Peter Brown’s The Cult of the Saints: Its rise and function in Latin Christianity

By Ben Wulpi, Fall 2009

In his book, Peter Brown does an excellent job of outlining the main factors contributing to the

rise of the cult of the saints in late-antique Christianity, while at the same time countering modern

historical assumptions about this phenomenon. Brown comes at the issue from a cultural and

anthropological, rather than a theological, standpoint, which was not a strategy that I was expecting, but

one that ended up making a lot of sense in light of the modern misconceptions of the development of

the cult of saints. Each chapter represents a distinct factor that contributed to the rise of the cult of

saints, and does so in a way that is succinct and understandable (for the most part).

The first chapter deals largely with late-antique religious thought about the strict separation of

heaven and earth. Brown refers to it as “a fault that ran across the face of the universe” (2). Death was a

way of crossing that fault in popular religion. But as the Christian concept of the Resurrection began to

develop more and more, Christians could imagine a breaking-through of that fault. This thought

converged on the graves of those holy men who had died and gone on. The saints made their resting

place on Earth, but at the same time dwelled in Heaven. “The saint in Heaven was believed to be
‘present’ at his tomb on earth”(3). It was at the graves of the holy that Heaven and Earth met. And it

was around these graves that the Christian religion of late-antiquity began to develop. The intimacy with

God that the dead saint possessed provided a tangible measure of the power and mercy of God to the

faithful here on Earth. Along with this came a shift in the development of cities and architecture, which

now centered around the cemeteries and tombs of the saints, and the making-public of the graves

which had previously been held very private (which Brown discusses further in the next chapter).

In this chapter Brown also refutes the popular opinion (particularly originating from David

Hume) that the rise of the cult of saints was a grassroots movement of the popular, or “vulgar”, religion

of the uneducated. Hume suggests that the cult of saints was a solution for the human tendency to

struggle with the tension between theistic and polytheistic ways of thinking. According to Brown, this

line of thinking is based on a faulty “two-tiered” model of cultural hierarchy, in which there was a

separation between the educated and elite, and the “vulgar.” Hume and others assumed that the rise of

the cult of saints (as well as most religious developments) was a capitulation by the enlightened elites to

the popular religion of the vulgar, so that all religion just developed out of unenlightened superstition

among the vulgar of its time. Brown suggests that we abandon this model, instead looking at the

development of culture as a greater whole rather than a dialogue between two parties. Brown suggests

though, that the thought behind the cult of saints came directly from the most educated and

enlightened Christians of the time.

In chapter two, Brown discusses the cultural shift in the burial practices in response to the rise

of the cult of saints, and the tension between the family, which always traditionally played the largest

role in the care of the dead, and the community, which desired to use the graves of the holy dead as

shrines and altars—loci of the connections between Heaven and Earth. Up to this time, “religious

practice took place with the family and for the family” (30). But as the Christian church rose in

prominence, it became an “artificial kin group” (31). This resulted in a tension between the private and
communal, especially when it came to the care of the deceased. The church wanted to be the protector

and care-giver of its leaders and heroes, but had to deal with the individuals’ families first. In many

cases, it was the wealthy families within the church that could claim possession and patronage of the

holy dead, thus creating a “privatization of the holy,” which resulted in a new paradigm of cultural and

religious power. One solution to this, prompted largely by Ambrose, was the development of relic s as

spiritual loci as well. These relics could be appropriated by the church and moved to any number of

places, where the saints were then inseparably linked to the communal religion of that place and

available to the community as a whole. At these shrines, many healings and miracles took place, and the

figure of the martyrs themselves began to change into a type of spiritual Roman patronus, an invisible

protector of earthly clients, of which the bishop was a visible representation. These shrines also were

able to reach out to the marginalized urban community (specifically women and the poor) to offer

protection and healing and a sense of intimacy with the divine, bringing a sense of solidarity among

believers in the church, breaking down the walls of separation and social structure. All were equal

before the mercy of God shown through the saints.

Chapter three focused on the spiritual intimacy available between believer and martyr, who

served as an invisible companion to the believer. This begins with late-antique belief about the Christian

soul, which was not “a simple, homogenous substance: it is a composite, consisting of many layers” (51).

In this way, the self is a hierarchy, and its core lies directly beneath the divine. And at that core, “late-

antique men placed an invisible protector” (51). This protector could be presented as a personal

daimon, the genius, or as a guardian angel. But it served not only as protector, but, because of its

intimate relation with the individual’s being, as a sort of upward extension of the individual. It was this

thought that was transferred over to the saints as patroni and intercessors—the spiritual connection

between our souls and Heaven. Brown uses the example of Paulinus and his intimate relation with Saint

Felix:
 “For Paulinus deliberately pins his identity on his relationship with Felix, and, in so
doing, he carries over to the human saint much of the language used previously of the
daimon, the genius, and the guardian angel. The weight of the centuries of belief that
linked the layers of the self to the divine through a close-knit chain of nonhuman
intermediaries presses Felix deep into the life and personality of Paulinus. He is far more
than a distant intercessor before the throne of God; he is a guardian of Paulinus’s
identity and, almost, at times, a personification of that identity” (56).

Augustine developed this concept further, and as the cult spread, it was this need for intimacy with a

protector with whom one could identify that is the hallmark of fourth-century Christian piety. This

development was a sort of replication of the social experience of the late Roman Empire, and this

practice of relationship with the saints in turn causes the public to bring into question the social

structures of their society. Along with this was an even deeper need for patronage, and Brown identifies

this as “the perpetual hope of amnesty,” which “pushed the saint to the forefront as patronus” (65). All

of these changes in the fourth century served to change the sense of the stability of the identity, which

now rested in something more divine than themselves, inverting the traditional hierarchy of the

universe as an essential aspect of the journey of men in discovering themselves.

