what is biography hagiography

• More from M-W
• To save this word, you'll need to log in. Log In

hagiography

Definition of hagiography

Did you know.

Like biography and autograph , the word hagiography has to do with the written word. The combining form - graphy comes from Greek graphein, meaning "to write." Hagio - comes from a Greek word that means "saintly" or "holy." This origin is seen in Hagiographa , the Greek designation of the Ketuvim , the third part of the Jewish Scriptures. English's hagiography, though it can refer to biography of actual saints, is these days more often applied to biography that treats ordinary human subjects as if they were saints.

Examples of hagiography in a Sentence

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'hagiography.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

see hagiographa

1821, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Articles Related to hagiography

The Good, The Bad, & The...

The Good, The Bad, & The Semantically Imprecise - 5/17/19

Some of the words that defined the week of May 17, 2019

Theme music by Joshua Stamper ©2006 New Jerusalem Music/ASCAP

Get Word of the Day delivered to your inbox!

Dictionary Entries Near hagiography

hagiographist

Cite this Entry

“Hagiography.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary , Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hagiography. Accessed 15 Aug. 2024.

More from Merriam-Webster on hagiography

Thesaurus: All synonyms and antonyms for hagiography

Britannica English: Translation of hagiography for Arabic Speakers

Britannica.com: Encyclopedia article about hagiography

Subscribe to America's largest dictionary and get thousands more definitions and advanced search—ad free!

Can you solve 4 words at once?

Word of the day.

See Definitions and Examples »

Get Word of the Day daily email!

Popular in Grammar & Usage

Plural and possessive names: a guide, commonly misspelled words, how to use em dashes (—), en dashes (–) , and hyphens (-), absent letters that are heard anyway, how to use accents and diacritical marks, popular in wordplay, 8 words for lesser-known musical instruments, it's a scorcher words for the summer heat, 7 shakespearean insults to make life more interesting, 10 words from taylor swift songs (merriam's version), 9 superb owl words, games & quizzes.

Look up a word, learn it forever.

Hagiography, /ˌhæɡiˈɑɡrəfi/.

Other forms: hagiographies

A hagiography is a type of biography that puts the subject in a very flattering light. Hagiographies are often about saints.

The two halves of hagiography refer to holiness and writing, and it is something written about holy people. Originally, a hagiography was a biography of a saint written without skepticism or criticism. A hagiography idealizes the subject and puts them on a pedestal. These days, a hagiography is not necessarily written about a saint, but it still idolizes the subject. A hagiography makes the subject seem like a hero, or at least a wonderful, nearly perfect person.

• noun a biography that idealizes or idolizes the person (especially a person who is a saint) see more see less type of: biography , life , life history , life story an account of the series of events making up a person's life

Vocabulary lists containing hagiography

Ripped from the headlines! See full stories here: Obama Backs Bill to Overhaul Immigration as Debate Is Set , Behind Cry for Help From China Labor Camp , and ‘Boo Radley’ of the Woods? Not to All Maine Neighbors .

Biographer Frank Brady chronicles the meteoric rise and astounding fall of chess prodigy Bobby Fischer.

All Saints' Day, celebrated on November 1st in many Christian traditions, is a solemn occasion dedicated to honoring and remembering all the saints, known and unknown, who have lived virtuous lives. It serves as a day for reflection and gratitude. Learn more with this list of vocabulary related to all things saintly.

Sign up now (it’s free!)

Whether you’re a teacher or a learner, vocabulary.com can put you or your class on the path to systematic vocabulary improvement..

• Britannica Homepage
• Ask the Editor
• Word of the Day
• Core Vocabulary
• Most Popular
• Browse the Dictionary
• My Saved Words

hagiography

• hagiography (noun)
• a hagiography about a famous politician
• The book gives a good idea of his virtues without resorting to hagiography .

• About Us & Legal Info
• Partner Program
• Privacy Notice
• Terms of Use
• Pronunciation Symbols

• Awards and Prizes
• Teaching the Saints
• Book Series
• Current CFPs

Thomas Head’s “Hagiography: A Brief Introduction”

This page reprints the contents of a page created by Thomas Head (1956-2014) for The ORB: the On-line Reference Book for Medieval Studies, which is currently unavailable. It was recreated from a file archived on The Internet Archive (FILE ARCHIVED ON 3:44:32 Jul 30, 2013). Links have not yet all been updated.

Hagiography

Thomas Head

The term hagiography is derived from Greek roots ( hagios =holy; graphe =writing) and has come to refer to the full range of Christian literature which concerns the saints. The scope of that literature has been breathtakingly wide over the course of two millennia of Christian history, including such genres as lives of the saints, collections of miracle stories, accounts of the discovery or movement of relics, bulls of canonization, inquests held into the life of a candidate for canonization, liturgical books, sermons, visions, and the like. These works have been composed not only in the official clerical languages of the Christian churches, such as Latin and Greek, but in the full range of vernacular languages as well. Works of hagiography, in this sense of the term, have been written by Christians from at least the middle of the second century of the Common Era to the present day. The middle ages, however, was a particularly fruitful time for the composition of hagiography, and hagiographic texts remain particularly important to our understanding of the history of medieval Christianity and society. The focus of this essay, and of the other essays which I have prepared for ORB in connection with it, is on the middle ages, and in particular on western Christendom. (Two good places to search for material related to hagiography in eastern Christendom are the Internet Medieval Sourcebook: Saints’ Lives , edited by Paul Halsall and the Survey of Translations of Byzantine Saints’ Lives compiled by Alice-Mary Talbot. The term “hagiography” and other terms related to sanctity, such as “saint,” have specifically Chrsitian roots, but have been adopted by modern scholars and practitioners to apply to parallel practices inother religious traditions. See my ORB essay Christian Sanctity in Comparative Perspective .)

Before proceeding further with a consideration of hagiographic texts composed in the middle ages, it is important to note that the term “hagiography” can also be used to refer to the modern discipline of studying such writings. In these current usages, the term hagiography is a term of relatively modern vintage. Medieval writers usually used cognate terms to refer instead to the “holy writings” of the Bible. The Greek word hagiographa , by contrast, was used in late antiquity to specify one of the three divisions of the Hebrew scriptures. Similar usage continued in medieval Latin: Notker the Stammerer (+ ca.890), for example, used the word hagiographi to refer to the “holy writings” of the Bible. The systematic study and criticism of writings about the saints began in the seventeenth century with the work of clerics of the Congregation de Saint-Maur and the Société des Bollandistes (who are still very active scholars and who maintain a site on the World Wide Web, click here ). It was only then that the term “hagiography” came to refer to this new discipline and its subject matter, in what might be called its modern sense.

