Marginality, Media, and Mutations of Religious Authority in the History of Christianity [1 ed.] 9042936746, 9789042936744

Table of contents :
CONTENTS
PREFACE
NOTES ON THE CONTRIBUTORS
I. MARGINALITY, MEDIA, AND MUTATIONS OF RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY IN THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY
II. ATHANASIUS’
MARGINALITY, SPATIALITY AND MEDIALITY
III. CHARISMATIC TEXTUALITY AND THE MEDIATION OF CHRISTIANITY IN LATE ANTIQUE EGYPT1
IV. LETTERS FROM THE WILDERNESS . MARGINALITY, LITERARITY, AND RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY CHANGES IN LATE ANTIQUE GAUL
V. SYMEON THE NEW THEOLOGIAN, MYSTICAL POETRY, AND THE RESPONSE TO THE TEXTUALISATION OF SAINTHOOD IN BYZANTIUM
VI. THE WRITTEN MEDIA OF IMPERIAL GOVERNMENT AND A MARTYR’S CAREER: JUSTIN MARTYR’S
VII. VIS.KNUT: MARGINALITY IN FOLKLORE AND FOLK RELIGION
VIII. AUTHORITY, GENRE AND RESISTANCE: CHILD MURDER IN MEDIEVAL NORWICH, AND ITS AFTERMATH
IX. WRATH AND FEAR. LUTHERANISM AND THE MARGINALISATION OF WITCHES IN EARLY MODERN DENMARK
X. MUTATIONS OF RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY IN CONTEMPORARY NORWAY . MARGINALITY AND MEDIATISATION IN THE CASE OF THE MAN FROM SNÅSA
XI. CATHOLIC MIGRANT, UNKNOWN VISIONARY
XII. PRAYERS AND STORIES AS MEDIA AND MATERIALITY: CHANGING SOURCES OF AUTHORITY IN THE EMERGING CHURCH MOVEMENT
INDEX OF NAMES AND SUBJECTS

Citation preview

Studies in the History and Anthropology of Religion 6

Marginality, Media, and Mutations of Religious Authority in the History of Christianity

Laura Feldt and Jan N. Bremmer (Eds)

PE E T E R S

MARGINALITY, MEDIA, AND MUTATIONS OF RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY IN THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY

ST U D I E S I N T H E H I ST O RY A N D A N T H R O P O L O G Y O F R E L IG IO N

Editors: Jan N. Bremmer and Laura Feldt In recent years, especially after the tragic events of 9/11, religion has increasingly drawn the attention of scholars. Whereas, traditionally, religion was studied by historians, anthropologists and students of the main religious traditions, today religion can be seen as a major factor on the contemporary political stage and is omnipresent in the media. Yet modern developments can rarely be well understood without proper anthropological and historical analyses. That is why we are pleased to announce a new series, Studies in the History and Anthropology of Religion. The editors welcome contributions on specific aspects of religion from a historical and/or anthropological perspective, be it proceedings of conferences or monographs.

1. The Strange World of Human Sacrifice, J.N. Bremmer (ed.), Leuven, 2007 2. The Celtic Evil Eye and Related Mythological Motifs in Medieval Ireland, J. Borsje, Leuven, 2012 3. Dreams as Divine Communication in Christianity: From Hermas to Aquinas, B.J. Koet (ed.), Leuven, 2012 4. Writing Myth: Mythography in the Ancient World, S.M. Trzaskoma and R.S. Smith (eds), Leuven, 2013 5 Priests and Prophets among Pagans, Jews and Christians, B. Dignas, R. Parker and G.G. Stroumsa (eds), Leuven, 2013

Marginality, Media, and Mutations of Religious Authority in the History of Christianity edited by

Laura Feldt and Jan N. Bremmer

PEETERS LEUVEN  PARIS  BRISTOL, CT 2019

Cover illustration: “Temptation of Saint Anthony”, by Mathias Grünewald (Isenheim Altarpiece). Source: Wikimedia Commons. A catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

© 2019, Peeters – Bondgenotenlaan 153 – B-3000 Leuven – Belgium ISBN  978-90-429-3674-4 eISBN  978-90-429-3886-1 D/2019/0602/16 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

CONTENTS

Preface. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

vii

Notes on the Contributors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

ix

I

L. Feldt, Marginality, Media, and Mutations of Religious Authority in the History of Christianity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1

The Power of Religious Marginality: Monastic Media Cultures II III IV

J.N. Bremmer, Athanasius’ Life of Antony: Marginality, Spatiality and Mediality. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

23

D. Frankfurter, Charismatic Textuality and the Mediation of Christianity in Late Antique Egypt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

47

L. Feldt, Letters from the Wilderness – Marginality, Literarity, and Religious Authority Changes in Late Antique Gaul . . . . . . .

69

Marginality as Strategy and Tactics: Adapting Media V

C. Høgel, Symeon the New Theologian, Mystical Poetry, and the Response to the Textualisation of Sainthood in Byzantium .

97

VI

B. van der Lans, The Written Media of Imperial Government and a Martyr’s Career: Justin Martyr’s 1 Apology . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117

VII

D. Johannsen, Vis-Knut: Marginality in Folklore and Folk Religion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135

Marginalising Others: Social Marginality and Narrative Networks VIII M. Rubin, Authority, Genre and Resistance: Child Murder in Medieval Norwich, and its Aftermath . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . IX

157

L.N. Kallestrup, Wrath and Fear. Lutheranism and the Marginalisation of Witches in Early Modern Denmark . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171

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contents

Performing Marginality: Contemporary Religious Belonging and Media Cultures X

I.S. Gilhus, Mutations of Religious Authority in Contemporary Norway – Marginality and Mediatization in the Case of the Man from Snåsa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

193

XI

A.K. Trolle, Catholic Migrant, Unknown Visionary . . . . . . . . .

209

XII

S. Schüler, Prayers and Stories as Media and Materiality: Changing Sources of Authority in the Emerging Church Movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225

Index of names and subjects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

249

PREFACE

This volume springs from an international seminar held at the University of Southern Denmark, Odense, in late August 2016. I wish to thank The Carlsberg Foundation for generously funding the seminar, as well as the participants for their stimulating contributions to thinking through the theme of marginality, media, and mutations of religious authority with me. I also wish to thank the Department of History for hosting and funding the research programme Authority, Materiality, and Media from which some of these ideas grew, and the good colleagues who participated in the work of the research programme. Last, but certainly not least, I wish to thank Professor Jan N. Bremmer for so generously applying his excellent editorial eye to the final form of this set of articles. Odense, February 2018

Laura Feldt

NOTES ON THE CONTRIBUTORS

Jan N. Bremmer is Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies at the University of Groningen. More recently, he published The Rise of Christianity through the Eyes of Gibbon, Harnack and Rodney Stark (2010); Initiation into the Mysteries of the Ancient World (2014) and Maidens, Magic and Martyrs in Early Christianity: Collected Essays I (2017). He co-edited Perpetua’s Passions (2012); The Materiality of Magic (2015); The Ascension of Isaiah (2016); Thecla: Paul’s Disciple and Saint in the East and West (2016) and Figures of Ezra (2018). Laura Feldt is Associate Professor of the Study of Religions with the Department of History, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, head of the cross-disciplinary research programme Authority, Materiality and Media, and managing editor of Numen – International Review of the History of Religions (Brill) with G. D. Alles. She is the author of The Fantastic in Religious Narrative from Exodus to Elisha (2012), editor of Wilderness in Mythology and Religion – Approaching Religious Spatialities, Cosmologies, and Ideas of Wild Nature (2012) and Reframing Authority – The Role of Media and Materiality (2018) with C. Høgel. David Frankfurter is Professor of Religion and Aurelio Professor of the Appreciation of Scripture at Boston University and a specialist in Roman and Late Antique Egypt, popular religion, magic, ancient apocalypticism, demonology and exorcism, and the dynamics of Christianization. His books include Elijah in Upper Egypt (1993), Religion in Roman Egypt: Assimilation and Resistance (1998), Evil Incarnate: Rumors of Demonic Conspiracy and Satanic Abuse in History (2006), Christianizing Egypt: Syncretism and Local Worlds in Late Antiquity (2017), and the edited volume Pilgrimage and Holy Space in Late Antique Egypt (1998). His articles have appeared in Journal of Early Christian Studies, Numen, Archiv fur Religionsgeschichte, Journal of the History of Sexuality, and many others. Ingvild Sælid Gilhus is Professor of the Study of Religion at the University of Bergen, Norway. She works in the areas of religion in late antiquity and

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new religious movements. Her publications include Laughing Gods, Weeping Virgins (1997), Animals, Gods and Humans: Changing Attitudes to Animals in Greek, Roman and Early Christian Ideas (2006), New Age Spirituality: Rethinking Religion, edited with Steven J. Sutcliffe (2013), and New Age in Norway, edited with Siv Ellen Kraft and James R. Lewis (2017). Christian Høgel is Professor (wso) of Byzantine Literature and co-director of the Centre for Medieval Literature at the Department of History, University of Southern Denmark, Odense (www.sdu.dk/cml). He has published on Byzantine hagiography (Symeon Metaphrastes. Rewriting and Canonization, 2002), Arabic-Greek translation (especially the early Greek translation of the Qur’an), and on the Ciceronian concept of humanitas (The Human and the Humane, 2015). Dirk Johannsen is Associate Professor of Cultural History at the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages (IKOS), University of Oslo. His research focuses on narrative cultures, popular religion in the nineteenth century, cognitive approaches, and trolls. He is the author of Das Numinose als kulturwissenschaftliche Kategorie (2008), the editor of a volume on narratological approaches to religion, Konstruktionsgeschichten (2013) with Gabriela Brahier, and a volume on the Norwegian Folklore Archives ‘En vild endevending av al virkelighet’ – Norsk Folkeminnesamling i hundre år (2014) with Line Esborg. Birgit van der Lans was affiliated with the Department of Archaeology, History, Cultural Studies and Religion, University of Bergen, Norway, on a Niels Stensen Fellowship with her project Christian Correspondence and Diplomatic Culture in the Early Roman Empire. Her dissertation at the University of Groningen discusses Jewishness and Christian Identity in ClaudianNeronian Rome: Impacts of State Interventions. She has published articles on persecution, martyrdom, expulsion, and the literary representation of these events in Jewish and Christian sources. She currently works for the Council for Religious and Life Stance Communities in Bergen, Norway. Louise Nyholm Kallestrup is Associate Professor, the Department of History, and director of Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at the University of Southern Denmark. She has authored and co-edited a number of publications on early modern Italy and Denmark. Among her recent publications are Agents of Witchcraft in Early Modern Italy and Denmark (2015), ‘“When Hell became too Small”. Constructing Witchcraft in PostReformation Denmark’ in Cultural Histories of Denmark 1500-2000 (2017)

notes on the contributors

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co-edited with Tyge Krogh & Claus Bundgaard Christensen; ‘Kind in words and deeds, but false in their hearts: Fear of evil conspiracy in late sixteenthcentury Denmark’ in Cultures of Witchcraft and Magic, J. Barry et al (eds.: 2017; and ‘The Infected and the Guilty: On Heresy and Witchcraft in PostReformation Denmark’ and ‘Approaches to heresy, witchcraft and magic’, (with Raisa Toivo), in Contesting Orthodoxy in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Heresy, Magic and Witchcraft, co-edited with Raisa Toivo (2017). Miri Rubin is Professor of Medieval and Early Modern History at the School of History, Queen Mary University of London. She is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and Corresponding Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America. She is the author of several books, among them Corpus Christi: the Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (1991), Gentile Tales; the Narrative Assault on Late Medieval Jews (1999), Mother of God. A History of the Virgin Mary (2009), and most recently she has translated and edited Thomas of Monmouth, The Life and Passion of William of Norwich (2014) for Penguin Classics. Sebastian Schüler is Assistant Professor for the Study of Religions at Leipzig University, Germany. He has published a number of articles dealing with contemporary Evangelical movements in the USA and Europe. His research covers different theoretical areas such as religious cognition and evolution, religion and the body, the aesthetics of religion, and the sociology of religious movements and transformations. He is the author of Religion, Kognition, Evolution: Eine religionswissenschaftliche Auseinandersetzung mit der Cognitive Science of Religion (2012), editor of Religion and Madness around 1900: Between Pathology and Self-Empowerment (2017) with Lutz Greisiger and Alexander van der Haven. Astrid Krabbe Trolle is a PhD student at the Religious Studies Section, Department for Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen. Her PhD project focuses on Christian Filipino migrants with a special emphasis on how generation and social class influence moral values in the diasporic community. She has authored the articles ‘Migrantkirker. Fra grænseflade til kerne i den danske religionsmodel’ (Migrant Churches. From Periphery to Centre in the Danish Model of Religion) (2015), ‘Det nationale og det nye. Filippinske katolske og pinsekirkelige menigheder i Danmark’ (The National and the Novelty. Filipino Catholic and Pentecostal Congregations in Denmark) (2016), and edited a special issue of Religionsvidenskabeligt Tidsskrift (Journal for the Science of Religion) on the Danish model of religion (2015) with Margit Warburg.

I. MARGINALITY, MEDIA, AND MUTATIONS OF RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY IN THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY Laura Feldt

Introduction Marginal figures, from heretics, ascetics, and mystics, to saints, visionaries, and witches have played key roles in decisive mutations of religious authority in the history of different forms of Christianity. Yet, marginality has often been understood primarily in terms of social exclusion, othering, and demonization, and/or as a matter of ideological and cognitive difference. This perspective on marginality does not explain its role in transformations of religious authority, where marginal positions may be used tactically or changed to positions of empowered agency and alternative authority by means of a creative use of media, nor does it throw light on the use of the power of the marginal in religious discourses of marginality where marginality is used to enhance or change status. Religious ideas of marginality have often been used positively in performances of marginality through religious technologies of the self, in spatial instantiations as mythologies of the wilderness, and for constructing special objects that give the sense of ‘a presence of something “beyond”’.1 The goal of this volume is to offer new analyses and understandings of marginality by using media perspectives to discuss marginality as a social and religious phenomenon. The volume presents case studies of a wide range of uses of marginality discourses in different historical contexts, throwing light on the religious power of the marginal, on strategic and tactical uses of marginality, on marginality as othering, and on performances of marginality. The central aim is to show how a focus on media and mediality is crucial 1 B. Meyer, ‘Mediation and the Genesis of Presence’ (reprint of inaugural lecture). Religion and Society: Advances in Research 5 (2014) 205-54 (quote on p. 214). Birgit Meyer has been at the forefront of the inspirational media and religion research trend.

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for understanding the role of marginality – religious as well as social – in authority changes in the history of Christianity. The chapters of this volume contribute to an inter-disciplinary conversation on religion and media from the perspectives of historians of religion and historians. The articles discuss a wide range of media, from space, technologies of the self and literary forms, to objects, visual culture and contemporary mass and social media. While our aim is to throw new light on how the concept of marginality encompasses not only social marginality, but also religious marginality, and on how marginality can be used strategically and tactically to change forms of authority, we are especially interested in the role of media in such processes. The currently blossoming field of ‘religion and media’ has primarily focused on new media in the contemporary era, although this situation is slowly changing.2 Media-focused analyses of case studies from the history of Christianity have mainly concentrated on the contemporary era, and on non-Western forms of Christianity. The field seems to want historical perspectives and comparative, historical case studies that also include Western forms of Christianity. We attempt to remedy the lack of research specifically on marginality and the role of media in transformations of religious authority in the diverse and multi-faceted history of different forms of Christianity. Inspired by recent work in the field of religion and media, especially that of Birgit Meyer and David Morgan,3 the volume works from the assumption that, even if religion has often been studied as a question of ideas and representations, specific media, their use, materiality, appraisal, and appeal, are not something added to religion, but fundamentally inextricable from how religion functions. All religions use media of many different kinds in order to ensure their own transmission across generations, in order to stay in the existential game, as it were, – from literature to rituals, ascetic training programmes, architecture, religious paraphernalia such as rosaries and figurines, and to the internet and social media.4 The goal is to use the media 2 P. Horsfield, From Jesus to the Internet. A History of Christianity and Media (London, 2015); K. Lundby (ed.), Religion Across Media. From Early Antiquity to Late Modernity (New York, 2013). 3 B. Meyer (ed.) Aesthetic Formations. Media, Religion and the Senses (New York, 2009); B. Meyer, ‘Mediation and Immediacy. Sensational Forms, Semiotic Ideologies and the Question of the Medium’, Social Anthropology 19/1 (2011) 23-39; D. Morgan, The Embodied Eye. Religious Visual Culture and the Social Life of Feeling (Oakland, 2012). 4 Horsfield, From Jesus; Lundby, Religion Across Media; Meyer, ‘Mediation and Immediacy’; Morgan, The Embodied Eye; S. Hjarvard, and M. Lövheim (eds.), Mediatization and Religion: Nordic Perspectives (Gothenburg, 2012).

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and materiality-oriented change of focus in the study of religions to throw new light on the role of marginality in the history of Christianity. With this volume, we thus advance the understanding of marginality by analysing the use of media, by or in relation to marginal figures, as well as the role of religious discourses on marginality, in transformations of religious authority in the history of Christianity. Before I present the contributions of the book, let me introduce the key terms. Marginality and Mutations of Religious Authority In sociological research on marginality, the focus has often been on a dichotomous self/othering or centre/periphery model, and in social scientific marginality research, the concept of social marginality is often used to explain the complexities of exclusion.5 In cultural studies research, monstrous, marginal and deviant persons or beings have been analysed as figures of abjection and distancing, victims of othering, demonization and social exclusion.6 While the empowering and fascinating aspects of marginality and the potentiality of marginality for effectuating change have been noted,7 the functioning of these aspects of marginality has been unfolded to a lesser extent. This book contributes precisely in this regard, as it presents case studies that bring out forms of religious as well as social marginality and analyse how marginality can be used tactically and creatively to effect change. We work from a distinction between social marginality, which is commonly involuntary and associated with discomfort and distress, and religious marginality, which can be voluntary, actively sought out, and performed. The marginal is often co-constitutive for religious authority, both in terms of social marginality and in terms of religious discourses of marginality, in as much as we understand marginality and authority as relational and contestable positions, which need to be researched as such. With this book, we suggest that if we focus on how the relations between marginality and 5 J. von Braun and F. Gatzweiler (eds.), Marginality: addressing the nexus of poverty, exclusion and ecology (Cham, 2014); R.J. Dunne, ‘Marginality: a conceptual extension’, in R.M. Dennis (ed.), Marginality, Power, and Social Structure (Oxford, 2005) 11-28; B.T. Cullen and M. Pretes, ‘The meaning of marginality: interpretations and perceptions in social science’, The Social Science Journal 37/2 (2000) 215-29. 6 D. Frankfurter, Evil Incarnate. Rumours of Demonic Conspiracy and Satanic Abuse in History (Princeton, 2006); S. Crook, ‘Minotaurs and Other Monsters’, Sociology 32 (1998) 523-40; J.J. Cohen, Monster Theory – Reading Culture (Minneapolis, 1996). 7 As, e.g., by J.J. Cohen, Monster Theory and J.J. Cohen, Hybridity, Identity and Monstrosity in Medieval Britain (London, 2006).

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religious authority are mediated, we can stimulate new understanding of the role of marginality with regard to transformations of religious authority. As formulated by Braun and Gatzweiler, the concept of social marginality is understood sociologically as ‘an involuntary position and condition of an individual or group at the margins of social, political, economic, ecological or biophysical systems, preventing them from access to resources, assets, services, restraining freedom of choice, preventing the development of capabilities, and eventually causing (extreme) poverty’.8 Braun and Gatzweiler discuss how researchers generally agree that social marginality is always perspectival, i.e., ‘relative to a particular point’.9 It is therefore always important, in discussions of social marginality, to take into account how the framing of social marginality can indeed vary (e.g., as either fixed or mobile), and that marginality is multi-dimensional, because an actor can be simultaneously integrated with one or more centres, while being understood as marginal in relation to one or more other centres.10 Social marginality research frequently focuses on the causes for exclusion, inequality, social justice, spatial segregation, etc., and understands marginality as a social construction for which social power is the key determining factor.11 In the social sciences, the concept of social marginality is often understood to derive from Park’s 1928 essay ‘Migration and the Marginal Man’. Park understood the marginal man as a figure appearing as a result of migration, a cultural hybrid, who shared in more than one culture, who mediated between cultures, as an intermediary agent.12 Park’s essay leads us towards the concerns in focus in this volume, because we are interested in how social marginality is observed and culturally embedded, in how cultural views of social marginality may change over time, in the meanings social marginality are ascribed in different eras or contexts, and in the historically variable status of marginality. Park’s idea of the marginal man as an intermediary agent leads us also to our next concept, namely religious discourses of marginality, which are a subset of broader, cultural discourses of marginality; i.e., religious discourses of marginality form a part of how marginality is observed and verbalised in a society. We are interested the meanings it is ascribed and how they vary in the history of Christianity.

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Braun and Gatzweiler, Marginality. Braun and Gatzweiler, Marginality, 30. 10 Dunne ‘Marginality’, 15. 11 Cullen and Pretes, ‘The Meaning of Marginality’. 12 R.E. Park, ‘Human Migration and the Marginal Man’, American Journal of Sociology 33 (1928) 881-91. 9

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Turning briefly to etymology, the Latin term margō referred to a retaining wall, a bank, an edging, a flange or rim, a border or an edge, or the margin of a book (The Oxford Latin Dictionary, s.v.), aspects which point in interesting ways not only towards common understandings of the marginal, but also towards the uses of marginality, as that which is not at the centre, but which frames and enables it, to a peripheral space of interaction and exchange, an intermediate boundary space. Approaching the concept of religious discourses of marginality, we must ask what it is that allows us to place ascetics, saints, mystics, martyrs, and witches (etc.) in the same category? What seems to characterise the marginal in religious discourses is some form of deviation from a norm or a centre. The religiously marginal is transgressive, liminal, and it has to do with boundaries, a departure from a centre, but also with the periphery as a broader zone of exchange and interaction, that may involve a transgression of the norms and boundaries of the cultural centre, but with which the centre is in continual interaction and with which it has multiple kinds of relations. Here too the perspectival and relational qualities of marginality must be stressed. Boundaries vary from culture to culture, and from one historical context to the next, but a virtual norm or a virtual centre is always at stake, according to which the marginal is a deviation, a transgression.13 Such transgressions and departures may be used for religious articulations of the intersections between this world and the other world in the religious imaginary. Articulations of the intersections between the human everyday world and the superhuman otherworld are of course historically and cross-culturally variable, but they commonly involve intermediary agents and marginal figures, such as angels, demons, wild men and saints, as well as functionally similar spaces, actions, and objects. For these reasons, social marginality and religious discourses of marginality often intersect. As our case studies show, discourses of marginality are always perspectival and must be contextualised historically, culturally, and socially. In discourses of religious marginality, the boundary between the human and the non-human, or this world and the other world, is continually in focus. Discourses of religious marginality revolve around articulations of the intersections between the everyday, human world and the nonhuman, including the divine otherworld. Religious marginality can thus 13 H.R. Brittnacher, Ästhetik des Horrors (Frankfurt a.M., 1994), 183-87; L. Feldt, ‘Monstrøsitet som kulturel og religiøs diskurs’, Religionsvidenskabeligt Tidsskrift 42 (2003) 43-64; A. Mittman, ‘Introduction: The Impact of Monsters and Monster Studies’, in A.S. Mittman (ed.), with P. J. Dendle, The Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous (Farnham, 2012) 1-16.

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be distinguished from regular deities and fully superhuman, religious cosmological domains like heaven or hell, because religious marginality is precisely about ways of articulating, through media, the intersection between worlds, about putting into words that which lies at the edges of the human world, that which contributes to the delimitation of worlds in the religious imaginary. Such intersections, or forms of religious marginality, can be seen in the examples of the ascetic, the mystic, the witch, or the saint, in natural-fantastic or artefactual-fantastic spaces like wildernesses,14 churches,15 haunted houses, or in the material charisma of relics, figurines, and other special objects.16 Religious marginality discourses often involve hybrid bodies, which belong to, or transgress, more than one category, liminal spaces, in which impossible events can happen, or stories of fantastic actions done by incredible persons. Religious marginality discourses may threaten cultural categories and critique the existing cultural order, because the marginal, on the one hand, embodies that which may dissolve existing categories, and this may lead to demonization. On the other hand, the special person or member of a category is defined precisely by his or her marked deviation from the category, too, and therefore marginality can be used also as a distinction. The marginal is, in cultural and historical understanding, a matter of perspective and relations, and marginality is a discourse, which can, on the one hand, be used to horrify, scare, delegitimise and demonise, but on other it can also be used to distinguish, fascinate, and empower. For this volume’s discussions of social and religious marginality, it is further important to draw on sociological understandings of marginality as a practice. These focus on the marginal figure not solely as a figure of exclusion on the part of a centre of authority, but on marginality as performed and mediated by ‘agents capable of functioning in a particular social, political or religious environment in contradistinction to … hegemonic environments’.17 It is important because such understandings stress 14 L. Feldt (ed.), Wilderness in Mythology and Religion. Approaching Religious Spatialities, Cosmologies, and Ideas of Wild Nature (Berlin, 2012); L. Feldt, The Fantastic in Religious Narrative from Exodus to Elisha (London, 2012). 15 D. Massey, ‘Politics and Space/Time’, in M. Keith and S. Pile (eds.), Place and the Politics of Identity (London and New York, 1993) 3; T. Cresswell, In Place/Out of Place: Geography, Ideology, and Transgression (Minneapolis, 1996). 16 C.W. Bynum, ‘The Sacrality of Things. An Inquiry into Divine Materiality in the Christian Middle Ages’, Irish Theological Quarterly 78 (2012) 3-18; C.W. Bynum, Christian Materiality. An Essay on Religion in Late Medieval Europe (New York, 2012). 17 R. Valantasis, The Making of the Self. Ancient and Modern Asceticism (Cambridge, 2008) 103-13 at 103; cf. M. Foucault, The Hermeneutics of the Subject: Lectures at the Collège de France 1981-1982, ed. F. Gros. Trsl. by G. Burchell (New York, 2005) 413-89.

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not only the relations between social marginality and religious marginality discourses, but also the performance of marginality and its tactical and strategic uses. While it is important to be aware of how social marginality and religious discourses of marginality may relate and intersect, this volume maintains the usefulness of making this fundamental distinction. It stresses how marginality discourses function through media performances and the circulation of media-objects.18 Religious marginality is not the same as social marginality, for forms of religious marginality may be socially central at a general level, in the cult of particular religions (like saint worship in medieval forms of Christianity), but still represent a kind of religious marginality at a different level of analysis. Still, we are of course aware of the many relations and intersections between the two. Religious marginality is connected to the concept of liminality, as is social marginality, and interestingly, this is where charisma, as a form of religious authority,19 and marginality intersect, and where ideas from the mediamaterial turn can make a key difference. With this book, we investigate some of the ways in which the marginal can be co-constitutive for religious authority, and we suggest that both positions must be understood as relational and contestable, and can be researched as such. The book’s guiding assumption is that focusing on how the relations between marginality and religious authority are mediated can fuel new understanding of the role of marginality in transformations of religious authority, of the relations between social and religious forms of marginality, and of the voluntary, performed, fascinating and transformative potential of marginality. As sociologist Frank Furedi has put it recently, authority has an elusive quality.20 Authority differs from power, and it is often pointed out how authority, properly understood, hovers between force, or the threat of

18 M. Serres, Le Parasite (Paris, 1980) 224-25, 302-05; L. Feldt, The Fantastic, 235-58; J. Stolow, ‘Religion and/as Media’, Theory, Culture and Society 22 (2005) 119-45. 19 M. Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Grundriss der Verstehenden Soziologie. Fünfte, revidierte Auflage, besorgt von J. Winckelmann. Studienausgabe (Tübingen 1980 [1921]); S. Breuer, Max Webers Herrschaftssoziologie (Frankfurt and New York, 1991) 32-67; L. Feldt, ‘Authority, Space, and Literary Media – Eucherius’ Epistula de laude eremi and authority changes in late antique Gaul’, Postscripts – The Journal of Sacred Texts and Contemporary Worlds 8/2 (published in Jan. 2018 / due to journal lapse counted as: 2012) 193-219. 20 F. Furedi, Authority. A Sociological Approach (Cambridge, 2013) vii. This section on the concept of authority overlaps with my previously published discussion of authority in L. Feldt, ‘Special issue introduction – Reframing Authority. The Role of Media and Materiality’, Postscripts – the Journal of Sacred Texts and Contemporary Contexts 8/2 (2018 / 2012) 185-92.

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violence, on the one hand, and persuasion on the other.21 With recent studies, we emphasise how authority is relational and fragile, as historical struggles against, negotations of, and challenges to, authority demonstrate.22 For the concept of authority, a classical point of departure is Weber’s ‘Typen der Herrschaft’,23 which he does sometimes use interchangably with ‘Autorität’.24 Weber’s approach to authority has been widely used in the study of religions and the history of Christianity.25 Yet, as Furedi points out, a key problem of authority theories relates to the source which validates autority, to what it is that forms the foundation of authority. Furedi, as Bruce Lincoln and Hannah Arendt before him, underlines that authority is a relational concept, suggesting a compelling power to motivate and gain obedience, ‘without having to argue or threaten the use of force’; authority is an influence which compels.26 By focusing on media and mediation, we take steps towards expanding previous understandings of authority in light of theories of mediality, so that we can also discuss the forms of authority that religious literature, ritual objects, or particular spaces may be ascribed, the obedience or influence they may command, as well as the important role of objects and material media in the construction, maintenance and transformation of authority.27

21 Furedi, Authority, 1; B. Lincoln, Authority. Construction and Corrosion (Chicago, 1994). 22 Furedi, Authority, 3. 23 Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft [1921] 122-176; M. Weber, ‘Die drei reinen Typen der legitimen Herrschaft. Eine soziologische Studie’, Preussischen Jahrbüchern 187 (1922) 1-12. 24 E.g., Weber, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft, 122; Weber, ‘Die drei reinen Typen’; Breuer, Max Webers Herrschaftssoziologie. The difference between Herrschaft and Autorität is a large discussion in the discipline of sociology that I will not delve into here. 25 To mention merely a couple of examples, Lincoln, Authority; C. Rapp, Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity. The Nature of Christian Leadership in an Age of Transition (Berkeley, 2005). 26 Furedi, Authority, 7-9; Lincoln, Authority; H. Arendt, ‘What is Authority?’, in her Between Past and Future (London, 1966 [1958]). 27 J. Law, ‘The Manager and His Powers’, published by the Centre for Science Studies, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YN, UK, 2003, at http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/ sociology/papers/Law-Manager-and-his-Powers.pdf. Already Weber argued that charisma is a form of recognition (Anerkennung), which may be transferred to rules, techniques, blood or family, and to things via ‘rituelle Versachligung’ (Weber, Die drei reinen). The implicit authenticity of personal presence, in Weber, with regard to the ascription of charisma, can be developed by understanding authority in terms of specific relational, narrative and discursive practices (cf. Thomas Csordas, Language, Charisma, and Creativity: The Ritual Life of a Religious Movement, Berkeley, 1997). The approach I take here is that the classical social constructivist and discursive approaches to authority can draw important inspiration and new insight from approaches that focus on media and materiality, in spite of the differences between social constructivist approaches and Actor-Network-Theorybased approaches.

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A focus on media is arguably crucial for new understandings of authority. It is important to note that charismatic and other forms of authority are only available to research through the media by means of which authority is communicated and ascribed, whether these are narrative-hagiographical, ascribed to objects, a set of rules, or the holiness of tradition.28 Moreover, media and materiality play fundamental roles in the very functioning and validation of authority.29 As suggested by Frank Furedi, it is crucial to provide historical context for transformations of authority,30 as a key way of allowing new understanding to emerge, just as it is very important to continually keep in focus how authority is a fragile accomplishment of social interaction. The analyses investigate, via an intense attention to forms of mediation, the fundamentally relational character of authority. As the case studies suggest, authority is dependent upon a range of media in order to be upheld – objects, materials, paraphernalia, spatial practices, visual culture, literary forms and techniques, technologies, and bodies – but it is also vulnerable and in need of continual maintenance, as struggles against, negotiations of, and mutations of authority constellations demonstrate. With the case studies of this book, we suggest that not only marginality, but also material media, play key roles in authority mutations. Inspired in various ways by religion and media studies, the book analyses how media figure in authority constellations, and how forms of marginality are mobilised, in mutations of authority, without necessarily positing a singular acting, human subject behind the authority transformation. Drawing inspiration from many different ends of a vast and multi-disciplinary field, the contributions of this volume offer analyses which do not approach space, objects, imagery, or other non-human networked participants as wholly passive, but which try to take into account the distributed relations and effects that enable authority constellations and mutations at different historical moments. Media Perspectives and the History of Christianity In this book, we draw on the flourishing field of ‘religion, media, and culture’.31 This field has tended to focus on contemporary mass media and 28

Feldt, ‘Special issue introduction’. See Law, ‘The Manager’, and L. Feldt (ed.), Reframing Authority – the Role of Media and Materiality (London, fc. 2018). 30 Furedi Authority, vii. 31 Hjarvard and Lövheim Mediatization; Morgan, The Embodied Eye and D. Morgan, ‘Materiality, social analysis, and the study of religions’, in D. Morgan (ed.), Religion and Material Culture: The Matter of Belief (London, 2010); J. Mahan, Media, Religion, and 29

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leave historical studies more out of sight, but a broad historical interest is currently incipient and much suggests the fruitfulness of new historical approaches to media in the history of Christianity and other religions.32 Study of religions research on the media aspects of Christianity has mainly focused on new Christianities in Africa and Asia in the contemporary era, 33 while the history of Western forms of Christianity has been left more out of sight. This book thus offers a fresh perspective by including studies of Western Christianity, and by approaching the long history of Christianity using perspectives drawn from the field of religion, media, and culture. All religions have, naturally, always been mediated in many ways – from visual images, to dance, drama, narratives, amulets and more.34 Yet, recent developments such as the emergence of new forms of media, mass-media, and the so-called ‘media age’, have occupied centre stage in research, and religion and media have, in some contexts, been understood as separate spheres.35 However, it has become clear that entanglements of religion, media, and culture have a long history and are about much more than simply religion in modern news and mass media. Instead, researchers in the field of religion, media, and culture now view religion and media not as separate spheres but as fundamentally intertwined. Religion and media are studied in terms of a range of ways in which religions use media in order to reproduce themselves – from literary forms, ritual, ascetic training, church architecture, religious paraphernalia such as rosaries and figurines, as well as the internet and social media.36 Key developments in the field thus show that mediation is integral to religious practice. Building on this key and recent trend in the field of religion, media, and culture, our starting assumption is that specific media, their use, materiality, appraisal and influence, are not something added to religion. Rather, Culture – An Introduction (London, 2014); G. Lynch, J. Mitchell, A. Strhan (eds.), Religion, Media and Culture: A Reader (London, 2011). 32 Morgan, The Embodied Eye; Lundby, Religion Across Media; Horsfield, From Jesus. 33 See, e.g., B. Meyer, ‘“There is a Spirit in that Image.” Mass Produced Jesus Pictures and Protestant Pentecostal Animation in Ghana’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 52 (2010) 100-30; K.L. Wiegele, ‘Mediated spaces of religious community in Manila, Philippines’, in Michael Bailey and Guy Redden (eds.), Mediating Faiths, Religion and Socio-cultural Change in the Twenty-First Century (Surrey, 2011). 34 D. Morgan, ‘Mediation or mediatisation: The history of media in the study of religion’, Culture and Religion 12 (2011) 137-52. 35 S. Hoover, ‘Religious Authority in the Media Age’, in S. Hoover (ed.), The Media and Religious Authority (University Park, 2016) xiii. 36 Meyer, ‘Mediation and Immediacy’; B. Meyer, ‘Religious Sensations. Why Media, Aesthetics and Power Matter in the Study of Contemporary Religion’, in H. de Vries (ed.), Religion. Beyond a Concept (New York, 2008) 704-23; Morgan, The Embodied Eye; 2010; Stolow, ‘Religion’; Hjarvard and Lövheim, Mediatization.

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media are inextricable from how religion is communicated, re-produced, and from how it functions and becomes effective.37 In this book, we thus use a broad concept of mediation. We understand a medium as ‘any device that facilitates communication and enables relations, including social structures and traditions’.38 We thus move away from several common ideas of media, among these the phantom idea of an original, unmediated state of culture, along with the instrumentalist view of media as neutral channels of expression, and, finally, also the technologically determinist view that vests media with a great formative power. Even if different media do have special affordances, actors can still use media creatively and tactically.39 So, while the definition of media and mediation is contested, the book argues that the historical study of media is best served by broad understandings of media, which facilitate comparative discussions. While some often think of media as a modern phenomenon, found in the form of technologies such as radio, tv, films, facebook and twitter, it is important to the approach of this volume to stress that we work from the assumption that all communication is mediated – in speech, our bodies, writing, dance, images, etc. As suggested by Regis Debray, messages never travel unchanged; sender and receiver are also changed by the message exchanged, just as the message itself is transformed by being circulated. Materiality plays a key role in the process of mediation, because materiality mediates human relationships to the world.40 Media are thus not neutral carriers of content or channels of communication, but can be approached broadly as ‘content-inform’,41 which have specific physical, sensory, social and technological characteristics or affordances, which can be described and analysed. We may thus, with Jörg Heider, understand media as conditioned internally and externally by specific characteristics; conditions and characteristics which constrain reception and use socially.42 New media may thus lead to social change over time by constructing new patterns of identity formation, socialisation and hierarchy as suggested by Joshua Meyrowitz.43 New media 37 B. Meyer, ‘Mediation and Intimacy: Sensational Forms, Semiotic Ideologies, and the Question of Medium’, in J. Boddy and M. Lambek (eds.), A Companion to the Anthropology of Religion (Chichester, 2013); Meyer, ‘Mediation and the Genesis’; Stolow, ‘Religion’; Lundby, Religion Across Media. 38 Meyer, ‘Mediation and the Genesis’. 39 Meyer, ‘Mediation and Immediacy’, 3-5. 40 R. Debray, Media Manifestos (New York, 1996) 44. 41 Meyer, ‘Mediation and Immediacy’, 23-39 at 30. 42 F. Heider, ‘Thing and Medium’, Psychological Issues 1 (1959) 1-34 at 20. 43 J. Meyrowitz, ‘Medium Theory’, in D. Crowley and D. Mitchell (eds.), Communication Theory Today (Cambridge, 1994) 50-77.

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sometimes serve to amplify existing mediation processes, reaching new audiences or enabling transmission across time. When mediation is taken to refer to complex processes through which the senders, the messages, and the receivers are changed in the act of communicating, via a range of material objects, then it becomes very clear that media are not neutral channels or carriers of content. Yet, as can be gathered from the above passage, with recent work in the field, this book stresses agency and change in relation to mediation more strongly than previously.44 While media do have affordances that affect people, and while actors do act within certain media cultures that offer certain possibilities and exert specific limitations, people can indeed act creatively and tactically to effect change, just as other networked agents and relations will effect changes.45 In this book, we focus on mediation in the history of Christianity, and so our case studies bridge fields of existing work relating to visual culture,46 space,47 the cultivation of the body/mind, literary forms,48 materiality research,49 and new media in late modernity.50 The book aims to move the discussion of marginality and how it interacts with religious authority forward by focussing on media and mediation. The case studies show how creative practices by marginal figures, or the tactical use of discourses of marginality, in and through emergent media may challenge or transform traditional religious institutions and authorities, and help construct new forms and contexts of authority. As Liv I. Lied has pointed out previously, the tendency to assume that the field of religion and media before the advent of print cultures was characterised by simplicity, control, local and immediate contexts, and clear social limits does not do justice to the historical media cultures before the advent of print, and needs to be challenged in historical studies.51 44

Hoover, ‘Religious Authority’, xiv. Mahan, ‘Religious Authority’, 12. 46 Cf. Morgan, The Embodied Eye. 47 Cf. K. Knott, The Location of Religion (London, 2005); Feldt, Wilderness. 48 Cf. N. Largier, ‘Praying by Numbers. An Essay on Medieval Aesthetics’, Representations 103 (2008) 73-91. 49 Cf. B. Meyer, et al., ‘The Origin and Mission of Material Religion’, Religion 40 (2010) 207-11. 50 Hjarvard and Lövheim, Mediatization. We are naturally also glad to acknowledge the inspiration gained via the collaboration with the German Arbeitskreis Religionsästhetik and the edited volume by J. Johnston and A. Grieser, The Aesthetics of Religion – A Connective Concept (Berlin, 2017). 51 L.I. Lied, ‘Manuscript culture and the myth of golden beginnings’, in Lundby, Religion Across Media, 54-70. 45

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The historical case studies of this book discuss how ‘media’ function in various historical contexts and how media interact in variable ways in different media cultures. In this book, when we use the word medium, we refer to one form of mediation and one particular medium in a particular cultural context. When we use the word media, we use a plural verb to stress how multiple media work together, to recognise the complex interrelations between media, and to clarify that the term media does not signify a single entity with a monolithic social influence. We use the term media culture to refer to the interaction of cultural factors and contexts of communication, where some forms of mediation – and the forms of social life they encourage – may dominate in some eras and contexts.52 We are interested in changes in media cultures brought about when people make choices about ‘how to use, resist, or adapt’ new media and media technologies53 as well as when networked agents understood in a broader sense effect changes. While there has been a substantial amount of research on changes in the representational and ideological content in the history of Christianity, and while the role of the printing press in transformations of Christianity in the Reformation era has been demonstrated,54 the role of media in transformations of religious authority needs more attention in the history of Christianity, as pointed out recently by Peter Horsfield.55 In the religion, media and culture field, much important and innovative work has been done to throw light on the role of media in religions. This book adds historical approaches to a field where historical perspectives still lack attention and need to dialogue with work on contemporary sources and theories. It investigates the ways in which marginal figures and discourses of marginality have contributed to changes of religious authority, through the use of media, in the long history of Christianity. Studying transformations of religious authority in the history of Christianity from the perspective of marginality and media opens up several new perspectives on the history of Christianity, so that it appears not as a coherent and linear development, but as a diverse, variegated, contested, adaptable, and inevitably mediated religious repository. It also brings new case studies from the history of Christianity into the vibrant debate in current discussions about religion, media, and materiality. 52

Mahan, ‘Religious Authority’, 12-14. Mahan, ‘Religious Authority’, 14. 54 E. Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change. Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 1979). 55 Horsfield, From Jesus. 53

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The Chapters of the Book The eleven contributions of this volume have been organised into thematic sections: 1) The Power of Religious Marginality: Monastic Media Cultures; 2) Marginality as Strategy and Tactics: Adapting Media; 3) Marginalising Others: Social Marginality and Narrative Networks; 4) Performing Marginality: Contemporary Religious Belonging and Media Cultures. The first section is entitled The Power of Religious Marginality: Monastic Media Cultures and encompasses contributions by Jan N. Bremmer, David Frankfurter, and Laura Feldt. The articles focus on marginality and mediation in ancient Christian monasticism in late antiquity. These chapters demonstrate the power of religious marginality – here understood as the verbalisation of liminal contact zones between this world and the other world in religious imaginaries – and how the power of religious marginality is put to use in ancient Christian contexts. In ancient monasticism, the training, performance, and mediation of marginality were central concerns and the religious marginality of the monks came to be seen as authoritative, spiritually powerful, and socially consequential. We start in fourthcentury Egypt, with Bremmer’s detailed study of the likely most seminal work of ascetic hagiography to date, namely Athanasius’ Life of Antony, moving from that into Frankfurter’s discussion of the broader context of the mediation of Christianity in late antique Egypt, and we end in late antique Gaul in the sixth century with Feldt’s discussion of mutations of authority and media culture in the Latin west on the eve of the creation of early medieval Europe. The three chapters in this section demonstrate the immense power of the religious marginality of Christian monks in the era after Constantine, the various ways in which marginality was used as an asset, and how specific media were used to construct and maintain that marginality. Jan N. Bremmer’s chapter, ‘Athanasius’ Life of Antony: Marginality, Spatiality and Mediality’ discusses one of the most surprising developments in Christian late antiquity, namely the emergence of hermits and monks as spiritual leaders and models. Bremmer takes a close look at one medium used to promulgate such a spiritual authority, Athanasius’ Life of Antony, which provided the model for later hagiography. Bremmer carefully dissects how Athanasius constructed his biography, how much fact and how much fiction we can presuppose when reading the work, how and why Athanasius, himself a bishop, pictures the socially and religiously marginal position of Antony. This leads us towards a balanced explanation and discussion of how we may explain the enormous influence of this mediated model of an ascetic

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monk on his contemporaries and later generations in the East and the West, an influence that proved crucial in the transformation of clerical authority to that of monastic influence. In his chapter, ‘Charismatic Textuality and the Mediation of Christianity in Late Antique Egypt’, David Frankfurter examines the way Christian monks in Egypt from the fourth to the ninth century used writing in ways that mediated a Christian material potency in the written word in a semiliterate culture, arguing that the monastic scribes themselves served as ritual specialists in the magical use of writing. In the second half of the essay, he reframes the charisma of the monks as the distributed agency (in the terminology of Alfred Gell) of the monk as prophetic figure – that is, as a power-dispensing figure associated with the social and cosmic margins. Frankfurter emphasises that in considering writing as a medium in the communication and experience of religion, we must begin by grasping how it worked alongside a number of other material media distinctive of Christianity in late antiquity, as material, tactile elements by which Christianity became sensible to real bodies in time and space. In my own chapter, ‘Letters from the Wilderness – Marginality, Literarity, and Religious Authority Changes in Late Antique Gaul’, I discuss marginality and the role of media in transformations of religious authority via an analysis of the anonymous text known as the Life of the Jura Fathers (Vita Patrum Iurensium, ca. 522); a text reflecting an era of major social transformations, changes in power structures, and diversification of the loci of authority. In this situation, literary media were important for bolstering the authority of the ascetics. But as the chapter demonstrates, a special power is not primarily or only ascribed to the monks, but also to their spatial marginality – ‘the wilderness’ – and to their letters. The ascetic practices of spatial withdrawal, lectio, fasting, vigils and abstinence are technologies of the self, designed to empower and form the subject through a performance of marginality, and in order to gain a heavenly reward, but the text analysed here clearly emphasises that the power of these ascetics plays out as material benefits; it is used to solve everyday problems, providing magical assistance with illness, lack of food, demons, and to negotiate relations with other loci of authority, such as not only priests and bishops, kings and judges, but also relics and tombs. In this context of use, what the text strives to legitimate and authorise is the special power of literary culture, letters, and writing, as materially and locally useful media special to the ascetics of Gaul in an era of great societal transitions. The second section is entitled Marginality as Strategy and Tactics: Adapting Media, and it contains contributions by Christian Høgel, Birgit van der

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Lans and Dirk Johannsen, who treat materials ranging from Byzantine mystical poetry in the eleventh century, second-century Christian apologetic literature to nineteenth-century Norway. The header here alludes to Michel de Certeau’s famous distinction between strategy and tactics in The Practice of Everyday Life, in which he links strategies with institutions and structures of power, while individuals often act tactically in environments predefined by others.56 All three contributions analyse how marginal figures – the migrant religious entrepreneur, the mystic, and the peasant healer – move from a marginal position to a religiously authoritative position through the use of specific media, negotiating contestation and dissent, and through an active tapping into religious marginality discourses. Thus, these contributions throw light on the tactical use of specific media and the relational nature of both marginality and authority. They all, in their own ways, touch upon the strategies of institutions and predefined structures of power within which these figures are positioned. These three contributions demonstrate how specific media are key in the construction of new, religiously authoritative figures, who are at the same time, in Høgel’s and Johannsen’s cases, positioned as religiously marginal (the mystic, the healer) between this world and the other world. The articles also show – as unfolded in detail by Johannsen – how highlighting marginality can function as a narrative ploy and be used to further political and religious change. This too testifies to the power of the marginal and ties nicely in with the book’s first section. With Christian Høgel’s chapter, ‘Symeon the New Theologian, Mystical Poetry, and the Response to the Textualization of Sainthood in Byzantium’, we turn to Byzantium in the eleventh century. Høgel discusses how key actors succeeded in promoting Symeon the New Theologian as a saint in an imperial world attempting to secure the sanctification of saints for itself by means of literary media. The strategy of Symeon, and in particular that of his biographer Niketas Stethatos, was media-based. They emphasised Symeon’s writings, and the form of his writings, through the edition of his poetry as well as the publication of his vita or biography, in competition with the imperial initiatives. Høgel demonstrates how the very literary mediality of Symeon the New Theologian’s mystical poetry functioned in an increasingly limited saintly mediascape, and on how its aesthetics and imagery play out a particular form of religious marginality. The rise of this new voice and media form had crucial implications for authority transformations in Byzantine Christianity. 56

M. de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley, 1984).

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Birgit van der Lans (‘The Written Media of Imperial Government and a Martyr’s Career: Justin Martyr’s 1 Apology’) takes us further into the theme of the tactical and creative use of media in her examination of the 1 Apology of Justin, a Christian, religious entrepreneur from the second century. His text is shaped as a petition, a common written medium through which private individuals and groups could approach emperors and other office-holders to obtain personal benefits, legal rulings, or to ask for intervention in cases of wrongdoing. The author would later become known as Justin Martyr, one of the authoritative early fathers of the church, but this is not a position he enjoyed from the beginning of his career. Van der Lans explores how Justin creatively used the petition and related official documents as media in the endeavour to establish his authority and to move from the margins towards a position of increased social power. She suggests that concepts from media studies can offer new ways of thinking about the citation of official documents in ancient literature, in addition to the well-known source-critical perspective focusing on the categories of genuineness and authenticity, by looking at the overlap between media production and media consumption and discussing how and for which purposes selective and creative media appropriations took place. Dirk Johannsen’s chapter, ‘Vis-Knut: Marginality in Folklore and Folk Religion’, completes this section by taking apart the subtleties of how marginality functioned as a narrative ploy in the folk religion discourse in nineteenth-century Norway. Here, marginality came to be seen as fostering genuine, creative, almost miraculous expressions of faith and love that would challenge and undermine any religious or political machinery of power. Marginality was thus a narrative ploy that was very effective in creating a moral obligation to listen and to withhold judgment, obscuring the strategies and the power plays. Johannsen’s case study is Knut Rasmussen Nordgården (1792-1876) from Gausdal parish; a rural healer, prophet, and cunning man who was turned into a modern saint of unparalleled fame and popularity. Johannsen traces the roots, development and usage of the characteristic marginality narrative connected to Vis-Knut throughout the nineteenth century, analysing its role within the Norwegian folk religious field of practice and the emerging folkloristic endeavour. His analysis demonstrates how self-proclaimed and ascribed marginality was strategically and tactically used to further political and religious change. By tracing the marginality narrative connected to Vis-Knut from its early use in a local religious conflict to its late nineteenth century use in an international debate on parapsychology and alternative spirituality, Johannsen shows that emphasising marginality is a narrative ploy crucial to the folk religious alterity discourse.

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The volume’s third section is Marginalising Others: Social Marginality and Narrative Networks and it presents analyses of forms of othering and social marginalisation from the medieval and early modern era. The chapters by Rubin and Kallestrup demonstrate how social marginalisation narratives are constructed via the use of several different media types, and how such narratives migrate and mutate within a wider network of media. While both chapters analyse the intricacies of how narratives of othering, exclusion, and demonization of the marginal are constructed, they also offer perspectives on how social and religious marginality intersect. They show us the ambiguities of the marginalised and occasionally offer glimpses of a tactical use of marginality on the part of those othered, as well as of how the marginal, and understandings of and relations to the marginal, can be central for the self-formation of a majority group. In her chapter ‘Authority, Genre and Resistance: Child Murder in Medieval Norwich, and its Aftermath’, Miri Rubin discusses how the narrative of child murder accusation that brought Jews to the fore of anxiety about children and their safety rose and spread from the twelfth century onwards, by dissecting Thomas of Monmouth’s composition of a holy biography, namely The Life and Passion of William of Norwich. This piece of hagiography uses several marginal agents who became key in the process of cult formation. The story spread in several media – wall paintings, chronicles, liturgical offices, and more – and spurred similar accusations against Jews elsewhere. In its many transmutations, across centuries and regions, versions of this narrative nourished anti-Jewish sentiments throughout Europe and, later, beyond it too. Rubin’s elegant tracing of the narrative networks demonstrates that emergent narratives and related images are almost always born at the margins of the imaginable, and they are tested out upon those who can least effectively resist, the marginal. Rubin’s piece also shows how the marginal and the excluded could be very central to the self-perceptions of the majority group, and how they could dominate discourses about identity and religious practice. Louise N. Kallestrup discusses the witch hunts of early modern Lutheran Denmark in the chapter ‘Wrath and Fear. Lutheranism and the Marginalisation of Witches in Early Modern Denmark’. Her chapter studies instances of how religious and social marginalisation came to overlap in postReformation Denmark as seen in the witch trials instigated by the Danish king’s lieutenants. The analysis details how these trials functioned as demonstrations of the fidelity of the lieutenants to Lutheranism, as well as how the court protocols functioned as media that transmitted, repeated, and authorised local narratives about ‘evil women’ and legitimised specific

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emotional practices of fear and anger. A popular notion of evil women permeated the Danish trials, and was particularly prevalent in cases against the socially marginalised. In the cases against alleged witches, the social marginalisation of evil people came to fuse with the religious marginalisation of witches perpetrated by the authorities. Yet, the court protocols also bring out the ambiguity of the marginalised and offer glimpses of a tactical use of marginality on the part of the accused. Finally, in the fourth section, Performing Marginality: Contemporary Religious Belongings and Media Cultures, the contributions focus on religious mutations in the contemporary era, via case studies of the performance of marginality in a mediatised, late modern environment. Starting off in contemporary, majority Lutheran Norway, moving to minority Catholicism in Denmark, we end in a globalised form of evangelicalism. Ingvild S. Gilhus uses the case of Joralf Gjerstad, also known as ‘The Man from Snåsa’ (Snåsamannen), as a starting point for a broader discussion of transformations of religious authority and mediatisation in contemporary Norway, Trolle treats a marginal, female visionary in minority Filippino Catholicism in Denmark, while Schüler discusses the 24-7Prayer-movement within the context of contemporary evangelicalism. These chapters touch upon mediatisation and contemporary religious transformations. In her chapter, ‘Mutations of Religious Authority in Contemporary Norway – Marginality and Mediatisation in the Case of ‘The Man from Snåsa’ (Snåsamannen), Ingvild S. Gilhus traces the rise of the rural media celebrity and healer, Joralf Gjerstad, in contemporary Norway. Gilhus uses mediatisation theory in combination with an adapted version of Jonathan Z. Smith’s spatial model of religious distribution to analyse the interaction between the media and the Church of Norway in the case of Snåsamannen. She shows how Joralf Gjerstad appears marginal from the perspective of the urban centres of Norway and how this sort of marginality goes well with the idea of Norwegian roots, nostalgia, and ideas of authenticity, and this makes Gjerstad attractive and turns his marginality into a valuable asset. The efficient media coverage of Gjerstad, the support from celebrities and a broad acceptance, has facilitated an official approval of him in the Norwegian Lutheran church, where bishops and priests use their authority to offer him legitimacy at the same time as the Church benefits from his charismatic authority. Gjerstad’s charismatic authority does not undermine the authority of the Church; on the contrary, it supports it by being based on alleged divine intervention and a Christian tradition of regarding marginality as an asset. This means that the media have contributed to widening the conception of what is regarded as legitimate religious authority in

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the Church of Norway today. It also means that in the case of Joralf Gjerstad, mediatisation is part of a process of ‘religionification’ rather than a process of secularisation. In Astrid Krabbe Trolle’s chapter, ‘Catholic Migrant, Unknown Visionary’, we relocate to contemporary Denmark, minority Catholicism, and a discussion of the limitations of social and religious marginality in contemporary society. Trolle presents the case of Gloria, a Filipino migrant in her sixties and a devout Catholic living in Denmark. Throughout her life, she has had an ongoing conversation with figures from the Catholic pantheon of saints, but despite attempts of recognition from her local environments as a visionary, she has failed. Trolle argues that this case of failure throws light on the complexity of marginality as a tactic in the late modern period. Essentially, Gloria’s unsuccessful quest for religious authority shows how the tactical and creative use of marginality is limited by social circumstances. Gloria’s revelations are only mediated by her own oral narratives of the events, and that form of mediation has not proven authoritative enough to establish a context around her visions in the contemporary mediatised society. Although she places herself in a devotional tradition where certain forms of social marginality are well established as fruitful means for mediating what is framed as divine presence, Gloria’s social marginality as a migrant keeps her from taking advantage of the established Catholic codes of recognition. Finally, with Sebastian Schüler’s chapter ‘Prayers and Stories as Media and Materiality: Changing Sources of Authority in the Emerging Church Movement’, we dive into authority mutations within contemporary evangelicalism. Schüler analyses the role and place of the 24-7Prayer-movement and discusses the functions of media and materiality in the discourse on marginality and its influence on authority in the movement. He shows how the intentions, performances, and media culture of the Emerging Church Movement (of which the 24-7Prayer Movement forms a part) to renew evangelicalism from the margins have contributed to changing concepts and sources of authority. The media culture of the Emerging Church Movement has shifted from ‘mediatisation’ in terms of the influence of modern (mass) media on religion to ‘intermediality’ in terms of the use of shifting forms of media and an entwinement with material culture. This shift in media culture has been used to foster a shared sense of a marginalised reality. The use of online media such as websites, videos, and a weekly newsletter with online links to video messages is combined with practices of prayer and story-telling on paper, in works of art, poems, blogs, and books. Importantly, it is also connected to a subversive attitude concerning the role of religious authority and the centring of the religious self as a source

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of authority that is independent from institutionalised structures and an attempt to create a new and more mobile form of religious belonging characterised by loose, shifting and temporary networks. This shift in authority is accomplished through the triggering and embedding of an aesthetic dimension of authority in the believers’ everyday lives. Mediating Marginality – Mutations of Authority With this book, we hope to bring out the complexities of the theme of marginality and to demonstrate the key importance of this theme for authority changes in the history of different forms of Christianity, as well as to offer media-based pointers for comparative, historical studies more broadly in the long history of religions. As shown in this book, marginality has both social and religious aspects; marginality can be both involuntary and voluntary, borne out by broader circumstances and ascribed by those in power, as well as actively sought out and performed as a way to verbalise and contact ‘the other world’ in shifting religious imaginaries. Marginality can be an asset as well as a stigma. It is invariably perspectival, relational, and relative to a broader context. Consequently, it is important to analyse how marginality is culturally and historically embedded if we wish to grasp the changing value ascriptions and understandings it can be assigned and how it can play an active part in the constitution, negotiation, and mutation of authority constellations. As emphasised here, marginality and authority always form parts of broader media cultures and this means that we have to think about and study social and religious transformations as dependent on a broader range of agents for change than sometimes done. In studies of authority changes and forms of marginality, human persons, ideas, and institutions have often been understood as key. Here, we suggest that we should also include, to a greater degree, forms of media and materiality in our discussions. Special things, paraphernalia, buildings, spatial practices, visual culture, technologies of the self and the body, online social media, and more should factor centrally into discussions of how authority and marginality function. Finally, for the study of the history of different forms of Christianity, we hope that this book will encourage more research on the myriads of material media through which this religion functions; on the media that play a role for how it becomes an influence that compels and is made sensible to the bodies and minds of its adherents, and on how these material media have played key roles in authority constellations and transformations historically.

II. ATHANASIUS’ LIFE OF ANTONY: MARGINALITY, SPATIALITY AND MEDIALITY Jan N. Bremmer

Athanasius’ Life of Antony (abbreviated henceforth as V[ita] A[ntonii]), which he wrote shortly after Antony’s death in AD 356, is one of the most popular religious biographies of all time,1 except for the gospels. It has been translated into numerous languages, from Latin to Georgian and from Armenian to Arabic, to mention just the early ones.2 Why was and is this work about a marginal man so popular? It is of course impossible to answer this complex question in a brief contribution. Instead, I will concentrate on some smaller issues which, nevertheless, may help us answer this overarching problem. First, how did Athanasius compose his biography of Antony and how should we approach it (§ 1)? Secondly, how does he construct the marginal position of Antony? On which aspects of Antony’s life does he concentrate in this regard, and why does he think Antony’s marginality is important (§ 2)? Last, but not least, what can we say about the intended readership of the Life and its reception in the East and the West? Averil Cameron has persuasively argued that ‘the ascetic drive is closely, indeed, explicitly, bound to linguistic expression’ and that ‘real lives, it was hinted, should follow the pattern set in the texts, themselves accounts of 1 The standard edition is G.J.M. Bartelink, Athanase d’Alexandrie, Vie d’Antoine (Paris, 1994), to which the chapter numbers in the text refer. His text has been used by the Greek-German edition of P. Gemeinhardt, Athanasius: Vita Antonii – Leben des Antonius (Freiburg, 2018), whose introduction and commentary are more elaborate than Bartelink’s edition. I am most grateful to Peter Gemeinhardt for letting me see his edition before publication. For the date of composition, between AD 356 and 362, see A. Martin, Athanase d’Alexandrie et l’Église d’Égypte au IVe siècle (328-373) (Rome, 1996) 826. For the status quaestionis of all kinds of aspects of the Life, see D. Wyrwa, ‘Literarische und theologische Gestaltungs-elemente in der Vita Antonii des Athanasius’, in J. van Oort and D. Wyrwa (eds.), Autobiographie und Hagiographie in der christlichen Antike (Leuven, 2009) 12-62; Gemeinhardt, Athanasius: Vita Antonii, 22-100. 2 See É. Poirot, Saint Antoine le Grand dans l’Orient chrétien: dossier littéraire, hagiographique, liturgique, iconographique en langue française, 2 vols (Frankfurt, 2014); see also below § 3.

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exemplary lives … Integral to it is the implication that texts and real life – social behaviour – are in fact closely linked. While appearing to be the discourse of retreat, and thus of the marginalised, it calls for an audience’.3 These observations raise the question of the impact of the book on its intended readers, its mediality, and the role played in it by Antony’s marginality. Additionally, Athanasius’ biography also throws light on authority changes in his time, and we will have to come back to that aspect too, as it is key for the other issues (§ 3). Let us start, however, with some observations on Athanasius’ biography. 1. The Composition and Content of the Life of Antony The content of Athanasius’ biography is, in a nutshell, as follows. Born about 251, Antony grew up in a well-to-do family, but turned to the ascetic life after having heard the call of the Gospel in church: ‘If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me’ (Matthew 19.21, tr. NRSV), a scene that is at the basis of the famous conversion scene of Augustine in his Confessions (8.12.20), although the latter was in a garden, not in a church, when he heard this verse.4 At age 35, Antony conquered the demons that were attacking him while still in the vicinity of his village (10). He then proceeded to the desert where he remained for 20 years.5 Here he became more and more famous until in the end people broke open his cell and ‘Antony came forth, as from an inner shrine, initiated in the mysteries and filled with the spirit of God’.6 Now at the age of 55, he was so successful that the desert was filled with hermits (44). But Antony felt oppressed by all the attention so he moved even further away, to the Upper Thebaid, where 3 Av. Cameron, ‘Ascetic Closure and the End of Antiquity’, in V.L. Wimbush and R. Valantasis (eds.), Asceticism (New York, 1998) 147-61 at 153 (quotations). 4 P.W. van der Horst, Japhet in the Tents of Shem (Leuven, 2002) 167-68 (with bibliography); R. Lane Fox, Augustine: Conversions and Confessions (London, 2015) 278-80. 5 Bartelink translates τὸ ὄρος (12.3) with ‘mountain’, but in Egypt the Greek word for ‘mountain’ can also mean ‘desert’, cf. É. De Strycker, La forme la plus ancienne du Protévangile de Jacques (Brussels, 1981) 422-23; H. Cadell and R. Rémondon, ‘Sens et emplois de τὸ ὄρος dans les documents papyrologiques’, Revue des Études Grecques 80 (1967) 343-49. Athanasius also frequently uses the term ἔρημος to indicate the loneliness of what nowadays is often called ‘wilderness’, cf. VA 3.2, 8.2, 11.1, 13.2, etc. For a similar occurrence of both ὄρος and ἔρημος in the Gospel of Matthew, see L. Feldt, ‘Ancient Wilderness Mythologies— The Case of Space and Religious Identity Formation in the Gospel of Matthew’, Archiv für Religionsgeschichte 16 (2015) 163-92. 6 Athanasius, VA 14.2: προῆλθεν ὁ Ἀντώνιος ὥσπερ ἔκ τινος ἀδύτου μεμυσταγωγημένος καὶ θεοφορούμενος.

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he settled in the inner desert or mountain (49-51), now about 60 years old. In his late 80s,7 he descended once to Alexandria to assist in the struggle against the Arians (69-70), but eventually he died in his last chosen place at the age of about 105 (91-92). This brief account of Antony’s life should not conceal the fact that Athanasius’ work is a patchwork biography. Even though one may agree with Peter Gemeinhardt, in the most recent and attractive biography of Antony, that Athanasius is the composer of the work and has put his stamp on it,8 one cannot overlook the fact that, to a larger or lesser degree, Athanasius has used at least four sources that can be identified: 1. Athanasius mentions that he has drawn on an existing report from a contemporary of Antony who knew him well, possibly his friend Serapion of Thmuis (82.3, 91.9);9 this use of a Vorlage is confirmed by the vocabulary of his biography, which sometimes differs markedly from that of the rest of his work.10 2. Athanasius also took over parts of a biography of Pythagoras,11 if perhaps indirectly; in any case, as Richard Reitzenstein has persuasively argued,12 7

For the date, see Bartelink and Gemeinhardt on VA 69.2. P. Gemeinhardt, Antonius der erste Mönch (Munich, 2013) 21-26. 9 M. Tetz, ‘Athanasius und die Vita Antonii. Literarische und theologische Relationen’, Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 73 (1982) 1-30, repr. in id., Athanasiana (Berlin and New York, 1995) 155-84. 10 So, rightly, T.D. Barnes, Early Christian Hagiography and Roman History (Tübingen, 2010) 160-70. However, Barnes goes too far by denying Athanasius the authorship of the Life, cf. Gemeinhardt, Athanasius: Vita Antonii, 31-33. 11 Contra Gemeinhardt, Athanasius: Vita Antonii, 39-42, who prefers to think of Athanasius’ familiarity with the ideal of the philosopher as ascetic, but this underestimates the closeness with Porphyry’s biography of Pythagoras in an important passage, cf. R. Reitzenstein, Des Athanasius Werk über das Leben des Antonius. Ein philologischer Beitrag zur Geschichte des Mönchtums, in Sitzungsberichte der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften. Philosophisch-historische Klasse no. 8 (Heidelberg, 1914); Bremmer, ‘Richard Reitzenstein, Pythagoras and the Life of Antony’, in A.-B. Renger and A. Stavru (eds.), Forms and Transformations of Pythagorean Knowledge (Wiesbaden, 2016) 218-35. Tetz, ‘Athanasius und die Vita Antonii’, 20, ascribes the use of Porphyry to Serapion, but this seems unnecessarily complicated. 12 Unlike most of his contemporaries, Reitzenstein (1861-1931) was at home both in pagan and Christian literature, cf. E. Fraenkel et al. (eds.), Festschrift Richard Reitzenstein zum 2. April 1931 dargebracht (Leipzig and Berlin, 1931) 160-68 (bibliography); M. Pohlenz, ‘Richard Reitzenstein’, Nachrichten von der Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, Geschäftliche Mitteilungen 1930/31 (Berlin, 1931) 66-76 (usually overlooked); W. Fauth, ‘Richard Reitzenstein, Professor der Klassischen Philologie 1914-1928’, in C.J. Classen (ed.), Die Klassische Altertumswissenschaft an der Georg-August-Universität Göttingen (Göttingen, 1989) 178-96; K. Prümm, ‘Reitzenstein’, in Dictionnaire de la Bible, Suppl. 10 (Paris, 1985) 200-10; G. Audring, Gelehrtenalltag. Der Briefwechsel zwischen Eduard Meyer und Georg Wissowa (1890-1927) (Hildesheim, 2000) 10-13 (on young Reitzenstein); S. Marchand, ‘From Liberalism to Neoromanticism: Albrecht Dieterich, Richard Reitzenstein, and the 8

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Athanasius does not seem to have known Porphyry’s Life of Pythagoras, but he used its main source, which was probably the biography by the firstcentury AD author Nicomachus, now unfortunately lost.13 3. At the beginning and end of his work Athanasius employs Lucian’s biography of the Cynic Demonax – the Cynics of course being relatively similar in their lifestyle to that of the early Christian hermits and monks and often using the same symbols of marginality as did the Pythagoreans.14 4. Even if Athanasius never met Antony personally, which seems not unlikely,15 he must have heard enough about Antony to write his biography.16 Given the loss of both the original report and Nicomachus’ biography of Pythagoras, it is not easy to determine the oral tradition Athanasius employed and his original contribution but, as we will see shortly, some theological ideas ascribed to Antony can be identified as stemming from Athanasius himself.

