Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity

Brown’s Cult of Saints
The Author’s Argument
The argument that Peter Brown makes in The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity is that the “cult of saints” was essentially promoted by the cultural leaders of the time—the bishops and elites of society who had a hand in shaping the perceptions of others. Through them, the Church expressed the idea that Heaven and Earth could be joined through the intercession of the saints,[footnoteRef:2] whose bodies were vestiges of grace and holiness, conduits through which Heaven could bridge the fault above the earth and reach out for Christians interested in making it to the other side, in holiness. As Brown notes, “the joining of Heaven and Earth was made plain even by the manner in which contemporaries designed and described the shrines of the saints.”[footnoteRef:3] The saints and their resting places represented the jointure—the point where the divine and the earthly merged—a point to be honored, revered, and utilized for holy purposes. The Jews, Brown makes clear, believed in no such notion: for the Christians, it was part and parcel of their belief in a God-Man Who had done what no other could do. The fact that the cult of the saints took its rise outside the realm of the Roman world—i.e., “in the great cemeteries that lay outside the cities”—indicates that the cult was an alternative to what the past and present Roman culture offered: it was something distinct, new, unique and outside the main.[footnoteRef:4] This in its own right had a special allure, as journeying to the land of the dead was symbolic in itself of the spiritual pilgrimage the Christian believed himself to be on. It also encapsulated the paradoxical mystery of the faith—that among the dead there could be found the grace of life. [2: Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (University of Chicago Press, 1981), 6] [3: Ibid 4.] [4: Ibid, 4.]
This idea, this essence of the faith, was what Brown argues inspired the cult of the saints. He rejects the idea of modern historians that the cult came about as the result of a “democratization of culture,” facilitated by the culture elites of late antiquity who allowed the “vulgar” ideas of the masses to become commonplace.[footnoteRef:5] Rather, Brown argues that the “two-tiered model” fails to explain what really transpired because, in fact, there was no historical basis for the “vulgar” idea upon which the cult of the saints flourished: it was wholly unique among Mediterranean pagans and therefore not an outgrowth of any vulgar cannon. It was not something that the elites consented to in order to appease the lower-level intellectuals of the Christian crowd. On the contrary, it was an organic development within the Christian community, sanctioned by the leaders of the community. [5: Ibid 17.]
Execution of the Argument
Brown executes the argument, first, by showing what is gained when one rejects the “two-tiered model” that “invents” more than it explains.[footnoteRef:6] Specifically, Brown emphasizes the fact that “differences of class and education play no significant role”[footnoteRef:7] in the practice of the Christian religion: elites and the vulgar were one and the same. The breaking of the barrier between Heave and Earth, the living and the dead, as Brown forcefully puts it, was no small thing: it was a tremendous movement and not one that could have spontaneously arisen out of “popular belief” for a number of reasons: 1) the elites and the vulgar shared, generally, the same beliefs and practices—though disputes did arise among some when it came to the finer points of dogma and theology; 2) there was no precedent for such belief: it was wholly its own thing and indicates a massive movement of a large segment of late antiquity society embracing “new forms of reverence…orchestrated by new leaders…with new bonds of human dependence, new, intimate, hopes for protection and justice in a changing world.”[footnoteRef:8] In other words, the only satisfactory explanation of the rise of the cult of the saints was that it was a truly religious movement, prompted by experience, sustained by a new faith, supported by a new organization of leaders who likewise shared in the belief. [6: Ibid 18.] [7: Ibid 19.] [8: Ibid 22.]
Brown brings up the argument of modern historians who favor the “two-tiered model” in relation to Augustine (a leading light of the intellectual world in late antiquity), who became a Christian, a participant in the cult of saints, and eventually a saint himself.[footnoteRef:9] The “two-tiered model” assumes that a landslide of vulgar, pagan ideas about worshipping the dead is what gave rise to the cult of the saints—but Brown argues that no landslide ever took place and that the pagans newly converted would not have imagined the cult of the saints in the form that it took in any way.[footnoteRef:10] Augustine’s concern was the cult of saints might eclipse or “devalue the common high day of Easter”[footnoteRef:11]—the day upon which Christ rose from the dead and achieved the final victory of death. Because the Church was very family-focused, families enjoyed adopting special venerations of saints and there were disputes over relics, and so on. Augustine did not condemn the practice of revering the holy sites and shrines, of imploring the saints for intercession or of the idea that the saints could be conduits of miracles—he merely urged the early Christians to remember that Christ was their God and that the saints were His. They were not to forget Him Who should be the final object of their love and devotion. Augustine feared the “privatization of the holy by well-to-do Christian families was a very real prospect”[footnoteRef:12] and such a thing was not to be allowed for it undermined the idea that the faith was for all—not for a few elites. [9: Ibid 28.] [10: Ibid 29-30.] [11: Ibid 32.] [12: Ibid 34.]
Significance
By focusing on these points, Brown shows that the dynamic of the cult of the saints was much more of a mixture of the actual religious experience and faith of the late antiquity Christians with the natural desire of a powerful few to want to have control over the relics, shrines and holy places where so many miracles took place. It was not a pagan invention, nor did the leaders tolerate it: instead, they simply tried to show that there was a right way for a Christian to honor a saint—and a wrong way. The book helps substantially in explaining that the cult of the saints was a unique phenomenon in history that cannot be understood using the modern “two-tier model” because the model simply does not apply or provide an adequate explanation of what happened.
Brown is very successful in making his point because he gives, again and again, page after page, clear and vivid details of the reality of the situation that was the early Church in late antiquity. He provides the correct lens that a historian should use to look up on the events—“kinship colored glasses”[footnoteRef:13]—to see how it stood for the people at the time and not to allow a modern projection or interpretation of the past to create a false impression of the dynamic. Brown uses careful and considerable evidence to argue his point and make a convincing case. His reasoning is logical: the belief in the breaking of the barrier between Heaven and Earth could not have come from pagan ideology, for pagans did not believe such a thing possible. It could only have come organically from the Christian religion and Christian beliefs/experiences themselves—and thus the two-tiered model fails to explain the rise of the cult of the saints. Brown explains this argument with crystal clear imagery and reason. [13: Ibid 30.]
What Brown aims to accomplish in the book is to show that the rise of the cult of the saints was something that could not have stemmed from practices or beliefs originating outside the Christian Church. He shows how Church leaders like Gregory and Fortunatus assisted in the rise of the cult of saints by embracing the idea of victory over death, the theme of the “emotional inversion of suffering,”[footnoteRef:14] and enhancing it through art, architecture and work: “both men turned the summum malum [greatest evil] of physical death preceded by suffering into a theme into which all that was most beautiful and refined in their age could be compressed.”[footnoteRef:15] Brown’s intention, thus, is to proved that the rise of the cult of the saints was wholly organic the Christian belief system. [14: Ibid 84.] [15: Ibid 85.]
I personally feel that Brown pursues his argument very well: he has precise command and control of the topic and writes with careful attention to detail, highlighting the most significant aspects of the topic and underscoring the arguments that should be considered to see why his argument holds water. He does not embellish facts or use an emotional appeal to make his case: everything is presented straight-forward and reasonably well. He emphasizes how the idea of pilgrimage was central to the tenets of the faith and how the concept of spiritual pilgrimage related to the cult of the saints—it was about seeking assistance to the other world and breaking down the barrier for oneself in this life, too—what Brown refers to as the “therapy of distance”[footnoteRef:16]—the intercession of the saints, an idea upon which the Church was built. [16: Ibid 87.]







Bibliography
Brown, Peter. The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981.