Soldiers of Christ: Saints and Saints' Lives from Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages

Commonweal, March 22, 1996 by Lawrence S. Cunningham

Pennsylvania State University Press, $18.95, 383 pp.

I have had a long interest in the tradition of hagiography as a resource for understanding how people in various ages appropriate the gospel and, further, how various ages emphasize particular aspects of gospel practice at the expense of others. To be professionally interested in the lives of saints is to be interested in an area where there is a-flood of publication from historians, theologians, and religionists. I found this recent volume edited by Thomas Noble and Thomas Head a welcome addition to the literature. In fact, it arrived on my desk on a day that I was to speak about Saint Augustine in class, affording me the opportunity to read some excerpts of Possidius's Life of Augustine, anthologized in this volume, to my students. At my leisure I have been reading some other of these Vitae which range from the late patristic period through the Carolingian Age. Some of these Vitae are well known, for example, Sulpicius Severas's "Life of Saint Martin of Tours" which was a "best seller" right down to the Renaissance period and was an important vehicle for spreading the cult of the saint throughout Europe. Noble/head also give us lives of important figures in the history of early medieval Europe, such as Boniface (the "Apostle of Germany") and Benedict of Aniane, who was a crucial, figure in the development of monasticism.

My suspicion is that this work originated in a desire to produce a work for classroom use (both editors are history professors). That would explain some of the attractive features built into the volume. There is a very fine introduction which would serve as an entry into the field of hagiography in general and hagiography in the early medieval period in particular (their time frame ends just before A.D. 1000). At the end of the volume there is a bibliographical essay surveying standard works in the field. At the head of each Vita there is a brief introduction with a particular bibliography of sources.

If one were to take the Noble/head volume and combine it with Jo Ann McNamara's Sainted Women of the Dark Ages (1992; reviewed February 12,1993), which has seventeen female Vitae from the fifth to the seventh centuries, one would have a copious collection of material for an academic course. Those who are not academics might equally appreciate these two volumes as representative of a crucial aspect of the Catholic tradition of sanctity.