The holy man and Christianization from the apocryphal apostles to St Stephen of Perm

Abstract

Abstract Peter Brown’s article on ‘The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity’, first published in 1971, immediately added a new dimension to the study of the ascetic movements within the Christian Empire, by drawing attention to the ways in which holy men could contribute to the easing of social relations, as well as of the anxieties of individuals, in a time of rapid economic and political change. One change that the holy man could certainly assist was the process of Christianization. This essay will explore the ways in which the holy man, as represented in the Lives of the saints, could make a distinctive contribution to this process. I shall use a wide range of hagiographical narratives, which will extend in time from the apocryphal Acts of the late second century, through the hagiographical literature generated by the monastic movement, to texts from the late medieval period, and in location from Egypt to Ireland, and from the Loire to beyond the Volga. The texts vary enormously in their historicity, extending from the reliable to the wholly fictitious. I hope to show how this literature, despite its huge range, shows striking continuity in ideology and narrative motifs, and how texts from widely different times and countries can be mutually illuminating.