Hagiography and Religious Truth

Rico G. Monge is Assistant Professor of Theology and Religious Studies, University of San Diego, USA. Kerry P. C. San Chirico is Assistant Professor of Interfaith and Interreligious Studies, Villanova University, USA. Rachel Smith is Assistant Professor of Theology and Religious Studies, Villanova University, USA.

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Contributors

Foreword: Jeffrey J. Kripal

Acknowledgements

Introduction:
Rico G. Monge, Kerry P.C. San Chirico, and Rachel J. Smith

Part One: Theoretical Considerations

1. Saints, Truth, and the “Use and Abuse” of Hagiography, Rico G. Monge

2. Devotion, Critique, and the Reading of Christian Saints’ Lives, Rachel J. Smith

3. Sacred Narrative and Truth: What Does It Mean If It Did Not Happen?, Peter C. Bouteneff
and Patricia Fann Bouteneff

Part Two: Case Studies in Dharmic Traditions

4. Imagining Hagiographies in Chhattisgarh, Ramdas Lamb

5. Turning Tomb to Temple: Hagiography, Sacred Space, and Ritual Activity in a Thirteenth-
Century Hindu Shrine, Mark J. McLaughlin

6. From Legend to Flesh and Bone: The Reenactment of a Tantric Narrative, Joel S. Gruber

Part Three: Case Studies in Abrahamic Traditions

7. The Transmission of Virtue in the Hagiography of Haci Bektas Veli: The Narrative of
Güvenç Abdal, Vernon J. Schubel

8. A Global Intercessor: Triumphalism and Reconciliation in the Services of St. John
Maximovich, Nicholas Denysenko

9. “King-slaves” in South Africa: Shrines, Ritual, & Resistance, Bahar Davary

10. Many Truths, One Story: John of Ephesus’s “Lives of the Eastern Saints”, Todd French



Part Four: Case Studies in Comparison

11. Saints from the Margin: Rescuing Tradition through Hagiography in the Lives of
Sylouan the Athonite and Milarepa, Thomas Cattoi

12. Holy Negotiations in the Hindu Heartland: Abundant People and Places among the
Khrist Bhaktas of Banaras, Kerry P. C. San Chirico


Afterword: Comparative Theological Reflections, Francis X. Clooney

Notes
Select Bibliography
Index