2. Inventing the saints

Sainthood took on its most familiar forms from the death of Jesus c.33 ce to the decades following the Council of Chalcedon in 451 ce. The early Christian church was an urban diaspora spread around the Mediterranean littoral, Hispania, Gaul, Asia Minor, North Africa, and Palestine. But who among these diverse communities were saints? ‘Inventing the saints’ describes the earliest saints as apostles who were ‘sanctified’ through their common associations with Jesus Christ. It outlines persecution, early Christian martyrdom, Donatism, asceticism, monasticism, and eremeticism, and introduces St Paul and St Antony. By the end of the 5th century the martyr, the ascetic, and the confessor had become the most important forms of Christian sainthood.