Writing And Holiness: The Practice of Authorship in the Early Christian East (Divinations: Rereading Late Ancient Religion)

"Drawing on comparative literature, ritual and performance studies, and the history of asceticism, Derek Krueger explores how early Christian writers came to view writing as salvific, as worship through the production of art. Exploring the emergence of new and distinctly Christian ideas about authorship in late antiquity, Writing and Holiness probes saints' lives and hymns produced in the Greek East to reveal how the ascetic call to imitate Christ's humility rendered artistic and literary creativity problematic. Claiming authority and power appeared to violate the saintly practices that hagiographers sought to promote, Christian writers meditated within their texts on these tensions and ultimately developed a new set of answers to the question "What is an author?"" "Each of the texts examined here used writing as a technique for the representation of holiness. Some are narrative representations of saints that facilitate veneration; others are collections of accounts of miracles, composed to publicize a shrine. Rather than viewing an author's piety as a barrier to historical inquiry, Krueger argues that consideration of writing as a form of piety opens windows onto new modes of prac