No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Hagiography and Autobiography in the Late Antique West
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 January 2016
Extract
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.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2011
References
1 Brown, Peter, ‘The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity’, JRS 61 (1971), 80–101.Google Scholar
2 Brown, Peter, ‘The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquityxs: 1971–1997’ JECS 6 (1998), 353–76 Google Scholar, at 368.
3 Pricoco, S., Monaci, filosofi e santi. Saggi di storia della cultura tardoantica (Messina, 1992), 59–61.Google Scholar
4 Hilarius, , Vita Honorati 23–5, in Vitae Sanctorum Honorati et Hilarii, Episcoporum Arelatensium, ed. Cavallin, S. (Lund, 1952), 65–8.Google Scholar
5 Sulpicius Severus, Vita Martini 25 (CSEL 1, 134).
6 Theodoret, Religious History 9.5-8 (SC 234, 415–23); 13.16-17 (ibid. 503–7).
7 Porphyry, De vita Plotini et ordine librorum eius 11, in Plotinus I: Porphyry on Plotinus, Ennead I, ed. and trans. Armstrong, A. H., LCL 440 (London, 1966), 37.Google Scholar
8 Eunapius, Vitae Philosophorum ac Sophistarum, in Philostratus and Eunapius: Lives of the Sophists 485–6, ed. and trans. W. C. Wright (London, 1921, repr. 2005), 476–83.
9 Eugippius, Epistula ad Paschasium 7–11 (SC 374, 153–5).
10 Ibid. 9 (SC 374, 152–4).
11 Porphyry, De vita Plotini 1 (Plotinus I, ed. and trans. Armstrong, 3).
12 There has been extensive debate about the historicity of Eugippius’s hagiography and, in particular, of the function of this device. For an introduction, see W. Pohl, ‘Einleitung: Commemoratium — Vergegenwärtigungen des heiligen Severin’, in W. Pohl and M. Diesenberger, eds, Eugippius und Severin (Vienna, 2001), 9–23.
13 Hilarius, Vita Honorati 4.1.
14 Ibid.; ET in Hoare, F. R., The Western Fathers (London, 1954), 250.Google Scholar
15 Honoratus of Marseilles, Vita Hilarii 2 (Vita Honorati et Hilarii, ed. Cavallin, 81). Like his mentor, Hilarius was unknown in the city before the election. The parallel is observed, but goes undeveloped, by Mathisen, R. W., Ecclesiastical Factionalism and Religious Controversy in Fifth-Century Gaul (Washington, DC, 1989), 89Google Scholar. Other examples of late antique Western saints apparently concealing their own identity occur in the Lives of Germanus of Auxerre and Fulgentius: Constantius of Lyons, Vita Germani 31 (SC 112, 180); Ferrandus, Vita Fulgentii 12.24-5 (PL 65, 129).
16 e.g. Ferrandus, Vita Fulgentii 12.23 (PL 65, 128); Gerontius, Vita Melaniae Iunions 26 (SC 90, 178–80).
17 For an excellent introduction, see Frow, J., Genre (London, 2006).Google Scholar
18 As argued by Vessey, J. M., ‘Ideas of Christian Writing in Late Roman Gaul’ (unpublished D.Phil, thesis, University of Oxford, 1988), 116Google Scholar. The view is supported by Leyser, C., ‘“This Sainted Isle”: Panegyric, Nostalgia, and the Invention of Lerinian Monasticism’, in Klingshirn, W. E. and Vessey, M., eds, The Limits of Ancient Christianity (Ann Arbor, MI, 1999), 188–208 Google Scholar, at 199.
19 ‘Der FAMA-EFFEKT beruht sich auf einem Paradoxon: Je mehr sich ein Anachoret von seiner Umwelt abschliesst, je mehr er den Kontakt zu den Mitmenschen zu meiden sucht, desto bekannter wird er’: Brunert, E.-M., Das Ideal der Wüstenaskese (Münster, 1994), 411Google Scholar (‘The FAMA-EFFECT is based on a paradox: the more an anchorite cuts himself off from his environment, the more he seeks to avoid contact with his fellow men, the better known he becomes’ [translation mine]).
20 Hodgkin, T., Italy and her Invaders, 8 vols (London, 1880-9), 2Google Scholar: 248, speaks of ‘the harmless comedy of the nolo episcopari, which was so commonly played in those days’. In a similar vein, Mathisen calls Hilarius’s flight after Honoratus’s death ‘de rigueur’, suggesting that he was ‘hoping, perhaps, to be able to fulfil the topos of being raptus ad episcopatum’: Ecclesiastical Factionalism, 88.
21 Williams, M. S., Authorised Lives in Early Christian Biography: Between Eusebius and Augustine (Cambridge, 2008), 150Google Scholar. My argument above is very close to that of Williams.
22 Augustine, Confessiones 8.12.29; ed. J. J. O’Donnell, 3 vols (Oxford, 1992), 1: 101. The translations in the main text and at n. 24 below are from Augustine, Confessions, trans. P. Burton (London, 2001).
23 Augustine, Confessiones 8.6.15.
24 Ibid. 8.6.14: ‘There was the strongest attestation for them [i.e. God’s work through Antony]; they had occurred within living memory, and almost, indeed, within our own lifetimes.’
25 Williams, B., Truth and Truthfulness (Princeton, NJ, 2002), ch. 8.Google Scholar
26 See Wolterstorff, N., ‘God’s Speaking and Augustine’s Conversion’, in Mann, W. E., ed., Augustine’s Confessions: Critical Essays (Oxford, 2006), 161–74.Google Scholar
27 Augustine, Confessiones 2.3.7.