Month: November 2018

In my never-ending quest to bring you, dear reader, the very best in primary source material, let me present a list of translated early medieval saint’s lives!

The life of a saint, or vita (plural vitae),^1.Both singular and plural are pronounced wee-tah. is a posthumous biography written both to celebrate the saint and to instruct the reader. The lives can feel a little formulaic, and usually include a childhood marked by a piety that promised future greatness, then some trials and tribulations, followed by either a peaceful or a martyr’s death. The miracles the saint performed, both before and after death, are a necessary element. Vitae were usually written by another ecclesiastic, such as a monk or an abbot.

The most notable exception to the rule that vitae are written about saints is Einhard’s Life of Charlemagne. Einhard was not a monk, and Charles was certainly no saint.

As a primary source vitae can be fruitful, but it really depends on what you’re looking for. Generally they are pretty weak on political history, but occasionally you’ll get a glimpse of the great and powerful striding outside the monastery walls. The lives sometimes present little bits of social history, as you watch a young boy or girl grow up in a bad world before finding the Light. I’m told that the the careful reader can find plenty of ecclesiastical and theological history in the lives, but that’s not really my area.

I’ve arranged the list by chronology of the saint, insofar as I can determine it. As with many facts from the era, birth and death dates are approximate. The “Source” is the book where the life is published, which you can reference in the Bibliography (I suppose I should link from each title to its entry, but maybe later). There are multiple translations available for some vita, which can be handy if you’re trying to figure out what the author really meant.

The list includes all of the lives in the sources that I have, but of course there are more out there. Vitae are handy subjects with which to train Latinists, as I learned with great pleasure here in Boulder working with Dr. Scott Bruce. I imagine there are a lot of lives sitting in doctoral supervisors’ file cabinets.

I’ll add to the list as I find the sources. If you know of any that I don’t have, please send along a link. Enjoy!