05 — Hagiography vs. History

The critical heart of the collection. St. Andrew is known almost solely through one hagiographic text whose date is debated and whose hero’s historical existence is doubted by most modern scholarship. This section states the source problem in full — the dating debate (Cyril Mango vs. Lennart Rydén), the question of historicity, the anachronisms that betray the Life’s late and literary composition, and the theological question of what the Church venerates when the subject may be a literary saint — and then sets out soberly what can and cannot be known.

Tradition: Byzantine (Constantinopolitan)

This is the source-critical flagship of the collection, modeled on the Xenia methodology file that is the repository’s model for such work (see St. Xenia: The Xenia Case as the Limit of Hagiographic Knowledge). Read methodology.md before drawing any historical conclusion from the biographical files in Sections 01–04.

Files

File Description
methodology.md The flagship: the dating debate, the historicity question, the anachronisms, and what the Church venerates in a possibly literary saint
what-can-be-known.md A sober accounting of what the sources can and cannot establish about Andrew

See Also