Includes bibliographical references and index.

pt. 1. The cult of saints in Peter Brown. On defining the holy man / Averil Cameron ; Ascetics as mediators and as teachers / Philip Rousseau -- pt. 2. The cult of saints in eastern Christendom. 'For next to God, you are my salvation': reflections on the rise of the holy man in late antiquity / Claudia Rapp ; 'What we heard in the lives of the saints we have seen with our own eyes': the holy man as literary text in tenth-century Constantinople / Paul Magdalino -- pt. 3. The cult of saints in western Christendom. Demystifying the role of sanctity in western Christendom / Paul Antony Hayward ; The origins of the Carolingian attempt to regulate the cult of saints / Paul Fouracre ; The missionary life / Ian N. Wood -- pt. 4. The cult of saints in medieval Rus'. Holy men and the transformation of political space in medieval Rus' / Paul A. Hollingsworth ; The holy man and Christianization from the apocryphal apostles to St Stephen of Perm / Richard M. Price -- pt. 5. The cult of saints in Islam. Prophecy and holy men in early Islam / Chase Robinson ; The etiquette of devotion in the Islamic cult of saints / Josef W. Meri.

"This book contains eleven essays, prefaced by a general introduction, on a set of related themes: the characteristic traits and diverse functions of holy men; the fashioning of saints out of a small minority of holy men and a number of other individuals of high social status but with more dubious spiritual credentials; the literary processes involved in the construction of hagiographical texts; the role of hagiography in the creation and diffusion of cults; and the worldly interests and other purposes which were served by hagiographical texts and the cults which they propagated. These themes are explored across a wide range of social and cultural milieux, extending from the late antique east Mediterranean through the early medieval Frankish world and Byzantium to Russia and Islam in the high middle ages."--Jacket

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