Vera Figura Sancti: The Hagiographical Readings in the Roman Breviary

This article investigates the role of hagiography as a mediating genre between Scripture and liturgy. Hagiographical readings for saints (legenda) have been featured in the office of Matins in Rome from at least the eighth century. By the early modern period, these texts came under scrutiny for a lack of historical credibility, a concern echoed in the reform of the breviary after the Second Vatican Council which pruned the office of much legendary material. Yet recent scholarship on hagiography suggests that the dominant postconciliar concern—historicity—failed to fully understand the genre. Legenda were not bad history, but forms of narrative exegesis, a means to “display to the faithful fitting examples for their imitation” (SC 111). The liturgical function of the hagiographical readings emerges clearly in four case studies comparing Matins of the Breviarum Romanum 1568 to the Liturgia Horarum of 1971 for Agatha, Cecilia, Agnes, and Lucy. These feasts demonstrate both the motivation and the result of the directive to reform the readings of the saints to accord with the “facts of history” (SC 92c). This study demonstrates the need for further work on these understudied hagiographical readings, which use the liturgical and Scriptural context to propose saints as living extensions of the Gospel, rendered concrete and attractive through narrative.