Hagiography and Legends

Lives of saints, miracle collections, devotional legends, and historical hagiography, read as religious sources with their own communities, claims, and transmission histories.

Pages

Barlaam and Ioasaph — St. John of Damascus — The complete Christian edifying story of Barlaam and Ioasaph, a major cross-cultural legend associated with St. John of Damascus.
Lives of the Saints — Alban Butler — Alban Butler's classic Lives of the Saints in the 1894 Benziger Brothers one-volume abridgment, giving a saint or feast for every day of the calendar year plus a set of additional lives.
The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ — Anne Catherine Emmerich — The visionary meditations on Christ's Passion recounted by the German mystic and stigmatist Anne Catherine Emmerich, as taken down and arranged by Clemens Brentano, in the 1862 English translation.
The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi — Candide Chalippe and Hilarion Duerk — A complete Catholic hagiographic life and legend collection of Saint Francis of Assisi, translated from Candide Chalippe and revised by Hilarion Duerk.
The Little Flowers of St. Francis — tr. W. Heywood — W. Heywood's 1906 translation of the Fioretti, the beloved fourteenth-century Italian collection of legends and sayings about St. Francis of Assisi and his early companions, with its appended lives of Friar Juniper and Friar Giles.
The Writings of St. Francis of Assisi — tr. Father Pascal Robinson — Father Pascal Robinson's 1905 scholarly translation of the surviving writings of St. Francis of Assisi -- his admonitions, rules for the Friars Minor and the Poor Clares, testament, letters, and prayers, including the Canticle of the Sun.