The perception of hagiography as a form of “popular” Christianity has been questioned by the analysis of Peter Brown (the cult of saints as promoted by the aristocratic bishopric) or of Averil Cameron (rejecting the assumed popular character of apocryphal and hagiographical literature). In describing the hagiography of the third to the fourth centuries, which is mainly concerned with the martyrs, rather than qualify it as “popular” literature, the author prefers to speak of a communitarian, ecclesiastical literature, which developed spontaneously in response to environment and circumstances, not as the execution of a systematic plan. The martyrdom narratives circulated within communities. The spontaneous tendency among the faithful to consider the Acta martyrum as new chapters of the canonical scriptures was finally discarded; but the Acts and Passions continued to be read out in public to both literate and illiterate listeners, especially in the West (in the East certain Passions, with a more intellectual tenor, may have circulated in more restricted circles). In the fourth century, the Church organised the cult of heroized martyrs. This was the time of the appearance of eulogies of martyrs in the encomiastic tradition in the East; in the West, of the homilies for the feast days of the martyrs; in the East as well as in the West, of those Passions called “epic Passions” and of collections of miracles. These different types are no more “popular” than “aristocratic”: their oral presentation made them nearly accessible to the illiterate public. The same is true for monastic hagiography, even if it addresses a restricted audience. On the other hand, hagiography generally affirms the equality in the Church of men and women of all conditions. Certain biographies of ascetics and bishops (Jerome, and even Saint Martin as delineated by Sulpicius Severus) present the case of an Unterhaltungsliteratur which is not, for all that, really intended for “the people”. Although the aristocratic public was divided on this point, the hagiographers opted more and more for the sermo humilis or rusticus. Even when in the VI century, the Bischofsherrschaft prevailed, the masses became less literate and the social gap between the “people” and the aristocratic bishops widened, hagiography, which continued to be read aloud, maintained a bond with the illitterati, especially on the occasion of the feasts celebrating local saints.