Despite the fact that Athanasius tells us, in the Prologue (5), that he had to finish the biography in a hurry because of the approaching end of the sailing season (§ 3), the book is surprisingly well composed, although we still find some obvious seams caused by the use of the different sources.17 Now Porphyry’s biography of Pythagoras can be divided into two parts: life and teaching,18 and a similar structure can be seen, to some extent, in the Life of Antony.19 Yet this similarity is not specific enough to conclude that Religious Turn in Fin-de-Siècle German Classical Studies’, in I. Gildenhard and M. Ruehl (eds.), Out of Arcadia. Classics and Politics in Germany in the Age of Burckhardt, Nietzsche and Wilamowitz (London, 2003) 129-60 at 151-58. 13 Reitzenstein, Leben des Antonius, 15. 14 O. Overwien, ‘Neues zu den Quellen der Vita Antonii des Athanasius’, Millennium 3 (2006) 159-84. As he observes (p. 167 n. 33), Reitzenstein, Leben des Antonius, 6 and 29 had already noted parallels with Lucian’s Demonax. Cynics and Christians: M.-O. Goulet-Cazé, Cynisme et christianisme dans l’Antiquité (Paris, 2014). On monks, hermits and Pythagoreans, see Bremmer, ‘Symbols of Marginality from Early Pythagoreans to Late Antique Monks’, Greece & Rome 39 (1992) 205-14. 15 Tetz, ‘Athanasius und die Vita Antonii’, 24, makes a good case against Athanasius having met Antonius personally; similarly, Gemeinhardt, Athanasius: Vita Antonii, 30-31, but see also the objections of E. Wipszycka, Moines et communautés monastiques en Égypte (ive – viiie siècles) (Warsaw, 2009) 233; D. Brakke, Athanasius and Asceticism (Baltimore and London, 1995) 205-06 thinks that Athanasius met Antony only once. 16 For a possible example, see J. Zecher, ‘Antony’s Vision of Death? Athanasius of Alexandria, Palladius of Helenopolis, and Egyptian Mortuary Religion’, Journal of Late Antiquity 7 (2014) 159-76. 17 Tetz, ‘Athanasius und die Vita Antonii’. 18 See the detailed analysis of the structure by G. Staab, Pythagoras in der Spätantike. Studien zu De Vita Pythagorica des Iamblichos von Chalkis (Munich and Leipzig, 2002) 118-21. 19 For the structure of the Life, see also Gemeinhardt, Athanasius: Vita Antonii, 44-47.

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Porphyry or his source was the main model after all. In the end, one cannot but agree with what Averil Cameron writes about the Life and Eusebius’ Life of Constantine: ‘both are innovative, and the innovation in each case consists precisely in the creative adaptation and translation of existing patterns to new needs’.20 But what was Athanasius’ aim with his biography? More recently, there has been a new development in this respect, as Samuel Rubenson has demonstrated that we should not look at the biography in isolation but also take into account the existing letters of Antony, having made a plausible and generally accepted case for their authenticity.21 Even if they are not authentic, which is unlikely, they must derive from the fourth century as they were known to Jerome (Vir. ill. 88). This discovery has fundamentally changed the traditional interpretation of the Life, and I see here three different approaches in the last three decades. First, my Groningen colleague Hans Roldanus has closely compared the Life with the Letters and Athanasius’ other work in order to show that, in addition to similarities, important differences remain between the saint and his biographer, which enable us to identify the main contribution of Athanasius. Next to the important theme of a victory over the Devil and his demons,22 the focus on the incarnation of Christ and the auspicious nature of the feats of our saint are the contributions of Athanasius, whereas the exhortations to re-establish the natural purity of the soul in oneself as the source of all virtues (20) and knowing the future (34) must have been typical of Antony, just like the distinction between good and evil spirits

20 Av. Cameron, ‘Form and Meaning: The Vita Constantini and the Vita Antonii’, in T. Hägg and Ph. Rousseau (eds.), Greek Biography and Panegyric in Late Antiquity (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 2000) 72-88 at 86; see also C. Rapp, ‘The Literature of Early Monasticism: Purpose and Genre between Tradition and Innovation’, in C. Kelly et al. (eds.), Unclassical Traditions. Alternatives to the Classical Past in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, 2010) 119-30; T. Hägg, ‘The Life of St Antony between Biography and Hagiography’, in S. Efthymiadis (ed.), The Ashgate Research Companion to Byzantine Hagiography I (Farnham, 2011) 17-34. 21 S. Rubenson, The Letters of St. Antony: Origenist Theology, Monastic Tradition and the Making of a Saint (Lund, 1990) = Letters of St. Antony: Monasticism and the Making of a Saint (Minneapolis, 19952), updated in Poirot, Saint Antoine le Grand, 133-202 and Gemeinhardt, Athanasius: Vita Antonii, 72-76; see also P. Tóth, ‘“In volumine Longobardo”: New Light on the Date and Origin of the Latin Translation of the Letters of St Antony the Great’, Studia Patristica 64 (2013) 47-58. The Coptic translation of the Life (93) actually hints at the fact that Antony left smallish writings, cf. M. Choat, ‘The Life of Antony in Egypt’, in B. Leyerle and R. Young (eds.), Ascetic Culture: Essays in Honor of Philip Rousseau (Notre Dame, 2013) 50-74 at 52. 22 Cf. P. Alvarez, ‘Demon Stories in the Life of Antony by Athanasius’, Cistercian Studies 23 (1988) 101-18.

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(34.4).23 We may perhaps add that Antony’s warnings against the heresies of the Arians and Melitians (68 and 89) also occur in a letter of Athanasius to the bishops of Egypt and Libya of ca. 356 and in a newly discovered fragment of his famous 39th Festal Letter of 367: surely, we also see the orthodox bishop at work here rather than the aging hermit.24 Whereas Roldanus concentrates on the Christian aspects of the Life and leaves the non-Christian ones aside, Rubenson stresses the importance of seeing Antony as an anti-Pythagoras.25 According to him, the Life was Athanasius’ counter-move in a war of biographies in which Christians and pagans competed over whose saint was the most divine philosopher. This interpretation undoubtedly goes too far, as there is next to no evidence for such a war.26 Moreover, Rubenson’s concentration on the pagan philosophers does not do justice to the long oration of Antony about the demons or his continuing focus on the incarnated Christ. Still, there can be little doubt that Athanasius directs his polemical arrows against Greek paideia, of which Pythagoras, next to Plato, was the most important representative in Late Antiquity.27 Although the anti-Pythagorean aspect of Antony is not the main thrust of Athanasius’ work, it certainly is an important one. 23 See J. Roldanus: ‘Die Vita Antonii als Spiegel der Theologie des Athanasius’, Theologie und Philosophie 58 (1983) 194-216, ‘Athanase en face d’Antoine, maître des moines. Confluence ou correction de perspectives?’, in C.F.G. de Jong and J. van Sluis (eds.), Gericht verleden. Feestbundel W. Nijenhuis (Leiden, 1991) 11-48, ‘Origène, Antoine et Athanase: leur interconnection dans la Vie et les Lettres’, Studia Patristica 26 (1993) 389-414 and ‘Perspectives et corrections infiltrées par Athanase dans la Vie d’Antoine: un nouvel examen’, in La narrativa cristiana antica: codici narrativi, strutture formali, schemi retorici = Studia Ephemeridis Augustinianum 50 (Rome, 1995) 211-16. 24 Athanasius, Epistula ad episcopos Aegypti et Libyae 21-22; D. Brakke, ‘A New Fragment of Athanasius’s Thirty-Ninth Festal Letter: Heresy, Apocrypha, and the Canon’, Harvard Theological Review 103 (2010) 47-66. For the Melitian schism, see most recently T.R. Karmann, Meletius von Antiochien. Studien zur Geschichte des trinitätstheologischen Streits in den Jahren 360–364 n. Chr. (Frankfurt, 2009); H. Hauben, Studies on the Melitian schism in Egypt (AD 306-335), ed. P. Van Nuffelen (Farnham, 2011); P. Gemeinhardt, Die Kirche und ihre Heiligen (Tübingen, 2014) 346-49; H. Barkman, ‘The Church of the Martyrs in Egypt and North Africa: A Comparison of the Melitian and Donatist Schisms’, Journal of the Canadian Society for Coptic Studies 6 (2014) 41-58. 25 S. Rubenson, ‘Anthony and Pythagoras: A Reappraisal of the Appropriation of Classical Biography in Athanasius’ Vita Antonii’, in D. Brakke et al. (eds.), Beyond Reception. Mutual Influences between Antique Religion, Judaism and Early Christianity (Frankfurt, 2006) 191-203; ‘Monasticism and the Philosophical Heritage’, in S. Johnson (ed.), Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity (Oxford, 2012) 487-512 and ‘Apologetics of Asceticism. The Life of Antony and its Political Context’, in Leyerle and Young, Ascetic Culture, 75-96. 26 Note also the critical observations of Gemeinhardt, Athanasius: Vita Antonii, 39-44. 27 So, rightly, A.P. Urbano, The Philosophical Life: Biography and the Crafting of Intellectual Identity in Late Antiquity (Washington DC, 2013) 205-28; E. Watts, The Final Pagan Generation (Oakland, 2015) 154-57; note also C. Bay, ‘ The Transformation and Transmis-

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In fact, this anti-Pythagorean tendency shows in an unexpected detail: Athanasius’ claim of Antony’s extreme old age. There can be little doubt that Athanasius only got to know (of?) Antony when the latter was well advanced in age, as he regularly calls him an ‘old man’.28 But how old did he become?29 Athanasius tells us that he was nearly 105 when he died. Given that Jerome informs us that he died in AD 356, he must have been born ca. 251.30 But is that credible? Richard Westall has argued that the average age in Late Antique Egypt was so far below this impressive number that Athanasius must have been mistaken or made it up. Now exceptions to such general rules are always possible, but if Athanasius is right, Antony was in his later 80s when he travelled to Alexandria to oppose the Arians (ca. AD 337: 69.1) and around the same age when he composed his surviving letters.31 This is not very believable. Unfortunately, we have no other indications about Antony’s age, but there is one point in Athanasius’ account where we can be virtually certain that a date supplied by him is not very probable. As Reitzenstein has shown, the picture of Antony coming forth from his isolation after the doors of his cell have been broken (14.1-2) is derived from a biography of Pythagoras (above). After this chapter, Athanasius indeed uses a different source or his own information, as the next anecdote in which he crosses a canal without being eaten by crocodiles (15.1) does not follow on harmoniously from the previous section. It is striking that at this highly important moment, Antony’s age is nearly exactly the same as that of Pythagoras when the latter finishes his travels abroad and returns to Samos. Antony is about 55 (10.4 and 14.1) and Pythagoras is ‘about 56 years old’ when he becomes a teacher of the Greeks. As Reitzenstein already noted, the coincidence is too precise to be true, and Athanasius must have derived Antony’s age at that moment from Pythagoras.32 There is therefore a strong reason to be suspicious about Athanasius’ information. When, in sion of Paideia in Roman Egyptian Monasticism’ = https://www.academia.edu/18049090/ The_Transformation_and_Transmission_of_Paideia_in_Roman_Egyptian_Monasticism. 28 Athanasius, VA 51.1, 54.4, 56.2, 59.4 etc. 29 R. Westall, ‘The Old Age of St. Antony of Egypt; Doubts and Consequences’, Adamantius 15 (2009) 214-28. 30 Athanasius, VA 89.3 (nearly 105); Hieronymus, Chronicon ad annum 356 (death), whence the entry ad annum 252 (birth); see also for the date of his death, R. Draguet, ‘Une lettre de Sérapion de Thmuis aux disciples d’Antoine en version syriaque et arménienne’, Le Muséon 64 (1951) 1-25. 31 Date of his visit: Gemeinhardt on VA 69.1. Date of the Letters: Rubenson, Letters of Antony, 44. 32 Reitzenstein, Leben des Antonius, 18, cf. Iamblichus, Vita Pythagorae 19: εἰς Σάμον ὑπέστρεψε περὶ ἕκτον που καὶ πεντηκοστὸν ἔτος ἤδη γεγονώς.

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addition, we know that according to Iamblichus (Vita Pythagorae 265) Pythagoras lived until nearly 100, it is not difficult to see that Athanasius let Antony trump the pagan sage also in this respect,33 just as he had let him become a teacher at a slightly earlier age than Pythagoras. Antony’s age is clearly a literary construct to a greater extent than realised even by his latest biographer. Obviously, this conclusion has consequences for the chronology of Antony and his career as represented in modern studies, but to elaborate this point in our contribution would carry us too far. The anti-Pythagorean slant of our Life is somewhat neglected and downplayed by our third and final approach. Peter Gemeinhardt has recently advanced the thesis that Athanasius wrote his work with a decisive Martyriumsthematik, claiming that martyr terminology and theology are the basis of our Life.34 He rightly sees Antony’s journey to Alexandria during the persecution by Maximinus Daia as an important moment in his life (46), but it is hardly the major turning point as it takes place well before his final move to the Upper Thebaid (49). Gemeinhardt also interprets several passages as referring to martyrdom when this is not really warranted.35 The pronouncement ‘for I am a slave of Christ’ (52.3) does not refer to the martyrs, but is a quote from Paul (e.g., Rom. 1.1, Gal 1.10 etc), and the exhortation by Antony at the end of his life to the brothers of the Outer Desert (i.e., the areas closest to the inhabited Nile valley, where most monasteries were in fact located) to live as if one could die any day (91.3) hardly has anything to do with martyrdom either.36 In fact, as we will see (§ 3), Athanasius was rather opposed to the cult of the martyrs and would not have liked to depict his hero as one of them. Finally, and most importantly, Gemeinhardt’s interpretation passes over the fact that after Kyrios, daimôn and theos, askêsis and related words occur most often in the Life, five times more often than martys and martyreô.37

33 But note that Jerome (Life of Paul 7) trumps Athanasius by letting Paul reach the age of 113. 34 Gemeinhardt, Die Kirche und ihre Heiligen, 327-60 (‘Vita Antonii oder Passio Antonii? Biographisches Genre und martyrologische Topik in der ersten Asketenvita’, first published in 2012) and Athanasius: Vita Antonii, 45-47. 35 Gemeinhardt, Die Kirche und ihre Heiligen, 343. 36 As is clear from the explanation of this expression in VA 19. 37 The counting by Wyrwa, ‘Literarische und theologische Gestaltungselemente’, 290 note 9 is based on Bartelink’s index, which is not exhaustive. Using the text of Bartelink, we find the following frequencies: Κύριος 92; δαίμων 70; θεός 57; ἄσκησις and related forms (ἀσκέω, ἀσκητηρίος, [συν]ἀσκητής) 54; μάρτυς/μαρτυρέω 11. For the language of ἄσκησις, see M. Sheridan, ‘Monastic Culture: a Comparison of the Concepts of Askesis and Asceticism’, in Ph. Nouzille (ed.), Monasticism between Culture and Cultures (Rome, 2013) 17-34 and

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In other words, Athanasius stresses that God did not want Antony to suffer martyrdom, but had chosen to make him the master of a great number of people in the askêsis (46.6). It is this stress on the ascetic lifestyle with Antony as its model that will be one of the reasons of the immediate success of the Life in the ancient world, given that the persecutions with their martyrdoms had already ended half a century earlier (§ 3). So where does all this leave us? Clearly, there is no consensus on the precise aims that Athanasius may have had with his biography. After Reitzenstein, there can be no doubt that Athanasius used a biography of Pythagoras, but Athanasius was not a slavish follower of his sources and he presented Antony in various respects as an anti-Pythagoras. Moreover, Roldanus’ studies have shown that behind Antony we can regularly detect the theological insights of Athanasius. Yet, the precise nature of the various subtexts, such as its presentation of Antony as well as the theology, the anti-philosophical slant, the idea of martyrdom and its view of ecclesiastical authority are still matters of discussion. 2. Antony’s Marginality: Spatially and Socially In this section I will try to shed some more light on one of these subtexts: the manner in which the marginality of Antony is constructed. Clearly, Athanasius has fashioned Antony’s Life according to a spatial scheme, as he describes how Antony gradually moves from the edge of the village to the deep desert.38 This spatial distancing from civilisation is concomitant with an increasing distancing from the normal features of the civilised life of somebody of his class. Athanasius even lets Antony’s life begin at a lower level than he almost certainly was positioned by calling him an Egyptian by birth (1.1) and letting him speak only Coptic (16.1, 72.3, 74.2, 77.1), that is, by picturing him as somebody who was below the cultured class of the Hellenised elite. It fits this tendency of Athanasius that Antony, when still a child, refused ‘to learn letters’ (1.2). When his parents died, he gave away his ancestral land (2.4) to the villagers and sold his

‘Early Egyptian Monasticism: Ideals and Reality, or: The Shaping of the Monastic Ideal’, Journal of the Canadian Society for Coptic Studies 7 (2015) 9-48 at 14-17. 38 See also D.Ø. Endsjø, ‘“The truth is out there”: Primordial lore and ignorance in the wilderness of Athanasius’ Vita Antonii’, in L. Feldt (ed.), Wilderness in Mythology and Religion (Berlin and Boston, 2012) 113-29 (although he continuously confuses Greek eschatia and eschata); F. Rivas Rebaque, ‘Consagración del espacio en la Vida de san Antonio. Salir a los desiertos para adentrarse en Dios’, CONFER 54 (2015) 307-27; Gemeinhardt, Athanasius: Vita Antonii, 48-50.

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goods, giving the proceeds to the poor, except for a small reserve for his only sister (2.5). In this initial stage, Athanasius stresses Antony’s separation from his family – he entrusted his sister to faithful virgins (3.1)39 – but also that he did not yet live that far from his own village (3.4). When the Devil tried to seduce him, he intensified his ascetic life by regularly staying up all night, fasting several days on end as well as limiting his food to bread, salt and water (7). Subsequently, he entered a tomb at some distance from the village (8). At age 35, after the Lord had shown his help against the demons, he left the surroundings of his village and took up a deserted fortress at a place with fresh water and with a six-month supply of bread (12). Here he remained for twenty years until at last his doors were broken open and he appeared unchanged. (14). After having assisted martyrs during the last pagan persecution, he returned to his fortress and once again intensified his ascetic life (47). He now wore an animal skin with the hairs on the inside and the leather on the outside, thus punishing his skin all the time. In addition, he stopped bathing and never washed his feet. (47.2). At the end of the Life, Athanasius confirms once again that he never wanted nice food, never washed and never changed his garment (93.1). We are left with the picture of an extremely marginal figure, although accompanied by two disciples in his final years,40 but of impressive holiness through his asceticism and orthodoxy. Yet how credible is this picture of the unlettered but very holy Egyptian? It must be said that serious doubts can be raised. To start with his name: Antonius is of course a Roman name, which was very popular in Egypt in the first centuries AD; unfortunately, though, it does not give any indication of Antony’s background.41 We find ourselves on more certain ground when we look where Antony was born. His place of birth was Koma in the Herakleopolite nome, 80 kilometres south of Greek Memphis. At the turn of our era, there was a gymnasium in Koma, as a papyrus (BGU IV.1188.2) mentions a local gymnasiarch. In other words, the village from which

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Unfortunately, nothing is known about these virgins. For his type of hermit, see C. Rapp, ‘Die unvollständige Weltflucht des frühen Mönchtums’, in H.-G. Nesselrath and M. Rühl (eds.), Der Mensch zwischen Weltflucht und Weltverantwortung: Lebensmodelle der paganen und der jüdisch-christlichen Antike (Tübingen, 2014) 167-79. 41 For possible explanations of the assumption of Roman names, see P. van Minnen, ‘A Change of Names in Roman Egypt after A.D. 202?’, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 62 (1986) 87-92; Y. Broux, ‘Explicit Name Change in Roman Egypt’, Chronique d’Égypte 88 (2013) 313-36. For the popularity of the name, see Trismegistos People, Nam_ ID 2091: http://www.trismegistos.org/nam/detail.php?record=2091 (accessed 12-12-2017). 40

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Antony came had a, perhaps partially, Hellenised population.42 There also was a temple, as another papyrus mentions priests (BGU IV.1197.9), and these had to know Greek in order to be able to operate their temple under Roman rule.43 In this village his father was a landowner of considerable fortune. We need not believe the exact number of 300 arourai that Athanasius gives, but even with much less land, he would have been a big man, who naturally would belong to the Greek-speaking class and had to do his transactions in Greek.44 Greek was widely spoken in Egypt at that time, even in the villages, as is shown by the fact that contemporary Egyptian already included a good deal of interference from Greek.45 Moreover, increasing attention to Demotic Egyptian has shown the frequent interaction with Greek literature.46 Consequently, a monolingual Antony without any knowledge of Greek is already highly improbable on these general grounds. However, several indications in the text strongly suggest that he was well educated in his youth, also in Greek. Antony’s refusal ‘to learn letters’,47 at least according to Athanasius, is usually misunderstood. By comparing the occurrence of the same expression in chapter 20, Raffaella Cribiore has recently been able to explain that this refusal does not mean that Antony hardly had any literary education,48 but that he did not want to go abroad as a student in order to study: he preferred to remain at home ‘for the sake of the kingdom of heavens’ (20.4).49 In the meantime, though, he had learned a good bit of Greek mythology (76-77), which was typical of the primary writing exercises.50 Antony’s refusal to go abroad clearly suggests 42 Sozomen, Historia Ecclesiastica 1.13.2; M.R. Falivene, The Herakleopolite Nome (Atlanta, 1998) 109-12. 43 R.S. Bagnall, Egypt in Late Antiquity (Princeton, 1993) 241. 44 Cf. Bagnall, Egypt, 117, for the size of village farms. 45 Bagnall, Egypt, 240-46 (villages); I. Rutherford, ‘Bilingualism in Roman Egypt? Phratres of Narmouthis and the Origin of Coptic’, in T. Evans and D. Obbink (eds.), Buried Linguistic Treasure (Oxford, 2009) 198-207 (interference); S. Torallas Tovar, ‘What is Greek and what is Coptic? School Texts as a Window into the Perception of Greek Loanwords in Coptic’, in F. Feder and A. Lohwasser (eds.), Ägypten und sein Umfeld in der Spätantike. Vom Regierungsantritt Diokletians 284/285 bis zur arabischen Eroberung des Vorderen Orients um 635–646 (Wiesbaden, 2013) 109-19. 46 I. Rutherford (ed.), Greco-Egyptian Interactions. Literature, Translation, and Culture, 500 BC-AD 300 (Oxford, 2016). 47 Athanasius, VA 1.2: γράμματα μὲν μαθεῖν οὐκ ἠνέσχετο. 48 Thus Gemeinhardt, Antonius, 35-36, nuanced by Gemeinhardt, Athanasius: Vita Antonii, 58, 108. 49 For this meaning, not properly understood before, see R. Cribiore, Libanius the Sophist: Rhetoric, Reality, and Religion in the Fourth Century (Ithaca and London, 2013) 67-68. 50 Many publications by Raffaella Cribiore, but see especially her ‘Greek and Coptic Education in Late Antique Egypt’, in S. Emmel et al. (eds.), Ägypten und Nubien in spätantiker

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a wealthy home, just as another neglected detail does. He also refused to be anointed with oil, ‘saying that it fitted young men to be earnest in training and not to look for what would soften the body’.51 The reference is unmistakably to the young men of the gymnasium or the gymnasial community, the neoi or neôteroi, who anointed their bodies with oil, as many an inscription tells us;52 we even have a papyrus, which is addressed: ‘To the gymnasium, to Theon, son of Nikoboulos, the oil-supplier’.53 Again, if he was not a member of that Greek-speaking community, Antony would not have had reason to comment on this. Moreover, the family went to church, which also presupposes a Greekspeaking background: as was the case with Origen, Antony’s parents were already Christians (1.1) and must have listened to the readings in church in Greek, because at the time of Antony’s birth, ca. 250, or even a few decades later (§ 1), translations of (later) biblical books into Coptic did not yet exist. They would only start to come into being at the end of the third century – at the very earliest.54 The presence of the Christian Church in Egypt before Constantine cannot be quantified, but the number of Christians must already have been quite impressive at the time of Antony’s parents, judging by the number of earlier papyri identified as Christian ones.55 Athanasius also remarks upon the fact that Antony, when he had become an ascetic,

und christlicher Zeit, 2 vols (Wiesbaden, 1999) 2.279-86 and Gymnastics of the Mind: Greek Education in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt (Princeton, 2006). 51 Athanasius, VA 7.8: λέγων μᾶλλον πρέπειν τοὺς νεωτέρους ἐκ προθυμίας ἔχειν τὴν ἄσκησιν καὶ μὴ ζητεῖν τὰ χαυνοῦντα τὸ σῶμα. 52 C.A. Forbes, Neoi (Middletown, 1933) 60-61; Ph. Gauthier and M. Hatzopoulos, La loi gymnasiarhique de Béroia (Athens, 1993) 77-78, 177; A.S. Chankowski, L’Éphébie hellénistique: Étude d’une institution civique dans les cités grecques des îles de la Mer Égée et de l’Asie Mineure (Paris, 2010) 236-317. 53 P.Oxyrhynchus 2.300: εἰς τὸ γυμνάσι(ον) Θέωνι Νικοβούλ(ου) ἐλεοχρειστηι. 54 S. Emmel, ‘Coptic Literature in the Byzantine and Early Islamic World’, in R.S. Bagnall (ed.), Egypt in the Byzantine World 300-700 (Cambridge, 2007) 83-102; T.S. Richter, ‘Greek, Coptic, and the “Language of the Hijra”. Rise and Decline of the Coptic Language in Late Antique and Medieval Egypt’, in H. Cotton et al. (eds.), From Hellenism to Islam: Cultural and Linguistic Change in the Roman Near East (Cambridge, 2009) 402-46; C. Askeland, ‘The Coptic Versions of the New Testament’, in B. Ehrman and M. Holmes (eds.), The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research: Essays on the status quaestionis (Leiden, 20122) 201-30 and ‘Dating Early Greek and Coptic Literary Hands’, in H. Lundhaug and L. Jenott (eds.), The Nag Hammadi Codices and Late Antique Egypt (Tübingen, 2018) 457-89. Sheridan, ‘Early Egyptian Monasticism’, 13 unpersuasively states that Antony heard the Scriptures in Coptic. 55 E.A. Judge, Jerusalem and Athens (Tübingen, 2010) 140-55 (‘The Puzzle of Christian Presence in Egypt Before Constantine’); W. Clarysse and P. Orsini, ‘Christian Manuscripts from Egypt to the Times of Constantine’, in J. Heilmann and M. Klinghardt (eds.), Das Neue Testament und sein Text im 2. Jahrhundert (Tübingen, 2018) 107-14.

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admired the study of biblical writings by other ascetics (4.1).56 Moreover, according to Athanasius, Antony also noted that demons interfered with the ascetics’ reading (25.2), advised monks to write (55.11-12), and responded to the letters he had received from the emperors (81). Taken all together, it is not that difficult to see that the traditional view of monks as illiterate peasants has helped to support the modern idea of Antony as being one of them. Yet, the growing number of findings and publications of Greek and Coptic papyri and manuscripts, as well as a less biased view of the monastic movement, have demonstrated that we should not underestimate the rate of literacy among the early monks in general or in Antony’s case in particular.57 Roger Bagnall and others have repeatedly made the case for the importance of a bilingual elite of Egyptians,58 and Antony’s family surely belonged to that milieu. In fact, we can now see Antony as one of those Egyptians who lived in the transitional period in which Coptic literature took off. There are very few securely dated examples of that literature for the third century, but there is a sudden surge in the earlier fourth century, which coincides with the sudden surge in Christianisation at the time.59 The connection between the two phenomena seems clear. Taking all these indications for a certain degree of literacy in the case of Antony into account, it becomes clear that Athanasius’ stress on Antony being theodidaktos, ‘taught by God’ (66.2 with Gemeinhardt ad loc.), is his own invention. In his representation, Antony’s wisdom was not that of people like Pythagoras and other Greek philosophers (73.2-3), whom he

56 For the meaning of philologein here, see Bartelink ad loc., referring to K. Girardet, ‘φιλολογος und φιλολογεῖν’, Kleronomia 2 (1970) 323-33; see also Gemeinhardt, Athanasius: Vita Antonii, 119. This must also be the meaning in Martyrium Pionii 11.7, contra L. Robert, Le martyre de Pionios prêtre de Smyrne (Washington DC, 1994) 77. 57 See E. Wipszycka, Études sur le Christianisme dans l’Égypte de l’antiquité tardive (Rome, 1996) 123-25, 132-34, 376-77; for later monks, see A. Maravela, ‘Alphabetic Verses and Cipher Alphabets from Western Theban Monasteries: Perspectives on Monastic Literacy in Late Antique Egypt’, in E. Juhász et al. (eds.), Byzanz und das Abendland III (Budapest, 2015) 45-61. 58 Bagnall, Egypt in the Byzantine World, 238-40 and Early Christian Books in Egypt (Princeton, 2009) 68-69; see also P. Fewster, ‘Bilingualism in Roman Egypt’, in J.N. Adams et al. (eds.), Bilingualism in Ancient Society: Language Contact and the Written Word (Oxford 2002) 220-46; A. Papaconstantinou (ed.), The Multilingual Experience in Egypt, from the Ptolemies to the Abbasids (Farnham and Burlington, 2010). 59 Coptic literature: see note 53. For the Christianisation, see M. Depauw and W. Clarysse, ‘How Christian was Fourth Century Egypt? Onomastic Perspectives on Conversion’, Vigiliae Christianae 67 (2013) 407-35. The response by D. Frankfurter, ‘Onomastic Statistics and the Christianization of Egypt: A Response to Depauw and Clarysse’, ibidem 68 (2014) 284-89 does not take the rise of Coptic into account and seems less persuasive, cf. Depauw and Clarysse, ‘Christian Onomastics: A Response to Frankfurter’, ibid. 69 (2015) 327-29.

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even defeated in a debate, but his social marginality in this respect was the precondition for his divine wisdom, which left little or no room for any teaching by humans. Moreover, Athanasius’ biography has the additional aim of showing that it is impossible to live a fully ascetic life within the context of ordinary social obligations.60 That is why Antony not only had to become socially marginal but also spatially marginal. Yet, for reasons that are not wholly clear – perhaps just to make his biography more entertaining or more persuasive? – it is evident that where we can check Athanasius we find that he has often exaggerated Antony’s marginality. In many ways, it is not the historical but an imaginary Antony that we meet in his pages. 3. Mediality: Readership and Reception According to David Brakke, Athanasius’ outline of Antony’s life and some of his activities might be reliable, but his theological sections reflect more that of the author than of his subject.61 Yet, as I have argued (§ 1), we also have to look at Athanasius’ outline of Antony’s life with some suspicion. Moreover, even Athanasius’ presentation of his own work arouses misgivings. In the prologue, Athanasius makes clear that his book is meant for monks, presumably Western ones.62 Two Egyptian monks, Ammonius the Tall and Isidorus, had accompanied Athanasius to the West only a few decades earlier,63 but we can only speculate to whom exactly Athanasius wrote, as proper Western monks were not yet known at that time. This fact is usually overlooked, but confirms Reitzenstein’s observation that the letter form is a literary fiction.64 Yet the mention of the sailing season does suggest the West rather than the coast of Syria or Asia Minor.65 However, there is also another suspicious aspect to the prologue. Athanasius (Prol. 4) calls his work a diegesis, and Claudia Rapp has shown that this term means ‘a brief account of edifying character’. Moreover, it is typical of

60 S. Rubenson, ‘Christian Asceticism and the Emergence of the Monastic Tradition’, in Wimbush and Valantasis, Asceticism, 49-57. 61 Brakke, Athanasius and Asceticism, 204; see also L. Jenott and E. Pagels, ‘Antony’s Letters and Nag Hammadi Codex I: Sources of Religious Conflict in Fourth-Century Egypt’, Journal of Early Christian Studies 18 (2010) 557-89. 62 Cf. Bartelink, Vie d’Antoine, 46, but Gemeinhardt, Athanasius: Vita Antonii, 36-39 argues for an audience in the East. 63 Palladius, Historia Lausiaca 1.4; Socrates, Historia Ecclesiastica 4.23. 64 Reitzenstein, Leben des Antonius, 6-7. The fact that later manuscripts often call the Life a biography may support this suggestion, cf. Gemeinhardt, Athanasius: Vita Antonii, 102. See also Feldt’s chapter in this volume for a discussion of the letter form. 65 Contra P. Brown, Treasure in Heaven (Charlottesville and London, 2016) 77.

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these accounts that the author insists on the truth of his story, usually by stressing that he is an eyewitness or relying on such.66 Indeed, the latter point is stressed by Athanasius himself, when he writes: ‘But since the season for sailing was coming to an end and the letter-carrier urgent, I hastened to write to Your Piety what I myself know, having seen him many times, and what I was able to learn from him [probably Serapion], who was his attendant for a long time and poured water on his hands; in all points being mindful of the truth, that no one should disbelieve through hearing too much, nor on the other hand by hearing too little should despise the man’.67 Now we have already observed that it is unlikely that Athanasius knew Antony well, let alone had seen him many times, but it is also very unlikely that he was under great pressure to finish his biography. As far as I can see, nobody so far has realised that this writing under pressure was a kind of topos in Late Antiquity.68 We can infer this from Jerome’s letter to Fabiola (Ep. 64.22: AD 397): ‘I dictated this [letter] with swift speech in one night’s work when the rope was already loosed from the shore and the sailors calling out repeatedly, what I could hold in my memory and what I collected from my long reading in the breastplate of my breast, understanding more in the impetus of me speaking than flowed to the judgment of the one writing and bringing out turbid speech like a torrent’. Similarly, Augustine writes in the prologue of his De gratia Christi (1.1: AD 426): ‘We have, indeed, had to compose these words to the best of the ability which God has vouchsafed to us, while our messenger was in a hurry [festinante perlatore] to be gone’. In fact, we even find the topos in letters found on papyri and ostraca.69 Naturally, couriers could be in a hurry, but the excuse seems to occur too often not to be a seen as a literary cliché. If we disregard the haste, it also becomes much more understandable that the Life of Antony is extremely readable: Athanasius clearly took his time and composed a well-written work. But for whom was the Life intended? It is only in the East, surely, that somebody like Pythagoras still had such an influence that Athanasius felt he had to style his hero as a kind of anti-Pythagoras. Only in the Levant and Egypt could Athanasius’ monastic ideals be understood as different 66 C. Rapp, ‘Storytelling as Spiritual Communication in Early Greek Hagiography: The Use of Diegesis’, Journal of Early Christian Studies 6 (1998) 431-48; see also Wyrwa, ‘Literarische und theologische Gestaltungs-elemente’, 19. 67 Athanasius, VA, Prol. 5, tr. P. Schaff and H. Wace, adapted. 68 Except for Gemeinhardt, Athanasius: Vita Antonii, 38, who, however, gives no parallels. 69 M. Peppard, ‘A Letter between Two Women, with a Courier about to Depart’, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 167 (2008) 162-66.

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from that of the wandering Syrian holy men or Manichaean Elect.70 And only in Egypt would the problem of the relation between the monks and the clergy be so pressing that it had to be addressed in clear terms. Yet even within Egypt, the readership must have been limited, as the intended readers would have been people who could read Greek, and this excludes the lower classes. This aspect presupposes a fairly wealthy readership in Egypt, as indeed can also be seen from his work, which is surprisingly often occupied with money and business.71 Moreover, also in the West the first readers must have been wealthy, as Greek was quickly declining in importance in the West at this time and increasingly limited to the aristocracy.72 When we view these factors together, the Life presupposes an upper-class readership both in the East and the West, where monasticism indeed started among aristocrats.73 Athanasius probably made several copies of his work before sending it off to Italy so that it could also be read in Egypt and the wider East. In fact, given the attention to media in this book, it is important to note that, unlike today, ancient books were expensive, as Roger Bagnall has recently stressed again.74 To mention one example not listed by him, Abba Serapion was reputed to have sold his little Gospel in order to pay off the debts of somebody who was seized for not paying.75 Consequently, only well-to-do and well-educated people could read Athanasius’ book. Thus, paradoxically, we have here the use of upper-class language in an expensive medium that is meant to propagate a lifestyle that takes leave of all the luxuries of contemporary life, even of a social life (at least most of the time). But how successful was Athanasius with his work? Let us conclude our analysis with a look at the popularity of the Life, as at this point we can notice a striking discrepancy between Egypt, the Holy Land, Syria and Asia Minor, on the one hand, and the West on the other, which has not yet been satisfactorily explained, but which is important to note. It may surprise, but although there are more than 165 Western manuscripts of the Greek Life, 70

As is stressed by Brown, Treasure in Heaven, 77-78. Brakke, Athanasius and Asceticism, 235-38 perceptively notes ‘wealthy men’ among Athanasius’ intended readership; similarly, Gemeinhardt, Athanasius: Vita Antonii, 38. 72 Al. Cameron, The Last Pagans of Rome (Oxford, 2011) 527-66. 73 M. Dunn, The Emergence of Monasticism: From the Desert Fathers to the Early Middle Ages (Oxford, 2000) 59-75, 82-84. 74 Bagnall, Early Christian Books, 50-69, 95-96 (notes); add the interesting discussion of C. Markschies, Christian Theology and Its Institutions in the Early Roman Empire (Waco, 2015) 267-73. 75 J. Wortley, The Anonymous Sayings of the Desert Fathers (Cambridge, 2013) 383 (N.566/15.117). 71

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none comes from Egypt: this high number makes it unlikely that the absence in Egypt is due to a fluke in the Egyptian textual transmission. Moreover, the Life was translated into Coptic only in the sixth century, was not mentioned that often in early Coptic monastic literature and less present in monastic libraries than might have been expected,76 even though Antony is regularly mentioned soon after his death by various monks and reports of monastic life.77 Why would that be so? Malcolm Choat, to whom we owe these observations, does not explain this situation, but a few reasons may be suggested. First, it took some time before Greek writings other than those of the Bible were translated into Coptic. Then, when the Life of Antony was published, Egyptian monasticism was already well established,78 which may have made Athanasius’ claim for the priority of Antony less popular among other monks, such as Pachomius and his monastery. Third, Athanasius stresses that Antony knew his – lower – place in the ecclesiastical hierarchy (67) and had given his goatskin mantle (mêlôtê) to him, in direct reference to the Old Testament story of Elijah giving his magical mantle to Elisha (2 Kings 2.13: c. 91.8).79 In other words, Athanasius claimed to be the successor of Antony as the most important monk, possessing, presumably, also his charisma and powers. The possession of the mantle, not just a claim based on the words of Antony, was the material sign of these powers. Evidently, the bishop felt it necessary to establish beyond any doubt a hierarchical order in which the monks were subject to the bishop. The detail suggests a competition between the clergy and the

76 Bartelink, Vie d’Antoine, 77-95; Choat, ‘The Life of Antony in Egypt’. Add to his dossier the reference to a passage of the VA in the fourth/fifth-century Pseudo-Athanasius, Allocutio ad Monachos, cf. A. Boud’hors, ‘L’Allocutio Ad monachos d’Athanase d’Alexandrie (CPG 2186): nouveaux fragments coptes’, in P. Buzi and A. Camplani (eds.), Christianity in Egypt. Literary Production and Intellectual Trends. Studies in Honor of Tito Orlandi (Rome, 2011) 101-58 at 112. 77 See the review of the evidence by L. Brottier, ‘Antoine l’ermite à travers les sources anciennes: des regards divers sur un modèle unique’, Revue d’Études Augustiniennes et Patristiques 43 (1997) 15-39. 78 See especially J. Goehring, Ascetics, Society, and the Desert (Harrisburg, 1999); B. Pearson, ‘Earliest Christianity in Egypt: Further Observations’, in J. Goehring and J. Timbie (eds.), The World of Early Egyptian Christianity (Washington DC, 2007) 97-112 at 107-10; D. Brooks Hedstrom, The Monastic Landscape of Late Antique Egypt (Cambridge, 2017). 79 A. Dihle, ‘Das Gewand des Einsiedlers Antonius’, Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 22 (1979) 22-29, repr. in his Antike und Orient (Heidelberg, 1984) 153-60. For the mantle, see S. Torallas Tovar, ‘El hábito monástico en Egipto y su simbología’, Ilu. Revista de Ciencias de las Religiones 7 (2002) 163-74 at 170-71; A. Boud’hors, ‘Le “scapulaire” et la mélote: nouvelles attestations dans les textes coptes?’, in A. Boud’hors and C. Louis (eds.), Études coptes XI (Paris, 2009) 1-15 at 8f.

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monks, and thus is an interesting indication of the changing relations of ecclesiastical authority in Egypt at the time. Once again, this episcopal superiority might not have been a popular claim in all monastic circles. Fourth and finally, just before his death, Antony attacks the worship of the mummified martyrs by especially, it seems, women (90.4).80 And indeed, we know that there was a very popular martyr cult in Egypt.81 It is not wholly clear from the Life why Athanasius was so opposed to the cult, but it seems reasonable to suppose that he feared competition in the attention to monks from the worship of martyrs; his interest in the failed martyrdom of Antony (46), at least as he describes it, certainly points in that direction.82 From the Life and his letters, we can see that Athanasius sought to redefine the parameters of the ascetic life in and through his patronage of a monastic episcopacy, although he still reinforced the biblical and social discourses that marked monasticism as a privileged means toward attaining the martyr’s crown. In his work, we see very clearly the transition of attention to and identification with the martyrs to the glorification of the monks, as long as they knew their (lower!) place in the ecclesiastical hierarchy.83 80 H.-J. Drexhage, ‘Einige Bemerkungen zum Mumientransport und den Bestattungskosten im römischen Ägypten’, Laverna 5 (1994) 167-75 at 170-71; S. Torallas, ‘Egyptian Burial Practice in Late Antiquity: the case of Christian mummy labels’, in J.P. Monferrer and S. Torallas Tovar (eds.), Cultures in Contact. Transfer of Knowledge in the Mediterranean Context (Córdoba, 2013) 13-24 and ‘Egyptian Burial Practice in a Period of Transition: on embalming in Christian times’, in P. Mantas and Ch. Burnett (eds.), Mapping Knowledge. Cross-Pollination in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Córdoba, 2014) 129-40; Zecher, ‘Antony’s Vision of Death?’. 81 H. Delehaye, ‘Les martyrs d’Égypte’, Analecta Bollandiana 40 (1922) 5-154, 299-364, updated by W. Clarysse, ‘The Coptic Martyr Cult’, in M. Lamberigts and P. Van Deun (eds.), Martyrium in Multidisciplinary Perspective: Memorial Louis Reekmans (Leuven, 2005) 37795. 82 During the persecutions, the Church was opposed to voluntary martyrdom, but many decades later Athanasius could clearly afford not to bother about that, cf. J.-L. Voisin, ‘Prosopographie des morts volontaires chrétiens (en particulier chez Eusèbe de Césarée)’, in M.-F. Baslez and F. Prévot (eds.), Prosopographie et histoire religieuse (Paris, 2005) 351-62; A. Di Berardino, ‘Il modelo del martire volontario’, in T. Sardella and G. Zito (eds.), Euplo e Lucia 304-2004 (Catania, 2006) 63-107; A.R. Birley, ‘Voluntary Martyrs in the Early Church: Heroes or Heretics?’, Cristianesimo nella Storia 27 (2006) 99-127; A. Dearn, ‘Voluntary Martyrdom and the Donatist Schism’, Studia Patristica 39 (2006) 27-32; G.E.M. de Ste. Croix, Christian Persecution, Martyrdom, and Orthodoxy (Oxford, 2006) 153-200; C. Moss, ‘The Discourse of Voluntary Martyrdom: Ancient and Modern’, Church History 81 (2012) 531-51; Ph. Tite, ‘Voluntary Martyrdom and Gnosticism’, Journal of Early Christian Studies 23 (2015) 27-54. 83 See the fine study by S.J. Davis, ‘Completing the Race and Receiving the Crown: 2 Timothy 4:7–8 in Early Christian Monastic Epitaphs at Kellia and Pherme’, in H-U. Weidemann (ed.), Asceticism and Exegesis in Early Christianity (Göttingen, 2013) 334–73.

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It was different in the Holy Land. In AD 394 a group of seven monks set out from their monastery on the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem to visit the monastic celebrities in the desert of Egypt. On their return one of them published an account of their expedition, the so-called Historia monachorum in Aegypto, which is an indispensable source for our knowledge of early monasticism but also still a very readable work. In his book, the anonymous author shows to have been an avid reader of the Life of Antony, but also an independent thinker, who had realised that Athanasius had made Antony more prominent than he had actually been. His work can therefore be read as a sympathetic but also critical reaction to the Life.84 Unlike in Palestine, the Life was fairly popular in Syria, as fifteen manuscripts are known. The various dates of the manuscripts suggest that the interest in the Life was not restricted to one period, but lasted several centuries. Yet the oldest manuscript only dates from the sixth century, and the translation was not made before the fifth century; influence of the Life, though, is well discernible in the sixth-century monastic biographies of Cyril of Scythopolis.85 In other words, the impact of Athanasius’ book was not an immediate one, and the difference between the Egyptian monkhood and the Syrian holy men may well have played a role here; it is even possible that the Life was translated just because of the great popularity of Athanasius in orthodox Syria.86 Unfortunately, we have little early information about the early reception of the Life in Asia Minor, but in 380 Gregory of Nazianzus mentions it in a panegyric on Athanasius a few years after the latter’s death in 373 (Oration 21.5). In the West, on the other hand, the Life was highly popular. After only about fifteen years, it was translated into Latin twice:87 first, perhaps still in the 360s, by an anonymous translator whose very literal translation survives in only one manuscript,88 but who introduced the word

84 As is well shown by A. Cain, The Greek Historia monachorum in Aegypto (Oxford, 2016) 74-91, although he (p. 82) overrates the success of the Life in the East. 85 G. Garitte, ‘Réminiscences de la Vie d’Antoine dans Cyrille de Scythopolis’, Studi bizantini e neoellenici 9 (1957) 117-22; B. Flusin, Miracle et Histoire dans l’Œuvre de Cyrille de Scythopolis (Paris, 1983) 44-45, 241-42, 251. 86 B. ter Haar Romeny, ‘Athanasius in Syriac’, Church History & Religious Culture 90 (2010) 225-56 at 242-46, 255. 87 For both translations, see L. Gandt, A Philological and Theological Analysis of the Ancient Latin Translations of the “Vita Antonii” (Diss. Fordham University, 2008). 88 See G.J.M. Bartelink, Vita di Antonio (Milano, 1974: edition and commentary) and ‘Die älteste lateinische Übersetzung der Vita Antonii des Athanasius im Lichte der Lesarten einiger griechischer Handschriften’, Revue d’histoire des textes 11 (1983) 397-413.

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monachus into Latin (Pr. 1),89 only half a century after the term first emerges in Greek.90 The second one, closely following in time and certainly before 372/3, but much less literal, is by Evagrius of Antioch, whose well-written text immediately became immensely popular, as its more than 300 surviving manuscripts show.91 Its influence must have been more or less instant, as we already hear from Augustine of its powerful impact in Trier in the 370s. In his Confessiones (8.6.14-15, 12.29), he relates how his friend Ponticianus had met three friends at the court of the Emperor Valentinian I. When walking one afternoon, two of them stumbled on a hut where they found the Life. When Ponticianus met them again, they told them that they had decided to renounce their worldly career and to become, instead of an amicus Caesaris, ‘friend of the emperor’ an amicus Dei. Both of them abandoned their fiancées, and the latter, when they heard it, dedicated their lives to virginity.92 It may be good to pause for a moment, as we can observe here how Athanasius’ Life of Antony was appropriated in different circles.93 These 89 J. Sepulcre, ‘Dos “etimologías” de monachus: Jerónimo y Agustín’, in Il Monachesimo Occidentale dalle origini alla Regula Magistri (Rome, 1998) 197-211. 90 M. Choat, ‘The Development and Usage of Terms for “Monk” in Late Antique Egypt’, Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 45 (2002) 5-23; Judge, Jerusalem and Athens, 156-77 (‘The Earliest Use of monachos for “Monk” (P. Coll. Youtie 77) and the Origins of Monasticism’, first published in 1977); F.F. Bumazhnov, ‘Some Further Observations Concerning the Early History of the Term monachos (Monk)’, Studia Patristica 45 (2010) 21-26 at 24-25; Sheridan, ‘Early Egyptian Monasticism’, 10-14. First occurrence: C. Rapp, ‘The social organization of early monasticism in the East: challenging old paradigms’, in Monachesimi d’Oriente e d’Occidente nell’Alto Medioevo = Settimana di Studio … sull’Alto Medioevo 64 (Spoleto, 2017) 33-51 at 36 points to De patientia, a text that dates from 311 or 312 and circulated under the name of Athanasius, cf. M. Tetz, ‘Eine asketische Ermunterung zur Standhaftigkeit aus der Zeit der maximinischen Verfolgung (311/313)’, Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 81 (1990) 79-102, reprinted in his Athanasiana, 249-73. 91 P. Bertrand, Die Evagriusübersetzung der Vita Antonii. Rezeption – Überlieferung – Edition. Unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Vitas Patrum-Tradition (Diss. Utrecht, 2006) 29-88, overlooked by Barnes, Early Christian Hagiography, 161; Gemeinhardt, Athanasius: Vita Antonii, 83-85 and ‘Translating Paideia: Education in the Greek and Latin Versions of the “Life of Anthony”’, in L.I. Larsen and S. Rubenson (eds.), Monastic Education in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, 2018) 33-52. For Evagrius, see S. Rebenich, ‘Hieronymus und Evagrius von Antiochia’, Studia Patristica 28 (1993) 75-80; Cribiore, Libanius the Sophist, 62-66, 191-94. 92 N. Kamimura, ‘Augustine’s Quest for Perfection and the Encounter with the Vita Antonii’, in N. Kamimura (ed.), Research Report Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C) 23520098: The Theory and Practice of the Scriptural Exegesis in Augustine (Tokyo, 2014) 41-52. 93 See also J. Gribomont, ‘L’influence du monachisme oriental sur Sulpice Sévère’, in Saint Martin et son temps. Mémorial du XVIe centenaire des débuts du monachisme en Gaule (361-1961) (Rome, 1961) 135-49; J. Fontaine, ‘L’aristocratie occidentale devant le monachisme au ive et ve siècles’, Rivista di storia e letteratura religiosa 15 (1979) 28-53.

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courtiers may have renounced their worldly goods, but in their imagination they did not lose their important position on earth. Instead of having the ‘title’ amicus Caesaris, which denoted the membership of the emperor’s inner circle,94 they imagined themselves as being a courtier in God’s heavenly court. No humility there. The passage shows that even if we seem to observe social and political marginality, this might not be the interpretation of the hermits or monks/nuns themselves. Marginality is clearly an idea and a practice that can serve many ends, which may well have made it so popular at that time. One of Ponticianus’ friends was perhaps Jerome, as Pierre Courcelle (1912-1980) brilliantly speculated.95 His suggestion has received mixed reactions,96 but even if it is not true, the fact remains that Jerome was tremendously impressed by the book and tried to trump it by inventing an older hermit, Paul of (Egyptian) Thebes in a kind of (fictional) biography, the Life of Paul,97 written in Syria in the later 370s. Unlike Athanasius, who seems to have limited himself mainly to the pagan biography of Pythagoras, Jerome drew on Latin, Greek and Jewish literature in a dazzling display of literary erudition, not even eschewing a case of soft porn.98 Moreover, he 94 F. Millar, The Emperor in the Roman World (London, 1977) 110-22; add Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum 32.1202 = G. Petzl, Die lnschriften von Smyrna II.1 (Bonn, 1987) no. 593; W. Eck, ‘Der Kaiser und seine Ratgeber: Überlegungen zum inneren Zusammenhang von “amici”, “comites” und “consiliarii” am römischen Kaiserhof’, in A. Kolb (ed.), Herrschaftsstrukturen und Herrschaftspraxis: Konzepte, Prinzipien und Strategien der Administration im römischen Kaiserreich (Berlin, 2006) 67-77. 95 P. Courcelle, Recherches sur les Confessions de saint Augustin (Paris, 19682) 184f. 96 Compare R. Herzog (ed.), Handbuch der lateinischen Literatur der Antike V: Restauration und Erneuerung: die lateinische Literatur von 284 bis 374 n. Chr. (Munich, 1989) 538 (J. Fontaine: against) with Lane Fox, Augustine: Conversions and Confessions, 281 (accepting). 97 The standard edition is: B. Degórski, Edizione critica della Vita Sancti Pauli primi eremitae di Girolamo (Rome, 1987), repr. in P. Leclerc, E.M. Morales, and A. de Vogüé, Jerôme: Trois vies de moines: Paul, Malchus, Hilarion (Paris, 2007) 142-83; see also I.S. Kozik, The First Desert Hero: St. Jerome’s Vita Pauli (New York, 1968); Cribiore, Libanius the Sophist, 69-70; Y. Schulz-Wackerbarth, Die Vita Pauli des Hieronymus (Tübingen, 2017). For translations, see M.L. Ewald, ‘Life of St. Paul, the First Hermit’, in Early Christian Biographies: A New Translation (Washington, D.C., 1952) 219-38; C. White, ‘Life of Paul of Thebes by Jerome’, in her Early Christian Lives (London, 1998) 71-84. 98 Cf. J.B. Bauer, ‘Novellistisches bei Hieronymus, Vita Pauli 3’, Wiener Studien 74 (1961) 130-37, repr. in his Scholia biblica et patristica (Graz, 1972) 215-23; H. Kech, Hagiographie als christliche Unterhaltungsliteratur. Studien zum Phänomen des Erbaulichen anhand der Monchsviten des hl. Hieronymus (Goppingen, 1977); M. Furhmann, ‘Die Mönchgeschichten des Hieronymus: Form-experimente in erzählender Literatur’, in id. (ed.), Christianisme et formes littéraires de l’Antiquité tardive en Occident (Geneva/Vandoeuvres, 1977) 41-89; R. Wisniewski, ‘Bestiae Christum loquuntur: ou des habitants du désert et de la ville dans la Vita Pauli de saint Jérôme’, Augustinianum 40 (2000) 105-44; Barnes, Early Christian Hagiography, 177-79.

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put Athanasius in his place by elevating his hero Paul to the place of the first Christian hermit.99 For us, though, it is important to note that, like that of Athanasius, his work is directed to a wealthy audience, whom he explicitly harangues at the end by comparing their marble, gold and jewels with the poverty of Paul (Vita Pauli 17.1-3). There can be no doubt about the purpose of his work. The wealthy should follow the example of Paul: they should leave their villas and palaces and become imitatores Pauli.100 However, the composition of the Life of Paul subtly shows us another aspect of Jerome’s thinking too, which fitted its time. He had started his ‘biography’ by locating the youth of Paul in the time of the persecutions of Decius and Valerian, that is, in the fairly distant past. However, Paul had fled to the mountains and thus, like Antony, escaped martyrdom.101 Like Antony, he also withdrew further and further and eventually died, later to be found by Antony. In an artful manner, Jerome thus focalises Paul through the eyes and deeds of Antony. Via Athanasius’ biography Jerome’s readers knew that Antony was the first and most famous monk, but in Jerome’s ‘history’ it is Paul who receives the gold medal of renunciation. And just like Athanasius mentioned Antony’s assistance to martyrs during the persecution of Maximinus Daia but paid much more attention to his asceticism, so Jerome, by mentioning the persecutions of Decius and Valerian, but subsequently paying much more attention to Paul’s asceticism, ‘transformed the bloody martyrdom of persecution into a bloodless martyrdom of asceticism’.102 This replacing of the martyr by the monk struck the right nerve. The fairly tolerant attitude of the Roman government in the West had created not that many martyrs to worship in the time after Constantine. Ambrose tried to fill that vacuum by translations of suddenly discovered martyrs,103 99 For this rivalry, often noticed, see most recently A. Monaci Castagno, ‘Vitae in dialogo: la Vita di Paolo di Tebe di Gerolamo e la Vita di Antonio di Atanasio’, in A. Balbo (ed.), “Tanti affetti in tal momento”. Studi in onore di Giovanna Garbarino (Alessandria, 2011) 647-57. 100 For Jerome and wealth/poverty, see P. Brown, Through the Eye of a Needle (Princeton, 2012) 265-68. 101 O. Nicolson, ‘Flight in Persecution as Imitation of Christ: Lactantius Divine Institutes IV,18,1-2’, Journal of Theological Studies NS 40 (1989) 48-65; J. Leemans, ‘The Idea of “Flight from Persecution” in the Alexandrian Tradition from Clement to Athanasius’, in L. Perrone (ed.), Origeniana Octava: Origen and the Alexandrian Tradition (Leuven, 2004) 901-10. 102 Thus, persuasively, S. Rebenich, ‘Inventing an Ascetic Hero: Jerome’s Life of Paul the First Hermit’, in A. Cain and J. Lössl (eds.), Jerome of Stridon: His Life, Writings and Legacy (Farnham and Burlington, 2009) 13-27 at 26. 103 J. den Boeft, ‘Milaan 386: Protasius en Gervasius’, in A. Hilhorst (ed.), De heiligenverering in de eerste eeuwen van het Christendom (Nijmegen, 1988) 168-78 and ‘Vetusta

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and his innovative move soon promoted similar translations elsewhere in the West, although not immediately in Rome itself.104 Yet this vacuum also became filled by ‘symbolic martyrs’ like Antony, and ascetics like him now started to come to the fore: the famous ‘holy men’ of Peter Brown.105 Athanasius’ well-written work, which concentrates on Antony and virtually leaves all other hermits in the shadows of the Egyptian towns, villages and deserts, thus fitted the times in which it appeared in the West, as did Jerome’s Life of Paul. What remains to be explained is the success of his book among wealthy aristocrats. One reason is given by the story of Ponticianus’ friend, who remarks that to be a ‘friend of the emperor’ was only a short-lived favour leading to a fragile status. In a world where wealth attracted more and more attention from the imperial tax inspectors and worldly careers could be brief, the fame of Antony must have been attractive to ambitious pious young men, who may have wanted to replace their worldly capital by religious capital. Once the monastic movement took off, Athanasius’ book only gained in popularity. Moreover, his construction of Antony’s biography which, as we have seen (§ 2), made him more marginal than he was, proved to be irresistible to artists from paintings by Hieronymus Bosch and Rubens to Flaubert’s famous novel, thus expanding the mediality of his work into the visual arts. Its ascetic ideal can still fascinate our own consumer society, even after the demise of the monastic movement in the West.106

Saecula Vidimus: Ambrose’s Hymn on Protasius and Gervasius’, in G.J.M. Bartelink et al. (eds.), Eulogia: mélanges offerts à Anton A.R. Bastiaensen (The Hague, 1991) 65-75. 104 A. Thacker, ‘Popes, Patriarchs and Archbishops and the Origins of the Cult of the Martyrs in Northern Italy’, in P. Clarke and T. Claydon (eds.), Saints and Sanctity (Woodbridge, 2011) 51-79. For Rome, see S. Diefenbach, Römische Kulterinnerungsräume (Berlin and New York, 2007) 360-79. 105 Brown’s ideas in this respect have often been discussed. See, for example, Av. Cameron, ‘On Defining the Holy Man’ and C. Rapp, ‘“For next to God, You are My Salvation”: Reflections on the Rise of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity’, in J. Howard-Johnston and P.A. Hayward (eds.), The Cult of Saints in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Essays on the Contribution of Peter Brown (Oxford, 1999) 27-43 and 63-81, respectively; Bremmer, ‘From Heroes to Saints and from Martyrological to Hagiographical Discourse’, in F. Heinzer et al. (eds.), Sakralität und Heldentum (Würzburg, 2017) 35-66. See also Frankfurter and Feldt in this volume. 106 I am most grateful to Jitse Dijkstra for his comments on an earlier version, to Laura Feldt for her thoughtful editing, and to Rebekka Bremmer for her correction of my English.

III. CHARISMATIC TEXTUALITY AND THE MEDIATION OF CHRISTIANITY IN LATE ANTIQUE EGYPT1 David Frankfurter

Introduction In considering writing as a ‘medium’ in the communication and experience of religion, we must begin by grasping how it worked alongside of, and intrinsically refracted, a number of other material media that – across the Christian empire of the fourth and later centuries – were perceived locally as both distinctive of Christianity and distinctively efficacious as vehicles of Christian power. For late antiquity, hagiographies, sermons, and other texts refer to relics as a primary Christian medium with far-reaching agency, as well as oil, as a medium of relics (passed through special reliquaries)2 and also to liturgy and incantation. Oil served as a medium even of places and of people: those misguided folk, complains Abbot Shenoute of Atripe, ‘annoint themselves with oil from elders of the Church, or even [oil] from monks!’3 Further, the Christian religion was apprehensible through the materiality of crosses, from wooden amulets to inscribed graffiti to bodily gestures. It was apprehensible through candles and their curious, even oracular behavior in saints’ shrines. People perceived the power of the religion in the material presence and glory of specific robes and belts, as Abbot Shenoute was said to have received and passed on as charismatic accoutrements, and – in Ireland especially – in the bells that were carried, rung, and passed among Irish monks.4 Bodies too manifested a distinctive, material 1 Abbreviations for primary text reference numbers: ACM = M. Meyer and R. Smith (eds.), Ancient Christian Magic: Coptic Texts of Ritual Power (San Francisco, 1994); Suppl. Mag. = R.W. Daniel and F. Maltomini, Supplementum Magicum 1-2 (Opladen, 1990-92). 2 See, e.g., M.-C. Comte, Les reliquaires du proche-orient et de Chypre à la période protobyzantine (IVe-VIIIe siècles: Formes, emplacements, fonctions et cultes (Turnhout, 2012). 3 Shenoute, Acephalous Work A14, §259, ed. T. Orlandi, Shenute: Contra Origenistas (Rome, 1985) 18-21. 4 Shenoute’s belt: v. Sin. 106-8. Bells: L.M. Bitel, ‘Saints and Angry Neighbors: The Politics of Cursing in Irish Hagiography’, in S. Farmer and B.H. Rosenwein (eds.), Monks &

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Christianity: as vehicles of demons who could hail arriving saints and as bearers of charisma and authority.5 Many of these material media might have had pre-Christian ritual analogues, but my point is that, by the end of the fourth century, they all served as media for Christianity. So, we must begin any discussion of writing and textuality as Christian media by setting it within the material world – the material vocabulary – of these other Christian things: oil, relics, bells, crosses, robes, candles, etc. For all these media of Christianity, as well as images and buildings, amounted to what the anthropologist Birgit Meyer calls the ‘sensational forms’ of the religion: those material, tactile elements by which Christianity could be sensible to real bodies in time and space.6 Monks, Monastic Scribes, and Textual Culture The picture of monks in Egyptian society has changed enormously since the mid-twentieth century, when scholarship largely replicated the idealized depictions of desert-dwelling, psalm-memorizing, spiritually-minded prayer-warriors, embodiments of holy scripture who shunned civilization. Now we recognize their regular interaction with the people and leaders of lay society, their dwellings quite close to the larger culture, their attention to organizational and financial matters (Weber’s Veralltäglichung), and – in the case of the more heroic individuals and their acolytes, as commemorated in saints’ lives – their social roles as regional prophets and community organizers.7 It is important to note the construction of monks in Nuns, Saints & Outcasts: Religion in Medieval Society (Ithaca & London, 2000) 132-33; cf. D. Bénazeth and A. Delattre, ‘Cloches et clochettes dans l’Égypte chrétienne’, in A. Boud’hors and C. Louis (eds.), Études coptes XIV: Seizième journée d’études (Paris, 2016) 251-80. 5 See D. Frankfurter, ‘Where the Spirits Dwell: Possession, Christianization, and SaintShrines in Late Antiquity’, Harvard Theological Review 103 (2010) 27-46. 6 B. Meyer, ‘How to Capture the ‘Wow’: R.R. Marett’s Notion of Awe and the Study of Religion’, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 22 (2016) 7-26 at 19-20. On materiality and the comprehension of Christianity, see P.C. Miller, The Corporeal Imagination: Signifying the Holy in Late Ancient Christianity (Philadelphia, 2009); C.W. Bynum, Christian Materiality: An Essay on Religion in Late Medieval Europe (New York, 2011). 7 Monks and society: see esp. J.E. Goehring, Ascetics, Society, and the Desert: Studies in Early Egyptian Monasticism (Harrisburg, PA, 1999); H. Behlmer, ‘Visitors to Shenoute’s Monastery’, in D. Frankfurter (ed.), Pilgrimage and Holy Space in Late Antique Egypt (Leiden, 1998) 341-71; E. Wipszycka, ‘Les formes institutionnelles et les formes d’activité économique du monachisme égyptien’, in A. Camplani and G. Filoramo (eds.), Foundations of Power and Conflicts of Authority in Late-Antique Monasticism (Leuven, 2007) 109-54. Social roles of holy men: P. Brown, ‘The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity’ [1971], in P. Brown, Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity (London, 1982) 103-52; and idem, Authority and the Sacred: Aspects of the Christianization of the Roman World

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hagiography, for example, to gauge not their historical status in relationship to local society but rather the importance that marginality played in the construction of their charisma. Monastic holy men are imagined as dwelling on the periphery of habitable lands, even off in the desert, among wild animals and ambiguous earth spirits.8 As ascetic virtuosi they know the demons all too well and have the capacity to exorcise and control demons, both.9 In these ways notions of marginality contributed to the definition of monastic charisma even if most monks lived in closer interaction with society.10 In the realm of literary culture we know from the artefacts themselves that monks’ reading, copying, and composition of texts was far more eclectic than psalms, gospels, or the Christian Bible, extending regularly to extracanonical apocalypses, gospels, and texts later called ‘Gnostic’.11 Indeed, it has long been recognized that this familiarity with apocalyptic and apocryphal materials as well as with the liturgical experimentation that structured monastic life, offers the most detailed context for the great amount of magical texts in Greek and Coptic: that is, idealized or ad-hoc ritual compositions and amulets to heal, protect, curse, resolve social crises or bring angelic empowerment.12 This ritual expertise in composing and administrating (or performing) such texts must have followed from earlier (Cambridge, 1995); see also D. Frankfurter, ‘Syncretism and the Holy Man in Late Antique Egypt’, Journal of Early Christian Studies 11 (2003) 339-85. 8 E.g., v. Ant. 8-14; Hist. Mon. 9, 12-13, 15, 20.12-17, etc. See in general, Frankfurter, ‘Syncretism and the Holy Man’, and A. Merrills, ‘Monks, Monsters, and Barbarians: Re-Defining the African Periphery in Late Antiquity’, Journal of Early Christian Studies 12 (2004) 217-44. 9 See D. Kalleres, ‘“O, Lord, Give This One a Daimon So That He May No Longer Sin”: The Holy Man and His Daimones in Hagiography’, Archiv für Religionsgeschichte 14 (2012) 205-9, 222-32, and D. Frankfurter, Christianizing Egypt: Syncretism and Local Worlds in Late Antiquity (Princeton, 2017) 80-87. 10 On the spatial ‘non-marginality’ of monks historically, see Goehring, Ascetics, Society, and the Desert. 11 See D. Frankfurter, ‘The Legacy of the Jewish Apocalypse in Early Christian Communities: Two Regional Trajectories’, in J.C. VanderKam and W. Adler (eds.), The Jewish Apocalyptic Heritage in Early Christianity (Minneapolis, 1996) 129-200; H. Lundhaug and L. Jenott, The Monastic Origins of the Nag Hammadi Codices (Tübingen, 2015); and D. Brakke, ‘Scriptural Practices in Early Christianity: Towards a New History of the New Testament Canon’, in J. Ulrich et al. (eds.), Invention, Rewriting, Usurpation: Discursive Fights over Religious Traditions in Antiquity (Frankfurt, 2012) 263-80. 12 Meyer and Smith, Ancient Christian Magic; S. Richter, ‘Bemerkungen zu magischen Elementen koptischer Zaubertexte’, in B. Kramer (ed.), Akten des 21. internationalen Papyrologen-kongresses (Stuttgart, 1997) 835-46; J. Van der Vliet, ‘Literature, Liturgy, Magic: A Dynamic Continuum’, in P. Buzi and A. Camplani (eds.), Christianity in Egypt: Literary Production and Intellectual Trends: Studies in Honor of Tito Orlandi (Rome, 2011) 555-74; and Frankfurter, Christianizing Egypt.

