Drawing on comparative literature, ritual and performance studies, and the history of asceticism, Derek Krueger explores how early Christian writers came to view writing as salvific, as worship through the production of art.

1. Literary Composition as a Religious Activity
2. Typology and Hagiography: Theodoret of Syrrhus's Religious History
3. Biblical Authors: The Evangelists as Saints
4. Hagiography as Devotion: Writing in the Cult of the Saints
5. Hagiography as Asceticism: Humility as Authorial Practice
6. Hagiography as Liturgy: Writing and Memory in Gregory of Nyssa's Life of Macrina
7. Textual Bodies: Plotinus, Syncletica, and the Teaching of Addai
8. Textuality and Redemption: The Hymns of Romanos the Melodist
9. Hagiographical Practice and the Formation of Identity: Genre and Discipline
List of Abbreviations
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments

Derek Krueger is Joe Rosenthal Excellence Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. He is the author of Symeon the Holy Fool: Leontius's Life and the Late Antique City.