The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity

by Peter Brown

Following the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, the cult of the saints was the dominant form of religion in Christian Europe. In this elegantly written work, Peter Brown explores the role of tombs, shrines, relics, and pilgrimages connected with the sacred bodies of the saints. He shows how men and women living in harsh and sometimes barbaric times relied upon the merciful intercession of the holy dead to obtain justice, forgiveness, and to find new ways to accept their fellows. Challenging the common treatment of the cult as an outbreak of superstition among the lower classes, Brown demonstrates how this form of religiousity engaged the finest minds of the Church and elicited from members of the educated upper classes some of their most splendid achievements in poetry, literature, and the patronage of the arts.

"Brown has an international reputation for his fine style, a style he here turns on to illuminate the cult of the saints. Christianity was born without such a cult; it took rise and that rise needs chronicling. Brown has a gift for the memorable phrase and sees what the passersby have often overlooked. An eye-opener on an important but neglected phase of Western development."— The Christian Century

"Brilliantly original and highly sophisticated . . . . [ The Cult of the Saints ] is based on great learning in several disciplines, and the story is told with an exceptional appreciation for the broad social context. Students of many aspects of medieval culture, especially popular religion, will want to consult this work."—Bennett D. Hill, Library Journal

Genres: History, Religion, Nonfiction, Christianity, Medieval, Theology, Church History

187 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1981

About the author

Peter Robert Lamont Brown FBA is an Irish historian. He is the Rollins Professor of History Emeritus at Princeton University. Brown is credited with having brought coherence to the field of Late Antiquity, and is often regarded as the inventor of said field. His work has concerned, in particular, the religious culture of the later Roman Empire and early medieval Europe, and the relation between religion and society.

Reviews

[Warren Fournier · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting book, but not quite as interesting as I thought. Having been raised in a very Catholic household with first generation Sicilian Americans on my mother's side, I always wondered how the saints seemed to have more prominence in our daily lives than God. Got a migraine? I bet you do after squinting at the tiny print on those novenas all day long. Just pray to St. Teresa of Avila, the patron saint of headaches. Your house has been on the market for a year because your asking price for a tiny shotgun shack with no yard could buy a historic plantation? Just bury a statue of St. Joseph in your flower bed under the azaleas, and some young yuppy yankee from the Northeast will take your money pit off your hands. Can't find your thing? Ask St. Anthony for help (that one actually works).

My grandmother had statues of saints all over the house. Where did she get them all? Our church had them too, but life-sized. Particularly impressive was the statue of St. Lucy holding her eyeballs out to you on a plate. That one scared me, but my relatives loved her, especially since they all needed cataract surgery. Saints were plastered all over candles, refrigerator magnets, and decorative spoons that no one was supposed to use unless we had company. And we had a lot of streets named after saints. Ever heard of St. Roch? How about St. Bernard? Too bad none of them were patron saints of potholes. And don't forget about St. Joseph's Day. For one night, your house turns into a temple, your living room adorned with a giant glowing alter full of dead people staring at you from black and white photographs nicely positioned amid the anise cookies and the tentacles of a smoked octopus, while dozens of visitors try to figure out which "Tony" your deaf great aunt keeps screeching for from her wheelchair in the corner.

Yes, I am very familiar with the Cult of Saints, and always was curious why so many Catholics who professed to believe in one God all unwittingly had their own virtual pantheon of gods.

This book does provide some nice theories as to how all this came about, but was not very satisfying to read. The audience for this book clearly did not include someone like me. This was an academic paper for scholars of historical antiquity who are fluent in their Latin and Greek, and somehow are just as able to interpret the circumstantial and tangential ramblings of an author with untreated ADHD. I just got finished reading this book and couldn't tell you one interesting takeaway without consulting my notes.

So if you are curious about this subject, give "The Cult of Saints" a try, but most of you will end up praying for St. Anthony to find them a better book to read.