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types of scribal expertise that developed in third-century Egyptian Christianity, extending the power of scripture and scriptural mastery into quotidian life.13 To be sure, there were other people in late antique Egypt both capable of and available for writing amulets; but most amulets reflect their scribes’ affiliation with monastic environments.14 Monastic Scribes and the Medium of the Written Word It is in these ways that we can gather a sense of monks as mediators, not just of Christian ideas or liturgical glory or saintly power, but of a magic in the written word, introducing and performing for non- and semiliterate laity a distinctively potent material extension of Christianity.15 In the first part of this paper, I go through four contexts in which writing was transmitted to people as a magical medium: (1) the magic of the written word itself; (2) the sensory power of liturgical performance as conveyed in charms and written incantations; (3) concepts of scripture as intrinsically supernatural, often heavenly-based media; and (4) the notion of scripture – concrete holy texts like the biblical codex – as a repository of ritual efficacy. In the second part of the paper, I look more closely at the monastic scribe as ritual specialist and the potential overlaps between this powerful scribal role and the holy man: that marginal charismatic figure who attracted local and transregional devotees to his person and bestowed blessings – oral, tactile, contact, and – of greatest interest to me in this essay – written.16 A Monastic Culture of Empowered Letters: A) The Magic of Writing Writing, which to us is familiar and this-worldly, assumes a ‘marginal’ otherworldliness in semi-literate cultures: what are these letters and what do they signify? What is happening when that man draws these symbols on a scrap of papyrus? How do these figures affect the world – communicate with God or protect me from demons? In speaking of the magic of writing, liturgy, and other formal religious communication, then, I am referring precisely to that imputed marginality and to the mysterious efficacy that follows from it. 13 On the evolution of Christian amulets from the third to fourth/fifth centuries, see W.M. Shandruk, ‘Christian Use of Magic in Late Antique Egypt’, Journal of Early Christian Studies 20 (2012) 31-57. 14 See T. De Bruyn, Making Amulets Christian: Artefacts, Scribes, and Contexts (Oxford, 2017) 6-11. 15 I use the term ‘magic’ in an impressionistic, qualitative sense of ‘material potency’. 16 On these aspects of the holy man in Egypt see Frankfurter, Christianizing Egypt, ch. 3.

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In every culture with a writing system – especially when such a writing system is linked to religious authority – letters, semantic signs, and textual displays have assumed a numinous quality, both for those outside the literate elite and for those within as well.17 In early Judaism mezuzot and tefillin functioned primarily as amulets, the inscribed words carrying concrete powers.18 In traditional Egyptian religion, incantations inscribed on stone stelae could be washed off and consumed – again, with a sense of letters’ material powers that could be picked up through other media.19 And so also with the mysterious ancient Greek notion of ‘Ephesian letters’ – magical pseudo-letters – that transferred special potency in amulets. Well before the Roman period the model of the Egyptian hieroglyph had influenced the concept of the written word in Greek, leading to complex forms of magical writing, like arrangements of the vowels or the mysterious pseudo-alphabet of the charaktêres, and also traditions about the special ways letters could be inscribed.20 The rich array of uses to which writing has been put cross-culturally to capture and direct the material potency of scripture has been usefully discussed by anthropologist Jack Goody and observed from Muslim North Africa to evangelical America.21 So, in what ways can we see this magical technology of the written word in the literate subculture of monastic scribes? One might first note the uses of cryptography among late antique monks in graffiti, ostraca, and other media for expressing personal invocations. For example, a graffito in the Theban desert can be deciphered to read: ‘I am Jacob; pray for me, Jesus. Jesus Christ. I am Jacob. Pray for me, please, Amen. St. Apa Ammonios, the holy Martyr.22 The author hid these words according to a code 17 J. Goody, The Logic of Writing and the Organization of Society (Cambridge, 1986) 26-44; idem, The Interface Between the Written and the Oral (Cambridge, 1987) 129-38. 18 Y.B. Cohn, Tangled Up in Text: Tefillin and the Ancient World (Providence, 2008). 19 See R.K. Ritner, ‘Horus on the Crocodiles: A Juncture of Religion and Magic in Late Dynastic Egypt’, in J.P. Allen (ed.), Religion and Philosophy in Ancient Egypt (New Haven, 1989) 103-16; and idem, Mechanics of Ancient Egyptian Magical Practice (Chicago, 1993) 102-10. 20 See D. Frankfurter, ‘The Magic of Writing and the Writing of Magic: The Power of the Word in Egyptian and Greek Traditions’, Helios 21 (1994) 189-221; R. Gordon, ‘Showing the Gods the Way: Curse-Tablets as Deictic Persuasion’, Religion in the Roman Empire 1 (2015) 148-80; cf. C.A. Faraone, Vanishing Acts on Ancient Greek Amulets: From Oral Performance to Visual Design (London, 2012). 21 See Goody, Logic of Writing and Interface Between; see also J.W. Watts (ed.), Iconic Books and Texts (Bristol, CT, 2013). Cf. A. Osman el-Tom, ‘Drinking the Koran’, Africa 55 (1985) 414-29. 22 A. Delattre, ‘Inscriptions grecques et coptes de la montagne thébaine relatives au culte de saint Ammōnios’, in A. Delattre and P. Heilporn (eds.), “Et maintenant ce ne sont plus que des villages…”: Thèbes et sa région aux époques hellénistique, romaine et byzantine (Brussels, 2008) 183-86.

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(which modern Coptologists have no trouble translating). But in a literate subculture that reveres the act of writing, cryptography amplifies the significance of the written word. It affirms the symbolic potency of the alphabet itself. It accentuates the concealed invocation and renders it accessible to the heavenly world. And the cryptography shifts the written message into a liminal semantic domain between author and divine sphere.23 Of course, cryptography is a technology by and among the literate; for the non-literate, Greek or Coptic (or Egyptian) appears cryptic anyway. The value of this particular example lies in its demonstration that a graphic technology of mystifying the written word for ritual purposes had a vitality within the monastic world, in advance of the graphic technologies monastic ritual experts used to mediate Christian scriptural efficacy to outsiders.24 We catch a glimpse of this awe at the written word in a story from the Apopthegmata patrum that captures the panoptical world of the monastery, in which all behaviors may be scrutinized.25 In that context, a monk’s specially-inscribed prayer or scripture passage might incite suspicion for its ambiguous potency. In the story, a monk who has written an inspirational phrase on a scrap of papyrus, to reassure himself in stressful times, is accused of goēteia – sorcery – when other monks observe him pulling out the scrap and then feeling better. They tell the abbot to check out the piece of goēteia; and it turns out indeed to be scripture, so the monk is ultimately found innocent. Textuality can be a dangerous thing, even when deployed for reassurance or catharsis, as we know from recent American cases of children and teens who make up lists of their enemies, which adults fear are plans for actual assassination.26 23 Cf. F. Wisse, ‘Language Mysticism in the Nag Hammadi Texts and in Early Coptic Monasticism, I: Cryptography’, Enchoria 9 (1979) 101-20; J. Dieleman, ‘Cryptography at the Monastery of Deir el-Bachit’, in H. Knuf et al. (eds), Honi soit qui mal y pense: Studien zum pharaonischen, griechisch-römischen und spätantiken Ägypten zu Ehren von Heinz-Josef Thissen (Leuven, 2010) 511-17; T.S. Richter, ‘Markedness and Unmarkedness in Coptic Magical Writing’, in M. De Haro Sanchez (ed.), Écrire la magie dans l’antiquité (Liège, 2015) 91; Frankfurter, Christianizing Egypt, 197-99. 24 Expressions of magical writing from within monastic culture: magical tomb graffiti (see Van der Vliet, ‘Literature, Liturgy, Magic’); wooden boards with scripture passages, alphabet, etc.: C. Préaux, ‘Une amulette chrétienne aux Musées Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire de Bruxelles’, Chronique d’Égypte 10 (1935) 361-70; R.G. Warga, ‘A Christian Amulet on Wood’, Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists 25 (1988) 149-52. Cf. N. Gourdier, ‘Le vêtement et l’alphabet mystique chez les coptes’, in M. Rassart-Debergh and J. Ries (eds.), Actes du IVe congrès copte (Louvain-la-Neuve, 1992) 1:135-40. 25 See esp. C. Schroeder, Monastic Bodies: Discipline and Salvation in Shenoute of Atripe (Philadelphia, 2007) esp. ch. 1. 26 Apoph.patr. (anon.) N644, ed. J. Wortley, The “Anonymous” Sayings of the Desert Fathers: A Select Edition and Complete English Translation (New York, 2013) 530-31. Teenagers accused

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Writing works; it does things. It is an efficacious craft whose master can wield various powers through what he inscribes. While I will shortly turn to how these powers play out through the copying of scripture as amulets, it is worth looking specifically at two ritual uses of writing that extend beyond Christian scripture. A brief miscellany text (Suppl. Mag. 96) from the late fifth or sixth century ce, containing names, magical figures, and charaktêres meant for inscribing amulets and other ritual materials, contains an instruction ‘for childbirth: (write the words) “Come out of your tomb; Christ is calling you!” (on an) ostracon, (which should be placed on her) right thigh.’ The efficacious phrase is a historiola that recalls the story of Lazarus (John 11:43; as well as, more broadly, the legend of Jesus’s empty tomb from various gospels). The redirection of the gospel story to the facilitation of childbirth comes about through the instrument of the pen, the agency of the scribe, and the materiality (and sensation) of the inscribed ostracon placed on the thigh. Through these ritual elements – all components of scribal craft – the efficacy of the mythical voice behind the command is drawn from the mythical world established through Christian story (and, as we shall see, liturgy) into the immediate obstetrical situation.27 An amulet from the sixth or seventh century (ACM 11 = Suppl. Mag. 34 = P. Cologne 851) illustrates a range of scribal devices for producing an efficacious application of Christian writing. As the above instruction for inscribing an ostracon conveys a command, this invocation of a Christian story works as a declaration, likewise accomplished through the power of writing. We can see the design much more clearly in the editors’ transcription than in the compressed writing of the original:28

of conspiracy to murder on basis of written lists: e.g., Lake St. Louis, Missouri, 3/2014. See S. Saulny, ‘On Hit Lists, Anger Finds an Outlet’, New York Times (22 March 2007). 27 On the dynamics of the historiola see D. Frankfurter, ‘Narrating Power: The Theory and Practice of the Magical Historiola in Ritual Spells’, in M. Meyer and P. Mirecki (eds.), Ancient Magic and Ritual Power (Leiden, 1995) 451-70, and E. Bozoky, Charmes et prières apotropaïques (Turnhout, 2003) 34-49. 28 Daniel and Maltomini, Supplementum Magicum, 1.98-99. Here approximated and reset from an image of the original by the series editors.

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david frankfurter A

B

Ἰ(ησou)ς Χριστό)ς Θεραπεύει τὸ ῥῖγος και τόν πυρετὸν και πᾶσαν νόσον τοῦ σώματος Ἰωσῆφ τοῦ φοροῦντος τὸ φυλακτήριον – τό καθημερινὸν και διὰ μιᾶς. ταχύουσι. ᾿αμήν, ῾αλληλούια.

Ү Ү Ү Ηριχθονιη ριχθονιη ιχθονιη χθονιη θονιη ονιη νιη ιη η

C λύκος λευκός, λύκος λευκός, λύκος λευκὸς θεραπευσάτω τὸ ῥιγοπυρετὸν Ἰωσῆφ ταχύουσι. ††

On the left third of the amulet (A) is a declarative formulation: ‘Jesus Christ heals the chill and the fever and every disease of the body of Joseph, who wears the amulet daily and intermittently. They are fast! Amen Alleluia.’ The verb form is notably not a plea or invocation but a statement functioning as a declaration, an illocutionary act, in which the utterance (or writing) brings about the desired situation. Illocutions depend, however, on the authority of the one who declares; and while it is in the capacity of writing itself to project that authority – to materialize the statement, however hopeful – the authority also comes from the scribe himself as craftsman of the written word. He was, for example, skilled in a range of forms of ritual potency, for the central portion of the text (B) is a magical word, Erichthoniē, in ‘wing-formation’, a triangle based on the scribe withdrawing one letter from the beginning or end of each line. This tradition of writing certain magic words compounds their ritual effect through the additional dimension of alphabetic play and arrangement.29 And finally the scribe has added, in the third (right-hand) section (C), an oral charm: ‘lukos leukos, lukos leukos, lukos leukos – let it heal the shivering fever of Joseph. They are fast!’, followed by crosses.30 This Cologne amulet is a rich assemblage of scribal technologies in the mediation of healing power from a literate representative of the Christian 29 Pace Faraone, Vanishing Acts, who argues that the diminishing letters reduce the danger of the word. 30 Given the homonymicality of lukos leukos, I find unconvincing past attempts to rationalize this phrase as a reference to Osiris and Horus, alleged by Greek authors to have some association with a ‘white wolf’, cf. D. Wortmann, ‘Der weisse Wolf. Ein christliches Fieber-amulett der Kölner Papyrussammlung’, Philologus 107 (1963) 157-61.

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institution to someone quite likely outside that institution. Christianity itself is not a coherent a priori system behind the amulet, nor is it represented simply through the vehicle of scripture; rather, it is constructed through idiosyncratic references to Christian figures and symbols and through longstanding techniques of inscribing ritual power through oral charms and graphic arrangements.31 Communities literate and non-literate and scribal specialists of all types shared traditions of the intrinsic – visual and material – efficacy of writing. Letters could be arranged, invented, eaten, drunk, and tattooed, since letters dwelled in heaven, turned sounds into images, and then images into material substance. The literate culture of Christian monasticism had a fascination with this materialization of holy words and sounds – from the very nature of scripture as heavenly oracle to the incantations of regular liturgy – and Christian representatives promoted this graphic technology as a central medium of the religion. A Monastic Culture of Empowered Letters: B) The Magic of Liturgy We turn now to the graphic materialization of liturgical performance as another form of written thing purveyed by monks. A small folded amulet from about the fifth century begins with a formal prayer to Mary: ‘Having received grace from your only begotten son, stop the discharge, the pains of the eyes of Phoibammon, son of Athanasios’ (ACM 5 = Suppl. Mag. 26 = Berlin 21911). The amulet concludes with a psalm (90): ‘He who dwells in the help of the Most High will reside in the shelter of the God of heaven.’ Like other amulets, this one was folded and kept on the person as a holy object, personalized for a specific individual in crisis, and as a vehicle of the scribe himself, the mediator of the agency of Christian incantation. But the opening clause, presumably addressed to Mary, shows the composer’s fluency with liturgical formulations he knew well from monastic culture as well as his clever attachment of the clause to the healing command through a grammatical construction (such that the reception of grace should itself create healing). If liturgical scholars tend to focus on the various stages of mainstream Christian liturgy, my interest here is in how liturgies in Egypt were heard and imagined, such that monks could improvise so richly from them in the composition of incantations.32 From the apocalypses we know were avidly 31

See esp. Frankfurter, Christianizing Egypt, ch. 6. See U. Zanetti, ‘La liturgie dans les monastères de Shenoute’, Bulletin de la société d’archéologie chrétienne 53 (2014) 167-224; and now Á.T. Mihálykó, ‘Writing the Christian Liturgy in Egypt (3rd to 9th Cent.)’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Oslo, 2017). 32

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read in monasteries to the cosmic liturgies from the Nag Hammadi Library, it seems more and more likely that monks put great store in liturgical formulas and incantations as potent ritual speech, invoking heavenly beings, gaining ritual power through participation in angelic praise, creating powerful melodies that could affect the world, and directing all this supernatural energy into material substances like oil or water. One notices, for example, the extensive use of that central liturgical utterance, the Trisagion, in amulets directed to a wide variety of purposes.33 Liturgy, we may say, was an idealized model for incantation and for the materialization of incantation.34 Thus, a curious protective amulet from a private collection, which begins with a pastiche of scriptural phrases and incipits, unrolls a series of invocations to heavenly beings to attend to the amulet that contains it all: I adjure you by Orphamiel, the great finger of the Father; I adjure you by the throne of the Father; I adjure you by Orpha, the entire body of God; I adjure you by the chariots of the sun; I adjure you by the seven curtains that are drawn over the face of God; … – that you keep any person who may wear this amulet from all [harm] and all evil and all sorcery and all injury induced by the stars and all the demons and all the deeds of the hostile adversary, Holy Holy Holy Amen Amen Amen [ACM 62 = Coll. Nahman].35

In an illocutionary structure characteristic of liturgical performance, the specialist’s repetitive invocation here of aspects of the divine body calls into ritual presence secret features of the heavenly world, out of which powers might be drawn to protect the subject. A good number of Coptic ritual manuals, in fact, have this structure: an extensive invocation, sometimes going on for pages, followed by various applications and recipes for a material form of the invocation: as oil, water, or inscribed object.36 An incantation from the London Hay collection, a ‘loose-leaf’ compendium of

33 T. S. De Bruyn, ‘The Use of the Sanctus in Christian Greek Papyrus Amulets’, Studia Patristica 40 (2006) 15-19. 34 See in general De Bruyn, Making Amulets Christian, 189-234, and Frankfurter, Christianizing Egypt, 202-6. Cf. Suppl. Mag. 23, which contains a credal formulation and an appeal to the ‘holy stela and mighty charaktêres’ (drawn on the papyrus) to heal the bearer’s fever. 35 See also J.E. Sanzo, Scriptural Incipits on Amulets from Late Antique Egypt (Tübingen, 2014) 89-90, #13. 36 E.g., P. Macquarie 1, ed. M. Choat and I. Gardner, A Coptic Handbook of Ritual Power (Turnhout, 2013).

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charms and instructions, develops a notion of the materialization of divinity presumably drawn from Eucharistic ritual:37 I beg, I invoke [you] … Anbersaou Araraf Kaththou Petakaththa Araraf … that you deem it worthy today to leave every place where [you] are, and come down upon the chalice of water that is set before me, that you fill it with light for me, like the sun and moon, and sevenfold more, that you adorn my eyes with divinity and discernment. Rouse yourselves, that you may reveal all mysteries that I shall seek through you. Yea, yea, for [I adjure] you by the great, true name of the Father, whose name is Aio Sabaoth … that you come to me today, down upon the chalice of water that is set [before me], that you fill it with light for me, like the sun and the moon, and sevenfold more, that [you adorn] my eyes with discernment. Rouse yourselve and reveal to me [every mystery] that I shall seek. Yea, yea, for I adjure you by your names. Spell. [ACM 127 = London Hay 10391 = ACM 127, ll. 39-49]38

This incantation seeks to infuse a material medium – the chalice of water – with the powers of some spirit that has the capacity to endow supernatural discernment. But it is the incantation itself that creates the ritual occasion, not the chalice. Such elaborate invocations show us how much the power of the liturgy influenced monks’ concepts of mediation: as liturgical voices themselves, they had the fluency to adjust, improvise, and even concoct heavenly names and attributes that could, in the end, empower oil or amulet. When we recognize the liturgical background of many of these ritual compositions, whether for use among monks or for layfolk, we become aware of a larger sensory and authoritative dimension to amulets: the rituals they materialize, the traditions they direct, even the complex relationship between written object and oral or auditory performance. These interconnections between sound and text, between ritual performance and inscribed object, between heavenly beings and ritual objects, all had sanction through Christian liturgy. 37 On the character of the Hay collection see D. Frankfurter, ‘Collections of Recipes’, in Meyer and Smith, Ancient Christian Magic, 259-62. 38 Ed. A. Kropp, Ausgewählte koptische Zaubertexte, vol. 1 (Brussels, 1931) 55-61, corrected and translated in Meyer and Smith, Ancient Christian Magic, 266.

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A Monastic Culture of Empowered Letters: C) Scripture as a Heavenly Thing Before turning to the material efficacy of scripture itself as something monks purveyed and layfolk found useful, it is worth briefly considering the very concept of scripture, of a sacred body of writings, as Egyptian monks seem to have imagined it in their subcultures. Given the monks’ saturation in the apocalyptic tradition, its visionary legends and images of heaven, hell, and angels,39 it is not surprising that an invocation (IV-VI ce) for diverse purposes adjures ‘you great archangels who are strong in your power, you whose names were first given to you, that is, (you) angels who call all of the special names that are written (here) in Hebrew, the language of heaven…’ (ACM 133 = Michigan 593, 3).40 The scripture that one might behold in an ecclesiastical procession, or hear described in a sermon, has a heavenly archetype with extravagant and esoteric features – as Isaiah in one apocryphon is shown in the seventh heaven, ‘books, but not like the books of this world; … And the books had writing in them, but not like the books of this world.’41 Of course, this idea of the heavenly prototype of an earthly holy book goes back to biblical literature.42 From the beginning the heavenly world of text extended to lore about the angels, the body of God himself, and the creation of the world. In many ways, it was this myth of the heavenly book and the secret heavenly names that inspired so many additional apocryphal compositions over late antique and byzantine centuries.43 But it also validated concepts of scripture as oracle. David Brakke has famously argued that this oracular function was the basis of Athanasius’s own efforts to circumscribe the books of a biblical canon: to establish a framework for divination and mantic interpretation, much as the Sibylline books (and even Homer) provided early Roman seers.44 Books were oracular devices. These gospels, letters, 39

See Frankfurter, ‘Legacy of the Jewish Apocalypse’, 164-200. Tr. Meyer and Smith, Ancient Christian Magic, 304. 41 Ascension of Isaiah 9.22, trans. M.A. Knibb, in J.H. Charlesworth (ed.), The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha 2 (Garden City, NY, 1985) 171. 42 E.g., Ezek 2:9-10; 43:12; 1 En 81, 103, 108; Rev 5. Cf. J.N. Bremmer, ‘From Holy Books to Holy Bible: An Itinerary from Ancient Greece to Modern Islam via Second Temple Judaism and Early Christianity’, in M. Popovič (ed.), Authoritative Scriptures in Ancient Judaism (Leiden, 2010) 327-60. 43 On the range of apocryphal apocalyptic compositions in late antique and Byzantine Egypt see Frankfurter, ‘Legacy of the Jewish Apocalypse’, 185-96. 44 D. Brakke, ‘Canon Formation and Social Conflict in Fourth-Century Egypt: Athanasius of Alexandria’s Thirty-Ninth Festal Letter’, Harvard Theological Review 87 (1994) 395419 at 415-17; cf. I.H. Henderson, ‘Early Christianity, Textual Representation, and Ritual Extension’, in D. Elm von der Osten et al. (eds.), Texte als Medium und Reflexion von Religion im römischen Reich (Stuttgart, 2006) 81-100 at 85. Homer divination: e.g., P. Oxy 40

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and apocalypses amounted to heavenly words – oracles. Textual evidence for this perspective on scripture appears in the guides to bibliomancy and for divining Christian guidance through other ritual means: the Sortes sanctorum, especially one such sortes manual from Egypt, addressed below, that is actually entitled ‘the Gospel of the Lots of Mary’.45 But there are echoes of this popular image of scripture in saints’ lives: Antony is walking by a church when he hears, purely by chance, the gospel admonition to impoverish oneself for God.46 The idea is that the restricted mantic ‘pallette’ constituted by the church space and its gospel readings produces messages for the one who asks or is suitably prepared. Thinking about scripture and its components as a comprehensive heavenly compendium helps us also to frame the magic of scripture in its more material forms. A Monastic Culture of Empowered Letters: D. The Magic of Inscribed Scripture Having surveyed the magic of the written word, the materialization of liturgical sound, and the myth of the heavenly book, all as ideologies framing a ritual potency in the act of writing religious texts, we turn now to the example of the scripture amulet, a ritual medium that papyrologists have documented in the hundreds. Indeed, it has been argued that the preponderance of our scripture fragments on papyri were intended as amulets.47 Most such amulets contained one or more phrases or passages from the psalms or gospels that had apparently accumulated notoriety for their healing or protective properties, much as biblical psalms and Qur’anic suras came to acquire certain material applications. To these Christian scriptural amulets scribes often added crosses or nomina sacra, compounding their potency and reflecting their origin in Christian scribal subcultures. Clients or supplicants subsequently folded the papyri for wearing.48 In essence, 56.3831. In general, see P.W. van der Horst, ‘Sortes: Sacred Books as Instant Oracles in Late Antiquity’, in L.V. Rutgers et al. (eds.), The Use of Sacred Books in the Ancient World (Leuven, 1998) 143-73. 45 See W.E. Klingshirn, ‘Inventing the Sortilegus: Lot Divination and Cultural Identity in Italy, Rome, and the Provinces’, in C.E. Schultz and P.B. Harvey, Jr. (eds.), Religion in Republican Italy (Cambridge, 2006) 137-61, and for Egypt A. Luijendijk, Forbidden Oracles? The Gospel of the Lots of Mary (Tübingen, 2014). 46 Life of Antony 2; cf. Theodoret, Historia religiosa 16.2 (Simeon Stylites). See Van der Horst, ‘Sortes’, 151-53. 47 E.A. Judge, ‘The Magical Use of Scripture in the Papyri’, in E.W. Conrad and E.G. Newing (eds.), Perspectives on Language and Text (Winona Lake, IN, 1987) 339-49, though see now B.C. Jones, New Testament Texts on Greek Amulets from Late Antiquity (London, 2016), with more stringent criteria for amulets. 48 In general, see T.S. De Bruyn and J.H.F. Dijkstra, ‘Greek Amulets and Formularies from Egypt Containing Christian Elements: A Checklist of Papyri, Parchments, Ostraka,

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monastic scribe and recipient shared the assumption that scriptural passages were divinely originating and potent things and that the efficacy of scripture lay in its ‘performative’ or ‘iconic’ function – that is, spoken, inscribed for one’s living space, worn, touched, rubbed, and eaten – rather than ‘informatively’ for its content.49 The amulet form provided a tangible form, even an internalization of scripture, just as an inscription turned biblical passages into apotropaic icons. Of course, what counted as scripture could extend to texts that had – in their scribal replication – a distinctive claim to divine agency, like the various representations of an apocryphal correspondence between Jesus and King Abgar of Edessa. The early fourth-century legend held that King Abgar wrote Jesus to come to Edessa to heal him. Jesus wrote back that he was supposed to be crucified but that he would send a disciple instead. This correspondence was copied or reimagined, in whole or parts, in many amulets and protective inscriptions because it conjured the idea that the Son of God had written something himself and that its mere copying or invocation maintained the miraculous agency of Christ’s initial letter – or of Abgar’s initial request that got a letter from Jesus.50 Vienna Coptic Papyrus K 8302 (ACM 61) embeds a reference to Jesus’s letter within a complex assemblage of stories, sacred names, and signs. ‫ ؼ‬I ask and I invoke you today, evil madness(?). At the time Jesus Christ was lifted onto the wood of the cross, he called out, saying Eloe Lema Sabakdani, Jesus Christ … . Leave (?) Abraham the son of Kaselia. Adam, Seth, Noah, Methuselah, and the Holy Spirit! … Give me, all of you, the second letter that our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of the ever-living God, wrote to him, to Abgar the king, the king, at the city, the city, to give deliverance, through Ananias the messenger, the copyist, that it might give health to those who are in every infirmity, whether an infirmity from … illness or a potion or sorcery or a drug. In and Tablets’, Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists 48 (2011) 163-216, and De Bruyn, Making Amulets Christian, 60-67. See also Jones, New Testament Texts on Greek Amulets. 49 On these alternative modes or functions of text see S.D. Gill, ‘Nonliterate Traditions and Holy Books: Toward a New Model’, in F.M. Denny and R.L. Taylor (eds.), The Holy Book in Comparative Perspective (Columbia, 1985) 224-39; and J.W. Watts, ‘The Three Dimensions of Scriptures’, in Watts, Iconic Books and Texts, 9-32. 50 Eusebius, H.E. 1.13.6-11; Egeria, Itin. 19. On the broad improvisational tradition in the invocation of this story, see F. Maltomini, ‘Letter of Abgar to Jesus (Amulet)’, in M.W. Haslam et al. (eds.), The Oxyrhynchus Papyri 65 (London, 1998) 122-29; J.G. Given, ‘Utility and Variance in Late Antique Witnesses to the Abgar-Jesus Correspondence’, Archiv für Religionsgeschichte 17 (2016) 187-222; and De Bruyn, Making Amulets Christian, 153-57.

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general, it must deliver from everything evil, becoming a source of healing for those who are in every infirmity, in the peace of God, Amen. Jesus Christ, help!51

In this case the apparent dittography (duplicated words) in the final section may rather reflect the repetitions typical of a song. Another common form of exploiting the powers of scripture through writing was the copying of one or more incipits to gospels or psalms: ‫ ؼ‬In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. One who dwells in the help of the Most High abide in the shelter of the Lord of Heaven. ‫ ؼ‬In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with , and the Word was God. This was in the beginning with God.  ‫ ؼ‬Book of the generation of Jesus Christ, son of David, son of Abraham.  ‫ ؼ‬Beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, son of God.  ‫ ؼ‬Since many have undertaken to compile a narrative.  ‫ ؼ‬The Lord is my helper, and I shall not fear. What will humankind do to me?  ‫ ؼ‬The Lord is my helper, and I shall look upon my enemies.  ‫ ؼ‬The Lord is my foundation and my refuge and my deliverer. ‫ ؼ‬The Lord Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every infirmity.  ‫ ؼ‬The body and the blood of Christ spare your servant who wears this amulet. Amen, Alleluia ‫ ؼ‬A ‫ ؼ‬Ω ‫ؼ‬52

Scholars had long interpreted this strategy as the scribe’s effort to condense the magic of the entirety of the particular biblical book in its few opening words. But in his recent study of this phenomenon, Joseph Sanzo has found that the scribes actually imagine the ‘Gospel’ as a compendium of thaumaturgical exempla – that it is to this thaumaturgical totality that the incipits refer, not to the Gospel as we imagine it.53 This idealization of the gospel text returns us to the general idea of scripture itself, but this time not as a canonical ideal but as a material compendium or object: that is, the codex, a reification of that heavenly ideal. It is well-known that the codex developed in Christian scribal culture to allow portability and ease of reference but that also inspired people to regard it as 51

Trans. in Meyer and Smith, Ancient Christian Magic, 114. ACM 9 = Berlin 9096, trans. Meyer and Smith, Ancient Christian Magic, 34-35. 53 See Sanzo, Scriptural Incipits on Amulets, ch. 2, and De Bruyn, Making Amulets Christian, 143-46. See, e.g., ACM ##7-8, 13-14, 16, 18, 62. 52

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potentially amuletic.54 John Chrysostom criticizes ‘how women and little children suspend gospels from their necks as a powerful amulet.’55 The implication here is that this performative – apotropaic – codex is miniaturized from what might be seen in a larger ceremonial setting – much like the Cologne Mani Codex at 4.5 × 3.5 cms.56 By the early fourth century, that is, the codex was not only a literary-technological convenience, but also a craft: a material depiction of religious textuality in general and the powers that such textuality might provide. The recently edited divination guide that calls itself ‘the Gospel [evangelion] of the Lots of Mary … she to whom the Archangel Gabriel brought the Good News [p-shenoufe]’ is but 7.5 × 6.9 cms.57 Here scripture – that is, ‘gospel’ – has again acquired an oracular significance, while the miniaturization underscores the magical or mantic power of anything called ‘gospel.’58 Sometimes examples from further afield can clarify a pattern less apparent ‘at home’, as it were. One innovative expression of this craft of turning the codex into a symbol can be seen in the gold pendants shaped like small codices (11 × 12 mm.) that craftsmen developed in workshops across early medieval Scandinavia.59 While peripheral geographically, this example indicates that the codex struck people around and beyond the Christian empire as more than a book of pages for reading. Another 54 R. Bagnall’s observation of early experimentation with the codex in the magical texts from Thebes suggests a certain association between codex contents and a culture of ritual expertise: Early Christian Books in Egypt (Princeton, 2009) ch. 4. 55 De statuis hom. 19 (PG 49: 196, 37-46). See S. Trzcionka, Magic and the Supernatural in Fourth-Century Syria (London, 2007) 108. 56 On CMC see M. P. Canepa, ‘The Art and Ritual of Manichaean Magic: Text, Object and Image from the Mediterranean to Central Asia’, in H.G. Meredith (ed.), Objects in Motion: The Circulation of Religion and Sacred Objects in the Late Antique and Byzantine World (Oxford, 2011) 79-80, and in general on magical value of miniature codices see M.J. Kruger, ‘P. Oxy 840: Amulet or Miniature Codex?’, Journal of Theological Studies 53 (2002) 81-94; N. Carlig and M. De Haro Sanchez, ‘Amulettes ou exercises scolaires: sur les difficultés de la catégorisation des papyrus chrétiens’, in M. De Haro Sanchez (ed.), Écrire la magie dans l’antiquité (Liège, 2015), 69-83 at 80-81; and T.J. Kraus, ‘Miniature Codices in Late Antiquity: Preliminary Remarks and Tendencies about a Specific Book Format’, Early Christianity 7 (2016) 134-52, with D. M. Parmenter, ‘The Iconic Book: The Image of the Bible in Early Christian Rituals’, in Watts, Iconic Books and Texts, 63-92, on the material culture of the book in early Christianity. 57 Ed. Luijendijk, Forbidden Oracles? Compare the leaf from a divination codex in S. Torallas Tovar, ‘A New Sahidic Coptic Fragment: Sortes Sanctorum or Apophthegmata Patrum?’, Journal of Coptic Studies 17 (2015) 153-64. 58 See Luijendijk, Forbidden Oracles?, 18-25. 59 See C. Fabech and U. Näsman, ‘Ritual Landscapes and Sacral Places in the First Millennium AD in South Scandinavia’, in S.W. Nordeide and S. Brink (eds.), Sacred Sites and Holy Places: Exploring the Sacralization of Landscape through Time and Space (Turnhout, 2013) 90-91.

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expression, from late antique Egypt, involves a type of amulet designed with notches to facilitate a particular way of folding. The result would have been a thick little bundle, not unlike a codex. Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 1077, which contains verses from the ‘curative [iamatikon] Gospel of Matthew’, is designed to feature a human head and torso on the outside of the folded amulet: a sort of icon, affirming the material significance and – in its combination of both book and icon-cover – the multidimensionality of the folded amulet.60

CM 7 = P. Oxy 1077, VI-VII ce. Photo courtesy of Special Collections & Archvies, Trexler Library, Muhlenberg College; printed with permission.

The Jesus/Abgar amulets, the use of gospel incipits, and iconic versions of the codex were not anomalies in the mediation of scripture in late antique Christianity, but reflected common traditions across the Mediterranean and Near Eastern worlds. What they show are the various ways in which textuality and the written word lent themselves to new traditions and innovations, all to bring heavenly power, heavenly word, into material form. The agents behind these new traditions in conceptualizing and redirecting scripture were scribes, technicians of the written word, those who imagined the codex or the incipit as crafts that gave substance to the notion of scripture. 60 Jones, New Testament Texts, #1; cf. P.Oxy 78.5127. Sanzo interprets the face to be the patient or client, meant to go on the inside of the folded charm: ‘Wrapped up in the Bible: The Multifaceted Ritual on a Late Antique Amulet (P. Oxy. VIII 1077)’, Journal of Early Christian Studies 24 (2016) 569-97. I think it more likely that the face was designed for the outside of the completely folded amulet, in which it could be client, angel, or Christ.

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From the Magic of the Written Word to Charismatic Textuality So far, I have been looking at how writing, especially the writing of monastic scribes, carried a magical power in the craft itself, the very lettering on papyrus, but a power compounded by the authority of scripture and sensibilities of liturgy. But when we move speculatively into the social world of amulets and monastic scribal services, we must confront the personalized, face-to-face encounters of laypeople, their everyday impressions and assumptions about each other, their observations of who goes where, of what is public and what private, and especially of the potential virtues and powers of those monks who are engaged in liturgy, self-control, the knowledge of demons and angels, and the chanting of scripture. In these contexts, I would suggest, the ritual authority of the monastic scribe quite often overlapped with the charismatic authority of the holy man – the one who converses with angels, delivers credible oracles, demonstrates mysterious prescience among his brethren, and heals successfully the ailments of visitors. Moreover, scribal expertise in the area of scriptural and healing charms might itself come to convey a charismatic authority beyond mere scribal craftsmanship.61 How can we see writing itself as a vehicle of that social charisma, as conveying the numinous agency of the holy man himself – or indeed the scribal ritual specialist turned holy man? Writing a scripture passage, charm, curse, or blessing in this case would be akin to the amulet of fox claws that – according to Shenoute of Atripe – ‘a great monk’ told a fifth-century official he should bind to his leg. That amulet conveyed not simply the weirdness of an assemblage of animal parts but the monk’s own saintly crafting and authoritative instruction.62 The anthropologist Alfred Gell described the extension of an original owner’s or craftsman’s active presence in a thing as his distributed agency. It is this distributed agency, indexing social forces of some originary stage of the thing, that endows it with healing or protective (or even aggressive) powers. In the form of blessing a thing thus conveys not only craftsmanship but the charisma of the living holy man or deceased saint. This charisma, albeit controlled through material forms (like papyrus, oil, or some assemblage of ingredients), is a fundamentally ambiguous, uncontrolled force, deriving from the margins of society, as hagiographical texts stressed, and 61 In my 2002 essay ‘Dynamics of Ritual Expertise in Antiquity and Beyond: Towards a New Taxonomy of ‘Magicians’,’ in M. Meyer and P. Mirecki (eds.), Magic and Ritual in the Ancient World (Leiden, 2002) 159-78, I distinguished these two types of ritual expert – scribal specialist and prophet. In the following I pursue the overlaps. 62 Shenoute, Acephalous Work A14, ed. Orlandi, Shenute: Contra Origenistas, 18-21.

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could convey both beneficial and destructive forces – a point that Mary Douglas made in her landmark book Purity and Danger.63 While few inscribed amulets suggest such dangers prima facie, their historical association with charismatic figures – holy men – recommends that we consider the distributed agency of charisma through amulets as often ambiguous – marginal. By virtue of his status as a holy man, a monk’s scribal craft would result in things that, whatever the actual product, became potent and salvific in and of themselves. Thus, a fifth- or sixth century supplicant who has heard that an important monk had just ‘bought parchment’ writes to him to request that he ‘begin to copy for us a book on parchment’. That is, the book this monk might copy becomes a holy thing beyond its contents, a vehicle for the monk’s charisma and his authority as a Christian mediator.64 How precious a holy man’s writing could be as a material blessing appears in the Byzantine Life of Daniel the Stylite, who is asked for prayers in letter-form. ‘On receiving the holy man’s written reply, [a certain rich man] would lay the letter, as if it were the miracle-working hand of Jesus, on the sufferer [in his household], and immediately he received the fruits of his faith.’65 Likewise, the letters of Eugendus, one of the Jura Fathers, were reputed to carry the holy man’s healing and exorcistic agency, inspiring a diversity of gestures to access that agency: one ill recipient clenched her letter in her teeth as she prayed for healing.66 In these cases, it is the recipients, the devotees, who perceive the writing as a vehicle of charisma and agency. But in some cases, holy men composed amulets conscious of their roles as dispensers of charisma. The same Jura Father, Eugendus, was reputed to have written a letter directly to a demon to exorcise it from a woman’s body.67 In Egypt, a Coptic amulet, apparently for facilitating childbirth, reads: ‘Give what I have written to the one split

63 M. Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London, 1966) esp. ch. 6. 64 P. Köln inv. 1473, ed. L. Koenen, ‘Ein Mönch als Berufsschreiber. Zur Buchproduktion im 5./6. Jahrhundert’, Festschrift zum 150 jährigen Bestehen des Berliner Ägyptischen Museums (Berlin, 1974) 347-54; translated with discussion by C. Rapp, ‘Holy Texts, Holy Men, and Holy Scribes: Aspects of Scriptural Holiness in Late Antiquity’, in W.E. Klingshirn and L. Safran (eds.), The Early Christian Book (Washington, DC, 2007) 194-222 at 211. 65 Life of Daniel the Stylite 88, trans. E. Dawes and N. H. Baynes, Three Byzantine Saints (Oxford, 1948) 61. See in general Rapp, ‘Holy Texts, Holy Men’, 212-19. 66 Life of Saint Eugendus 145, trans. T. Vivian et al., The Lives of the Jura Fathers (Kalamazoo, 1999) 168-69. See L. Feldt, this volume, on writing, mediality and marginality in the Lives of the Jura Fathers. 67 Life of Saint Eugendus 144, in Vivian et al., Lives of the Jura Fathers, 167-68.

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in herself’, followed by two lines of magical names.68 In specifying ‘what I have written’, the amulet attributes its efficacy to the writer’s own charisma, his own agency, conveyed and materialized through the act of writing, compounded with the graphic features of secret holy names. The Theban holy man Frange writes to another monk, ‘Since you said to me, ‘write (on) a large chip and send it to me so I can place it before the animals,’ behold, I have sent it.’ Frange’s written blessing protects the livestock.69 Frange sends someone an ostracon with a series of benedictions, including the notation, ‘Frange wrote in his own hand;’ and another time he sends someone a message to ‘put this cord on your mare and attach to it the benedictions around the neck so that the lord blesses and protects her.’70 In these latter cases, the blessing of the holy man’s writing extends to the medium of the inscription. Likewise, a protective incantation that accompanied a vessel of oil concludes with the words, ‘Apa Anoup has sealed this oil. Michael is the one who intercedes. Jesus Christ is the one who gives healing to [this patient]’ (ACM 63 = Berlin 11347).71 This is a template for an oral healing rite, not an amulet, but it demonstrates again the importance of the holy man’s – in this case, Apa Anoup’s – distributed charisma through the media that accompanied the written word. Sainthood, its marginal powers, and its myths of marginality are always a dialectical construction, involving not just the subject’s social recognition but his or her own performance in dialectic with that social recognition. Monks like Apa Anoup and Frange, as well as Eugendus of the Jura and Daniel the Stylite, embraced both the social role of local saint (with its marginal powers and associations) and the materiality of communication of that role, especially the technology of writing itself to communicate their authority and agency – their capacity to act in the world. That is, these holy men were well aware that writing, in their societies, served not simply as a vehicle for informative content but, even more, as an iconic thing, a numinous thing, and an extension of one’s reach as an agent of blessings.

68 Coll. Moen inv. 107, ed. P.J. Sijpestijn, ‘A Coptic Magical Amulet’, Chronique d’Égypte 57 (1987) 183-84. 69 O. Frange 190, edd. A. Boud’hors and C. Heurtel, Les ostraca coptes de la TT 29: Autour du moine Frangé (Brussels, 2010) 1: 158, with thanks to Malcolm Choat. Bodleian Coptic 426 (see Sanzo, Scriptural Incipits, 78-80, #2) is a large (24 × 24 cm) limestone chip covered in scriptural references and Christian symbols, with a hole bored at the bottom for hanging, much like the animal-protection amulet Frange has prepared according to this ostracon. 70 O. Crum ST 18; O. Frange 191. 71 Trans. Meyer and Smith, Ancient Christian Magic, 119.

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Conclusion What do these diverse crafts and notions of textuality have to do with the monastic holy man as mediator of Christianity? First of all, they all constitute facets of Christian textuality as a distinguishing ideology of the religion, one that was regularly moving into materiality through a book or an amulet. This is what scripture meant, what ‘gospel’ comprised, and how sacred words became functional and efficacious. Second, textuality implies craftsmen, scribes, whose agency as masters of the written word continued through the writings themselves. If to us a papyrus amulet is first and foremost papyrus with some recognizable scriptural passage, in an ancient semi-literate culture that object might well transmit the charisma and agency of its maker. Precious objects did not stand independent and aloof from the craftsman (even if the progenitor of the words was God himself); they always maintained in some way associations with their makers. And acknowledging this personalization of written things opens a vital continuum between the ‘mere’ scribe, technician of the written word, on the one hand, and on the other the charismatic holy man, paragon of marginality, the one who might write ‘give what I have written to the one suffering in labor’. The continuum was present in the diversity of monks, like the eighth-century anchorite Theophilus, who had covered his cell walls with the very incipits and scripture passages commonly used in amulets.72 So while we must not exclude the anonymous amulet or the purely technical amulet scribe with no monastic affiliation, historically we are in a more likely place in regarding the literate monk, one with some degree of charisma in the eyes of regional layfolk, as mediator of Christianity through textual and other media.

72 W. Godlewski, ‘Monastic Life in Makuria’, in G. Gabra and H.N. Takla (eds.), Christianity and Monasticism in Aswan and Nubia (Cairo, 2013) 160-63; cf. Van der Vliet, ‘Literature, Liturgy, Magic’.

IV. LETTERS FROM THE WILDERNESS  MARGINALITY, LITERARITY, AND RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY CHANGES IN LATE ANTIQUE GAUL Laura Feldt1

The anonymous text known as the Life of the Jura Fathers (Vita Patrum Iurensium2) provides good material for an analysis of marginality and the role of media in transformations of religious authority. It treats the lives of the monks Romanus, Lupicinus, and Eugendus from sixth-century Gaul (ca. 522). It was written in a transitional period, and draws on, but differs from, earlier ascetic literature in Gaul,3 as well as from later Merovingian, aristocratic hagiography.4 In Western Europe in the aftermath of the Roman empire, the status of asceticism and the authority of church leaders was contested. Power structures and networks were changing, and so were forms of authority. In this situation, ascetic literature – saints’ lives, letters, treatises – played a decisive role in promoting the ascetics in the West as figures of authority. This article discusses the role played by literary media in ascetic discourses of spatial and bodily marginality in late antique Gaul.5

1 I wish to thank Jan N. Bremmer and Ingvild S. Gilhus warmly for their feedback on this article. 2 Throughout this paper, I use the edition of F. Martine, Vie des Pères du Jura. Introduction, texte critique, lexique, traduction et notes, Sources Crétiennes no. 142 (Paris, 2004). Henceforth, the text will be abbreviated VPI after its Latin title. 3 Such as Sulpicius Severus’ Life of St Martin, Cassian’s works, and monastic literature from Lérins, etc. 4 I. Moreira, Dreams, Visions, and Spiritual Authority in Merovingian Gaul (Ithaca, 2000); T. Vivian, K. Vivian, J.B. Russell, The Life of the Jura Fathers (Kalamazoo, 1999) 45-6; L. Feldt, ‘Authority, Space, and Literary Media – Eucherius’ Epistula de laude eremi and authority changes in late antique Gaul’, Postscripts – The Journal of Sacred Texts and Contemporary Worlds 8/2 (2018/2012) 193-219. 5 J.N. Bremmer, Maidens, Magic and Martyrs in Early Christianity (Tübingen, 2017) 71-2, in his discussion of Peregrinus, characterises Christianity as a movement ‘connected and maintained by the written word’.

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Replacing the Egyptian desert of earlier Christian wilderness mythology with the mountainous forests of Gaul, the Jura monks are at once ascribed forms of marginality and forms of authority. The VPI contains stories in which they wield their marginality successfully as a weapon over against the authority of priests, bishops, secular leaders, kings and judges. The three ascetics perform their marginality through spatial and bodily practices relating to wilderness mythology, and their performance of marginality is what – according to our text – also enables them to produce a special kind of magical power to heal illnesses, to produce a rich harvest, to drive out demons, etc. So, while the marginality they perform would seem to point in a world-rejecting direction, it is put to use in world-affirming ways.6 The text thus presents a fascinating picture of the relations between marginality and authority in the era. The following analysis will engage the questions of how this text of praise of three Christian ascetics functions as a literary medium, how it promotes the marginality of its protagonists, and how it reflects authority changes of the era. Analyses of the text’s literary mediality shows how the text’s hagiographical discourse is embedded in a literary-epistolographic frame, which reflects a particular aesthetic7 culture of reception. As I hope to show, in this text fantastic power and magical potency are ascribed to the wilderness space, to the marginal bodies of the protagonists, as well as to ascetic literary culture and the materiality of the written letter itself.8 This special power is presented as the key form of religious authority. After the analysis, which will focus on the text’s mediality and issues of marginality, I return to the discussion of authority. The epistolographic frame, combined with the stories of the fantastic powers of the letters and writing of Eugendus, makes for a mise-en-abyme9 6 For this distinction, I draw on H.J.L. Jensen, ‘Maria Magdalene i Provence. Tribal og postaksial askese’, Religionsvidenskabeligt Tidsskrift 64 (2016) 96-120. 7 I.e., aesthetics in the Greek sense (aisthesis), not in the Kantian sense, see A. Grieser, ‘Aesthetics’, in K. von Stuckrad and R.A. Segal (eds.), Vocabulary for the Study of Religion (Leiden, 2015) 14-23. 8 As noted by J.N. Bremmer, ‘From Books with Magic to Magical Books in Ancient Greece and Rome’, in D. Boschung and J.N. Bremmer (eds.), The Materiality of Magic (Paderborn, 2015) 241-69 at 265-8, it was only from the late fourth, fifth and later centuries that we have evidence of special treatment of the physical Bible and Christians only slowly began to designate their writings as ‘sacred’; as Bremmer points out, it is hardly by chance that we also find Bible quotations used as amulets from the fourth century onwards, also discussing miniature codices used for apotropaic purposes. It is worth pointing out, however, that this usage refers to the Bible and Bible quotations, not to the writing of a monk. 9 Mise-en-abyme is a literary expression for a form of literary recursivity or selfreference, where a text segment at a lower level is mirrored at a higher level: A. Nünning (ed.),

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reading experience, which is used to frame the ascetic letter as a medium of religious power and potency.10 The model readers are addressed explicitly several times, and their life and conduct is described as one of spiritual contemplation (conversatio vitaque theoretica VPI 2, 5-6).11 Our text also legitimises their authority as producers and users of these mobile, far-ranging, and in principle unlimited material media of religious potency with which to intervene in social relations. In sum, the text provides affordances – sensory, emotional, practical – for the model ascetic reader to read the text through the exempla lens, it mediates the necessary practices for the readers to train, in the forest, to become media of presence like the three ascetic heroes. In addition, the text quite clearly provides affordances for the production and authorisation of new mobile and flexible media of presence and magical power: the ascetic letters. Before we proceed, let me say a few words about the concepts used in the analysis. Marginality and Mediality Wilderness mythology and spatial practices related to the wilderness are here regarded as significant aspects of the performance of marginality by the Gallic ascetics, as relayed in the VPI. In previous work, I have formulated an understanding of a ‘wilderness’ as an intermediary, semi-natural and social space that is regarded as marginalised with regard to an inhabited or ‘home’ region, and which is ascribed cultural meanings and functions.12 It is thus, emphatically, not a binary concept to be understood Metzler Lexikon Literatur- und Kulturtheorie (Stuttgart, 2001) 442-3; it stems originally from art history and it is used for instances of self-reflection in a work of art or a representation of the whole work embedded in the work. 10 For a discussion of the ‘charisma’ of the written word in Christian Egypt and the role of monastic scribes, see D. Frankfurter, ‘Charismatic Textuality, Monastic Scribes, and the Mediation of Christianity in Late Antique Egypt’ (this volume); see Th. de Bruyn, Making Amulets Christian. Artefacts, Scribes, and Contexts (Oxford, 2017) for a study of Greek amulets with Christian elements from late antique Egypt. 11 The recipients of the text are further likened to the apostle on the breast of Christ, Christ is presented as the author of salvation, and the text again as spiritual nourishment (alimonia spiriali), VPI 2, 13. 12 The understanding of place, space, and landscape has developed tremendously in history, anthropology, and in the study of religion. The new interest in space relates to how space is produced, imagined, and lived, in addition to a geophysical interest in space. This means that space should not be investigated only as a passive materiality, but also in terms of practices, experiences, modes of production, materiality, relations, and forms of engagement, see details and references in L. Feldt (ed.), Wilderness in Mythology and Religion. Approaching Religious Spatialities, Cosmologies, and Ideas of Wild Nature (Berlin, 2012).

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vis-à-vis ‘civilisation’ or ‘culture’, but rather a concept that taps into current understandings of the messiness of the relations between humans and ‘the world’.13 Many scholars have discussed how the Egyptian desert ideal moved west and became a key spatial model in the formation of ascetic milieu in Latin Europe.14 The desert is precisely a form of wilderness. Often in Latin ascetic literature, the Jewish wilderness prophet-type, as well as the Torah wilderness narratives, are referenced intertextually alongside the vitas of earlier Christian ascetics, and in some Latin texts, like in some of the Lérinian literature, we see a trend towards increasing metaphorisation of the wilderness.15 Thus, what is at stake in the texts is arguably not the desert specifically, but rather its marginality, as an intermediary space, a space in which to perform religious marginality. Of course, this space need not actually be far away from home, but it presupposes an act of distancing. In Christian ascetic literature in Gaul, the wilderness space was also a spatial practice and a body technology; that is, a devotional elaboration of wilderness mythology was mediated in literature,16 and it connected to the bodily marginalisation techniques of the ascetics. It is thus important to note that the wilderness is not only a mythologised and literary space, but also a series of related spatial practices for the formation of religious identity as a marginal identity.17 Embedding technologies for self-formation, ascetic wilderness texts demonstrate a marked interest in the behaviour, attitudes, and equipment of those withdrawing spatially to the wilderness, their particular style of clothing, attitudes towards riches, etc., which can be seen as spatial practices used to signal

13

See Feldt, Wilderness, 1-24. P. Rousseau, Ascetics, Authority and the Church in the Age of Jerome and Cassian (Oxford, 1978; 2nd edition Notre Dame, 2010); M.-E. Brunert, Das Ideal der Wüstenaskese und seine Rezeption in Gallien bis zum Ende des 6. Jahrhunderts (Münster, 1994); M. Dunn, The Emergence of Monasticism: From the Desert Fathers to the Early Middle Ages (Oxford, 2003); C. Rapp, ‘Desert, City, and Countryside in the Early Christian Imagination’, in J. Dijkstra and M. van Dijk (eds.), The Encroaching Desert. Egyptian Hagiography and the Medieval West (Leiden, 2006) 93-112; C. Leyser, ‘The Uses of the Desert in the Sixth Century West’, ibidem, 113-34. 15 Feldt, ‘Authority, Space’. For a comparative discussion of Mesopotamian, Jewish, and Christian wilderness mythology, see L. Feldt, ‘Myth, Space, and the History of Religions – Reflections on the Comparative Study of Wilderness Mythologies from Mesopotamia, the Hebrew Bible, and Early Christianity’, in P. Antes et al. (eds.), Contemporary Views on Comparative Religion (London, 2016) 85-97. 16 I have previously elaborated this perspective with regard to the gospel of Matthew, see L. Feldt, ‘Ancient wilderness mythologies: the case of space and religious identity formation in the gospel of Matthew’, Archiv für Religionsgeschichte 16/1 (2015) 163-92. 17 Cf. Feldt ‘Ancient wilderness’. 14

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marginality. Marginality can thus be a question of a voluntary and religiously marked performance aimed at producing social distinction.18 Approaching ascetic literature, and the selected vita, in terms of theories of mediation, media technologies, and media affordances entails an understanding of media not as neutral carriers of content or information, but as ‘content-in-form’ that has physical, sensory, social, emotional, material (etc.) characteristics.19 Understanding texts as media thus entails shifting our understanding even further from the idea of information, to say that texts also mediate social relations, habits, modes of communication, and emotional practices. Texts are also material objects which afford certain types of usage, relations, and forms of interaction. They can be stored, put on display, used in rituals, or physically destroyed. Media are both conditioned internally in their form by their characteristics, which constrain reception and use,20 as well as externally in their materiality and contexts of production and use, and so they facilitate communication and enable social relations in varying ways.21 Here, I wish to address the mediality of ascetic literature by investigating how our text mediates and stimulates religious practices, including emotional, sensual, and spatial ones. Literary Mediality in the Life of the Jura Fathers The Vita Patrum Iurensium or Life of the Jura Fathers was composed in the early sixth century. The text offers biographies of three Christian ascetics from the Jura mountains who lived in the fifth century, its author is anonymous, and the consensus dating of it is around or slightly after 520.22 It consists of 179 sections of ca. 6-12 lines each.23 It is positioned historically 18 In the VPI, the fantastic power of the wilderness is palpable, but mediated in and by a literary text that tells stories of the transfer of this power to material texts written by Eugendus. 19 M. McLuhan, Understanding Media – The Extensions of Man (Cambridge, 1994 [1964]); J. Meyrowitz, ‘Medium Theory’, in D. Crowley and D. Mitchell (eds.), Communication Theory Today (Cambridge, 1994) 50-77 and ‘Morphing McLuhan. Medium Theory for New Millennium’, Proceedings of the Media Ecology Association 2 (2001) 8-22. 20 See already F. Heider, F. ‘Thing and Medium’, Psychological Issues 1 (1959) 1-34 and the introduction to this volume. 21 This section overlaps extensively with my previous description of my approach in L. Feldt, ‘Contemporary fantasy fiction and representations of religion: playing with reality, myth and magic in His Dark Materials and Harry Potter,’ Religion 46/4 (2016) 550-74. 22 See the introductions in Martine, Vie des Pères and Vivian et al., The Life, as well as Leyser, ‘The Uses of the Desert’. 23 I follow the edition of Martine, Vie des Pères. The oldest manuscript is Bisontinus (Chapître de Besançon), followed by Parisinus (Bibliotheque Nationale); the next stage in the text’s evolution is Jurensis (Abbaye de Saint-Claude). In the tenth century, independent

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after the more famous biographies of Antony (ca. 360?)24 and Martin (ca. 397),25 which the author used and had access to, along with excerpts from the writings of Cassian, Basil, and Pachomius.26 At this time, monasticism was already established in Gaul, and desert texts and wilderness practices were popular.27 Slightly later, in 534, the Franks conquered the Jura area, and this marked the beginning of major changes in Western monasticism, because of the way the Franks used the monks, and the great role that royal patronage and aristocratic benefactors came to play.28 The introductory sections of the text (sections 1-3) serve as an introduction (praefatio); sections 4-61 treat the life of the first ascetic to venture into the wild forests, Romanus; sections 62-117 narrate the life of Lupicinus, and 118-178 the life of Eugendus. Each life is framed by sections of address and valediction. Section 179 is a final, valedictory address. The introductory sections address the text to two named and devout brothers, Johannes and Armentarius (1,10), whom the narrator states that he knows personally, as an answer to their repeated exhortations to write the lives of the Jura fathers (1,10-14). Several times throughout the text, references are made to the personal relations between the narrator and the addressees, and the VPI also ends with an address to the recipients and readers. In the following, I first analyse the internal literary mediality of the text in order to enable a discussion of the kinds of usage, relations, emotions, practices that are mediated and stimulated by the text. I focus on the key literary strategies used: a, the epistolographic frame and its impact on an copying of Vita Eugendi began; one from Dijon, and many later from Citeaux and elsewhere (Martine, Vie des Pères, 128-9, 187-9; see Martine’s discussion of the complex history of transmission, 128-89). 24 See J.N. Bremmer, ‘Athanasius’ Life of Antony: Marginality, Spatiality and Mediality’ (this volume). 25 As seen in the VPI, Martin is clearly venerated by the Jura monks (e.g., VPI 161 and the story of how the monastery once went up in flames, destroying everything but the holy oil of Martin). 26 Vivian et al., The Life, 50-51. Vivian describes the author as learned and as a practiced writer, and speculates that he may have known Greek (Vivian et al., The Life, 50-51, n.82); Martine (Vie des Pères, 374-5, n.2) is more sceptical saying that if the author knew Greek it would have been exceptional in this era. For a study of the Latin of the Life of the Jura Fathers, see P.-W. Hoogterp, ‘Les Vies des Pères du Jura: Étude sur la langue’, Bulletin du Cange: archivum latinitatis medii aevi 9 (1934) 129-251. 27 Athanasius’ Life of Antony was translated into Latin very early after its composition (see Bremmer, this volume), and among others, Cassian became a major broker of the desert in the West; he wrote his Institutes and Conferences in the 420s. These works are thought to constitute an adaptation of the Eastern traditions to the West, changing them significantly, not merely a transfer of it, cf. Leyser, ‘The Uses’; Dunn, The Emergence, 59-60. 28 P. Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom. Triumph and Diversity (London, 2003) 219-31; Vivian et al., The Life, 44-46.

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imitatory and emotion-stimulating culture of reception, b, the use of wilderness mythology and the stimulation of the performance of marginality, and c, the fantastic strategies that affect religious practices by contributing to the creation of the special power of ascetic writing.29 Texts such as the VPI often contain hagiographical discourse, descriptions of outstanding personal virtues, just as descriptions of the performance of marginality forms an integral part of ascetic hagiography.30 Both aspects are related, and contribute, naturally, to casting the monks as models for emulation. A series of fantastic31 or marvellous events are also key parts of the text’s form, and fantastic content indeed features as typical content in hagiography. These aspects of the text’s mediality are crucial for understanding the passages in which the protagonists are depicted as competing with other forms of authority. Interestingly, for our understanding of marginality and authority mutations in the era, the three monks are placed in competitive situations, in which their authority is proven to be superior to other types of authority; this shows that authority forms were contested. After analysing and discussing the text’s mediality, finally, in the article’s second section, I move to a discussion of the role of media in authority mutations in the era. A) Framing the Text: Epistolographic Traits and Imitatory Culture While the narratives of each of the three ascetics in VPI are framed by introductory and concluding sections, section 1 and 179 present the frame of the entire composition, that is, the initial and the final greetings of the author/narrator. The text is addressed to the two ascetics, Iohannes and Armentarius (1,10), and its form is that of a letter between friends. I will argue that these framing sections influence the reception of the text considerably.

29 See further below and cf. L. Feldt, The Fantastic in Religious Narrative from Exodus to Elisha (London, 2012). In the VPI, a series of further literary strategies are used, also specifically to construct the three persons as heroes and the text as authoritative, which I cannot go fully into here (e.g., the intertextual references to Evagrius’ translation of The Life of Antony and Sulpicius Severus’ Life of Martin, as well as key Old Testament scenes). 30 I relate here to Richard Valantasis’ understanding of asceticism as performed and mediated by ‘agents capable of functioning in a particular social, political or religious environment in contradistinction to dominant or hegemonic environments’: R. Valantasis, The Making of the Self. Ancient and Modern Asceticism (Cambridge, 2008) 103-13 at 103. 31 For arguments in favour of this terminology in relation to marvellous elements in religious narratives, see Feldt, The Fantastic, 239-52.

