From this point-of-view, it can be said that religion can be viewed more as a general framework of principles and that there are regional individual representations which make it original according to the region. More precisely, the role of the saints in western iconography is more important and has a better detailed description than in the Eastern parts. This comes to point out that even though there are certain common elements in the religious practice, these are doubled by specific elements and characteristics.
A similar example is the issue of saint worshiping. There are different means through which saints are venerated or through which the popular belief had built an image culturally attached to the territory under discussion. In this sense, there are common stories about different saints such as Martin, a representative figure of Western Christianity. However, his actions and the facts surrounding his existence are strictly related to this space and have little connection to the general view of religion.
Finally, another aspect which must be taken into account when discussing the issue of popular religion is the extent in which it is important that beliefs and ideas be reduced to concepts which can be understood by most of the common people. From a general perspective, it is fair to say that religion usually unites a people because it offers them a common sense of identity. This is the case with the Chinese set of beliefs for instance that was used as a unifying element for the Chinese tribes. Similarly, different personalities and particular elements are used and developed throughout the literature in order to offer a certain people a general sense of belonging to a set of religious values and norms. In this sense, the books written on the lives of saints do have the potential of creating a framework for encouraging the belief.
However, it cannot be argued that the existence of figures such as traditional saints or the accounts of actions undergone by saints are part of a popular religion. They are in fact a representative element which allows people...
Still, they are different from region to region and do not make up the entire religious spectrum. From this point-of-view, it can be said that although religion as a whole appeals to the entire mass of people, there are examples from the regional approach of the burial process, the sanctification one, as well as the portrayal of different representative figures which determine a distinctive nature of religious approaches. Even more, one cannot talk about a popular religion and of the limited mental capabilities of the worshipers, but rather of a different approach to religion taken at the level of different regions precisely in order to reach a goal religion has: uniting a people under a common sense of unity.
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Brown, Peter. "The Saint as Exemplar in Late Antiquity." Representations, No. 2. (Spring, 1983), pp. 1-25.
Brown. chapter 1.
Chapter 3, Bishops, monks and nuns.
Hahn, Cynthia. "Seeing and Believing: The Construction of Sanctity in Early-Medieval Saints' Shrines." Speculum, Vol. 72, No. 4. (Oct., 1997), pp. 1079-1106
Brown, Chapter 1, p 20
Idem.
Brown, Chapter 1, 16-18.
Brown, Chapter 1, 19
Brown Chapter 2, 24.
Cynthia Hahn." Seeing and Believing: The Construction of Sanctity in Early-Medieval Saints'
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Idem, 1092-1094.
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Idem.
Chapter 3, bishops, monks and nuns
Popular Religion." Overview of world religions. N.d. (accessed 28 January 2008), available at http://philtar.ucsm.ac.uk/encyclopedia/china/pop.html
Peter Brown,"The Saint as Exemplar in Late Antiquity," Representations, No. 2. (Spring, 1983), pp. 1-25