Hagiography can only be understood with reference to the concept of sanctity and to the practice of the cult of saints. For medieval Christians saints were those “holy people” ( sancti or sanctae in Latin) who had posthumously entered the kingdom of heaven. According to certain theological definitions of sanctity, anyone who entered heaven was a saint. In practice, however, Christian communities honored only a limited number of people with the title of saint. Crucial to such official recognition of sainthood was the celebration of a feast which marked the day of the saint’s death, that is the day considered to be that person’s birth into the kingdom of heaven. Thus in practice a person becomes a saint only when he or she is accepted as such by an audience and provided the blessing of an institutional authority. In late antiquity and the early middle ages, bishops controlled the celebration of such feasts. By the thirteenth century the papacy came to assert its authority over this process (or canonization as it came to be known) for the western (or Roman Catholic) Church as a whole. More limited cults, however, continued to be fostered at the local level, while varied forms of episcopal and imperial authority continued to be decisive in eastern (or Orthodox) churches. Because of the varied ways through which the veneration of saints could be authorized, there was and is no single universally authoritative list of Christian saints. Rather there are many lists, litanies, and calendars of the holy people given public honor by Christian institutions and communities in varied times and places. Hagiography played a pivotal role in this process, for the very composition and use of a hagiographic text implied that its subject has received institutional recognition. The very composition of a hagiographic text does serve as evidence, however, that its subject once received some form of such public honor. The celebration of a feast or the existence of a relic shrine are other indications of officially sanctioned status as a saint. In practical terms then, the living holy man or woman only gained sainthood when accepted by a community of believers and blessed by an ecclesiastical authority. In one important sense sanctity is thus a social construct, and as such the ideals and practice of sanctity changed, often greatly, over the course of time and place in Christianity.

One of the most important factors in the changing character of sanctity over the course of the Middle Ages was gender. The recognition of, or more importantly the failure to recognize, women as saints betrays many of the misogynist traits typical of medieval society and culture. While most medieval theologians conceded a theoretical equality between men and women in their ability to be saved, they almost uniformly saw men as more likely to practice the virtues necessary for salvation. Moreover women were excluded from the Christian clergy and thus from the callings which produced the majority of saints recognized during certain periods. Throughout the Middle Ages women were a distinct minority among those Christians whose reputation for holiness received public celebration and thus earned for them the title of saint.

Saints were venerated long after their deaths and thus long after memory of them had faded. The most common type of hagiography, that is lives of saints ( vitae ), served to record the actions which had formed and demonstrated their holiness. Excerpts from such lives were often read out as part of the liturgical celebration of a saint’s feast. In the mid-ninth century Bertholdus of Micy, in his Life of St. Maximinus of Micy , described the purpose of hagiography, “The churches of the faithful scattered through the world celebrate together with highest praise the fame of holy men. Their tombs, which are wreathed in the metals of gold and silver, as well as in layers of precious stones and a shell of marble, now bear witness to their pious memory. . . Surely to no less a degree than miracles, which incite the love proferred by the devotion of faithful people, the monuments of letters which are set down on pages also fully satisfy the senses of those who read and hear them. For what has been said and done by the saints ought not be concealed in silence. God’s love provided their deeds to serve as a norm of living for the men of their own times as well as of those years which have since passed; they are now to be imitated piously now by those who are faithful to Christ.”

The aim of hagiographers was not to produce biography in the modern sense, but rather sought rather to portray a saint as an exemplar of the Christian life. Gregory of Tours (+595) wrote that he decided to name a work the Life of the Fathers rather than the Lives of the Fathers because he deemed most important the “merits and virtues” common to a single ideal of sanctity, rather than the diverse singularities of the individual lives of his many subjects. Elsewhere Gregory remarked, “I have recently discovered information about those who have been raised to heaven by the merit of their blessed conduct here below, and I thought that their way of life, which is known to us through reliable sources, could strengthen the Church. . . because the life of the saints . . . encourages the minds of listeners to follow their example.” The lives of the saints thus provided a model, albeit an extraordinary and almost unattainable one, of the Christian life. The records of the lives of the saints were a template of Christian virtue, a map of the path to salvation. Just as epics such as Beowulf or the Norse sagas provide a key to understanding the ideals of Germanic culture, so too the works which follow will help to unlock the ideals of early medieval Christianity. When Eddius Stephanus, an Anglo-Saxon priest, sat down to write the Life of Bishop Wilfrid in the early decades of the eighth century, he mused, “This very task of preserving the blessed memory of Bishop Wilfrid is of great gain and value to myself. Indeed it is in itself a ready path to virtue to know what [Wilfrid] was.” And so he did not simply record the actions of Wilfrid, but did so both to advance the cause of his own salvation and to educate his audience in the proper practice of Christianity. Pedagogic and pastoral, as well as spiritual, concerns lay very much at the heart of the enterprise of composing hagiography. The student of hagiography should remember that these works tell us at least as much about the author and about those who used the text–their ideals and practices, their concerns and aspirations–as it does about the saints who are their subjects. Hagiography thus provides some of the most valuable records for the reconstruction and study of the practice, as well as the spiritual ideals, of medieval Christianity.

To be sure, many works of hagiography-such Baudinovia’s Life of St. Radegund or Raymond of Capua’s Life of St. Catherine of Siena -were written by authors who had first-hand knowledge of their subject. But even these authors modeled their portraits on existing ideals of sanctity and drew upon a large body of traditional and somewhat standardized stories about the saints which are known to modern scholars as topoi or types. Such stories were borrowed, sometimes with little change, from earlier saints’ lives and were intended to convey a moral message rather than historically accurate information. Works written centuries after the fact were often little more than bundles of such topoi. Some-such as the anonymous Life of St. Montana -were composed by authors who knew nothing about their subject’s life or identity. These consisted virtually entirely of stories borrowed from the lives of other saints in which the names and other details have simply been changed. This traditional or typical character is one of the most striking aspects of hagiography. Hagiographic works must sometimes be used with extreme caution, recognizing that they reveal more about the religious and cultural world of their authors than about the lived lives of their subjects.