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The narrator calls attention to his personal relationship with the two brothers, and indicates that his authorship of the Vita is an answer to their repeated requests to write about the lives of the three monks, Romanus, Lupicinus, and Eugendus (1,10-14). The praefatio thus uses some of the epistolographic traits characteristic of the genre of ancient letters. Roberto Alciati, in his analysis of key persons in the Gallic monastic milieu, also stresses how Lérinian authors mix genres, and how key aspects of the epistolographic form, especially that of the letter as a dialogue in absentia, are used in many works of other genres. On that basis, Alciati suggests that we might use the term ‘la lettre didactique’ for such texts that have educational and parenetic purposes.32 As recent research on ancient letters has suggested, the distinctions between letters and other kinds of monastic literature are not as strict as sometimes assumed.33 In monastic literature collections, many kinds of text are combined, and generally the texts are preserved because they are deemed to have a paedagogic or instructive purpose or quality.34 Marilyn Dunn points to the remarkable emphasis in ascetic literature from Gaul on scriptural study, especially in Cassian’s works, and on letter-writing in literature produced at Lérins in the fifth century.35 The epistolographic frame influences the text’s mediality and gives us an idea of which kinds of use, social relations, practices, etc., the text stimulated in its social life. The text also contains self-reflective elements on its reception and performance which point, in interesting ways, towards the text’s monastic, social life. Letters of Christian ascetics from the era of the VPI often express, in emotional terms, a close and special relationship

32 R. Alciati, ‘Eucher, Salvien et Vincent: Les Gallicani doctores de Lérins’, in Y. Codou and M. Lauwers (eds.), Lérins. Une île sainte de l’Antiquité au Moyen Âge (Turnhout, 2009) 118-19. 33 S. Rubenson, ‘The Letter-Collections of Antony and Ammonas. Shaping a Community’, in B. Neil and P. Allen (eds.), Collecting Early Christian Letters from the Apostle Paul to Late Antiquity (Cambridge, 2015) 68-79. 34 Rubenson, ‘The Letter-Collections’, 77-78, pointing out how instructions, stories, legends, sayings, etc., are all mixed up and do not appear as separate genres. 35 Dunn, The Emergence, 82-4; Dunn notes that the Lerinese abbots and bishops cultivated the classical art of letter-writing (83); Alciati, ‘Eucher, Salvien’, 118, stresses their use of a letter-like question and answer-form in much of their literature. Interestingly, The Life of Honoratus presents his letters as very special and to be kept in ‘the coffer of the heart itself’: Dunn, The Emergence, 83. Although the VPI may be understood to distance itself from Lérins in other ways, it may thus draw on, and develop, some Lerinian ideas and traditions regarding letters. Clearly, Lérins did influence the Jura monasteries, cf. the consecration of Romanus to the priesthood by Hilarius of Arles (F. Prinz, Frühes Mönchtum im Frankenreich (Munich, 1988) 68-9), and cf. the mention that Abbot Marinus of Lérins requested the rules and regulations of the Agaune community (VPI 179).

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with the addressees.36 We certainly see this in the VPI, along with other traits named by Rubenson as particular to ascetic letters, namely references to the author’s own experience and expressions of his knowledge of what the recipients need and long for,37 as in this example: Voilà pourquoi, mes frères très pieux, Jean et Armentaire, forts de votre double affection, vous frappez avec plus d’insistance à la porte de votre ami…’ and ‘Étanchez pour l’instant à ces sources, ô très saints frères, la soif de votre foi et de votre ferveur, vos désirs étant, pour un moment, satisfaits’ (VPI 1,10-13 and 179,1-338).

As we see here, the text is something that the recipients long for affectionately, and it is seen as a form of nourishment. References are made to secrecy and figurative readings: ‘L’Ami sacré et mystériux évoqué dans l’Évangile, en enseignant mystiquement…’ (VPI 1,1-2), and to the close bond between the sender and the addressees. In addition, instructions are given for how the text should be used. In the very first section of the text, several different words are used to stress how the text should be read. Reference is made to Luke 11,5-8 and the story of the friend asking for bread in the middle of the night. Indications are given that the text should be read and understood through the presentation of Christ as a sacred and mysterious (sacer arcanusque, 1,1) friend, who taught mystically (mystice, 1,2). The present text, by being placed in metaphorical relation to the gospel text, and in imitatory connection to what is presented as the mystical teaching of Christ, is thus framed, from the outset, as partaking in the same great and secret, divine and ineffable mystery (magnum secretumque arcanum, 1,5; ineffabili diuinoque… sacramento, 1,7), the mystery of the trinity and salvation (1,3).39

36

Rubenson, ‘The Letter-Collections’, 75. Rubenson, ‘The Letter-Collections’, 76. 38 VPI 1,10-13: Unde vos, o piisimi fratres Iohannes atque Armentari, vehementius amicum gemino pulsantes adfectu…; VPI 179, 1-2: His interim fidei feruorisque vestri sitim, o sanctissimi, exsatiatis tantisper desideriis, reficite, fratres. I use Martine’s superior French translation, but I include also the English translation of Vivian et al.: ‘This is why, John and Armentarius, my dear devout brothers, you with twin affections knock so insistently at the door of your friend…’; ‘Refresh yourselves, holy brothers, and quench for while your faithful and fervent thirst, with your desires for the moment satisfied’. 39 Moreover, the relationship between the sender and the addressees as friends and their gift exchanges is envisaged as similar to Christ as a friend. We are perhaps meant to read the three ascetics with the three loaves of the trinity as a lens (father, son, and holy spirit); such a reading would contribute to explaining the preponderance of fantastic elements in the Life of Eugendus. 37

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Next, the addressees are mentioned explicitly as the devout, affectionate, and insistent brothers knocking on the door of the author (1,10-11). The author himself is thus framed as the friend inside the house in the Lukan story, and simultaneously as a person offering the loaves of the Trinity himself for mystical consumption to other ascetics, thus fusing writing, reading, eating the host, and salvation. These, I think, are the first clues we get that something very interesting is going on in this text with regard to mediation. In this initial framing section, the text is presented as food, as made for eating, for consumption, a special kind of eating with affection and strong emotion, in ways evocative of that other special, Christian form of eating, the Eucharist. The mediality of the introductory passages also indicates that the text is aimed for use in the monastic community, and designed to be read in a particular manner. Certain literary traits support what we may call a ‘labile interpellation’, as it were. On the one hand, the addressees are concrete persons, pointed out deictically through their names, John and Armentarius, through the repeated use of the personal pronoun (you), and on the other hand, the addressee is unlimited in the sense that the language used is sufficiently open so that all future ascetic readers can be directly addressed by the ‘you’. These textual movements are supported by the imitatory structure of reception suggested also in much other ascetic literature.40 Consuming the text in an ascetic culture of reading, they are encouraged to see themselves as participating in a long chain of friends and imitators of Christ. It has been pointed out with regard to Sulpicius Severus’ letters that they do not demonstrate the classical, epistolographic traits of salutation, valediction, of address to a named recipient in the 2nd person, or of the mentions of the recipients’ physical distance from the sender.41 Yet, as recent research on those letters shows, what Sulpicius Severus accomplishes by using some aspects of the letter form is an increased emphasis on the proper reception of the text and on the model recipients. I would suggest that something similar is taking place here. John and Armentarius are depicted as commissioning the text, occasioning its production, and so the act of reading is presented as an essential component of its literary mediality.42 In other ways 40 This is emphasised in our text by intertextual references to The Life of Antony and to The Life of Martin, which invite the readers to see the three Gallic monks as the heirs of these two famous ascetics, and as ascetic readers. I will not delve into this here. 41 Z. Yuzwa, ‘Reading Genre in Sulpicius Severus’ Letters’, Journal of Late Antiquity 7 (2015) 329-50. 42 See Yuzwa, ‘Reading Genre’, 337-8: ‘Conceived most simply, what a letter does is introduce a second person – the addressee and primary reader – into the narrative space of the text’; a letter can be understood as a media form the meaning and function of which is generated at least as much by the internal recipient and the external recipient, as by the author.

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too, the text underscores the role of the reader, and of reading, in the production and reception of ascetic literature and hagiographical discourse. In the VPI, the audience’s reading and presence is thus not external to the text, but attain a vital role within the text. The readers are stimulated to take John and Armentarius and their affectionate and emotional reading of the text as exemplary, in addition to the three protagonist abbots. The recipients read the text, consume it, just as the later readers will; the many deictic markers support this, so that the text stimulates its own reception as a form of direct speech from the author to all the later readers. The text’s epistolographic mediality thus underlines how to read in an exemplary mode and demonstrates what the reader can gain from doing so. Reading ascetic literature and letters, indeed, is presented as a salvific act, as part of the ascetic work and discipline, equal to receiving the loaves of the Trinity and consuming the mystery of the Eucharist, in the salutation and valediction parts of the text. The epistolographic mediality also entails a claim that the text forms part of the narrative world of Romanus, Lupicinus and Eugendus. Reading about them then entails participating in the narrative, as it were.43 By adding the media affordances of a letter to the vita, the author achieves something significant. The text’s mediality stresses a set of practices for producing presence and power – and relates them to ascetic lectio, and to ascetic letters. The fantastic power is no longer solely connected to the ascetic heroes, but also to lectio, literary culture, and letters. I will return to this in the final section of the analysis; suffice it here to point out that the salvific, healing and protective benefits of being in the company of the three ascetics are here extended to reading about them. The introduction suggests that salvation is possible through reading and writing, through the production and consumption of ascetic literature, through lectio and ascetic literary practices. Literary practice becomes a way of producing potency and obtaining protection; literary practice is also described as the fundamental and vital food that the ascetic can indeed consume; the spiritual nourishment which sustains him in the wilderness, which he longs for affectionately (VPI 2,13; 179).44 43 C. Conybeare, Paulinus Noster: Self and Symbols in the Letters of Paulinus of Nola (Oxford, 2000) 41-59 at 58, perhaps points to something similar when arguing that Paulinus’ letters are sacramental, suggesting that for Paulinus, letters come to represent a ‘spiritualisation of the aristocractic habit of forming and maintaining connections by letter’; discussed in Yuzwa, ‘Reading Genre’, 344. 44 The author also calls attention to the text’s media form by underlining his own poverty of style, in ways similar to Cassian in his Conferences, as noted by Martine (Vie des Pères, 241 note 4). The author also points to himself as an incompetent medium (in the manner of Moses), thus at once legitimising his own words by making it seem as if the

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The final section of the introduction takes up the theme of space. The natural environment of rock, and forests of pine and fir of the Jura mountains is described as a remote wilderness that is metaphorically likened to Peter, to the Church, and to the ark of the Old Testament (Vulgate Psalm 131,6 (Hebrew Bible Psalm 132), as the site of the holy brothers (sancti) (VPI 3,6-8), i.e., as their ‘desert’. Let us now move to the theme of marginality. B) Wilderness Mythology and Marginality All three monks perform their marginality by means of spatial practices related to the wilderness. Romanus is the clearest example; Lupicinus and Eugendus continue what he started. The text describes Romanus’ withdrawal from society, and how he ventures into the mountain forests to do ascetic training, to live, to some extent, as a wild man in the manner of Elijah and Elisha from the Old Testament. At the foot of a rocky mountain, and near an icy spring, Romanus settles down under a magnificent fir tree, many miles distant from any habitation: D’autre part, si quelqu’un décidait, avec une téméraire audace, de couper à travers les solitudes sans chemin pour gagner le territoire des Équestres, sans parler de la densité de la forêt et des amas d’arbres tombés, les crêtes très élevées où vivent les cerfs et les vallées escarpées des daims permettraienet à peine à cet homme, même robuste et agile, d’effectuer le trajet en une longue journée de solstice. Quant à parcourir l’étendue de cette chaîne par la droite, sinistre à vrai dire, je veux dire en partant de la limite du Rhin, d’où soufflé l’Aquilon, et en se dirigeant vers les confins du pays de Nîmes, personne ne pourrait, en raison de la distance et des difficultés d’un relief inaccesible.45 praise and lives (laus vitaque) shine of their own accord (VPI 3,9-14) and at the same time demonstrating his own literary skill. Each life is framed by such introductions and endings that offer deictic pointers to the readers, self-referential comments on the text’s use, and the narrator’s references to his own style of writing as simple, unadorned, and un-philosophical, arguably intending to mirror ascetic practice in literary form, as well as possibly letter writing ideals of terseness and simplicity, as well as the ideal of being taught by Christ. 45 VPI 9,1-10: Ceterum, si quis solitudinem ipsam inuiam contra Aequestris territorii loca ausu temerario secare deliberet, praeter concretionem siluestrem siue congeries arborum caducarum, inter iuga quoque praecelsa ceruorum platocerumue praerupta conuallia, uix ualidus expeditusque poterit sub longa solstitii die transcendere. Nam dextra, certe sinistra, serrae ipsius tractum, a limite scilicet Rheni siue flatibus aquilonis usque pagi Nemausatis extimum, nullus omnino ob longitudinem uel difficultatem inaccessibilis naturae poterit penetrare. In the English translation of Vivian et al.: ‘Moreover, if someone decided, with audacious daring, to cut across this roadless wilderness toward the territory of the Equestres, in addition to the dense forest and the heaps of fallen trees, he found high and lofty mountain ridges and steep valleys dividing the regions. There stags and broad-horned deer

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The area is described as a roadless, solitary, inaccessible wilderness, with dense forests, lofty mountains and steep valleys, and replete with wild animals such as stags and deer (VPI 6-9; 12). Not long after, Romanus’ brother Lupicinus joins him, and the renown of their ascetic practice, of their miracles of healing and exorcism, and the sweet fragrance they exude attract many others, who advance into this region which is described as nearly impassable. The relative peacefulness of the wilderness depicted here is noteworthy; no dangerous animals (bears, boars, wolves) are mentioned. Through their practices and attitudes, the group of monks perform marginality vis-à-vis normal society and family life, and the wilderness becomes emblematic for their lives. As is clear to see, the wilderness is here at once ‘natural’, ‘cultural’, and ‘social’; it cannot be grasped by means of a dichotomous nature-culture distinction. The wilderness models their identity, and it assumes not only a spatial, but also a durative, temporal, and a metaphorical quality: their life in this world is seen as a wilderness life, moving towards a heavenly reward after death (VPI 169). And yet, the VPI is not very concerned with the afterlife or with rejecting this world. It is much more concerned with highlighting the effects, in this world, of living in the wilderness, ascetic training, and monastic practices. The monks, placed in the wilderness, are presented as being able to produce a magical-protective power, which gives them the ability to heal, drive out demons, produce food and other goods for survival in this world. Living at the margins of society, they are presented as able to provide food, healing, and exorcisms for throngs of people, just as they also intercede with kings and other powerful men on behalf of the weak. As it is summed up at the end of the life of Lupicinus, their specialness, their sainthood, involves powers, example, patronage, and prayers of intercession. They produce powers or miracles, function as examples, offer protection, and constant prayers, from their spatially marginal position: … au monastère de Laucone, qu’il orne de ses miracles, pénètre de ses exemples, comble de ses protections, assiste continuellement de ses prières.46

live. Even if the traveler were strong and lightly equipped, he would scarcely be able to cross it in a day, even the longest day of the year. Given the distance and the difficulties of its natural inaccessibilit, no one could blaze a trail through this mountain range, to right or to left, from the regions of the Rhine and the raging of the north wind all the way to the farthest wooded regions’. 46 VPI 117,5-8: … interius hic interim Lauconnense monasterium virtutibus instrueret, inbueret exemplis, ornaret patrociniis, orationibus iugiter adiuuaret. In Vivian et al.’s translation: ‘(Lupicinus) … would for the time being furnish the monastery of Lauconnus with his powers, imbue it with his example, adorn it with his patronage, and aid it continuously with his prayers’, see Martine, Vie des Pères, 362.

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As Martine notes, the author cleverly creates a comparable relation between Lupicinus’ function while still alive, and the later function of his tomb. C) The Fantastic and Writing Letters from the Wilderness Hagiographical discourse often features superhuman, counterintuitive actors, events, actions, and spaces,47 and as such hagiography forms part of a broader set of religious narratives set in an everyday, human world that feature marvellous incursions from the other world.48 To analyse this aspect of the mediality of the text, I here use terms adapted from literary studies of the fantastic and fantasy,49 that is, from literary genre theories of the fantastic. Fantasy and the fantastic usually designate a set of currently very popular and related genres,50 but these genres are also sites of literary-theoretical reflections on the aesthetic form of these genres. With some theorists, I understand the fantastic as a broad literary mode of narration which presents the super-human, the impossible and the unreal, in literature, and which uses ambiguity programmatically. Elements of fantasy theory can be used as a strategy of analysis for religious narratives set in an everyday world with fantastic elements, whether they are persons like deities, monsters, or saints, events like miracles or marvels, spaces like enchanted forests, the desert, or purgatory, things like magical objects or relics, or special practices, like magic.51 One advantage of this approach is that the analysis does not get bogged down in discussions over veracity, as has sometimes been the case in traditional historical approaches to hagiography. Instead,

47 See M. van Uytfanghe, ‘L’hagiographie: un “genre” chrétien ou antique tardif?’, Analecta Bollandiana 111 (1993) 135-88, on the advantages of using the term ‘hagiographical discourse’ rather than ‘hagiography’ understood as a genre. Regarding the fantastic, Martine (Vie des Pères, 97) puts it thus, ‘le genre hagiographique a toujours accordé une large place au “merveilleux”’, but he notes the special character of the marvellous in the VPI as discrete and unassuming compared to other hagiographical literature; no miracles after the deaths of the saints, no speaking animals, very few direct demonical interventions (Vie des Pères, 97-104). 48 For a detailed discussion of the literary affordances of religious narratives, and of this special type of religious narrative as opposed to classical phenomenological definitions of myth, see Feldt, ‘Contemporary fantasy’. 49 It is a large and complex field; for more detailed discussions, see Feldt, The Fantastic. 50 Particularly famous are multi-media narratives such as Harry Potter, Narnia, and The Lord of the Rings. 51 See L. Feldt, ‘Religious narrative and the literary fantastic: Ambiguity and uncertainty in Ex 1-18’, Religion 41/2 (2011) 251-83.

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we gain ways of analysing the literary strategies used to construct an event, actor, thing or action as fantastic. Another advantage of the approach is not only the strategies of analysis, but also the terminology itself, because it does not form part of emic identity discourses to the same extent as other terms such as the magical versus the miraculous.52 While fantastic strategies are used in all three biographies, the number of such incidents rises with each protagonist. By far the largest number of marvellous elements is found in the third part, the life of Eugendus. In this final life, we see a profusion of fantastic elements and episodes. The fantastic strategy of coincidence is used when the text relates that providence steers Eugendus’ birth location (VPI 120),53 and right from his childhood, his life demonstrates how he is possessed by divine power (virtute divina), the text tells us, using a mixture of adynata and hyperboles: ‘Le rejecton béni croissait, poussé Presque dès le berceau par une stimulation intérieure, vers la félicité et la lumière, et une force divine, je crois, faisait déjà augurer en lui l’avenir’.54 He is a blessed child, and his visions demonstrate that he is divinely authorised; this happens in a moment of harmony, where singing angels and mortals mingle (VPI 123; cf. Genesis 28,10-22). The vision references the Old Testament images of the patriarchs Jacob and Abraham intertextually (VPI 121), as Eugendus’ vision is of a crystal stairway to the summit of heaven, and a promise of numerous descendants (cf. Genesis 15,5; VPI 123). After Eugendus tells his father of the vision, his father spends a year teaching him to read and write and then offers him to Romanus in the monastery at the age of seven (125-126). Eugendus never again leaves the monastery. In several ways, Eugendus’ life is presented as the culmination of the three. Interestingly, the author indicates that he knew Eugendus himself (124), which makes the many fantastic elements even more striking.55 Certainly, this warrants an analysis of the text as a medium and a consideration 52 See here K. Stratton, Naming the Witch. Magic, Ideology, and Stereotype in the Ancient World (New York, 2007); Feldt, ‘Religious Narrative’. 53 Feldt, The Fantastic, 60-61. 54 VPI 121,1-2: Igitur, cum beatissimum pignus ab ipsis paene incunabulis quodam instinctu successuque felicitates ac luminis, virtute divina, ut reor, praesagante, succresceret… Vivian et al.: ‘The blessed child grew, impelled almost from the cradle by a prosperous happiness and light, as divine power, I believe, foretold’. 55 This is quite interesting, since fantastic elements are often displaced chronologically backwards to a time of origin, or forwards to a time to come, or it is displaced spatially to regions far away, in the margins. Our anonymous author frames himself as a contemporary of Eugendus, having met him himself, and yet the greatest number of fantastic events occur in Eugendus’ Life. Interestingly, the manuscript history shows that only Eugendus’ Life was copied separately in the medieval era, cf. Martine, Vie des Pères, 128-29.

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of the effects and functions of its mediality. One function could be to authorise the account even more securely by letting the author function as a witness, or near-witness. Yet, it has implications for our understanding of the text’s use, for if the readers of the text were also contemporaries of Eugendus, and lived in the same monastery, this narrative version and the sheer number of fantastic elements could easily be contested by counter-narratives and doubts. In combination with the information we gained in the analysis of the epistolographic framing of the text, I suggest that this makes it worth considering that the text was intended for use at a distance, either chronologically or spatially, or both. Fantastic elements are usually displaced chronologically or spatially, and the letter form features enhance this aspect of its mediality. The sections describing Eugendus’ performance of marginality, his ascetic behaviour, his clothing, manners of prayer, and eating habits (VPI 127, 129-131), also portray him as surpassing the other two monks. The text underlines that the favourite occupation of the most extraordinary ascetic and abbot of the three was lectio; he devoted all his time to reading, day and night (once he had done his duties) (again, we notice the strategy of hyperbole). Picturing him as learned in Latin works as well as fluent in Greek, the text places considerable emphasis on Eugendus’ literary skill and literary practices, stressing the value of books and literary culture (VPI 126). At the same time, he is the perfect ascetic in terms of clothing, shoes, prayer, food and eating, conduct, clearly modelled with references to the gospels (Matthew 10; Luke 9:3) as well as the lives of Antony and Martin (127). In these hyperbolic ways, Eugendus is constructed as an exemplary literary monk, worthy of respect and emulation. The emphasis on literary culture is striking, and the differences to the ‘wild man’ descriptions of Romanus (and to some extent Lupicinus)56 are palpable. Where Athanasius stressed that Antony was unlettered,57 Eugendus is the master of lectio, literary culture, letters, and writing. Interestingly, his way of performing marginality pits him over against classical forms of authority, also within the church. The first example

56 The wilderness aspects and functions come out most clearly in the Life of Romanus, while the Life of Lupicinus emphasises the skills of administrator and leader of the monastery vis-à-vis the outside world. 57 In this way, Athanasius attributes Antony’s powers to Christ and the Christ-religion as natural vis-à-vis learned or philosophical wisdom, cf. Dunn, The Emergence, 10. As pointed out by Bremmer (’Athanasius’ Life’, this volume), Athanasius’ stress on Antony being unlettered is his own invention and an attempt to present Antony’s wisdom as thoroughly divine in nature.

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given in the Life of Eugendus is the passage narrating how he became abbot at Condadisco (132). The previous abbot had grown tired and ill, and shared his tasks and worries with Eugendus, trying to persuade Eugendus to become a priest. This was, however, against Eugendus’ will, as was his desire that he take over the administration (132). The authority of the priest and of the administrator are presented here as less valuable than the power Eugendus possesses due to his extraordinary marginality, his abilities as a monk. Administration is clearly framed as a burden, and the priesthood depicted as an office which would unquestionably tie the exemplary monk down, tie him to this world.58 Interestingly, and quite contrary to what we know of the careers of the Lérinian monks after their stay on the island, the positions of priest and bishop are here understood as unattractive and to some extent incompatible with the marginality of the monk’s life.59 We see this for instance in the passages that narrate how Eugendus flees, when priests come to visit the monastery, and when the text relates that he regards the office of the priesthood as form of worldly striving which does not fit a renouncer (133); indeed, the priesthood is worldly, and it leads easily to pride (134). Clearly, we see the signs of a polemic over forms of authority in the era. Eugendus does eventually become abbot, but only after he’s received a prophetic vision authorising him to do so (135-138);60 only upon divine inspiration, as it were. The text further affirms and legitimises Eugendus’ leadership with reference to how divine compassion (divinae pietatis – goodness, kindness, pity, mercy) watches over him all the time (139), and makes sure he receives the power and strength of its right arm, an abundance of great signs, many gifts and miracles (dona et prodigia) of healing; that is, he is capable of adynata and metamorphoses. His influence and sphere of reverence extends beyond the monastery: the greatest and most powerful people of the time ask for his protection and blessing, as the text relates. Notably, they ask for it in writing, in letters (139). Eugendus’ popularity and influence in the 58 Priesthood is presented as a reason for pride (VPI 134) and as something that will make the monk forget humility. The refusal of ordination by monks is a common motif also in early desert monasticism (Vivian et al., The Life, 111; Life of St Martin 5). 59 Clearly, the VPI finds the roles of monk and priest incompatible, at least ideally. 60 The expression used of Eugendus’ new duties is administratione… subarratam, i.e., Eugendus is metaphorically pledged to, betrothed to, the monastery, and it to him. The text plays on a long biblical intertextuality of marriage metaphors to describe the pact between Yahweh and Israel. Indications are offered that there was a rebellion against the new abbot, and that some monks even left the monastery. The text is vague here. In terms of historical background, this is a hint that his authority was not uncontroversial, which could be part of reason for the rise in fantastic elements and hyperbole in the Life of Eugendus.

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outside world becomes an argument for his leadership through lectio, literary culture and letters. The text portrays his authority as grounded in his ability to perform fantastic healings and other marvellous deeds. While his body is indeed to some extent constructed as a medium for supernatural power as in the classical Brownian holy man-sense, according to which he acts as a societal hinge person and a mediator between this world and the other world, it is nevertheless remarkable how our text places more emphasis on Eugendus’ ability to transfer this power into his letters (eius litteris).61 The ascetic’s body as a medium of power is not fully at the centre of interest. Instead, his letters are presented as fully equal to the personal presence and healing power of this ‘friend of Christ’ (VPI 139,8-9; 140,1-3). The authority of the ascetic healer is clearly positioned as superior to that of other forms of religious authority: bishops and priests seek out Eugendus, wish to be in his presence, or indeed – to receive a letter from him (VPI 140,1-3).62 The power, value, and recognition ascribed to Eugendus’ letters and writing is taken to new levels in the following section of the text, which relates a story of the fantastic healing of a young woman possessed by an unclean spirit.63 People had attempted to heal her by binding written formulae of exorcism around her neck;64 she, however, gave the names and vices of these people and claimed to have possessed them, as a demon of sin, for a long time (VPI 141). One of the bystanders threatened to bind around the girl’s neck written exorcisms of all the saints to overcome the demon. The demon’s deriding rejoinder responded that he could place on him a cartload of inscribed Alexandrinian papyri,65 but the only thing that could drive him out was the command (jussum) of Eugendus, the monk from the Jura mountains (142):

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VPI 139,7. Indeed, Eugendus’ popularity with the laity is represented as being so great that it caused the pseudofratres, who rebelled and voiced contempt of the new abbot and left the monastery, to return (VPI 140,5-8). 63 In VPI 141,11 the Latin inergima transliterates the Greek: enérgêma. 64 R. Markus, ‘From Caesarius to Boniface: Christianity and Paganism in Gaul’, in J. Fontaine and J.N. Hillgarth (eds.), The Seventh Century: Continuity and Change (London, 1992) 154-72 at 157 understands these amulets as remnants of paganism; a view that in my view overlooks the broad range of ancient Christian media, the materiality of Christian magic, and Christian lived religion. See here for instance R. Roukema, ‘Early Christianity and Magic’, Annali di Storia dell’Esegesi 24 (2007) 367-78, and D. Frankfurter, this volume, as well as D. Trout, ‘Christianizing the Nolan Countryside: Animal Sacrifice at the Tomb of Saint Felix’, Journal of Early Christian Studies 3/3 (1995) 281-98. 65 On papyri in Merovingian Gaul, see Martine Vie des Pères, 393. 62

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Sur moi, répond le diable, tu peux metre, si bon te semble, une cargaison de papyrus d’Alexandrie toute écrite: jamais tu ne réussiras à m’expulser du receptacle que j’ai occupé, pourvu que tu ne m’en apportes l’ordre exprès d’un seul homme au monde, Oyend, le moine du Jura.66

The bystanders then ran to Eugendus and entreated with him to heal the girl, and he accepted to help. How? Naturally, Eugendus would not compromise his marginal position in the wilderness to venture into the world. No, he wrote a short letter with a long prayer, sealed it, and sent it to the demon (VPI 143). Like Jesus in the gospel of Mark, Eugendus is accredited by an adversarial spirit with the authority of consequential, authoritative speech (Lincoln 1994) in the supernatural domain. The text contributes to the construction of the fame, fascination, and authority of Eugendus, not only by dwelling on the fantastic events, but by describing the reactions of people around him, the text-internal characters, – they believe in him, they are overwhelmed by him, they listen attentively and respectfully to his words (143; 145,1-4). In the following text segment, we see how magical potency is ascribed to the medium of the ascetic’s letters. Section 144 relates the content of Eugendus’ letter to the demon, as well as how he prepares it for use by praying as he folds it: Moi, Oyend, serviteur du Christ Jésus, au nom de notre Seigneur JésusChrist, du Père et de l’Esprit de notre Dieu, je te l’ordonne par le present écrit: Esprit de gourmandise et de colère et de fornication et d’amour, Démon de la lune et de Diane et de midi et du jour et de la nuit, Esprit immonde, qui que tu sois, sors de la creature humaine qui porte sur elle cet écrit. C’est par Lui, le vrai Fils du Dieu vivant, que je t’en adjure: sors rapidement, et prends garde de ne plus rentrer à l’avenir en elle. Amen. Alleluia.67 66 VPI 142,7-11: Tu mihi, inquit diabolus, Alexandrina, si placet, cartarum onera exarata inponas: nunquam tamen ex obtento vasculo poteris propulsare, dummodi mihi solius Eugendi Iurensis monachi ex hoc nun adferas iussionem. Vivian et al.: ‘“You”, said the Devil, “if you so please, may lay on me a cartload of inscribed alexandrinian papyri; you will, however, never be able to drive me out of this vessel I have gained possession of until you bring me the order of one person: Eugendus, the monk from the Jura mountains’. 67 VPI 144,1-9: Eugendus servus Christi Iesu, in nomine Domini nostri Iesu Christi, Patris et Spiritus Dei nostri, praecipio tibi per scripturam istam, spiritus gulae et irae et fornicationis et amoris, et lunatic et Dianatice et meridian et diurne et nocturne, et omnis spiritus inmunde, exi ab homine quae istam scripturam secum habet. Per ipsum te adiuro uerum Filium Dei uiui: exi uelociter et caue ne amplius introeas in eam. Amen. Alleluia. Vivian et al.: ‘I, Eugendus, servant of Christ Jesus, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, of the Father, and of the Spirit of our God, admonish you with this writing: Spirit of gluttony and wrath and fornication and carnal love, demon of the moon and madness, demon of Diana, of

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Among the more interesting phrases are ‘praecipio tibi per scripturam istam’ and ‘exi ab homine quae istam scripturam secum habet’, by means of which Eugendus abjures the demon. The text tops off the fantastic character of this adynaton by relating that even before the messengers carrying his letter had come even half way on their journey back to the possessed girl, the demon left her. The story thus indicates that the power of Eugendus’ letters is so great that his letters can heal from a distance. The power of Eugendus’ authoritative speech is presented as radiating from the letter-thing to affect the possessed girl from a distance. In Bill Brown’s discussions of materiality in what he calls ‘thing theory’, he distinguishes between objects and things.68 Objects become ‘things’, when they appear in situations where they cannot be taken for granted and so take on a noticeable ‘presence’, making them stand out against their environment and acquire an excess, which signifies a changed relation to human subjects.69 When this changed relation is one of positive recognition, reverence, and respect, we can speak of the authority of the thing. In this case, the thing is a literary medium, a text calling attention to itself as a thing-medium; and the letter’s materiality clearly effects changed relations. The letter as a medium/thing is here accredited with special powers. Soon after, the text tells of a woman from Lyon70 who is desperately ill and in need of healing. She had previously received a letter from Eugendus, and now, in a passage offering an interesting substitution of the ascetic’s body with writing, she orders it to be taken from her cupboard so that she could touch it and kiss it ‘as though’71 it were the right hand of the blessed man: Elle la saisit, puis, tout en priant, elle la met sur ses yeux d’où tombent les larmes abondantes don’t la lettre est toute mouillée; elle l’introduit ensuite dans sa bouche, et, sans cesser de prier, elle la serre un instant entre ses dents, et voici qu’elle est guérie et se lève.72 midday, of the day and the night, spirit unclean in everything, depart from the human being who has this writing on her person. Through him, the true Son of the living God, I abjure you: Depart quickly, and see that you do not enter into her again! Amen. Alleluia.’ 68 B. Brown, ‘Thing Theory’, Critical Inquiry 28/1 (2001) 1-22. 69 Brown, ‘Thing Theory’, 1-9. 70 This is Syagria, a philanthropist living in Lyon in the late fifth century, cf. Martine, Vie des Pères, 394-5. 71 ’As though’ here translates uice (or uicis) which signals substitution, something functioning in place of something else: OLD s.v., not the somewhat weaker ‘as if’. 72 VPI 146,1-5: Cumque adprehensam, contactis ex eadem cum oration oculis, lacrimis quoque haud minime deciduis infecisset, ori dehinc insertam aliquantisper dentibus cum

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The text notes that Eugendus’ fame rises both among the local folk and among inhabitants of far-off lands (VPI 145,1-4), in a remark taken almost verbatim from Sulpicius Severus’ Vita Sancti Martini,73 thus indicating that Eugendus’ authority is exemplary and boosting it by means of Martin. Eugendus’ letters heal by what is otherwise known as contagious magic,74 and what is in this literary text described as a spectacular adynaton. As is clear, the text attempts to construe Eugendus’ letters as authoritative media of superhuman power. Again, the text underlines his growing fame and how a multitude of secular people flock to the monastery along with many monks; how they queue up to be healed by his hands, thus creating an imitatory desire in the readers. The same goes for the production of healing letters. The text relates that for the wealthy, he offers holy oil and written orders (scripta mandata) against spirits and maladies, instructing that they should be bound on the afflicted, so that those who lived far away could obtain the same as those visiting the monastery. Again, the text-medium indicates how future readers can hope to gain access to Eugendus’ special powers, even if far away.75 The following sections again stress Eugendus’ efforts not to become a priest or a bishop, although others often try to persuade him to do so, thus underlining both the extraordinariness of his asceticism, and its superiority vis-à-vis other Christian forms of authority. He receives visions, converses with apostles, with Martin (VPI 152; 157), and he even receives confirmation in a vision, from Peter, Andrew, and Paul, that their presence will also dwell at the monastery. A few moments later, two monks arrive, having obtained relics of those three apostles from Rome (VPI 151-160),76 demonstrating the divine sanction of his visions and dreams. Again, we see that the media of divine power and presence are either material letters or things, as here, which can be moved about, stolen, or transferred from one oration constringens, mox, recuperate santitate, surrexit; Vita Martini 19,1-2. Vivian et al.: ‘Taking the letter, she held it to her eyes with a prayer, soaking it with a great many fallen tears; then she put the letter in her mouth for a while, gripping it with her teeth while praying; soon she recovered her health and stood up’. 73 VPI 7.7; Vivian et al., The Life, 168-169. 74 This refers, of course, to J.G. Frazer’s term, but in the more recent cognitive reformulation by J. Sørensen, A Cognitive Theory of Magic (Altamira, 2007) 10-13. 75 Eugendus also willingly delegates his charismata meritorum to other monks in the community, to stop jealousy (VPI 148). This too suggests that the text frames his practices of ascetic marginality, rather than his body per se, as producing access to supernatural power. Interestingly, this also means that these powers can be learned by others; they are available through practice. 76 It is interesting to note that the relics are placed in the monastery, and thus not under the control of bishops (156).

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person or place to the other, or marginalising practices, which can be trained and learned. As is usual in hagiographical discourse, Eugendus himself is indeed extolled and praised in the text.77 According to this text, Eugendus has so many virtues and merits (or powers) (meritorum virtutumque) that he is regarded as already possessing the glory of divine powers; even if he is still in the body (VPI 165), he is illumined from above (VPI 168). He is a temple of Christ (VPI 125,3-4) and the deeds of Antony and Martin and their way of life, are always in his spirit. His lifestyle epitomises core monastic ideals (VPI 168).78 Nevertheless, the importance of reading and writing is remarkable, as is the stress placed on ascribing superhuman power not only to Eugendus’ person, but also to the practice of lectio and to his letters as fantastic thing-media, media of magical power. In the concluding sections of his Life, we see that the text explicitly discusses what his authority (imperium) is founded on (VPI 171,1-2): The power of example and practice in caring for the sick, in attending to those who live in the world (saeculi hominibus), in ensuring obedience in the monastery, in perfect renunciation (VPI 171-173).79 But at the top of the list we get, indeed, his practices of reading and writing, which are presented as key to the true, spiritual, monastic life (VPI 169,1-3): La lecture lui procurait un tel réconfort, qu’il lui arrivait très souvent, pendant qu’on lisait au réfectoire, d’être subjugué par l’amour des biens futurs et d’entrer dans une sorte d’extase, au point d’en oublier la nourriture placée devant lui; une joie profonde s’emparait de lui: méprisant la peregrination de la vie présente, il aspirait ardemment au droit de cite prepare dans la patrie celeste. C’est lui d’ailleurs qui prit l’initiative, à la suite des anciens Pères, d’introduire l’usage de la lecture au réfectorie.80 77 While Moreira (Dreams, Visions, 40-41) argues that ascetic visionaries changed the spiritual culture of Gallic clerics, I would point also to the role of ascetic texts and their mediality. 78 As in many other monastic texts, the discernment of smells plays a role here too; according to our text Eugendus can discern a person’s vices or merits via their smell (VPI 167; Vivian et al., The Life, 178). 79 The Life of Lupicinus offers many interesting passages relevant for an analysis of different forms of authority. In his dealings with ‘the world’, Lupicinus’ ascetic practices are what saves the day, they are his way to success; that and, as is explained in VPI 114, grace. The text speaks of Lupicinus’ auctoritas (not potestas), and it is connected to his manner of speaking, his sincere conscience, and his courage vis-à-vis secular leaders (VPI 92-95); in other words, his authority is of a very different nature than that of secular leaders (cf. Eugendus, VPI 171). The ascetics have authority because of their virtuous practice, whereas the authority of secular leaders is described as proud, vainglorious and puffed up (VPI 96-110). 80 Tantum namque lectione reficiebatur ut, cum lectitaretur ad mensam, saepissime futurorum victus adfectu, velut in extasi positus, obliviscebatur adpositis; nam prae gaudio

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Reading is presented as a refreshment of the soul, just as reading regularly makes Eugendus fall into ecstasy because it makes him think of futures; it strikes him with joy and longing for the next life (VPI 169; 173).81 The very ending of the Life takes up this theme by exhorting the readers to refresh themselves, and to quench their faithful and fervent thirst, to satisfy their desires, by reading this text. Asceticism, the Performance of Marginality and Authority Mutations – a concluding discussion To sum up, the most interesting feature of the VPI is that it, in a sense, shows us a shift in understandings of the authority of the ascetic holy man, in as much as what is praised here are not primarily the fantastic deeds of exemplary men, but instead, first and foremost, the marginality of the wilderness and the specific marginalising practices related to it, bodily as well as literary, mystical reading and writing practices. Secondly, the power thus attained can be channelled into writing, into letters, which can be circulated, stored, stolen, and passed around. The thing-medium of the letter here possesses a fantastic, superhuman power, and the medium of the letter gives an image of this power as transient, mobile, and up for grabs. Moreover, the special power of the monks is portrayed as independent of local rulers and kings, as well as of priests and bishops. It is a form of religious influence which rests on marginalising technologies of the self, which is tied to the wilderness spatially, and which self-reflectively uses literary culture and literary letters as media with which to intervene in power structures.82 In the above paragraph, I have consciously not used the term ‘authority’, although I believe authority is what is at stake; this is because I work here from an understanding of authority that differs in some ways from the

adtonitus, peregrinationem praesentis vitae dispiciens, municipatum suspirabat in caelestibus praeparatum. Iste namque illic post priscis patribus legend proprie invexit industriam. Vivian et al.: ‘Reading so refreshed him that, while being read to during meals, he was often overcome by thoughts of the future as though he had fallen into ecstasy, and he forgot about what had been set before him. Struck by joy and despising the pilgrim nature of the present life, he longed for that city in the heavens that was prepared for him. He it was at Condadisco who, following the ancient fathers, properly introduced the practice of reading [in the refectory]’. 81 Vivian et al., The Life, 179, suggest that communal reading is meant, but also speculate that private reading is an option. 82 This is especially visible in the Life of Lupicinus.

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Weberian model often used in the study of religions.83 The basic understanding of authority is similar to that of previous scholars in seeing authority as an exercise of power perceived as legitimate, an uneven relation of influence, the power to motivate and gain obedience, or an ascribed prestige, recognition, or status.84 However, by addressing the mediality of the sources, this contribution moves towards expanding the understanding of authority, positing that authority is fundamentally dependent upon media and materiality in order to function, stay effective, or be overturned or merge into new constellations. I also stress that authority is fundamentally a relation, a fragile accomplishment of social interaction that needs maintenance in order not to wither, and which is necessarily transformed in the course of its management and maintenance over time.85 For this type of investigation, I have thus found models such as Weber’s theory of Typen der Herrschaft86 too static, and too focused on understanding authority in institutional and personal terms.87 Instead, I here view authority as an elastic relation that comes into being in complex networks, and as something that is fundamentally dependent on mediation and materiality, as a fruitful point of departure for a discussion of our text and authority changes in the era.88 The collapse of the Roman empire, and the political and military process following it, had a major impact on the development of western Christianity. Perspectives differ on how the period following it should be understood – whether the development was one of general collapse and degeneration, or whether it was one of diversification of forms of culture, power, and authority.89 Many of the Frankish and Germanic tribesmen and new leaders were indeed not ‘barbarians’, but products of a ‘middle ground’.90 They 83 As outlined in L. Feldt, ‘Special issue introduction – Reframing Authority. The Role of Media and Materiality’, Postscripts – the Journal of Sacred Texts and Contemporary Contexts 8/3 (2018/2012) 185-92. 84 See the references and discussion in Feldt, ‘Special issue’. 85 Feldt, ‘Special issue’. 86 Further references and discussion of Weber, Lincoln, and Lukes, among others, in Feldt, ‘Special issue’. With regard to the present subject matter, see here also Claudia Rapp’s discussion of Weber’s types in relation to bishops in late antiquity; Rapp’s account, however, strikes me as too emic in its approach, cf. C. Rapp, Holy Bishops in Late Antiquity. The Nature of Christian Leadership in an Age of Transition (Berkeley, 2005) 16-8. 87 S. Hoover, ‘Religious Authority in the Media Age’, in S. Hoover (ed.), The Media and Religious Authority (University Park, PA, 2016) 15-36 voices a similar critique, grounded in contemporary developments in the field of media and religion. 88 Feldt, ‘Special issue’. 89 P. Horsfield, From Jesus to the Internet. A History of Christianity and Media (Chichester, 2015) 106; Brown, The Rise, 21. 90 Brown, The Rise, 100.

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had served in Roman armies and respected aspects of Roman order and culture, and they were often Arian Christians.91 Changes in power and political structures varied in Gaul, where new kingdoms appeared gradually. The Roman gentry, and locals of the towns, negotiated in various ways with the new leaders and groups,92 but the level of education and literacy declined across Western Europe in this period of transition.93 It has often been pointed out that the church played a central part in this situation as a primary agent of literate education and literary media control, with an organisational base grounded in literacy, which through mission expanded its influence across western Europe in various forms of cooperation with political leaders.94 Literacy, manuscript production and circulation became powerful tools of the church: ‘Literacy and Christianity arrived together, and books were long regarded with superstitious awe. Knowledge of writing, the virtual preserve of the monasteries, became identified with authority, both religious and secular’.95 As we have seen in the VPI, some ascetic literature worked actively to create and sustain the special power of writing and the idea of fantastic letters, and not only did these media contribute to creating and sustaining the authority of the monks but they also exercised their own form of influence. While Peter Brown has pointed to the mobile qualities of the organisational structure as well as the ‘material’ arguments (his ‘arguments in stone’), as well as the creation and maintenance of a widespread interconnectivity as some of the key traits which gave the Western church its power throughout the medieval period,96 Peter Horsfield adds the crucial role of media – the constant circulation of letters, books, and news, which made the recipients part of a worldwide textual community – as supports for the power and authority of the church and its officials.97 Our text provides an interesting, early window into these processes. 91 Many regard the conversion to Catholic Christianity by the Frankish king Clovis in 496 as decisive for the church’s further development: Brown, The Rise, 136-7; Horsfield, From Jesus, 110. 92 Brown, From Jesus, 106; I. Wood, The Merovingian Kingdoms 450-751 (Harlow, 1994). 93 Horsfield, From Jesus, 107; Vivian et al., The Life, 30-31. Indeed, with regard to the text studied here, it does give an ‘impression of relative tranquility’ in the region in the period of 80 years which it covers, cf. Vivian et al., The Life, 31. Yet, the VPI also describes how Jura monks had to travel to the Mediterranean to acquire salt because of the Alamanni to the north (VPI 157). 94 Brown, The Rise, 25; Horsfield, From Jesus, 107-109; Vivian et al., The Life, 31-32. 95 I. Wood, ‘The conversion of the barbarian peoples’, in G. Barraclough (ed.), The Christian World (London, 1981) 85-98 at 92. 96 Brown, The Rise, 13-14, 29-32. 97 Horsfield, From Jesus, 109-110.

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Christian desert asceticism and monasticism appeared towards the end of the third century in the East,98 and knowledge of the monastic movement spread to the West through reports of travellers and pilgrims. Literary works, especially vitas of famous ascetics played an important role in the growing popularity of monasticism and stimulated a traffic of travellers, pilgrims, tourists, and aspiring ascetics. Many scholars have discussed the seminal influence of desert monasticism on later writings.99 Monasteries spread quickly in the West,100 and functioned as sources of social stability, refuges in times of unrest, as centres for social services, as subservient to a strategy of mission, but also as centres of literary culture and education.101 They became centres of wealth and influence, and at the beginning of the seventh century, the estimated number of monasteries and convents in Gaul was at least 220.102 Yet, as this text demonstrates, in the fifth and sixth centuries, the authority, status and nature of asceticism was a matter of contention.103 In our text, we see a process of negotiation of authority in the transitional era before the Carolingians in Western monasticism. In fifth- and six-century Gaul, the aristocracy of Gaul took over the government of the church as bishops,104 and this made Gaul quite different from other regions at the time. Many of these aristocratic bishops had been trained as monks. Monastic communities established at Marseilles and Lérins105 played key roles in providing monk-bishops for sees in Gaul.106 As shown above, the VPI does not agree with this view of the compatibility of the monk and the priest or bishop; instead, it stresses the incompatibility of the offices of priest and ascetic, and accentuates the importance of the continual performance of spatial marginality vis-à-vis the world, by the monk, as Eugendus stays forever enshrined in the monastery in the wilderness. One the one hand, it stresses the world-rejecting qualities of asceticism, but on the other hand it emphasises the ways in which the special power produced by the

98 The roots of Christian renunciation and askesis go further back: see L.E. Vaage and V.L. Wimbush (eds.), Asceticism and the New Testament (London, 1999); Feldt, ‘Ancient Wilderness’. 99 Rapp, ‘Desert, City and Countryside’, 107. 100 The series of maps in Prinz, Frühes Mönchtum, 665-84 is very illustrative. 101 Horsfield, From Jesus, 112-17. 102 Brown, The Rise, 221. 103 Brown, The Rise, 93-122; Leyser ‘The Uses’. 104 Brown, The Rise, 110. 105 At Lerins, Eucherius writes his De laude eremi ca. 427 (Dunn, The Emergence, 82-110; Alciati, ‘Eucher, Salvien’). 106 Brown, The Rise, 111-12.

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wilderness and ascetic practice could be put to world-affirming use and intervene in local power relations and everyday life. In this world of social transformations, changes in power structures, and diversification of the loci of authority, literary media promoting ascetic holy figures were evidently important for bolstering their authority, and were ascribed a fantastic power to heal and protect. But they also helped construe and further the authority of powerful objects and practices related to them, as we have seen in this text, where fantastic power is not primarily ascribed to the monks, but instead to their spatial marginality and to their literary culture and letters. While we might say that the ascetic practices of lectio, fasting, vigils, abstinence etc. were technologies of the self, designed to empower and form the subject through a performance of marginality, and in order to gain a heavenly reward, the VPI clearly highlights, as the value of the lives of these monks, a series of very earthly fantastic actions. The special power of these ascetics plays out as material benefits; it is used to solve everyday problems, providing magical assistance with illnesses, lack of food, demons, and to negotiate relations with other loci of authority, such as not only priests and bishops, kings and judges, but also relics and tombs. In this context of use, what the text strives to legitimate and authorise is the special power of literary culture, letters, and writing, as media special to the ascetics. Letters are presented as the key ascetic media of power, as fantastic, and as more powerful, indeed, than relics. Thus, unmistakably, and taking into account the epistolographic frame, the text in a mise-en-abyme fashion also ascribes authority to itself, as it demonstrates the power of writing letters from the wilderness.

V. SYMEON THE NEW THEOLOGIAN, MYSTICAL POETRY, AND THE RESPONSE TO THE TEXTUALISATION OF SAINTHOOD IN BYZANTIUM Christian Høgel1

Introduction Symeon the New Theologian (949-1022) may not seem a likely candidate when searching for an obviously marginalised person from Byzantium. Byzantine saints’ lives and other sources give us numerous glimpses and sometimes fuller accounts of far more marginalised people than Symeon, and as the son of rich noble parents and later as an abbot, for more than two decades, of a monastery in the capital of Constantinople, he may in fact not appear marginalised at all. But with the monastery he later founded as far from the city centre as his exile allowed him, with his wealth gone due to his monastic career, and with much of his literary output – hymns and homilies in particular – phrased in the language of voluntary seclusion from and confrontation with society at large, he certainly represents various, interesting aspects of marginalisation as conceived also by his contemporaries. Symeon himself, and his hagiographer, Niketas Stethatos (ca. 1005 – ca. 1090), clearly felt that he was not enjoying the kind of recognition he deserved. This notion of having been bypassed also accrued, in Symeon’s view, to Symeon’s spiritual father, also carrying the name Symeon, known as Eulabes, the ‘pious’. Symeon the New Theologian had fought for the recognition of Symeon Eulabes’ sanctity, just as Niketas Stethatos would later fight for that of Symeon the New Theologian, and in this endeavour to have spiritual fathers recognised as saints, we see – in the first half of the eleventh century – an outcome of the fundamental changes in the conditions for acknowledging sainthood in Byzantium. Not only were new types 1 This text was made possible by the generous support of the Danish National Research Foundation, under the grant DNRF102ID.

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of arguments in favour of sainthood introduced, acknowledging sainthood now also included spiritual and mystical levels of accomplishment, in addition to traditional asceticism. But what was new was that the primary medium in which these claims were to be expressed was also different, for Symeon was soon to be known for his inspired, devotional poetry explicitly describing his experience of mystical union with God. In this contribution, I discuss how key actors succeeded in promoting Symeon the New Theologian as a saint in an imperial world attempting to secure the sanctification of saints for itself by means of literary media. The strategy of Symeon, and in particular that of his biographer Niketas Stethatos, would be media-oriented; i.e., they emphasised Symeon’s writings, and the form of his writings, through the edition of his poetry as well as the publication of his vita or biography, in an outright competition with the imperial initiatives. I discuss how the very literary mediality of Symeon the New Theologian’s mystical poetry functioned in an increasingly limited saintly mediascape, and on how its aesthetics and imagery play out a particular form of religious marginality. The rise of this new voice and media form had crucial implications for authority transformations in Byzantine Christianity. Sainthood, Symeon, and the Imperial Court The hard shift in claims to sanctity, witnessed in the struggles for raising first Symeon Eulabes and then Symeon the New Theologian to the status of saints, did not come out of the blue. Sainthood had, in the preceding century or so, come under the ever-increasing control of the imperial court in Constantinople. Novelistic versions of saints’ lives, now clad in the classicising linguistic level of high formal oratory, had come to dominate much of the hagiographical representations of saints in the central and especially in the courtly circles of Constantinople.2 Through the introduction of centrally 2 For discussions of the following, see C. Høgel, Symeon Metaphrastes: rewriting and canonization (Copenhagen, 2002); S. Paschalides, ‘Ο ανέκδοτος λογος του Νικήτα Στηθάτου Κατὰ ἁγιοκατηγόρων και η αμφισβήτηση της αγιότητας στο Βυζάντιο κατα τον 11ο αιώνα’, in Ε. Κουντούρα-Γαλάκη (ed.), Οι ήρωες της ορθόδοξης εκκλησίας. Οι νέοι άγιοι, 8ος – 16ος αιώνας (Athens, 2004) 493-518; S. Efthymiadis (ed.), The Ashgate Research Companion to Byzantine Hagiography. Volume I: Periods and Places (Farnham, 2011) ch. 3 & 4; A. Luzzi, ‘Synaxaria and the Synaxarion of Constantinople’, in S. Efthymiadis (ed.), The Ashgate Research Companion to Byzantine Hagiography. Volume II: Genres and Contexts (Farnham, 2014) 197-208, with bibliography; F. D’Aiuto, ‘La questione delle due redazioni del «Menologio Imperiale», con nuove osservazioni sulle sue fonti agiografiche’, Rivista di studi bizantini e neoellenici 49 (2012) 275-362.

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sanctioned collections of saints’ lives, produced especially in the century from mid-tenth to mid-eleventh century, a de facto canonisation of saints was taking place. And what may come as a surprise, this canonising process was not undertaken on ecclesiastical but on imperial initiative. Already when Symeon the New Theologian reached adulthood, this process had swept away – or at least strongly confined – the former openness in Byzantium to sainthood. Unlike the West, no formal procedure was ever established in Byzantium for an official recognition of true saints, and before the ninth century only a few saints or their texts were ever deemed heretical or condemned in Byzantium. After the iconoclastic struggle in the eighth and ninth centuries, texts that would appear heretical to new readers were, in quite some instances it seems, rewritten rather than done away with, in order to ensure their orthodox foundation.3 By and large, saints could be venerated even if not centrally accepted, as at least indicated by the numerous images and texts on saints that are never mentioned or represented in books or images produced near the imperial or patriarchal centre.4 There had been precursors to the centralising initiative taken by the Byzantine emperors. Various lists of saints and selections in pictorial programmes, just as collections of hagiographical narrations (whether full versions or abridged) would all impart notions of who the true saints were. From at least as early as the ninth century onwards, we find in manuscripts calendars with saints inscribed according to their feast days, and hundreds of volumes contain saints’ lives equally ordered, probably in most cases produced in monastic milieus in and outside the capital. But the selection of saints in these calendars and text collections differ extensively, even if some saints – especially of older date – seem to be ubiquitous. The producers and commissioners of these manuscripts were clearly not bound by a prototype, as in the case of Legenda aurea in the West, but had a wider range of free choice.5 3 J.O. Rosenqvist, ‘Changing Styles and Changing Mentalities: The Secondary Versions of the Life of St Philaretos the Merciful’, in C. Høgel (ed.), Metaphrasis. Redactions and Audiences in Middle Byzantine Hagiography (Bergen, 1996) 43-59;  I.  Ševčenko, ‘Hagiography in the iconoclast period’, in A. Bryer and J. Herrin (eds.), Iconoclasm (Birmingham, 1977) 113-31; and in general Efthymiadi, The Ashgate Research Companion to Byzantine Hagiography. 4 At the moment of publication of this text, the online BHGms (http://www.labexresmed.fr/les-manuscrits-hagiographiques) comprised 947 saints. 5 On the dissemination of the Legenda Aurea, see B. Fleith, ‘Le classement des quelque 1000 manuscrits de la Legenda aurea latine en vue de l’éstablissement d’une histoire de la tradition’, in B. Dunn-Lardeau (ed.), Legenda Aurea: sept siècles de diffusion (Paris, 1986) 19-24. To get an impression of the vast variety in the selection of saints found in Greek hagiographical manuscripts, one need only browse through the volumes of A. Ehrhard,

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With the new imperially commissioned volumes appearing from the middle of the tenth century, this flexible system stopped, or was heavily reduced. In the wake of this process, we see new kinds of media being brought in for the purpose of furthering claims to sainthood. Images, or icons, had a long tradition in Byzantium of conveying the veneration for a saintly person, and in the centuries after iconoclasm, this expression of the holy gained further strength.6 As we shall see, an icon of Symeon Eulabes, venerated by Symeon the New Theologian, became an object of contention, where centrally located people in the patriarchate objected in what appears to be an unprecedented way. It would, however, take centuries before icons were in themselves used as a primary argument for sanctification.7 This was the age of texts, and the central feature in the subsequent sanctification of Symeon the New Theologian was his mystical writing – especially his mystical poems. Before his time, such poetry had not been a direct medium for conveying the sanctity of a person. Mysticism had, with various emphases, been known in the Greek Christian tradition since the Neo-Platonically inspired church fathers, as Clement of Alexandria and Origen, and perhaps most strongly presented in the Pseudo-Dionysian corpus. But apart from the scattered poetry accumulated in the later Philokalia, mysticism had, before Symeon, not been extensively expressed in poetic form in the Greek world, and the composition of mystical poetry had not earned anybody sainthood.8 The rise of a new, and highly expressive, literary form will be discussed here. As an expression of the personal experience of mystical union with God, this literary medium may be seen as a technology of the self, as a medium through which a voice is transformed from an involuntary status of marginalisation to that of performed marginality with strong potentials, not least for becoming the direct mouthpiece of God. This rise of a new voice had strong influence on later Byzantine theology and, in particular, on the Hesychast movement and position, prominent in heated debates and controversies in the early fourteenth century.9 The development is also Überlieferung und Bestand der hagiographischen und homiletischen Literatur der griechischen Kirche (Leipzig and Berlin, 1936-52). 6 The literature on this is enormous, see e.g. C.L. Connor, Saints and Spectacle. Byzantine Mosaics in their Cultural Setting (Oxford, 2016). 7 C. Galatariotou, The Making of a Saint. The Life, Times and Sanctification of Neophytos the Recluse (Cambridge, 1991). 8 A. Louth, ‘Apophatic and Cataphatic Theology’, in A. Hollywood and P.Z. Beckman (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Christian Mysticism (Cambridge, 2012) ch. 5. 9 The best presentation is still J. Meyendorff, St Gregroy Palamas and Orthodox Spirituality (Crestwood, NY, 1974).

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closely tied to new notions of authorship, with authors of various types of holy texts increasingly being sanctified and recognised as saints.10 Even if early church fathers were often poets and/or hagiographers, none of them had become saints solely on that basis. Only the evangelists, and possibly some hymnographers, had received that recognition at an early stage.11 As with all types of saints, recognition would very often depend on initiatives taken by a pupil or follower who had survived the saint in question. This role could now be taken by the person who edited the writings of the saint-to-be. In the case of Symeon, we see that the person to carry this out, Niketas Stethatos, was both the composer of a Life of Symeon and Symeon’s literary executor. In fact, in fighting the hard textualization of sainthood that imperial powers had accomplished, both Symeon and Niketas would eventually have to base their claims of Symeon’s sainthood on his position as writer. A Conflict with the Church and the Imperial Authorities In accounting for the life of Symeon the New Theologian, we are faced with a substantial problem concerning the sources. Our main and almost sole source is Symeon’s hagiographer, Niketas Stethatos, who had a vested interest in presenting Symeon as a paragon of virtue.12 The rest of our information comes sparsely from Symeon’s own writings, edited by Niketas.13 We have therefore only partisan accounts. And when taking a closer look at the hagiographical Life that Niketas wrote, doubts may even be cast on Niketas’ proclamation of having been a close companion and assistant of Symeon. Niketas has nothing to tell, as he himself confesses, about Symeon’s childhood; and the fact that he was himself probably still a teenager when Symeon died, and that he was not present at his death, calls for a re-evaluation of his exact relation to Symeon.14 What is certain, however,

10 Shortly discussed in N.P. Sevcenko, ‘The “Vita” Icon and the Painter as Hagiographer’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 53 (1999) 149-65 at 149 n.1; on the attempted sanctification of Niketas the Paphlagonian, see W. Treadgold, ‘The Lost Secret History of Nicetas the Paphlagonian’, in F. Curta and B.-P. Maleon (eds.), The Steppe Lands and the World Beyond Them. Studies in honor of Victor Spinei on his 70th birthday (Iași, 2013) 645-76. 11 On evangelists, see K. Maxwell, ‘Illustrated Byzantine Gospel Books’, in V. Tsamakda (ed.), Byzantine Illustrated Manuscripts (Leiden, 2017) 270-84. 12 R.P.H. Greenfield, Niketas Stethatos. The Life of Saint Symeon the New Theologian (Washington, DC, 2013). 13 The hymns are edited in J. Koder et al., Hymnes par Syméon le nouveau théologien (Paris, 1969). 14 Greenfield, Niketas Stethatos, viii-xi, with bibliography.

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is that he became Symeon’s literary executor by receiving and assembling his writings, and not without making some corrections, especially to correct metrical faults.15 At least thirty years later, he wrote the Life of Symeon, documenting what seems at least in broad outlines to give the major facts of Symeon’s life after arriving to Constantinople around the year 960, at the age of approximately eleven.16 Since we know of Niketas from other texts and not least of his central role in bringing about the controversies in 1054 that eventually led to the schism with the Latin church, we may question whether his fervent advocacy for the sainthood of Symeon was primarily based on his knowledge and veneration for the man, or whether the strongest factor was his affiliation with the influential monastery of Stoudios. Here, Symeon Eulabes and Symeon the New Theologian had also been monks. Moreover, he was generally dissatisfied with centrally placed ecclesiastic leaders, such as Stephen, bishop of Nikomedia.17 But all these things probably formed one opinion in the mind of Niketas, based on a strong belief that imperial and ecclesiastical authorities should have a lesser control on sainthood, expressed briefly but vehemently in his short treatise Against the saint-criticisers (Kata ton hagiokatēgorōn) and, with more dedication, in his Life of Symeon.18 And if Niketas was a man of conflicts, so was his biographee Symeon. Controversies surfaced in Symeon’s life soon after his arrival to Constantinople. As Niketas tells us, his parents, who lived relatively prosperous lives in the province of Paphlagonia and had family connections in the capital, sent Symeon to Constantinople to receive further education, supported by grandparents who were residents of the capital (Life ch. 2). Later, he was to be introduced at court through a paternal uncle who held the position of koitonites, a trusted servant of the emperor’s koiton, the imperial bedchamber (Life ch. 3). However, according to Niketas, Symeon soon felt dissatisfied with the prospects of an imperial career and instead looked up his teacher, Symeon Eulabes, at the monastery of Stoudios. The older Symeon refused him a place at the monastery, and years passed with the younger Symeon practising an increasingly harsher asceticism, with early experiences of mystical unity (Life ch. 5-8). Only at the age of twenty-seven or twenty-eight, at the point of leaving for a visit to his parents, the young

15

Koder, Hymnes par Syméon le nouveau théologien, 156.47-50. Greenfield, Niketas Stethatos, xi (with bibliography). 17 M. Angold, The Byzantine Empire 1025-1204. A Political History (London & New York, 1984) 85-89. 18 Paschalides, ‘Ο ανέκδοτος λογος. 16

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Symeon was allowed to become a monk.19 And after leaving his parents, renouncing his inheritance, and ‘taking with him only his own possessions, his personal servants’, he departed ‘never looking back’ (Life, ch. 9). At Stoudios, he was (not unlike Harry Potter) allowed to take up residence under a staircase (Life, ch. 11). After some time, disputes arose between Symeon and other Stoudite monks, and Symeon Eulabes secured him a stay at another monastery, that of Mamas, also in the capital. Here, he became abbot in 980, at the age of about thirty-one, after the death of the former abbot.20 The following long passage in Niketas’ account blends mystical experience with fierce controversies with monks at the Mamas monastery, with the patriarch, and especially with Stephen, former metropolitan of Nikomedia and now synkellos, a position in the ecclesiastic system only second to that of the patriarch.21 Many of the controversies are hard to get a firm grasp of, and to Niketas most of it reflected the envy of the devil and others, blurring the actual agency. But in the description of Symeon’s clashes with Stephen (Life ch. 74-94), clearer details appear. For whatever motives, Stephen required Symeon to produce a document proving his views on the relation between the Father and the Son, and his response was documented in his Hymn 21, which repeated the arguments of that document. Despite this declaration, further issues arose, and soon Symeon’s veneration for his spiritual father was reported to the patriarchal authorities. Following this, one night some men – according to Niketas, at the initiative of the patriarch and Stephen – stole the image, or icon, which Symeon the New Theologian had of Symeon Eulabes (Life ch. 87). A truly intriguing procedure ensued, in which Symeon had to defend his veneration of the image to a gathered synod, basing his arguments on the words of John of Damascus, the firm defender of image veneration, but with little success. Stephen convinced the assembly that at least the words on the icon, indicating the holiness of Symeon Eulabes, had to be scraped off. Only after this had been done, the image was returned (Life ch. 88-91). Soon, further opposition to Symeon’s veneration arose, and all images of Symeon Eulabes were destroyed at the monastery of Mamas, while Symeon himself was banished into exile. At the orders of Stephen, officials accompanied Symeon to the other side of the Bosporus, where he installed himself in the dilapidated monastery of Marina, which he soon restored. Sometime 19 20 21

Greenfield, Niketas Stethatos, xii-xiii. Greenfield, Niketas Stethatos, xiii. Angold, The Byzantine Empire 1025-1204, 78 and 87.

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later, Symeon’s exile was repelled but he continued to live at the monastery, experiencing mystical union and finding himself in continuous controversies with local monks and others. A few miracle narratives are ascribed to him before and after his death, but the account of Symeon’s demise is mainly concerned with explaining the role of Niketas as editor of Symeon’s writings and, thirty years later, as writer of his Life (ch. 128-140). Canonisation and Contestation It is clear even from Niketas’ exposition that Symeon was not always an easy person, as most obviously attested in his conflicts with the monks of the Mamas monastery and at his monastery of Marina in Chrysopolis. Niketas makes no effort to gloss this over, even though these monks hardly represent an extension of the church authorities he opposed. We can easily surmise that clashes over a number of small and big issues may have made Symeon a widely unpopular person. And his exile was probably prompted by more than his veneration for Symeon Eulabes, even if this seems to be founded on a more fundamental theological issue than many of his other points of conflict. Against this backdrop, it is difficult to understand why he could so easily be made abbot of the Mamas monastery, but the fact that he was a man of knowledge, good education and, even if not trained in rhetoric, in obvious control of the spoken and written word, as witnessed in his various writings, probably opened the way for him to such a post.22 But Symeon’s position as exiled, even if only to a religious institution in the proximity of the capital, very well illustrates his marginalised status at this point: acknowledged to shifting degrees but always strongly controversial in the eyes of the church authorities and monastic groups. His position after his death seems equally uncertain, not least since his writings – apart from Hymn 21 – had little or no circulation before the edition made around thirty years later by Niketas Stethatos, at the time when he also composed the Life of Symeon the New Theologian, in or just after 1052.23 Nobody seems to have continued the veneration of Symeon Eulabes. As for the younger Symeon, he may only have acquired his epithet of ‘the New Theologian’ when his relics were translated to the capital in 1052, according to Niketas on the instigation of a miracle that he himself

22 We know very little about the general requirements for election to posts as abbot – and to which degree social factors influenced this. See the contributions in M. Kaplan (ed.), Images, pouvoirs et sociétés à Byzance (Paris, 2006). 23 Greenfield, Niketas Stethatos, xvii-xix.

