ABSTRACT
An exponential rise in awareness of the problems and pitfalls of hagiography has resulted in a concomitant decrease in the ability to use it to study anything other than the literary construction of cult. The sources for the cults of the city's northern cemetery are more extensive. Maximinus and Paulinus were successive bishops of Trier in the fourth century. Maximinus was a staunch supporter of Athanasius of Alexandria against Arianism and became one of the leading figures of the mid fourth-century Gallic church. The cult of Pauhnus is more obscure, largely because it is not attested by Gregory. Paulinus' exile to and death in Phrygia meant that Trier lacked the physical remains that were so important for the working of the miracles and the promotion of a cult. More than 2,500 Christian epitaphs survive from late antique and early medieval Gaul.