When reading works of hagiography, it is important to keep in mind that the primary aim of the authors was not to compose a biographical record of the saint, but rather to portray the subject as an exemplar of Christian virtue. Hagiographers also sought to show how the saints themselves had imitated such norms, particularly those provided by the life of Christ and previous saints. Just as they encouraged their audience to imitate the example of the saints, so too they employed the literary models offered them by the Bible and by earlier hagiographic works. Stories, themes, and motifs were repeated from the life of one saint to that of another, each hagiographer adapting a traditional pool of material to the needs of the narrative at hand. Hagiographers even went so far as to repeat phrases and whole passages verbatim from earlier works. The effect, largely intentional, was in part to subsume the particularity of a given saint’s life into a generalized type of sanctity, such as the martyr, the virgin or the holy bishop. Such use of models aided the moral and didactic purpose of hagiography. As André Vauchez has noted, hagiography was a genre which “aims precisely at blurring the individual’s traits and transforming his or her lifetime into a fragment of eternity.” At the same time, the traditional character of hagiography can be overstated. The models of sanctity changed considerably over time, as each new author used and thus altered extant tradition.

In addition to exemplary conduct, the “merits and virtues” described by hagiographers also included the miracles which God performed through the saints. Such miracles did not only occur during the lives of the saints, but also posthumously at their tombs or otherwise in relation to their relics. Posthumous miracles included such visible marvels as cures and exorcisms, as well as invisible acts such as the remission of sins. The devout came to the shrines of saint or prayed to them in search of miraculous intercession. Hagiography recorded these aspects of the veneration of the saints through collections of posthumous miracle stories ( miracula ) and accounts of major events in the history of relic cults ( inventiones , that is the “discovery” or ritual placement of relics in a shrine which inaugurated their public veneration, and translationes , the transfer of relics from one shrine to another).

As noted above, sanctity is in many important respects a changing social construct, rather than an immutable theological ideal. Hagiography was formed by and in turn helpted to form the history of the changing ideals of sanctity. I have composed four ORB essays to complement this present introduction to hagiography. The first, The Cult of Saints and their Relics , discusses the relationship of hagiogrpahy and sanctity to its audience and reception through the veneration of the saints. The second, Women and Hagiography in Medieval Christianity , considers the ways in which gender in particular molded ideals of sanctity in the medieval west. The final two essays provide a survey of the historical development of hagiography and the cult of the saints over the course of the middle ages. The Development of Hagiography and the Cult of Saints in Western Christendom to the Year 1000 has a wide geographical scope, covering western Christendom for late antiquity and the early middle ages. The complementary survey of the later middle ages, The Development of Hagiography and the Cult of the Saints in the Later Middle Ages: The Example of the Kingdom of France from the Capetian accession to the Reformation , is limited to a single important region of western Christendom. I intend to expand the scope of that essay over the course of the 1999-2000 academic year. For the beginning student of hagiography and medieval history, I have made two introductory guides available: An Introductory Guide to Research in the Medieval Hagiography (focused on primary sources) and An Introductory Guide to Scholarship on Hagiography in the Early Middle Ages (focused on secondary works). For more advanced students and researchers, I have made available a set of ten detailed bibliographies on various aspects of medieval hagiography. These and other resources may be accessed by returning to the main page of the hagiography section of ORB.

Attwater, Donald. The Penguin Dictionary of Saints . Harmondsworth, 1965.

Aigrain, René. L’hagiographie: ses sources, ses méthodes, son histoire . Paris, 1953.

Barone, Giulia, and Marina Caffiero, Francesco Scorza Barcellona (eds.). Modelli di comportamento/modelli di santità. Contrasti, intersezioni, complementarietà . Sacro/santo, 10. Turin, 1994.

Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Renate, and Timea Szell (eds.). Images of Sainthood in Medieval Europe . Ithaca, NY, 1991.

Boesch Gajano, Sofia, and and Luigi Sebastiani (eds.). Culto dei santi, istituzioni e classi sociali in età preindustriale . L’Aquila, 1984.

Brown, Peter. The Cult of the Saints. Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity . Chicago, 1981.

Brown, Peter. “The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity,” in Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity (Chicago, 1982), pp. 103-52;

“The Saint as Exemplar in Late Antiquity.” In John Hawley (ed.), Saints and Virtues (Berkeley, 1987), pp. 3-14;

“Arbiters of the Holy: The Christian Holy Man in Late Antiquity.” In Authority and the Sacred (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 55-78;

“The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity, 1971-1997.” Journal of Early Christian Studies 6.3 (1998) 353-376.

Bynum, Caroline. Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women . Berkeley, 1987.

Delehaye, Hippolyte. Legends of the Saints , trans. V. M. Crawford (London, 1907; reprint, South Bend, 1961).

Dubois, Jacques and Jean-Loup Lemaitre. Sources et méthodes de l’hagiographie médiévale . Paris, 1993.

Elliott, Alison. Roads to Paradise. Reading the Lives of the Early Saints. Hanover, NH, 1987.

Farmer, David. The Oxford Dictionary of Saints . Revised edition. Oxford, 1992.

Farmer, Sharon. Communities of Saint Martin: Legend and Ritual in Medieval Tours . Ithaca, NY, 1991.

Geary, Patrick. Furta Sacra. Thefts of Relics in the Central Middle Ages . Princeton, 1978; second edition 1990.

Graus, Frantisek. Volk, Herrscher und Heiliger im Reich der Merowinger. Studeien zur Hagiographie der Merowingerzeit . Prague, 1965.

Head, Thomas. “Hagiography.” In Medieval France: An Encyclopedia , eds. William Kibler and Grover Zinn (New York: Garland, 1995), pp. 433-7.

Head, Thomas. “Hagiography.” In Women in the Middle Ages: An Encyclopedia , ed. Nadia Margolis (New York: Garland, in press).

Head, Thomas. Hagiography and the Cult of Saints. The Diocese of Orléans, 800-1200 . Cambridge, 1990.

Head, Thomas (ed.). Medieval Hagiography: An Anthology . New York, 1999.

Heffernan, Thomas. Sacred Biography. Saints and Their Biographers in the Middle Ages. Oxford, 1988.

Kleinberg, Aviad. Prophets in Their Own Country: Living Saints and the Making of Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages . Chicago, 1992.

Kieckhefer, Richard. Unquiet Lives. Fourteenth-Century Saints and Their Religious Milieu . Chicago, 1984.

Lifshitz, Felice. “Beyond Positivism and Genre: ‘Hagiographical’ Texts as Historical Narrative.” Viator , 25 (1994), pp. 95-113.

