The Legenda sanctorum in Slovenian Translation: An Eighteenth-Century Manuscript

Abstract

Studies in early Slovenian literature indicate that hagiographic writings seem to be a semi-literary genre that first made its appearance in small booklets at the end of the eighteenth century. However, manuscript HV 9/39, kept in the Carinthian Provincial Archives in Klagenfurt/Celovec and entitled Dober Legent teh Suetnikov (The Good Legend of the Saints), is a comprehensive text of 1,032 dense handwritten pages containing 181 hagiographic stories of the saints. This is the first translation and rearrangement of substantive hagiographic literature in Slovenian and it dates from between 1750 and 1775. – The original German text is entitled Legenden der Heiligen (Legends of the Saints; 1705). The author of the original was the German Capuchin friar Martin of Cochem (1634–1712), a very popular religious writer. The original itself is one in a series of elaborations and rearrangements of hagiographic texts, originating from the oral traditions of late Antiquity and receiving strong modifications up to the late medieval period. The leading figure of modern scholarly hagiography, Hippolyte Delehaye, following the Bollandist tradition, introduced a strict distinction between what in the lives of the saints can be proved using historical sources and what can be considered elements of folk imagination, oral tradition, and even literary fiction. – Following Delehaye’s hagiographic method, an eighteenth-century manuscript such as Ms HV 9/39 can be rediscovered in a new light. Many legends reveal strong fictional elements and traits. From this point of view, this comprehensive hagiographic collection proves to be an interesting corpus of themes, motifs, and tales that entered Slovenian language and literature for the first time in this unique and unexpected way.