Images of Holiness in Late Antique and Early Byzantine Biography

This article examines the discursive strategies employed in the construction of sanctity within the biographical genre of Late Antiquity and the Early Byzantine period. The study draws upon a corpus of canonical texts representing both pagan and Christian biographical traditions. It presents the findings of a comparative analysis of Iamblichus' On the Pythagorean Life (c. 248/280 – c. 325/330), Athanasius of Alexandria's Life of Antony (c. 295–373), and Cyril of Scythopolis' Life of Euthymius the Great (c. 524/525 – c. 558), the latter of which is here contextualized within the broader diachronic development of the biographical genre. The inquiry foregrounds the problem of literary filiation and intertextual continuity between pagan and Christian hagiography. Particular attention is devoted to the discursive mechanisms differentiating the construction of Christian sainthood from its pagan antecedents. The comparative analysis demonstrates a significant divergence in the hagiographic profiles of Antony the Great and Euthymius the Great, while simultaneously revealing a striking conceptual and structural affinity between the figures of Pythagoras and Euthymius. It is argued that this phenomenon is attributable to the specific generic conventions of the texts under consideration and their respective positions within the history of biographical writing. Whereas the Life of Antony instantiates a dynamic, teleological worldview characteristic of Biblical historicism, the Early Byzantine hagiographer Cyril of Scythopolis reverts to the conceptual schemata and epistemic frameworks inherent to the pre-Christian, classical conception of the world.