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In her review of Robert Bartlett¡¯s Why Can the Dead Do Such Great Things?, a study of the Christian cult of saints from the martyrs to the Reformation (Books, 19/26 December), Helen Fulton helpfully suggests a limitation of the book when she writes that ¡°the evidence-based methodology constructs a tenor of strict objectivity deliberately stripped of analysis or interpretation¡±. In supplying an example that tells us something about ¡°the why of saints and the powers claimed for them¡±, she points to ¡°the profit motive that lay behind the trade in relics¡±. She tacitly restricts answers to the ¡°why¡± to the realm of the non-transcendent, in this way extending a central assumption of scientific methodology. In declaring allegiance to the openness of analysis, she nonetheless seems to accept a totalising limit on what the source and nature of interpretation might be.

Norman Klassen
St Jerome¡¯s University in the University of Waterloo
Canada