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This chapter begins the comparison of the cults of Genovefa and Brigit of Kildare. It describes the three phases of Ireland’s christianization during the 4^th through 5^th centuries. Because the Romans had never invaded Ireland, the Irish had a different relationship with the empire and its religions than other Europeans. In the first phase of conversion, the island’s inhabitants sought trade in Roman goods via Britain. In the second phase, romanized Christians such as Saint Patrick used this trade network to bring new religious ideas to Ireland. In the third phase, Christian leaders in Ireland began to organize the politically fragmented rural landscape and its ancient pagan sites into recognizably Christian, Roman-style places.

This chapter examines the notion of simplicity and of the simple believer, which had a complex history—both Christian and non-Christian—and was in use long before the Council of Chalcedon. In the first centuries of Christian history, pagans attacked Christians for being simple, uneducated, and credulous, but Christians themselves would also acknowledge their simplicity and take pride in the triumph of the Christian message over the wisdom of the world. Stories were told suggesting that a Christian with simple faith could defeat and convert even learned philosophers skilled in debate. Indeed, labeling someone “simple” could also be a polemical tool, and the notion of the simple believer played an important role in the language Christian leaders used to discuss teachings they opposed; accusing adversaries of leading the simple astray was a well-worn tactic.

This chapter focuses on the most consequential kind of Christian–Muslim interaction: conversion. It considers legitimate and illegitimate reasons for converting from one religion to another. For some Christian leaders, becoming a Muslim was something that people did out of a number of motivations, some of them more unholy than others: in addition to a desire for material benefits or a drive for status and power, there were family or tribal connections that drew people to convert. There was also an attraction to a religious framework that allowed a greater range of human behaviors and activities. People might also become Muslims under compulsion. Tellingly, these leaders could not conceive that a person might convert out of sincere religious motivation. Conversions that took place with reference to doctrines or beliefs were seen as cases where people had been deceived or had acted out of a lack of education and ignorance.

This chapter looks at the most powerful tool for community formation that Christian leaders had at their disposal: the sacraments, particularly the Eucharist. The sacraments united the simple and the learned alike. In the world of simple believers, the Eucharist was much more than a mystery one took at church, and baptism was much more than a rite of Christian initiation. Seeing the enormous power ascribed to these things and others provides a better understanding of why they could help produce the sort of confessional indifference among the simple that so exercised church leaders like Jacob of Edessa. Moreover, considering the extra-ecclesial life of the sacraments will help illustrate why controlling them might prove fundamental to forming a communal vessel that did not have leaks and why controlling them was ultimately more powerful than any dialectical argument.

This chapter recreates the plight of the abbot of Cluny by interconnecting three distinct but related topics: the perils and promises of transalpine travel for merchants and pilgrims around the year 1000; the impact of the Muslims of Fraxinetum on Provencal society; and the career of Maiolus himself, who travelled repeatedly through the Alps during his tenure as abbot of Cluny (954–94). The chapter asserts that the Muslims of Fraxinetum were an entrepreneurial community that took advantage of the lawlessness of tenth-century Provence—pursuing profitable enterprises like kidnapping and slave trading. The inadvertent capture of Maiolus was not insignificant, for Christian leaders responded to this offense by organizing a military campaign that eventually eradicated the Muslims of Fraxinetum.

The Disruption of the Established Church of Scotland in 1843 and the misery which followed the widespread failure of the potato crop in the years after 1846 had the effect of bringing social and religious matters together more closely in the minds of many Christian leaders. This chapter discusses the opinions of leading ministers in order to gain a fuller understanding of the Presbyterian response to the social crisis. Particular emphasis is given to the views of two prominent Highlanders who were deeply engaged in the amelioration of destitution, Mackintosh Mackay, minister of the Free Church at Dunoon, Argyll; and the Established Church minister Norman MacLeod, of St Columba's Gaelic congregation in Glasgow. A central issue addressed is the role of the doctrine of providence in shaping Presbyterian attitudes to the causes of famine, the provision of philanthropic relief, and the necessity of emigration.