Saint's Life:  the brief biographies of holy men or women whose pure faith and good works are meant to inspire the faithful to imitate, in lesser ways, their extraordinary self-sacrifice for their fellow creatures or for the propagation of their faith.  They suffer with cheerful demeanor the ordinary ills of human existence like hunger and sickness.  The martyred saints' good deeds attract the attentions of corrupt pagan officials, who try to tempt and to torture them so that they will abandon their faith.  The saints refuse temptation and ignore or even pray for torture as a way to prove their love of God.  They die with supernatural calm, suffering their illnesses or rebuking their pagan torturers and preaching to the witnesses long after they have endured pains that would have killed ordinary mortals.  Chaucer's "Second Nun's Tale" [St. Cecelia], Foxe's Acts and Monuments (see Norton 7th edition page 551-3 for samples of this Protestant "martyrology"), and for a modern, secular version, Henry James' Daisy Miller.