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experienced, where the number ‘5’ appearing on a piece of marble in his cell, indicating that year (the fifth in the Byzantine indiction calendar) for the translatio.24 In any case, Niketas, who was by this time a monk at the Stoudios monastery, seems to have been actively involved in this, making the canonisation of Symeon almost a complete product of his own making. On the one hand, the canonisation of Symeon is in many ways surprising, given the control under which sainthood had been placed. On the other hand, it conforms to a general pattern arising in the eleventh century, that of allowing a new, but restricted group of people sainthood, namely writing saints. To follow the process, we need to take a close look at the process leading up to it. Our knowledge of the role played by the church in the preceding de facto canonisation process instigated by the imperial court is minimal, but we may, in the case of Symeon’s main opponent, Stephen of Nikomedia, see how church and court were in some kind of agreement. Angold even claims that Stephen was involved in the production of hagiographical collections, but it has been impossible to verify this detail.25 In any case, nothing indicates that there was any real opposition between church and court on this point. Starting in the mid-tenth century, the imperial employee Evaristos had, under the commission of emperor Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos, produced the Synaxarion, a collection of short memoranda on a long list of saints to be commemorated in the liturgy.26 The abbreviated texts, produced in most cases on the basis of existing longer accounts, were ordered in chronological sequence following the feast days of the saints. This volume, including far beyond a thousand saints, is the first attempt in Byzantium to centrally establish who was a saint, and since the Synaxarion is found in quite a number of later copies, its influence was substantial already in the early years of Symeon’s stay in the capital. Some decades later, probably in the 980s and thus around the time that Symeon became abbot of the Mamas monastery, the Menologion followed. It was composed by another state employee, Symeon Metaphrastes.27 This collection of 148 full-size texts (lives and martyrdom accounts) comprised a smaller selection of saints (or group of saints), not all found in the Synaxarion. In the next two centuries, this collection became immensely popular, and around

24 25 26 27

Greenfield, Niketas Stethatos, 311-13 (ch. 129). Angold, The Byzantine Empire, 78. Luzzi, ‘Synaxaria and the Synaxarion of Constantinople’. Høgel, Symeon Metaphrastes.

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700 copies and fragments of single volumes of the original ten-volume edition are extant today. It also appeared in the mid-eleventh century, at the time of Niketas’ writing of Symeon’s Life, in modified and lavishly illuminated versions.28 The many buyers and commissioners of these highly expensive volumes must, apart from the emperors, have been aristocratic members of society, who would be the only people wealthy enough. And it seems likely that many of them were meant for private religious institutions established and/or directed by aristocrats, as we know from the case of a will, written by the aristocrat Eustathios Boilas in 1059.29 In the list of valuables that are to pertain to his monastery, three volumes of the Metaphrastic Menologion are explicitly mentioned. Even if such private religious institutions came under pressure from church officials, who would rather have them belong directly to the church, we see a collusion of state and church, which can be explained, at least to some degree, by the simple fact that members of the same aristocratic families took up the central positions in both systems.30 In the controversies over privately founded and run religious institutions, we see an economical aspect pertaining to the issue of private initiative in the religious sphere, and this resembles the question of free choice in selecting and proclaiming saints. Just as the church seemed to oppose private money in the religious institutions, the imperial initiatives on hagiographical texts and collections had restrictive implications on sainthood that must have been substantial, even if hard to document in more than the controversies, such as that involving Symeon the New Theologian. A number of rather surprising hagiographical lives were composed in Byzantium in the second half of the tenth century (if our dating of them is correct), especially the Life of Basil the Younger, the Life of Andrew the Fool, the Life of Gregentios, bishop of Taphar, and the Life of Barlaam and Ioasaph.31 All these texts are very long, with an uncommon narrative 28 N.P. Ševčenko, Illustrated Manuscripts of the Metaphrastian Menologion (Chicago, 1990). 29 S. Vryonis, ‘The Will of a Provincial Magnate, Eustathius Boilas (1059)’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 11 (1957) 263-77. 30 J.P. Thomas, Private Religious Foundations in the Byzantine Empire (Washington, DC, 1987). 31 D. Sullivan et A.-M. Talbot, The Life of Saint Basil the Younger. Critical Edition and Annotated Translation of the Moscow Version (Washington, DC, 2014); L. Rydén, The Life of St Andrew the Fool, 2 vols. (Uppsala, 1995); A. Berger, Life and Works of Saint Gregentios, Archbishop of Taphar (Berlin, 2006); R. Volk, Die Schriften des Johannes von Damaskos. Historia animae utilis de Barlaam et Ioasaph, vol. 6.1-2 (Berlin, 2006); the Barlaam story appears here among the collected works of John of Damascus, though Volk was the one to finally prove that the church father had no connection to the text, see his introduction.

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richness, and in the case of the Life of Andrew the Fool, the text probably reflects an attempt from its author to make it appear as if it were written centuries earlier.32 The Life of Basil the Younger is strongly engaged in eschatological visions, but it first and foremost accommodates its saintly protagonist in an urban aristocratic milieu, allowing the semi-aristocratic author a voice in a holy project.33 The Life of Barlaam and Ioasaph, originally a life of Buddha that reached Byzantium through a sequence of translations, is in many ways a mirror of princes, which can furthermore be shown to have strong textual correspondences with the contemporary Metaphrastic Menologion.34 An enormous energy and creativity went into the production/translation of these texts, just as in the vast rewriting projects, primarily the Synaxarion and the Metaphrastic Menologion. This increased literary, hagiographical activity cannot be unrelated to the fact that also a rising number of hagiographical writers were now raised to sainthood. Early church fathers and composers of liturgical hymns, as Romanos the Melodos (sixth century), had long been recognised as saints, but with the attempts to have Niketas the Paphlagonian (b. ca. 885) recognised, and with the actual recognition of Symeon Metaphrastes as saint, persons whose contact with the holy depended purely on their literary output could now hope for sainthood.35 That the sanctity of Symeon the New Theologian was to hinge almost exclusively on his literary output can therefore easily be seen as a direct continuation, perhaps even as a climax, of this process. No other successful saintly writer had experienced the same degree of controversy during his life, and no other saintly writer had promoted himself as a saint. This would only become possible through the unique and completely novel mediality of Symeon’s hymns.

32

Rydén, The Life of St Andrew the Fool, I.72-81. P. Magdalino, ‘“What We Heard in the Lives of the Saints We Have Seen with Our Own Eyes”: The Holy Man as Literary Text in Tenth-Century Constantinople’, in J. Howard-Johnston and P.A. Hayward (eds.), The Cult of the Saints in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages: Essays on the Contribution of Peter Brown (Oxford, 1999); C. Høgel, ‘From Cyclops to Unicorn. Fiction as interests or the new communitas of Byzantine hagiography’, (forthcoming). See also C. Høgel, ‘The Authority of Translators: Vendors, Manufacturers, and Materiality in the Transfer of  Barlaam and Josaphat  along the Silk Road’, Postscripts – the Journal of Sacred Texts and Contemporary Worlds 8/3 (2012/2018) 193-219. 34 See the apparatus fontium of the text edition in Volk, Die Schriften des Johannes von Damaskos. 35 Høgel, ‘The Canonization of hagiographic writers’, forthcoming. 33

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Mystical Poetry as a New Medium It is hard to say whether Symeon the New Theologian expected to be proclaimed a saint, but his poems certainly come close to stating the conditions for it. In his hymns, he continuously expresses segregation, seeing this as a sign of his special position, since it is the working of God: That is why You withdrew me from everything, separated me from the world and from my parents and all my friends; to take pity on me and to save me, O my Christ! It is Your grace which gave me this certainty and I had pure joy and firm hope. But the last two things, I know not how to say them, those which have happened to me by Your goodwill, O my King! leave my soul and my mind speechless, my actions and all my thoughts cease, whilst the greatness of Your glory overwhelms me and that, for a little while, I would let myself be convinced, my Savior, no longer to say anything, nor do anything, nor describe these things. Interiorly I remain disconcerted, astonished, saddened; how I, unhappy one, have been able to place myself in the service and practice of such ineffable realities? The angels fear to fix their attention too freely therein, the prophets have recoiled with fear at once on hearing how incomprehensible are your glory and your saving condescension. The apostles and martyrs and throng of masters loudly proclaim themselves unworthy as they openly preach to all the inhabitants of the world. And I, the prodigal, I the fornicator, how, I, the lowliest of all, how have I been judged worthy of becoming the superior of my brothers, the priestly celebrant of the divine Mysteries of the all holy Trinity? (Hymn 14.30-54; transl. Maloney p. 47-48, with minor changes)36 36 Διὰ γὰρ τοῦτο ἐκ παντὸς ἦρες με, ἐκ τοῦ κόσμου/ καὶ πάντων ἀπεχώρισας συγγενῶν τε καὶ φίλων/ ὅπως καὶ ἐλεήσῃς με καὶ σώσῃς Χριστέ μου ·/ τοῦτο πληροφορούμενος παρὰ τῆς χάριτός σου/ εἶχον χαρὰν ἀπλήρωτον καὶ βεβαίαν ἐλπίδα./ Τὰ δύο δὲ τὰ ἔσχατα ὅπως εἴπω, οὐκ οἶδα,/ ἃ εἰς ἐμὲ εὐδόκησας γενέσθαι, βασιλεῦ μου,/ καὶ τὴν ψυχήν μου καὶ τὸν νοῦν λόγου ἀποστεροῦσι/ καὶ ἐνεργείας παύουσι καὶ φρονήσεις ἁπάσας,/ ἀλλὰ καὶ τῷ μεγέθει σου βαρύνουσι τῆς δόξης/ καὶ παύσασθαι παρὰ μικρὸν πείθουσί με, σωτήρ μου,/ μηδὲν λαλεῖν, μηδὲν ποιεῖν μηδὲ ἅπτεσθαι τούτων/ καὶ ἀπορῶ ἐν ἐμαυτῷ καὶ θαυμάζων λυποῦμαι./ Πῶς τοῖς τοιούτοις ἐμαυτὸν πράγμασιν ἀπορρήτοις/ ἐξέδωκα διακονεῖν καὶ λειτουργεῖν, ὁ τάλας;/ Ἐν οἷς ἄγελοι φρίττουσιν ἀδεῶς ἀτενίσαι,/ προφῆται ἐδειλίασαν ἐνωτισθέντες ἅμα/ δόξης τὸ ἀκατάληπτον καὶ τῆς οἰκονομίας·/ ἀπόστολοι καὶ μάρτυρες καὶ διδασκάλων πλῆθος/ βοῶσι καὶ κραυγάζουσιν ἑαυτοὺς ἀναξίους/ διαρρήδην κηρύττοντες ἅπασι τοῖς ἐν κόσμῳ./ Ἐγὼ δὲ πῶς, ὁ ἄσωτος, καὶ πῶς ἐγὼ, ὁ πόρνος,/

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Despite Symeon’s proclamations of humility, seclusion (v. 30 ‘You withdrew’) brings him – through the mystical experience – close to the divine. This is a recurring claim in Symeon’s poetry (see e.g., Hymn 20.60ff. and Hymn 28), and one that takes him mentally, but also in terms of status, from one extreme (v. 51-52 ‘prodigal’, ‘fornicator’, lowliest’) to the other (v. 53 ‘superior’). In rising to his spiritual vision, he surpasses angels, prophets, apostles, and martyrs’ (v. 45-50). Symeon seems not to waver upon this high claim, talking of his ‘certainty’ (v. 43). This high-spirited claim is supported by the enthusiasm emanating from his hymnic style, which speaks out clearly while at the same time claiming inability to talk. Symeon shares this aesthetics of silence with other mystical writers.37 The mystical union comes about, as is repeatedly made clear, in the granting of sudden illumination. And the ‘ineffable realities’ (v. 55) contained in this gift are strong: Psychically man indeed cannot suddenly receive the Spirit fully, and become passionless, but when he will have achieved all that is in his power: the stripping, the indifference, the separation from one’s family, the pruning of this will, the renunciation of the world, the endurance of trials, prayers, compunction, poverty, humility, with all the fortitude he can, then, dimly, like a delicate ray, minute, having enveloped his mind suddenly, it enraptures him in ecstasy, rapidly forsaking him so that he may not die. (Hymn 18.55-64; transl. Maloney p. 80)38

Illumination comes suddenly for the fully prepared, but also leaves quickly, or the illumined person would die, says Symeon. Despite difficulties, Symeon is somehow protected, and again and again – much repetition is to be found in his hymns – he describes the effects of the mystical union that he is given, repeatedly perceived as the reception of light (here as the καὶ πῶς ἐγὼ, ὁ ταπεινὸς γενέσθαι ἡξιώθην/ τῶν ἀδελφῶν ἡγοῦμενος, τῶν θείων μυστήριων/ ἱερουργὸς καὶ λειτουργὸς τῆς ἀχράντου Τριάδος; Koder-Paramelle-Neyrand, Hymnes par Syméon, I.268-70. 37 S. Sontag, ‘The Aesthetics of Silence’, in S. Sontag, Studies of Radical Will (New York, 1969) ch. 1. 38 Οὐ γὰρ εἰσδέξεσθαι χωρεῖ αἴφνης ὅλον τὸ Πνεῦμα/ ὁ ἄνθρωπος ὁ ψυχικὸς καὶ ἀπαθὴς γενέσθαι,/ ἀλλ᾽ ὅταν τὰ εἰς δύναμιν διαπράξηται πάντα·/ γύμνωσιν, ἀπροσπάθειαν, χωρισὸν τῶν ἰδίων,/ ἐκκοπὴν τοῦ θελήματος καὶ ἄρνησιν τοῦ κόσμου,/ ὑπομονὴν τῶν πειρασμῶν καὶ προσευχὴν καὶ πένθος,/ εὐτέλειαν, ταπείνωσιν, ὅσον ἰσχύος ἔχει./ Τότε ὀλίγον ὡς λεπτὴ αἴγλη καὶ σμικροτάτη/ αἴφνης τὸν νοῦν κυκλώσασα εἰς ἔκστασιν ἁρπάζει,/ καταλιμπάνουσα ταχύ, ἵνα μὴ ἀποθάνῃ: Koder, Hymnes par Syméon, II.78.

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‘delicate ray’ in v. 62). But Symeon is not only under a certain kind of protection. His experiences put him under some sort of obligation to speak out. In Hymn 1, which, according to the editors, may have been composed by Symeon to introduce his hymns, he states that he is forced into speaking out about these illuminations, despite his hesitance and other difficulties: I repeat, I do not know what I can say about it and I would wish to be silent – if only I had been able to – but the tremendous marvel causes my heart to beat faster and opens my mouth, my tainted mouth, and makes me speak and write in spite of myself. You, who rose in a moment in my darkened heart, You who descended even to me as the last of all, You who made me a disciple and son of an apostle, me whom the dreadful, man-killing dragon formerly held as his worker and instrument of evil, – You, the sun who before all ages shone in the depths of hell and who then enlightened my soul enveloped in darkness and who blessed me with the gift of endless light – ah! how difficult this is for cowards and lazy people like me to believe! – You, who lavished all blessings on my former misery, give me a voice, provide me with words to tell all Your amazing works and what You still are doing in us, Your servants, today, so that those who slumber in the darkness of negligence and who say: ‘Impossible for sinners to save themselves and to find mercy, like Peter and the other holy blessed and just apostles’, may know and learn that that was easy, is still easy and will always be so because of kindness such as Yours. (Hymn 1.41-65; transl. Maloney p. 12, with minor changes)39

39 Οὐκ οἶδα, καθὼς εἴρηται, τί εἴπω περὶ τούτου,/ καὶ ἤθελον τοῦ σιωπᾶν (εἴθε καὶ καὶ ἐδυνάμην!),/ ἀλλὰ τὸ θαῦμα τὸ φρικτὸν κινεῖ μου τὴν καρδίαν/ καὶ ἐξανοίγει στόμα μου τὸ κατεσπιλωμένον,/ καὶ μὴ βουλόμενον ποιεῖ λαλεῖν μέ τε καὶ γράφειν./ Ὁ ἀνατείλας ἄρτι μου ἐν σκοτεινῇ καρδίᾳ,/ ὁ δεῖξας μοι θαυμάσια, ἃ ὀφθαλμοὶ οὐκ εἶδον,/ ὁ κατελθὼν καὶ ἐν ἐμοὶ ὡς εἰς ἔσχατον πάντων,/ ὁ ἀποστόλου μαθητὴν καὶ υἱὸν ἀποδεῖξας/ ἐμέ, ὃν εἶχεν ὁ δεινὸς δράκων καὶ βροτοκτόνος/ τὸ πρὶν ἐργάτην ὑποθργὸν πάσης παρανομίας,/ ὁ πρὸ αἰώνων ἥλιος ὁ ἐν τῷ ᾅδη λάμψας,/ ὕστερον καὶ φωτίσας μου ψθχὴν ἐσκοτισμένην/ καὶ χαρισάμενος ἐμοὶ ἀνέσπερον ἡμέραν/ – τὸ δύσπιστον τοῖς κατ᾽ ἐμὲ ὀκνηροῖς καὶ ῥαθύμοις -,/ ὁ πλήσας πάντων ἀγαθῶν τὴν ἐν ἐμοὶ πτωχείαν,/ αὐτὸς καὶ λόγον δώρησαι καὶ ῥήματα παράσχου/ τοῦ πᾶσι διηγήσασθαι τὰς σὰς τερατουργίας/ καὶ ἅπερ σήμερον ποιεῖς μεθ᾽ ὑμῶντῶν σῶν δούλων,/ ἵνα καὶ οἱ καθεύδοντες ἐν σκότει ῥαθυμίας/ καὶ λέγοντες· Ἀδύνατον ἁμαρτωλοὺς σωθῆναι/ καὶ ὥσπερ Πέτρου καὶ λοιποὺς ἀποστόλους, ἁγίους,/ ὁσίους καὶ δικαίους τε, αὐτοὺς ἐλεηθῆναι,/ γνώσωσι καὶ μαθήσονται, ὅτι εὔκολον τοῦτο/ τῇ ἀγαθότητι τῇ σῇ ἦν καὶ ἐστὶ καὶ ἔσται!: Koder, Hymnes par Syméon, I.160-62.

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The very optimistic tones towards the end of this passage, promising easy access to mercy, only comes through in Symeon’s verses after a careful weighing of the special favour that God has shown him, and the difficulties that Symeon will have in expressing it. He is in fact, he claims, speaking in spite of himself (v. 46) and in spite of the fact that he, as a coward and a lazy person, is prone to disbelief (v. 57). Important for the ability to transmit this inner tension is the fact that Symeon here, as well as in a number of other passages, refers to his poetry not only as speech, but also as writing (as here in v. 46 ‘speak and write’). Symeon was documenting his special role as an instrument of God, and he insists that those who deny the possibility of sainthood in the present world, whose arguments are echoed in the direct quotation above, are wrong. We here see a direct expression of the views that Niketas also held, views that would be facing harsher responses in a world of centralised control on sainthood. And, it seems, he knew that writing was a central feature of all pronouncements, no matter how spoken they seem in style. The mystical experience is all-encompassing, and for Symeon, love is the most direct manner of expressing it (see especially Hymn 16). Being so, it also has serious consequences for the speaker: I love him, and He loves me. I eat, I nourish myself with only this contemplation And being made one with Him, I am transported above to the heavens. That this is true and certain I know, but where then is my body, this I do not know. I know that He who remains immovable descends. I know that He who is invisible appears to me. I know that He who is separated from all creation takes me within Himself and hides me in His arms. And I am completely outside of the whole world. (Hymn 13.66-75; transl. Maloney p. 45-46)40

During the union Symeon does not know where his body is. He – i.e., his soul and, probably not his body – is ‘completely outside of the whole world’ (v. 75).41 But, under these conditions, an acquisition of knowledge is 40 καὶ φιλῶ, φιλεῖ με καὶ ἐκεῖνος,/ ἐσθίω, τρέφομαι καλῶς μόνῃ τῇ θεωρίᾳ/ καὶ συνενούμενος αὐτῷ οὐρανοὺς ῾θπερβαίνω/ καὶ τοῦτο οἶδα ἀληθὲς καὶ βέβαιον ὑπάρχειν,/ τὸ ποῦ τὸ σῶμα τότε δὲ ὑπάρχει, οὐ γινώσκω./ Οἶδα, ὅτι καέρχεται ὁ ὑπάρχων ἀκίνητος·/ οἶδα, ὅτι ὁρᾶται μου ὁ τυγχάνων ἀόρατος·/ οἶδα, ὁ πάσης κτίσεως ἀποκεχωρισμένος/ ἔνδον αὐτοῦ λαμβάνει με καὶ ἐν ἀγκάλαις κρύπτει,/ καὶ ἐκ παντὸς εὑρίσκομαι ἔξω τότε τοῦ κόσμου, Koder-Paramelle-Neyrand, Hymnes par Syméon, Ι.262. 41 On the issue of the soul of saints, see J. Gouillard, ‘Léthargie des âmes et culte des saints: un plaidoyer inédit de Jean diacre et maïstôr’, Travaux et Mémoires 8 (1981) 171-86; D. Krausmüller, ‘What is Mortal in the Soul?’, Mukaddime. 6.1 (2015) 1-14.

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fundamentally claimed. Having been transported outside the world, the divine descends into him, a claim supported by the repeated ‘I know’ (v. 69-73). This insistence on some bodiless sense experience of course carries little weight unless believed. Only the high-sounding, hymnic ‘I know’ is offered as proof. Few other genres would have served Symeon in this. Whether working as further support of this, or as aim of his writing, by claiming union with the Logos, and in mirroring views on the nature of Christ, Symeon actually ends up arguing for his own divinity: If He did not become a body but only in appearance, then we have become only a spirit as an idea, but it is true that the Word became flesh, so also He transforms us ineffably and makes us in truth children of God. Dwelling unchangeable in His divinity, the Word became man in taking on flesh, preserving His humanity unchangeable in His flesh and in His soul, He made me completely God. (Hymn 50.179-87; transl. Maloney p. 253)42

This manner of expression, going far beyond what is ordinarily claimed for saints in Byzantium, is also found in Niketas’ Life of Symeon. Already in the first chapter, Niketas announces that ‘virtue is an ardent thing, able to … make man wholly God’. How this is to be understood may escape our grasp, but it is likely that this notion is what supports Symeon’s ability to express directly and extensively the words of God. As an example, we may take a look at Hymn 32, which ends in a long monologue spoken by ‘that brilliant light which cries out in loud voice’ (Hymn 32.84ff; transl. Maloney p. 181). The subsequent 29 verses, which form the ending of the hymn, are spoken in first person by the Logos, Christ, talking of ‘My glory’ and ‘My divinity’, and explaining that He is ‘at the same time God and man, I am one of the Trinity’. Just as rewriting of hagiography had become a common practice in tenth-century Byzantium, Symeon’s words are now rewriting (or perhaps even overwriting) the Bible as the unique depository of the words of Christ. This would obviously have made his words liable to the charge of heresy. But it also demonstrates the high ambitions that his literary medium carried.

42 εἰ δὲ γέγονεν ἐν φαντασίᾳ σῶμα,/ οὐδ᾽ ἡμεῖς πάντως ἐν ἐπινοίᾳ πνεῦμα,/ ἀλλ᾽ ὡς ὑπῆρξε σὰρξ ἀληθῶς ὁ λόγος,/ οὕτω καὶ ἡμᾶς μεταμορφοῖ ἀρρήτως/ καὶ τέκνα ποιεῖ Θεοῦ ἐν ἀληθείᾳ./ Ἄτρεπτος θεότητι μείνας ὁ λόγος/ ἄνθρῶπος ἐγένετο σαρκὸς προσλήψει,/ ἄτρεπτον τὸν ἄνθρωπον σαρκὶ ψυχῇ τε/ τηρήσας πεποίηκε Θεόν με ὅλον,…, Koder, Hymnes par Syméon, I.170.

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The threatening features of Symeon’s bold pronouncements are clear to him, but counterweighing this he insists that not experiencing the divine love wold mean a new form of banishment: Let us wake up, slothful ones, to possess love, or rather to receive it by sharing and thus leave earthly things and, with love, to keep ourselves in the presence of our Creator and our Master, having reached, with this love, far beyond visible things. Otherwise, we shall be banished with the visible things and creatures, as a creature, in the fire and the abyss and the terrible punishments; because we will have been found without it, I say, without love. (Hymn 17.410-25; transl. Maloney p. 69)43

The voice of Symeon is able to become the mouthpiece of God, by transforming the experience of segregation into an experience of true knowledge and true faith. And as the Holy words, his own words are also repeatedly referred to as writing. In a remarkable passage that reflects on autobiographical delusions as well as worldly ambitions, Symeon seems to sum up this: You who gave sparrows their song, give me also the word, to me the unhappy one, so that I may tell everyone, by writing or by word of mouth, what You have done for me by a boundless mercy, my God, and solely in consequence of Your own love for man! – For they are great and awesome, they exceed all thinking the blessings that You have granted me, to me the stranger, the ignorant, the beggar who dares not speak, rejected by all humanity. 43 Ὀκνηροὶ διεγερθῶμεν,/ ὅπως ἐγκρατεῖς ἀγάπης,/ μέτοχοι δὲ ταύτης μᾶλλον/ γενησόμεθα καὶ οὕτως/ μεταβῶμεν τῶν ἐνθένδε,/ ἵνα σὺν αὐτῇ τῷ κτίστῃ/ καὶ δεσπότῃ παραστῶμεν,/ ἔξωθεν τῶν ὁρομένων/ γεγονότες σὺν ἐκείνῃ !/ Εἰ δὲ μὴ, τοῖς ὁρωμένοις/ καὶ τοῖς κτίσμασιν ὡς κτίσμα/ ὄντες ἐναπολειφθῶμεν/ ἐν πυρί τε καὶ ταρτάρῳ/ καὶ φρικτοῖς κολαστηρίοις,/ δίχα ταύτης εὑρεθέντες,/ δίχα τῆς ἀγάπης λέγω. Koder-Paramelle-Neyrand, Hymnes par Syméon, II.42.

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Symeon fears sinning through writing, not least because whatever lie or statement less than true that slips on to the page will remain there (v. 122-25). This view of writing as something stable is on the one hand Symeon’s problem – the de facto canonised lives and other hagiographical texts that have stopped the flow of sanctification – but on the other hand it is also a central tool in his ambition to get his messages through. In this way, Symeon acknowledges the fundamental importance of writing for his ambitions to express and reflect upon his mystical experiences. And for the generations after him, it was not least this extraordinary manner of expressing this that made lasting impressions.

44 Ὁ τὰ στρουθία φωναῖς λαλεῖν ποιήσας/ δώρησαι κἀμοὶ λόγον, τῷ παναθλίῳ,/ ἵνα τοῖς πᾶσιν ἐγγράφως καὶ ἀγράφως/ διηγήσωμαι, ἃ εἰς ἐμὲ εἰργάσω/ διὰ ἔλεος ἄπειρον, ὁ Θεός μου,/ καὶ διὰ μόνην τὴν σὴν φιλανθρωπίαν ! – / Καὶ γὰρ ὑπὲρ νοῦν φρικτά τε καὶ μεγάλα/ πέλουσιν, ἅπερ παρέσχες μοι τῷ ξένῳ,/ τῷ ἀμαθεῖ, τῷ πτωχῷ τῷ ἀπαρρησιάστῳ,/ τῷ ἀπὸ παντὸς ἀπερριμμένῳ ἀνθρώπου./ Γονεῖς οὐ προσεῖχον μοι φυσικῇ τῇ ἀγάπῃ,/ οἱ ἀδελφοὶ καὶ φίλοι μου πάντες ἐνέπαιζόν μοι,/ ἀγαπᾶν γάρ με λέγοντες ἐψεύδοντο εἰς ἅπαν./ Οἱ συγγενεῖς, οἱ ἔξωθεν, οἱ ἄρχοντες τοῦ κόσμου/ τοσοῦτον μ᾽ ἐπεστρέφοντο καὶ ἠνείχοντο βλέπειν,/ ὅσον συναπολέσαι με ταῖς αὐτῶν ἀσεβείαις./ Πολλάκις ἐπεθύμησα δόξης ἀναμαρτήτως/ καὶ οὔπω ταύτην εὕρηκα ἐν τῷ παρόντι βίῳ· … ἠγάπων γάρ, ὡς εἴρηται, δόξαν καὶ πλοῦτον κόσμου/ καὶ φαντασμὸν ἐνδύματος καὶ βλακευμάτων ἤθη./ Οὐκ οἶδα δὲ τί φθέγξομαι, οὐκ οἶδα τί σοι εἴπω·/ φοβοῦμαι γὰρ καὶ τὸ λαλεῖν καὶ γράφειν τὰ τοιαῦτα,/ μὴ περιπέσω τοῖς ἐμοῖς λόγοις καὶ ἁμαρτήσω,/ καὶ ἔσται ἀνεξάλειπτον τὸ ψευδῶς γεγραμμένον. Koder-Paramelle-Neyrand, Hymnes par Syméon, ΙΙ.116-20.

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Symeon’s new type of writing, the elated hymns, unparalleled in earlier Byzantine writing, thus became a paradoxical medium through which he strove for sanctity. Placing himself in various marginal positions – before being forced into more daily and physical conditions of marginality – Symeon could express divine illuminations and through this he laid out all the credentials for rising to sainthood through writing. In voicing his mystical experience, Symeon invented, it seems, a position that he could only identify in double descriptions, as in the examples above, insisting both on his humble, sinful, and useless figure and, at the same time, on his ability to rise above prophets, apostles, and martyrs. If not, how could he otherwise claim to be dependable in his transmission of Christ’s very words? Symeon would become the New Theologian, a phrase in which ‘new’ probably meant ‘of a new and hitherto unknown sort’. The Written Saint The in-built confrontation, and the strong opposition Symeon met with, made it necessary that another person, eventually his self-proclaimed heir Niketas Stethatos, took up his cause, collected and edited his writings, and through these activities finally presented Symeon as the marginalised writing saint, who outdid, or perhaps emulated, other saints who were primarily perceived through writing.45 But this was done with an important transformation, for with Symeon it was now the saint, Symeon, who did the writing himself, a fact that Niketas repeatedly stresses. Symeon would ‘write compulsively, day and night’ (Life ch. 131). Using the same word for ‘compulsively’ (in Greek akōn, literally ‘unwillingly’) Niketas speaks (ch. 111) of how Symeon had the compulsion to ‘publish (dēmosieuei) what he had seen in his revelation of God’. Through this Symeon came to be God by adoption and as a son of God. As a result … conversed like Moses, and inscribed in ink by the finger of God as on the tablets the energy of divine fire.’ (Life, ch. 111)46

This emphasis on writing leads Niketas into telling a twisted story from his days as Symeon’s secretary and future literary executor, presented as a sign of Symeon’s prophetic gifts (Life ch. 131). One day Niketas had been given some drafts to copy out onto parchment in books or scrolls, but 45

Magdalino, ‘What We Heard in the Lives of the Saints’. Θεὸς ἐχρημάτιζε θέσει, καὶ ὡς υἱὸς Θεοῦ … κατὰ τὸν Μωσέα ὡμίλει, καὶ τὰ τῆς ἐνεργείας τοὺ θείου πυρὸς μέλανι ἐν δακτύλῳ Θεοῦ ὡς πλάκας ἐχάραττε. Greenfield, Niketas Stethatos, 259, who notes the quotation from 2 Tim 2:25. 46

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contrary to the normal procedure, Niketas did not send the copies back right away to Symeon. Later he heard that Symeon had become infuriated with the person who was meant to bring back the copies. Niketas then assumed that Symeon was now suspecting him of playing some trick on him by withholding the copies, and he therefore sent him a letter excusing himself.47 Symeon responded (ch. 132) by sending a letter rejecting the apology, because not only would Symeon never suspect such thing of Niketas, he would even entrust all his writings for him to copy, having pledged ‘once and for all to treat you like myself, and have entrusted you with all my writings, and hope that they become known to everyone else through you’.48 This slightly incoherent story (the rejection of Symeon is strangely overloaded) has the advantage of emphasising the trust needed in a publisher, as was Symeon’s in Niketas, at least according to Niketas. The double emphasis on writing as medium, in Symeon’s writing and in the subsequent partisan writing of Niketas Stethatos, secured Symeon’s sanctification and made his hymns available to later readers. For, despite its inner qualities, Symeon’s literary project would probably not have succeeded, had it not been for the efforts of Niketas Stethatos. It was his edition of Symeon’s texts that ensured him continuous influence on orthodox writing and theology, and it is his Life that enables us to trace the stages of Symeon’s life and the conditions under which his texts were pronounced and put into writing, namely the actual exiles and confrontations. Symeon produced an extraordinary voice, which seems to transform exile – whether physical or mental – into a divine mouthpiece. It is a radically altered ‘I’ that is speaking, an ‘I’ that is performing its marginalisation in an unprecedented way in Byzantium.49 The selfhood appearing from this, whether exiled from life or from the union of love, had the power to take up the challenges from an imperial world that was all but securing sanctification of saints for itself. Extending the model of other authors of saintly writing, Symeon was able to transcend the literarisation of sainthood. By composing and writing poetry that surpassed the beauty of the rewritten lives of the saints, he would become the written saint par excellence.

47 This seems a better translation of ἀπελογησάμην than ‘offered an explanation’, as in Greenfield, Niketas Stethatos, 319. 48 εἰς σέ, ὃν ὡς ἐμαυτὸν ἔχειν ἅπαξ καθωμολόγησα, καὶ πάντα τὰ ἐμά σοι ἐθάρρησα, καὶ διὰ σοῦ καὶ πᾶσιν ἄλλοις ἐλπίζω φανερὰ γενήσεσθαι, Greenfield, Niketas Stethatos, 320. 49 D. Krueger, Liturgical Subjects: Christian Ritual, Biblical Narrative, and the Formation of the Self in Byzantium (Philadelphia, PA, 2014) 197-214.

VI. THE WRITTEN MEDIA OF IMPERIAL GOVERNMENT AND A MARTYR’S CAREER: JUSTIN MARTYR’S 1 APOLOGY Birgit van der Lans1

Around 150 ce, a religious entrepreneur who had come to Rome from Flavia Neapolis (modern Nablus) wrote a lengthy text that was addressed to the emperor Antoninus Pius (138–161) and to his adoptive sons, Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus. The text is shaped as a petition (a βιβλίδιον or libellus), which was a common written medium through which private individuals and groups could approach emperors and other office-holders to obtain personal benefits, legal rulings, or to ask for intervention in cases of wrongdoing.2 A petition could be accompanied by supporting documents and would typically be answered by a short reply written under the request (the subscript). The petitioner who is the protagonist of this chapter introduces himself as ‘Justin, son of Priscus and grandson of Bakchios’. He would later become known as Justin Martyr, one of the authoritative early fathers of the church. This is not a position he enjoyed from the beginning of his career.3 In 1 Apology, the title that came to be associated with the address, Justin demands of the emperor that Christians who are denounced before the courts would be judged on the basis of their deeds, and not punished simply for being Christian. To support the petition, he also appends a document, a copy of a rescript that Hadrian had earlier sent to one of his governors, confirming that proper legal procedures should be followed. 1 The research for this article was carried out during a research stay at the University of Bergen that was funded by the Niels Stensen Foundation. I am grateful for the valuable input I received from the conference participants and, on other occasions, from Jan N. Bremmer, Phil Harland, Eivind Heldaas Seland, Håkon Fiane Teigen and Einar Thomassen. 2 On petitioning and litigation, see B. Kelly, Petitions, Litigation, and Social Control in Roman Egypt (Oxford, 2011). 3 In this article, translations of 1 Apol. are generally drawn from D.P. Minns and P. Parvis, Justin, Philosopher and Martyr: Apologies (Oxford, 2009).

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Throughout the text Justin supports his request with philosophical reasoning, refutes charges such as atheism, and expounds Christian teaching on different subjects. This makes the text unusually long for a petition. Because of its length, and for other reasons, many have questioned whether Justin wrote 1 Apology as an actual petition that was meant to be delivered to and read by its imperial addressees. If the address of 1 Apology is indeed fictive, why would Justin cast his text in the form of this ubiquitous medium? This chapter explores how Justin creatively used the petition and the official documents that came to be linked to his text as media in an endeavour to establish his personal authority. It focuses on Justin as a case study that illustrates the creative use of administrative documents (petitions, rescripts, subscripts) by private groups and individuals, including those who might be considered marginal, to negotiate social power. In line with the perspective of this volume, I approach petitions as specific types of media that facilitate communication and the establishment of social connections. And as media, petitions were not neutral carriers of information.4 Justin’s choice of the petition as a medium can therefore only be understood when the social and physical characteristics of petitions and petitioning are taken into account. By looking at how petitions functioned as media we can better understand the factors informing Justin’s decision to cast his text in the form of a petition. First, we explore to what extent Justin, at the time he composed the petition, can be described as marginal. A Martyr from the Margins? Justin was not the first or the only Christian who reportedly addressed an emperor in the Hadrian-Antonine period (117–192). This was an era that set the stage for a fundamental transformation of authority in the history of Christianity.5 Some of these Christian authors, like Quadratus of Athens, are known from references in later sources, primarily Eusebius’ fourth century Church History – a work which Doron Mendels describes as the ‘media revolution’ of early Christianity.6 Eusebius also incorporated a version of 4 For media as ‘content-in-form’, see B. Meyer, ‘Mediation and Immediacy. Sensational Forms, Semiotic Ideologies and the Question of the Medium’, Social Anthropology 19 (2011) 23-39 at 30. 5 On the influence of Roman conceptions of auctoritas on later conceptions of authority, see F. Furedi, Authority: A Sociological History (Cambridge, 2013) 47-94. 6 D. Mendels, The Media Revolution of Early Christianity: An Essay on Eusebius’s ‘Ecclesiastical History’ (Grand Rapids, 1999). Quadratus of Athens: Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 4.3.1, cf. Jerome, De vir. ill. 19. In the same passage, Eusebius reports Aristides of Athens’ address to Hadrian as being preserved by many: Hist. eccl. 4.3.2. Other sources, probably correctly,

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Justin’s petition, including a Greek translation of Hadrian’s rescript that Justin appended to his petition, as well as parts of a petition from Melito, the bishop of Sardis, to Marcus Aurelius.7 To the same emperor (and to his son Commodus) Athenagoras of Athens addressed a treatise called Embassy, which reads as an ambassadorial speech.8 Partly thanks to Eusebius, these figures have been grouped together in the ‘age of the Apologists’, and their writings were long studied under the heading of ‘apologetic literature’.9 While there were other Christian writings addressed to the emperors, Justin offers a good case study for the theme of marginality and media, not only because his 1 Apology is the only text that survives in full as a petition, but also because his own position among fellow Christians in Rome was quite ambiguous: on what grounds could he act as their representative? If we, for the moment, go along with the rhetorical situation created by Justin, we may wonder whether he was in fact the most obvious candidate to petition the emperor on behalf of Christians in Rome and elsewhere. Unlike Melito, who was bishop of Sardis, Justin did not hold an ecclesiastical office that would make him a natural envoy. What can be said about Justin’s status and his authority in Roman, Christian circles by the time he penned 1 Apology? Unfortunately, only little is known about Justin and his position in Roman Christian circles. We have to rely on how Justin presents his own biography, on information provided in the Acts of Justin and on several other later Christian authors who mention Justin and his works, such as Eusebius’ Church History. These later sources regard Justin as an authoritative figure.10 This clearly does not mean, however, that he already enjoyed this status when he composed 1 Apology. associate Aristides with Antoninus Pius. For discussion and surviving fragments see M. Lattke, ‘Die Herkunft der Christen in der Apologie des Aristides: Baustein zu einem Kommentar’, in G.D. Dunn and W. Mayer (eds.), Christians Shaping Identity from the Roman Empire to Byzantium (Leiden, 2015) 48-63; D. Hagedorn, ‘Ein neues Fragment zu P. Oxy. XV 1778 (Aristides, Apologie)’, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 131 (2000) 40-44. 7 Justin: Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 4.8-9; 11-12, 16-18; Melito: Hist. eccl. 4.13 and esp. 26. Here Eusebius also mentions Apollinaris of Hierapolis’ apology: Hist. eccl. 4.27. 8 P.L. Buck, ‘Athenagoras “Embassy”: A Literary Fiction’, Harvard Theological Review 89 (1996) 209-26; W.R. Schoedel, ‘Apologetic Literature and Ambassadorial Activities’, Harvard Theological Review 82 (1989) 55-78. 9 For recent discussions of these issues: J. Ulrich, A.-C. Jacobsen and M. Kahlos (eds.), Continuity and Discontinuity in Early Christian Apologetics (Frankfurt am Main, 2009). 10 In Hist. eccl. 4.11.8, Eusebius describes Justin as most prominent (μάλιστα δ’ ἤκμαζεν) ‘in those days’, that is under the reign of Antoninus and the episcopate of Anicetus. He also makes it clear that Justin’s works were studied by the early fathers, such as Irenaeus, and encourages others to study his writings (4.18.9-10).

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Despite these difficulties, some observations can be made. We know that Justin, a Greek speaking Roman citizen, had come to Rome from his native city, the Roman colony of Flavia Neapolis in Samaria.11 After a career of religio-philosophical shopping and flirtations with Stoicism, the Peripatetic school and Pythagoreanism, he turned from Platonism to Christianity and spent his life dressed in the philosophical pallium, teaching Christianity as the true philosophy.12 Following the persuasive chronology of AdalbartGautier Hamman, Justin’s first visit to Rome took place around 140, followed by a trip back to Palaestina (151–155) that included stops in Greece, possibly Corinth, during or shortly after which the Dialogue with Trypho may have been composed.13 It was during his second stay in Rome (155/6– 165/6) that Justin set up shop in a rented apartment ‘above the baths of Myrtinus’, if we rely on the information provided by all three recensions of the Acts of Justin (3.3).14 Here he catered to a diverse crowd of intellectually interested clients or pupils. These included Christians but perhaps also non-Christians: according to the Acts of Justin, he welcomed all who chanced to pass by (3.3).15 Following this description, Justin appears to 11 Since the names of Justin and that of his father (Priscus) are Latin, the family may have been Roman colonists. On migration and marginality, see Robert Park’s classic article ‘Human Migration and the Marginal Man’, American Journal of Sociology 33 (1928) 881-93. 12 Justin, Dial. 1.1-3. We cannot be sure that Justin’s departure from Syria Palestina was a direct result of the Bar Kochba revolt and its violent suppression (132–135 ce) (Dial. 1.3: ‘a refugee from the recent war’). On Justin’s ‘conversion’, see R.M. Thorsteinsson, ‘By Philosophy Alone: Reassessing Justin’s Christianity and his Turn from Platonism’, Early Christianity 3 (2012) 492-517; O. Skarsaune, ‘The Conversion of Justin Martyr’, Studia Theologica 30 (1976) 53-73. 13 A.G. Hamman, ‘Essai de chronologie de la vie et des œuvres de Justin’, Augustinianum 35 (1995) 231-39. Eusebius locates the Dialogue in Ephesus, but from the text itself a Greek, possibly Corinthian, setting can be inferred. For the Dialogue, see H. Leppin, ‘Christlicher Intellektualismus und religiöse Exklusion – Justin und der Dialog mit Tryphon’, in S. Alkier and H. Leppin (eds.), Juden, Christen, Heiden? (Tübingen, 2018) 36389. 14 On the historical value of the Acta Iustini: R. Freudenberger, ‘Die Acta Iustini als historisches Dokument’, in K. Beyschlag et al. (eds.), Humanitas – Christianitas: Walther von Loewenich zum 65. Geburtstag (Witten, 1969) 24-31. Recension B, probably expanding and perhaps attempting to explain A, has ‘above the bath of a certain Martinos son of Timiotinos’; C omits mention of a place altogether. The exact location remains unknown, despite attempts to localise Justin’s dwelling. H.G. Snyder offers valuable observations on apartments connected to small neighbourhood baths: ‘“Above the Bath of Myrtinus”: Justin Martyr’s “School” in the City of Rome’, Harvard Theological Review 100 (2007) 335-62. 15 Recension A, in the German translation by Seeliger and Wischmeyer: ‘Und wenn jemand zu mir kommen wollte, habe ich ihn mit den Lehren der Wahrheit bekannt gemacht’ (H.R. Seeliger and W. Wischmeyer, Märtyrerliteratur. Herausgegeben, übersetzt, kommentiert und eingeleitet (Berlin, 2015). For the text see A.A.R. Bastiaensen et al., Atti e Passioni dei Martiri (Milan, 1987), with J. den Boeft and J.N. Bremmer, ‘Notiunculae Martyrologicae IV’, Vigiliae Christianae 45 (1991) 105-22.

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have been active as a private teacher offering services to pupils, some of whom may have gathered around him for a longer period.16 Justin’s mode of operation can therefore be located in the social setting of individual, freelance religious and philosophical specialists that populated the city of Rome in the second century.17 This class of specialists operated outside or alongside religious institutions in what Ingvild Gilhus, using J.Z. Smith’s framework, discusses as the ‘anywhere’ dimension of religious activity (see Gilhus in this volume). Such religious specialists competed for recognition, resources and social distinction that granted authority or symbolic capital by offering their services, which ranged from ritual skills to wisdom, knowledge, and learning. In some cases, a performance of exoticism was part of their appeal, illustrating the role of marginality as a cultural asset, a particular discourse, and a matter of performance, to which other contributions in this volume draw attention.18 This phenomenon is less obvious in Justin’s 1 Apology, unless his arguments for the authority of the Judaean prophetic books are read as appeals to alien wisdom.19 To build a reputation and to attract students, Justin would have to compete with other specialists, such as the Christian Valentinus, but also with non-Christian teachers. Public debates with philosophers such as the ‘Cynic’ Crescens provided publicity and repute.20 The detailed report of this debate that Justin gives in 2 Apology indicates the effort he took to enrol in the competitive philosophical scene.21 Another platform of competition 16 On travelling teachers as labour migrants, see R. Tacoma, Moving Romans: Migration to Rome in the Principate (Leiden, 2016) 197. Tacoma notes that teachers generally stayed in the same place 10-15 years since it took time to build a circle of pupils. Does Justin’s departure indicate a lack of success and income? 17 See now H. Wendt, At the Temple Gates. The Religion of Freelance Experts in the Roman Empire (Oxford, 2016) 191-216. On discursive competition for religious authority between Christians, sophists and philosophers in the second century, K. Eshleman, The Social World of Intellectuals in the Roman Empire. Sophists, Philosophers, and Christians (Cambridge, 2012). 18 See the introduction to this volume, and in particular the contributions by Bremmer, Feldt, Gilhus, and Johannsen. Wendt calls this phenomenon ‘ethnically coded’ religious expertise: At the Temple Gates, 75-113. 19 See esp. 1 Apol. 44.13 on Justin’s possession of prophetic books, suggesting that he presented them to the emperor for inspection. 20 Justin, 2 Apol. 8.1-7. According to Tatian, Or. ad Graec. 19, it was Crescens who denounced Justin to the authorities; cf. Eusebius. Hist. eccl. 4.16.7-8. R.M. Thorsteinsson reads 2 Apol. as a ‘personal case of defence against previous and impending charges from Crescens in particular’: ‘The Literary Genre and Purpose of Justin’s Second Apology: A Critical Review With Insights from Ancient Epistolography’, Harvard Theological Review 105 (2012) 91-114 at 453. 21 Justin’s desire for publicity is evident from his suggestion that the debate between him and Crescens should be repeated in the presence of the emperors: 2 Apol. 8.6. The discourse

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would be the publication of written media, which normally took place in public readings.22 Unfortunately, we do not know precisely at which point in his career Justin composed the Apologies. Although a precise date cannot be established, it was most likely during his first ten years in Rome, in any case preceding the Dialogue with Trypho.23 It may represent Justin’s literary debut, seeking to establish a name for himself. Eventually, of course, Justin succeeded in building an authoritative reputation. Subsequent Christian authors were acquainted with his work and referred to it approvingly; this indicates that his work was circulated and transmitted.24 But this may only have been achieved after, and possibly by virtue of, his martyr’s death under the urban prefecture of Q. Junius Rusticus (163–168), who tried Justin together with six otherwise unknown fellow defendants.25 Admittedly, the Acts of Justin present Justin as the group leader. Only Justin is questioned about Christian meetings, teaching, and missionary practices (1–3) and Rusticus suspects that it was Justin who converted the others.26 Yet this can easily be explained with the post factum composition of the Acts.27 in 2 Apol. 4-13 appears to rehearse the debate: R.M. Thorsteinsson, ‘Justin’s Debate with Crescens the Stoic’, Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum 17 (2013) 451-78, who argues persuasively that Crescens was a Stoic. 22 On public readings as publication method: R. Winsbury, The Roman Book: Books, Publishing and Performance in Classical Rome (London, 2009) 86-110, and D. Nässelqvist, Public Reading in Early Christianity: Lectors, Manuscripts, and Sound in the Oral Delivery of John 1-4 (Leiden, 2016). 23 1 Apol. 31.6 describes the Bar Kochba war as recent, but so does Dial. 1 Apol. 46.1 conceives of Jesus’ birth 150 years earlier, which is not helpful. Lucius’ prominence possibly points to a date shortly after his quaestorship in 153: Minns and Parvis, Justin, Philosopher and Martyr, 44. The reference to a petition presented to (L. Munatius) Felix, governor of Alexandria between c. 150/1-154, suggests a date between 151 and 155: L.W. Barnard, Justin Martyr: His Life and Thought (Cambridge, 1966) 11. 24 Besides Tatian, Justin is cited twice by Irenaeus (Adv. Haer. 4.6.2; 5.26.2). Tertullian praises him as one of the first antagonists of heretics (Adv. Valent. 5). Eusebius discusses Justin extensively and quotes from his works (Hist. eccl. 4.18.9) and makes clear that by his time of writing several now lost works written by Justin or attributed to him were circulating (Hist. eccl. 4.8-9; 11-12, 16-18). 25 An exact date cannot be established. Eusebius, Chron. p. 203 lines 13-18 (Helm) dates Justin’s death to 154; Chron. Pasch. I.482 (Bonn) to 165. For discussion, see Freudenberger, ‘Die Acta Iustini’, 25. 26 As observed by T. Georges, ‘Justin’s School in Rome: Reflections on Early Christian “Schools”’, Zeitschrift für antikes Christentum 16 (2012) 75-87; cf. with more caution, P. Lampe, From Paul to Valentinus: Christians at Rome in the First Two Centuries (London, 2003) 277. 27 I follow J. Ulrich’s dating of recension A to shortly after 200 ce, while B and C are resp. fourth and fifth century: ‘What do We Know About Justin’s “School” in Rome?’, Zeitschrift für antikes Christentum 16 (2012) 62-74.

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As for the period prior to this event, we are rather ill informed about the nature of Justin’s connections to other Christians in the metropolis.28 We know that Tatian was among his Christian pupils (Address to the Greeks 19).29 Further, in the Acts of Justin one of Justin’s fellow defendants, Euelpistus, states that he has listened to Justin’s teaching (4.7), but it seems inappropriate to speak of Justin as the head of an established school.30 Several earlier scholars have indeed wondered how to characterise the relationship between Justin and his circle of students and the diverse and loosely organised collection of Christian assemblies in second century Rome. Peter Lampe suggested that ‘Justin’s circle existed very autonomously, as a free school, an organisation that was independent from the rest of the house-church communities of the city’.31 According to Einar Thomassen ‘there is no evidence that Justin, a freelance philosopher with no official ecclesiastical position, had any significant influence within Christian circles in Rome’.32 To be sure, Justin’s detailed knowledge of Christian teaching and doctrine, and of at least one important event in the local community’s life (2 Apol. 2.8), does imply the existence of connections to Christian circles from which he must have retrieved this knowledge and members of which possibly provided him with access to written sources. He also knew about and polemicized against Marcion and his followers (1 Apol. 26.3, 58) and claimed to have written a book against heresies (1 Apol. 26.8; according to Eusebius, against Marcion: Hist. eccl. 4.11.8).33 In the Dialogue, written after 1-2 Apologies, he shows awareness of competing Christian groups and mentions Valentinians, Marcionites, Basilideans, and Satornalians (Dial. 35.6). But he does not articulate specific social connections to church officials. He also knows about the sequence of activities during assembly meetings (1 Apol. 67.3–8). But then again, in the Acts of Justin 28

Also noted by Ulrich, ‘What do We Know About Justin’s “School”’, 73. Irenaeus, Adv. haer. 1.28.1 describes Tatian as a ‘hearer’ of Justin, who did not express his Encratite views while he ‘continued with Justin’, but separated from the Church (ἀποστὰς τῆς Ἐκκλησίας) after the latter’s death so as to become an independent teacher. This (hostile) report suggests that Justin formed the link between Tatian and ‘the Church’, yet not a link strong enough to be retained or even developed further when Justin was no longer there. 30 Recent articulations of the different positions can be found in the Georges, ‘Justin’s School in Rome’ and Ulrich, ‘What Do We Know About Justin’s “School”’. 31 Lampe, From Paul to Valentinus, 274-79 surveys Justin’s social relations, pp. 376-77 the connection between his ‘philosophical circle’ to other house communities in the city; quotation from p. 277 note 78. Lampe’s tendency to categorise ‘Justin’s group’ as a demarcated unit fits in with his broader thesis on the fragmented character of Roman Christianity. 32 E. Thomassen, ‘Orthodoxy and Heresy in Second-Century Rome’, Harvard Theological Review 97 (2004) 241-56 at 242. 33 On the so-called Syntagma, cf. Irenaeus, Adv. haer. 1.23-27. 29

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he professes to be unaware of any meeting place (συνέλευσις) besides his own residence (Act. Iust. 3.3), although here he is clearly answering the prefect’s questions in an evasive manner.34 In sum, there are reasons to disentangle Justin from the status and authority that he enjoyed in the early church.35 Instead, Justin can be situated among the Christian and non-Christian freelance experts such as Crescens and Valentinus who competed for resources and authority in second-century Rome. Against this background, I turn to Justin’s use of the written media of imperial government and ask how it may have been instrumental in the creation of religious authority. The Petition as a Medium and Justin’s 1 Apology The last two decades have seen a ‘mediatisation’ of the study of the Roman administration, followed by an increasing differentiation between the types of media through which the Roman government published and recorded information, such as sculptures, coins, and inscriptions. These are now studied as distinctive types of media, each with their own physical characteristics and ways of communicating imperial ideals and values to different types of audiences.36 It has been observed that written media were particularly central to governing the empire.37 In this regard Fergus Millar’s model of petition and response still functions as a useful tool for understanding how the empire worked. The emperors were approached by governors through letters, by cities that sent embassies carrying written decrees, and by private individuals filing petitions. These approaches generated written responses, letters 34 On this point, cf. Thomassen, ‘Orthodoxy and Heresy’, 242 with G. Lüdemann, ‘Zur Geschichte des ältesten Christentums in Rom: Valentin und Marcion; Ptolemäus und Justin’, Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 70 (1979) 86-114 at 104-5. In recension B and C, the prefect wants to know where Justin meets his pupils, rather than inquiring about the location of Christian gatherings (A). 35 It is difficult to establish marginality in the absence of a centre and standard. On marginality as a relational and contestable concept, see Feldt’s introduction to this volume, with B.T. Cullen and M. Pretes, ‘The Meaning of Marginality: Interpretations and Perceptions in Social Science’, The Social Science Journal 37 (2000) 215-29. 36 Coins: O. Hekster et al., ‘Making History with Coins: Nero from a Numismatic Perspective’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 45 (2014) 25-37. Legal tablets: E.A. Meyer, Legitimacy and Law in the Roman World: Tabulae in Roman Belief and Practice (Cambridge, 2004). Inscriptions: C. Ando, Imperial Ideology and Provincial Loyalty in the Roman Empire (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 2000). 37 For an overview, see S. Corcoran, ‘State Correspondence in the Roman Empire from Augustus to Justinian’, in K. Radner (ed.), State Correspondence in the Ancient World: from New Kingdom Egypt to the Roman Empire (Oxford and New York, 2014).

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or rescripts, as well as subscripts written below petitions, which gained the force of law and were later collected in the legal codices.38 Many of these sources survive because they were copied, stored and published by interested parties, not only by public bodies such as cities and provincial councils but also by private individuals and associations. Such responses, often regarded as containing the emperor’s own words, were valuable commodities that could be of practical use when privileges had to be re-negotiated, but they also conveyed status and prestige on the possessor. Regardless of the question of the degree to which the emperor was personally involved in reading petitions and writing subscripts, there was a powerful cultural expectation that the emperor was available to his subjects and that petitions would be answered.39 Let us briefly look at the petition language used in Justin’s 1 Apology. The text carries some of the formal characteristics and customary vocabulary of a petition.40 The address identifies the recipient(s) in the dative (to N), introduces the petitioner in the nominative (from N) and characterises the text as a request, in this case using the terms ‘address’ (προσφώνησις) and ‘petition’ (ἔντευξις) (1 Apol. 1.1).41 After setting out the problem (the unfair treatment of Christians in trials), the request that follows asks (using the standard verb ἀξιόω) for a judgement in accordance with reason, which entails that the charges brought against Christians would be properly investigated; that those found to have committed wrongs would be punished, but that those found innocent of any crime would be released and not condemned simply for being Christian.42

38 F. Millar, The Emperor in the Roman World, 31 BC – AD 337 (Ithaca, NY, 1977, repr. 1992), with discussion in J. Edmondson, ‘The Roman Emperor and the Local Communities of the Roman Empire’, in J.-L. Ferrary and J. Scheid (eds.), Il princeps romano: autocrate o magistrato? Fattori giuridici e fattori sociali del potere imperiale da Augusto a Commodo (Pavia, 2015) 701-29. 39 Between the early Principate and the High Empire the process was increasingly bureaucratised. Millar, The Roman Empire, stresses the emperor’s own involvement; cf. W. Williams, ‘The Publication of Imperial Subscripts’, Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 40 (1980) 283-94. 40 For the rhetorical structure of petitions, see T. Hauken, An Epigraphic Study of Petitions to Roman Emperors, 181-249 (Bergen, 1998) 258-89. It is fair to say that 1 Apol. does not follow a neat rhetorical division. 41 Minns and Parvis omit, from the main surviving manuscript, Paris. gr. 450, the inclusion of the ‘holy Senate and the people of Rome’, (ἱερᾷ τε συγκλήτῳ καὶ δήμῳ παντὶ Ῥωμαίων) as part of the address, as well as ‘philosopher’ (Φιλοσόφῳ) as the title of Lucius Verus. The translation is slightly modified. 42 This request is expressed in various ways throughout the text: cf. 1 Apol. 2.3, 3.1, 7.4, 56.3.

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Besides the opening and the way in which the request is phrased, the text also ends like a petition. If the most recent textual reconstruction of Denis Minns and Paul Parvis is followed, Justin’s text concludes with the customary request to the authorities to answer his petition:43 And therefore we ask (ἀξιοῦμεν) you to add the subscription (ὑπογράψαντας) which seems good to you to this petition (βιβλῑδιον) and to post it up (προθεῖναι) … And if you would promulgate (προγράψητε) this we would be glad to have it brought to the attention of all, in order that, if they can, they may change their minds (1 Apology 69.1–70.1).

Using the customary terminology, Justin requests a response to his petition (βιβλῑδιον) in the form of a subscription (ὑπογράψαντας, ὑπογραφή) at the bottom.44 The practices of archiving, publishing, and copying petitions and subscriptions were subject to local variety and development over time, but by Justin’s time such subscriptions were probably posted at a public place where the petitioner could find it, order a copy and take it home.45 Justin’s double request to post and promulgate the response along with the petition already suggests his interest for the publicity potential of the petition as a medium. Scholars commenting on the petition format of Justin’s Apologies have either accepted that Justin intended to deliver his writing as a petition and that he meant it to be read by his imperial addressees, or dismissed its literary form as fictive.46 The more recent studies on the Apologies show a 43 Based on codicological analysis of Paris. gr. 450, Minns and Parvis, Justin, Philosopher and Martyr, 28-31 suggest that the folios containing 2 Apol. 14-15 were dislocated from their original location at the end of 1 Apol., possibly when a scribe replaced Justin’s Latin rescript with Eusebius’ Greek translation, and was reinserted at the end of 2 Apol.; more extensively: P. Parvis, ‘Justin, Philosopher and Martyr. The Posthumous Creation of the Second Apology’, in S. Parvis and P. Foster (eds.), Justin Martyr and his Worlds (Minneapolis, 2007) 22-37; P. Parvis, ‘The Textual Tradition of Justin’s Apologies: A Modest Proposal’, Studia Patristica 36 (2001) 54-60. 44 Justin uses βιβλῑδιον twice referring to other petitioning Christians: 1 Apol. 29.2; 2 Apol. 2.8. 45 On publication and copying, see A.J.B. Sirks, ‘Making a Request to the Emperor. Rescripts in the Roman Empire’, in L. de Blois (ed.), Administration, Prosopography and Appointment Policies in the Roman Empire (Leiden, 2001) 121-35. 46 Genuine: Lampe, From Paul to Valentinus, 268 (‘What we have before us is the attempt to directly influence the religious politics of the Antonini’). W.R. Schoedel argues that Justin meant to hand in his ‘apologetically grounded petition’, but also describes it as a literary vehicle to communicate to a wider audience: ‘Apologetic Literature and Ambassadorial Activities’, Harvard Theological Review 82 (1989) 55-78. See further A. Wartelle, Saint Justin, Apologies. Introduction, Texte Critique, Traduction, Commentaire et Index (Paris, 1987); R.M. Grant, Greek Apologists of the Second Century (London, 1988) 55; P. Keresztes, ‘The Literary Genre of Justin’s First Apology’, Vigiliae Christianae 19 (1965) 99-110.

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growing tendency in favour of the latter position.47 The genuineness of the petition does not depend on Justin’s social status or on his religious identity, since petitioning was an administrative procedure that was open to any subject regardless of social class or gender.48 Indeed, as mentioned earlier, the attractiveness and popularity of this medium was connected to the strong expectation that the emperor and other office-holders were to be accessible to their subjects, to receive their complaints and to answer their requests.49 Nevertheless, compared to extant petitions on stone or papyrus, Justin’s text is exceedingly long and digressive in character and in that sense without parallel.50 There are also reasons to assume that Christian apologetic writings generally served an in-group audience rather than the external audience that is explicitly addressed, although there is no need to restrict the intended readership to either of the two.51 Yet even though it is unlikely that Justin attempted to deliver the Apology in its present form to his imperial addressees, we should not stop asking questions once we decide that the petition format is a literary fiction. Compared to cases of fictive royal correspondence and staged ambassadorial speeches, for instance, other examples of fictive petitions are difficult to find.52 Justin’s choice of this medium is therefore a significant cultural choice. What sort of meanings would Justin’s public attach to the free-lance teacher in his role of petitioner when they heard his text being read out aloud and performed as a petition? Since any private individual could attempt to bring a petition to the attention of an emperor or another magistrate, it was not an inherently prestigious social role. Approaching the emperor by means of a petition was 47 Minns and Parvis, Justin, Philosopher and Martyr, 25 (somewhat implicitly); P.L. Buck, ‘Justin Martyr’s “Apologies”: Their Number, Destination and Form’, Journal of Theological Studies 54 (2003) 45-59; C. Munier, ‘A Propos des Apologies de Justin’, Revue des Sciences Religieuses 61 (1987) 177-86. 48 Financial resources were needed to draft the petition (and hire a scribe to do so), to obtain a copy of the response, and to travel to the imperial residence, in case of petitions to emperors. 49 See the references above. The emperor’s accessibility also struck the Chinese, judging from the third-century compilation Hou-Han-Shu, chs. 86, 88; cf. Wei Lue 11. 50 On length, Hauken, Petition and Response, 284-87. 51 For example, F. Young, ‘Greek Apologists of the Second Century’, in M. Edwards et al. (eds.), Apologetics in the Roman Empire (Oxford, 1999) 81-104. 52 Somewhat comparable is a grammarian’s petition from 258 ce, which is taken to be a rhetorical exercise: P.Oxy 33.66, with P. Parsons, ‘The Grammarian’s Complaint’, in A.E. Hanson (ed.), Collecteana Papyrologica: Texts Published in Honour of H.C. Youtie (Bonn, 1976) 410-46. Martial compares his poems addressed to the emperor with petitions: Ep. 2.91-92. And the sixth-century archive of Dioscorus of Aphrodito contains poems that resemble petitions; see L. MacCoull, Dioscorus of Aphrodito: His Work and his World (Berkeley, 1988).

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clearly inferior to sending letters, which was reserved for office-holders, cities, and personal friends. Moreover, the chances of getting immediate access and attention depended to some extent on standing and connections.53 Generally, it would therefore increase the chance of success if private groups and individuals had their petition forwarded by a provincial magistrate, client king or someone else with access to court circles.54 Otherwise, most libelli would be handed to attendants at a salutatio or at a public appearance, to be processed at an unknown moment.55 Nevertheless, there are also anecdotes of an emperor reading a petition straight away when it was handed to him, sometimes also in the presence of the petitioner.56 Vespasian, for instance, put the philosopher Euphrates to shame by reading aloud a written petition in which he asked for money. Apparently, the philosopher had expected the emperor to keep it and read it in private.57 Significantly, Justin’s text seems to presuppose a personal meeting with his addressees when he writes that it ‘was not to flatter you with this document nor to win your favour by our speech that we appeared before you’ (1 Apol. 2.3). And whereas it seems to have been uncommon that the delivery of petitions by private individuals was accompanied by speech (unlike decrees and requests presented by ambassadors), some of the terms Justin uses to describe his text suggest a setting of oral performance. Besides ‘petition’ (βιβλίδιον: 1 Apol. 69.1), ‘request’ (ἀξίωσις, 56.3), ‘words’ or ‘speeches’ (λόγοι, 70.1, which can be both written and oral), he uses the προσφώνησις, which was commonly used for addressing someone in speech (‘address and petition’, προσφώνησις καὶ ἔντευξις in 1.1; and ‘address and exposition’, προσφώνησις καὶ ἐξήγησις in 68.3). In rhetorical handbooks, the term is used for speeches addressed to a ruler.58 The rhetorical setting of a spoken 53 F. Millar, ‘Government and Diplomacy in the Roman Empire during the First Three Centuries’, in his Rome, the Greek World, and the East, vol. 2: Government, Society, and Culture in the Roman Empire, ed. H.M. Cotton and G.M. Rogers (Chapel Hill and London, 2004) 195-228; originally published in International History Review 10 (1988) 345-77. 54 Provincial governor: Pliny, Ep. 1.106-107; Tabula Banasitana (AE 1971.534). Client king: Philo, Legat. 101, 178-179; cf. Suetonius, Aug. 40: Augustus demands the personal appearance of a Greek client on whose behalf Tiberius asked for citizenship; cf. Millar, The Roman Emperor, 473. 55 Suetonius, Jul. 81.4; Plutarch, Caes. 65. Much depends on the question if there was an office for handling petitions in the mid-second century and what its tasks were (see above). 56 Immediate reading: Suetonius, Dom. 17. The woman petitioning Hadrian on the road in Dio 69.6.3 is granted a hearing, but presumably does not hand in a written petition. 57 Euphrates is in the emperor’s presence because Apollonius had invited him and Dio to join a conversion on political constitutions (Philostratus, V A 5.31-39). 58 G.A. Kennedy, A New History of Classical Rhetoric (Princeton, 1994) 225. προσφώνησις is also used for the written report offered to a higher authority upon an ordered inquiry or offering legal advice. P.Herm. 20 (fourth century) possibly offers a parallel for a προσφώνησις accompanying the handing over of a libellus.

