberation of Pskov, the Battle on the Ice. Alexander Yaroslavich is the focus best qualities famous heroes of the Old Testament history - Joseph, Samson, Solomon.
An outstanding Russian hagiographer of the first quarter of the 15th century. was Epiphanius the Wise, who wrote "The Life of Stephen of Perm" and "The Life of Sergius of Radonezh". The writer sought to show the greatness and beauty of the moral ideal of a person who puts the common cause above all else - the cause of strengthening the Russian state.
In the second half of the 16th century Russian writer Yermolai-Erasmus created "The Tale of Peter and Fevronia of Murom", in which he tells the love story of a prince and a peasant girl. The author sympathizes with the heroine, admires her intelligence and nobility in the struggle against the boyars and nobles. In a work with extraordinary power, strength and beauty are glorified female love which is able to overcome all life's hardships and triumph over death. In the story, a halo of holiness surrounds the ideal married life and the wise monocratic management of their principality.
The next step was taken by Archpriest Avvakum, who wrote his own life. In the 1640s, the question arose of holding church reform, which caused a powerful movement - a split, or Old Believers. The ideologist of the Old Believers was Archpriest Avvakum, who in 1672-1673 created his best creation - "The Life of Archpriest Avvakum, written by himself." The character of Avvakum is revealed both in terms of family and everyday life, and in his social and political life, the image of a persistent and courageous Russian person is recreated. - Life is a genre of church literature that describes the life and deeds of the saints.
LIFE (Greek βίος, Latin vita), a genre of church literature, a biography of a saint. The area of literature, to which the totality of life belongs, is called "hagiography". Life is usually divided into groups according to the following criteria: the rank of holiness (hagiological type) of the depicted person; features of the narrative form; the lengthy or short character of the description of the saint's life. In accordance with the ranks of holiness, the lives are divided into martyr's, the lives of the Equal-to-the-Apostles saints, the venerable (the life of the holy monks), the life of the holy wives, the life of the holy fools (known only in Orthodox hagiography), the saints (the life of the saints - hierarchs of the Church), as well as the lay saints ; among the latter, the life of the holy rulers is singled out (in the Slavic tradition, the life of the holy princes). This classification is not rigorous, because. a saint can simultaneously belong to several hagiological types (a martyr or a missionary can be a saint at the same time, a holy wife can be a martyr and/or a nun, etc.). According to the peculiarities of the narrative form, hagiobiographies are distinguished, in which the life of a saint from birth to death is described in detail, and martyria (from the Greek μαρτύριον - torment; in Western catholic tradition were called passio), describing the martyrdom of the saints for the confession of faith, but not containing a story about their life as a whole. By the nature of the description of the life of the holy life can be lengthy and short. The lengthy lives were intended for reading in monasteries at a meal on the day of the saint's memory, for cell and home reading (in the Orthodox Greek and Slavic traditions, they are usually called menaias, since they were included in the Cheti-Minei). Brief Lives were compiled for reading at the service (in the Orthodox Greek tradition they were part of the collections of Synaxar and Menologia; in Ancient Russia, they were part of the Prologue collection created on the basis of the Synaxar, which continued to be called Synaksar among the Orthodox southern Slavs).
From the point of view of the authority and reliability of the reported information, the lives of some saints in the church tradition are usually divided into canonical and apocryphal; the canonical and apocryphal lives of the great martyrs George, Nikita Gotha, Theodore Tyron are known. Lives were often created by witnesses of the lives of saints or from eyewitness accounts. The purpose of life is to preserve the memory of the saints, to edify those who read, to glorify the saint at divine services. According to the materials of the life, services to the saints were usually compiled. The writing of the life was often timed to coincide with the moment of the canonization of the saints, or served as a preparation for the canonization.
In contrast to secular biography, life describes in the person of a saint, first of all, the manifestation of the Divine principle; the images of saints in their lives are usually not individualized; life - the "verbal icon" of the saint (V. O. Klyuchevsky). The life is characterized by a set of compositional and stylistic " common places"(topoi): the author's prayer to God with a request for help and recognition of his sinfulness and "non-literacy"; information about the saint's parents; miracles accompanying his birth; baptism, naming a name endowed with a symbolic meaning and foreshadowing the exploits of a saint; his childhood refusal to play with peers; turning to God; going to a monastery; demonic temptations; knowledge of the day of one's death and pious death; intravital and posthumous miracles (healing of the blind, paralyzed, demon-possessed, etc.). AT different types hagiography has its own set of topoi.
