(Rev.) Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints. Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (enlarged edition), The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 2014, pp. xxxi + 187 (original) (raw)
Culte des saints et litterature hagiographique, ed Vincent Déroche, Bryan Ward-Perkins & Robert Wiśniewski, 2020
Hagiographical texts were centrally important in the encouragement of the cult of saints, but with a degree of variation in the emphasis they place on the specific location of each saint's cult. This paper, using the evidence collected in the 'Cult of Saints in Late Antiquity' database, explores this issue across the various hagiographical genres: Miracles Stories, Martyrdoms, and Lives. Some texts are focused on a single cult-site (the resting place of the saint's body), but others encourage a certain amount of diffusion of the saint's cult. The extent to which successful (and durable) cult required the existence of written hagiography is also discussed.