This book tells the story of the ancient cult of Paul as a martyr in the Latin West. This cult was comprised of a group of practices through which Christians created an image of Paul as an elevated figure worthy of veneration. The evidence for these practices comes from literature, archaeology, art history, and liturgy, and all these forms of evidence are analyzed so that they inform each another. The study focuses on Rome and the regions most directly impacted by the Roman cult and example—Latin Europe and North Africa—through the end of the episcopate of Gregory I (590–604).

The first part of the book focuses on the two primary locations in Rome where Paul was venerated as a martyr: The site of the current Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls on the Ostian Road, and the Catacombs of St. Sebastian on the Appian Road. The Ostian Road site had ties to Paul's martyrdom and burial, while the Appian Road location preserves the earliest archaeological evidence of the Pauline cult. The designation of these places as holy places led to substantial architectural and cultic development at both locations. More peripheral, but equally interesting, are the points outside Rome where the Pauline cult was practiced. The second part of the book focuses on these sites in the rest of Latin Europe and North Africa. A major theme in these chapters is the way in which places associated with the Pauline cult served to connect these other regions with Rome. Christians appropriated Roman models of sacred space and created cultic centers as a means of asserting association with, or in some cases separation from, the spiritual capital of the West.

Throughout the book I argue that the identification and architectural development of sacred places provided the underlying framework for the Pauline cult, and that the complex interplay of practices that occurred in these spaces shows us the ways in which Christians produced and venerated Paul as a martyr.