McNamara, Jo Ann, and John Halborg, with E. Gordan Whatley (eds.). Sainted Women of the Dark Ages . Durham, 1992.

Noble, Thomas and Thomas Head (eds.). Soldiers of Christ: Saints and Saints’ Lives from Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages . University Park, PA, 1994.

Smith, Julia. “Oral and Written: Saints, Miracles, and Relics in Brittany, c. 850-1250” Speculum 65 (1990), pp. 309-43.

Tilliette, Jean-Yves et al.(eds.). Les fonctions des saints dans le monde occidental (IIIe-XIIIe siècle). Actes du colloque organisé par l’Ecole française de Rome avec le concours de l’Université de Rome “La Sapienza” Rome, 27-29 octobre 1988 . Collection de l’Ecole française de Rome, 149. Rome: Ecole française, 1991.

Vauchez, André. La sainteté en occident aux derniers siècles du moyen âge d’après les procès de canonisation et les documents hagiographiques . Rome, 1981. English translatioin as Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages . Trans. Jean Birrell. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Zarri, Gabriella. La sante vive: cultura e religiosità femminile nella prima età moderna. Sacro/santo, 2. Turin, 1990.

Copyright ©1999, Thomas Head. This file may be copied on the condition that the entire contents,including the header and this copyright notice, remain intact.The contents of ORB are copyright ©1995-1999 Laura V. Blanchard and Carolyn Schriber except as otherwise indicated herein.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

For Members

Donate today, member log-in & admin.

• Entries feed
• Comments feed
• WordPress.org

Novlr is now writer-owned! Join us and shape the future of creative writing.

What is a hagiography?

A detailed biography of a saint., writing a saint's story: understanding the art of hagiography.

Hagiography refers to a biographical writing that chronicles the life, deeds, and miracles of a saint, aimed at highlighting their exemplary character and sanctity. The term is derived from Greek 'hagios,' meaning holy or saintly, and 'graphein,' which means to write, and it has been an essential part of Christian literature, particularly in the Middle Ages.

When writing a hagiography, one must make sure to accurately represent the life and deeds of the saint, as well as their spiritual significance. Sainthood is not bestowed lightly, and a hagiography must accurately reflect the saint's virtue and holy works, often leading to embellishments, miraculous events, and unverified stories.

Thus, hagiography requires a delicate balance between historical accuracy and the spiritual significance that the saint holds. A creative writing approach is often necessary, one that captures the essence of the saint's life and attributes that inspired their worship and veneration. In modern times, this genre has expanded beyond its spiritual roots, with writers producing hagiographical texts for notable public figures, celebrities, and political leaders.

Hagiography has played a significant role in Christian literature, but it has also been used to describe the lives of non-religious or fascinating characters. Here are two examples of how hagiography was used in literature:

The biography of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell is an example of a highly influential hagiography that explores the life, character, and virtues of the renowned 18th-century English writer, Samuel Johnson. While the book was intended to record Johnson's life, accomplishments, and literary contributions, it glorified his memory with mystical overtones.

Boswell presented Johnson as a hero who battled through the challenges of life to become an inspiration to society, sharing his advice and wisdom wherever he went. Boswell's biography portrays Johnson's generosity, wit, and love of literary criticism, making him a beloved figure in English literary history.

Much like Samuel Johnson's biography, Malcolm X's autobiography showcases the life of the iconic civil rights leader in an exemplary manner, making him a martyr to the African American struggle for racial equality. The book's narrative frames Malcolm X as a hero who bravely fought against segregation, racism, and oppression, all the while struggling against his personal demons and conflicting faith.

Alex Haley addressed Malcom X's role as a ''secular saint'' whose message of black pride, self-determination, and community control transformed many young African Americans, leading them to reject assimilationist strategies and pursue autonomous black political power as an alternative to a biased white society.

Hagiography

Hagiography is the writing of saints ' lives. It comes from the Greek words άγιος; and γραφή = "holy writing" or "writing about the holy (ones)."

• Hagiography refers literally to writings on the subject of such holy persons; specifically, the biographies of persons publicly glorified (canonized) by the Church.
• Hagiology , by contrast, is the study of saints collectively, without focusing on the life of an individual saint.
• 1 Hagiography as a form of biography
• 2 Development of hagiography
• 3 Usefulness
• 5 External links

Hagiography as a form of biography

Hagiography is unlike other forms of biography in that it does not necessarily attempt to give a full, historical account of the life of an individual saint. Rather, the purpose of hagiography is soteriological —that is, the life of the saint is written so that it might have a salvific effect on those who encounter it.

As such, hagiography often fails to include details which are standard for most biographical works, such as birthdate, childhood, career, and so forth. Rather, the details included are those which pertain to the saint's life as an icon of Christ, as one who points us to the abundant life available from our Lord.

The secondary purpose of hagiography is to glorify persons in whom Christ has powerfully worked. Therefore, one often can notice a dearth of mention of the saint's sins in this life. Sometimes, those sins are mentioned (as with St. Mary of Egypt or the Prophet King David ) so that their great repentance can be demonstrated, but other times, hagiography includes no mention of the saint's sins at all. This character of the genre should not be understood as propaganda—after all, it is axiomatic that only Christ is without sin—but rather that such details are not germane to the purpose of hagiography.

Development of hagiography

Hagiography comprised an important literary genre in the early millennia of the Church, providing informational history as well as inspirational stories and legends. A hagiographic account of an individual saint is often referred to as a vita or life .

The genre of lives of the saints first came into being in the Roman Empire as collections of traditional accounts of Christian martyrs , called martyrologies . In the 4th century, there were 3 main types of catalogues of lives of the saints:

• Menaion , an annual calendar catalogue (in Greek, μηναίον menaios means "month") (biographies of the saints to be read at sermons )
• Synaxarion , or a short version of lives of the saints, arranged by dates
• Paterikon (in Greek, πατήρ pater means "father"), or biography of the specific saints, chosen by the catalogue compiler

In Western Europe hagiography was one of the more important areas in the study of history during the Middle Ages. The Golden Legend of Jacob de Voragine compiled a great deal of mediæval hagiographic material, with a strong emphasis on miracle tales.

In the 10th century, the work of St. Simeon Metaphrastes —an Orthodox monk who had been a secretary of state—marked a major development and codification of the genre. His Menologion (catalogue of lives of the saints), compiled at the request of Emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus while Simeon was still a civil servant, became the standard for all of the Western and Eastern hagiographers. Over the years, hagiography as a genre absorbed a number of narrative plots and poetic images (often of pre-Christian origin, such as dragon fighting etc.), mediaeval parables , short stories and anecdotes. Simeon's contribution was to collect these saints' lives from written and oral traditions, copying directly from some sources and reworking others, then arranging them in order of the saints' feast days.

