08 — Hagiography vs History

The methodological section, on the Xenia model — but at the opposite end of the evidentiary scale: where Blessed Xenia is the repository’s limit case of the barely documented saint, Shushanik is its best case — a near-contemporary, named-author, eyewitness-confessor source, unusually strong for the fifth century. The section builds the source inventory, states what is documented and what is legendary accretion, and draws the contrast with the later semi-epic Georgian Lives (Juansher’s Vakhtang above all).

Tradition: Georgian Orthodox (shared pre-division veneration with the Armenian Apostolic Church)

Contents

File Description
methodology.md The flagship: the dated source inventory; the attestation classes adapted from the Herman/Xenia models to a strong case; what is documented, computed, and accreted; the rules this compendium follows; the value of the best case for reading all hagiography
what-an-eyewitness-account-gives.md The confessor-eyewitness source examined as a genre: proximity’s gains (checkable audience, incidental corroboration, realism), partisanship’s costs (advocacy, composed speeches, liturgical shaping), and the contrast with Juansher’s epic Vakhtang

Summary

This repository’s source-critical flagships have been forged on hard cases — Xenia’s vanished documentation (see the Xenia methodology), Vakhtang’s late epic (see the Vakhtang methodology). Shushanik completes the instrument from the other end: the method must also know what to do when the evidence is good — how to use a strong source without sliding from “near-contemporary witness” to “documented fact,” and how to keep the accretions (the name forms, the relic dates, the calendar etiologies) distinct from the fifth-century core. The two files do that work.

See Also