Abstract
Abstract Peter Brown’s ‘The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity’ (1971) has spawned decades of scholarship. This article raises a few queries. Brown’s ‘holy man’ seems to emerge undefined on a blank canvas, but the notion of the ‘holy’ was already well developed: the vocation of Christians, exemplified in martyrdom. Brown is also keen to see the holy man as something new, and Christian, as opposed to holy places, but by the time the holy man has made his entrance, Christians were also discovering the importance of holy places: churches as holy shrines. Brown’s holy man is defined in terms of power, the power conceded to one apart from the community, but such power was soon claimed by bishops, very much part of their communities. Power, furthermore, exercised on behalf of a remote deity: which is to ignore the radical presence implicit in the Incarnation.
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