The formation of life was partly influenced by various traditions. It absorbed some features of ancient biography, the ancient novel, folklore genres and mythological representations (for example, the motif of snake fighting in the life of the great martyr George).
The earliest lives are those of martyrdom. The initiative but to compile the first collections of martyr lives that have not come down to us is attributed to the Roman popes Clement I and Fabian, later a martyrology was compiled, without sufficient grounds attributed to Jerome the Blessed, another collection was written by the English monk Bede the Venerable. In the 9th century in the Latin West, martyrologists were Flor, Hraban Moor, Vandelbert, Uzuard, in the 10th century - Notker Zaika. On the Greek the unpreserved martyrology of Eusebius of Caesarea was compiled, and his book on the Palestinian martyrs is also known. The History of the Persian Martyrs was compiled around 410 by Bishop Marufa of Targit.
The most ancient venerable life is the life of Anthony the Great, written by Athanasius the Great. In the 5th century, life in the East was written by Gerontius the Presbyter, Kallinikos, Theodoret of Cyrus. Hagiographic tales about the monks of a certain area were combined into special collections - patericons (Egyptian patericon - “Lavsaik” by Palladius, Sinai patericon - “Spiritual Meadow” by John Moschus).
In Byzantine hagiography, two directions coexisted - "folk", distinguished by the simplicity of language and adherence to everyday specifics, and "literary", focused on book style, abstracted from the image of everyday realities, gravitating towards parable. The "folk" direction includes the lives of John the Merciful and Simeon the Holy Fool, compiled by Leonty of Cyprus. In the 2nd half of the 10th century in Byzantium, the previously written lives were rewritten in an abstract rhetorical style by Simeon Metaphrastus (in total, he edited 148 lives, among them the lives of the Virgin, Nicholas, Bishop of Myra, Dionysius the Areopagite).
The first Latin life is the life of St. Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, written by the deacon Pontius (mid-3rd century). The life was written by Rufin of Aquileia, John Cassian the Roman, Gregory of Tours and others. Artistic features are intensified in the lives created by Walafrid Strabo (St. Blaitmakk, St. Mamma). By the 11th century, the canons of depicting the life of saints were finally developed in Latin literature; in the 12th century, the hagiographies were dominated by descriptions of miracles. In the 11th-13th centuries, codes of life - legends - were created. The most famous and readable was the legend of the Dominican monk Yakov Voraginsky "Golden Legend" (13th century), which included 180 lives; the collection "Catalogue of Saints" was compiled in the 14th century by Peter Natalibus (died 1382). The publication of the corpus of the Latin life ("Acta Sanctorum") was begun in 1643 by the Bollandist society (publication continues to this day).
The oldest Russian lives date back to the turn of the 11th-12th centuries: “Reading about Boris and Gleb”; the life of Theodosius of the Caves, compiled by Nestor, as well as the "Tale of Boris and Gleb" by an unknown author. The lives compiled at the end of the 14th - 1st quarter of the 15th century by Epiphanius the Wise (Sergius of Radonezh, Stefan, Bishop of Perm) are written in a sophisticated style, which is characterized by a variety of rhetorical devices (the style of "weaving words"). In the middle of the 16th century, a corpus of translated and original lives was collected by Metropolitan Macarius in the collection "Great Menaion". New edition translations and original lives, also combined in the collection of Chetiah Menaia, belongs to Metropolitan Dimitry of Rostov. Canonization by the Russian Church at the turn of the 20th-21st century a large number saints (mainly martyrs who suffered in the 20th century) became the reason for the active development of Russian hagiography in the last 2 decades and the compilation of numerous new lives, mostly based on documentary materials.
Lit .: Klyuchevsky V. O. Old Russian Lives of the Saints as a historical source. M., 1871. M., 1989; Brown R. Society and the holy in late antiquity. Berk., 1989; Toporov VN Holiness and saints in Russian spiritual culture. M., 1995-1998. T. 1-2; Podskalski G. Christianity and theological literature in Kievan Rus(988-1237). 2nd ed. SPb., 1996; World of Lives: Collection of materials of the conference (Moscow, October 3-5, 2001). M., 2002; Fedotov G.P. Saints of Ancient Russia. M., 2003; Russian hagiography: research, publications, controversy. SPb., 2005.
