At the beginning of the sequel to his story by Alonso Fernández de Avellaneda, which was published in 1614 and thus before Miguel de Cervantes' own continuation, Don Quixote is condemned to reading the lives of saints, specifically Alonso de Villegas' Flos Sanctorum. This chapter revisits this initial scene and considers the nature of the book that Don Quixote had in his hands. The ambivalences of hagiography are examined through the lives of St Bernard of Clairvaux, which Don Quixote reads aloud to Sancho Panza, and St Anthony the Abbot. The chapter demonstrates how hagiography's primary function – rendering the lives of saints memorable by recounting pivotal scenes of manifest faith, including those that inspire materialised attributes – is frequently undermined. In other words, textual and visual traditions diverge considerably, forming assemblages of devout ideas and abject images that are not free from contradiction. Bernard of Clairvaux, an outspoken critic of imagery in religious practice, becomes associated with the highly emotive scene of the lactatio Bernardi, in which the Virgin Mary nurses him from her exposed breast. This scene was absent from the textual tradition until the seventeenth century. Saint Anthony was transformed from a model of ascetic piety into a saint revered for his lively imagination. The fact that Anthony, who rejected literacy, was customarily depicted with a book in his hands makes him Don Quixote's true patron saint.