The genre of lives of the saints was brought to Russia by the South Slavs together with writing and also in translations from the Greek language. In the 11th century, the Russians began to compile the original life stories of the first Russian saints. In the 16th century, Metropolitan Macarius expanded the list of the Russian saints and supervised the compilation of their life stories. They would all be compiled in the so called Velikiye chet'yi-minei catalogue (Великие Четьи-Минеи, or "Grand monthly readings"), consisting of 12 volumes in accordance with each month of the year.

Even though some of the writings seem to contain embellishments, as one may assume when reading of the life of St. Nicholas of Myra , they are still quite useful. In the words of Fr. Thomas Hopko :

• Article adapted from Wikipedia:Hagiography
• The Orthodox Faith Written by the V. Rev. Thomas Hopko ( OCA web site )

External links

• The Great Collection of the Lives of the Saints English translation of the work by Saint Demetrius of Rostov from Chrysostom Press
• Great Synaxaristes - Lives of Saints English translation from Greek from Holy Apostles Convent and Dormition Skete

Navigation menu

Personal tools.

• Request account
• View source
• View history
• Featured content
• Browse categories
• Recent changes
• Random page

interaction

• Community portal
• Trapeza (Discussion)
• What links here
• Related changes
• Upload file
• Special pages
• Printable version
• Permanent link
• Page information
• Cite this page

In other languages

• This page was last edited on April 30, 2019, at 04:35.
• This page has been accessed 70,139 times.
• Copyright Information
• Privacy policy
• About OrthodoxWiki
• Disclaimers
• Mobile view

ENGL 4892: Medieval Manuscripts & Where to Find Them (Camp): Hagiography (The Saints)

• Hagiography (The Saints)
• Books of Hours
• Biographies
• Medieval Art History
• Medieval Color
• Sainte-Chapelle & Paris

Hagiography

Medieval hagiography comprises narratives that recount the saints' lives ( vitae ). Typically, these texts include the deeds and miracles associated with the saint, the conditions of their death ( passio  or passion) and martyrdom.

The hagiographical literature, which often describes a saint's life in graphic detail, is a vital source for medieval social, cultural and intellectual history. The resources below include a very small selection of basic tools for researching the lives of the saints. Both primary sources and secondary sources are available via the UGA Libraries.  

For even further reading on the subject, the following websites are especially comprehensive:

Internet Medieval Sourcebook: Saint's Lives   http://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/Halsall/sbook3.asp

Ménestrel ​ http://www.menestrel.fr/spip.php?rubrique427&lang=en  ​ Guide to Internet resources about Medieval hagiography, in a web site dedicated to the Middle Ages and run by a group of French and Belgian historians.  (The website has an English version, linked above.)

(Image Credit:  Saint Margaret with a Lady Donor.  Attributed to the Luçon Master, ca. 1405, Princeton University Art Museum, http://artmuseum.princeton.edu/)

Primary Sources

• Patrologia Latina Database Writings of the major Christian writers from Tertullian to the death of Pope Innocent III in 1216.

Researching Saints (Secondary Sources)

Religious Iconography

Your Librarian

• << Previous: Background
• Next: Books of Hours >>
• Last Updated: Jun 21, 2024 12:29 PM
• URL: https://guides.libs.uga.edu/medievalbook

• Daily Crossword
• Word Puzzle
• Word Finder
• Word of the Day
• Synonym of the Day
• Word of the Year
• Language stories
• All featured
• Gender and sexuality
• All pop culture
• Writing hub
• Grammar essentials
• Commonly confused
• All writing tips
• Pop culture
• Writing tips

Advertisement

hagiography

[ hag-ee- og -r uh -fee , hey-jee- ]

• the writing and critical study of the lives of the saints; hagiology .
• a biography that treats the person with excessive or undue admiration.

/ ˌhæɡɪˈɒɡrəfɪ; ˌhæɡɪəˈɡræfɪk /

• the writing of the lives of the saints
• biography of the saints
• any biography that idealizes or idolizes its subject

Derived Forms

• hagiographic , adjective

Other Words From

• hag·i·o·graph·ic [ hag-ee-, uh, -, graf, -ik, hey-jee- ] , hagi·o·graphi·cal adjective

Word History and Origins

Origin of hagiography 1

Example Sentences

This movie is not a hagiography, and it stops short of treating Larson like a genius.

Birdsall gives us a portrait of Beard that is neither a take-down nor hagiography.

She wants a “hagiography,” and the conflicts and confusions that ensue provide The Last Word with its comic momentum.

We Could Be King is, of course, part of a larger emergent genre, that of the high school football hagiography.

Surfing on an ocean of media hagiography, Christie seemed unbeatable just when it was time for Democrats to declare themselves.

And thank God, given the current glut of baseball hagiography on the market.

One has to be careful not to descend into a mess of hagiography.

But the great and absorbing subject of poetry in this age is Hagiography.

Hagiography was now a lost branch of art, as completely lost as wood carving, and the miniatures of the old missals.

The second version, though LB calls it miraculum insolitum, is one of the commonplaces of hagiography.

Space would now fail us to trace the development of hagiography in the Church.

The hagiography of the Eastern and the Greek church also has been the subject of important publications.

How to go to Heaven

How to get right with god.

What is hagiography?

For further study, related articles, subscribe to the, question of the week.

Get our Question of the Week delivered right to your inbox!

• Search Menu

Sign in through your institution

• Advance articles
• Author Guidelines
• Book Reviewer Guidelines
• Submission Site
• Open Access Options
• Why Submit?
• About Journal of the American Academy of Religion
• About the American Academy of Religion
• Books for Review
• Editorial Board
• Advertising and Corporate Services
• Self-Archiving Policy
• Dispatch Dates
• Terms and Conditions
• Journals on Oxford Academic
• Books on Oxford Academic

• < Previous

Hagiography Unbound: A Theory of Making and Using Holy Media

• Article contents
• Figures & tables
• Supplementary Data

Aaron T Hollander, Hagiography Unbound: A Theory of Making and Using Holy Media, Journal of the American Academy of Religion , Volume 89, Issue 1, March 2021, Pages 72–102, https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfab009

• Permissions Icon Permissions

Hagiography is a scholarly category that has been used primarily to group textual sources that represent the lives of Christian saints. This article contends that the utility of hagiography and hagiographical far exceeds this commonplace usage, in terms of both the ways they entail broadly enacted cultural dynamics and their applicability beyond conventional disciplinary expectations of what constitutes representations of saints (or even religious content). The article provides a retheorization along two analytic vectors: (1) framing hagiography in terms of a field of many interconnected media rather than identifying it with texts alone, and (2) studying it in terms of the psychosocial processes (imagination, representation, and appropriation) that generate and mobilize understandings of holiness in the world rather than limiting it to the products that instantiate but do not exhaust these processes.