[Charlie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Peter Brown begins by announcing a topic and ends by illuminating a period. In this work, he uses the cult of the saints to trace the shift from ancient pagan to late-antique Christian cosmology. The ancient pagan link between the individual person, nature, and the divine was replaced by a hierarchical, mediatorial system populated by fellow humans. Modeled after the late Roman system of patronage, the cult of the saints brought Western Christendom into a spiritual web of patronage relationships dominated by cultural elites and bishops.

This short book of only 130 pages in 6 chapters (plus a very helpful preface in the revised edition) is densely packed with information, but is nevertheless very readable, as each chapter is tightly wrapped around its theme. Brown squeezes significance out of every detail. Some assertions may be debatable, but there is no shortage of debates worth having. Highly recommended for scholars of this historical period or of the Christian religion in general.

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really enjoyed reading this. I know I'm going against the general grain of reviews here, but I didn't find the book to be much of a chore to read. It's certainly dense (it's only 127 pages and there are a lot of ideas packed in there), and it made me slow down my reading pace a bit, but I don't think any of it is unnecessary. Considering the complexity of his ideas and the number of pages he uses to convey them, I think the work as a whole winds up being rather elegant.

It's also really thoughtful. Brown presents and then effectively rejects the traditional idea of a two-tiered society in late antiquity, in which the pseudo-paganism that remained in the lower, rural classes (that had just converted to Christianity) forced the cultural and social elite to grudgingly accept the cult of the saints. Brown instead suggests that the cult of the saints was an essentially elite phenomenon, based on the Roman concepts of friendship and patronage and fraught with tension between the lay and ecclesiastical elites who wished to control it. It's a fun argument, and a very persuasive one. My only (small) criticism would be that Brown takes his argument a bit too far at the end. He suggests that the cult of the saints wound up making nature a "passive" force, drained of the divinity that paganism had attributed to it. It's a provocative idea, but Brown doesn't give it nearly enough space in his last few pages to adequately answer the questions he raises. It winds up being too neat an inversion of the argument he initially rejected: he's right to say that rural classes didn't contaminate a pure elite religion with saint veneration, but I don't think it's fair to argue that the elite promotion of the cult of the saints wiped out rural, pre-Christian beliefs about nature.

[Katherine Addison · Rating 4 out of 5]

127 pages about Christianity in late antiquity (c.a. AD 300-600) and the increasing devotion to (specifically) martyred saints and their physical remains. Brown talks about shrines and pilgrimages and burials and exorcisms and relics, and it is all fascinating. 4 of 5 stars only because I've read The Body & Society: Men, Women & Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity--long long ago in an undergraduate history class--and that book sets the particular bar for Professor Brown kind of high. This is a lovely book, full of affection for the rather difficult men (Augustine of Hippo, Gregory of Tours, Paulinus of Nola) who are our guides to the growing adoration of the saints in the transition from the Rome-centric culture of the Empire to a much more dispersed relationship of interdependent loci of Christian worship/life of the mind.

Brown is absolutely explicit and open about the fact that this book leaves out enormous chunks of Roman/early-medieval culture: he's talking about the upper class male intellectuals who created and transmitted the theological core of hagiophilia ("love of the saints"--I don't know if that was previously a word, but I need it to be right now). He discusses "women" and "the poor" (and we can talk about the infinite drop-down list of problems with the way he conceptualizes the two as monolithic and discrete categories some other time) only anecdotally--so if what you really want is social history, this is not the book for you. I found it both a pleasure to read and a useful introduction to the intellectual end of a fascinating phenomenon.

There's also a thing in here that, if I were still teaching undergraduate English, I would totally use for an upper-level course on pilgrimages and quests:

By localizing the holy in this manner [martyrs' shrines], late-antique Christianity could feed on the facts of distance and on the joys of proximity. This distance might be physical distance. For this, pilgrimage was the remedy. As Alphonse Dupront has put it, so succinctly, pilgrimage was "une thérapie par l'espace." The pilgrim committed himself or herself to the "therapy of distance" by recognizing that what he or she wished for was not to be had in the immediate environment. Distance could symbolize needs unsatisfied, so that, as Dupront continues, "le pèlerinage demeure essentiallement depart": pilgrimage remains essentially the fact of leaving. But distance is there to be overcome; the experience of pilgrimage activates a yearning for intimate closeness. For the pilgrims who arrived after the obvious "therapy of distance" involved in long travel found themselves subjected to the same therapy by the nature of the shrine itself. [...] For the art of the shrine in late antiquity is an art of closed surfaces. Behind these surfaces, the holy lay, either totally hidden or glimpsed through narrow apertures. The opacity of the surfaces heightened an awareness of the ultimate unattainability in this life of the person [i.e., the saint] they had traveled over such wide spaces to touch. (Brown 86-87)

There is so much in this passage if, as I am, you are predisposed to map the structure of the pilgrimage onto other texts. I'd really like discussions of how MacGuffins and P.R.O.s (Priceless Ritual Objects: Edward Gorey's term) do and don't map onto saints' relics; the way The Lord of the Rings is an anti-pilgrimage: Frodo has to get to Mount Doom (pilgrimage), but it's to rid himself of the unholy (I feel perfectly okay using that adjective for the Ring in this context) rather than to approach the holy; the difference between a quest and a pilgrimage and how those differences affect the structure of a work (Odysseus is on a pilgrimage to reach his home; Aeneas is on a quest to find somewhere to call home); why fantasy, as a genre, is so invested in the therapy of distance; the effect of the quest-structure used, for instance by the movie version of The Wizard of Oz, wherein the quester goes through perils and trials only to discover that what she's looking for was at home/on her feet the whole time; the definition of "home," for that matter, and what its value is as a place of pilgrimage and/or quest object. And the potential reading list: The Canterbury Tales, The Faerie Queene, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Lord of the Rings, Don Quixote, Pilgrim's Progress, Growing Up Weightless (because we need to start teaching John M. Ford), The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Supernatural, To the Lighthouse if I want to get pretentious high-brow literary into Bloomsbury, because I am not touching Joyce with a ten foot pole,* the Odyssey, the Aeneid, hey, the Satyricon just to embarrass the fuck out of my students, Heart of Darkness (post-colonial reading), Candide, Gulliver's Travels, Huckleberry Finn (and the picaresque in general, because it both is and isn't like quests and pilgrimages), Return to Nevèryön (which are meta-parody of the whole genre on top of everything else they're doing), The X-Files, Le Petit Prince, this list badly needs more women and people of color, because apparently you can take the girl out of the canon but you can't take the canon out of the girl, The Wizard of Oz (books and the 1939 movie, since the movie differs pretty dramatically from Baum's original in its valuations of Oz and Kansas), Lassie Come Home, Pinocchio, The Velveteen Rabbit, The Incredible Journey, The Beginning Place--there'd have to be a small assortment of core texts (and a smorgasbord of secondary reading because apparently what I actually want to teach is a graduate seminar) and then a wide variety of works that students could do individual research projects on (basically, anything they could make a case for--I know there must be manga that would be perfect, for instance, but I have no idea what), ending with presentations to the class. If enrollment was small enough, we could try to fake up a sort of mini-conference. ... ahem. Here endeth the digression.**

If you are interested in this odd little corner of history, this book is absolutely worth finding.

---
*I really like Virginia Woolf (although more for her nonfiction than her fiction), but I have run out of patience with the artificial divide between "literary" and "popular" fiction that the soi-disant literati of the early twentieth century created in Anglophone literature. And I'm afraid she'd be a pain in the ass to teach. Ditto, come to think of it, for Mervyn Peake. Gormenghast would be awesome conceptually, but oh my god a nightmare about a plague in the classroom. Also, try though I do to overcome it, I really dislike him.

**If anyone wants to try and actually teach this course, you have 100% permission to steal my idea.

[Mesoscope · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have discovered a great scholar of first rank in this book by Peter Brown, my first encounter with the erudite historian of the late classical period, but certainly not my last. It would be difficult to overstate my extreme enthusiasm for this book, which is beautiful, penetrating, and immensely illuminating.

