In 1971 Peter Brown published his justly famous article, ‘The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity’. It is no exaggeration to say that this article — and the host of articles and books that succeeded it — have transformed the way we think about saints and their cult in late antiquity. This change is part of a wider transformation of the study of the world of early Christianity, a change that has much to do with the changing, not to say declining, place of Christianity in Western society. The very words Peter Brown used in the title of his article are emblematic of this changed perspective: holy, man, late antiquity. Others have noted the change of words from what one might have expected, or from what one would have expected a few decades, even years, earlier. Averil Cameron spoke of Peter Brown ‘rightly avoiding the term “saint”, for in this early period there were no formal processes of sanctification, and no official bestowal of sainthood’. Put like that, it seems obvious why Brown talked about the ‘holy man’. I want to suggest that the nature of the change involved is much less easy to track down, and furthermore that awareness of the specific suggestions implicit in Brown’s choice of words will enable us to contemplate the world of late antiquity from the perspective Brown was largely inaugurating, while not losing the other perspectives that were implicit in the language and concepts laid aside.

By the time Augustine read the Life of Antony in 386, the biography had already become an international best seller in the Roman Empire. Translated twice into Latin and read in places as far off as Milan and Syrian Antioch, the Egyptian Life also proved to be a significant influence upon hagiographical writing in the late fourth century, the most notable example being the Lives of St Jerome. Consequently, scholars have often taken it to represent the dominant paradigm for sainthood in fourth-century Christianity and the centuries that followed. But is this assumption tenable? The Life of Antony would in all likelihood be read only by the educated elite or by ascetic circles in the Church, and was hardly accessible to the ordinary Christian. More importantly, hagiographical discourse in the fourth century was not restricted to biographies, but pervaded all sorts of Christian literature. This is certainly the case with the writings of St John Chrysostom (c. 349—407), who often presents the Christian monk as a saintly figure in his monastic treatises and his voluminous homilies. Indeed, what emerges from his writings is a paradigmatic saint who is significantly different from that portrayed in the biographies, and yet equally influential among his lay and ascetic audiences. To be sure, Chrysostom’s monastic portraits share some common features with that provided by Athanasius’s Life. Nevertheless, there are also stark differences between the two, and these are the focus of this paper.

Recent studies of martyrdom in early Christianity look beyond the traditional perception of martyr acta and passiones as historical documents that can help us to reconstruct the past. While previously these texts had been deemed worthy of attention on account of their proven authenticity or historical veracity, now they are all valued as important sources that have much to tell us about the communities and environments in which they were produced. This approach does not deny the historical value of the sources, but rather it appreciates that they are a special kind of historical document. Texts and sermons about holy men and women never were created as objective accounts. Every textual portrait of a martyr reveals a prior judgement that inscribes meaning and purpose into seemingly meaningless events to present condemned criminals as religious heroes, horrific tortures as divine gifts, and public deaths as cosmic dramas. Consequently, the various methods of representation that were used to construct depictions of the martyrs are significant elements in their own right, whether they are rhetorical devices, scriptural allusions, artistic embellishments or miraculous occurrences. These are the very details that make martyrs; they turn death into martyrdom, and the dead into martyrs.

Peter Brown’s classic essay of 1971, ‘The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity’, is celebrated for applying the tools of sociology and anthropology to the study of late antique sanctity. It strove to remove holy men from the distorting literary texts through which we know them, and to place them instead in a rich context of everyday concerns. My starting point here, however, is not the essay itself but a no less interesting critique of it subsequently made by the author himself. In 1998, Brown offered a number of pieces of advice he would now give to a younger self embarking on the same topic. In 1971, he claimed, he had unwittingly colluded with the hagiographical texts by presenting holy men in dramatic, epic terms. Focusing on what holy men did for society, he had observed the phenomenon from a purely third-person perspective, and had neglected their own personal quest for sanctity. Although he had located the holy man’s activity in the everyday, he had effectively conceded that the ultimate locus of the holy man’s holiness — his superior understanding — was unknowable.