American Academy of Religion members

Personal account.

• Sign in with email/username & password
• Get email alerts
• Save searches
• Purchase content
• Activate your purchase/trial code
• Add your ORCID iD

Institutional access

Sign in with a library card.

• Sign in with username/password
• Recommend to your librarian
• Institutional account management
• Get help with access

Access to content on Oxford Academic is often provided through institutional subscriptions and purchases. If you are a member of an institution with an active account, you may be able to access content in one of the following ways:

IP based access

Typically, access is provided across an institutional network to a range of IP addresses. This authentication occurs automatically, and it is not possible to sign out of an IP authenticated account.

Choose this option to get remote access when outside your institution. Shibboleth/Open Athens technology is used to provide single sign-on between your institution’s website and Oxford Academic.

• Click Sign in through your institution.
• Select your institution from the list provided, which will take you to your institution's website to sign in.
• When on the institution site, please use the credentials provided by your institution. Do not use an Oxford Academic personal account.
• Following successful sign in, you will be returned to Oxford Academic.

If your institution is not listed or you cannot sign in to your institution’s website, please contact your librarian or administrator.

Enter your library card number to sign in. If you cannot sign in, please contact your librarian.

Society Members

Society member access to a journal is achieved in one of the following ways:

Sign in through society site

Many societies offer single sign-on between the society website and Oxford Academic. If you see ‘Sign in through society site’ in the sign in pane within a journal:

• Click Sign in through society site.
• When on the society site, please use the credentials provided by that society. Do not use an Oxford Academic personal account.

If you do not have a society account or have forgotten your username or password, please contact your society.

Sign in using a personal account

Some societies use Oxford Academic personal accounts to provide access to their members. See below.

A personal account can be used to get email alerts, save searches, purchase content, and activate subscriptions.

Some societies use Oxford Academic personal accounts to provide access to their members.

Viewing your signed in accounts

Click the account icon in the top right to:

• View your signed in personal account and access account management features.
• View the institutional accounts that are providing access.

Signed in but can't access content

Oxford Academic is home to a wide variety of products. The institutional subscription may not cover the content that you are trying to access. If you believe you should have access to that content, please contact your librarian.

For librarians and administrators, your personal account also provides access to institutional account management. Here you will find options to view and activate subscriptions, manage institutional settings and access options, access usage statistics, and more.

Short-term Access

To purchase short-term access, please sign in to your personal account above.

Don't already have a personal account? Register

Email alerts

Citing articles via.

• Recommend to your Librarian

Affiliations

• Online ISSN 1477-4585
• Print ISSN 0002-7189
• Copyright © 2024 American Academy of Religion
• About Oxford Academic
• Publish journals with us
• University press partners
• What we publish
• New features  
• Open access
• Rights and permissions
• Accessibility
• Advertising
• Media enquiries
• Oxford University Press
• Oxford Languages
• University of Oxford

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide

• Copyright © 2024 Oxford University Press
• Cookie settings
• Cookie policy
• Privacy policy
• Legal notice

This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Sign In or Create an Account

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

Words and phrases

Personal account.

• Access or purchase personal subscriptions
• Get our newsletter
• Save searches
• Set display preferences

Institutional access

Sign in with library card

Sign in with username / password

Recommend to your librarian

Institutional account management

Sign in as administrator on Oxford Academic

hagiography noun

• Hide all quotations

What does the noun hagiography mean?

There are three meanings listed in OED's entry for the noun hagiography . See ‘Meaning & use’ for definitions, usage, and quotation evidence.

hagiography has developed meanings and uses in subjects including

How common is the noun hagiography ?

How is the noun hagiography pronounced?

British english, u.s. english, where does the noun hagiography come from.

Earliest known use

The earliest known use of the noun hagiography is in the mid 1600s.

OED's earliest evidence for hagiography is from 1631, in the writing of Peter Heylyn, Church of England clergyman and historian.

hagiography is a borrowing from Latin.

Etymons: Latin hagiographia .

Nearby entries

• hagiarchy, n. 1826–
• hagi-heroical, adj. 1829
• hagio-, comb. form
• hagiocracy, n. 1816–
• Hagiographa, n. a1382–
• hagiographal, adj. 1565–
• hagiographer, n. 1648–
• hagiographic, adj. 1769–
• hagiographical, adj. 1585–
• hagiographist, n. 1799–
• hagiography, n. 1631–
• hagiolater, n. 1872–
• hagiolatrous, adj. 1839–
• hagiolatry, n. 1649–
• hagiologic, adj. 1826–
• hagiological, adj. 1776–
• hagiologist, n. 1795–
• hagiology, n. 1651–
• hagiomania, n. 1807–
• hagio-romance, n. a1843–
• hagioscope, n. 1840–

Thank you for visiting Oxford English Dictionary

To continue reading, please sign in below or purchase a subscription. After purchasing, please sign in below to access the content.

Meaning & use

Pronunciation, compounds & derived words, entry history for hagiography, n..

hagiography, n. was revised in September 2021.

hagiography, n. was last modified in July 2023.

oed.com is a living text, updated every three months. Modifications may include:

• further revisions to definitions, pronunciation, etymology, headwords, variant spellings, quotations, and dates;
• new senses, phrases, and quotations.

Revisions and additions of this kind were last incorporated into hagiography, n. in July 2023.

Earlier versions of this entry were published in:

OED First Edition (1898)

• Find out more

OED Second Edition (1989)

• View hagiography in OED Second Edition

Please submit your feedback for hagiography, n.

Please include your email address if you are happy to be contacted about your feedback. OUP will not use this email address for any other purpose.

Citation details

Factsheet for hagiography, n., browse entry.

• Cambridge Dictionary +Plus

Meaning of hagiography in English

Your browser doesn't support HTML5 audio

• multi-volume
• young adult

Related word

Translations of hagiography.

Get a quick, free translation!

