OA

[Ideas about the Relationship between Christian Apocrypha and Hagiographic Literature: The Example of the Veronica-Traditions, Gedanken zum Verhältnis zwischen christlichen Apokryphen und hagiographischer Literatur: Das Beispiel der Veronica-Traditionen]

The article deals with the relationship between Christian apocryphal texts and hagiographic texts. It starts with theoretical considerations about the meaning of text interpretation. Their result is that it should not be asked whether a text is ‘apocryphal’ or ‘hagiographic’, but whether it can be interpreted ‘reasonably’ as apocryphal or hagiographic literature. Thus, one and the same text can be understood reasonably from one point of view as apocryphal, and from another point of view as hagiographic. Those theoretical thoughts are illustrated with the analysis of the figure of ‘Veronica’ in the Acts of Pilate, the so called Mors Pilati, as well as in the Sixth Station of the Cross.