The careers of many scholars in various disciplines have been focused on the study of hagiography, including that of the author. Yet, as those scholars have uncovered new knowledge and employed new interpretations of the materials at hand, the very notions of “hagiography” and “hagiology” have become deeply problematized. The issues become more complex as multiple religious traditions are examined. The scholarly work that forms the basis of the essays in this volume has explored the effects of taking a comparative and collaborative approach to “hagiography”. This piece responds to the core essays by showing first how personal the study of such sources and act of comparison can be, and then exploring how knowledge changes through the processes of comparison and collaboration. In the end, this response argues that comparison is by its very nature a provisional activity in that the knowledge it creates constantly changes as comparative methods and theories are re-applied again and again over time. This process is only aided by collaborative efforts which make the act of comparison even more effective and productive.

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Pope Gregory I was the first monk to hold the office of Bishop of Rome, and he was one of the most prolific papal writers of the Middle Ages. It should not be a surprise that his views on monasticism can be found in everything that he wrote, including the Homiliae in Evangelia. This text includes lessons that would be heard by both monks and lay people, because both would have been listening to the sermons. By looking at the first two of these homilies, it can be determined that Gregory urged his audience to strive for asceticism, which he equated to martyrdom. Yet, the asceticism of the monk could not be the same as that of the lay person. This article argues that Gregory conceived of two types on non-red martyrdom: the white martyrdom of the monks which served as the model for the blue martyrdom of the laity.