Chapter four begins with an analysis of the emotional connotations surrounding death in late-

antiquity. There was a sense of horror and dread surrounding the “black death.” And it was in this

emotional atmosphere that the tombs of the martyrs were thrust into prominence. These were the very

special dead, because they had died in a special way. “The late-antique cult of the martyrs represents,

therefore, a consistent imaginative determination to block out the lurking presence…of ‘black death’”

(71). Martyrs were seen as the best of the elect, and a part of Christ Himself, and because they had

conquered death, their graves brought the light of Christ to a dark world. “At their graves, the eternity

of paradise and the first touch of the resurrection come into the present” (78). It is in this context that

the relics of the martyrs became prominent among the faithful. In relics, detached fragments of the

whole body, boundless associations and power were contained in these tiny and compact relics,

affirming the effect of “inverted magnitudes” as it related to God’s grace. The sufferings of the martyrs
were miracles in themselves, and it is these stories of suffering that brought the past into the present at

feasts celebrating the martyr, and in this, the saint was truly present. “’Death’s grim grim face’ is

washed so clean by the martyr that a torture that had caused exquisite suffering is now the most

apposite vehicle for relief” (84), and this emotional inversion of suffering served to cause quite a shift in

Christian attitudes towards death.

In chapter six, Brown points out that, if the graves of the saints stayed only in one place, then it

was very difficult for all to experience that powerful praesentia (presence) that was offered by the

saints. There was a tension between physical distance and spiritual proximity that had to be measured in

this time period. The solution for the church was to allow the relics to travel to people, which was called

translation, rather than having the people come to the relics, which is called pilgrimage. “If relics could

travel, then the distance between the believer and the place where the holy could be found ceased to

be a fixed, physical distance” (89). The translation of relics played a large role in shaping the spirituality

of the Christian Mediterranean. Relics were always a sign of God’s mercy: “A sense of the mercy of God

lies at the root of the discovery, translation, and installation of relics” (92). If a community possessed a

relic, then it knew that it had been judged by God to have deserved the praesentia of the saint. The

arrival of a relic into a community, which was often much more celebrated than its continued presence

there, was always associated with good happenings. The relics brought peace and unity. It was the

virtues of concord and the “unsullied exercise of power” that the late-Roman men lacked and wished for

the most, and that they found fulfilled in the coming of the relics. Firstly, “the translation of the relics

symbolized the newly achieved solidarity of an empire-wide class.” This was a new Christian elite of

bishops and noble pilgrims. These, who brought the relics from community to community, bringing

protection and solidarity wherever they went, were privileged agents who were personally involved in

bringing the mercy of God. The relics, and the resulting praesentia of the saints, brought with them
concord, reconciliation among the community, acts of justice, miracles of healing and exorcisms, and the

overcoming of the presence of evil, the “clean” power defeating the “unclean” power.

It is this “clean power”—the potentia of the saints—that Brown turns to in the sixth chapter. He

focuses largely on the healing of the possessed in the praesentia of the saint. It was in these exorcisms

that the people “witnessed more clearly and with greater precision the manner in which God, through

his lords the saints, could stretch forth into their midst the right hand of his healing power” (107). And

the potentia of the saint as witnessed through exorcism was not merely to exercise power, but to

reintegrate the possessed into the community as a healed representation of God’s acts of mercy and

power. With healings of this type often came a change of social status. “The healed became the

property of the invisible “lord” to the exclusion of all other lords” (113). The healing potentia of the

saints was contrasted with the natural healing of doctors, such as Marcellus of Bordeaux, who wrote a

book about all the natural healing elements in the environment. Brown contrasts these natural healings,

which he linked to an attitude of environmental dependence (on a horizontal plane) with the

supernatural healings of the saints, which assumed a spiritual dependence (on a vertical plane). It is this

conflict of the assumptions of man in relation to his society and environment that shaped a lot of late-

antiquity. Brown suggests that “It is in a conflict of models of healing, therefore, that we can sense the

impact of the rise of Christianity” (120). The advance of Christianity spread beyond the towns into the

far reaches of the civilized world, concomitant with the advance of the praesentia of the saints. And it is

in this, says Brown, that “the ancient preclassical world had come to a definitive end” (121), and that

this change was larger by far than the rise of the Christian church, and it is the results of this change that

the church inherited. These changes and tensions in the late-antique world were “nothing less than a

conflict of views on the relation between man and nature” (125). It is in the context of man’s search for

identity in himself, in his world, and in the spiritual realm, that the cult of saints emerges to prominence.
 Peter Brown’s book was very enlightening for me to read, as I had come with many of the same

apparent assumptions as modern scholarship—that the rise of the cult of saints was based purely in

superstition from the common people, struggling to link their pagan pasts to their Christian present. His

style, although I appreciated it greatly, was interesting to me. His structure and explanations were

straightforward and clear, as if he was writing for a general audience. But often, he would leave whole

paragraphs of quotations in their original language (whether Greek, German, French, or Latin), as if

writing for a much more scholarly audience, which made it difficult for me to follow at times. And I often

had to look up the definitions of the many Latin words he used throughout the book. So the book almost

read like it was a “The Cult of the Saints for Really Smart Dummies.” And my only other issue with it was

that, as I mentioned in the introduction, I wish there would have been some more theological

background on the rise of the cult of the saints. But I appreciated immensely his cultural and

anthropological analysis, which is an angle not often considered in church history it seems. Overall, I

found this to be an excellent book, and I think I have grown invaluably as a result of reading it.