Beyond Compare: Pagan Saint and Christian God in Late Antiquity

Abstract

1. A Proposition on Christian Sainthood Let me begin with a proposition: Christian sainthood functions as a means not only of airing the uncertainties of a hegemonic culture but also of negotiating, with existing literary and communicative structures, how best to play out and deny those uncertainties. This may seem a tad paradoxical, especially given that Christian hegemony over the centuries has not typically seen itself as uncertain. But I want to exemplify my claim by examining the surprisingly long history of vituperative Christian attacks on a pagan ‘saint’, Apollonius of Tyana, who has at various times been seen as a rival both to Jesus and his saints. I shall move chronologically backwards through certain Christian assaults on the figure of Apollonius, who lived in the last half of the first century AD, and his hagiography by Philostratus, Vita Apollonii [The Life of Apollonius of Tyana].1 The fact that John Henry Newman writing in the nineteenth century should have delivered as vehement a defence of Jesus against Apollonius as that by Constantine’s biographer, Eusebius of Caesarea (writing in the fourth century),2 is itself evidence of the extraordinary longevity, vibrancy, and continued relevance of this form of apologetic for a strikingly extended period in Christian culture. I will conclude the argument by