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address accompanying the delivery of petitions and decrees is more at home in the context of ambassadors delivering petitions and decrees, which might be the social role Justin is aspiring to.59 In any case, the petition format allows Justin to portray himself as a partner in communication with the emperor, which we must understand as a strategy used to lend prestige to his project. Further, the format can be seen to support his self-presentation as a philosopher. Based on their rhetorical qualities, philosophers were often selected as mediators and ambassadors. More specifically, Justin’s text plays on the traditional theme of the dialogue between the philosopher and the king, which gained new prominence in the culture associated with the Second Sophistic.60 Justin, too, places himself in role of the bold philosopher who confronts the emperor using frank speech. As already seen above, Justin also states explicitly that his purpose was not to flatter or win favour, but to demand a judgement in accordance with reason (1 Apol. 2.3). He challenges his addressees to make true their reputation for piety, truth, philosophy, and learning, notions that are introduced in the opening address and returned to throughout the text (1 Apol. 2.1-2). Finally, as a philosopher Justin makes Christian life and teaching available for inspection.61 Its purpose, as Justin describes it in the concluding passage that was quoted earlier, is to correct ignorance and to ‘let all inspect (ἐπίσκεψιν) both our life and our teachings’ (3.4). The Greek word used here, ἐπίσκεψις, is at home in the setting of a philosophical examination. In a Platonic context, which would be familiar to Justin, it refers to the reflection of the intellect that is solicited by objects and perceptions.62 What is more, in addition to his self-presentation as a philosopher engaged in communication with the emperor, the petition format allows Justin to position himself as a representative of the Christians. Without mentioning the designation Christian, he introduces himself as interceding ‘on behalf of those, drawn from every race of human beings, who are being unjustly hated and abused’ (1 Apol. 1.1).63 Justin does not use the name ‘Christian’ here, probably because the relevance of the name itself is central to the content of the request. Neither does he explain why he is delivering the petition on their behalf, but simply describes himself as ‘one of them’ 59 Cf. Josephus, Ant. 16.31-57: Nicolaus of Damascus delivers an ἔντευξις on behalf of the Jews before the tribunal of Marcus Agrippa in Ionia. 60 G. Bowersock, Greek Sophists in the Roman Empire (Oxford, 1969) 32-38. 61 Minns and Parvis, Justin, Philosopher and Martyr, 85 note 7. 62 E.g. Plato, Rep. 523b. 63 ἔντευξις also has the connotation of an intercession to a higher authority: Josephus, Ant. 16.58.

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(εἷς αὐτῶν). This is significant, since it was common for petitioners to state their relationship to the group on whose behalf they acted.64 For example, when a group of priests connected with the temple of Kronos in Tebtynis complained about the poor conditions in which tenants had left a granary that was part of the temple property, they were represented by the presidents and other office-holders, as the address makes clear, who petitioned ‘on behalf of the tribes of the same priests of Tebtynis of Kronos’ (ἀπὸ τῶν φυλῶν τῶν αὐτῶν εἱαιρέων; P.Mich. 5.226, 37 ce).65 The well-known Skaptopara inscription contains another example of a petition that stipulates the relationship between the deliverer and the petitioning group. It carries a petition to emperor Gordian III from the tenants of the imperial estate of Skaptopara in modern Bulgaria (IGBulg. 4.2236, 238 ce). It states that the petition had been delivered by a soldier named Aurelius Pyrrhus, who hailed from Skaptopara and was a member of the praetorian cohort, and therefore in close physical proximity to the emperor: ‘Presented by (dat(um) per) Aurelius Pius soldier in the tenth praetorian cohort pia fidelis Gordiana, of Proculus’ century, fellow villager and owner’.66 More importantly, the inscription also illustrates well how petitions worked as a medium for social distinction through its publicity potential. As a public monument, the inscription marked the public recognition of Pyrrhus’ contribution to the village welfare.67 This is all the more noteworthy in light of the fact that the emperor’s reply (lines 166-169) indicates that Pyrrhus’ petitioning was in fact unsuccessful, since the villagers were referred back to the provincial governor. It has therefore been suggested that it was Pyrrhus himself who provided for the inscription, wanting to advertise his commitment to his hometown.68 If this suggestion is correct, it illustrates the credits one could get for taking the (financial) effort of delivering a petition and bringing back a response as something worth advertising in itself. 64 On the ‘differences in experience’ between petitioning collectively and petitioning individually, see S. Connolly, Lives Behind the Law: The World of the Codex Hermogenianus (Bloomington and Indianapolis, 2010). It was generally easier for groups to petition the emperors since they could mobilise more funds for composition and delivery. 65 For another example, F. Abbott and A. Johnson, Municipal Administration in the Roman Empire (Princeton, 1926), no. 143. 66 See Hauken, Petition and Response, no. 5 and a more recent translation as appendix in Connolly, Lives Behind the Law, 167-73. There were financial benefits to petitioning through soldiers close to the emperor’s court, as it would save travel allowances. 67 The stone monument itself is lost, but the text survives in early modern copies. 68 Hauken, Petition and Response, 105, also commenting on the uniqueness of the delivery note. The space taken up by Pyrrhus’ self-display also makes the Skaptopora inscription one of the longest petitions of which the text is known.

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Appropriating Official Documents in New Contexts Justin’s text does not include a response to his request, nor was one added in the later manuscript tradition, to which I return shortly.69 He does provide supporting documentation in the form of a letter concerning the trial of Christians that was sent by emperor Hadrian (117–138), predecessor to Antoninus Pius, to C. Minicius Fundanus, one of his provincial governors. Minicius Fundanus probably succeeded Q. Licinius Silvanus Granianus as governor of Asia (122–123).70 The latter had sent a letter to Hadrian to inquire about the proper way of handling the large number of denunciations brought in against Christians by means of countless petitions and outcries, a system that was regularly abused by informers for the purpose of financial gain.71 In his reply, Hadrian insists on following the proper legal procedures, which apparently entailed that only accusations that would stand in court were to be accepted, and that individuals should be punished if it was proved that they had acted ‘against the laws’.72 Despite Justin’s bold assertion that the rescript offered sufficient precedent (1 Apol. 68.3), Hadrian’s answer may not directly support the contents of Justin’s request. Yet, quoting the copied letter serves not only to provide legal support to the request itself. It also shows that ‘we are telling the truth in this matter also’ (68.4).73 The document thus validates the trustworthiness of Justin’s personal performance. Justin’s statement illustrates how imperial letters and rescripts could represent valued commodities that conveyed prestige on those who possessed them or were able to access them in public or private archives. We are ill informed about the circulation and copying of such documents in Christian circles, also since the scholarly discussion of these texts has focused on the question of their authenticity, potential original forms and 69 According to the fifth-century Christian historian Paulus Orosius, Hist. adv.pag. 7.14.2, Antoninus Pius was indeed moved by Justin’s representation to a more favourable view of Christianity. 70 The Greek text that ended up in Paris. grec. 450 is derived from Eusebius (Hist. eccl. 8.9), who claims to have translated Justin’s Latin version ‘as accurately as we could’. The relationship between the original Latin text and Rufinus’ version in Hist. 4.9.1 is debated. 71 Cf. the better known response of Trajan to Pliny (Ep. 10.96-97), to which Hadrian does not refer. Pliny mentions Minicius in Ep. 5.16.1-11. 72 Hadrian’s answer leaves open what constituted an act against the law. Whether or not Hadrian viewed the name Christian as a crime is not the primary question, cf. J.G. Cook, Roman Attitudes Toward the Christians. From Claudius to Hadrian (Tübingen, 2010) 262. 73 For the presentation of imperial letters to an individual as proof of character, see the philosopher Flavius Archippus in Pliny, Ep. 10.58, 60 with C. Kokkinia, ‘The Philosopher and the Emperor’s Words’, Historia 53 (2004) 490-500.

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apologetic purposes.74 Often there are good reasons to address these issues. While there are no immediate reasons to doubt the genuineness of Hadrian’s rescript, two other letters, one by Antoninus Pius and the other by Marcus Aurelius, are in their current form clearly partly or wholly fabricated to demonstrate imperial favour to Christianity.75 Yet, regardless of the disputed origin of these documents, and uncertainties about the routes of textual transmission, these texts were evidently copied and circulated in early Christian circles. Sometimes the manuscript tradition gives some clues regarding this process. The only independent manuscript of Justin’s work (Codex Parisinus graecus 450, completed in 1364) contains the two letters by Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius, which were added to Hadrian’s rescript at an unknown point in time. These documents are, understandably, left out of the modern editions of Justin’s works, which means that the process of copying, editing, and incorporating official documents in new literary settings remains invisible.76 These literary practices can be discussed in light of the well-known historiographical tradition of citing documents, but cannot be understood separately from the central practical and symbolic role of written media in imperial government, and its creative re-uses in different settings.77 Do concepts borrowed from media studies offer an alternative way of thinking about the citation of official documents in literary sources? Categories of genuineness and authenticity are appropriate from a source-

74 For a bibliography concerning Hadrian’s rescript, see Cook, Roman Attitudes, 252-80. A comparison with documentary practices of private associations would be a good place to start addressing questions about the archiving, copying, and circulation of state documents. 75 Antoninus Pius’ letter to the provincial council of Asia reproaches the provincials for prosecuting Christians, cf. recent discussion in C.P. Jones, ‘A Letter of Antininus Pius and an Antonine Rescript concerning Christians’, Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 58 (2018) 67-76. Marcus Aurelius writes to the Senate about the so-called rain miracle, in which he attributes the rescue of a Roman legion from dying of thirst to the prayer of Christian soldiers. This event, which probably took place around 170, gave rise to different interpretations, including Christian ones. See P. Kovács, Marcus Aurelius’ Rain Miracle and the Marcomannic Wars (Leiden, 2009) 3-21 for an historiographical overview. 76 M. Marcovich includes them as appendices: Iustini Martyris Apologiae pro Christianis (Berlin, 1994); A. Wartelle provides a French translation: Saint Justin Apologies, introduction, texte critique, traduction, commentaire, et index (Paris, 1987). There is now increasing interest in the cultural world of the manuscript tradition; see, for example, L.I. Lied and H. Lundhaug (eds.), Snapshots of Evolving Traditions. Jewish and Christian Manuscript Culture, Textual Fluidity, and New Philology (Berlin, 2017). 77 It is telling that state documents are cited in different types of texts, not only historiography but also fiction. See K. Ní Mheallaigh, ‘Pseudo-Documentarism and the Limits of Ancient Fiction’, American Journal of Philology 129 (2008) 403-31.

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critical perspective, but do not necessarily reflect ancient points of view.78 Instead of attempting to find an original text, it may be more fruitful to call to mind the overlap between media production and media consumption, which has been a topic of interest in consumerist media studies. A central observation in this field is that individuals not only consume but also help to produce media, for instance by sharing media online or by responding to media messages in ways that can surprise their makers. As John Thompson emphasises, such media appropriations are active, selective, and creative processes through which ‘media products, which have been disconnected from their context of production, are re-embedded in particular locales and adapted to the material and cultural conditions of reception’.79 For Thompson, the cultural prominence of these re-embedded global media products on a local scale are a result of the intensified diffusion of media in the digital age. While incomparable in terms of scale and availability, this points to a connection between the intensified traffic in written media in the Roman Empire and the creative ways in which different types of subjects appropriated these texts for their own purposes.80 Conclusion On at least three scores Justin’s unusual choice of the medium of the petition can be understood as an attempt to bolster his authority, at a point in time when he would still have to compete for the attention of fellow Christians. Performing as a petitioner allowed him to position himself as representative of Christians everywhere, to present himself as partner in a personal exchange with the emperor and his sons, and to boast about his intellectual credentials as a philosopher, donning the authority to present his version of Christian teaching. Justin also seems to have been aware of the PR potential of petitions: he asks not only that the subscription, but also the petition itself, be posted and promulgated. In this way, his version of Christian teaching would become known to all. Even when he never 78 There was certainly a concern for the authenticity of documents in the archives, but documents incorporated in literary narrative would be evaluated by different standards. For concerns about forging rescripts and tampering with documents, see Pliny, Ep. 10.56; SEG 33.1177; 254-286; CJ 9.22.3. 79 J.B. Thompson, ‘Social Theory and the Media’, in D. Crowley and D. Mitchell (eds.), Communication Theory Today (Stanford, 1994) 27-49; see also The Media and Modernity: A Social Theory of the Media (Stanford, 1995). 80 Globalisation has served as a fruitful paradigm for understanding cultural change in the ancient world. See, for instance, M. Pitts and M.J. Versluys (eds.), Globalisation and the Roman World. World History, Connectivity and Material Culture (Cambridge, 2015).

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received a response, we can imagine that evoking such publicity had a strong rhetorical force when Justin read out his treatise to students or to other passers-by. Justin’s selection of the petition as a medium, and the addition of Hadrian’s rescript to it, is culturally significant. It speaks to the very varied and creative ways in which private individuals and groups in the early empire used the system of petition and response and engaged with the written documents that were associated with the Roman government and bureaucracy. Thompson’s emphasis on media appropriation as an active, selective process in which media products are re-embedded in new contexts and acquire new meanings seems to be a promising lens through which the incorporation of imperial letters, rescripts, and subscripts in Christian (and nonChristian) literary settings can be studied.81 Rather than simple forgeries, the creative engagement with such media products offered Christians a way to renegotiate their position in Roman political culture.

81 This perspective can also be used for other examples of re-embedded official documentation, such as Pliny’s composition of Trajan’s letters, the records of trials in the Christian martyr acts and the Acts of the Alexandrian martyrs.

VII. VISKNUT: MARGINALITY IN FOLKLORE AND FOLK RELIGION Dirk Johannsen

Introduction: The Poet and the Prophet In 1878, the Norwegian ‘national poet’ Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson published a peculiar biography about a peasant with miraculous abilities. Vis-Knut (Wise-Knut) was the story of a social misfit who challenged the religious, political and scientific authorities of his time and whose memory would continue to do so for many years to come. Bjørnson introduced the protagonist by making social, economic, and cultural marginality his defining trait: Knut was not like other children. Far from it. He was often very sick, and suffered intensely from the falling-sickness (epilepsy) and for that reason was unable to take part in the hard farm work or in fact do anything at all. Nor could he be taught to read except by listening to the other children. But the teacher soon took a liking to this strange ailing boy, with big’ sparkling and strongly squinted eyes, a defect, however, which only gave an added impression of something strange and absent. […] He was born and brought up in a poor mountain district and on one of its very poorest farms at that. […] Knut’s mother was a sincere Christian and so was his teacher, and this influence, as well as the boy’s delicate health, made him trust in God and lean upon Him as his only support. […] Poor lad! There he lay in his bed disabled and dreaming, oppressed by poverty, shut in by mountains and ever yearning.1

1 Quoted from the English edition: B. Bjørnson, Wise-Knut, transl. Bernard Staal (New York, 1909) 13-16; cf. B. Bjørnson, Vis-Knut (Chicago, 1878) 3-5. Bjørnson’s piece first appeared as a supplement to the journal Ude og Hjemme (1877-1878), then as a series in the newspaper Verdens Gang (29.6.1878-11.7.1878). Unless stated otherwise, all translations from Scandinavian languages are my own. For longer quotes that include key terms, the original is given in the footnote. References to manuscripts preserved in the Norwegian Folklore Archives (NFS), hosted by the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages, IKOS, at the University of Oslo, are coded as: NFS [Collector] [Folder: Document].

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Among the historical actors of religious life in Norway, none has achieved a similar lasting fame as a marginal voice worthy of being heard as Knut Rasmussen Nordgården (1792-1876). Born in the small village of Svatsum in Gausdal parish, Gudbrandsdal, Rasmussen entered the religious stage of his local community in 1818 as a prophet, making a name for himself as a charismatic healer and clairvoyant at the centre of a short-lived revivalist movement. His controversial fame became the stepping stone for an outstanding career as a cunning man. For more than fifty years, throughout a period marked by fundamental changes in popular understandings of religion, politics, and science, he treated clients from all over the country. In the 1870s, intellectuals discovered him as an iconic representative of the authentic popular mentality sought after since national romanticism. Shortly before his death in 1876, folklorist Johannes Skar published Vis-Knut, the first major, Norwegian monograph on a rural miracle worker.2 Bjørnson’s tale of ‘kindness’ and ‘bitter persecution’ was one of many re-narrations of Skar’s study. But it was the one that made the strongest impact on the popular, and even much of the academic, reception of Rasmussen. Bjørnson ignored the historical complexities and debates documented by Skar to make one argument: Marginality fostered genuine, creative, almost miraculous expressions of faith and love that would challenge and undermine any religious or political machinery of power.3 In the subsequent years, Rasmussen was pronounced a ‘peasant saint’, became a figurehead of progressive forms of Christianity, served as a model for future generations of Norwegian faith healers, and was claimed by both spiritualists and socialists as one of their own.4 Casual mentions of his name would trigger the narrative imagination, for example when prudent politicians were described as ‘a kind of Vis-Knut’, or when the Old Testament prophets Samuel and Jeremiah were introduced as ‘Jewish “Vis-Knut’s,”’ and even Jesus’ early ministry was compared to Vis-Knut’s shaking up of Gausdal.5 I want to thank Amanda Olsen for providing me with transcripts of the historical letters, reports and legal documents by and about Knut Rasmussen (NFS J. Skar 64). 2 J. Skar, Vis-Knut (Hamar, 1876). 3 Bjørnson, Wise-Knut, 46-47, 60. 4 E.g. L. Daae, Norges Helgener (Christiania, 1879) 201; K. Janson, Skal vi bede til Gud, og I saa fald, hvad skal vi bede om? Prædiken (Minneapolis, Minn., 1884); J. Bergo, De klarsynte (Vikersund, 1974). 5 E.g. [J. Bergh], ‘Advokat Berghs Deduction’, in Sagen Jaabæk-Riddervold i Høiesteret. Advokaternes Foredrag samt Høiesterets Votering og Dom af 26. Januar 1876 (Christiania, 1876) 1-47 at 19; Nordre Bergenhus Folkeblad (31.7.1911) 1; M.J. Færden, Det Gamle Testament i lyset af de nyere Bibelforskning (Kristiania, 1902) 79; H. Birkeland, Jeremia. Profet og dikter (Oslo, 1950) 39; E.F.B. Horn, ‘I Anledning av Skredsvigs Billede’, Aftenposten (24.9.1891) 1.

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By the early twentieth century there was ‘no school child in Norway that had not heard about Vis-Knut.’6 To this day he serves as an iconic manifestation of Norwegian folk traditions and belief, considered to be a prime example of ‘esoteric’ mediumship, and he is still diagnosed in medical journals to argue that ‘epilepsy may have had a considerable role in the history of religions.’7 This chapter traces the roots, development and usage of the characteristic marginality narrative connected to Vis-Knut throughout the nineteenth century, analysing its role within the Norwegian folk religious field of practice and the emerging folkloristic endeavour. The analysis demonstrates how self-proclaimed and ascribed marginality as a narrative ploy was key in a folk religious alterity discourse and strategically used to further political and religious change. Marginality and Folk Religion This case study is about the narrative constitution of marginality. It reflects on the usage of narratives of (self-) marginalisation and the rhetoric by means of which an actor in the religious field was denied agency when he was declared to be a victim of sickness, low socio-economic status, and an oppressive religious and political regime. All these aspects were condensed in Bjørnson’s acts of the saint: Impoverished and with the Bible as ‘his only source of knowledge’, ‘something new came to him’ when his seizures turned into auditions of angels and Rasmussen, ‘innocent as a child’, discovered his gift to heal. From that point on help-seekers would ‘never leave [him] alone’, while the learned mocked him, and priests, sheriffs, and judges engaged in a ‘heart-rending unjust’ persecution. Bjørnson popularised the view that Rasmussen had a passive nature and that it was only his unbreakable faith and kind-hearted spirit that ‘made [the authorities] hate him’.8 Like many saints in the Christian tradition, he was meant to threaten those in power simply by embodying traits they lacked: Humility and compassion. The narrative was compelling. And while Bjørnson consolidated it, he was not the first 6

K. Ouron, ‘Vis-Knut’, Nordisk Tidende (21.10.1926) 16. E. Brodtkorb and K.O. Nakken, ‘The relationship between epilepsy and religiosity illustrated by the story of the visionary mystic Wise-Knut’, Epilepsy & Behavior 46 (2015) 99-102 at 99. On Vis-Knut in folklore cf. Ø. Hodne, Det gåtefulle Norge. Mystiske steder, Sagn, Folketro (Oslo, 2004) 218-21; seen as a medium in T.M. Mehren, ‘Spiritualism in Norway’ and ‘Mesmerism in Norway’, in H. Bogdan and O. Hammer (eds.), Western Esotericism in Scandinavia (Boston, 2016) 269-84 and 506-20 at 273, 510. 8 Bjørnson, Wise-Knut, 30, 57, 103, 122, 60. 7

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to apply it to Rasmussen. Rasmussen himself first employed it when he declared himself an ‘instrument of God’ in 1818 and, in the form of revelatory seizures, quite literally embodied a longstanding conflict in the community’s contested folk religious field. James Kapaló has recently made a strong argument for a ‘new critical engagement’ with the largely abandoned category of folk religion.9 Leonard Norman Primiano and others have criticised the use of folk religion as a descriptive category for reinforcing an ideologically constructed two-tiered model of a learned elite culture as the place of religious authority and a subordinate popular culture as the place of religious marginality.10 But, as Kapaló emphasises, it is precisely the term’s historical baggage that can be put to use: Different from the scholarly perspective provoked by vernacular religion and similar categories, the term folk religion already points to the modern ‘European experience of religion as a discursive field dominated by Christian Churches, nation states, the ideology of romantic nationalism, […] Enlightenment and secularist thought’, and is therefore suited to highlight those religious expressions that were developed against the backdrop of this experience.11 Speaking of a folk religious field makes it possible to enter a specific historical ‘meeting place of various agentive forces; clerical and national ideological, secularising and scholarly, and the lay actors, often from amongst the most economically, politically and socially marginalised’, all of whom produce distinctive practices in response to selfperceived social and discursive oppositions.12 In the case of Rasmussen, this approach allows us to scrutinise aspects that the established narrative tends to tone down, for example: the tactic use of practices (such as epileptic seizures) in local power plays; the ‘intersecting interests, relations and agencies’ connected to medial formats (such as legends); the use of figures of speech to conceal a conflicted person-field and suggest high relevance (for example the synecdochal use of ‘the people’ or ‘the authorities’ when referring to a few individuals). 9 J.A. Kapaló, ‘Folk Religion in Discourse and Practice’, Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics 7/1 (2013) 3-18; cf. J.A. Kapaló, Text, Context and Performance: Gauguz Folk Religion in Discourse and Practice (Leiden, 2011). 10 L.N. Primiano, ‘Vernacular Religion and the Search for Method in Religious Folklife’, Western Folklore 54/1 (1995) 37-56, referring to the definition by D. Yoder, ‘Towards a Definition of Folk Religion’, Western Folklore 33/1 (1974) 2-15. Primiano’s concept of vernacular religion substitutes this demarcation in favour of an interdisciplinary perspective that highlights the processual, bi-directional, negotiated and unfinished character of ‘religion as it is lived’, cf. M. Bowman, ‘Vernacular Religion, Contemporary Spirituality and Emergent Identities: Lessons from Lauri Honko’, Approaching Religion 4/1 (2014) 101-13. 11 Kapaló, ‘Folk Religion’, 4. 12 Kapaló, ‘Folk Religion’, 14-15.

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By tracing the marginality narrative connected to Vis-Knut from its early use in a local religious conflict to its late nineteenth century use in an international debate on parapsychology and alternative spirituality, I argue that emphasising marginality is a narrative ploy crucial to the folk religious alterity discourse. The following three sections of this chapter focus chronologically on three different personas that Rasmussen embodied throughout his life. The first one is as a prophet (1818-1820), where he positioned himself at the centre of pre-existing conflicts and declared himself a persecuted ‘instrument of God’. The second one is as a cunning man (1820-1876), where the folkloristic endeavour provided a new medial infrastructure suited to countering the discursive hegemony, telling Rasmussen’s story and advertising his services. The third persona was as a modern saint (after 1870), where the narrative pattern of the legends about Rasmussen was transferred to literary and scholarly writings and used to undermine the religious and academic establishment by identifying them as oppressors. 1. Vis-Knut, the Prophet (1818-1820): A Case for Folk Religion In June 1818, some peasants from Svatsum in Gausdal began distributing handwritten reports of a strange event: Here some words are recorded that God revealed through his humble servant Knud Rasmussen Nordgaardden from Svatsum. On Sunday the seventh of June 1818, he went to Svatsum Church, where the new evangelical hymnal [Evangelisk-kristelig Psalmebog til Brug ved Kirke- og Huus-Andagt (1798)] was used, which he could not suffer, but shivered and trembled with every song from this book. On the same day he was a guest at the communion table: And there he had to sing from the old hymnal [Kingo’s Salmebok / Den forordnede Kirke-Psalme-Bog (1699)] […]. After that he fainted and lay there until the service was almost over and his brother and several others carried him out of the church. On the next Tuesday, the ninth of June, he was forced and driven by the hand of God to go to God’s Church in Svatsum, annex to Gausdal [written as Gudsdal, or God’s Valley] parish […]. When he got so close to the church that he could see it, he was compelled to go directly towards it, across rosebushes and turnips and in unusual ways […]. [After entering] he fainted and at that moment the spirit commanded to him to sing three songs from the old hymnal […]. When the songs were over he lay fainted, almost like a corpse, and said: Get away from me, out of the temple, I will lie here for two hours. When he awoke, he was sitting on the floor of the church and said the words written below, commanded to be recorded.13 13 ‘Her optegnes nogle ord som gud ved sin ringe tjener Knud Rasmussen Nordgaardden i Svastum vil aabenbare søndagen den 7 Junni 1818 var hand i Svastums kirke hvor der var

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He then dictated eight commandments directed against recent changes of the church service, notably the introduction of a new hymnal and altered formats for catechisation, religious education, and legal procedures. The ‘voices of angels’ that Rasmussen heard in his catatonic state concluded that God ‘hates fashions’ and was about to send ‘pestilence and bloody war’ if the parish did not go back to the old ways.14 The incident marked the beginning of a revivalist movement that unfolded right before the eyes of parish priest Hans Henrik Thaulow (17541823), the man responsible for most of the alterations now being declared as against God’s will. To Thaulow, Protestantism was a religion in accordance with enlightened thought. In his effort to make the church a driving force of rational education and agricultural modernisation, he had teamed up with the local judge and the procurator to build up the regional chapter of the learned Society for the Good of Norway (Norges Vel), in which most clerics, officials and many influential peasants were now active.15 He tried to address the needs of the peasants by compiling a new manual for catechisation and replaced the old hymnal with a more sober one.16 His endeavours, however, contrasted with rapidly increasing poverty rates. Since taking brugt den nije evangeliske kirke salmebog hvilket hand ikke taallede men skiælvede og bævede for hver sang af samme bog samme dag var hand en giæst ved herrens bord: og da maate det synges af den gamle salmebog Jesu føde i hukommelse strax derefter falt hand i svimer hvor hand laa i til gudstienesten var næsten forbi og da bar hans broder med flerre ham ud av kirken treie dagen derefter som var tirsdagen den 9 junni var hand af guds aand tvungen og dreven til at gaae i guds kirke i Svastums Anex til gudsdals præstegiæld hvor jeg Torger Holle og Ærland Melbye med flerre var med der tilstæde i kirken og da hand kom kirken saa nær hand fik naa at see hende maate hand gaae bent mod kirken over roser og muraser og usædvanlige gange og som hand kom til kirken maatte det ringes paa kirkens klokerne efter aand og naade hvilket den venstre kloke ikke fik give lyd merre end nogle slag og som hand kom hand kom [sic] i kirken var hand befalet at Læse en bøn om syndernes forladelse og fader vor siden falt han i svimer og da var det hand aandelig befallet i samme stund at der skulde synges tre salmer af den gamle salmebog vor gud hand er saa fast en borg og herre jesu christ mit levnetslys’ og o storre gud vi love dig: da det var forbi med den sang menst han laag i svimer næsten som død sagde han gak her fra mig af tæmpelen du her skal jeg ligge i to timmer som hand vaagne sad han paa gulvet i kirken og sagde til os som her etterfølger og var befalet at optegnes.’ Account of a Revelation, June 1818, NFS Skar 64:60, cf. variant NFS Skar 64:39. 14 On angels and visionary traditions in rural Norway cf. A.B. Amundsen, ‘“Mig Engelen tiltalte saa…” Folkelige visjoner som kulturell kommunikasjon’, in A.B. Amundsen and A. Eriksen (eds.), Sæt ikke vantro i min overtroes stæd. Studier i folketro og folkelig religiøsitet (Oslo, 1995) 21-59; B. Seland, ‘Synepiger’ og ‘Sværmersker’. Religiøs mystikk mellom tradisjon og modernitet (Kristiansand, 2011). 15 Cf. Det Kongelige Selskab for Norges Vel’s journal Budstikken (3.4.1812) 117; (8.11.1811) 258-59; (14.5.1813) 206. 16 NFS Skar 64:3 appears to be an incomplete transcript of the catechetical manual ‘not mentioning Jesus even once’.

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office in 1808, a series of cold winters culminated in the infamous ‘frostwinter’ of 1812, which left the peasants without seeds. In 1813, the Gunboat War lost against Great Britain triggered a Danish monetary reform that led to a massive devaluation of the peasant’s savings.17 Moreover, 1814 was a year of political upheaval, where Norway’s union with Denmark was dissolved, a constitution was adopted, and a united kingdom with Sweden was founded. Thaulow was among the candidates for the Constitutional Assembly, an honour but also the cause of resentment.18 Should the new nation rest on the shoulders of adherents of French philosophy educated in Denmark? Thaulow and other reformers were labelled ‘freethinkers’ in Gausdal and many locals had heard of Voltaire’s plan to promote the demise of Christianity.19 The protests did not come as a surprise to Thaulow. There was a strong faction of Haugians, i.e. followers of the pietistic revivalist Hans Nielsen Hauge (1771-1824), in Gausdal and surrounding parishes, and the majority of the congregation was still devoted to the older Danish church’s doctrines of piety and inwardness.20 The fact that the latest protest arose, however, as a revelation declaimed by the young day labourer, Knut Rasmussen Nordgården, was startling. Rasmussen came from one of the poorer families, he had dropped out of school due to his epilepsy, and Thaulow considered him a ‘halfwit’. Now Rasmussen claimed to be ‘an instrument’ of God. To Thaulow it seemed more likely that he had become the instrument of radicals. In his report to the bishop he recounts how several peasants approached him prior to the events, threatening him so that he would not intervene when Rasmussen collapsed or when they entered the church to receive the revelation.21 The entire spectacle was enacted.

17 Cf. I. Kleiven, Gamal bondekultur i Gudbrandsdalen. Østre og Vestre Gausdal (Oslo, 1926) 109-123. 18 While in Gausdal, Thaulow wrote regular contributions to the national journal, using the ultra-Nordic pseudonym of Haakon Haraldsson Thorsklubbe (Thor’s Club). He argued in support of the Norwegian parliament’s ‘sacred duty’ to claim compensation for the years of Danish oppression and for a reform of allodial rights, e.g. Det Norske Nationalblad (21.11.1815) 147-50; (22.2.1816) 122-24. Cf. C. Thaulow, Personalhistorie for Trondheims by og omegn i et tidsrum af circa 1 1/2 aarhundrede (omfattende ca. 1300 Personer): afsluttet omkring 1876 (Trondhjem, 1919) 222. 19 On the distribution of books among peasants in Gausdal, cf. E. Eide, ‘Bønder og bøker – opplyst folkelighet omkring år 1800’, Nytt Norsk Tidsskrift 2 (2009) 141-52. 20 On the tensions between different factions in the Danish-Norwegian church, cf. A.B. Amundsen, ‘Konventikler og vekkelser’ and ‘Mellom inderlighet og fornuft’, in A.B. Amundsen et al. (eds.), Norges religionshistorie (Oslo, 2005) 243-316. 21 Cf. Skar, Vis-Knut, 12-36.

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Previous accounts, based on Skar’s book, often emphasised how Rasmussen’s social and economic marginality had become embittered by the hardships of the previous years. His father died in 1808, the monetary reform forced his family to abandon the farm and his older brother, a soldier, died in 1812, leaving Rasmussen a copy of the old Kingo hymnal, which was perhaps his only piece of private property. Thaulow’s announcement that the New Evangelical hymnal would be used in church services must have come as an emotional shock. But Rasmussen was not alone in his dislike of this symbolic act. In broad parts of Norway, the New Evangelical hymnal was viewed as a manifestation of the ruthlessness of an educated elite that forced its ideas onto the peasants.22 Moreover, Rasmussen was not isolated in his community either. The revelation alone required coordinated effort. The bell ringer provided the key to unlock the door at just the right moment, the village school teacher committed the songs of the angels to paper and other parishioners put out the word in surrounding parishes, leading to a respectable audience. Rasmussen’s neighbour and ‘fatherly friend’, Ole Pedersen Klåpe (1774-1820), provided a handwritten character reference, signed by eight peasants, declaring that his revelations were genuine miracles.23 The presence of Klåpe’s name on the document must have raised some eyebrows. He had been sentenced to a high fine for publicly insulting the local procurator, who was then humiliated in court when Klåpe, in turn, sued the judge and won an appeal.24 There were rumours that he dealt in magic.25 In a situation where, in James Kapalo’s words, ‘communication with the divine or metaphysical is contested and where access to spiritual and practical resources for the resolution of this-worldly troubles and the assurance of other-worldly futures is disputed’, Rasmussen had literally forced his way into the church and claimed a monopoly.26 He had exposed current tensions, transforming them into an active conflict. The difference between ‘the authorities’ (øvrigheten) and ‘the people’ (folket) was highlighted in what he called ‘aerial songs’ (luftsanger) and marked by practices such as laying on hands and seizures. The seizures, in particular, determined all of his actions. If Rasmussen touched money or luxury goods, ate more than one kind of food at a time or even wore a hat, he would collapse without 22 Cf. J.N. Skaar, Den Evangelisk-Kristelige Salmebogs Historie i Trondhjems Bispedømme (Kristiania, 1895). 23 Levnets Løp, NFS J. Skar 64:10. 24 Den Norske Rigstidende (3.1.1816) 3. 25 F.E. Johannessen, Gausdal Bygdehistorie. Bind 3: Folkevekst og Levekår 1530-1830 (Gausdal, 1990) 200. 26 Kapaló, ‘Folk Religion’, 4.

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fail.27 When Thaulow declared that the seizures were the result of sickness, Rasmussen’s supporters countered that it was the sickness of the parish. Following up on Thaulow’s call for Christian faith in accordance with science and reason, they conducted public experiments. While blindfolded, Rasmussen was handed either the Kingo or New Evangelical hymnal. Inevitably, the latter would fall from his hands. The rumours of miraculous events spread like wildfire: ‘It is hard to believe that anyone would be so gullible to let this goofy fool pose a threat as an enthusiast, big mistake!’ Thaulow wrote to the bishop. ‘They conduct pilgrimages to him from surrounding parishes, and this scoundrel is called (horribile dictu) the wise boy.’28 His request to the Ministry of Church Affairs to have Rasmussen arrested or committed to the insane asylum, however, was turned down. In the month following the revelation in Svatsum Church, Rasmussen visited neighbouring parishes, participated in conventicles and built a following. The gatherings were distinctly charismatic, with attendants reporting visions and instances of laying on hands. One of the first journeys took him to the parish of Fron, where some of his most devoted supporters lived. He arrived late in the harvest season of 1818 and drew large crowds, leading to a complaint from the village warden about unexcused worker absence. Chaplain Hans Olai Fremming Heyerdahl (1789-1866), another member of the Society for the Good of Norway, asked Rasmussen to leave the parish, explaining that he might scare the people with what was essentially a message of impending doom. But Rasmussen declined. With the various camps hardening against him, Sheriff Jens Petter Jarmann (17731862) expelled Rasmussen. When Jarmann arrived to enforce the order, however, Rasmussen collapsed in a seizure, which set in motion a new pattern. From now on, the mere sight of a sheriff or a priest could trigger seizures. It is tempting to interpret this practice as an expression of marginality, as suggested by Patrick Olivelle with reference to Mary Douglas: ‘Ecstatic states, spirit possessions, and lack of bodily control depend not as much on psychological maladjustment or economic deprivation as on the experience

27 Failing to wear a hat or a cap was highly unusual at that time. Dozens of reports mentioned that it made his tall, long-haired frame immediately recognisable from afar, e.g., the memorates in I. Fosse,  Den framsynte frå Gausdal: Fråsegner om Vis-Knut samla frå alle verdsens kantar, ed. by A. Fosse (Hundorp, 1941). 28 ‘Man skulde tro, intet Menneske var saa enfoldigt, at denne strøbelige Taask kunde som Sværmer blive farlig for ham; men meget feilet! Her gjøres Pilegrimsreiser til ham fra de omliggende Sogne, og denne Usling kaldes (horribile dictu): “Den kloge Dreng”.’ Quoted in Skar, Vis-Knut, 35.

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of weak social constraints. Social marginality is thus expressed through the medium of the body by the slackening of bodily control.’29 Toning down the strategic aspects of such a practice represents a danger, however. First and foremost, Rasmussen’s seizures were an aggressive and rather brilliant move to publicly denounce his ‘freethinking’ antagonists as depraved without giving them the chance to hold him accountable for an offence. After all, they had already declared that the seizures were a result of epilepsy. With Rasmussen weakened from his catatonic state, the sheriff asked him to leave the parish as soon as he had recovered. But some hours later, a new conventicle was organised. Sheriff Jarmann then gathered local members of the military to enforce the order. When the group, led by Captain Johan Godtfried Høyer (1791-1865), arrived at the farm, Rasmussen had yet another seizure but was carried outside and transported on sleds and carriages 100 kilometres along the Gudbrandsdallågen, back to the sheriff’s farm, Rokvam, in Gausdal. Right away, rumours started swirling. Rasmussen’s own, quite elaborate account is preserved in the Norwegian Folklore Archives.30 He states that he was mocked and tortured by the soldiers, who caused him to suffer prolonged seizures by putting a cap on his head. His account is interesting in that it seems to address a general audience not familiar with the local actors. Sheriffs and priests are rarely mentioned by name; they become anonymous representatives of the ‘authorities’. Jarmann even appears as ‘Herod’ in the text, making Rasmussen John the Baptist. His followers were anonymised as ‘the people’. They had to ‘stand by and cried awfully.’ Confronted with rumours like these, Heyerdahl summoned Captain Høyer some days later and learned that Høyer gave Knut a cap because it was cold. In a letter to Thaulow, Heyerdahl regretted how things turned out: ‘The lovers of enthusiasm have now found the opportunity to compare their Knut to the biggest of all martyrs, who was also taken at night by a regiment equipped with torches and lanterns, swords and sticks.’31 The story of how the authorities abused their power to get rid of the misfit became an indelible part of every collection of legends about Vis-Knut.

29 P. Olivelle, ‘Deconstruction of the Body in Indian Asceticism’, in V. Wimbush and R. Valantasis (eds.), Asceticism (New York, 1998) 188-210 at 206. 30 Frons Præste gjæld, NFS J. Skar 64:4. 31 ‘Sværmeriets Elskere nu havde fundet den forønskede Leilighed til at sammenligne deres Knudt med den største af alle Martyrer, der ogsaa blev greben om Natten af Skaren, udrustet med Blus og Lamper, med Sverd og med Stænger.’ Quoted in: J. Skar, Knut Rasmusson Nordgarden eller Visknut. Eit Samlararbeid (Kristiania, 1898) 79.

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Talking to Johannes Skar, Rasmussen later recalled that Klåpe suggested suing the authorities, but he decided to turn the other cheek. A few weeks after the events, Rasmussen was back in Fron and followed up on invitations from remote parishes. He was expelled several times but refused to leave, and the orders were no longer enforced. In light of recent events, local authorities tried to keep a low profile, leaving a vacuum that was soon filled by the Haugians, who actively began to counter his ministry. Thaulow, who had a fractious relationship with the Haugians, had personally witnessed Hauge’s rise and had even supervised some of the early conventicles, which he found boring and uninspired.32 After the revelation in Svatsum Church he immediately suspected a Haugian plot, but Hauge turned out to be an unlikely ally. In 1819, Hauge warned his followers of the ‘con-artist’ and his ‘disciples’.33 When ‘Rasmussen’s sect’ as both Hauge and Thaulow now called it, was still active in 1820, Hauge detailed the misdemeanours and deceptions of which he found Rasmussen guilty in two open letters. With reference to the Fron incident, he asked Rasmussen not to ‘cause a war’ in the parishes and to change his ways. When Rasmussen’s reply was defensive, Hauge reminded the local Haugians of their ‘plight to counter’ the false teachings.34 Hauge’s interventions seem to have been one reason for the cessation of the movement in 1820. Another reason might have been the death of Klåpe or perhaps an illness. In any case there were no further reports of prophetic aerial songs. Instead, Rasmussen used the name he had gained to start working as a cunning man. The assistant to the bishop reported in 1828 that a flourishing business had emerged from ‘Rasmussen’s sect’.35 In the same year, Rasmussen was charged with quackery, providing Gausdal’s judge with the chance to exact a delayed revenge.36 This temporary setback, however, just added to the stories of oppression. For almost half a century Rasmussen would receive clients, heal illnesses, find stolen property, water, metal or missing persons, tell fortunes and tell parents about the wellbeing of their children who had emigrated. He had become a living legend. 32

Cf. A.Chr. Bang, Hans Nielsen Hauge og hans Samtid (Christiania, 1875) 78, 119. Cf. Hauge’s letters from this period, collected in I. Kvamen (ed.), Brev frå Hans Nielsen Hauge. II. 1805-1822 (Oslo, 1972) 269-323. The well organised Haugians in nearby Øyer had likely given report. In Øyer the young lay preacher Jon Erichsen Bjørge had recently established himself as a promising candidate for a leading role in the movement. He felt threatened by Rasmussen and published a treatise attacking him as a false prophet: J. Erichsen Bjørge, Sandheds Stadfæstelse, hvorved Syndens Menneske bliver aabenbaret og Guds Kjærlighed bekræftet (Christiania, 1820). 34 Kvamen, Brev, 291, 310. 35 K.O. Knutzen, Dagbøger over reiser i Norge i 1824 og 1828 (Kristiania, 1922) 86. 36 Verdict, NFS Skar 64:58. 33

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2. Vis-Knut, the Cunning Man (1820-1876): A Market and a Medium for Marginality Approaching the folk religious field as constituted by the oppositions created through the modern discourse on the people affects how folkloristic sources are read. In cultural history, Peter Burke’s analysis of a modern rupture of ‘popular culture’ has long served as a rule of thumb: ‘In 1500, [the educated class] despised the common people, but shared their culture. By 1800, their descendants had ceased to participate spontaneously in popular culture, but they were in the process of rediscovering it as something exotic and therefore interesting.’37 Burke’s analysis unmasked the nineteenth century’s folkloristic endeavour as an exercise in bourgeois amusement and nation-building, conducted by a learned elite that never truly participated in the ‘popular culture’ it claimed to document. With the artificial setting of folkloristic fieldwork taken into account, and with the textualization of oral performances and the categorisation into genres, folklore could no longer be seen as an ‘authentic’ documentation of beliefs and practices. But while the ‘educated classes’ may not have participated in popular culture, the participation of the ‘common people’ in learned culture seems widely overlooked. Participation in the modern ‘European experience of religion’ was never limited to the elites. The discourse on the nation, the rise of secularism, scientific standards, and romantic notions of religion created the folk religious field. Knut Rasmussen was a typical proponent: his revelations were poetic, his conventicles ecstatic, his arguments affirmed by experiments. Moreover, he himself and his message were declared to be one of ‘the people’. The nation-building ideas of ‘folklore’ and ‘tradition’ soon provided an adequate paratext for common people’s strategic agency: Rumours became folk beliefs, ghost stories were transformed into reminders of a nation’s past and marginal voices were discovered to be genuine expressions of traditional identities. Termed folk legends, narrative accounts of local events and individual experiences were sought after by newspapers, magazines, and publishing houses. While the idea of ‘folk-lore’ was a late eighteenth century national-romantic project, in its nineteenth century implementation it became the medium of folk religion. Knut Rasmussen and his supporters made early use of the developing folkloristic, discursive infrastructure. Newspapers were the first medium to include folkloristic material in otherwise polemical articles. Publishers saw 37

P. Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (New York, 1978) 286.

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the critique of popular superstitions as an obligation, and Rasmussen soon became one of their favoured targets. His popular appeal, his claim that he never charged clients, and his methods were ridiculed. The weekly Skilling Magazin, for example, once gave a detailed analysis of the ‘fraud and halfwit’ Rasmussen and a description of his business model: ‘Most of the visitors […] come with some kind of gift. These gifts will be given to [Rasmussen’s] hosts, who, right away and in a most pleasant manner, start to interrogate the stranger before he is allowed to talk to the wise man.’38 Failed acts of divination were another journalistic favourite. Once, Rasmussen declared that a missing child was dead, causing the search to be called off. When the child was found several days later sitting in a strawberry field, this lesson of the dangers of superstition made headlines even in Danish newspapers.39 This incident was prime fodder for those who had long argued that reforming public education was the only way to counter ‘the old fool up there in Gausdal’.40 The steady stream of polemics, however, also had another side to it. On the one hand, journalists mocked Rasmussen and marginalised his clients; on the other hand they confirmed his appeal and illustrated the alleged beliefs of the commoners with legends and memorates. The controversies made the regionally known cunning man a national curiosity. Doubts began to rise about whether there was more to him than the critics were willing to acknowledge.41 In the early 1850s, the new genre of tourist reports provided a much friendlier view of the wise man in Gausdal. In a feature series on the Gudbrandsdal region, literary critic Paul Botten-Hansen added Rasmussen’s home to the map of tourist places of interest.42 Subsequent accounts of visits to the man behind the legends painted the picture of a welcoming and empathic original skilled at entertaining visitors and consoling clients.43 38 H.S., ‘Viseknut’, Skilling Magazin 2 (1854) 14-15. Skar reports that Rasmussen felt deeply hurt by this article. At any rate, most client memorates confirm the goods economy (cf. Fosse, Den framsynte). 39 E.g. Dagbladet (4.8.1874) 2; Bornholms Tidende (15.8.1874) 2. It was the second time a search was abandoned following a consultation, cf. Morgenbladet (18.11.1862) 1-2. 40 Dagbladet (26.8.1872) 2; Morgenbladet (9.8.1869) 1. 41 E.g., Morgenbladet (6.3.1859) 2. 42 P. Botten-Hansen, ‘Gudbrandsdalen’, Illustreret Nyhedsblad (16.4.1853) 63. 43 E.g., H.T. Newton Chesshyre, Recollections of a Five Years’ Residence in Norway (London, 1861) 73-79; T. Kjerulf, ‘Tourist-Liv i Fjeldet (1861)’, in P. Botten-Hansen (ed.), Gjengangere. Vers og Prosa af Norske Forfattere (Christiania, 1866) 2.47-78; P.M. Søegaard, I Fjeldbygderne (Christiania, 1868) 135-37; J. Dahl, ‘Jotunfjeldene, indberetning til Turistforeningen’, Den Norske Turistforenings årbog (Kristiania, 1870) 1-67; T. Caspari, ‘Fra Jotunheimen I 1870-Aarene’, in T. Caspari, Fra fjeld og fremmed land. Reiseminder (Kristiania, 1909) 1-66.

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No account failed to mention that Rasmussen, after a period of intense persecution, was now able to enjoy an excellent reputation in his community. While many locals remained sceptical about the efficacy of his treatments, they would all vouch for his honesty. With legends about Rasmussen beginning to ‘entertain a whole century’, his standing changed significantly.44 As early as 1829, while Rasmussen was still serving his sentence for quackery, the folklorist and psalmist Magnus Brostrup Landstad paid him a visit and gained a favourable impression of the wise man. Undecided on the nature of his abilities, he left him to conduct his miraculous work.45 Later, political changes turned power relations in the village upside down. In 1837, when Norway introduced far-reaching communal autonomy, several of Rasmussen’s early supporters were among the first to be elected chairmen of the Gausdal Committee. In 1840, the committee formally approved of lay religious gatherings, thus removing a crucial legal constraint to Rasmussen’s work.46 It was one of the chairmen, later mayor and head of the peasant’s association, Paul Hansen Nygaard, who published the first collection of legends dedicated to Vis-Knut in 1863.47 The booklet, a striking example of how the new medial infrastructure could be used by the actors in the field to convey alternative perspectives, lent authority to the story of the marginalised Rasmussen, who suffered oppression by those in power for remaining true to his gift and the people. First and foremost, however, it was meant as an advertisement for Rasmussen’s services. Legendary accounts are debatable, Hansen Nygaard conceded, so he would stick to the facts. And the fact was that most of Rasmussen’s visitors were happy with their consultations, as they told him when they came to his farm seeking accommodation. The booklet, which was released in five editions, with the last one published as late as 44

‘Kvaksalvernes “grand old man” for hundre år siden’, Sarpsborg Arbeiderblad (19.2.1938)

2. 45 Cf. his letter to J. Skar (29.1.1879), NFS Skar 64:5. Landstad served as vicar in Gausdal from 1828 to 1834. 46 A. Engen, Gausdal Bygdehistorie. Bind 4. Endring og oppbrot 1830-1914 (Gausdal, 1988) 79, 111. The other constraint was the nineteenth century laws against quackery and ‘fraud by superstitious arts’ that prevented cunning people in Norway from formally charging their clients. This might be the reason why not only memorates but also many migratory legends concern how gifts and payments were given, even though Vis-Knut never asked for them. The legends could serve to inform potential clients of the expected conduct. Various memorates report that Vis-Knut declined to accept gifts from some of his poorest visitors, cf. Fosse, Den framsynte. 47 P. Hansen Nygaard, Underretning om Knudt Rasmussen Nordgaarden eller den saakaldte Viseknudt. En kort Levnetsbeskrivelse (Lillehammer, 1863).

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1875, assured readers that: ‘Knut is still alive and receives frequent visits from people from all over the country and from Sweden’.48 Later newspaper polemics were balanced by discussions on folk culture and framed by advertisements for group travels to Vis-Knut.49 Gausdal had become Norway’s first site for those in need of a miracle and for those yearning to learn more about Norwegian folk culture in its most compelling form. 3. Vis-Knut, the Saint (1870-): Gausdal’s School of Prophets Toward the end of his life Rasmussen was discovered by a group of intellectuals who made him a national icon. Yet again, it was the narrative pattern of the marginalised person defying the authorities that made way for a tremendous reception. Only this time it was not the local authorities, the priests, sheriffs and judges of Gausdal who were challenged, but Norway’s religious, academic, and political institutions. The lasting fame was made possible by a curious constellation of people. The Grundtvigian theologian Christopher Bruun, who founded one of the first Norwegian folk high schools in order to demonstrate the benefits of providing a substantial education for peasants,50 initially established the school in Sel in 1867 but moved it to Gausdal in 1871. In 1874, he was joined by his friend Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, who bought Aulestad estate, adjacent to the school’s main building, Vonheim. Conveniently located on the main route from Oslo (called Christiania at the time), to Trondheim, this little village in the Norwegian heartland was now transformed into an intellectual hub.51 With two of Norway’s most illustrious intellectual networkers present, Gausdal became a favoured summer retreat for educators, scholars and poets. Bruun was intrigued by the legends he heard about the local wise man after arriving in Gausdal. In later interviews, he referred to Rasmussen as evidence for the existence of natural faculties ignored by scientists, but well documented in the biblical accounts of the prophets.52 His initial interest, however, was probably based more on strategic considerations and fuelled

48 P. Hansen Nygaard, Underretning om Knudt Rasmussen Nordgaarden eller den saakaldte Viseknudt. En kort Levnetsbeskrivelse. Femte forøgede Udgave (Lillehammer, 1875) 3. 49 Cf. A. Møller, Vis-Knut (Oslo, 1980) 164. 50 K. Aukrust, ‘Fra Dybbøl til trøbbel. Christopher Bruun som biografisk utfordring’, Tidsskrift for kulturforskning 3/2 (2004) 29-47; Engen, Gausdals Bygdehistorie, 196-205. 51 Engen, Gausdals Bygdehistorie, 112. 52 E.g. Bergens Tidende (14.2.1884) 2 (from Dagbladet); Roskilde Dagblad (4.8.1907) 2 (from: Aftenposten).

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by anger. Similar to Rasmussen’s call for peasants to defend their faith against clerical interventions, Bruun’s plan to educate and politicise the peasants caused major discontent among clerics and pietists alike.53 In early 1873, a newspaper published a fierce attack against Bruun, calling him out as ‘the new Vis-Knut’: where the old soothsayer had tried to cure sick peasants, the anonymous author stated, the new ‘political quack’ was trying ‘to cure the sick state’, even though he knew as little about politics as Rasmussen knew about medicine.54 Several commentators adopted the metaphor and portrayed the folk high school as ‘the school of prophets in Gausdal’.55 No wonder Bruun had no difficulty relating to the local renegade. Making Rasmussen’s story further known represented a chance to present an ‘authentic’ religious voice from the peasant milieu and to shed new light on the controversies. At a later date in 1873, Bruun asked his brotherin-law, Skar, to assemble material for a book, which involved conducting major fieldwork, collecting stories and documents, and personally talking extensively with Rasmussen.56 Rasmussen discussed his supporters and adversaries from the old days, e.g., how Thaulow and Hauge failed to understand him and the devastation he felt when ‘Old Klåpe’ died. He also talked of the burden involved in consoling all the desperate souls who approached him. As an exploration into the mind of a heterodox outcast, Skar’s rich account was prone to fascinate and inspire the equally – albeit in a different way – heterodox intellectuals. Skar’s book immediately became required reading for Gausdal’s academic circle. It captured the zeitgeist by allowing national-romantic ideas to merge with criticism of the church and the emerging discussion on paranormal phenomena and the occult.57 The sheer amount of reports on miraculous deeds collected ‘from trustworthy people’ made a strong argument for the need to delve deeper into the exploration of as-yet unexplained human faculties. Soon after its publication, Bjørnson and Kristoffer Janson, a teacher at Vonheim folk high school, went on public

53 R. Stauri, Fire Folkelærarar. Herman Anker, Olaus Arvesen, Christopher Bruun, Viggo Ullmann (Oslo, 1930) 74-75. 54 Bergens Adressecontoirs Efterretninger (9.2.1873) 2. 55 ‘Ved Profetskolen i Gausdal, hvor Vis-Knud i sin Tid var den eneste Sandsiger, er der nu en hel Flok af store og smaa Profeter.’ Quote from Morgenbladet (1878) in Stauri, Fire Folkelærarar, 77. 56 Cf. O. Bø, Johannes Skar. Gudbrandsdølen som skapte ‘Gamalt or Sætesdal’ (Oslo, 1953) 38-41. 57 Cf. O. Dalgard, Samtid. Politikk, kunstliv og kulturkamp i mellomkrigstida (Oslo, 1973) 124.

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lecture tours introducing Vis-Knut.58 Both of them presented highly reduced re-narrations, shaped in accordance with the legend’s narrative pattern: depicting a static opposition between a saint-like marginal and a faceless collective of oppressors. Janson and Bjørnson, of course, knew that their take on the material would stir attention. Critical journalists still railed against popular superstition, and now two of Norway’s leading intellectuals were doing their best to ‘canonise’ a new saint.59 For Janson, who later founded the Norwegian Unitarian Church, the case of Vis-Knut was a historic lesson on the necessity of a liberal stance towards individual forms of worship. Collaborating with the authorities, the state church had furthered atrocities and undermined the nation’s unity. In his bestselling historical novel, Vore Bedsteforældre (Our Grandparents), Rasmussen’s expulsion from Fron is dramatised by a drunk captain and his ‘ferocious army’ brutally attacking their ‘own townspeople’.60 ‘By their fruits you will know them,’ Janson explained in his sermons. The ‘natural faith’ of the healer who helped so many was contrasted to the church’s manic focus on regulation.61 Bjørnson agreed with Janson that the state church needed to be abandoned. But he went one step further. Maybe Christianity needed to be abandoned. Influenced by the Danish modernist Georg Brandes, he declared himself a freethinker and atheist, engaging in fierce arguments with the theologians in Christiania. His publication of Vis-Knut gave them something to chew on. Reading the sanctions imposed on Rasmussen during his time as a prophet in the light of the legendary accounts of miraculous healings, Bjørnson suggested that it was not only the latter that confirmed Rasmussen’s abilities. His extraordinary powers were confirmed by the fact that the authorities teamed up to silence the outsider. Obviously, they had their reasons. Otherwise why would the learned elite even care about a socially marginal person like Rasmussen, if not to suppress something of importance? Resembling the narrative style of a conspiracy theory, the narrator’s voice in Bjørnson’s account is highly suggestive. Over and over again, the reader is asked to stay ‘open minded’, and not to join the authorities in dismissing Rasmussen and his ability to help those in need,

58 Cf. C. Holmberg, Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson som Digter, Politiker og Personlighed. Et Udkast (Kjøbenhavn, 1888) 30-31. 59 ‘Janson om Visknut og Jesus Kristus’, Romsdal Amtstidende (5.11.1878) 1. 60 K. Janson, Vore Bedsteforældre. Optegnelser om Tilstandene i Danmark og Norge fra 1790 til 1815 (Minneapolis and Chicago, 1900 [1882]) 344. 61 Janson, Skal vi bede.

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but to hear ‘all sides of the story’. Of course, the account is limited to Rasmussen’s version of events in all particulars. Rasmussen’s early self-marginalisation became a formative narrative principle that would now develop its full potential as a rhetorical strategy apt for challenging authorities of any kind: Since Rasmussen was a marginal voice, it was amoral to side with those in power. When theologians called Rasmussen’s preaching superstition, they were preying on the weak. When scientists declared the legends supernatural nonsense, they behaved narrow-mindedly in dismissing what the people said. Marginality was the argument that could not be countered. And while a few theologians and scientists still tried to do so – criticising him as a false prophet, ‘similar to Muhammad,’ or pathologizing him – the debates did not end well for them.62 They were called out for being narrow-minded and siding with the oppressors. Just a year after Bjørnson’s publication, historian Ludvig Daae included Rasmussen in his history of the Norwegian saints as ‘a person that in several regards came close to being a peasant saint’.63 That something ‘extraordinary was going on’ could no longer be dismissed.64 Accordingly, a primary issue in the new public debate on ‘the clairvoyant ecstatic’ was the nature of his abilities. Could they be explained by post-positivistic science? Was faith the key to unlocking the mind’s hidden potential? Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the folk religious field underwent a crucial shift towards modern spirituality. With the avantgarde siding with ‘the people’ and reading folklore in the light of the science of paranormal phenomena and ethnic mentalities, the revivalist understanding of Christianity was merged with modern psychological esotericism and the rising ethnic nationalism. Folklore’s polyphonic voices had created a projection space for alternative science and religion. Soon, spiritualists entered into debates with positivists about the nature of Rasmussen’s angels, and were later joined by theosophists.65 Bjørnson had wisely refrained from any explicit explanatory models in Vis-Knut, but found ‘a case of strong magnetism’ to be the most plausible interpretation.66 The reference to ‘animal magnetism’ made it 62

‘Mere om Visknut og Jansons sidste Foredrag’, Romsdals Amtstidende (14.11.1878) 1. ‘… en Person, der i flere Henseender nærmede sig til at være en Bondehelgen.’ Daae, Norges Helgener, 200-201. 64 Cf. H.G. Heggtveit, Den norske Kirke i det nittende Aarhundrede. Et Bidrag til dens Historie, vol. 2/2 (Christiania, 1912-1920) 701-02. 65 E.g. Romsdals Amtstidende (4.6.1878) 1; Veritas, ‘Hvad man taler om i Norge’, Viborg Stifts-Tidende (5.8.1907) 2. 66 Letter to G. Brandes (1.2.1878) in: B. Bjørnson, Brev. Andre Samling: Brytnings-år. Breve fra årene 1871-1878, ed. by H. Koht (Kristiania and Kjøbenhavn, 1921) 223. 63

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possible to dismiss the religious superstructure. Natural faculties had triggered the mysterious events, Bjørnson claimed, Rasmussen’s own Christian interpretation was the result of the Christian ‘prejudice’ forced upon him as a child. Attempts to naturalise paranormal phenomena were crucial to the criticism of both institutionalised religion and positivism, and Rasmussen’s allegedly passive nature came to play a key role. His ‘childlike nature’ provided a contrast to the modern man, estranged from himself. It explained why magnetism or extrasensory perception were experienced by only a few, even though psychic research claimed that they were based on universal, natural faculties.67 With this argument, the ‘Norwegian peasant’ became a topos, even in international debates on the paranormal, for example as discussed by Max Dessoir or in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychic Research.68 In Norway, the debate rekindled every few years when some rural healer or clairvoyant was discovered by the media and proclaimed ‘a new Vis-Knut’. The first one was Marcello Haugen in 1904, soon followed by Johann Fløttum in 1913 and later by Ivar Flatmo, Henry Glittenberg and various others.69 The chain of mostly self-proclaimed successors leads up to the twenty-first century with the currently famous Joralf Gjerstad from Snåsa, known as the Man from Snåsa.70 Although beyond the scope of this study, it would be promising to trace how ‘the grand old man of the quacks’ was discussed in light of the latest developments in popular religion and popularised psychic research with every new healer or clairvoyant that came to fame.71 After Bjørnson, the folk religious field merged with emerging New Age spirituality.

67

N. Kjær, Smaa epistler (Kristiania and København, 1908) 123-24. W. Leaf, ‘Vis-Knut’, Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research LIV/XXI (1907) 136-48; H. Wernekke, ‘Kurze Notizen’, Psychische Studien XXXV/6 (1908) 362; P. Carus, ‘Wise-Knut’, The Open Court XXIV (1910) 424-27; M. Dessoir, Vom Jenseits der Seele. Die Geheimwissenschaften in kritischer Betrachtung (Stuttgart, 1919) 121. 69 Cf. Ø. Parmann, Marcello Haugen (Oslo, 1974) 45-51; Hedemarkens Amtstidende (7.7.1913) 2; P. Foros, Fløttumgutten (Oslo, 1977) 16; M.G. Lerum and G. Grimstveit. Synsk. Historien om Ivar Flatmo fra Hallingdal (Oslo, 1988) 147; B. Andreassen, Hender som helbreder. Historien om ‘healeren’ Henry Glittenberg (Oslo, 1984) 54-55. 70 I. Sletten Kolloen, Snåsamannen. Kraften som helbreder (Oslo, 2008) 7. See the chapter by Ingvild Gilhus in this volume for a discussion of Snåsamannen. 71 ‘Kvaksalvernes “grand old man” for hundre år siden’, Sarpsborg Arbeiderblad (19.2.1938) 2. Cf. Th.S. Hauknæs, Norsk Folkelæsning. Kultur og Naturvidenskab (Granvin, 1910) 7-20; T. Bogsrud, ‘Vis-Knut. En Skildring fra første Halvdel af forrige Aarhundrede’, Fædrelandsvennen 39. No. 168-178 (11 parts) (24.7.1913-5.8.1913); Dunderlandsdølen (10.1.1914) 2; Norske Intelligenssedler (22.10.1917) 1. 68

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Conclusion: Marginality as a Narrative Ploy With Vis-Knut’s newfound popularity, folklorist Johannes Skar published a second edition of his study in 1898, equipped with a new motto: ‘I was but a strange guest among men, and in their ignorance many have judged me to be false and wanted to strip me of my Christian name and shame me with mockery.’72 It was a direct quote from notes Rasmussen wrote after having had a strange dream. Now these words came to represent his life’s motto. Throughout his career as a prophet, a cunning man, and a peasant saint, his success was connected to being identified as the representative of those living on the margins of society. His own accounts, reports by his supporters, the legends, and modern literary adaptations marginalised him by stressing his lack of education and social status, subsuming critics into an anonymous collective of those in power, leaving his supporters, ‘the people’, in the role of bystanders to vouch for his character and giftedness. Notably, with Bjørnson, the folksy one-against-the-many theme was later combined with the progressive rhetoric of open-mindedness, turning it into an enduring premise. The apocalyptic preacher became a prophet of modernity. Open-mindedness, not simply neglecting the voice of those who are marginalised, meant that generations of academic and popular commentators had to find new ways to account for the miraculous deeds without dismissing them as ploys. Until today, discussing Rasmussen’s epilepsy and correlating it to mystical states of consciousness or explaining his practices as expressions of popular belief is indebted to the premise of the marginalised not being an actor in a contested field of practice. But highlighting marginality is itself a narrative ploy, effective in creating a moral obligation to listen and to withhold judgment. It serves to obscure the obvious, the strategies, and the power plays. In his practice as a cunning man, documented in a unique collection of letters from clients and neighbours assembled by the folklorist Ivar Fosse at the turn of the last century, many visitors witnessed that Rasmussen said he regretted never having learned to read.73 All the more impressive were the auditions that followed. Announced by a seizure, the angels would speak to him about ongoing wars and the course of world events. When visitors later consulted their newspapers, all of his statements were confirmed. It is not necessarily naiveté 72 ‘[…] at jeg har været en fremmed Gjest blandt Mennesken, og mange af sin Uvidenhed har dømt mig at være falsk og vil afklæde mig ganske mit kristne Navn og gjøre mig ved Spot ganske nøgen og sort.’ Skar, Knut Rasmusson, 4. 73 Fosse, Den framsynte.

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that made them accept demonstrations like this, but rather the desire to believe. After all, clients did not visit him to hear about what was happening in the world, but for deeply personal reasons. When loved ones were dying and poverty prevented a visit to one of the small number of doctors available at the time, and when dire financial straits forced a significant part of the population to immigrate to the New World, a visit to Vis-Knut meant imagining that marginality could be a strength, that those living on the margins of society were guided by songs of the angels: ‘“He was so good at giving comfort,” is something that was often said about Knut.’74

74

Skar, Vis-Knut, 202.

