02 — The Lives of the Saints

The flagship section: the Cheti-Minei (the Menaion Reader / Book of the Lives of the Saints), the four-volume Russian Lives of the Saints that St. Dimitri compiled over some twenty years (1684–1705) — its making, its sources, and the honest question of his hagiographic method.

This is the labor for which St. Dimitri is chiefly remembered. The first file tells the story of the work itself; the second confronts directly the critical question of how Dimitri worked — that he weighed and selected among Greek, Latin, and Slavonic sources, yet produced a devotional compilation rather than critical history by modern standards.

Files

File	Description
the-cheti-minei.md	The monumental ~20-year labor compiling the four-volume Russian Lives of the Saints; the sources — Symeon Metaphrastes, the Bollandist Acta Sanctorum, St. Makary’s Great Menaion, the Kyiv archives
method-and-source-criticism.md	How Dimitri worked, and the critical question of his hagiographic method by modern standards — devotional compilation, not critical history, presented honestly

See Also

• The Call to the Great Work — how the project began
• 09 — Legacy and Reception — the centuries-long use of the Lives and the English edition
• Collection README — the master guide