Writing and Holiness: The Practice of Authorship in the Early Christian East (review)

Writing and Holiness, one of a number of books in recent years to invite readers to view late antique Christianity through the Foucauldian lens of self-cultivation, is a fascinating analysis of evolving notions of authorship and the practice of writing among late antique and Byzantine Christian writers. Its thesis is that Christian hagiographical texts written in Greek from the fourth through seventh centuries are not only narrative representations of saints and written expressions of piety but also technologies for the cultivation of Christian virtues in their readers and authors.

The book consists of nine chapters, roughly half of which contain material previously published by the author. Chapter 1, which introduces the book's major themes, explores the ways in which writing intersected with religious life for Christians in late antiquity. The following two chapters examine how biblical narrative and the process of its composition affected Christian authorial practice. Chapter 2 looks at Theodoret of Cyrrhus's Religious History and its use of biblical typology to signal that Christian ascetics were the equals of biblical heroes. His typological orientation affects his own self-understanding: he is like the evangelists, and his text "conveys a biblical truth" (30). Chapter 3 examines textual and artistic representations of the evangelists as authors. These representations cast the gospel writers as saints and their writing as a pious performance to be emulated by subsequent Christian authors.

The next three chapters, which focus on the intersection between authorship and various Christian praxes, traces "the conception of the author as devotee, as monk, and as priest" (63). Chapter 4 returns to Theodoret, who, together with anonymous miracle collections and two texts from Cyril of Scythopolis, offers an example of writing as a devotional activity. These narratives situate the authors within the cult of the saints with the result that "literary composition belongs within the economy of devotion" (63). Chapter 5 examines hagiography as an ascetic practice, where writing functioned as a technology for producing an ascetic self. Writing about the saints was doubly mimetic: hagiography was not only a genre representing the saints and their virtues but also a practice allowing for the imitation of the saints by cultivating humility. Chapter 6 argues that Gregory of Nyssa's Life of Macrina was a priestly activity not unlike Christian liturgy. Gregory's biography of his sister employs "a eucharistic model for hagiography," in which "Macrina's life is a thank-offering and sacrifice to God" (132).

The final two chapters address questions about "textuality and materiality" (12). Chapter 7 examines Porphyry's Life of Plotinus, the Life of Syncletica, and the Teaching of Addai, which offer "three strategies for coping with the relationship between text and body" (133). The first two authors are troubled by the Platonic problem of "the representation of the body in text," using writing in different ways as a strategy to resolve the quandary (134). Christian ideas about the incarnation and the divine presence in the Eucharist result in "the sanctification of matter itself" and a corresponding revaluation of the body (149). Chapter 8 analyzes several liturgical hymns of Romanos the Melodist. Romanos silently inscribes his identity into his work, performing humility while serving as Christ's hagiographer. Writing figures prominently in his hymns, e.g., the blood shed at Jesus' crucifixion becomes ink that inscribes both Christ's body and his cross (164). Chapter 9 serves as the book's conclusion, returning to the question of writing as Christian practice and its relation to the formation of Christian identity.

Writing and Holiness is beautifully written. Like the author's previous work, its style is elegant and engaging without being opaque. Krueger's analyses, which are in dialogue with contemporary discussions of authorship, reading, representation, embodiment, and identity, are both persuasive and full of insight. Although the book's underlying premise—that writing is not just a textual record of piety but a technology designed to...