And there is much in it, including words that almost certainly have never appeared before in a written Life of a Saint, to offend or scandalize believers with expectations of what a saint is and isn’t.įor one thing, Griffith’s Hild is bisexual, and the novel is spiced with full-blooded sex scenes, including one that follows a rough-and-tumble sparring session between a staff-wielding Hild and her sword-swinging childhood friend Cian and ends with the two of them, bloody and sweating, grappling in a much different way. Griffith’s novel, which is peopled almost entirely with characters who are found in the historical record, is certainly not pious. There are two general types of traditional lives: (1) relatively simplistic and pious accounts, emphasizing miracles and a kind of religious sweetness, and (2) more rigorous, historically based narratives that grapple with the real-world existence of the saint and his or her theological insights. The Church uses the lives of saints as tools for teaching morality, ethics and spirituality. But it’s definitely not hagiography - at least, hagiography in its traditional Catholic form. Hilda of Whitby, a major figure in medieval Britain. Nicola Griffith’s 2013 novel Hild is the first of a planned trilogy about the life of St.
There’s even a term for it: “hagiography.” The Catholic Church is big on books about the Lives of the Saints.
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