Brown is a scholar of extraordinary erudition, and in this volume he examines the genesis and evolution of the cult of sainthood in Europe from the earliest days of the Christian church through the seventh century. Examining the phenomenon from a variety of angles, he combines the analytical perspicacity of the finest historiographers with a deep philosophical and humanist insight into the profound human questions at stake in the transformation of religious culture.

Brown examines the saint cult in six essays, exploring concepts of space, holiness, the multiplicity of selves, presence and distance, and power. Drawing from an impressive array of classical and modern sources, he examines the cardinal aspects of saints such as pilgrimage, relics, healing powers, their use by both peasant and noble alike. Brown offers a powerful critique of the tendency of religious scholars to dismiss the whole phenomenon as "merely" a holdout of pagan polytheism, which he effectively dismantles with counter-evidence and analysis. That argument alone is worth the price of admission.

I can hardly imagine a greater work on the topic, and cannot recommend it strongly enough.

[Petruccio Hambasket IV · Rating 3 out of 5]

Peter Brown’s "The Cult of the Saints: It’s Rise and function in Latin Christianity", as laid out in the opening chapter, is an all-inclusive examination of the “very special dead”, and their detached holy paraphernalia, in relation to late antique (200-500 A.D.) religion, society, and modes of thinking. Brown will argue fervently that the religious shifts which occurred throughout the classical period to late antiquity, such as the cult of martyr’s, communal saintly patronage, invisible guardians, or pious literature/art, come to the forefront through new social deviations and serve specialized functions, as opposed to just simply lingering on as a mirror image to popular classical age traditions.

By adopting this view Brown is contesting the fashionable “two tiered model” expressed by modern scholarship and popular “armchair” opinion. This view suggests that the cult of martyrs was a popular mass religion adopted by illiterate, newly converted, lower class “vulgars”. Brown will suggest this view is too frail, and often taken for granted, to be still accepted in scholarly circles. Many of his main arguments will circle around trying to disparage the “two tiered model” and the role of elite figures in bringing the saints to the public interest.

Brown’s main argument is that the classical Mediterranean system of patronage allowed the saintly cult to ‘replicate’ smoothly the social context of late antiquity, while also fulfilling both the fluid needs of the community (protection, unification of all members) and important clergy (where to spend church money, etc.) Browns commentary reveals that this shifting quality of social ties between saints and there surroundings did not drop its appeal at the masses but rather positively affected and was driven by elite citizens (Paulinus, Augustine, etc).

Furthermore, Brown argues that the crucial (but quiet) victory of the church, with accordance to the privatization of saintly shrines in early cult development (from private to public), was an essential step to things like: communal patronage, relic translation, and the strength of bishops and the medieval church as a whole. With this argument we again see this aspect of involvement given to noble/elite members of society in determining the advancement of the cult of saints. Bishops must fight for their right to control certain practices, and in this we see no attempt to disband superstition of the “vulgar”, but rather a concern for losing power to private families.

The strength of Brown’s arguments stem from his broad and sharp systematic disproving against schools of thought related to the “two tiered model”. Usually Brown has a social approach to retaliating against idea’s set out by two-tiered scholars. For example, when trying to reinterpret seemingly obvious parallels between the classical cult of heroes to the cult of saints, Brown will look to contemporary pagan beliefs, and even classical tragedies, to help prove how men would have reacted to and differentiated between certain boundaries (heroes to divine). This social approach is evident even with just a cursory glance at Browns list of sources, which often avoids secondary sources except in cases that deal with “two-tiered” scholarship. Brown’s arguments, though very good at asking important questions and finding holes in established scholarship, tends at times to steer too hard into the direction of avoiding popular opinion, thus impeding a completely bias-free interpretation. By constantly focusing on disproving the notion of ‘popular religion’ Brown sets himself up as following an agenda not always dedicated to the square and concise portrayal of the saintly cult. The sometimes ambiguous nature of argumentative and ‘open to discussion’ style writing is why the broader appeal of this text loses some momentum. For these reasons the text would be better suited to students or scholars who wish to familiarize themselves with multiple angles and controversial points regarding discussion of saints in modern scholarship, as opposed to laymen who just wish to read a straight forward and unquestionable survey.

