This book aims to present an alternate methodology to the study of late-antique hagiography and ‘spiritual autobiography’ by problematising the approach of the modern historical method, which ‘assumes a division between two broad types of information’, factual and intellectual (or spiritual) (p. 3). T. contends that this dichotomy wrongly imposes modern criteria that obscure the standards and expectations for what counted as ‘truthful’ reportage in late-antique spiritual writings. Taking aim at both the positivist mining of these texts for historical information and the ‘linguistic turn’, which prefers to bracket questions of historicity, T. argues for a re-evaluation of the criteria of truthfulness, realism and historicity, as understood in modern and postmodern scholarship. Read according to late-antique understandings of these categories, these writings reveal a ‘continuity between life and text’ (p. 16) that requires neither a denial of ‘truthfulness’ nor a confining of their ‘realism’ to textual boundaries. T.'s approach is rooted in a Jamesian philosophical framework that emphasises individual and corporate religious experience, in this case mainly of intellectual and monastic communities of the third to the sixth centuries. The book is a revision of T.'s 2007 D.Phil. thesis. He laudably treats pagan and Christian works and engages with scholarship on hagiography (e.g. P. Cox, M. Williams, P. Rousseau and T. Hagg), late antiquity (e.g. P. Brown) and Augustinian studies (e.g. J.J. O'Meara, C. Conybeare), which occupies the bulk of the second part of the book.
The introduction is well written and clearly maps out the book's arguments and structure. The monograph is divided into two parts, each with two chapters. Part 1 deals with pagan and Christian hagiographies, in Latin and Greek, of the third to the sixth centuries and progresses through a discussion of the study's three main categories. Part 2 focuses on ‘spiritual autobiographical writings’ (primarily Augustine's Confessions and Cassiciacum dialogues, but also autobiographical texts of Porphyry, Julian and Gregory of Nazianzus) in search of first-hand accounts of the kind of practical and intellectual spirituality T. extracts from the third-person perspective in hagiographies.
As to the three criteria at the core of T.'s study, they are defined in the introduction. Truthfulness is ‘the basic desire of authors to give an accurate account and the audience's expectation that they will do so’. Realism relates to the ‘picture of the world’ represented by authors using literary techniques ‘to achieve and sustain a reader's belief in the truthfulness of their account’. In this regard, T. characterises the realism of late antiquity as a Platonic ‘transcendentalism’ that elevated communicating the hidden meanings in real events over rigid facticity. Finally, T. construes historicity mainly as a modern concern, which denotes ‘what we can learn about the late antique period’ (p. 16).
Chapter 1 characterises hagiography as a ‘form of literary realism’ not restricted to a written form (p. 70). It begins with an analysis of ancient authors' claims to truthfulness (e.g. Porphyry and Theodoret of Cyrus), judging this not merely a trope but indicative of a sincere desire to represent events honestly, whether these were witnessed first-hand or received in transmission (e.g. Eunapius). T. recognises the assumption this necessitates, but notes that hermeneutical suspicion requires a similar leap of faith. In short, the realism and truthfulness of both pagan and Christian hagiography should be judged through a lens of the transcendental Platonism in which both authors and readers were invested. T. suggests problematic accounts (e.g. miracles) reflect an existential and epistemic stance foreign to modern sensibilities.
Chapter 2 introduces Eugippius' Life of Severinus as an entry point to the question: how ‘hagiographical’ were the lives and lifestyles of holy men? Taking up Ernst Kris's notion of ‘enacted biographies’, T. pushes the boundary of the hagiographical beyond text and suggests a practical agency for texts in moulding the lifestyles of holy men. By internalising and enacting a textual ‘hagiographical code’, holy men played a role in shaping their reputations. This code was recognisable (also through texts) to others (p. 90). T. notes the compatibility of this practice with the classical tradition's (e.g. Favorinus) valuation of imitation. Therefore, a holy man, pagan or Christian, gained his reputation for holiness and became a worthy paradigm for imitation by successfully imitating earlier models – philosophers, prophets or monks. While the argument seems circular, it provides an interesting alternative to approaching the interplay of text and practice in late antiquity. The chapter ends with a discussion of the ‘fama effect’, that is, the tendency of holy men to gain more attention the more they shun it (p. 105). While largely a characteristic of Christian hagiography, T. finds non-Christian parallels in Eunapius' Lives and Plato's Myth of the Cave. This motif, according to T. ‘posits and indeed requires a radical difference between the saint's perception of himself and the view of him held by everybody else’ (p. 107).
The second part of T.'s study claims to identify first-hand accounts of the spiritual perspective of holy men that emerged from the third-person accounts of Part 1. The purpose is to build a bridge between hagiography and autobiography to demonstrate that people lived, thought and acted in a hagiographical reality strongly tied to the reading of texts. Here T. identifies ‘spiritual autobiographies’, focusing mainly on Augustine, but also alluding to writings of the Neoplatonist Porphyry. T. recognises that autobiography presents similar problems as hagiography and so returns to his definitions to read the texts as truthful, personal accounts of authors whose experience and memory were moulded by an ‘epistemic stance’ that saw divine action in mundane, especially spontaneous, events (e.g. Augustine's conversion and Julian's proclamation as emperor). While the move is important for T.'s methodology and contributes to the goal of his study, the close treatment of Augustine's Confessions at times eclipses the first part of the study. Nevertheless, T. identifies a realism in Augustine's self-reflection that follows the transcendental and typological models in hagiography. Regarding Augustine's truthfulness, T. prefers to judge the question from a perspective of expectation rather than retrospection. This, of course, does not resolve the historical problem, but merely shifts the perspective, as we only get to expectation through retrospect. Nevertheless, T.'s paradigm shift is well-conceived.
Chapter 4 sets Augustine's Cassiciacum dialogues in relation to Confessions. According to T. they represent a broader context for Augustine's lifestyle and existential perspective nearer to his conversion. When addressing the historical accuracy of the dialogues, T. returns to his thesis of intertextuality, noting that while the dialogues are not a transcript, neither should the presence of literary tropes rule out a ‘truthful’ representation of the practices of communal intellectual activity. The chapter concludes by comparing the spiritual claims in Gregory of Nazianzus' Concerning His Own Life and several writings of Julian.
T.'s study is a commendable contribution to the study of hagiography that attempts to shift scholarly paradigms. His challenge to the historical method and the literary turn is most helpful regarding practice – the relationship between text and lifestyle (what some might call ‘performance’). His view of hagiography as a realism in text and beyond provides an intriguing alternative to previous hagiographical studies. The parallel reading of pagan and Christian texts (stronger in Part 1) aids in understanding the broader shape of late-antique spirituality. However, a more systematic embedding of the texts in their particular historical circumstances could provide more nuance. The study would also have benefited from more attention to questions of hagiography and gender (e.g. Life of Macrina, Eunapius on Sosipatra). Because the evidence T. relies on is always embedded in texts, the committed devotees of the linguistic turn may not be converted. Nevertheless, T. presents a welcome new paradigm, if not a closed case, for appreciating the idea of sanctity in late antiquity.
