In an ideal world, hagiography and the cult of saints would develop in parallel and strengthen each other: a successful cult would need texts, just as much as it needed shrines, relics and feasts. This book, studying the evidence from the Greek, Latin, Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, and Georgian worlds, shows that the reality of the link between hagiography and cult was often more complex. Some stories were written in response to existing veneration, but the cult practices and the image of the saint which they presented, differed from those promoted by the principal shrines of the same saint. Other stories preceded the emergence of cult, and gave rise to it only very much later. Yet others, while enjoying considerable literary success, never achieved for their heroes a shrine or a place in the calendar of feasts. Hagiography could initiate, support, change, or even ignore cult; but cult could just as well initiate, support, change, or even ignore hagiography.