Although exceptional skill and learning have been devoted to the origins of martyr cult, undeniably this grand and highly distinguished tradition has been shaped by certain widely shared and long-standing assumptions. In particular, while great scholars such as Duchesne and Delehaye have exhibited a strong (and very proper) scepticism about particular legends, there has in general been a predisposition to accept at face value the underlying context as presented by the post-Constantinian Church. Most historians of the martyrs have followed hagiographical tradition and accepted that, as Pope Leo I claimed in the mid-fifth century, ‘uncounted numbers’ of the faithful had died in the imperial persecutions and were marked out as endowed with power ‘to help those in danger, to drive away sickness, to expel unclean spirits and to cure infirmities without number’. That carefully constructed picture, however, only emerges in the late fourth and fifth centuries, and it is the circumstances and processes which shaped its emergence that will be examined here.

It seems fitting to begin with a tribute to the late Henry Chadwick, whose thorough, even-handed, and ever readable work contributed much to our understanding of the theme of sanctity in the early Church. In particular, his address at a conference on ‘The Byzantine Saint’ held in Birmingham in 1980 exemplified his capacity to identify and constructively pursue the broad issues at stake. In speaking of the early saints and the content of their lives, Chadwick explains, ‘we are tempted either to tell the stories of their mortifications and then, as was said of Lytton Strachey, ostentatiously refrain from laughing, or we go in search of trendy non-religious explanations of the social needs that created them’. He goes on to acknowledge, as most would, the importance of sociological interpretations and their potential for the study of sanctity, but warns that ‘a stripping away of their religious motivation will leave the historian with a distorted picture’. It is along this route of keeping the religious or theological motivations and presuppositions of sanctity in mind, that the present essay will proceed. It focuses on the neglected concept of μετάνoια or ‘repentance’ (lit. a ‘change of mind’) which dominates much of the ascetic theology of the early Christian East, particularly as expounded by the influential fifth-century theologian Mark the Monk (or ‘the Hermit’ / ‘the Ascetic’).

Sanctity is a quality first perceived, then acclaimed, contested or affirmed. Most commonly the visual perception of sanctity took the form of witnessing miracles: individuals saw with their own eyes divine power working through another human being. The development of the cult of the saints in western Europe, however, gave rise to a rich visual and material culture. The tombs of saints and the churches dedicated to them were adorned with precious works of art intended to glorify the holy patron. This essay considers quite intimate gifts: articles of clothing laid on the body of a saint. It moves from a particular set of vestments left at a saint’s shrine to wider considerations of what the clergy wore during the central Middle Ages. Liturgical attire might not only honour the sanctity of a long-venerated individual but might also be used to claim sanctity for others.

The crusading movement was an important part of the attempt by the papal reformers of the eleventh century to integrate the turbulent and powerful warrior class of western Europe into Christian society. Pope Urban II’s aim was to persuade these fighting men to use their skills in defence of Christendom, and to form an armed force directed by the Church. Crusading would enable the warriors to combine their military abilities with the practice of the Christian life. This ideal later came to be accepted as normative by the armies of all Western states.

This paper uses Bourdieu’s model of the three forms of capital — economic capital, social capital and cultural capital — to explore the complex relationship between the spiritual and temporal spheres described in medieval hagiographical texts. It focuses on the vita of Hugh of Avalon, Bishop of Lincoln, composed in the early thirteenth century during a period of important procedural developments in the process of papal canonization. This paper argues that the two necessary prerequisites for canonization by the beginning of the thirteenth century, namely miracles and sanctity of life, can be analysed as forms of symbolic capital, which could be transformed into material goods through the mechanism of divine providence. Thus sanctity — in particular, a reputation for ascetic behaviour — was not merely a form of capital: it was also the mechanism through which one form of capital could be transformed into another.

The concept of the monstrous is tremendously powerful as a cultural signifier of Otherness, not least when it is embodied into a physical form such as a dragon or other fantastical and threatening creature which can be clearly contrasted with a human hero. A wide range of saints’ narratives — written and visual — which emanate from the Middle Ages include an encounter with a monster; the motif offers an excellent opportunity to present the saintly figure with a foil, not only in simple terms of good human versus evil beast, but also by demonstrating the contrast between the civilized nature of a form of perfected humanity and the untamed wilderness which is the natural habitat of monsters.

