The “legendary style” in “The comprehensive life of Constantin (Cyril) the Philosopher”

Abstract

The subject of the study is the “legendary style” of one of the most iconic hagiographic text of the IX century “The Comprehensive Life of Constantine (Cyril) the Philosopher”. This Pannonian legend belongs to the texts of Cyril-Methodius cycle and has the description of the re-finding and transportation Saint Clement’s relics by Constantine the Philosopher from Korsun (Chersonesus) to Rome. This episode is an important part of the process of legalizing the translation of the Divine Books to the so-called Church-Slavonic language. The phrase “legendary style” was borrowed from I. Franko’s work “Saint Clement in Korsun” (Lviv, 1902–1905) and has not been explained as a term yet. The purpose and the novelty of our research is to find out how “legendary style” was formed, which techniques were needed to create this concept. The relevance of this study is due to the analyzing sources for the legend as a genre (it was formed on the base of the hagiographical texts such as Jacobus da Varagine’s "The Golden Legend", XIII century). Ideological description of historical events ("tendentious historicity"), disclosure of holiness and using the category of the miraculous were clarified as the technique of “legendary style”, using the cultural-historical method, elements of comparative, structural and phenomenological analysis. Holiness, called by J. Le Goff “the most important value of Christian society”, is a predetermined aspect in “The Comprehensive Life of Constantine (Cyril) the Philosopher” and it connected the saint’s life with the events of the New Testament. The category of the miraculous is considered from the point of mythological view: miracles regulated the universe, restored harmony and established true rules and laws. According to A. Losev, the true Christian miracle occurred when the real person dialectically synthesized with his/her inner ideal at a certain moment. “Tendentious historicity” is observed in the episode about saint relics of Pope Clement I. There are variations in the very process of re-finding the holy remains: locations, heroes and time in some stories are not the same in different texts from the so-called Cyril-Methodius cycle. It gives reasons to consider these texts ideologically involved. It is advisable to include other hagiographic texts to confirm or refute, expand or narrow the “legendary style” as a term in further research.