Building urban Christian communities: sermons on local saints in the Eusebius Gallicanus collection Lisa Bailey This article uses the sermons in the anonymous collection known as the Eusebius Gallicanus to explore the ways in which preachers in fifth-century Gaul tried to build urban Christian communities, focusing particularly on the subset of sermons which deal with local saints. In these sermons preachers adapt a tradition of Christian language and thought to the specific circumstances they faced. They seize the opportunity provided by their subject matter to evoke a vision which is urban, localized, and which stands in contrast to more ‘universal’ conceptions of Christian community. Indeed it is a great thing, to offer our prayers in public and general celebrations, but a certain kind of festival should be judged even more excellent: to rejoice in local virtues. And therefore just as the cult of our native martyrs and the honour of our special patrons give their own particular joy, so they demand their own special devotion _ so that just as we are related to them by right of birth, because we sat on the lap of the one parent, so we lay claim for ourselves, in respect to them, upon the special right of piety and of grace, and we should approach them first with the devotion of faith, so that we shall deserve to have in heaven a civic fellowship with those whose fellow citizens we rejoice to be on earth. 1 In early medieval Christianity, local and universal articulations of identity and community co-existed. The church was both a particular congrega- tion and the worldwide community of the faithful. Christians envisaged 1 ‘Magnum quidem est: publicis atque communibus dare uota sollemnitatibus; sed excellentior quaedam festiuitas iudicanda est: alumnis exsultare uirtutibus. Et ideo, indigenarum martyrum cultus, et honor specialium patronorum: sicut peculiare dat gaudium, ita proprium requirit affectum _ ut, sicut eorum per unius parentis gremium iure nascendi cognati sumus, ita nobis erga eos pietatis et gratiae priuilegium uindicemus, atque ad eos fidei deuotione prius accedamus, ut: quorum esse ciues gratulamur in terris, cum his ‘‘municipatum’’ habere mereamur ‘‘in caelis’’.’ [Philippians III.20] Eusebius Gallicanus 55.1–2, ed. Fr. Glorie, CCSL 101, 101A and 101B, Eusebius ‘Gallicanus’. Collectio Homiliarum (Turnhout, 1970), p. 639. Early Medieval Europe 2003 12 (1) 1–24 # Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2003, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden MA 02148, USA