Other languages

• Dutch: heiligenleven, suffragium
• French: vie de saint 
• German: Heiligenleben 
• Italian: santi, vita di santi 
• Polish: żywoty świętych, hagiografia
• Spanish: vidas de santos 

Material form

Subject

Description

Saints’ lives were the subject of many kinds of popular publications, ranging from ballads and single-sheet images (e.g. devotional images, penny prints) to longer stories (e.g. in chapbooks), sermons, prayers, and collections of hagiographies (e.g. ‘suffragia’). These different forms catered to varying reading/viewing interests, including devotion, education, expression of religious identity, and sometimes also entertainment. As new saints continued to be canonised by the Catholic Church in the early modern period (especially in Italy and Spain), accounts of their lives and martyrdom had a topical or even polemical aspect as well. 

Related terms

devotional literature, broadsheet, chapbook, prayer book, sermon, martyr story, hagiography

Sources

D.S. Areford, The Viewer and the Printed Image in Late Medieval Europe (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010).

D.J. Collins, Reforming Saints: Saints’ Lives and Their Authors in Germany, 1470–1530 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).

A.K. Frazier (ed.), The Saint Between Manuscript and Print: Italy 1400-1600 (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2015).

J.R. Paas, The Altzenbachs of Cologne. Early Modern German Print Publishers: Popular Prints of the Seventeenth Century, 2 vols. (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2020).

B. Schöller, Kölner Druckgraphik der Gegenreformation, Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte religiöser Bildpropaganda zur Zeit der Glaubenskämpfe mit einem Katalog der Einblattdrucke des Verlages Johann Bussemacher (Cologne: Kölnisches Stadtmuseum, 1992).

A. Thijs, Antwerpen internationaal uitgeverscentrum van devotieprenten, 17de-18de eeuw. Miscellanea Neerlandica, 7 (Leuven: Peeters, 1993).

E.M.F. Verheggen, Beelden voor passie & hartstocht. Bid- en devotieprenten in de Noordelijke Nederlanden, 17de en 18de eeuw (Zutphen: Walburg Pers, 2006).