This volume comparatively explores how members of “monastic” communities, broadly understood, developed practical strategies for the construction of identity across a range of religious traditions in the greater regions of premodern Europe and Asia. In particular, it seeks to understand how the production, distribution, and reception of hagiographic material (written, visual, and performative) served as a tool for the implementation of “monastic” dynamics of legitimation. This is accomplished by pursuing and developing a two-fold approach. At an empirical level, the volume expands our scholarly understanding of the cross-cultural processes that characterize religious communities’ notions of identity. At a meta-level, it furthers a re-evaluation of our taxonomy as it challenges established notions of categories such as “monk/monastic” and “hagiography.”

With the emergence of the cult of saints, their remains assumed a central role, becoming sources of miraculous events and healings. According to the accounts of their martyrdom, the bodies were initially removed immediately after death to protect them from destruction by the elements or animals. In the centuries that followed, particularly after the cessation of persecution, the possession of saints’ relics came to signify prestige for a church, monastery, or city. The phenomenon of relic theft (furta sacra) – attested throughout the whole medieval Europe – is therefore closely linked to the need to document and legitimise such thefts, thereby establishing the right of a specific religious or urban community to claim possession of a saint’s remains. Justifications, legitimations, ordeals and supernatural interventions are intricately woven into the narratives of hagiographers across the centuries. This book adopts an interdisciplinary approach to reconstruct the cultural history of relic theft within the specific context of Italy, from Late Antiquity through to the Central Middle Ages.