VIII. AUTHORITY, GENRE AND RESISTANCE: CHILD MURDER IN MEDIEVAL NORWICH, AND ITS AFTERMATH Miri Rubin

The historical case I will discuss in this chapter involves a series of marginal folk. Situated in mid-twelfth century England, its protagonists are a child, some Jews, a Welshman, and several sick and poor people, AngloSaxon villagers in a society dominated by a Norman elite. Even the location is fairly marginal, provincial, outside main centres of royal administration or an established ecclesiastical power, the cathedral of Norwich having been founded only recently in the 1090s. Yet out of the interaction of all these elements, within the diverse medieval media of image, liturgy, and hagiography, there emerged a new authoritative narrative: the child murder accusation against Jews. In its many transmutations, across centuries and regions, versions of this narrative nourished anti-Jewish sentiments throughout Europe and, later, beyond it too. Versions of the narrative are still at large today. Hence the interest of this case for our volume. Accordingly, a broader suggestion arises too from this case: that emergent narratives and related images are almost always born at the margins of the imaginable, and they are tested out upon those who can least effectively resist, the marginal. Studies of religious authority in the Middle Ages have traditionally been approached through the operations of institutions: bishops, monasteries, religious orders, Latin liturgy, canon law, and the inquisition. All these institutions played important parts in the formation – and I mean formed both in terms of giving shape and imbuing with contents – of the lives of medieval Christians. Male charismatic leaders have always attracted attention – like Francis of Assisi or Savonarola – and some women, like Hildegard of Bingen or Bridget of Sweden, have also been appreciated, particularly within the confessional, regional, or national traditions with which they are associated. In recent decades, there has been a move towards the greater exploration of agency in religious life, of resistance to institutional prompts,

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and of creativity in unexpected quarters, including the lives of the laity. This has meant that attention is directed at what in the 1970s and 1980s was called ‘popular religion’. This is an array of activities which have since been explored through several dialectical pathways: vertical as well as horizontal religious influences, Latin and vernacular, clerical and lay. This has coincided with the vast broadening of the subjects to be studied: women alongside men, charismatic enthusiasts alongside institutional actors, parishioners alongside priests, Jews and Christians. And as the editor of this volume has reminded us, our approach to media and marginality should be associated with an engagement with the material – I would add the aural – aspects of these cultures.1 In taking the material turn, scholars have moved from the study of rich, expansive, monumental material expressions, to more vernacular, local, and mundane ones, which had not before been appreciated by historians of art. And there are genres and media now beloved of historians: the modest broadsheet, and the prayers and chants through which religion was taught and experienced. The move has thus been from theology to pastoral teaching, and from Latin summae to the application of their teachings in parish life. All these shifts in our historical attention have led to an enhancement of interest in marginal, excluded, cheap, rustic, vernacular, and domestic expressions of religion. As this historiographical process was under way, a transformation in the sense of the marginal was taking place, too. For medieval historians, the intervention of R.I. Moore has been seminal, even if much debated and sometimes criticised. In his 1987 The Formation of a Persecuting Society, he argued that the engagement by clerical elites with heretics, Jews, prostitutes, lepers, witches – groups we may all agree to consider loosely as marginal – formed part of a process of self-definition within Christian polities.2 It was associated with the development of the state’s capacity – and its avowed purpose – to identify, exclude, discipline, and punish those who did not fit its self-defining norms of belief, sexual behaviour, and social discipline. The preoccupation with Jews is particularly telling, for the tiny minority of Jews loomed very large in its symbolic value: Christianity tested itself against criteria of ‘Judaization’, and this continued throughout the Middle Ages and into the period of Protestant reform. To ‘Judaize’ was to be literal, to engage in ritual, to impede the operation of grace; hence various groups, as well as business groups engaged in money-making, were considered ‘Jews’. This 1 Feldt’s introduction to this volume. See, for example, the influential C. Walker Bynum, Christian Materiality: An Essay on Religion in Late Medieval Europe (New York, 2011). 2 See the second edition with a response by the author, R.I. Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Authority and Deviance in Western Europe 950-1250 (Oxford, 2007).

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shows us how the marginal and the excluded could be very central indeed to self-perceptions of the majority group, and could all but dominate discourses about identity and religious practice. This, in turn, complicates our own discussion of marginality: for if the marginal is the tail which wags the dog of hegemony, in what sense is it to be considered marginal? In what follows, we will explore the process by which a small group of Jews in Norwich were imagined as part of a universal menace to Christians, through an imputed need to kill a Christian child every Easter. No one was safe. And we will see how marginal figures could play arresting roles in the making of new narratives and in animating social dramas within an emerging religious cult. So, to Norwich and the twelfth century. Marginality and the Life and Passion of William of Norwich The case we are about to examine is known to us almost solely from one text that has survived in a single manuscript. This is Cambridge University Library Ms Add 3037, a collection copied c. 1200 of mostly hagiographical texts concerning recent English saints.3 The manuscript was created in a monastery of the order of Cîteaux – Sibton – in Suffolk. One might describe the contents of the manuscript as somewhat marginal, that is concerning saints who never became central to the European Christian tradition. The Life and Passion of William of Norwich, occupies the first 77 folios of the manuscript, and this Latin work is around 45,000 words long. Its composition began c. 1150, with the aim of convincing members of Norwich cathedral and its associates that a boy found dead in a wood outside the city six years earlier (in 1144), had been murdered by Jews. And since he was chosen as a Christian, he deserved to be treated as a martyr. In doing so, our author – monk of Norwich Cathedral priory, Thomas of Monmouth – must have relied on claims that had circulated in Norwich in the aftermath of the boy William’s death. He lent to these claims the authority of a narrative, with a set of arguments in support of the hitherto unheard accusation, that Jews were intent on killing Christian boys. Thomas of Monmouth claimed, in the preface, that his fellow-monks had urged him to undertake the writing. Who was this author? Thomas of Monmouth was an outsider in Norwich, a recent arrival and new member of the cathedral priory of Norwich. Judging by his name, he came from South Wales, a region where a lively Benedictine monastic culture had developed in the aftermath of the Norman 3 For a description of the manuscript, see Thomas of Monmouth, The Life and Passion of William of Norwich, translated and edited by M. Rubin (London, 2014) li-lxiii.

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Conquest. Most recruitment to religious houses in this period was local or regional, so Thomas must have been an exception. He arrived at Norwich Cathedral Priory with the ability to compose in Latin, and this allowed him to write a text enlivened by rhetorical flourishes, with biblical citations, and containing citations from classical texts taught in the schools. Thomas was a new arrival, who must have heard rumours of the boy William’s death upon joining the cathedral priory, and decided to explore them further. In The Life and Passion Thomas assumed an indignant tone, when inveighing against the neglect suffered by that boy’s memory. The monastery suffered loss for the absence of a cult of William, and the community, from the failure to punish the city’s Jews. Marginality was turned into the voice of authority when Thomas assumed the hagiographical genre and its related discourse. To that genre he added one familiar to us all – the cold case investigation – for he aimed to find out what those who had come before him had failed to do: the circumstances of the boy’s life, and even more importantly, the details of his death as a martyr. Thomas had to contend with several challenges as he attempted to present a mere skinner’s apprentice – the boy William – as a worthy figure for veneration. As is common in the genre of hagiography, which developed as record and praise for the heroism of early Christian martyrs, signs of the saint’s merit habitually appeared even before his or her birth. And so it was with William. We are told that the boy was born in the village of Haveringland, not far from Norwich, to modest folk; his mother was Elviva and his father Wunstan, both had Anglo-Saxon names, used by 1150 mostly by rural or urban working people. His grandfather Wulward was a well-known interpreter of dreams. William’s birth was announced to his mother in a dream: … she was standing on a road with her father Wulward the priest … when they observed that on the ground before their feet and a fish – commonly called lux – turning. The fish indeed had twelve red fins, as if sprinkled with blood. So she said to her father: ‘Father, I see a fish, but I wonder greatly how it reached here and how it can live in such a dry place’. Her father said to her: ‘Take it, daughter, take it and put it in your bosom’. Once she had done so the fish was seen moving in her bosom, and growing little by little, until the bosom could no longer contain it. And so… suddenly sprouted wings and flew away, passing through the clouds, and the open heaven received it within.4

4

The Life and Passion, 10.

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When she woke from her dream her father interpreted it as ‘You know indeed, dearest daughter, that you are pregnant, and so rejoice in joy, because you will indeed be giving birth to a son, who will be accompanied by the highest honour on earth and will be raised to the height of the clouds, greatly exalted in heaven’.5

Like the Virgin Mary and Elizabeth her kinswoman before her, William’s mother too had received the news of the wondrous birth of her son, a birth full of portent and promise. William grew up into boyhood, when his parents placed him for the purpose of training in a skinner’s (pelliparius) household in the city of Norwich. Thomas describes William as a diligent and hard-working boy, quick and good at his job. He was also an assiduous churchgoer: He also frequented the church most willingly; he learned letters, psalms and prayers, ad worshipped with the greatest reverence all that was related to God.6

And since he was a good worker – and a cheap one too – the Jews of Norwich employed him. This is when the Jews of Norwich are introduced to the reader – as moneylenders and takers of garments as pawns. Thomas of Monmouth also reveals them to be part of a divine plan, one by which William had been preordained ‘by the wish of divine providence he had been predestined to martyrdom for centuries gone by’.7 William was the son of Anglo-Saxon folk, but this was an upwardly mobile family that gave its sons Norman names – William and Robert – which had clergy amongst its close kin. The Jews were much closer in culture to the Norman elite of the city: they had come to England from Normandy after the Norman Conquest of 1066, they spoke French, and they served government, in local mints, under the auspices of the sheriff. They lived under royal jurisdiction, and had dealings with the sheriffs of each city, through whom they paid regular taxes and heavy extraordinary fiscal exactions to the Crown. As they did in other regions, the Jews lent money to knights, nobles and religious houses; they also acted as pawnbrokers to urban clients.8

5

The Life and Passion, 11. The Life and Passion, 12. 7 The Life and Passion, 13. 8 V.D. Lipman, The Jews of Medieval Norwich, ed. A.M. Habermann (London, 1967). On the Jews in relation to the Crown, see also R.R. Mundill, England’s Jewish Solution. Experiment and Expulsion, 1262-1290 (Cambridge, 1998). 6

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We glimpse a possibility of interaction between the Jews and William in the text, in the section depicting young William as a talented and hardworking boy: … he made great efforts with industry in his chosen craft and reached the age of twelve. Then, while he was living in Norwich, the Jews who dwelt there at the time chose him above all other skinners for the repair of mantles, furs and other things of this kind, which they either had as surety or which they themselves used. For indeed they considered him highly suitable, either because they saw him as simple and skilful, or because – led by miserliness – they reckoned they could pay him a lower wage.9

In the course of his narrative Thomas repeatedly sets up spying or eavesdropping situations in order to explain how he had procured privileged information even years after the event. When Thomas elaborately sets up the kidnapping of the boy by the Jews’ emissary, and his delivery to them, his relative was able to spy, though the information she garnered was not used to avert the alleged crime: Passing by the house of the boy’s maternal aunt he entered it with the boy, said that his mother had handed him over and hastily departed. Then the boy’s aunt immediately said to her daughter: ‘Quick, follow them’, carefully observing in which direction that man was leading the boy away. And so the girl went out in order to discover their route, and she followed them from a distance, as they turned, taking secret alleyways. Following in this way she watched them at last enter secretly into the house of a certain Jew, and noticed them immediately shut the door behind them. Having seen this, she returned to her mother and informed her of what she had seen.10

Once the boy was in the Jews’ house, the monk Thomas imagined a killing laden with scriptural reference. And so was born the ritual murder fantasy: Then the Jews received the boy kindly, like an innocent lamb led to the slaughter … and he was kept until the morrow. And so, following daybreak, which was their Pascha that year, after the appropriate chants of the day were finished in the synagogue, the leaders of the Jews met in the house of the aforementioned Jew, and while the boy William was eating, fearing no treachery, they suddenly seized him and humiliated him in various wretched ways. For some of them held him from behind, others inserted into his open mouth a torture instrument known in English as 9 10

The Life and Passion, 13. The Life and Passion, 16.

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a teasel, and fixed it with straps either side of the jaws, to the back of his neck, where they made a very tight knot. Next they took a short rope, about as thick as a little finger, and made three knots in places marked on it, and encircled that innocent head from forehead to back; in the centre of the forehead they pressed a knot, as they did at each temple… Both sides of the head were tied to the back, extremely, and there a firm knot was made. The ends of the rope were tied round the neck and around under the chin, and there this unheard of type of torture was completed in a fifth knot… Indeed, having shaven his head, they wounded it with an infinite number of thorn pricks and made him bleed miserably from the inflicted wounds. They were so cruel and so very eager to inflict pains that you could hardly say which they were: more cruel or more eager in torture.11

The narrative drive required a credible agent to reveal to Thomas the Jews’ secret crime. And so again, Thomas employed a poor working person, a servant in the Jew’s house. True to his method of investigation, here is a witness who had not been questioned in 1144, who had not come forward with her report at that time. But his assiduous investigation, and thus his visit to the site of the alleged crime led Thomas to her. For as the crime was being committed and blood gushed out of the child’s body, the Jews called for their maid to bring some boiling water to staunch the wounds. The maid did so, but lingered a while to peek through the door after handing over the pot. And she saw the hanging of the boy between the doorposts, and unto death. She explained that she had dared not come forward with her testimony lest she be fired by the Jews and lose the wages owed to her. In concocting his unusual tale, Thomas of Monmouth employed actors who were marginal to ecclesiastical authority and urban society, yet who fitted perfectly with his efforts to lend verisimilitude to the new tale. He shows the memory of the boy martyr to have been neglected by the representatives of both church and state – the bishop of Norwich, the sheriff of Norfolk – hence the truth about a poor boy would have to be established by ‘simple’ people. Indeed, most of those who received cures were villagers from surrounding communities, people who turned to the boy martyr in despair. The first to come about the buried body in a marginal space – a wood outside the city – were similarly modest people going about their business. While the boy’s body lay on the ground barely buried and awaiting its discovery, another figure had encountered it, a widow who had chosen a life of charity, working with the lepers established in the St Mary Magdalen leper 11

The Life and Passion, 16.

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hospital in the forest. She saw extraordinary lights shining above the place where the body was found, like a ladder leading upwards, and she called the inmates to see it too. But she had retired from the world, and did not wish to become involved in worldly affairs – so we are told. On Easter Saturday 1144, Henry of Sprowston came across the tortured and pierced body of William in Thorpe Wood. We are told that he had been a forester and hence familiar with the wood and its pathways. He was en route from his village home to the city, and was preoccupied with the forthcoming Easter. For when he found a body with strange marks on it, he did not stay to bury it or raise the alarm, but rather planned to return after Easter. So he did: … Henry of Sprowston, with his wife and family, were about to execute his plan on Easter Monday, and he set out around the time of prime to that illustrious corpse of the renowned martyr where it still lay under the sky. Reaching the spot with his companions – forewarned, I believe, by divine inspiration – he decided to act differently from the plan, because he feared to execute it without the bishop’s permission. And so, using a prudent plan, with as much reverence as possible, he buried the body where it had been found. But I think it should not remain unsaid that while he [William] was carried in the hands of those burying him, immediately such a sweet fragrance infused the noses of those present, as if an abundance of herbs and fragrant flowers grew there.12

The narrative of William’s life and death was crafted within an established genre – hagiography – and, as we have seen, it featured an AngloSaxon boy, and a series of working people as witnesses. Thomas also reported resistance to his efforts on William’s behalf from those who were not convinced: the local sheriff, and monks of the cathedral priory, who rejected the novelty of the emergent William’s cult. Thomas responded to these objections one by one, thus affirming the case for the authority of a young boy’s piety, as part of a long-standing Christian tradition: Also, those who do not believe that the poor and despised can be holy, let them hear what the prophet said: ‘The spirit of the Lord is upon me. Wherefore he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor’ [Luke 4:18]. Christ himself was poor, not having a place to lay His head, and He called the poor – not the rich – to be His apostles; the weak, not the strong; the unlearned, not the worldly wise; innocent children, not those grown old in malice.

12

The Life and Passion, 27.

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Now … let us move on to the others, who see him as a little, worthless, ragged and poor boy, and seeing him so, feel contempt, and in their contempt say that he should not attain the heights of such great veneration where no worthy deeds have gone before. To them we respond: if childhood were a reason to reject sanctification, we offer them the boys Pancras, Pantaleon and Celsus, whom Christ raised to the crown of martyrdom in their childhood years. Moreover, the Lord Himself set a child amid the disciples, and asserted that such were particularly suited for the kingdom of heaven.13

Narrative Networks and Religious Authority What was the effect of this unique inventive narrative? What does it tell us about issues of religious authority? How indeed might we know? There is no documentary evidence – Latin or Hebrew – to suggest that the Jews of Norwich suffered an immediate violent reaction. Thomas claims that this was due to the protection of a corrupt sheriff, and by implication – through his inaction – by an indifferent bishop. Thomas’ work was cut out for him, and it was not completed with the writing of the Vita et passio. He continued to promote the cult in the cathedral, and became – as he called himself – the martyr’s secretarius.14 He fulfilled a role which every shrine required, the go-to person for reporting news of cures and other miracles occasioned by William’s tomb, or by the invocation of his name. Hence the work Vita et passio, included a liber miraculorum too, to which Thomas made additions over the decades up until c. 1173. It sometimes recorded distance healings like those described in Laura Feldt’s article. The miracles reported usually benefitted rural folk from villages in Norfolk, mostly associated with the bishop’s estates. These were usually cases of chronic diseases, and occasionally instances of tumours or more acute suffering brought on by accidents. Most beneficiaries were too poor to offer more than a candle, or a penny to the saint, but none too poor to make the journey by foot, or carried in the arms of relatives, to William’s shrine in Norwich cathedral, for an outpouring of grateful prayers. The question of communication here is interesting: how did hard-working and poor villagers – probably serfs – hear about the cult and its promise? As I have already mentioned, it is striking to note the predominance of inhabitants of episcopal estates, manors managed by secular officials, reeves 13

The Life and Passion, 57-8. His role thus in some ways resembles that of Symeon the New Theologian’s biographer, as discussed in Christian Høgel’s contribution to this volume. 14

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in the service of the Cathedral Priory, who were in constant contact and travel between the city and its hinterland. On a few occasions, Thomas reports the despair of individuals or parents for their ailing child, when a priest recommended an appeal to William. These were local networks of constant interaction around labour, distributions of agricultural produce, and of course in the case of the priest, of support and guidance to the sick and dying.15 The books of miracles also reveal some of the trails by which news of William’s cult may have travelled further afield beyond Norwich. It is notable that in the later decades of the twelfth century a number of cases seemed to retell or enact the child murder narrative, though like in Norwich with little immediate success. At the Benedictine St Peter’s Abbey in Gloucester, an accusation was made when young Harold disappeared, and this may have been occasioned by the link to Norwich that this abbey had as patrons of the wealthy church of St Peter Mancroft in the city’s marketplace. A testimonial letter from a monk of Pershore Priory (Worcestershire) is one of the latest entries in the book, with evidence of a miracle attesting to William’s fame and efficacy much further west in England. All these instances are of dissemination within a Benedictine network, and within the broader Anglo-Norman realm. When the Norman monk Robert of Torigni (c. 1100-1186), Abbot of Mont Saint-Michel, and chronicler of the Dukes of Normandy, reported the burning of the Jews in Blois in 1171 for alleged child murder, he also mentioned the cases of Norwich and Gloucester as forerunners in the series.16 We can also detect the spread of the tale into another network of communication which was highly significant in this period, that of the Cistercian Order. I have been able to establish, on the basis of palaeographical, codicological, and stylistic analyses, that the sole surviving manuscript was produced in a Cistercian house. This documentary trail led to the Cistercian Priory of Sibton in Suffolk, the sole house in East Anglia.17 This is interesting in itself, since it is a ‘jump’ from the traditional Benedictine to the more recent 15 On two occasions, we note an intervention at a higher social level, in disputes between men and their vassals, that releases those chained unjustly from their shackles. 16 Hoc etiam fecerunt de sancto Willelmo in Anglia apud Norwiz, tempore Stephani regis; quo sepulto in ecclesia episcopali, multa miracula fiunt ad sepulchrum ejus. Similter factum est de alio apud Glocuestriam, tempore henrici secondi regis……. Et frequenter, ut dicitur, faciunt hoc in tempore Paschali, si opportunitatem invenerint, The Chronicle of Robert of Torigni, ed. R. Howlett (London, 1889; Kraus reprints, 1964) 250-51. For an evaluation of this testimony, see G.I. Langmuir, ‘Historiographic Crucifixion’, in G.I. Langmuir, Toward a Definition of Antisemitism (Berkeley, CA, 1990) 282-98; at 285-6. 17 The Life and Passion, lii-lvii.

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creation, the more fashionable, Cistercian milieu. The house at Sibson had been founded by no other than the brother, heir and executor of the last wishes of the sheriff of Norwich, so badly implicated in Thomas’s narrative of the events around William’s death. What is important for our purposes is to note that the circulation in the buoyant Cistercian network did not produce a series of copycat accusations. Rather, we witness the Vita et passio mined for the type of tales that interested Cistercian authors above all: stories about the afterlife, and wondrous Marian tales. And so the Cistercian poet and chronicler from northern France, Helinand of Froidmont (c. 1160-by 1237) – troubadour turned monk – referred to the death of William ‘crucified in England by the Jews on holy Friday in the city of Norwich’ – at the beginning of the 1146 entry to his Chronicon written c. 1204.18 In the Cistercian network, such communication may have occurred orally, for as Brian Patrick McGuire has often reminded us, travel within the order brought together brothers from farflung regions, and news was often written down as having been first heard from such guests. The Norwich child murder tale thus remained in twelfth century England a story above all, though in Blois it combined with several local circumstances to produce a nasty massacre of Jews in 1171.19 In England, only a century – 111 years – after the events in Norwich, the accusation produced violence against Jews and official and widespread recognition of the accusation. This was at Lincoln, where the pleas of an anxious mother seeking for her son and the efforts of king Henry III’s steward, combined to have a Jew of Lincoln tried, made to confess, and dragged through Lincoln by a horse to his hanging. The trial and execution of 18 other Jews of Lincoln soon followed in London.20 The case of the boy Hugh – whose body 18 ‘Helinandi Frigidis Montis monachi chronicon’, Patrologia Latina CCXII (Paris, 1855) cols. 1036-37. The entry is placed under the year 1146 and the boy William is described as being 15 years old; J.M. McCulloh, ‘Jewish Ritual Murder: William of Norwich, Thomas of Monmouth, and the early dissemination of the myth’, Speculum 72 (1997) 698-740 at 71924. On Helinand, see E.R. Elder, ‘Early Cistercian Writers’, in M. Birkedal Bruun (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Cistercian Order (Cambridge, 2013) 199-217 at 207-08. On the making and impact of the Chronicon, see M. Paulmier-Foucart, ‘Ecrire l’histoire au XIIIe siècle. Vincent de Beauvais et Hélinand de Froidmont’, Annales de l’Est 33 (1981) 49-70 at 52-4, 65-6. 19 E. Rose, The Murder of William of Norwich. The Origins of the Blood Libel in Medieval Europe (Oxford, 2015) 151-85. 20 For the first modern treatment of the case, see G.I. Langmuir, ‘The Knight’s Tale of Young Hugh of Lincoln’, Speculum 47 (1972) 459-82. For David Carpenter’s authoritative recent analysis of this case: http://www.finerollshenry3.org.uk/content/month/fm-01-2010. html and http://www.finerollshenry3.org.uk/content/month/fm-02-2010.html.

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was eventually found in a well – was promoted by the Dean and Chapter of Lincoln Cathedral, who buried the boy near the sainted bishop Robert Grosseteste, and promoted his cult. The atmosphere had become highly supportive of anti-Jewish action, and by the mid-thirteenth century it led those who were fully aware of King Henry III’s proactive policy towards conversion of the Jews. The Lincoln case inspired a French vernacular ballade, which was able to enter even wider circulation, so much so that at the end of the fourteenth century, long after the expulsion of the Jews from England in 1290, Geoffrey Chaucer was able to refer to the case at the end of his Prioress’ Tale, and expect that his – albeit aristocratic and mercantile – audiences would recognise the reference.21 So, the emergence of a narrative was not a sufficient condition for its implantation among the authoritative resources of Christian Europe. Most materials circulated through channels of communication that were attached to religious order, language, region, and diocese. Nor did all narratives – even those like ours, cast in a well-established genre – always spur people to action. They could be read as exempla to spice up a sermon, or used in polemical writings. Enactments of child murder accusations against Jews were relatively rare, and they often failed to meet legal criteria or fit into the policy framework of European rulers. Over the later medieval centuries, the narrative of child murder acquired new elements; it became a crime of blood, highly ritualised in its execution and in the purpose imputed to the Jews – to procure Christian blood.22 For a story to animate a local accusation, for narrative to turn into a social drama, several criteria had to be met. The narrative had to fit local circumstances and be painted in local colour – places, names, material artefacts, like the teasel of Norwich; there had to be an institutional willingness to allow an accusation to unfold, to allow legal and forensic activities to unfold. Such circumstances come together in Trent in 1475 – where inquisitor and bishop were at work.23 Political will existed there and allowed the unfolding of interrogations under torture, and executions of a group of Jews. These events were in turn disseminated, faster than ever before, through the new medium of print.24 21 L.O. Fradenburg, ‘Criticism, Anti-Semitism, and the Prioress’s Tale’, in K.L. Lynch (ed.), Chaucer’s Cultural Geography (New York, 2002) 174-92. 22 For an important discussion of the blood libel, see I.J. Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb. Perceptions of Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, trans. B. Harshav and J. Chipman (Berkeley, 2006) 135-204. 23 R. Po-chia Hsia, Trent 1475: Stories of A Ritual Murder Trial (New Haven, 1992). 24 Note the interesting parallels, in this volume, to Dirk Johannsen’s discussion of a 19th century case from rural Norway and Astrid Trolle’s discussion of the Catholic visionary’s lack of a media context in contemporary Denmark.

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Towards the later Middle Ages, we note a resurgence of an interest in William of Norwich in the city and beyond it. There was a taste in Norfolk churches for chancel-screen that depicted early Christian martyrs, and sometimes among them a more recent, local one was inserted. There is a spate of such fifteenth-century images painted on wood and forming part of chancel screens from Norfolk and Suffolk churches, one from the city of Norwich itself. With the development of the products of mechanical reproduction, such as woodcuts, news could spread more quickly, most notably, as in the case of Trent with a broadsheet combining image and text which soon reached all parts of Europe, as Ronnie Hsia has shown. But even more relevant to our theme of marginality, in the course of the sixteenth century, as polemical activity encouraged new compilations and collections of lives of saints and martyrs, William of Norwich was re-embedded within the new pan-European manuals of Counter Reformation hagiography. This is not to say it made him widely known, but rather introduces us to yet another stage in the use of the idea of a twelfth century village boy – marginal in so many ways – at the heart of the European, and global, efforts of Catholic reform. Conclusion To summarize, how have our themes of marginality, genre and media interacted in the arena of Christian authority? We have witnessed a uniquely – though not perfectly – documented attempt to create a new cult at the recently founded Norwich cathedral, a cathedral in search of identity and purpose. This ambitious project was undertaken by a newcomer, a man from far away, a new monk who sought to turn his impression – an outsider’s view – about the house’s recent history, into an opportunity through the making of a martyr’s cult. He did so by writing a hagiography in Latin, a text which met the criteria of contemporary presentation of saints, in an age before canonization processes had become centralised and codified by the papacy. His subject was a country boy, who became an apprentice, a boy of few important connections or remarkable attributes, beyond an endearingly precocious piety, until he became the subject of a Jewish plot. Most saints created before the twelfth century emerged from the ranks of the religious, monks and bishops above all. But the century also saw a move towards less established figures, with a sprinkling of hermits – like Godric of Finchale – and women – like Christina of Markyate – among those whose lives were appreciated, written up as vitae, at a time when new

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religious orders emphasised simplicity and humility. Indeed, our manuscript includes two such lives alongside William’s: those of Godric of Finchale and of Wulfric of Haslebury.25 Modesty and humility – marginality – had a certain appeal in the twelfth century, as a mode of exemplary living. Those who took it too far could be deemed heretical, but by a century later a whole order – the Franciscan – was authorised and spread throughout Europe, based on poverty within the world. It is also clear that those who sought to live as marginal – hermits, anchorites, and Cistercian monks – were often pulled back into the world by the visitations of their fans, or called to act in the world with their exemplary charisma. So there is a real tension between the claim of marginal purity or simplicity, and the influence their holders could wield. In the case of children, vulnerability betokened innocence, and it also contributed to the pathos of any account of their death or martyrdom. In turn, the Jews – their alleged killers – were demonised and shown to be cruel beyond imagining. Around the child martyr, themes of sacrifice, purity and passion could be deployed most powerfully, as we saw earlier in Thomas’ text. All forms of innovation must be cast rhetorically in ways that are convincing and moving. The right genre must be chosen to contain any new narrative, and in it a careful balance must be struck between the familiar and the novel. As we have seen, Thomas tried to achieve just this, but his narrative encountered criticism, which he tried to address. The cult never became a great affair; it had no official recognition beyond the Cathedral Priory’s own liturgy. Yet among the poor and sick, the boy’s promise worked, and their life stories were recorded as miracle tales, in keeping with authoritative pathways towards proof of sanctity. The child murder narrative was only sporadically embraced in the world. It was copied and illustrated in collections of tales, and occasionally enacted as an accusation. This happened only when the political and legal configurations allowed; hence its decline in Protestant Europe,26 hence, its modest new recognition in Europe of Catholic reform, where it remained a living narrative for far too long.

25

The Life and Passion, liii. R. Po-Chia Hsia, The Myth of Ritual Murder: Jews and Magic in Reformation Germany (New Haven, 1988). 26

IX. WRATH AND FEAR. LUTHERANISM AND THE MARGINALISATION OF WITCHES IN EARLY MODERN DENMARK Louise Nyholm Kallestrup

Since the papist ship is filled with pirates and murderers of souls, it is time to leave this ship and board the other, which carries the true message, because it is on this ship that a man shall sail off to the life eternal.’1

The witch hunts of Lutheran Denmark constitute a good case study for analysing instances of how religious and social marginalisation came to overlap in post-Reformation Denmark. The witch trials were instigated by the Danish king’s lieutenants and clearly functioned as demonstrations of the fidelity of the lieutenants to Lutheranism. This chapter focuses on the court protocols as media that transmitted, repeated and authorised local, marginalising narratives about ‘evil people’ and legitimised specific emotional practices of fear and anger.2 The author of the quote above is the Danish reformer and bishop of Zealand, Peder Palladius. In his collection of sermons published in 1554, he described the Church in terms of a ship. Christ was the captain, and all righteous Christians were on board the ship. For nine centuries, the ship had been held captive by pirates, the popes, who had abused and exploited it for their own desires. Now, the Church was finally freed.3 Danish reformers as well as the Danish king were strongly influenced by Martin Luther. 1 Peder Palladius, Skt. Peders Skib, published by L. Jacobsen, Peder Palladius Samlede Skrifter, vol. 3. (Copenhagen, 1916-1918) 26. All translations in this article are my own. 2 In the religious as well as the social marginalisation of witches, fear and anger were key emotions. Key, historical works on emotions include W. Reddy, The Navigation of Feeling. A Framework for the History of Emotions (Cambridge, 2001); Monique Scheer on emotional practices, ‘Are Emotions a Kind of Practice (and Is That What Makes Them Have a History)? A Bourdieuian Approach to Understanding Emotion’, History and Theory 51 (2012) 193-220; for a discussion of key works, see J. Plamper, The History of Emotions. An Introduction (Oxford, 2015). 3 Palladius, Skt. Peders Skib, 22.

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Several of these theologians had studied in Wittenberg, and they saw it as a crucial part of their work to make the populace adjust and identify themselves with the new faith and to reject Catholic beliefs. These evangelical reformers saw themselves as proponents of Luther’s ideas and of the breach with Rome. Luther’s dismissal of letters of indulgence meant that earthly life acquired even greater significance for the afterlife. In order for the soul to be saved from spending the afterlife in eternal pain and misery, it was necessary to succumb to the new faith and to be penitent.4 The powerful sense prevalent during this period, that Judgement Day was at hand, was widespread among Danish reformers and grew stronger during the 16th century with the proliferation of apocalyptic signs in the form of heaven-sent disasters. Disasters were seen as physical manifestations of God’s wrath, caused by the unremitting acts of human sinners. Collective sin hastened the approach of the End.5 The notion that the Day of Judgement was approaching deepened and extended people’s fear of the Devil. Witch Hunts in Lutheran Denmark As the end approached, the Devil had become active in the human world and was seeking allies for his final battle with God. Witches were the prototype of such diabolical allies, and from 1560 the number of witch hunts increased in Europe. On a European scale around 100,000 people were prosecuted for associating with the Devil and named as witches by local societies and courts. These individuals were often socially marginalised in their local setting, and accused by their own neighbours, sometimes even by their own children. Witchcraft was a twofold offence. On the one hand, from a religious viewpoint, witches were engaging with the Devil, and the perception of an increase in the number of witches fitted into the narrative of the apocalypse. On the other hand, as far as local society was concerned, witches were causing harm to others, and were feared for their ability to 4 For Peder Palladius’ interpretation of time and for a discussion of the sermon collection, see A. Wittendorff, ‘“Evangelii lyse dag” eller “hekseprocessernes mørketid”. Om Peder Palladius’ historie-opfattelse’, in G. Christensen et al. (eds.), Tradition og kritik. Festskrift til Sven Ellehøj (Copenhagen, 1984) 89-21. 5 See most recently the collection edited by J. Spinks and C. Zika, Disaster, Death and the Emotions in the Shadow of the Apocalypse, 1400-1700 (London, 2016); for the early modern English case on divine wrath and providentialism, see the article by A. Walsham, ‘Deciphering Divine Wrath and Displaying Godly Sorrow. Providentialism and Emotion in Early Modern England’, ibid., 21-43. See also the important chapter in S. Clark, Thinking with Demons. The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe (Oxford, 1997) 335-46.

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harm their neighbours, destroy harvests and kill children with the aid of the Devil. They posed a threat to the local order, and villagers would generally not attribute misfortune to sin and God’s wrath but to the anger of a vengeful witch, whose power, as they knew all too well, could cause severe damage to humans and livestock.6 The authorities in the Kingdom of Denmark-Norway conducted one of the most severe witch-hunts seen in Europe. About one thousand people were convicted of witchcraft, but many more were marginalised as suspects for merely being related to a witch or after being acquitted of witchcraft.7 The religious marginalisation of witches as harbingers of the apocalypse was widespread among both Danish theologians and lay authorities in the century following the Protestant reformation. These perceptions of witches were communicated through various media such as sermons, religious instructions, and popular writings and they must be interpreted within this context. At first glance, there seems to be a contradiction in the utterances of the Lutheran theologians when they describe natural disasters as God’s punishment and not as resulting from the evil deeds of witches. In the Danish case, witches and disasters were both apocalyptic signs, and they fused with popular views of witches, hereby intensifying the notion of witches as threats to the local order. In the eyes of villagers, the disasters a witch could cause may have been on a local scale but they were just as much a sign that the end was nigh. That ‘end’ was simply seen from the perspective of the household. The apocalyptic view of the cosmos was spread through news reports about witches and various disasters. Such reports were imbued with a sense of fear, which was used to incite penitence in their audience. From the last

6 Only a few works on Danish witchcraft are accessible to an international audience. The most recent – and only English – monograph is my own Agents of Witchcraft in Early Modern Denmark and Italy (Basingstoke, 2015). In Danish, J. Chr. V. Johansen’s monograph Da Djævelen var ude… Trolddom i Danmark (Viborg, 1991) on the trials of Jutland remains a key work. In the 1980s and 1990s, the works of Alex Wittendorff have influenced historians of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries’ cultural history, but to an international reader G. Henningsen is probably best known, especially for his work on the Spanish Inquisition. On the European witch trials R. Kieckhefer, Witch Trials in Europe. Their Foundations in Popular and Learned Culture (Berkeley & Los Angeles, 1976) remains the ground-breaking monograph. Essential reading on the European witch-hunt also includes B. Levack, The Witch-hunt in Early Modern Europe (Harlow, 1987, 20063); G. Waite, Heresy, Magic and Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe (Basingstoke, 2003); W. Behringer, Witches and Witch Hunts (Cambridge, 2004) and, recently, J. Goodare, The European Witch Hunt (London and New York, 2016). 7 For an overview of the largest witch hunts in Europe, see Behringer, Witches and Witch Hunts, 130.

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decades of the 16th century such reports were published on a more regular basis, and in the same year the kingdom saw some major witchcraft trials.8 The 1590s represent a transitional phase in the religious constitution of the kingdom. The Danish king and key Lutheran theologians began to define the state not only as non-Catholic and reformed, but explicitly as a Lutheran state.9 The notion that the Devil was responsible for polluting the faith and aimed to take over the world was repeatedly emphasised in this process. The fear of God’s wrath, the acknowledgement of human frailty and sin, and the need for penitence remained crucial as Lutheran orthodoxy grew stronger in the period up until the Lutheran celebrations of 1617.10 In this process the idea of the state as being founded on the ideals of the Lutheran household was also gaining ground.11 Strict but just, the king acted as father of the state. During the seventeenth century, the idea of the Lutheran household came to penetrate all institutional levels of society and influenced the Danish Law Code of 1683. However, the notion of the household can also be traced in the laws passed in 1617.12 Witches were signs of human frailty, sin, and of Satan’s agency in society. A Lutheran prince had a ‘divine duty’, to use an expression applied by Stuart Clark, to eradicate witches.13 ‘Judgement Day is at Hand’: Media of Apocalyptic Fear Listening to sermons in Danish churches, the congregation would see the dreadful events of the Last Judgement depicted in the murals around them. Naked, fearful bodies, devils, demons and the gaping mouth of hell made these scenes utterly terrifying to parishioners.14 All humans, living or

8 H. Horstbøll, Menigmands medie. Det folkelige bogtryk i Danmark 1500-1840. En kulturhistorisk undersøgelse (Copenhagen, 1999), 356. 9 C. Bach-Nielsen, Fra jubelfest til kulturår. Danske reformations-fejringer gennem 400 år (Aarhus, 2016) 21-22. 10 Bach-Nielsen, Fra jubelfest, 27. 11 G. Walker, Crime, Gender and Social Order in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 2003) 9-13. 12 For the Danish Lutheran state and the household in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, see the articles by N. Koefoed and T. Krogh in T. Krogh, L. Kallestrup & C.B. Christensen (eds.), Cultural Histories of Crime in Denmark, 1500-2000 (Routledge, 2018). 13 Clark, Thinking with Demons, 567. 14 A search in the database on Danish church murals confirms this to be one of the most frequent motives in late fifteenth and early sixteenth century (see https://natmus.dk/ salg-og-ydelser/museumsfaglige-ydelser/kirker-og-kirkegaarde/kalkmalerier-i-danske-kirker (as seen 19.12.2017).

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dead, would at some point be subjected to divine judgment, and theologians underlined the need for penitence. As Peder Palladius put it ‘Judgment Day […] is at hand’,15 and the signs indicating its imminence were recurrent. Disasters such as war, hunger, and epidemics along with natural disasters in the form of floods and the like were frequent in early modern European life. From the second half of the sixteenth century, the Little Ice Age caused summers to be cold and rainy and harvests to fail year after year. News pamphlets reported these catastrophes and described the disasters as the collapse of human morality intertwined with the collapse of nature.16 The cosmic model of the imminent approach of the apocalypse ascribed cultural meaning to these disasters, while at the same time mediating a narrative in which the number of witches was thought to be increasing. Even though human action was the immediate cause of a disaster, for instance when war broke out, these pamphlets always ascribed the true reason for the catastrophe to God’s anger.17 In the middle of the 16th century, such news reports were published sporadically in Danish translations, but from the 1590s they appeared on a regular basis in the kingdom.18 The frontispiece of these pamphlets would typically show images of the Apocalypse, depicting descriptions from the Book of Revelation, and this would support and compound the images in the church murals that villagers looked at every week during the sermon. A pamphlet published in Copenhagen in 1576 reported the devastation caused by the flooding of the city of Temesuar in Transylvania that year.19 15

Palladius, Skt. Peders Skib, 26. J. Spinks and C. Zika, ‘Introduction: Rethinking Disaster and Emotion’, in Disaster, Apocalypse, Emotions, 3, see also Walsham ‘Deciphering Divine Wrath’ and on the frontispieces, C. Zika, ‘Disaster, Apocalypse, Emotions and Time in Sixteenth-Century Pamphlets’, in Disaster, Apocalypse, Emotions, 69-90. For more on the Little Ice Age, the ruining of harvests and witches, see W. Behringer, ‘Climatic Change and Witch-hunting: the Impact of the Little Ice Age on Mentalities’, Climatic Change 43 (1999) 335-52 and, in the context of the European witch-hunts, his Witches and Witch Hunts. A Global History (New York, 2004). 17 For the International context, see Spinks and Zika, 3-4; for England, see Walsham, ‘Deciphering Divine Wrath’, 23. 18 Most often they were translated from anonymous German originals and adjusted to a Danish context. On the series of pamphlets, see Horstbøll, Menigmands medie, 356; for the collection of preserved pamphlets more generally, see Horstbøll esp. chapter 8. 19 Present day Timișoara in western Romania. Original title En sanddru, gruelig og forskreckelig ny tidende aff Ungern, huorledes den stad Temesuar, som nu hørde tyrkeren til, formedelst Guds sunderlige tilladelse, bleff I it øyeblik slet og aldeles fordærffet, omstyrt, forsprenge og nedsiuncken. Oc dersom staden oc slotted stod tilforn, er nu ekon idel vand oc er ligest til at ansee som en stor sø, published by the printer Laurent Benedicht 1576. 16

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The image on the frontispiece is a mixture of a number of scenes from the apocalypse, including the sun turned black, angels blowing trumpets, a rain of fire and the devastation of humans on the ground. To early modern readers there would have been no doubt as to the meaning of this image. By printing it on the frontispiece, the reader was prepared, tuned as it were, for an appropriate understanding of the subsequent pages of information. The flood of Temesuar should be interpreted within the apocalyptic view of the cosmos. Inside the pamphlet, the catastrophe in Temesuar was described in dramatic terms. A stock of (gun-) powder had accidentally been ignited and had caused an explosion so severe that the nearby river overflowed its banks and flooded the town and its castle. No one knew who lit the powder, but the devastating consequences of the explosion were obvious to all. Numerous people and livestock had died instantly. The explosion had been so loud that people heard it from afar and became so frightened that they had ‘run back and forth out of fear and horror’20 like frightened and confused animals. When people afterwards returned to the site of what used to be the town of Temesuar, they saw nothing but water. The pamphlet did not hesitate to compare the scene to the biblical story of Sodom and Gomorrah, the towns reduced to rubble by God for their sins. In Temesuar, fire had been raining from the sky, as in Sodom and Gomorrah, where the sky rained down ‘brimstone and fire’,21 consuming sinful humanity through the wrath of God’s divine judgement. The final lines of the pamphlet emphasise the purpose of mediating the story to a Danish audience. Although Temesuar was further away than an average inhabitant of the Danish kingdom would ever travel, the story should serve as a warning to all Christians to refrain from sin. In fact, they should thank God for being so merciful. Even though terribly sinful lives were led every day in the Danish kingdom, God did not eradicate its lands. However, he was issuing a warning to its inhabitants by letting disasters strike remote towns. These free warnings should not be ignored. On the contrary, the populace needed to take these warnings seriously and be penitent, otherwise God would eradicate the Christian world as he did with the towns of Sodom and Gomorrah. The apocalyptic model of cosmos was also woven into reports of the 1590 earthquake in Vienna.22 The image on the frontispiece of the pamphlet 20

En sanddru, 8. Genesis 19:24. 22 The Neulengbach earthquake of 1590. Original title Om nogle forferdelige oc uhørlige jordskel, som ere skede udi Wien I Østerige, oc udi de omkring liggendis steder. This pamphlet was also printed by Laurent Benedicht. 21

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published in 1591 was identical to the image on the Temesuar pamphlet. Inside, the text commenced by going straight to the message of the story. It refers to the ‘the terrible and unnatural occurrences of which God lets us hear and see on a daily basis’23 as warnings of sinful living and the absence of penitence among the populace. Once again, the only negotiable road to salvation was penitence, if the populace was to avoid God’s wrath and harsh punishment. To make the point clear to all readers, the anonymous author referred to a number of disasters that had struck the kingdom of Denmark in recent years. Among these the plague of the 1570s, the high cost of living and the crop failures of recent years. The Day of Judgement was inevitable, but the time of the arrival of Christ could be delayed. By means of penitence and godly living, humans could postpone the final reckoning. However, it was the responsibility of the prince to make the populace understand the importance of penitence. The increasing number of witches was another sign of the imminent apocalypse. Witches indicated the extended agency of Satan. In a news pamphlet, printed in Copenhagen in 1591, the harsh witch hunts carried out in Trier and neighbouring territories were narrated to a Danish audience.24 The pamphlet correlates with reports of natural disasters as signs of God’s wrath, and it explains how the regions of Trier and Swabia had long been troubled by bad weather, poor harvest, and epidemics. By dint of God’s help, this had now been revealed as a diabolical conspiracy of witches working against all Christians. The pamphlet mediates an image of witches that connected disasters with witches. Young and old, men and women, witches had voluntarily confessed to serving the devil, after which they were tortured and burned at the stake. Reflected in these trials is the belief that witchcraft was considered to be the gravest of crimes and seen in terms of a secret society of Satan working to destroy all Christians.25 A Lutheran prince had a divine duty to eradicate such enemies of God. As warned in the pamphlet on the Trier trials, ‘the Devil complains that Hell has become too small, and therefore he has sent out his messengers for builders to make

23

Om nogle forferdelige, 8. Original title En forskreckelig oc sand bescriffuelse, om mange Troldfolck: som ere forbrende for deris Misgierninger skyld, fra det Aar 1589 regnendis: oc huad deris vdretning oc bekendelse haffuer været, desligeste om en Troldkarl ved naffn stumme Peder. First published in 1591 in Cologne and in Copenhagen by Laurent Benedicht, unpaged. 25 For a general introduction to these cases, see Behringer, Witches and Witch Hunts, 95-97, T. Robisheaux, ‘The German Witch Trials’, in B. Levack (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft of Early Modern Europe and Colonial America (Oxford, 2013) 179-98. 24

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it larger’.26 It is clear that the pamphlet attempted to encourage fear of the Devil and of the apocalypse in its readers in order to push people into penitence. All Christians should know that the enemies of God and of godly people were lurking in the dark, and the only weapon against it was to be penitent and refrain from sin. The pamphlets on the German witch hunts and on the earthquake of Vienna were published in the wake of a turbulent year for the Danish court, in which witches were accused of harming the royal family in a series of trials. These cases will be familiar to an international reader, not least due to the consequences they had in Scotland.27 In 1589 the King’s sister, Princess Anne, was set to marry James VI of Scotland. The royal Danish fleet, led by Admiral Peder Munk, was poorly equipped for adverse weather, and the poor state of the ships further reinforced the enmity between the admiral and the minister of finance, Christoffer Valkendorff, who was financially responsible for ensuring that the ships were properly equipped. Halfway to Scotland storms forced the captain to head for calm waters in Norway. In Scotland, James VI grew impatient for his bride to arrive, and he eventually travelled to Norway, where the two of them wed before leaving for Denmark. The royal couple stayed in Denmark for the winter, returning to Scotland in April. During their stay in Denmark rumours of witchcraft started to circulate. Witches were said to have caused the storms that made the royal ships seek harbour. A woman named Anne Koldings, known as ‘the Devil’s mother’ and already imprisoned for witchcraft, now confessed to having participated in the bewitchment, and during the summer of 1590 several women were tried and convicted for their participation in witchcraft.28

26 ‘Djævelen beklager sig, at helvede er blevet ham for lille og derfor har [han] udsendt sine sendebud efter bygningsmænd den [at] gøre det større’, En forskreckelig oc sand beskriffuelse, 1591, 11. 27 For short bios on C. Valkendorff and P. Munk, see C.F. Bricka (ed.), Dansk Biografisk Lexikon (Copenhagen, 1887-1905) vol. XVIII, 209-16f, vol. XI, 539-42, web edition at http:// runeberg.org/dbl/2/0062.html (as seen 24.04.2017). The events of 1589-1590 are part of my current research project on emotions and the construction of witchcraft in Denmark; I will investigate the cases and their context in a forthcoming monograph. The trials are only preserved in fragments and the most comprehensive study of the trials is still the somewhat dated work of H. Bering Liisbjerg, Vesten for sø og østen for hav. Trolddom i København og i Edinburgh 1590. Et bidrag til hekseprocessernes historie (Copenhagen, 1909). As those familiar with Scottish history will know, after his return to Scotland, James the VI launched a massive witch hunt against what he believed to be the Scottish branch of this diabolical conspiracy. See L. Normand & G. Roberts (eds.), Witchcraft in Early Modern Scotland: James’s Demonology and the North Berwick Witches (Exeter, 2000) and D. Stevenson, Scotland’s Last Royal Wedding: The Marriage of James VI and Anne of Denmark (Edinburgh, 1997). 28 Bering-Liisbjerg Vesten for sø, 80.

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The majority of these trial records are lost, but three confessions from convicted witches have been preserved. In these accounts, we read that the bewitchment involved several witches working together, all of whom were determined to hinder the ships from reaching Scotland. The evil deed was performed by a servant devil belonging to one of the witches.29 As in Trier and the neighbouring regions, witches were the enemies of God and therefore of all Christians. In religious writings, in news pamphlets and in demonological treatises, this meant that they were marginalised. However, in local society they continued to live among good Christian people as ‘enemies within’, working to undermine the virtuous. The closing section of the pamphlet on witchcraft stated, ‘God did know that in 1589 there would be exceptionally many witches’.30 The increasing number of witches was proof of demonic agency, and by the turn of the seventeenth century, Danish authorities had witnessed several signs of God’s wrath. The only way to mitigate God’s anger was to ensure that the populace was penitent, obeyed the Evangelical faith and refrained from popular religious practices, whether these were rooted in Nordic tradition or Catholic rituals. The Lutheran King and the Lutheran Household During his reign, the pious king Christian III (d. 1559) had initiated new forms of regulation and discipline of his people, although this was taken to new heights during the reign of his grandson, Christian IV, when a series of laws were issued to uphold popular morals and pious living.31 Society needed to be cleansed of collective sin. In his writings, the prominent theologian, Niels Hemmingsen, had laid out the duties incumbent on the king in regard to witches. In being granted a divine title, the king and his magistrates bore a divine responsibility to ensure and consolidate the true faith.32 This duty included the prosecution of witches. The task was explicitly singled out, for witches had renounced their faith and were essentially the extended arm of the Devil, creatures who had been recruited to fight in the final battle. Only by eradicating witches did a Lutheran king demonstrate the fulfilment of

29 The confessions of Karen Weuffers (Karen the Weaver’s wife), Maren Matts Bryggers & Maren Mogensis, 13-16 July 1590, Danish National Archive, Copenhagen, Kongens Retterting, Diverse sager og retsakter, 1590-1614. 30 En forskreckelig oc sand beskriffuelse, 1591, 11. 31 For Christian III and social and religious discipline, see M. Schwarz Lausten, Christian den 3. og Kirken 1537-1559 (Copenhagen, 1987) 129-78. 32 En Undervisning af Den Hellige Skrift, hvad mand døme skal om den store oc gruelige Gudsbespottelse som skeer med Troldom Sinelse Manelse oc anden saadan Guds hellige Naffns oc Ords vanbrug, 45, 50.

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his role as ‘God’s lieutenant on earth’.33 If the prince failed to meet this obligation, God’s wrath would be unleashed on the kingdom and it would be punished with disease, hunger or war.34 In the first decades of the seventeenth century, the ideal of the Lutheran prince grew stronger, counterbalancing a renewed preoccupation with Satan’s attacks on God and on all Christians. Lutheran orthodox propaganda drew heavily on the resemblance between the name of Christ and that of the young Danish king Christian.35 The early seventeenth century is marked by a significant change in the religious climate. The leading Danish theologian of the time, Hans Poulsen Resen, was deeply concerned with penance (bodslære), and during his lifetime the idea of penitence for collective sin gained ever more credence.36 Consequently, the following years saw major efforts to make the Danish people aware that collective sin would lead to collective divine punishment. The authorities redoubled their efforts to ensure correct beliefs and practices among the populace.37 In October 1617, the centennial of Luther was celebrated extensively. In addition to religious celebrations all over the kingdom, four laws were issued that month. They all marginalised certain activities and individuals in order to prove that the authorities did not tolerate sinful behaviour. One concerned witches (troldfolk) and those privy to them; one targeted people of loose living and adultery; one was devoted to excessive lavishness at funerals and weddings; and one focused on clothing.38 In its handwritten original ‘The regulation concerning witches (troldfolk), and those privy to them’ was entitled ‘Regulation against making the 33

Clark, Thinking with Demons, 567. Via Clark, Thinking with Demons, 567; Kallestrup, Agents of Witchcraft, 44. 35 Bach-Nielsen, Fra jubelfest, 23. 36 Resen was professor at the University from 1591-1615 and bishop of Zealand from 1615 until his death in 1638. His teachings on penance resembled those included in the Book of Concord. The former king Frederik II had declined to include what may be the most important article of the Lutheran faith, the Book of Concord, in the Danish Articles of Faith; on Frederik II and the faith, see P. Grinder Hansen, Frederik 2. Danmarks Renæssancekonge (Copenhagen, 2013) 168-77. 37 An introduction in Bach-Nielsen, Fra jubelfest, 21, as related to witchcraft, Kallestrup, Agents of Witchcraft, 48-52. 38 H.F Rørdam, Danske kirkelove samt udvalg af andre bestemmelser vedrørende kirken, skolen og de fattiges forsørgelse fra Reformationen indtil Christian v’s danske lov, 1536–1683, vol. 3 (Copenhagen, 1886), 59-63; see also http://danmarkshistorien.dk/leksikon-og-kilder/vis/ materiale/forordning-om-troldfolk-og-deres-medvidere-12-oktober-1617/ (accessed 25.04.2017); for the regulation of clothing, see G. Henningsen, ‘Da Djævelen var ude… Trolddom i det 17. århundredes Danmark’, Historisk Tidsskrift 92 (1992) 131-49 at 139; see also P. Ingesman, ‘Fromhed styrker rigerne’, in C. Bach-Nielsen et al. (eds.), Danmark og renæssancen 15001650 (Gylling, 2006) 140-42. 34

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sign of the Cross’.39 This title points towards the most important aspect of the law, namely to officially prohibit beneficial magic. It is the first law in a Danish context to define witchcraft by means of its religious aspect. The first lines of the law emphasise the ignorance and indifference towards healing magic and divination that was still prevalent in the kingdom. Such rituals should not be regarded as innocent healing remedies. They were deeply abhorrent to God, and they strengthened the Devil’s cause. Therefore, they had to be eradicated. Here God’s wrath is linked directly to the sins of the ignorant people, who refuse to see the sinfulness of their practices. In the law itself, benevolent magic was referred to as ‘secret arts’ and the ‘first alphabet of every true witch’.40 The regulation stated that magical rituals were regarded as abuse of God’s words and naturally forbidden. They were referred to as ‘witchcraft’ (trolddom) – no matter whether they were practised with the aim of curing man or beast, or whether God’s word was included. In all its shapes and forms witchcraft would incite God’s wrath. When it came to punishing the delinquent, there was a distinction between true witches (de rette troldfolk) and those indulging in secret arts (hemmelige kunster). People practising secret arts were to be banished and to leave behind their ‘property’ (boeslod)41. Their clients were equally punished. No mercy was shown to true witches. They had entered into a pact with the Devil and were to be sentenced to death, which meant being burned alive at the stake.42 The last section of the law emphasised that all men in the service of the Crown were duty-bound to pursue and prosecute witches.43 This is significant for two reasons. In the first place, it shows that the king’s obligation to eradicate witches was passed on to local authorities. This mirrored the Lutheran household as the model for the state. If the king was God’s lieutenant on earth, his representative in the fief became the commissioned 39

Forordning om signeri, via Henningsen, ‘Da Djævelen var ude…’, 138. We also find the term ‘secret arts’ in Hemmingsen’s treatise on witchcraft, En Undervisning, 36. 41 ‘Boeslod’ refers to that part of the joint estate of spouses that accrues to the other on the division of the estate in case of death, divorce or judicial separation, in witch trials, see J.C. Jacobsen, Danske domme i Trolddomssager ved højeste instans (Copenhagen, 1966) 174; for an example of this division, see Johansen, Da Djævelen var ude, 93. 42 The law does not order specific penalties, but trials confirm the stake as standard penalty, Jacobsen, Danske domme, 170, 174. 43 For a discussion of this part of the law and the law at work, see L.N. Kallestrup, ‘Constructing Witchcraft in Early Modern Denmark’, in T. Krogh, L.N. Kallestrup & C. Bundgård Christensen (eds.), Cultural Histories of Crime in Denmark, 1500-2000 (London & New York, 2017) 27-28. 40

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officer, whose duty it was to represent the Lutheran king in all matters including fulfilling his ‘divine duty’. Secondly, the provision is significant in reflecting the standard procedures in trials for witchcraft. The great majority of trials were initiated from below, usually by local villagers, who had themselves fallen victim to witchcraft. When priests or others of similar status initiated trials, it was likewise due to a fear of being a victim of witchcraft. This persisted, at least when it involved malevolent magic. However, my preliminary studies of court records show that when it came to prosecuting ‘cunning’ folk and people denounced by other witches, there were more concerted efforts from the king’s lieutenants to initiate trials, and this suggests their compliance with what had now become a legal obligation to eradicate sin. We might entertain an anachronistic picture of the ‘cunning’ man or woman as the healer offering aid to the sick and weak. However, studies have shown that those individuals involved in witch trials usually existed on the margins of society and that their reputations were tarnished or poor. Sometimes they had loose ties within the fief and therefore failed to attend church, and this was the most obvious sign of their position outside the Christian community. These individuals, marginalised villagers or itinerants, were ascribed a position of power, which was predicated on a correspondence between their access to the supernatural and the villagers’ need for magical services. However, their power was closely linked to the fear they generated in local society.44 The final part of this article will take a closer look at this kind of marginalisation and how the persecution of these individuals contributed to strengthening Lutheran ideology at the local level. The King’s Lieutenants and the Witch Trials Early modern Denmark was divided into about 200 fiefs that were administered by the king’s lieutenants. The majority of the king’s lieutenants were members of the higher nobility, and several of them had attended European universities. They had often been rewarded with the fief following faithful service in war, politics, and/or national administration. Basically, a king’s lieutenant was the administrator and owner of an estate and at the same time the king’s representative in the fief. The fief reflected the state on a smaller scale, and the king’s lieutenant was the father of the 44 See, for example, the case of Påske Rasmussen, in Kallestrup, Agents of Witchcraft, 123-24.

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house. Therefore, he was obliged to broadcast new laws and to initiate trials against offenders. In the present context, the obligation to initiate trials is of particular interest, because, following the division of jurisdiction after the Reformation, the king’s lieutenants had the responsibility for prosecuting religious and disciplinary/moral offences such as witchcraft and fornication.45 My initial survey of the cases from eastern Jutland has shown how the king’s lieutenants did indeed take the ‘divine duty’ to prosecute witches seriously, not least by initiating trials against cunning folk and prosecuting those who had been denounced (udlagte) by convicted witches. The region is interesting for several reasons. It was one of two regions in which the most intense prosecution for witchcraft took place in Denmark. In addition, in 1617 the king’s lieutenants of the fiefs of the region were all members of the inner circle around the Danish king. They administered the fiefs of Mariager, Skanderborghus and Kalø and were members of the few families of the higher nobility who had been part of the power elite of the kingdom and closely linked to King Christian IV for generations. Eske Bille of Mariager and Lauritz Ebbesen of Skanderborghus (Åkjær & Hads) were both personal favourites of the King. Jørgen Skeel of Kalø was a leading figure in national politics and a field marshal and head of the army.46 The early trials show us a general picture of some of these king’s lieutenants already initiating trials before the law was issued. In the following, the emphasis is on these earliest identifiable trials from the spring of 1617. It is significant that even though men in the king’s service were not yet legally bound to initiate trials until late 1617, some king’s lieutenants brought denunciations to court already in early 1617.47 This indicates that the king’s lieutenants in the region were either personally motivated to persecute witches, or they were aware of the upcoming law and the obligation to eradicate witches. Either way the king’s lieutenants took their task to initiate trials seriously.

45 For a discussion of the transferral of jurisdiction after the Reformation and witchcraft, see Kallestrup, Agents of Witchcraft, 35-36; and more in general Schwarz Lausten, Christian III og kirken, 129-78. 46 Jørgen Skeel to Sostrup, C.F. Bricka (ed.), Dansk Biografisk Lexikon, vol. XVI, 29-31. 47 Trials are likely to have been initiated earlier in the fiefs of Eastern Jutland, but no court records are preserved from the region from before 1616. For an overview of the preserved protocols, see Johansen, Da Djævelen var ude, 16.

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Fear of the Evil Woman – the Ambiguity of the Marginal In the wave of trials in eastern Jutland, the earliest case we can identify was that of Karen Føutin from Djursland.48 The king’s lieutenant, Jørgen Skeel, brought the case to court in the early spring of 1617, i.e., before the law against witches had been issued. Karen Føutin, well known in her local society as a performer of various kinds of magical rituals, and feared for her malignant intentions, fitted a popular narrative of witches. She was socially marginalised and drifted from place to place. A witness referred to her being a cripple and her ill temper had once led to her arrest. As seen from other cases against cunning folk, Karen used the fear she caused among villagers to position herself in local society.49 A witness stated that Karen had voiced threats that she would make him so frightened that he would run into the sea and drown himself. This had so scared the witness that he had begged for his life, and for God to come to his aid. In her confession, Karen claimed that ‘she had been drinking from the Devil’s blood and he drank hers, and this is how she learned her [evil] arts’.50 This popular narrative of the witch was rooted in Nordic folklore, which was filled with evil women. Such women controlled evil powers and targeted them against their enemies. In the eyes of villagers, this meant that such people were able to give both good and evil fortune and health to people and livestock.51 Witches were not the only kind of evil women in early medieval folklore, but during the middle ages they had become the prototype of the evil woman in Scandinavia.52 In parish churches, evil women were depicted on murals side by side with stories from the Bible. Scenes of women churning butter with help from the devil or even women beating the devil are reminiscent of the misdeeds of witches known from the court records.53 In the murals, they were situated next to the biblical stories depicting upright Christian behaviour and living as a contrast that 48 The case against Karen Andersdatter Føutin, National Archive, Viborg, Viborg Landstings Dombøger, 78v-85r. 49 Kallestrup, Agents of Witchcraft, especially the case of Påske Rasmussen, 123-24. 50 The case against Karen Andersdatter Føutin, National Archive, Viborg, Viborg Landstings Dombøger, 79r. 51 In the nineteenth and early twentieth century, E.T. Kristensen (1843-1929) documented popular stories and traditions by collecting Danish folklore especially in the heaths of Jutland. The thousands of stories were published in an eight volume collection, Danske sagn som de har lydt i folkemunde, 8 vols (Copenhagen, 1928-36), and it forms an important source for investigations into popular tradition. 52 S. Mitchell, Witchcraft and Magic in the Nordic Middle Ages (Pennsylvania, 2011) 180-81. 53 On the narrative of evil women fusing with the narrative of witches in Denmark, see my article ‘‘‘He Promised Her So Many Things”: Witches, Sabbats, and Devils in Early Modern Denmark’, in J. Goodare et al. (eds.), Demonology and Witch-Hunting (Oxford, 2018).

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helped underline the evil intentions of these powerful women.54 The stories of evil women corrupting men and challenging male society were in line with a popular narrative characterised by a fear of matriarchy and of wicked women controlling evil and deploying it against their enemies.55 This narrative was confronted by Peder Palladius. In his Visitatsbog, he shot down popular notions that the Devil feared the vengeful and evil woman.56 As the theologians knew, the Devil feared no one but God. Besides being feared by villagers, Karen Føutin challenged social norms. The parish priest testified that he had admonished Karen Føutin from the pulpit for her ungodly living, which meant the entire parish had listened to the clergyman expound upon her immoral way of living. In court, she stated that she had not received communion for eight years; this underlined her exclusion from the Christian community. Following the Reformation, communion had become the most important sacrament of the church. The ritual determined whether or not you were included in the local community, because only those parishioners who had confessed their sins to the parish priest were allowed to receive communion.57 Adulterers, those

54 Mitchell, Witchcraft and Magic, 183. On women and their status in society following the Reformation, see especially the works of L. Roper, including The Holy Household (Oxford, 1991), on gender and crime see G. Walker, Crime, Gender and Social Disorder in early Modern England (Cambridge, 2008). 55 For this narrative of women as especially Nordic, see Mitchell, Witchcraft and Magic, 176. 56 ‘It is utter lies, when they say that even the devil is afraid of her. He is not afraid of no one, except God. They even say, that when he wanted to give her a new pair of shoes, he handed them to her on a long stick, because he himself did not dare approach the old witch. This is utter lie. Why would he not dare this, since every witch is the Devil’s milkmaid; she milks him and he milks her back, and they milk each other straight into the pits of hell’, Peder Palladius, En Visitatsbog, transl. by M. Schwarz Lausten (Copenhagen, 2003) 119. The evil woman referred to here is Sko Ella. According to popular tradition (cf. AarneThompson-Uther classification 1353) she was wicked and evil in a way that made even the Devil fear her. She had helped the Devil break up married people by revealing to the wife that her husband was an adulterer and to make him a good husband again, the wife would have to bring Sko Ella a lock of his beard. To the husband, Sko Ella said that his wife would kill him while he was asleep at night. When the wife had sneaked up to cut off a lock of the beard, the husband was prepared for her coming to kill him and the married couple had ended up killing each other. Witnessing this sly cruelty made even the Devil fear Sko Ella, and when he was to hand her the reward – a pair of shoes – for a job well done, he passed them to her on a stick, because he did not dare come close to her. Varieties of the story existed, for instance in the writings of Martin Luther as “The Devil’s tyranny against married couples”, for the reference see http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/type1353.html (as seen 19.12.2017) 57 This was laid forward in the Church Ordinance, which provided the legal fundament for the reformed church published in Latin in 1537 and in Danish in 1539. Full text and introduction published by M. Schwarz Lausten, as Kirkeordinansen 1537/1539 (Copenhagen, 1989) 185-86.

