Book Series Fabulae, vol. 3

Boundaries of Holiness, Frontiers of Sainthood

Negotiating the Image of Christian Holy Figures and Saints in Late Antiquity

Julia Doroszweska, Mateusz Kusio (eds)

  • Pages: approx. 280 p.
  • Size:156 x 234 mm
  • Illustrations:1 b/w, 3 col., 1 tables b/w.
  • Language(s):English
  • Publication Year:2025


Pre-order*
  • € 85,00 EXCL. VAT RETAIL PRICE
  • ISBN: 978-2-503-61421-2
  • Hardback
  • Forthcoming (Mar/25)

Forthcoming
  • € 85,00 EXCL. VAT RETAIL PRICE


Offering vital new perspectives on the religious world of Late Antiquity, this volume explores ancient and medieval holiness and sainthood as defined by their peripheries, and not their conceptual centre.

Subject(s)
BIO

Julia Doroszewska is Assistant Professor in the Faculty of History at the University of Warsaw. Her research interests include Greek and Latin imperial literature, particularly paradoxography, as well as hagiography and ancient novel. She has published a book The Monstrous World. Corporeal Discourses in Phlegon of Tralles ‘Mirabilia’ (2016) and many articles on the imperial prose. She is Principal Investigator in the research project Epiphanies of the Saints in Late-antique Greek Literature.

Mateusz Kusio is a postdoctoral fellow at the Faculty of History at the University of Warsaw. His academic interests include early Christian literature, ancient Judaism, biblical studies, and eschatology. His the author of The Antichrist Tradition. Antimessianism in Second Temple Judaism and Early Christianity (2020).

Summary

Many excellent studies have been published on the phenomenon of holy (wo)men and saints. As a rule, however, they focus on successful candidates for holiness who played the roles of charismatic leaders and patrons of social and religious life.

This volume offers a new perspective on ancient and medieval holiness — its main focus is holiness as defined by its peripheries, and not by its conceptual centre. The contributors explore stories of men and women whose way to sainthood did not follow typical ‘models’, but who engaged with it from its outskirts. Several essays examine the strategies employed by hagiographical authors to tailor the images of candidates for holiness whose lives provided less obvious examples of moral and/or religious ideals. These include attempts to make saints out of emperors, heretics, and other unlikely or obscure figures. Other case studies focus on concerns with false holiness, or unusual cases of holiness being ascribed prior to a saint’s death. Another concept explored in the volume is space. The spatial boundaries of holiness are discussed in relation to the transmission of relics, to the opposition between urban and rural spaces, holy sites, and even imagined space.

Holiness and sainthood have been crucial concepts for Christianity from its inception. By exploring their ‘marginal’ and ‘peripheral’ aspects, the essays in this book offer vital new perspectives on the religious world of Late Antiquity.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction
JULIA DOROSZEWSKA, MATEUSZ KUSIO

Part I. Negotiating the Boundaries of Holiness and Sainthood

The Holy Men Beyond the Limits of Humanity in Hagiography, Documentary Papyri, and Graffiti from Western Thebes
PRZEMYSŁAW PIWOWARCZYK

How to Portray an ἅγιος? The ἔκφρασις of Stephen within the βασιλικοὶ λόγοι of Gregory of Nyssa
MATTIA C. CHIRIATTI

Beatissima Lucina, Matrona Nobilissima: Lucina and the Shifting Boundaries of Female Holiness in Late Antique Rome
RAÚL VILLEGAS MARÍN

Gregory of Tours and the Boundaries of Sainthood
SIMON LOSEBY AND BRYAN WARD-PERKINS

Healing and Being Healed: Justinian, Imperial Illness, and the Emperor’s Body between Human Vulnerability and Divine Protection
JONAS BORSCH

Part II. Spatial Boundaries of Holiness and Sanctity

Establishing Imperial Holiness in Liminal Spaces: Heraclius’s Transformation into the Saviour of Byzantium during his Persian Campaigns Mirrored in the Panegyrical Writings by George of Pisidia
NIKOLAS HÄCHLER, SONSOLES COSTERO-QUIROGA

The Saint in and out of the Late Antique City: The Evidence of Greek Hagiography
STEPHANOS EFTHYMIADIS

Holy Places and Liminal Spaces in John Moschos’s Spiritual Meadow
FOTIS VASILEIOU

Telling Spaces and Stories in a Greek Narrative of the Passion of Agatha (BHG 37)
ANNA LAMPADARIDI

A Palestinian Holy Man at the Constantinopolitan Court: Stretching the Boundaries of Holiness at the Turn of the Sixth Century
MAURITS DE LEEUW

Index

RELATED PUBLICATIONS
Constructing Saints in Greek and Latin Hagiography View publication
Narrating Power and Authority in Late Antique and Medieval Hagiography across East and... View publication