Parergon

This miscellany inaugurates ‘Fabulae’, a new series from Brepols. As regards editing and physical appearance, the production values are good; the contributions are typically well written and readable. If the title is a mouthful, this is because the volume covers a lot of ground. It explores how hagiographic works show holiness interacting with authority, from late antiquity through the Middle Ages, from Western Europe to the Middle East. The work is weighted towards the earlier period and the East, with Islam and Zoroastrianism well represented. The collection derives from a conference, and in consequence the papers are reasonably [End Page 249] short, often treating specific moments or incidents. They offer scope for diverse methodological approaches and allow readers to contrast multiple case studies.

Editor Ghazzal Dabiri’s introduction assesses the complex ways in which authority and saintliness interrelate. The work eschews the obvious one— martyrdom for speaking truth to power—in favour of more subtle intersections. It is structured into four parts, each consisting of three chapters. Section 1, ‘Saints at the Courts of Rulers’, is the most tightly defined. Its chapters each concern a text originating within, or embraced by, Melkite Christian communities under Islamic rulers. The contributors consider how political circumstances conditioned these Lives’ accounts, or even how they influenced a single Life’s recensions in different languages. The first two articles, by Petros Tsagkaropoulos and Damien Labadie, have the closest affinity of any two of the volume’s chapters: in each, a Christian holy man is called on to defend himself, through argument and miracles, in front of a caliph. Maria Conterno discusses a legendary account of the friendship between Emperor Theodosius and Theophilus, Patriarch of Alexandria, in the contribution that most explicitly articulates the volume’s unifying thread: authority meeting holiness.

Section 2, ‘Authority at the Cross-Sections of Society’, is more vaguely delineated. Rather than focus on a single Life, Federica Boldrini gives a succinct overview of female Italian mystics’ vitae, detailing how such women’s efforts to espouse the ascetic life undermined the authority of parents, spouses, and sumptuary laws. The other chapters concern Zoroastrianism. Carlo G. Cereti’s article about dating two texts of Zoroaster’s legendary biography bears no obvious relationship to the volume’s stated theme; it does serve, however, to introduce Zoroastrianism, a subject possibly unfamiliar to some of the volume’s readers. Dabiri’s own contribution, one of the book’s more nuanced, treats the complex use Sufi hagiographer ‘Attār made of Zoroastrianism to reflect on spiritual authority. Sometimes in his works ‘Attār had Islamic holy men embrace Zoroastrian practices, to startle readers and render them receptive to the religious message that followed; at other times, he cited exemplary lives of ordinary Zoroastrians to instruct the saints themselves.

‘Mapping the Terrain of Power’ addresses intersections of locality, authority, and holiness. Maïeul Rouquette argues forensically that the churches of Salamis and Tamasos deployed the fifth-century Acts of Barnabas and Acts of Heracleides to bolster their respective cases for primacy on Cyprus. Previous consensus has held that both lives were used to affirm the island’s independence from the Patriarchate of Antioch; Rouquette cites them to support a different interpretation. Tenth-century Georgia reoriented itself from Iran towards Byzantium; in the process it stopped seeing itself as Christendom’s northern edge and began envisaging itself as its eastward edge. Nikoloz Aleksidze explores the complexities associated with the shift of mindset. Jason Moralee’s examination of the Gesta martyrum romanorum, a set of lives allegedly circulating in early Christian Rome, is the book’s most theoretically dense chapter. While engaging productively [End Page 250] with secondary scholarship in other disciplines, the reliance on primary sources is minimal.

The final section, ‘Negotiating Power and Authority’, addresses miscellaneous topics. Sibel Kocaer addresses the Saltuk-nāme, a set of stories about Muslim hero...