By way of a conclusion, this chapter turns its attention outwards to ask how hagiographical sources can be used in the study of Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages, and indeed change how we see those periods. In a relatively compact book such as this, one cannot be exhaustive, so I have chosen to sketch some ways in which hagiography has or could shed light on some of the “big issues” of early medieval studies in the West— issues that shaped our views and misconceptions about that past. As we saw in Chapter 3, historians have used saints’ Lives and related texts more in pursuit of some ends than others: understanding gender, for instance, rather than analyzing legal structures. Hagiographical evidence does offer distinctive takes on many issues, representing issues of morality and power processed relative to local politics, local cultural sensitivities, and expectations about narratives. Once, historians saw the period 500 to 900 as little more than an anarchic and simplistic “Dark Age” of misogyny, relative cultural and ethnic homogeneity, illiteracy, superstition, religious oppression, and limited horizons and travel, that all firmly brought an end to the progress of the progressive, multicultural civilization under the Romans for a millennium. That, of course, is often how the period is still seen in the media and in conservative polemics. And maybe it was often like that. But one must embrace all the available evidence, not just the parts that support existing prejudices, and there, hagiography reports worlds that are much richer and more complex than the tired “Dark Age” tropes might suggest. They might also pose new questions and open up new fields of inquiry altogether. We need to ask what difference hagiography makes to the Middle Ages.

In what follows, there are two important methodological issues to bear in mind. First, given everything we have seen in Chapters 1 to 3, we should remember all the issues of composition, circulation, and interpretation that mean we cannot use hagiographical narratives as unproblematic representations of past events “as long as we are careful.” Most people know this, but it is always worth repeating. The second issue is simply that I will try to highlight some differences and similarities in emphasis and approach across time and space, in order to push further the underlying concern throughout this book: to contribute to stronger foundations for comparative histories using hagiographies.