Although pilgrimage is not mentioned extensively in Brown’s work, we are given all the information we need to understand how various political assertions or new ideas helped the progress of going on a pilgrimage flourish. Several of Brown’s main arguments help us this understand this phenomenon of travelling in a broader light. Using his patronage model, Brown argues that it is precisely this early social patronus relationship that encouraged the translation of relics from one area to another. This would have a momentous importance in helping to develop the relevance of local relics and the creation of rich pilgrimage networks all over the continent. Brown even goes as far as to say that the “Spiritual landscape of the Christian Mediterranean” would have been drastically different if not for these travelling relics that were spurred on through the ideals imbedded in patronage (gift-giving). This directly impacts medieval pilgrimage as we come to think of it, i.e., the view of an abundant scattering of popular saintly shrines throughout Europe would have been vastly overshadowed by exclusive, favoured areas (Rome, Jerusalem) or the majority of shrines wouldn’t enjoy much attention from anyone outside of their immediate area.

"The Cult of the Saints: It’s Rise and function in Latin Christianity" is undoubtedly important as it serves as a supportive shortcut through an area dense with discussion, and one that may have not received the proper quality of attention it deserved. Through this book our understanding of elements in Latin Christianity such as the logic behind being the patron to a dead man, and others ideas are more developed. The text is exceptional in summarizing information on past scholarship and allowing us to draw our own conclusions on issues that may be changing positions as time goes on. Reading Peter Brown always takes time because of how much he pack into even a few short lines, but if you find the content intriguing your gonna have a good time with this study.

[William Lockett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read if you want to feel more Protestant.

Brown argues in this text that the development of the saints was not a “bottom-up” peasantry/pagan driven movement, but one more based on a continuation of the Roman patron-client relationship from the elite of society. Brown is mostly deconstructing the development, but it seems clear this development is clearly an accretion that a good Protestant would reject.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

The common view of religion in ancient times was that educated people held well-thought out beliefs while on the popular level superstitions and wacky ideas persisted. This has led many scholars to argue that the rise of the cult of the saints was a popular movement, resisted by the leaders in the Catholic church. Brown argues against this, showing that such a two-tiered view of religion is more a result of stereotyping and poor history then reality. In this book he sheds light on how the saints achieved their place in the medieval era. I found the book interesting, though I would love a theological treatment of how the saints functioned (and function) in Catholicism. Of course, I can't criticize Brown for not writing that book as he is a historian, and this book is a good piece of historical writing.

[Cali · Rating 5 out of 5]

the reading begins...

In a society where the bonds of kin tended to draw closer in a less certain world, the saints, as Ambrose pointed out, were the only in-laws that a woman was free to choose.

Clear & concise writing from Brown on the Cult of Saints in Late Antiquity. Beginning the school year with a banger.

[Denis · Rating 4 out of 5]

A classic worth to be reread as many times as necessary; something I will do myself in the near future.

[Annelise · Rating 3 out of 5]

Had to read for my "Saints and Sinners in the Middle Ages" course. Interesting material, but would not have gone searching for it on my own.

[Scott Barber · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really Good! -- This small book is essential reading for anyone drawn towards or perplexed by patristic/medieval approaches to the cult of the saints. Here Brown is focused on deconstructing Hume's "two-tier" approach to Christian piety: the view that the piety of the "common folk" naturally returns to a normative paganism as opposed to the piety of the intellectual elites which alone can maintain a robust monotheism. Instead, Brown argues that the cult of the saints was one of the primary challenges Latin Christianity posed against pagan notions of the relationship between God, death, and the natural world. He shines a lot of light on fourth and fifth century critiques of saint veneration offered by figures such as Augustine and Jerome. Moreover he does a fantastic job of introducing the reader to the way in which Latin Christians understood and experienced the cult of the saints in their everyday. An enjoyable read and a rich resource.

