A new edition of the “brilliantly original and highly sophisticated” study of saint worship after the fall of the Roman Empire (Library Journal). In this groundbreaking work, Peter Brown explores how the worship of saints and their corporeal remains became central to religious life in Western Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire. During this period, earthly remnants served as a heavenly connection, and their veneration is a fascinating window into the cultural mood of a region in transition. Brown challenges the long-held two-tier idea of religion that separated the religious practices of the sophisticated elites from those of the superstitious masses, instead arguing that the cult of the saints crossed boundaries and played a dynamic part in both the Christian faith and the larger world of late antiquity. He shows how men and women living in harsh and sometimes barbaric times relied upon the holy dead to obtain justice, forgiveness, and power, and how a single sainted hair could inspire great thinkers and great artists. An essential text by one of the foremost scholars of European history, this expanded edition includes a new preface from Brown, which presents new ideas based on subsequent scholarship. “Informative…demonstrates once again Brown’s genius for sharing with his readers the fruits of not only his own painstaking and meticulous scholarship but also his penetrating understanding of the evolution of Western culture as a whole.”—Religious Studies

This is the first comprehensive interdisciplinary study of the cult of St Margaret of Antioch in medieval England. Margaret was one of the most famous female saints of both the Catholic world and of Eastern Christianity (where she was known as St Marina). Her legend is remembered for her confrontation with a dragon-shaped devil, who allegedly swallowed Margaret and then burst asunder. This episode became firmly established in iconography, making her one of the most frequently represented saints. Margaret was supposedly martyred in the late 3rd century, but apart from the historically problematic legend there is no evidence concerning her in other contemporary sources. The sudden appearance of her name in liturgical manuscripts in the late 8th century is connected with the dispersal of her relics at that time. The cult grew in England from Anglo-Saxon times, with over 200 churches dedicated to Margaret (second only to Mary among female saints), and hundreds of images and copies of her life known to have been made. The book examines Greek, Latin, Old English, Middle English and Anglo-Norman versions of Margaret's life, their mouvance and cultural context, providing editions of the hitherto unpublished texts. By considering these versions, the iconographic evidence, their patronage and audience, the monograph traces the changes of St Margaret's story through the eight centuries before the Reformation. The book also considers the further trajectory of the legend as reflected in popular fairy-tales and contemporary cultural stereotypes. Special attention is given to the interpretation of St Margaret's demonic encounter, central to the legend's iconography and theology.

Translations of eight saints' lives, giving an insight into women's religious culture in Anglo-Saxon England. Devout, virtuous and independent, the heroines of Old English saints' lives (one of the most popular literary genres of the middle ages) provided exemplars of personal and public inspiration for medieval Christians. The eight lives translated here are the earliest known vernacular accounts of the biographies of Æthelthryth, Agatha, Agnes, Cecilia, Eugenia, Euphrosyne, Lucy, and Mary of Egypt. They depict women escaping unwanted marriages, communicating with male relatives, acquiring an education, living autonomously as hermits, and achieving positions of leadership; such lives document not only the importance of spiritual faith to early Christian women, but also testify to how these women (and their audience) employed faith as a tool for empowerment. Each life is preceded by a brief description of the saint's cult from its early Christian origins to its presence in Anglo-Saxon culture. The translationis accompanied by an introduction establishing the general background for the genre, the conventions of women saints' lives, and women's religious culture in Anglo-Saxon England; and an interpretive essay exploring the relationships between explicit presentations of the female body and the strength of spiritual authority as exhibited in these texts completes the volume. LESLIE A. DONOVAN is Associate Professor at the University of New Mexico.

Saints and Sacred Matter explores the embodied aspects of the divine--physical remains of holy men and women and objects associated with them. Contributors explore how relics linked the past and present with an imagined future in essays that discuss Christian and other religious traditions from the ancient world such as Judaism and Islam.

The cult of St Ursula and the 11,000 virgins was one of the most popular and relic-rich of all saints’ cults in the medieval period. This volume constitutes the first interdisciplinary collection of essays in English to explore the development and transmission of the legend of St Ursula in detail, considering a wealth of different sources including physical remains, literary texts, artistic representations and medieval music.

The saints, despite the ethical problems they often raise, remain a point of access to the mystery of holiness. In this book, Sara Maitland and Wendy Mulford have travelled a creative path which accepts the complex relationship between historical fact and spiritual truth. Denying the validity of neither, and exploring a new form - complex, double-sided, poetic - the book offers a meeting-place between virtue and magic. Virtuous Magic is for pilgrims, for feminists, for ordinary Christians, and for anyone who has ever wondered about that strange magic which the saints have exerted throughout Christian history.