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22 - Saints and holy men

from Part IV - Christian Beliefs and Practices

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

By
Claudia Rapp
Edited by
Augustine Casiday  and
Frederick W. Norris
Augustine Casiday
Affiliation:
University of Wales, Lampeter
Frederick W. Norris
Affiliation:
Emmanuel School of Religion
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Summary

The period beginning around the year 300 was a time of experimentation with expressions of faith, piety and belief. The legitimating of Christianity at the end of the Persecutions in 312 and the prospect of lasting imperial support for Christianity and its practitioners opened up new opportunities for social acceptance and public expression of the faith. By around the year 600, experimentation had turned to solidification and a firm groundwork was established that future generations would evoke as binding precedent. One of the great novelties of the period was the cult of saints.

The focus of studies on saints has commonly been on ‘the very special dead’, as Peter Brown has called them, centred on the cult at their tomb. Yet, other influential publications of the same scholar have drawn attention to the importance of living ‘holy men’ within the socio-economic landscape of late antiquity. There is no clear dividing line between them in terms of the veneration they received. Dead saints and living holy men alike were believed to hold a special connection to the divine that they were able to share with those who approached them. As will emerge from the following, many acts of veneration shown to saints after their death had their origin in the connections of the faithful to living holy men.

Keywords

cult of relicsancient Christiansancient culturecult of saintssaints and disciplesholy men
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of Christianity , pp. 548 - 566
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2007

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