[Alex Strohschein · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a compact book examining how the cult of the saints emerged in the late-Roman world. It is academic and dense and sometimes a little dry. Yet Brown does a good job of explaining how the late-Roman consciousness made the concept of saints possible (vestiges of Rome's patron-client relationships). One point Brown raised I had never considered before related to sacred space. The shrines of the saints early on were considered exceptionally holy places where "Heaven and earth met" and so pilgrims would risk the arduous journey to reach these tombs. But as the significance of relics grew, this represented a reverse of the pilgrim-to-shrine movement; instead, relics were robbed or removed from their original locations at the shrines and scattered across the Christian world, thus causing the direction to flow shrine-to-Christian. This is a good book for anyone interested in the origins of the cult of the saints and Peter Brown is a renowned scholar.

[Madly Jane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Difficult reading, but totally wonderful and thoughtful look at the cult of saints. Fascinating stuff.

[Rūta Miškinytė · Rating 5 out of 5]

Peterio Browno „The Cult of the Saints“ – nuostabi neįtikėtina vaizduote apdovanoto tyrėjo knyga, kurios lietuviško vertimo (ALK, 1999) skaityti, deja, negalima.

Nors Browno „The Cult of the Saints“ mano akiratyje atsidūrė senokai, paimti į rankas prisiruošiau tik dabar. Nežinau, ar čia gerai, bet jei knyga išleista lietuviškai, beveik visada skaitau vertimą, nebent studijoms labai jau reikia originalo. „Kulto“ originalo man nereikėjo, lietuviškas tiražas dar neišparduotas, egzempliorių radau už kelis eurus, apsidžiaugiau, nusipirkau, gavau siuntą ir kibau į reikalą.

Verčiant puslapius stiprėjo nuojauta, kad kažkas čia ne taip. Susiradau originalą, pradėjau lyginti sakinius tarpusavyje ir... jo, ne kažkas, o beveik viskas čia ne taip.

Keli pavyzdžiai:

1. One thing can be said with certainty about the religion of the late-antique Mediterranean: while it may not have become markedly more "otherworldly," it was most emphatically "upperworldly." Its starting point was belief in a fault that ran across the face of the universe.

„Vienas dalykas Viduržemio jūros regiono religijoje yra neabejotinas: kol ji netapo paženklinta labiau „anapusybe“, ji buvo pabrėžtinai „šiapusinė“. Viskas prasidėjo nuo tikėjimo, kad per pasaulio paviršių nusidriekė sprūdis.“

2. Applied in this manner, the "two-tiered" model appears to have invented more dramatic turning points in the history of the early church than it has ever explained.

„Šitaip pritaikytas, „dviaukštis“ modelis Ankstyvosios Bažnyčios istorijoje iškelia daugiau klausimų nei kada nors anksčiau.“

3. We have at least added a few softening touches to the outright contempt of the Enlightenment for "the vulgar."

„Mes pagaliau bent jau suteikėme keletą švelninančių atspalvių atvirai paniekai, kurią Švietimas jautė „prastuomenei“.

4. It is time, therefore, to step aside from this form of explanation and to set the conflicts in religious practice to which the late-fourth-century debate on "superstition" pointed against a wider background.

„O dabar metas atsitraukti nuo tokio aiškinimo būdo ir nurodyti religinės praktikos konfliktus, kuriems diskusijos apie IV a. pab. „prietaringumą“ suteikė erdvesnį foną.“

***

Moralas? Nekartokite mano klaidos, jei jau norėsite susipažinti su Browno „The Cult of the Saints“, iš karto imkite originalą.

Puikiai suprantu, kad buvo toks laikotarpis, kai reikėjo staigiai daug visko išsiversti bandant atsigriebti už penkis vakuumo dešimtmečius. Gaila tik, kad Browno atveju dėl to didžiulio alkio ir reikalo spartos nukentėjo turinys.