The miracle stories of St Thomas Becket, recorded first by Benedict of Peterborough (d. 1193) and then by his successor in the task, William of Canterbury (of whom little is known), comprise the largest collection of miracles of the high Middle Ages, and describe the nature of medieval sanctity in manifold ways. The two writers went about their task in markedly contrasting ways, with William generally the more ambitious of the two. He frequently returned to records entered by Benedict to adapt, correct or expand upon them.

The fifteenth-century collection of miracles attributed to Henry VI and collated as evidence for his canonization proceedings includes the tale of John Robbins of Worcestershire, who, it is reported, ‘rashly insulted the blessed King Henry, heaping many rebukes upon him’. The late king punished the irreverent Robbins, striking him blind. When Robbins repented, and ‘vowed with many tears to visit [Henry’s] holy tomb, he recovered his faculty of sight’. Robbins appears to have been understandably embarrassed about the event: when he later made his pilgrimage to Windsor, he failed to reveal the whole story to the shrine official. In late medieval England, a common moral justification for disease was that God and his saints inflicted infirmity on sinners as a punishment for their transgressions, providing the opportunity for repentance and atonement. However, blindness could also be regarded as a divine gift, offering protection from worldly distractions and allowing holy individuals to communicate more easily with God. Indeed, a lack of earthly sight allowed potential saints to demonstrate that they possessed the intrinsic values of humility and patience deemed necessary to achieve sanctity. This paper examines these two different theological explanations for blindness.

The vision of the otherworld seen by St Fursa (c. 590 — c. 649) and recorded in a Vita and in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History achieved a high level of popularity in England and France during the thirteenth century, especially through its inclusion in preaching aids for the friars and the pastoralia (the various guides and manuals for priests on the care and confession of their congregation) produced before and after the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215. This essay will discuss how compilers of this material altered, rearranged and summarized Fursa’s vision, and what these changes reveal about shifting attitudes towards sanctity in the thirteenth century. In some of these redactions, Fursa’s sainthood was sidelined or ignored completely. In others, the point at which Fursa is described as a saint varies and the emphasis of the vision shifts from a reward for a saintly life to the purgation of a sinful priest. It will be suggested that these modifications to Fursa’s role in the vision were linked to the genre and audience of the redactions and to other thirteenth-century theological preoccupations, including debates over the sinfulness of usury and the emergence of the doctrine of purgatory.

For many people in the Middle Ages it was the belief in the intercessory powers of saints at the court of heaven which drove individual acts of veneration. However, saints were not just sources of assistance in times of need; they could also be perceived as role models both for those who wanted to live a religious life and for the broader laity. Not surprisingly, the lessons drawn from a particular saint’s life tended to reflect individual attitudes and beliefs, and the same saint could be used to justify contradictory forms of behaviour. This paper examines two contrasting responses to the cult of St Katherine of Alexandria and what they tell us about attitudes to women and female sanctity in the thirteenth century.

The origin of the word ‘canonization’ is a timely reminder of the liturgical nature of the cult of saints. Up to the ninth century, including a new saint in the canon of the mass was one of the two steps, along with the translation of his or her relics, leading to the creation of a new cult. The cult of saints is essentially a liturgical matter.

Veneration of the martyrs as powerful intercessors and exemplars of Christ-like fortitude is one of the earliest and most powerful manifestations of Christian religious practice. Not only were martyrs thought to be assured of salvation, but the blood which they shed was conceived by Tertullian as ‘seed’ for the upbuilding of the Christian Church. As legends of their lives and, more importantly, the manner of their deaths developed over time, martyrs would also function as valuable instructors in the essentials of the Christian life, their speeches before death often assuming a sermon-like quality. By the fifth century recourse to the relics of martyrs was also already well established. The cult of the martyrs would have a long future.