hagiologic

There are, indeed, many characteristics in the hagiologic literature bearing an analogy to modern social habits so close as to be almost ludicrous; and it is not easy to deal with these conditions of a very distant age, brought to us as they are through the vehicle of a language which is neither classical nor vernacular, but conventional -- the corrupt Latin in which the biographers of the saints found it convenient to write.

The Book-Hunter A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author John Hill Burton