[Jackson B · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was expecting more, to be honest. The book is adapted from a series of lectures, and given that it’s only 127 pages, there’s only so much you can fit. Brown has some interesting ideas and amusing anecdotes (I’m partial to the priest whose despair over humanity’s sinfulness led him to doubt the resurrection of the dead), but his writing style is at times confusing and often the topic isn’t terribly exciting (a personal preference, of course, but, as someone with an interest in religion, I was surprised by the dullness). He has a tendency to throw in new terms and ideas without making it clear exactly what he’s referring to, and worse still is his fondness for that relic from a more barbaric age, the untranslated block quote.

Brown emphasizes the discontinuity between Roman Paganism and the cult of the saints, and attacks the so-called “two-tiered model” of religion, which divides religion into that practiced by the masses and that of the elites. Again, because of the brevity of the book, the arguments can only be so long, so I wasn’t always convinced. At times, I would get caught up in what he was saying, trying to defend the other side rather than just reading the text for what it was - you can take this as a positive or negative on my part or the book’s.

I would like to read the book again to see if I’m being unfair, but I did not enjoy it enough to sit through it a second time. It’s not quite an introductory text, and, given that it’s a ~45 year old book, I doubt it’s a groundbreaking argument either. Still, take a look and judge for yourself.

[Monica Mitri · Rating 4 out of 5]

Peter Brown challenges the two-tiered model of scholarship propagated by David Hume in his Natural History of Religion on interpreting religion as rational and monotheistic, and the contrary as vulgar. Brown does so by rethinking the cult of the saints (relics, shrines, bodies, literature, practices) in terms of late antique Roman relationships of patronage, intimacy, friendship, solidarity. He illustrates how, as the cult of the saints spread throughout the (especially Latin) Christian empire, it both drew on and challenged existing pagan notions of the divine/human divide, death and burial, the sacred and profane, the soul, intimacy with the dead, networks of patronage, authority, proximity and distance. It also grew upon and reshaped cross-Mediterranean solidarities among the new elite late antique Christian class. Ultimately the cult of the saints completed the Romanizing of Christianity and embedded it into the landscape.
Quite a well-strung argument – maybe too well strung at times. The lecture style of the book (which is based on his Haskell Lectures of 1978) is eloquent, engaging, fast-flowing, sometimes repetitive and yet the information packed in it makes it quite dense as well. Overall, the book is a fascinating read for historians and religious scholars of late antique Rome and Christianity.

[Justin Barger · Rating 4 out of 5]

A timely takedown of the two-tiered model of religious history proposed by David Hume and Edward Gibbon, in that there was no "vulgar" peasant religion and a religion of the elites that existed separately towards the fall of Rome. No, Peter Brown, an Anglo-Irish religious historian admits, that it was a bit more complicated than that. the rise of "saint culture" around the time of Augustine broke the barrier between the earth and the heavens, the rich and the poor, and often relics of these Christian martyrs (many of them died a horrible, painful death), as they were called, the blood and bones of deceased patrons of the Christian religion, often traveled from town to town, city to city to give sacral power to kings and the peasants alike. These people of late antiquity assumed that it would help with harvests, in battles, and other forms of abundance (side note: as a religious man, I understand the meaning of symbolism quite well). If the shrines were not nearby, many men and women would make pilgrimages to these sites to obtain relics for themselves (anthropologist Victor Turner discusses this in many of his books) and many were used to help demonically possessed citizens to (spiritually) come back to the kingdom of God after evil had taken them away. Pretty good book, but I took off one star because there was a section I couldn't make heads or tails of.

[Dcn. Benj · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great, relatively short look at the cult of the saints in the late classical period (3rd to 6th century) and its surprising endurance into the Middle Ages. Brown is very fair and level headed with great insights sprinkled throughout. The work is academic, and so a bit dry. I also don’t share all of his conclusions, but this in no way detracted from the work. Sometimes the book reads like one only has the response to an argument, without the argument itself; and so suffers from a lack of clarity. I was surprised as well by the lack of a concluding chapter. I certainly recommend it so long as you know it’s a more academic than popular read.

Interestingly, I think this work inadvertently answered my long time curiosity concerning why we Catholics have been chipping apart the bones of saints. It at least added to a working answer. Unsurprisingly the “answer” is great and way better than anyone today seems to give the practice credit for, despite its being admittedly extremely peculiar. I’m surprised the reasons aren’t more widely discussed, whether appreciated or not.

