Resumen de "Nota, pio leitor...": The Hagiographic Critical Discourse in 1567
Cristina Sobral devotes her study to the main example of post-Tridentine Portuguese hagiography, the Historia das vidas e feitos heróicos e obras insignes dos sanctos (1567), by the Dominican Diogo do Rosário. It is the first Iberian reformed book of saints, that is to say, derived from Tridentine stipulations and thus ruled by a new moral and historical accuracy and purged of any kind of falsehood such as those denounced by Protestantism. On this occasion Sobral analyses the points at which the author suspends the narrative to address the reader with critical considerations about the apocryphal nature of the subject matter, or to discuss the divergence of sources that sometimes leads the author to justify his choices, or to use a form of certification to support the authenticity of certain miracles that could be considered fabulous. When compared to medieval Iberian books of saints, Rosário’s is characterised by the rewriting of some narratives to emphasise the saints’ pastoral qualities and exemplary virtues for the faithful. His work is a balance, on one hand, between rhetorical strategies that seek credibility and imply erudition and, on the other, an accessible text in the vernacular that serves the pastoral objective of presenting models of holiness to the faithful.
