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Holiness and Sanctity in the Early Church

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Andrew Louth
Andrew Louth*
Affiliation:
Durham University
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Extract

In 1971 Peter Brown published his justly famous article, ‘The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity’. It is no exaggeration to say that this article — and the host of articles and books that succeeded it — have transformed the way we think about saints and their cult in late antiquity. This change is part of a wider transformation of the study of the world of early Christianity, a change that has much to do with the changing, not to say declining, place of Christianity in Western society. The very words Peter Brown used in the title of his article are emblematic of this changed perspective: holy, man, late antiquity. Others have noted the change of words from what one might have expected, or from what one would have expected a few decades, even years, earlier. Averil Cameron spoke of Peter Brown ‘rightly avoiding the term “saint”, for in this early period there were no formal processes of sanctification, and no official bestowal of sainthood’. Put like that, it seems obvious why Brown talked about the ‘holy man’. I want to suggest that the nature of the change involved is much less easy to track down, and furthermore that awareness of the specific suggestions implicit in Brown’s choice of words will enable us to contemplate the world of late antiquity from the perspective Brown was largely inaugurating, while not losing the other perspectives that were implicit in the language and concepts laid aside.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 47: Saints and Sanctity , 2011 , pp. 1 - 18
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2011

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References

1 Brown, Peter, ‘The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity’, JRS 61 (1971), 80–101 Google Scholar; repr. in idem, Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity (London, 1982), 103–52.Google Scholar I have referred to the reprint.

2 Several of Peter Brown’s later articles are collected in part II of Society and the Holy, 81–332; books include The Making of Late Antiquity (Cambridge, MA, 1978) and The Cult of the Saints (London, 1981). The significance of Brown’s original article is manifest from the fact that in March 1997 a conference was held in Berkeley, California, to celebrate the quarter-centenary of its publication, the proceedings of which were published in JECS 6.3 (Fall 1998), and from the publication of a symposium inspired by Brown’s article: Howard-Johnston, James and Hayward, Paul Anthony, eds, The Cult of Saints in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (Oxford, 1999)Google Scholar.

3 Averil Cameron, ‘On Defining the Holy Man’, in Howard-Johnston and Hayward, eds, Cult of Saints, 27–43, at 27.

4 e.g. Rom. 8: 25; 1 Cor. 1: 2; 6: 1; Col. 1: 2.

5 e.g. Pss 15: 3; 33: 10 (LXX).

6 Strikingly, Isa. 43: 15; very frequently, ‘the Holy One of Israel’, e.g. Isa. 1: 4; 5: 24.

7 e.g. Exod. 29: 30, and frequently in Heb.: 8: 2, 9; 13: 11.

8 e.g. Rev. 13: 7; 14: 12.

9 Karl Holl, ‘Die Vorstellung vom Märtyrer und die Märtyrerakte in ihrer geschichtlichen Entwicklung’, Neue Jahrbücher für dem klassischen Altertum 33 (1914), 521–56, repr. in idem, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Kirchengeschtchte, 3 vols (Tübingen, 1928), 2: 68–102.

10 e.g. Luke 21: 13–15; 1 Pet. 4: 12–14.

11 See Canon 7 of the Second Ecumenical Council of Nicaea, in Tanner, Norman P., ed., Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils (London, 1990), 144–5.Google Scholar

12 Young, Franceset al., eds, Cambridge History of Early Christian Literature (Cambridge, 2004), 373–81 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 373. There followed a reference to Richard Price’s elegant discussion of the question, which has not had the impact it deserved, owing to its being hidden away in his introduction to his translation of Theodoret’s Religious History: Theodoret of Cyrrhus, A History of the Monks of Syria, trans, with introduction and notes by Price, R. M., Cistercian Studies 88 (Kalamazoo, MI, 1985)Google Scholar, esp. ix-xxxvii.

13 Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis 4.4.15.3-5; David Brakke’s translation, modified, is taken from from his Demons and the Making of the Monk (Cambridge, MA, 2004), 25.

14 Origen, Exhortation to Martyrdom 11; trans. O’Meara, J. J., Ancient Christian Writers 19 (New York, 1954), 151Google Scholar, quoted by Brakke, Demons and the Making of the Monk, 26.

15 See Alexander Golitsin, ‘“Earthly Angels and Heavenly Men”: The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, Niketas Stethatos, and the Tradition of “Interiorized Apocalyptic” in Eastern Christian Ascetical and Mystical Literature’, DOP 55 (2001), 125–33.

16 Brown, ‘Rise and Function of the Holy Man’, 151.

17 Ibid. 152.

18 Ibid.

19 Brown, Peter, Augustine of Hippo (London, 1967)Google Scholar.

20 See esp. ‘Vera lux illa est quae illuminat: The Christian Humanism of Augustine’, and ‘The Church and the Eucharist in the Theology of St Augustine’, items IV and VI in Bonner, Gerald, God’s Decree and Man’s Destiny (London, 1987)Google Scholar.

21 Brown, ‘Rise and Function of the Holy Man’, 140.

22 Eusebius of Caesarea, History of the Church 10.4.55-6, 63, 66, 69; trans. Williamson, G. S., 2nd edn (Harmondsworth, 1989), 318, 320–1.Google Scholar

23 I Mystagogia ton Agiou Maximou tou Omologitou, ed. Sotiropoulos, Ch. G. (Athens, 1993)Google Scholar, esp. chs 1–7.

24 St Germanos of Constantinople, On the Divine Liturgy 1; ed. and trans. Meyendorff, Paul (Crestwood, NY, 1984)Google Scholar, 57 [slightly modified].

25 Brown, ‘Rise and Function of the Holy Man’, 151.

26 St John Damascene, Against the Iconoclasts 1.21; cf. 2.15; ET in Three Treatises on the Divine Images, trans. Louth, Andrew (Crestwood, NY, 2003), 34–5.Google Scholar

27 Brown, ‗Rise and Function of the Holy Man’, 143.

28 St John Damascene, Against the Iconoclasts 1.16 (trans. Louth, Three Treatises, 29–30).

29 Otto, Rudolf, Das Heilige (Breslau, 1917).Google Scholar