[Daniel Edwards]

This was not the book I expected; I thought it would be more of a chronological survey of the rise of the cult of the saints. I should have known better, given that it's Peter Brown. All the same, I don't seem to have such a deep knowledge of late antique Roman social dynamics to quite catch all of the significance of what he's doing here. Even so, several of the concepts that Brown lays out (e.g., the saints as new patroni, the transfer of relics as a means of building concord) are things I'll be mulling over. Additionally, I was greatly appreciative of Brown's pushback against ways of reading historical data that set too much at odds elite (educated) and plebeian religious practices. It's a much bigger Venn diagram than we tend to think.

[Greg · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an interesting book. Brown traces the development of the cult of saints in western Christianity, mainly as he explores the inclusive and developing popular religion, and the somewhat aloof religion of the clergy. Brown essentially rejects the development of the cult of saints as the natural evolution of popular superstition. Instead, he recounts examples of how this form of piety was championed by the elite, as well as artistic developments.

See my other reviews here!

[Kristy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book for a class so it wasn’t really voluntary but it turned out to be really interesting. It covers the functions of saints and relics in he late-antiquity so up to about 1000 A.D. almost. It’s a short read and pretty academic but not so bad that you’re lost. But honestly I think what made it interesting was the exposure to relics that I’ve had in the past year and a half. I found it relevant to life right now and without that relevance I don’t think I would have enjoyed it as much.

[B · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting study on the increasing prominence of the role of the shrines and relics of the saints in the West from the 3rd to 6th centuries. Views of such prominent figures as Jerome, Ambrose, Gregory of Nyssa, Augustine, and Theodoret are included. The author contends that the touching (incl. kissing), dismembering, moving, and distributing of the relics of saints was a distinctly Christian phenomenon that was thought distasteful by pagans. For some commentary by Augustine on relics, see Confessions (IX.7) and Letter 78.3.

[Gino · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an interesting read that made me work in all the hardest ways. Some chapters were stunning and filled with amazing insight of the practices of everyday Christians in late antiquity. Yet other sections were mighty difficult for me to engage or follow. I’m left with a sense that I just read an important work from a brilliant historian, one whom I wish wrote in a way I could more readily understand.

[Tosca Wijns-Van Eeden · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very interesting perspective on the rise of the worshipping of the dead saints in the late-antique and early-medieval ages.
Though interesting as it is, one is expected to know and read Latin and French. Often a translation is given, but not all the time, which can be very distracting.
A nice load of examples is given from that recorded time, which makes it an even more interesting read.

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've enjoyed a few of Brown's books and magazine pieces, but despite the intriguing subject matter, this didn't do it for me. Not sure why, but I think it's his slightly obscurantist style and failure to translate lengthy Latin, French and German quotes into English for the benefit of middlingly educated laymen, like me.

[Lori · Rating 2 out of 5]

Originating from a set of lectures to professionals, this book is more difficult to read than his later, more popular books. This book is about the specific Western version of saints, with the ability of fragments of bone to represent the Christian ability of forgiveness.

2 stars, good if you are interested in the area.

[Abigail · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. Read for college. Overall very good and interesting though I felt like I occasionally lost the point of what the author was trying to say. Also got slightly annoyed when a quote not in English would be shared and no immediate translation was offered (I find it annoying to flip to the notes section).

[Gordon Walker · Rating 3 out of 5]

The prose is ponderous, often pretentious, but there is no doubting his scholarship, especially when he keeps on waving it out in front of every point he's trying to make.

He makes a good case that the cult is not a crude carry over from pagan culture but an innovation born out of Christian influence, but he makes no compelling case for where this alien idea arose and how such veneration contaminated Christian piety so completely

[John Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading this was the academic equivalent of watching Babe Ruth call a home run and then deliver on his promise. Peter Brown is truly outstanding in the field of Early Medieval history, a joy to read even for those not entirely familiar with the period.