Word of the Day

food remaining after a meal

Simply the best! (Ways to describe the best)

Learn more with +Plus

• Recent and Recommended {{#preferredDictionaries}} {{name}} {{/preferredDictionaries}}
• Definitions Clear explanations of natural written and spoken English English Learner’s Dictionary Essential British English Essential American English
• Grammar and thesaurus Usage explanations of natural written and spoken English Grammar Thesaurus
• Pronunciation British and American pronunciations with audio English Pronunciation
• English–Chinese (Simplified) Chinese (Simplified)–English
• English–Chinese (Traditional) Chinese (Traditional)–English
• English–Dutch Dutch–English
• English–French French–English
• English–German German–English
• English–Indonesian Indonesian–English
• English–Italian Italian–English
• English–Japanese Japanese–English
• English–Norwegian Norwegian–English
• English–Polish Polish–English
• English–Portuguese Portuguese–English
• English–Spanish Spanish–English
• English–Swedish Swedish–English
• Dictionary +Plus Word Lists
• English    Noun
• Translations
• All translations

To add hagiography to a word list please sign up or log in.

Add hagiography to one of your lists below, or create a new one.

{{message}}

Something went wrong.

There was a problem sending your report.

How the Simplicity of Bob Marley: One Love Lets Down Its Complex Subject

Your changes have been saved

Email is sent

Email has already been sent

Please verify your email address.

You’ve reached your account maximum for followed topics.

Quick Links

What is bob: marley one love about, what the biopic fails to address, bob marley derseves better.

One of the biggest surprise hit movies at the international box office, Bob Marley: One Love struck a chord with the masses upon release in February 2024. Yet, for all the commercial success, earning roughly $180 million worldwide (via Box Office Mojo ), most agree that the film is a standard, run-of-the-mill biopic that robs the brilliant artist's subject of a fully-rounded portrait . Despite the radiant charms of star Kingsley Ben-Adir in the lead role, the film sanitizes Bob Marley's life story to tell an uplifting story of a positive role model overcoming poverty in Jamaica to achieve international superstardom.

There's a stultifying simplicity to the movie that does a disservice to the three-dimensional complexity Bob Marley was known for. Most telling, the lack of compelling high-stakes drama makes the movie feel like a commercial Bob Marley music video rather than a legitimate biographical picture that gets to the heart of what made the man and musical artist tick. Now that the movie is available on Prime Video, a deeper exam of where the movie went wrong is on deck.

Bob Marley: One Love

A routine musical biopic directed by Marcus Reinaldo Green, Bob Marley: One Love avoids the trappings of telling a cradle-to-grave story yet still feels flat and one-dimensional. Focusing on five years in the life of mega-popular Reggae superstar Bob Marley (Ben Adir), the story occurs from 1976 to 1981 . The Black musical biopic begins in Jamaica, where Bob Marley and his wife Rita Marley (Lashana Lynch) are nearly assassinated in a politically fraught environment. The two try to broker peace by performing at a Smile Jamaica peace rally, only for Marley to move his family to Delaware and his band to London.

In London, Marley struggles to find inspiration for his new album, turning to Rita for ideas. Marley and his band recorded the hit album Exodus in London, which extended the global Reggae and Rastafarian movement. As the band achieves international stardom, it begins to tour Europe and Africa. Bob and Rita grow distant, with Bob's infamous infidelity hardly touched on in the film. A few cliché musical montages and phony feel-good moments aside, the movie quickly moves to Marley's skin cancer diagnosis caused by a neglected toenail infection .

The goodwill of the first half glances upon a depressing third act when Marley defiantly battles cancer and fights with his manager over money. Unconvincingly, the movie ends with Marley reconciling with Rita and his band and forgiving the man who nearly shot him to death at the beginning. Marley declares he "keeps no vengeance" before performing One Love in a simplistic Kumbaya moment that rings utterly false . The movie wants to celebrate Bob Marley's musical contributions and political activism, yet avoids genuine conflict, lasting ramifications, and the personal indiscretions that made the man and the artist whole.

For a biopic covering only five years in the life of a monumental musical artist like Bob Marley, One Love feels slight, simplistic, and sanitized. The term hagiography refers to a biography that lionizes its subject, which aptly describes how One Love functions. The movie worships and idolizes Marley instead of depicting the character honestly , and is more interested in putting the musical artist on a pedestal rather than a glass house to witness all his flaws and imperfections.

As such, several darker areas of Marley's life are hardly addressed in the film , if at all. For instance, Bob Marley's 13 children from eight different women are barely glanced over in the movie, all but excusing his chronic infidelity because Rita was simply aware of it. With a brisk runtime of 1 hour and 47 minutes, the film never gives enough time to explore the depths of Marley's personal and professional life and rushes through the paint-by-number beats to satisfy the formula of a basic biopic.

11 Best Movies About Musicians

Movies about rock stars and music biopics are always popular, and these are some of the best and most intimate looks at musicians.

The rote stage montages, the dull editorial platitudes, and the stark lack of drama make for a wildly underwhelming experience. Marley fans are better off replaying an old album to recapture the vibration experienced in his presence. The lack of childhood upbringing in Trench Town and learning how to play guitar and write songs, the absence of his sickened final days, and living with his sons and daughters are completely omitted to streamline a fairly conventional biopic that is more afraid of besmirching the Marley name than telling the full, honest, truth.

If any musical artist deserves a better, more accurate, and genuinely rousing biographical movie , it's hard to beat Bob Marley. Despite his faults and transgressions, the man almost single-handedly popularized Reggae and opened the doors for several to prosper in his footsteps . The political activism and attempt to broker peace in Zimbabwe are not to be taken as lightly as in the movie.

While Marley's musical legacy speaks for itself, the awareness he brought to Jamaica as a viable musical breeding ground cannot be overstated. Yet, these virtues can and should be expressed while also showing Marley's more complicated darker side, something the movie avoids in becoming a commercial celebration. As Owen Glieberman writes in his Variety review :

"The point of the new biopic mode was to reveal totemic figures in a more complex way. “One Love” flirts with complexity but slides into the banality of hero worship."

Similarly, IndieWire's Vikram Murthi adds :

One Love plods through an inert, and-then-this-happened structure that neglects to illuminate or entertain. It’s watchable only because of performances from Kingsley Ben-Adir and Lashana Lynch, who admirably attempt to imbue Bob and Rita Marley, respectively, with genuine life absent from the rest of the film."

