A rich collection of essays that advances work on the topic of hagiography. Many of the essays indicate new ways of understanding a fascinating subject. The essays are very suggestive of new directions for hagiographical studies, and indicate new connections for the subject…these essays will advance the understanding of hagiography and should encourage other scholars to grasp this subject more seriously in the future.

Reading Religion

This is a deeply engaging book that highlights the importance of stories of holy people and the way these stories enliven religious communities. Hagiography and the idea of the saint, which are so central to living religious traditions, have been somewhat neglected in scholarship and this very fine book takes these themes seriously as a focus for discussing questions of truth and how these traditions speak to us today. Everyone interested in comparative theology or comparative religion should read this book.

Gavin Flood FBA, Yap Kim Hao Professor of Comparative Religious Studies, Yale-NUS, Singapore, and Senior Research Fellow, Oxford University, UK

Embracing a notion of truth as manifestation - truth in so far as it reveals what could be - this volume attempts to create a space in which religionists, historians, and comparative theologians can engage productively with narratives of saints' lives. In doing so, it offers invaluable assistance to scholars interested in a deeper understanding of the role that saints' lives have played within and across religious traditions.

Ann Taves, Professor of Religious Studies and Graduate Advisor, University of California at Santa Barbara, USA