The saint and the social problems of his time based on hagiographical texts from the Palaiologan period

The article examines the role of hagiographic texts from the Palaiologan period as sources for understanding the social and political problems of Late Byzantium. The production of lives of saints, encomia, and liturgical services after 1261 is not limited to worship, but is linked to issues such as the union of the Churches, the spread of Hesychasm, the new martyrs under Ottoman rule, and the search for social justice. The saints are presented not only as defenders of Orthodoxy but also as social observers who condemn injustice, poverty, and political corruption, while calling for peace and unity. The hagiographers, often members of the scholarship and the state elite, reflect through their work the tension between ecclesiastical and imperial power, presenting the Church as the protector of the people. Thus, hagiography served as a means of historical testimony but also as a vehicle for the ideological legitiémization of the ecclesiastical presence in the changing Byzantine world.