One Love: What the Bob Marley Movie Gets Right (And What it Gets Wrong)

Bob Marley: One Love provides a fascinating glimpse into the life of the iconic singer. However, not everything depicted in the film was accurate.

Even those bestowing moderate praise on the high-grossing biopic say the total of its parts does not add up. Rolling Stone's David Fear states :

"Director Reinaldo Marcus Green ( King Richard ) does his duty by delivering eureka moments, a few greatest-hits sequences, some personal drama. The result is a perfectly functional look at a legend, one that will definitely make you want to put Exodus back into heavy playlist rotation. It’s still not enough."

Not enough indeed. One Love is too basic to paint a gripping 3D portrait of one of the greatest musical artists of the 20th century. It's a celebration of Marley's music, not a true depiction of the highs and lows of his life on and off the stage.

Bob Marley: One Love is available to stream on Prime Video.

• Today's news
• Reviews and deals
• Climate change
• 2024 election
• Newsletters
• Fall allergies
• Health news
• Mental health
• Sexual health
• Family health
• So mini ways
• Unapologetically
• Buying guides

Entertainment

• How to Watch
• My watchlist
• Stock market
• Biden economy
• Personal finance
• Stocks: most active
• Stocks: gainers
• Stocks: losers
• Trending tickers
• World indices
• US Treasury bonds
• Top mutual funds
• Highest open interest
• Highest implied volatility
• Currency converter
• Basic materials
• Communication services
• Consumer cyclical
• Consumer defensive
• Financial services
• Industrials
• Real estate
• Mutual funds
• Credit cards
• Balance transfer cards
• Cash back cards
• Rewards cards
• Travel cards
• Online checking
• High-yield savings
• Money market
• Home equity loan
• Personal loans
• Student loans
• Options pit
• Fantasy football
• Pro Pick 'Em
• College Pick 'Em
• Fantasy baseball
• Fantasy hockey
• Fantasy basketball
• Download the app
• Daily fantasy
• Scores and schedules
• GameChannel
• World Baseball Classic
• Premier League
• CONCACAF League
• Champions League
• Motorsports
• Horse racing

New on Yahoo

• Privacy Dashboard

Elon Musk’s Daughter on Dad’s Biography: ‘Sad Excuse for a Puff Piece’

For the past few weeks, Vivian Jenna Wilson, the estranged daughter of Elon Musk , has taken to the Threads platform to deliver scathing criticism of her father, characterizing him as a cruel absentee father who is “desperate for attention and validation from an army of degenerate red-pilled incels and pick-mes,” as she wrote in July.

Now, Wilson is taking aim at yet another target in Musk’s orbit: his biographer, Walter Isaacson, whose book about the Tesla CEO was released in 2023.

More from Rolling Stone

After Trump's Disastrous Musk Interview, Harris Mocks 'Rich Guys' Who Can't Run a Livestream

Will the Government Stop Political Deepfakes Like Elon Musk's Kamala Harris Ad?

How Elon Musk and X Became the Biggest Purveyors of Online Misinformation

“Let’s talk about the Walter Isaacson book,” Wilson wrote in an impassioned thread on Sunday. “For those of you unaware, he wrote a biography about Elon in which I am featured.” Wilson, who is transgender, is estranged from her father, which she has attributed in part to his history of making anti-LGBTQ comments. In 2022, she filed a petition in court requesting to change her name, stating she no longer wanted to have any connection to her father “in any way, shape or form.”

In Wilson’s posts on the platform Threads — a competitor to the Musk-owned platform X, formerly known as Twitter — she accused Isaacson of “[throwing her] to the wolves” by depicting her estrangement from Musk as a tragic backstory “to excuse or explain away in his behavior,” characterizing her depiction in Isaacson’s book as “one of the most humiliating experiences of my entire life.”

“Elon was your darling Tony Stark apartheid-American hero with a semi-tragic backstory who was saving the world and you were too fucking cowardly to write anything other than a sad excuse for a puff-piece,” Wilson wrote in her thread. “To further this goal, you portrayed me in a light that is genuinely defamatory and I’m not going to mince my words.”

Wilson also accused Isaacson of failing to directly reach out to her for comment while working on his book. “I found out about this thing’s existence literally a MONTH before it was released,” Wilson wrote. “So either you are completely fucking incompetent at the most basic aspects of your ‘job,’ or you are weaponizing your own lack of effort to try to lift the blame off of yourself because you knew damn well what you were doing.”

Wilson also claims that Isaacson got basic details of her story wrong, such as her first name. In the book, she is referred to by her middle name, “Jenna,” which she said on Threads is a name used only by her mother and her close friends from high school. “It is genuinely impressive that you somehow managed to find a way to even fuck up my NAME,” she wrote.

Though Isaacson and his publisher, Simon and Schuster, did not immediately return Rolling Stone ‘s requests for comment, Isaacson did state in an interview with NBC News that he had reached out to Wilson via family members . Wilson made the point in her posts, however, that Isaacson could have reached out to her directly to get her side of the story. “You had the information necessary to contact me directly and you didn’t. It’s not exactly neuroscience when all you had to do was ask for my fucking phone number,” she wrote.

Released in 2023, Elon Musk received mixed reviews from critics, many of whom viewed it as an unquestioning hagiography that glossed over Musk’s far-right views, such as his rants against the “woke mind virus,” DEI initatives, and LGBTQ+ people, in favor of focusing on his business achievements. In an interview with NBC News on July 25, Wilson had criticized the book, referring to Isaacson’s reporting, such as his characterization of her politics as “radical Marxism,” as inaccurate.

Isaacson’s book attributes Musk’s right-wing political views in large part to his rift with his daughter, particularly her “embrace of radical socialist politics” and her gender transition. “He feels he lost a son who changed first and last names and won’t speak to him anymore because of this woke-mind virus,” Isaacson quotes Musk’s personal office manager as saying. “He is a firsthand witness on a very personal level of the damaging effect of being indoctrinated by this woke-mind religion.”

In a recent interview with the conservative influencer Jordan Peterson, Musk doubled down on this perspective, repeatedly misgendering Wilson, referring to her as “gay and slighly autistic” as a child, and alleging he had been “tricked” into allowing her to take hormones during her transition. Wilson refuted this on Threads, claiming that Musk had no idea what her childhood was like “because he quite simply wasn’t there, and in the little time that he was I was relentlessly harassed for my femininity and queerness.”

Best of Rolling Stone

Every Super Bowl Halftime Show, Ranked From Worst to Best

The United States of Weed

Gaming Levels Up