Clever, wide-ranging, and tendentious… Kleinberg’s central concern is to explore the complex and often fraught interactions between charisma and authority. His book consists of a series of close readings of hagiographic narratives from the third to the 13th centuries.

- Eamon Duffy, London Review of Books

This highly readable and accessible book will be of interest not only to scholarly readers, but rather, like the saints’ lives themselves, it will challenge and engage a broader public of creative consumers… Kleinberg’s argument is laudable for recognizing the complex social transactions that underlie religious texts. His claims about the countless negotiations that determined the shape of these texts, the nature of sanctity, and the development of the cult of saints as a whole are compelling and plausible.

- Anna Lisa Taylor, H-Net Reviews

[Kleinberg] puts together, stone upon stone, a flawless, lively, cogent historical argument… [The history of saints’ stories] is an amazing story…which allows him to develop a brilliant analysis of the ties between sacred and profane, and to expose the power lines of European history. A magnificent sweeping away of conventional wisdom.

- Christian Makarian, L’Express