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with irregular lifestyles, witches and the like were excluded.58 Unrepentant sinners should be banned. The importance of complying with this was underlined in the Church Ordinance, where an apocalyptic reference to it indicated that it was especially important to observe this and to issue the most serious sanction ‘in these the last of days’.59 The court records do not carry information about Karen Føutin being married, at least not while she was on trial. Nevertheless, she admitted to the court that she had seven children with six different men, though there was one whose name she could no longer remember. One of these children, a daughter named Maren Madsdatter, was also on trial but seemingly she was not formally charged.60 In addition, Karen admitted to having sexual relations with 18 different married men. Usually in witch trials, the court records do no more than emphasise the threats posed by the suspected witch and the accidents and illnesses caused by her, and this kind of information about immoral and un-Christian living was not standard in Danish trials. Its inclusion here supports the notion that Jørgen Skeel was carrying out his duties as head of the household in his fief by going after suspects who were openly contravening pious Christian living on more than one point. The subsequent trial initiated by Jørgen Skeel supports this. In her confession, Karen Føutin gave the names of two other women, whom she claimed were also witches. Following this, the king’s lieutenant did not hesitate to have his bailiff initiate cases against these two women. One of them was Bodil Ibsdatter Hoffuens.61 When she was brought to court, numerous witnesses soon showed up to testify against Bodil Hoffuens. A male villager was the one to formally take the case further when he charged her with bewitching his cows. However, 50 others confirmed that Bodil Hoffuens was the ‘sharpest witch (troldkvinde) in the land of Jutland’. Like Karen Føutin, she was indeed a potential suspect. The trial includes many testimonies of Bodil being able to control supernatural powers, of her ability to diagnose and cure using spells, and of payments people had made to her for these purposes. Some

58 The Church Ordinance included four groups, which should be excluded from receiving the sacrament, 1. Those who are banned, 2. Those who are hardened heretics, 3. The mad [persons] and simple children and finally, 4. Those who live a life in open sin, Kirkeordinansen 1537/1539, 186. 59 Kirkeordinansen 1537/1539, 194. 60 This is supported by the list of witch trials published as appendix in Johansen, Da Djævelen var ude, 242-82. 61 National Archive, Viborg, Viborg Landstings Dombøger, B, 1617, fol. 205v-219r.

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of these testimonies also show that people believed that Bodil could harm people with evil powers. One man accused Bodil of bewitching his wife. The wife had gone ‘mad and threatening’, and had stabbed herself with a knife, almost killing herself. After this, the wife had run off. Apparently, the wife, at some point, had come to her senses and returned, because in court she confirmed that she had been ‘sick and badly injured’ due to Bodil’s witchcraft. The case against Bodil demonstrates how ambivalent was the perception of the cunning folk brought to trial. A few witnesses testified in court about various incidents in which Bodil had cured them or their livestock of witchcraft. The status of the witch becomes even more opaque in the case of Rasmus Jensen, whose cows had stopped producing milk. He sent for Bodil, who promised to cure the cows, if he would give her some linen. Bodil then warned Rasmus Jensen, saying that if he did not pay her, she would make sure that he would lose his milk again. He had then hastened to dispatch his servant boy ‘on horseback’ to pay her, indicating his eagerness not to risk incurring her displeasure. In the majority of the trials in eastern Jutland in 1617-1618, including that of Bodil’s, the suspects were known as ‘cunning women’ and they had a series of dissatisfied customers. When they were taken to court, their benign activities in finding cures and diagnoses were outweighed by suspicions of malevolence. In court, they would be referred to as ‘witch’ or as ‘infamous for her witchcraft’ (spøgeri og trolddom), as in Bodil’s case. Here two villagers confirmed: ‘48 men had witnessed that they knew Bodil Ibsdatter Hoffuens for 300 years had been known to be a witch and she was known to practice witchcraft.’62

Bodil seem to have had a habit of being demanding and to haggle about payment. In such cases, she did not hesitate to threaten to take back the cure – and in court witnesses responded with a sort of payback. This placed her in a fragile position of power, and vulnerable to a king’s lieutenant’s attempt to clean up his fief. A close reading of the testimonies made against Bodil Hoffuens prove, not surprisingly, that witnesses emphasised the evil and harm she had caused. Villagers feared her ill will, but more generally, villagers feared ‘the evil will of evil people’. In general, Danish trials were about witches being a threat to the livelihood of villagers. Incapacity for work or loss of livestock 62

National Archive, Viborg, Viborg Landstings Dombøger, B, 1617, fol. 215r.

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could ruin a family. One witness recalled how three years earlier he had been walking about in the bushes and a small thorn had touched upon his leg. He instantly became frightened, thinking that he would die. Naturally Bodil was to blame. There is no mention of the small poisonous snake, a viper, which might originally have caused him such fear.63 In court, the essence of the story was that Bodil controlled supernatural powers and this made people fear her. Another woman had told him that evil people had bewitched him, and he had called on Bodil to cure him. When he wanted to pay her with money, linen, and some malt, Bodil had refused to help, unless she could have a certain cloth, on which she had set her heart. The testimonies against these ‘witches’ reflect how they themselves played along with the fear that they caused. In court, a woman needed a legal guardian to present her defence, and this was rarely available. In Bodil’s case, her husband had run off the minute his wife was arrested – he was later convicted of witchcraft, too.64 In contrast to this lack of defence was the emphasis placed by witnesses on their own trust in God – often using the phrase ‘God only knows’ – and underpinned by stressing the fear witches spread and their unreasonable and demanding attitude when their cures were needed.65 The Torture Chamber and the Confession of a Witch Since 1547 Danish law had ordered that no person be tortured before a guilty verdict had been pronounced. As a consequence, when a witch was sent to the torture chamber, her fate had already been sealed. She was to be burned alive at the stake. The interrogators had a threefold agenda with torture. First, the witch had to confess when, where, and in whose company, she had renounced God and her Christian baptism and given herself to the devil. Second, she had to give the names of fellow witches. And third, the witch had to confess to all her malevolent deeds. This third part was basically a repetition of the accusations against her alongside an admission of having harmed co-villagers through evil and vengefulness. Usually the witch would surrender at least two to three names, often of ill-reputed people in nearby parishes. Others were totally random, and more rarely some could be family members. 63

National Archive, Viborg, Viborg Landstings Dombøger, B, 1617, fol. 213r. The fact that Bodil’s husband fled the parish was included in this trial as evidence of his guilt as well as hers, National Archive, Viborg, Viborg Landstings Dombøger, B, 1617, fol. 205v-219r. 65 For the social negotiation taking place in court, see Kallestrup, Agents of Witchcraft, ch. 9. 64

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The witch herself probably only had one agenda, which was to reduce her sufferings as much as possible – and for good reason. Many did not survive the trial as a result either of poor conditions in prison or of suicide, but also due to the brutality of torture. Many gave up names they thought the interrogators wanted to hear, only to withdraw their denunciation just before the stake. Bodil gave up the name of a woman she did not know, and later withdrew this denunciation. Executions were public events and usually drew large audiences. It is worth noting the venue of these executions. Bodil received her final sentence in Viborg, which was about 70 km from her village. She was then sent back to her home parish and executed on a nearby gallows hill. Execution could even take place on the same day as her return. Before the witch was tied to a ladder and pushed onto the stake, her confession was read aloud to the spectators, who had crowded on the gallows hill, and a clergyman would ask if she repented her deeds. If so, she was offered absolution. In the torture chamber, the witch would have confessed in order to reduce the pain. The recipient was the interrogator, who questioned her according to a standard formula. Now, the same statements, maybe in other words, were repeated, but the emotional and spatial context had changed.66 Among the spectators at the execution were her co-villagers and others from local society – people who had known her, feared and accused her. What they witnessed was a penitent witch, admitting to having given herself to the Devil as well as having collaborated with other witches in order to harm their neighbours. The statements were transferred from a closed, almost private room to a public sphere with local society as the audience.67 The offence was presented according to the law. She was condemned as a true witch, i.e., she had entered into a pact with the Devil. This was followed by a summary of the grounds for the verdict. In Bodil’s case, this meant that she had been sentenced for threatening her neighbours and for causing

66 On emotional spaces and the change of space, see A. Rizzi, ‘Violent Language in Early Fifteenth-Century Italy: The Emotions of Invectives’, 145-58; S. Broomhall, ‘Violence and Emotions in Early Modern Europe’, 1-18 at 6, both in S. Broomhall and S. Finn (eds.), Violence and Emotions in Early Modern Europe (London and New York, 2015). 67 This part of the legal actions does not leave any evidence in the protocol; however, it was common practice when executing a delinquent for a criminal offence to read aloud the offence, if the delinquent confessed, and refer to the law. In other trials for witchcraft, witnesses refer to a confession read out aloud before a given execution. In the trial against Paaske Rasmussen, a cunning man from western Jutland convicted of witchcraft in 1618, two witnesses relate that they had witnessed an execution and that they had listened to the witch’s confession read aloud just before she was pushed into the flames. The trial of Paaske Rasmussen, National Archive, Viborg, Viborg Landstings Dombøger, C, 1618, fols. 163r-174v; the trial is discussed in Kallestrup, Agents of Witchcraft, 123-24.

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their misfortunes, especially the misfortunes of Peder Christensen’s cows. It was also revealed how she had been denounced by Karen Føutin, which underlined her association with individuals who stood outside the community of godly villagers. The final parts of the verdict are interesting in this context, because they show the overlap between social and religious marginalisation. The statements of the local clergyman were repeated in the verdict. He had confirmed Bodil’s ‘evil reputation for being a witch’, hereby demonstrating that he and others were very much aware of her association with evil powers. He did not himself initiate a trial, but his testimony weighed heavily in the ears of the judges. This was regarded evidence not only of Bodil’s guilt but also of the husband’s, as they ‘were together tied in evil living and business’.68 As can be seen, the offences committed by the delinquent were presented at the execution, and these gave grounds for the severity of the penalty. The confession of the witch was structured according to law on witchcraft. She had forsaken God and entered into a pact with the Devil. The spectators knew only too well how a witch would harm her neighbours, and by executing her the authorities, represented by the king’s lieutenant, confirmed and legitimised the fear of evil people. Here, the social and religious marginalisation of the witch fused and their narratives were transmitted and repeated. Conclusion Emotions of anger and fear formed part of the social as well as the religious marginalisation of witches in the century following the Reformation in Denmark. Subject to social as well as religious marginalisation, the twofold nature of the crime of witchcraft was linked to their marginalisation. Witches were regarded as a sign of Satan’s agency and became integrated in the eschatological narratives of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The Lutheran king had a divine duty to eradicate witches in order to mitigate divine wrath. Fear of God’s wrath and the need for penitence was the only path to follow, and this was communicated through various media, as the number of news pamphlets increased after the last decade of the sixteenth century. Descriptions of the horror caused by natural disasters were used to enlighten the populace about the 68 National Archive, Viborg, Viborg Landstings Dombøger, B, 1617, the verdict fol. 218r-219r; the husband was afterwards found guilty of witchcraft in absentia. National Archive in Viborg (Rigsarkivet), Viborg Landstings Dombøger, B, 1617, fol. 362v-364r.

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need for penitence. Even though these disasters took place far away from the kingdom, they should not be ignored. Disasters in remote areas were as much signs of God’s anger as the plague and war that struck the kingdom. Such stories were supported by the spoken word of God in churches and by the murals on the churches’ walls. Collective sin made the kingdom vulnerable and opened the way to diabolical agency. In this context the series of witch trials of the 1590s, most prominently the witch trials relating to the royal fleet, supported the notion of diabolical agency, sin, and the need for penitence. The notion of collective sin and the need for penance grew stronger in the years up until the Lutheran centennial. Leading theologians explicitly promoted Lutheran ideas and the idea of the Lutheran king as head of the state household. The laws promulgated in October 1617 reflect the notion of the Lutheran king as responsible for eradicating collective sin, and at the same time project this task onto the institutional levels of the kingdom. In this sense witches were marginalised as the worst offenders against God and as a threat to all godly people. In addition, witches were perceived as a real threat to local society on account of the harm they inflicted on humans and livestock. Especially in the early trials, conducted around 1617, many of the suspects had a longstanding reputation for being witches. These individuals were marginalised socially, not least as a result of the fear they caused in local society. Like Karen Føutin, they might be itinerant from parish to parish, or, despite their benign function as cunning folk, they might have had a reputation as evil-doers. Such popular narratives of evil women permeated the Danish trials, and was particularly prevalent in cases against the socially marginalised. In the cases against alleged witches, narratives supporting a social marginalisation of evil people came to fuse with the religious marginalisation of witches perpetrated by the authorities. Not only was Karen Føutin arrested for ill temper prior to her witch trials, she had also been excluded from the Christian community for not receiving communion for eight years. When villagers presented themselves in court, they would emphasise their own trust in God and place themselves in a tight community of good Christian people, within which the witch was regarded a threat. In the Danish trials, the court represented an emotional space in which emotives and narratives accentuated the marginalisation of the witch. When witnesses articulated their stories of fear of the witch and of her anger, these emotives were reinforced and the contrast between the good Christian and the evil woman increased. This was further supported by the legal actions taken by the authorities, when the king’s lieutenants ordered a

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suspected witch to be prosecuted. Witch trials became media for bolstering the Lutheranism of the kingdom and for the king’s lieutenant to demonstrate that he did not tolerate sinners in his fief. But at the same time the trials also enabled the king’s lieutenant to demonstrate his compliance with Lutheran divine duty and the king’s efforts to evade God’s wrath.

X. MUTATIONS OF RELIGIOUS AUTHORITY IN CONTEMPORARY NORWAY  MARGINALITY AND MEDIATISATION IN THE CASE OF THE MAN FROM SNÅSA Ingvild Sælid Gilhus

Introduction Joralf Gjerstad (b. 1926) is a former diary-assistant and a bell-ringer in the Church of Norway.1 He is also a clairvoyant healer. Gjerstad heals by laying on hands, as well as via phone-calls, and it is said that more than 50 000 people have consulted him.2 Gjerstad’s fame has mutated from being primarily connected to his local habitat, Snåsa, a rural area ca. 500 kilometers from Oslo, and by the slightly derogatory, but also endearing name Snåsakaill’n (‘the old man from Snåsa’), into his current nation-wide fame, as seen by the use of the nickname Snåsamannen (‘the man from Snåsa’) as well as, finally, by his own name. He has become a media celebrity, known by virtually everyone in Norway.3 Recently the Church of Norway has also paid special attention to him. Healing is at the core of the narratives about him, and these narratives resonate not only with local healing traditions but also with the stories about the healing miracles of Jesus in the gospels.4 They describe Gjerstad as charismatic, kind, and in some ways marginal. In this chapter, I will use a media-theoretical framework, inspired by the Danish media scholar Stig Hjarvard and his views of ‘mediatisation’. Hjarvard defines ‘mediatisation’ as ‘the social and cultural process through 1 I wish to express my gratitude towards Astrid Krabbe Trolle for reading and commenting on an earlier version of this chapter. I have benefited greatly from her comments. 2 This includes ca. 1 % of the population of Norway. 3 The media history of Gjerstad implies that an oral, local and private transmission has been changed to a public one, cf. S.J.W. Hoff, ‘“Ja, vi tror på Snåsamannen”: Fortellinger om folkemedisin i modern massemedia’, Tidsskrift for kulturforskning 8/3 (2010) 5-18 at 8. 4 In Snåsa, a tradition of healers goes back to the eighteenth century, cf. S. Mathisen, ‘Continuity and change in the tradition of folk medicine’, Scandinavian Yearbook of Folklore 44 (1998) 169-98.

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which a field or institution to some extent become dependent on the logic of the media’.5 According to him, the media have become ‘a more autonomous, independent institution in society’, and at the same time they ‘have become integrated into the workings of other social institutions’.6 Mediatisation theory refers to a ‘media logic,’ which – more or less – determines the shape of what is mediated. In the analysis of the case of Joralf Gjerstad, I will focus on the interaction between the media and the Church of Norway, which is the main religious institution in the country, in combination with a spatial model of religious distribution in society that I present below. My aim is to show how mediatisation not only supports processes of secularization, but also processes of ‘religionification’ in contemporary Norway. I concentrate on books, films, television programs and newspaper articles, but will also refer briefly to the internet forums of the newspapers. What does the story about Joralf Gjerstad say about marginality, media, and the transformation of religious authority in contemporary Norway? How are the relations between marginality and authority figured in his case? In which ways do media contribute to changes in religious authority in Norway today? Healing Narratives Gjerstad has authored four memoirs – the first two by local publishing houses in his home county, Trøndelag, and the last two by one of the leading Norwegian publishers, Gyldendal.7 In his memoirs, Gjerstad promotes a lay form of Norwegian Christianity with roots in family values, the nation, and rural tradition. He gives the impression of being a thoughtful and pious Christian who regards his alleged healing powers and clairvoyance as gifts that cannot be explained, but which nevertheless form part of his Christian worldview. A journalist from his home county, Arvid Erlandsen (b. 1927), wrote the first biography about him in 2000. The book was sold in 10.000 copies and consolidated Gjerstad’s local fame. The title is Warm-Hearted and with Warm Hands: The Sorcerer from Snåsa Narrates to Arvid Erlandsen (my translation).8 The main title picks up on the two characteristics that the 5 S. Hjarvard, ‘The mediatization of religion: Theorising religion, media and social change’, Culture and Religion 12/2 (2011) 119-35 at 119. 6 Hjarvard, ‘The mediatization’, 122; emphasis in the original. 7 J. Gjerstad, Det godes vilje: Minner fra liv og virke (Snåsa, 2004); J. Gjerstad, Å stå i lyset (Steinkjer, 2006); J. Gjerstad, Den gode kraften (Oslo, 2010); J. Gjerstad, De gode gjerninger (Oslo, 2012). 8 A. Erlandsen, Med varmt hjerte og varme hender: Trollmannen fra Snåsa forteller til Arvid Erlandsen (Namsos, 2000).

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news media usually concentrate on – Gjerstad’s healing abilities and his kindness. The term ‘sorcerer’ in the subtitle, stressing Gjerstad’s miraculous powers, is a quote from the explorer Helge Ingstad, whose knee was cured by Gjerstad according to Erlandsen’s biography.9 The book consists of more than fifty sub-chapters and presents thirty healing narratives in addition to a biographical narrative about Gjerstad, details of his relation to the church and his relations to his home county. According to Erlandsen, Gjerstad is ‘the man with a very special gift of grace’.10 The subchapters have titles like ‘Parked the wheel chairs’, ‘A real healer!’ ‘She sees!’, and ‘He hears!’ (my translations).11 Clearly, the book is written from a position of admiration. In 2006, Gjerstad was presented on a national television programme that was viewed by 503 000 people.12 Two years later, the journalist and prize-winning author, Ingar Sletten Kolloen, published a biography with the title The Force that Heals.13 This book proved to be a turning point.14 Due to the popularity of the book and the concomitant media hype, Gjerstad, then 82 years old, went from local to national fame. 135 000 copies of the book were sold, which is a high number in Norway. In Kolloen’s presentation, the lay Christian view on Gjerstad is downplayed and the focus is on his healing powers.15 In January 2016, the film director, film producer, and screen writer Margreth Olin released the documentary ‘Mannen fra Snåsa’ (The Man from Snåsa). Olin is the recipient of several film awards, and her documentary sold 100 000 tickets during its first two weeks in the cinemas. This was the best opening for a documentary in Norway ever.16 The documentary paints a touching picture of Gjerstad as an empathic and kind man who can indeed heal people. The film gives the impression of supporting the belief in Gjerstad’s healing powers. In addition, Gjerstad has powerful supporters who promote him because they have consulted him and believe in him. An author and former chief of police, Hanne Kristine Rohde, has stated publicly that he has healed her youngest son. A high-profile lawyer, Cato Schiøtz, has claimed that the 9

Erlandsen, Med varmt hjerte, 13 ‘Mannen med en helt spesiell nådegave’; Erlandsen Med varmt hjerte, 214. 11 All translations in this article are my own. 12 ‘Kjenner du varmen?’ NRK. 9. In 2009, TV 2 presented ‘Møter med Snåsamannen’. Cf. Hoff, ‘Ja, vi tror på Snåsamannen’. 13 I.S. Kolloen, Snåsamannen: Kraften som helbreder (Oslo, 2008). 14 S.E. Kraft, ‘Kjenner du varmen? Om Kolloens snåsamann’, Nytt Norsk Tidsskrift 27/3 (2010) 243-53. 15 Kraft, ‘Kjenner du varmen?’, 249-50. 16 http://www.aftenposten.no/kultur/Dokumentaren-om-Snasamannen-har-solgt100000-kinobilletter-9469b.html (visited 11.07.2016). 10

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evidence for Joralf Gjerstad’s supernatural abilities is so strong that it would hold up in court. According to some newspapers, the queen of Norway initiated a meeting with Gjerstad at the castle in Oslo in 2010.17 Respectable members of society as well as famous celebrities thus lend credibility to the healing stories, and the interaction between the celebrity endorsement and media attention creates a feedback loop that strengthens and intensifies the media impact. While a host of books, television programs, and films mediate the extraordinary powers of Joralf Gjerstad and offer personal testimonies about successful healings, some newspaper articles offer more critical perspectives on his alleged powers. The minister of health, Bjarne Håkon Hansen, related that he had once, before he became minister, consulted Gjerstad on the phone to treat the colic of his new-born son. This story led to headlines and a massive debate in the media.18 According to Hjarvard, when ‘religion is discussed in factual and journalistic genres such as news, current affairs, and political debates, a rational kind of authority tends to dominate, often with the effect of marginalizing the authority of religious actors and viewpoints’.19 Frequently, however, newspaper articles are not very critical, and even in the journalistic genres, where a rational approach is usually dominant, Joralf Gjerstad tends to be treated uncritically. One example is a journalist who managed to get a private meeting with Gjerstad at the press conference in connection with the publication of Kolloen’s biography. She represented a newspaper that is usually critical of Christianity and the Church, but nevertheless she writes: ‘He laid his big warm hand on my very sore shoulder. The shoulder did not hurt anymore when I cycled from there’.20 It is also rather striking that journalists tend not to question Gjerstad’s healing powers, but instead unquestioningly assume the existence of these powers. Still, some critical voices have been heard. The most prominent among Gjerstad’s critics is probably Kristian Gundersen. He has written the book, 17 http://www.dagbladet.no/2010/09/17/nyheter/snasamannen/overtro/healing/13432592/ (visited 19.08.2016). 18 VG 26.01.2009: http://www.vg.no/forbruker/helse/helse-og-medisin/snaasamannenkurerte-min-soenn/a/546595/ (visited 18.08.2016), cf. S.E. Kraft, ‘Ja, vi elsker Snåsamannen! En analyse av mediedekningen i kjølvannet av helseminister Bjarne Håkon Hanssens telefonhealingopplevelse’, Din 1-2 (2010) 121-39. 19 S. Hjarvard, ‘Mediatization and the changing authority of religion’, Media, Culture & Society 38/1 (2016) 8-17 at 14. 20 Dagbladet 20.10.08, my translation, http://www.dagbladet.no/kultur/2008/10/10/549796. html (visited 10.09.2016) (‘Han la sin store varme pote på min særdeles vonde skulder. Skuldra var ikke vond da jeg syklet derfra’).

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Snåsakoden: En kunnskapsbasert guide til alternativ medisin (‘The SnåsaCode: A Knowledge-Based Guide to Alternative Medicine’). The book is written from the perspective of the natural sciences and evidence-based medicine. Gundersen is a professor of biology, a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, and a board member of the University of Oslo – and an active participant in media debates. In his book, Gundersen uses Gjerstad as a summarising symbol and chief example of alternative medicine.21 According to Gundersen, Gjerstad ‘has attained a unique status in the media by being totally above critical journalism. Not even the members of the royal family have this kind of status today’.22 Gundersen clearly has a point. In addition to some critical newspaper articles, the lively discussions on the internet-forums of the newspapers do include critical voices about Gjerstad’s healing powers and thus show a more nuanced picture. What sort of narratives do the media tell about Joralf Gjerstad? The theologian Rolv Nøtvik Jakobsen stresses the similarity between what Jesus did in the gospels and the healing stories told about Gjerstad.23 The cultural scientist Torunn Selberg points out that the personal stories about Gjerstad’s healings share in the universal structures of healing narratives. She too mentions the biblical connection, but says that the biblical motifs in the healing narratives ‘are more an echo of the stories about Jesus’ healings than deliberate references to biblical stories’,24 which seems very much to the point. However, the resonance with the stories about the healing miracles of Jesus is highly relevant, because this resonance connects Gjerstad to key elements in Christianity and implicitly to Jesus. Further elements connect Gjerstad to Jesus. The stories stress, for instance, that he does not take money from the people he attempts to heal.

21 Kristian Gundersen makes a comparison between theology, which has a special position among the sciences, because of its relation to God, and alternative medicine. He finds that both have special norms of truth for research and for the evaluation of medical treatments. They do not test whether the medicine works, but whether people like it (Gundersen, Snåsakoden, 272). 22 ‘Han fikk også en helt unik status i media ved å være hevet over kritisk journalistikk. En slik status blir ikke engang kongehuset til del i vår tid’ (K. Gundersen, Snåsakoden: En kunnskapbasert guide til alternativ medisin (Oslo, 2013) 7). Cf. also R. Johanson, Snåsamannen: Helbredelsene, spådommene, løgnene (Oslo, 2014). 23 R.N. Jakobsen, ‘Call me Joralf: Frå Snåsakailln til Snåsmannen – ei litterær utviklingshistorie’, Kirke og Kultur 2 (2010) 130-53. Jacobsen suggests that the activities of Jesus should be interpreted more in the direction of vernacular medicine and folk medicine. The suggestion of a reciprocal explanatory power between the healing narratives of Jesus and those of Joralf Gjerstad is worth noting. 24 T. Selberg, ‘Vernacular Medicine, Narratives and Miracles. Healing Narratives in the Context of Popular Storytelling’, Arv: Nordic Yearbook of Folklore 72 (2016) 11-28 at 22.

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This information is connected to the idea that true religion should come free of charge.25 The principle of not asking for money makes Gjerstad similar to Jesus and the apostles and a marked contrast to those New Age healers who sell their services for money. Additionally, and in opposition to some New Age healers, Gjerstad points out that he has not learnt healing by means of a course. In other words, he is a natural born healer, who has received his ability to heal as a divine gift.26 Marginality A miraculous healer is a type of religiously marginal person frequently encountered in various religions. The authority of the healer is built on the ascription of charismatic power and an alleged intersection between the human and the super-human spheres. In the case of Gjerstad, additional traits of marginality add to his allure. Chief among them is his high age combined with a special geographical background and a particular type of folk-cultural belonging. Joralf Gjerstad belongs to an age segment that usually gets only very little positive attention in the media. Except for the late philosopher Arne Næss, there are few octogenarians or nonagenarians who are the darlings of the Norwegian media. In Gjerstad’s case, his age adds to his uniqueness and makes him fit the role of the wise old man. He appears to be modest and kind in a way that makes people see him as an ideal grandfather or great-grandfather. Perhaps his high age also makes him more harmless and less prone to criticism? While Gjerstad is a highly respected member of the community at Snåsa, he belongs geographically to a region that from an urban point of view, and especially from Oslo, the capital of Norway, tends to be seen as the Norwegian periphery. He is marginal in relation to the urban centres and the religious views of most of the journalists who write about him, and most likely also to the majority of those who read about him. Geographical distance from a centre, a rural milieu, and old age belong to more general types of marginality in an urbanized world. When they, in 25 Cf. L. Mikaelsson, ‘New Age and the spirit of capitalism: energy as cognitive currency’, in S. Sutcliffe et al. (eds.), New Age Spirituality: Rethinking Religion (Durham, 2013) 160-73. 26 The motif of delegitimising those who sell their services for money and the motif of having spiritual powers while being uneducated are traditional in Christianity. The first is connected especially to Simon Magus in Acts 8, while the second is found, for instance, in Athanasius’ Life of Antony as discussed by Jan N. Bremmer in this volume.

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the case of Gjerstad, are used to promote him, the narrative also plays on a broader Norwegian nostalgic relationship to one’s rural, geographical roots and to primary industries such as farming and fishing. Gjerstad’s geographical marginality in a rural milieu is an expression of what is regarded as a typical Norwegian background for many – remote, but cherished. Norwegian media love, for instance, to report about persons who live difficult lives on small, old-fashioned farms or in the wilderness. According to the scholar of religion, Siv Ellen Kraft, ‘Snåsamannen is the old man next door, a version of Norwegian ideals in miniature’.27 She sees Norwegian discourses on national identity as one of the success-criteria behind the career of Joralf Gjerstad.28 When discourses of marginality are used for marketing a person, it happens for a reason. It means that this type of marginality has become an asset, as in the case of Joralf Gjerstad. He may still be regarded as marginal, but his marginality is processed and adapted to a purpose and, in his case, used to paint a positive picture of a healer with superhuman backing. Do the media have a form of agency in his case and do they contribute to changes in the religious landscape? Mediatisation and Changes in the Religious Landscape Religion has always been a marginal theme in newspapers and life-style magazines in Norway and it still is (ca. 2 %). In Norwegian media, ‘religion’ used to mean simply ‘Christianity’. This situation is changing. Religion is, to a higher extent, controversial in the media today, and ‘religion’ may mean several different things, in addition to Christianity. Indeed, in current Norwegian newspapers, religion tends to be Islam. In the life style magazines, it tends to be New Age spirituality.29 We do see some competition from New Age spirituality, which to some degree uses Christian ideas and conceptions. Angels are perhaps the best example, especially the so-called ‘Angel School’ of the princess Märtha Louise and Elisabeth Nordeng that has received quite some attention in recent years.30

27 S.E. Kraft, ‘Bad, Banal and Basic: New Age in Norwegian News Press and Entertainment Media’, in I.S. Gilhus et al. (eds.), New Age in Norway (Sheffield, 2017) 65-78 at 68. 28 Kraft, ‘Bad, Banal and Basic’, 76; Kraft, ‘Kjenner du varmen?’, 251-52. 29 K. Lundby and A.K. Gresaker, ‘Religion i mediene – omstridt og oversett?’, in Furseth, Religionenes tilbakekomst, 69-104. 30 I.S. Gilhus, ‘Angels : Between Secularization and Re-enchantment’, in Gilhus et al. (eds.), New Age in Norway (Sheffield, 2017) 141-58.

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During the last two or three decades, a complex process of interrelated media changes and social and cultural changes has been going on; a process usually referred to as mediatisation.31 This process has been described in several ways, sometimes with a focus on its secularising effects. I will stress its ability to change the religious landscape, but not necessarily in the direction of increased secularisation. Generally speaking, mediatisation takes place along with other, general processes, such as globalisation, urbanisation, secularisation, and individualisation.32 These processes have changed the religious landscape in a profound way, and according to Hjarvard, ‘media have increasingly become an important, if not the most important, source of information about religion in society’.33 Popular media are now sources of discussion and religious imagination, and media are increasingly coming to produce religion.34 According to Lynn Scofield Clark, the media both challenge and replace traditional sources of authority.35 She claims that ‘the ability to speak authoritatively about religion no longer rests within traditional religious institutions’.36 According to her ‘consensus-based interpretative authority’ has become important, which means that in a particular media circuit a person with authority articulates views of the world that are widely acceptable and also widely accepted.37 This means that both the media reception and the interplay between the media and the users are vital. Stewart M. Hoover stresses that popular reception practices make their own interpretations of the media.38 He also notes that contemporary media invite new religious voices and make it possible for them to achieve a form of authority; this, in turn, challenges the old authorities.39 With the current heavy mediatisation of religion and the new possibilities this mediatisation has revealed, the question of authority arises and challenges the old Weberian categories.40 31 S. Hjarvard, ‘The mediatization of religion: A theory of the media as agents of religious change’, Northern Lights 6 (2008) 9-26. 32 F. Krotz, ‘Mediatization: A Concept With Which to Grasp Media and Sociental Change’, in K. Lundby (ed.), Mediatization: Concept, Changes, Consequences (New York, 2009) 21-44 at 25. 33 Hjarvard, ‘Mediatization’, 10. 34 S. Hoover, ‘Introduction’, in S. Hoover (ed.), The Media and Religious Authority (University Park, 2016) 1-11; S. Hoover, ‘Religious Authority in the Media Age’, ibidem, 14-36. 35 L.S. Clark, ‘Religion and Authority in a Remix Culture: How a Late Night TV Host Became an Authority on Religion’, in G. Lynch et al. (eds.), Religion, Media, and Culture: A Reader (London, 2012) 111-21, 113-14. 36 Clark, ‘Religion and Authority’, 120. 37 Clark, ‘Religion and Authority’; cf. Hjarvard, ‘Mediatization’, 13. 38 Hoover, ‘Introduction’. 39 Hoover, ‘Introduction’. 40 Hoover, ‘Introduction’.

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These are fruitful descriptions of what is happening today, but to get a more complete picture it is necessary to include religious institutions as well. I find it useful to introduce an analytical model to describe the contemporary religious situation in Norway, including the mediatisation of the religious landscape. Jonathan Z. Smith has created a spatial model based on the concepts of ‘here, there, and anywhere’ to describe religious change in antiquity.41 The model describes where religion is placed in society and how the different places interact. ‘Here’ is religion in the homes and at the graves; ‘there’ is religion in the temples while religion ‘anywhere’ is the space of religious entrepreneurs. The last dimension became dominant in late antiquity. Transferred to the contemporary Norwegian religious landscape, the model covers homes and graveyards (here), churches and mosques (there), and religious entrepreneurs (anywhere). In addition to the three dimensions of Smith, I have suggested that we add a fourth dimension, which is religion ‘everywhere’. This is the media dimension of religion.42 In Norway today, the ‘everywhere’ dimension of media is a rich source for religion and for religious change. This dimension sometimes tends to dominate the other dimensions. Comparatively few Norwegians go to church on Sundays, whereas many people watched the television programs featuring Gjerstad, bought the book by Kolloen, or went to the cinemas to watch Olin’s documentary. In addition, we can observe a broader media hype in the wake of these events, and so the differences are quite striking. It is also important to note that while many people visit graveyards during the year, the ‘here’-dimension of religion, religion in the homes, is probably for most people primarily nourished by the secular media, especially by the internet, newspapers, and television.43 The interplay between these media adds to the fame of Gjerstad and together they effectively distribute the stories about him. The media stories about Gjerstad have turned out to have a great appeal among large segments of Norwegians. How does the Norwegian Church react to these stories? How does Gjerstad relate to the expert systems of 41 J.Z. Smith, ‘Here, There, and Anywhere’, in S. Noegel, J. Walker, and B. Wheeler (eds.), Prayer, Magic, and the Stars in the Ancient and Late Antique World (Pennsylvania, 2003) 21-36. 42 I.S. Gilhus, “‘All over the place”: the contribution of New Age to a spatial model of religion’, in S. Sutcliffe et al. (eds.), New Age Spirituality: Rethinking Religion (Durham, 2013) 35-49. 43 There has been a tendency to understand television as hedonistic and time consuming in relation to how true religion should be mediated. An alternative research perspective is that religion broadcast on television is simply part of religion today – perhaps even more so than religion transmitted in the churches. Cf. O. Krüger, Die mediale Religion. Probleme und Perspektiven der religionswissenschaftlicher und wissenssoziologischer Medienforschung (Bielefeld, 2012) 449.

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medicine and theology? In other words, it is necessary to include the ‘there’-dimension, the institutional dimension of religion, in order to fully understand the contemporary authority transformations. Expert Systems Gjerstad’s position as a religious healer challenges the expert authority systems of medicine and theology, but in different ways. According to the sociologist Frank Furedi, science ‘is arguably the one form of authority that has remained resistant to the corrosive influence of rationalization’,44 and Furedi says further that it ‘is the one form of authorisation that is still left standing’.45 The public recognizes the authority of the experts. Their skills are institutionalised and professionalised, and it takes many years of laborious university education before a student can get a certification as a doctor. Medicine was transformed into an authoritative profession and into an evidence-based science in the nineteenth century. While the Medical Quackery Act was passed in Norway in 1936, a new law about alternative medicine replaced it 1 January 2004.46 The new law endorses more of a customer-oriented view of medicine and tolerates what is seen as harmless varieties of alternative and complementary therapies.47 ‘Complementary’ is a key concept, because this seems to be what Gjerstad tries to be. This is how he describes himself and how the media stage him. He makes a point of cooperating with doctors, does not suggest alternative cures or potions, and he tells those who consult him to go to the hospital when they are ill. In other words, he wants to supplement, not to replace, evidence-based medical treatments. He has also been accepted, and received friendly treatment from general practitioners in Snåsa.48 When medical professionals acknowledge Gjerstad, it does not mean that their scientific authority rubs

44

F. Furedi, Authority: A Sociological History (Cambridge, 2013) 397. Furedi, Authority, 401. 46 Act No.64 of 27 June 2003 relating to the alternative treatment of disease, illness, etc. 47 NAFKAM, The National Research Center in Complementary and Alternative Medicine, and NIFAB, an information center about alternative medicine, were established in 2000 at the University of Tromsø. 48 When Olgeir Haug, one of the two general practitioners in Snåsa, retired in 2011, after 40 years as a practitioner, he gave an interview in Tidsskrift for Den norske legeforening, where he speaks warmly about Gjerstad. One of the things he says about Gjerstad is that ‘he does psychotherapy on a high level’ (J. Reymert, ‘Fastlege i Snåsamannens rike’, Tidsskrift for den Norske Legeforening 131, 19 (2011) 1964-66 at 1964, my translation). Cf. also Erlandsen, Med varmt hjerte og varme hender, 208. 45

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off on him, but rather that he does not challenge their authority and that they too recognize him as complementary. According to Furedi, a ‘major limitation of science is that it cannot endow human experience with meaning’.49 This leaves room for alternative voices with charismatic authority and access to divine powers, but it also leaves space for religious institutions like the Church. The authority of the Church has another basis than that of the medical profession, even though the Church also gets some legitimation from science. Priests in the Church of Norway are either educated at the Theological Faculty at the University of Oslo or at MF, Norwegian School of Theology, both of which are scientific institutions. The Lutheran church in Norway was established in 1537 and is closely connected to the State. After a change in the Constitution in 2012, the church is no longer a State Church and the country no longer has one official religion. Nevertheless, the Church of Norway still has a special place, as the Constitution makes clear. It continues to be a majority church, and ca. 70 % of the population are members. Generally, religion and life-stance communities in Norway are seen as resources for society, because they contribute to a conversation about ethics, values and the large questions in life.50 But each and every year, the members of the Church get lower scores on the traditional measures of religiosity, the three Bs of the sociology of religion: – belonging, believing, and behaving.51 When Norwegians score lower on the three Bs, indicating that fewer people go to Church regularly, believe in the Christian dogmas and behave according to religious regulations, the Church needs new and more effective narratives that transmit Christian values and reach out to people. A requirement of these narratives is that they must be in line with official Christian belief and practice, that they neither question Scripture nor the dogmas of the Lutheran Church, and that they are easily transmitted by the media. The media coverage of Joralf Gjerstad seems in the main to meet these requirements. The core of the stories about Gjerstad is that of the miraculous healer who combines his ability to heal with kindness towards fellow human beings and who regards his healing ability as a divine gift. This is very much in line with the Christian master narrative about Jesus.

49

Furedi, Authority, 400. U. Schmidt, ‘Stat og religion’, in I. Furseth (ed.), Religionens tilbakekomst i offentligheten? Religion, politikk, medier, stat og sivilsamfunn i Norge siden 1980-tallet (Oslo, 2015) 105-38 at 137. 51 Furseth, Religionens tilbakekomst, 35. 50

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The Church of Norway and the Charismatic Authority of Joralf Gjerstad Television transmits programmes directly into people’s homes, shows with religious and semi-religious content that is not necessarily in line with the teaching of the church or with ideas and practices that the church wishes to promote, such as shows about ghosts, speaking with the dead, or divination. Such programmes are hugely popular today, and we might say that in many ways Gjerstad counterbalances this development. As already mentioned, he does not want to be called a healer, which he conceives of as a New Age characterisation, and it is important for him that he has never attended courses to become a healer, but that he is simply a man with special powers. While the media are not unanimous in relating Gjerstad’s healing practice to Christianity and sometimes connect him to the New Age,52 Gjerstad publicly dissociates himself from the New Age milieu. This, however, does not mean that he completely evades New Age terminology, as he sometimes – for example – speaks about energies.53 Energy is part of the lingua franca of the New Age milieu and it forms a part of cultural parlance more generally, where it has found a place alongside traditional Christian terminology. However, Gjerstad’s acceptance by the Church weakens any potential connections to New Age spirituality. Gjerstad does not offer fancy and/or controversial explanations for his alleged power and clairvoyance. If he had done so, he would have placed himself in opposition to Lutheran theology. Whenever Gjerstad speaks about Christianity, he seems in the main to be in line with common lay as well as accepted Lutheran theology. The same goes for his religious views as found in his memoirs. A charismatic healer is, per definition, a marginal person in a religious universe, but this marginality is, in Gjerstad’s case, not matched by views that are marginal in relation to the theology of the Church. According to Siv Ellen Kraft, the established criteria of authentic and legitimate religion – ‘old, free of cost, minimal and moderate’ – are frequently used to describe his religious position. In this way, he easily passes a fundamental obstacle against being accepted in a Lutheran society.54 Moreover, one perspective on Gjerstad is that he does not offend the theology of the church. Another perspective is what he can offer a church in decline. In 2009, the bishop in Trondheim, Tor Singsaas, invited Gjerstad to a talk in the huge cathedral in the city, a highly symbolic place. Before the refor52 53 54

Hoff, ‘Ja, vi tror på Snåsamannen’. Mikaelsson, ‘New Age and the spirit of capitalism’. Kraft, ‘Ja, vi elsker Snåsamannen’, 138, my translation.

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mation, it was the cathedral of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Nidaros (1152-1537), the home of the shrine that contained the dead body of Saint Olav, the king assigned with the honour of having made Norway Christian. The cathedral is also the site of the blessing and anointing of the three Norwegian kings in the 20th century, and so it is also a potent national symbol. The conversation between Gjerstad and the bishop took place in the context of the divine service and ended with the bishop blessing Gjerstad and walking with him down the aisle. The church was crammed with people and around one thousand people waited outside. In newspaper interviews after the event, the bishop stressed that Gjerstad is not similar to Jesus, but gets his power from Jesus. He compared him to Joseph in the Old Testament, who did divination (Genesis 40), and he pointed out that Gjerstad’s type of healing is different from New Age therapies.55 After this event, Gjerstad was invited to other churches as an honored guest and to talks with bishops and priests, for instance in the cathedrals of Bodø and Oslo. His appearance in churches as an honoured guest shows not only that he has become famous, but also that the Church accepts him and his superhuman powers as a legitimate part of contemporary Christianity. Why? What has made Joralf Gjerstad into an asset for the Church? Generally speaking, the tension in Christianity between, on the one hand, the oralcharismatic authority of Jesus and the non-hierarchical community idealized in the gospel narrative, and, on the other hand, the hierarchical, institutional authority of churches, is easy to see.56 The first type of authority nourishes the second, as it has done throughout the history of Christianity. With the institutionalisation and nationalisation of the Lutheran churches in the Nordic countries into state churches, a traditional as well as a rational-legal form of authority becomes important for understanding how they function. The Church is, further, a part of the cultural heritage of these countries; generally, the Nordic churches are closely connected to the nation. In the Church of Norway, charismatic authority tends, in the main, to be confined to the pages of the holy texts and it is considered with suspicion when it appears in relation to real life persons. One reason for this is that charismatic authority tends to challenge and offend standard or official theological views. Peter Horsfield has pointed out that ‘the hierarchical, institutional authority concept of much of Christianity is an authority structure that was created and sustained by written media, and subsequently 55

http://www.dagbladet.no/nyheter/snasamannen-er-ingen-jesus/65259044. Cf. P. Horsfield, From Jesus to the Internet: A History of Christianity and Media (Oxford, 2015) 288. 56

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printed media, and used its cultural media superiority to assert itself against other authority practices’.57 This means that at the same time as charismatic authority in an embodied form may have a revitalizing power, it is difficult to accommodate in Lutheran churches, because it tends to differ from the authoritative scripture. In contemporary societies, however, written texts have, to a high degree, been supplemented and even supplanted by moving images, colourful narratives, and short messages, which speak more directly to emotions and experience. According to Stewart Hoover, commercial media establish an authority very much like Weber’s charisma, because it is built on the attractiveness of media to audiences.58 The church needs to adjust to this new situation, and thus Joralf Gjerstad becomes very useful for the church. The charisma of the media makes Gjerstad sparkle even more, as does the attention from celebrities. In all likelihood, most people in Norway do not know who the bishops are, but most people know about Joralf Gjerstad. His fame is nation-wide. He illustrates the Christian message of divine power and healing miracles, but without causing offense to official theological dogmas, combining his healing practice with an attitude of modesty and kindness. Gjerstad’s authority is charismatic and builds on his personal charm and abilities. By inviting him to visit their churches, bishops and priests partake of his charismatic authority and the Church basks in his light. In addition, the combination of a national component with charismatic authority, which is so clearly visible in Gjerstad, fits very well with the traditional profile of the Church of Norway in which cultural heritage and Lutheran beliefs also work together. In wake of the success of Gjerstad, the church has attempted to incorporate healing practices more actively. Per Arne Dahl, bishop in Tunsberg, has argued in favour of including healing practices into the church with reference to Gjerstad. The bishop expressed his regret that the church had neglected these powers for so long.59 Another example of a wish to include healing into the contemporary, Lutheran repertoire occurred when the highly esteemed professor of theology and moral philosophy at the Norwegian School of Theology, Jan Olav Henriksen, recently stood forth and claimed the ability to heal by laying on hands.60 These examples show that in the contemporary 57

Horsfield, ‘From Jesus to the Internet’, 288. Hoover, ‘Introduction’. 59 http://www.verdidebatt.no/debatt/cat12/subcat13/thread11624301/#post_11624301 (visited 18.08.2016). 60 Cf. also J.O. Henriksen and K.O. Sandnes, Jesus as Healer: A Gospel for the Body (USA, 2016). 58

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religious climate there is a tendency to stress religious experience and the practice dimension of religion more and to incorporate experiences and practices in the Christian repertoire to a higher degree than was done before. Joralf Gjerstad is mainly known for what he does, and many people think that what he does works. Gjerstad is a healer, which means that he is a practitioner. The dimensions of the ‘anywhere’ of the religious entrepreneurs and the ‘everywhere’ of the media are thus combined, in his person, in a successful way that almost constitutes a recipe for religious success in contemporary society. Contemporary mediatisation brings these two dimensions into the homes – the ‘here’ – dimension of religion of the spatial model. Generally speaking, these three spaces – here, anywhere, and everywhere, that is homes, religious entrepreneurs, and the media – constitute an important circuit for the transmission of religion and religious elements in Norwegian society. In the case of Joralf Gjerstad, the Church is also included in the circuit, because of Gjerstad’s relationship to the Church, but also because the Church actively uses Gjerstad in order to connect to the other dimensions. Seen in a broader perspective, religion is no longer kept strictly within one sector, partly because of the anywhere dimension of religious entrepreneurs and the everywhere dimension of the media and, not least, because of the interplay between these dimensions. This means that religion is ‘all over the place’,61 seeping into other sectors, for instance medicine, where the interplay between alternative medicine and New Age spirituality reflects a more general therapeutic turn of religion.62 Gjerstad can be seen as a Christian answer to this turn.63 His practice as a healer has had a vitalizing effect on Norwegian Lutheranism as an example of how the therapeutic turn of contemporary religion can be fused with the strong healing tradition in Christianity, which is based on and resonates with the miraculous healings of Jesus. In a society dominated by mass media, key persons tend to summarize or embody key clusters of ideas and practices. Joralf Gjerstad, the Man 61

Gilhus, ‘All over the place’. J.A. Macpherson, Women and Reiki: Energetic/Holistic Healing in Practice (London, 2008) 55, has pointed out that ‘one of the most visible aspects of New Age thought and practice is the widespread concern with health’, cf. A.C. Hornborg, ‘Designing rites to enchant secularized societies: New varieties of spiritualized therapy in contemporary Sweden’, Journal of Religion and Health 51/2 (2012) 402-18. 63 Cf. I.S. Gilhus, ‘Post-secular idols and the therapeutic turn: three emblematic figures in contemporary Norway’, Scripta Instituti Donneriani Aboensis 23 (2012) 62-75. According to M. McGuire, Ritual Healing in Suburban America (New Brunswick, 1988) 18-31, who describes ritual healing practices in Suburban America, one type of such healings is to imitate Jesus. 62

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from Snåsa (Snåsamannen), and princess Märtha Louise are probably the most well-known religious celebrities in Norway today. Both are connected to Christianity, Gjerstad in a traditional way, the princess with her interest in angels and angel-therapies in a New Agey way. The competition with New Age may be one of the reasons why the Church ‘has increasingly embraced’ Joralf Gjerstad.64 While the Church has embraced Gjerstad, it keeps the angel-school of the princess at a distance. Healing practices presupposing a superhuman power and associated with Christian divinity are more acceptable than communicating with angels. Conclusion Joralf Gjerstad belongs to a part of Norwegian geography and culture that appears marginal from the perspective of the urban centres. This sort of marginality goes well with the idea of Norwegian roots, nostalgia, and ideas of authenticity, and this makes Gjerstad attractive and turns his marginality into a valuable asset.65 His authority is built on personal charisma and on his alleged ability to heal. In the history of religions, charismatic authority and marginality are frequently seen together, especially when marginality is positively loaded, as in the case of Gjerstad. His appearance in different media and the subsequent media hype show that people are willing to believe in him and his power, and that they are fascinated by it. The mediatisation of Gjerstad is in line with broader changes in the media situation where print media are supplemented by other types of media favouring moving images and short, but pointed, stories and messages and where the stress is on showing and telling rather than on teaching and preaching. The efficient media coverage of Gjerstad, the support from celebrities and the acceptance of him among laypeople, has facilitated an official acceptance of him in the Norwegian Lutheran church, where bishops and priests use their authority to offer him legitimacy at the same time as the Church benefits from his charismatic authority. Gjerstad’s charismatic authority does not undermine the authority of the Church; on the contrary, it supports it by being based on alleged divine intervention and a Christian tradition of regarding marginality as an asset. This means that the media have contributed to widening the conception of what is regarded as legitimate religious authority in the Church of Norway today. It also means that in the case of Joralf Gjerstad, mediatization is part of a process of ‘religionification’ rather than a process of secularization. 64 65

Kraft, ‘Bad, Banal and Basic’, 76. Kraft, ‘Bad, Banal and Basic’, 76; Kraft, ‘Kjenner du varmen?’, 251-52.

XI. CATHOLIC MIGRANT, UNKNOWN VISIONARY Astrid Krabbe Trolle

This chapter gives voice to one of the many unknown visionaries within the Roman Catholic tradition in order to analyse and discuss some of the limitations of social and religious marginality in contemporary society.1 I present the case of Gloria, a Filipino migrant in her sixties and a devout Catholic living in Denmark. Throughout her life, she has had an ongoing conversation with figures from the Catholic pantheon of saints, but despite attempts of recognition as a visionary from her local environments, she has failed. I argue that this case of failure throws light on the complexity of marginality as a tactic in the late modern period. Essentially, Gloria’s unsuccessful quest for religious authority shows us how a creative use of marginality is limited by social circumstances that permeate every historic period. Even though late modern society offers new mediations of religious authority such as novel forms of propagation through social media, the resources available will always have a determinant effect. In theories of contemporary individualised authority, social marginality in terms of a basic lack of resources seems to fade from the picture. Although marginality is often connected to shifts in religious authority, the new media necessary to transform authority are often dependent on a specific type of social actor. My contribution to the volume’s focus on shifts in religious authority by way of new media and marginality is to discuss the social circumstances needed to apply marginality as a transformative force within the Catholic tradition. As a potential visionary and a Filipino migrant, Gloria’s visions simultaneously offer stories of personal encounters with extraordinary beings and an insight into her geographical and social position.2 In terms of affiliation, 1 I want to thank Andreas Bandak and Ingvild Gilhus for helpful comments on different parts of the chapter’s process from outline to text. I am also very grateful for Laura Feldt’s skillful editorial advice. 2 In this chapter I apply the term vision related to the experiences of Gloria, while the term apparition is used in the context of earlier studies on apparitions. I am aware that some of her experiences would not be recognised as visions or private revelations within the Catholic tradition, but I have tried to bring forth Gloria’s own interpretation in order to

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Gloria belongs to a minority church in Denmark where the Catholic Church’s 41.240 registered members3 lay claim to 0,7 percent of the Danish population. Within the Church, the Filipinos form part of the Englishspeaking congregations as their numbers are not large enough to establish an independent language group.4 Denmark is a majority Lutheran country with 75,9 percent of the population as members of the Danish Evangelical Lutheran Church.5 The different layers of marginalisation of Catholics and Filipinos in Danish society create an influential backdrop for Gloria’s current situation. Although being a Catholic in Denmark is a minority position, many Filipino Catholics underscore the common Christian heritage of Catholics and Protestants. But from the perspective of a potential visionary, the Danish type of secular Protestantism surrounding the Catholic Church in Denmark dampens the possibilities of recognition. Gloria has lived through several decades of varying visionary activity in the Roman Catholic Church, travelling from childhood and youth in the Catholic Philippines to retirement age in Protestant Denmark, and on the way her visions have changed. Today, the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ have ceased speaking directly to her, but they show themselves on a regular basis as sources of comfort in Gloria’s devotional life. In the following, I describe three examples of transcendent encounters from Gloria’s life in the Philippines, in Germany, and in Denmark, as the background for a discussion of how migration and resources affect the possibilities of public recognition. For this purpose, I apply anthropologist Paolo Apolito’s idea of establishing a context around the apparitional event, Robert E. Park’s notion of the Marginal Man/the migrant and media scholar Stig Hjarvard’s mediatisation theory to shed light on why Gloria has not been able to capitalise on her visions.

clarify how messy social circumstances intervene in the tactic and strategic use of mediated marginality. 3 Denmark has no public registration of religious membership except for the Danish Evangelical Lutheran Church. The Catholic Church’s membership registration was conducted by the church itself in 2015. The registration can be found online: https://www.katolsk. dk/fileadmin/katolsk/User_oploads/dokumenter_andre/Det_nye_katolske_Danmarkskort/Strukturplan_-_oversigt_-_12._udgave.pdf (seen 26.06.17). It is likely that the actual number of Catholics in Denmark is much higher than this registration suggests as many Catholics are immigrants who do not register as members for various reasons. The estimate of 0,7 percent is based on the total population number of 5.650.715 in 2015 from Statistics Denmark. 4 In 2016, Statistics Denmark registered 11.601 Filipinos in Denmark. 5 The percentage is calculated from the last quarter of 2016 in Statistics Denmark.

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Introducing Gloria Gloria wears a bright red suit for our official interview on the topic of her life as a visionary. She has brought seafood and wine for the occasion, but before we sit down to eat and talk, she takes me on a tour of the church interior of one of the Catholic churches in downtown Copenhagen. When we enter the church room, Gloria starts to explain how the various depictions of biblical narratives are mistaken in their portrayal of the life of Jesus Christ. Her most frequent visions are images of Jesus and the cross. She has seen the stations of Via Dolorosa and knows the exact positions of each actor, their hair colour and clothing. Gloria’s critique of these artistic reproductions betrays her frustration as an unrecognised visionary in a Catholic environment that does not want to hear about her visions. Her peers in the Catholic congregations do not believe her, and she is often silenced with tart remarks when she starts on the subject of her visionary knowledge. I have witnessed this several times during my fieldwork in two of the Catholic churches that Gloria frequents.6 Gloria goes to mass every day and volunteers in several churches throughout Copenhagen. Like most Filipinos, she is born and raised Catholic with an affinity for the Virgin Mary who is often called upon as a patron saint for the Philippines.7 Gloria came to Denmark in the beginning of the 1990s, and since married a Danish Protestant who passed away some years ago. Now, at the age of 66, she devotes her time to the Catholic communities in her vicinity. Besides the Philippines and Denmark, Gloria has worked as a maid in Spain and Germany, so her geographical orientation is transnational. In addition, she regularly visits pilgrimage sites such as Medjugorje, Jerusalem, and Rome, and on every location, she experiences visions of transcendence that confirm her religious conviction.8 She describes how mundane activities and chance meetings are actually patterns of divine intervention, accidents turned miracles. For Gloria, the world is marvellous.

6 The chapter material builds on participant observation and interviews in Catholic churches in Copenhagen from September 1, 2015, to June 1, 2016 as a part of my PhD dissertation on Filipino Catholics in Denmark. My official interview with Gloria took place 28 March 2017 in an empty classroom of a Catholic school sharing its property with the church Jesu Hjerte Kirke, Copenhagen. 7 D. de la Cruz, Mother Figured. Marian Apparitions and the Making of a Filipino Universal (Chicago, 2015) 11. 8 In this respect Gloria is an example of the everyday lived religion described by Robert Orsi in his many works on Catholics in America: R. Orsi, Thank You, St. Jude: Women’s Devotion to the Patron Saint of Hopeless Causes (New Haven, 1996).

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Establishing a Context In earlier research on apparitional events, one of the main markers of success has been the ability to move from private revelation to public event, something that often requires a broad use of the available media. In the 1980s, Paolo Apolito detailed the processes related to the apparitions at Oliveto Citra, a South Italian village, from the first visions to the subsequent years of decline in public attention. 9 One of the important findings in Apolito’s study is related to how a context can be established that makes the hermeneutic move from subjective experience to public event plausible. The apparitional context facilitates a collective reshaping of cultural ways of perceiving the world: ‘When the context of the apparitions had been defined, every subsequent testimony, emotional outbreak, or shout was a proof of the Madonna’s presence. There were no longer any critical thresholds for credibility’.10 In other words, when you establish the apparitional context, you buy into the argument of transcendent intervention in the local world. Every experience lived in the wake of the apparitions testify to this new phenomenology of presence.11 Even though the new presence impacts individual orientations as well as common understandings of the events, establishing a context has a collective dimension that our emphasis on mediation can help clarify.12 According to the historian Suzanne Kaufman, events like the visions at Lourdes in 1858 and onwards represent explicitly modern ways of mediating religion because of the mass-produced array of paraphernalia (postcards, guide books, plaster statues) connected to the apparitional site.13 Kaufman finds that religion in the modern era is profoundly commodified, 9 P. Apolito, Apparitions of the Madonna at Oliveto Citra. Local Visions and Cosmic Drama (University Park, 1992). 10 Apolito, Apparitions of the Madonna, 101. 11 Apolito, Apparitions of the Madonna, 102. 12 In this section I apply mediation in the descriptive and broad terms recommended by Morgan and Meyer as a way of acknowledging religion as media (see Stolow, below). In later sections, the theory of mediatisation by Hjarvard is more appropriate for an understanding of the Scandinavian situation. D. Morgan, ‘Religion and Media. A Critical Review of Recent Developments’, Critical Review of Religion 1/3 (2013) 347-56; B. Meyer, ‘Mediation and Immediacy: Sensational Forms, Semiotic Ideologies, and the Question of the Medium’, in J. Boddy and M. Lambek (eds.), A Companion to the Anthropology of Religion (Chichester, 2013) 309-21; J. Stolow, ‘Religion and/as Media’, Theory, Culture & Society 22 (2005) 119-45; S. Hjarvard, ‘The Mediatization of Religion. A Theory of the Media as Agents for Religious Change’, Northern Lights 6/1 (2008) 9-26. 13 S.K. Kaufman, ‘Religion and Modernity: The Case of the Lourdes Shrine in Nineteenth-Century France’ in P.L. Caughie (ed.), Disciplining Modernism (Basingstoke, 2009) 92-108.

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and that the religious marketisation at Lourdes ran parallel with the modernisation processes in French society. Scholars have been slow to realise the close connection between religion and commodification because of the Durkheimian legacy of a clear distinction between sacred and profane.14 This insight also applies to religious forms in the late modern period where religion is ever more difficult to differentiate from other societal institutions such as the media.15 Accordingly, religious communication cannot be viewed separately from other forms of communication. The main point is that to achieve a transformation of religious authority in late modern society, it is necessary to understand religion via a media-oriented logic which can also be seen in the recognised visionary activity in the 20th century. In the process of transforming an individual experience of transcendence into a public event, different media play a crucial role. At Oliveto Citra, the press coverage through TV broadcasts and newspapers spread the news of the events.16 William Christian’s study of visionaries at Ezkioga in Spain in the 1930s supports this emphasis on the media as a facilitator of the religious event and its transformation into a collective narrative.17 According to Christian, certain versions of visionary activity receive more press coverage than others, reflecting tensions between the rural Catholic and largely Basque population and the urban, secular, elitist supporters of the new republic. The media act as filters that determine whether or not the vision catches public awareness.18 In addition to media coverage, local support networks, a physical location/site and economic resources to support activities at the site are essential for the establishment of a context.19 Here I would like to dwell on the importance of a physical location because the collective narrative of an 14

Kaufman, ‘Religion and Modernity’, 93. The sociologist of religion Peter Beyer describes the same religious processes in late modern society applying systems theory. Here the religious system gradually models itself on other institutionalised societal systems such as media, politics and economy: P. Beyer, ‘Questioning the Secular/Religious Divide in a Post-Westphalian World’, International Sociology 28/6 (2013) 663-79. 16 Apolito, Apparitions of the Madonna, 32. 17 W.A. Christian, Visionaries. The Spanish Republic and the Reign of Christ (Berkeley, 1996). In a later study, Apolito suggests that the new social and technological media actually create the apparitional event, fundamentally changing the relations between the believers and their gods. But this intriguing analysis is not the focus of the current chapter. P. Apolito, The Internet and the Madonna. Religious Visionary Experience on the Web (Chicago, 2005). 18 W.A. Christian, ‘Afterword: Islands in the Sea: The Public and Private Distribution of Knowledge of Religious Visions’, Visual Resources 25/1-2 (2009) 153-65. 19 D.G. Bromley and R.S. Bobbitt, ‘Visions of the Virgin Mary: The Organizational Development of Marian Apparitional Movements’, Nova Religio 14/3 (2011) 4-41 at 14-15. 15

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apparitional event is often tied to the contagious effect experienced by people visiting transcendent hotspots such as Medjugorje and Lourdes, geographical locations where heaven and earth are understood, by believers collectively, to move close together. The transformation of the subjective experience into a public event is also determined by the physical qualities of a certain location. Although one could argue that the internet is also a location where this process of publication takes shape,20 its porous and horizontal character cannot always replace the physical site as a means of collective narrative and authority. In the establishment of a context, hard location is key, especially because location makes for commodification. My point in drawing attention to the materiality of the physical apparitional site in establishing a context is to juxtapose Gloria’s experience of movement through migration with visionary activity related to location. As we shall see below, Gloria’s most important vision took place in a state of political and personal turmoil, inhibiting any recognition of her visions. 1960s Manila: Stop Wiping Your Vagina Gloria was raised in a Catholic family in the 1950s rural Philippines where Catholic practices were an integrated part of family life. She and her siblings prayed the rosary every day. She relates that her personal relationship with the Virgin Mary intensified when the Virgin spoke to her in a dream at the age of 18. At that time Gloria worked as a maid in a Manila household. Gloria describes how the Virgin Mary spoke to her in her local dialect Visayan while floating on a cloud framed by six angels and flowering roses. The Virgin had a very specific message for her: ‘Do you know, ahh, you should not use toilet paper to wipe your vagina because your menstruation will stop’.21 The Virgin warned Gloria that her period would stop if she did not follow the Virgin’s order. Although the message had a very private character, it pointed to the future as Gloria’s period did in fact stop at the age of 38, to return a year later. More importantly, the Virgin’s orders also initiated a complicated relation as Gloria could not obey her demand of not wiping herself during her monthly period. Every time Gloria had her period, she would apologise to the Virgin for not being able to live up to her expectations. Even though the content of Gloria’s dream could be written off as too mundane to express a divine encounter, the experience testifies to the intimate dimensions of Gloria’s religious practice. In the 20 21

Apolito, The Internet and the Madonna. Interview with Gloria, 28.03.17.

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words of Robert Orsi, Gloria lived the tragedy of meaning brought on by the interventions and everyday relationships between heaven and earth.22 This meeting with the Virgin Mary was so private that it did not call for the establishment of a context. 1980s Berlin: the Fall of Communism in Europe Gloria’s second encounter with the Virgin Mary took place when she worked as a live-in maid at a consulate in West Berlin during the 1980s. In the summer of 1989, she visited East Berlin where she witnessed a short reunion of family members living on either side of the Berlin Wall. She returned home to plead with the Virgin Mary to intervene and help the family. Gloria promised that all her prayers would be dedicated to the Virgin Mary’s immaculate heart, echoing one of the themes in the Marian devotional genre of the war against communism. This encounter took the form of a vision where Gloria spoke with the Virgin in her room at the embassy. Gloria asked the Virgin if she could stop communism, and the following morning her employer woke her up with the news that the door of Romania was open, leading to the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989. For Gloria, the Virgin had intervened in history and fulfilled part of her promise to end communism. In the narration of her encounters with the Virgin, the conversation in Berlin stands out as the only time Gloria received a message of public quality. This could also have been her moment of recognition as a visionary, but shortly after her vision of the Virgin, she was fired from her work in Berlin, and then travelled to Denmark. In addition, she had all her money stolen by a former boyfriend. Her mobility and life situation as suddenly unemployed and poor stopped any form of establishment of a context. Compared to the known visionaries and apparitional events of the Marian devotional tradition, Gloria’s social marginality hindered her religious marginality in harnessing authority. Here migration or movement took away the physical location of her vision, and with that absence, also local support networks and media access crucial for supporting her claim of visionary activity.

22 R. Orsi, Between Heaven and Earth: The Religious Worlds People Make and the Scholars Who Study Them (Princeton, 2003).

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Contemporary Copenhagen: Silent Visions Gloria moved to Denmark in 1990 where she started work as a cleaning maid at an embassy. She quickly found a Catholic congregation to join and now frequents several Catholic churches in Copenhagen. Regularly, she has visions of the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ but neither speak directly to her. Instead she sees images of them, mostly in the Blessed Sacrament during the monthly vigil at one of the local Catholic churches. Her visions come as pictures in a black frame. The black frame tells her that something is holy, Gloria explains. Importantly, her visions have no messages, which is also why the local bishop has advised her to keep the visions to herself. Gloria accepts this: Gloria: So that’s ok for me. Why should I fight? I said, I will not fight the bishop, and I will not … because what is my vision? And he never talked to me, the Lord never talked to me. God never talked to me, just only shows his face, his action and everything. Astrid: So you don’t have a message? Gloria: Yeah, there is no message…23

The lack of messages is essential for Gloria’s status as a visionary, and although she believes that God commands her to speak, the lack of concrete and direct messages is the final reason that her private revelations will probably never become public events. When I asked Gloria how people usually react when she conveys her visions, she responded with a sneer, mimicking the faces of her peers: “Hvorfor tror du det? (Why do you believe that?)”. I here render her original answer in Danish because she suddenly turned to Danish even though our interview was in English. Gloria communicated a Danish scepticism that runs through the mainly secular population. Although the majority of the Danes are members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, their religious faith and practice remain at a very low frequency, leading scholars to declare Denmark and Sweden the most secular countries in the world.24 The Catholic Church is also affected by the secular and Lutheran surroundings and has of yet not had any candidates for an institutional investigation into visionary activity.

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Interview with Gloria, 28.03.17. P. Zuckerman, Society Without God (New York, 2008); P. Andersen and P. Lüchau, ‘Individualisering og aftraditionalisering af danskernes religiøse værdier’, in P. Gundelach (ed.), Små og store forandringer. Danskernes værdier siden 1981 (Copenhagen, 2011). Currently, the fastest growing group in the religious landscape is the so-called ‘nones’, people who opt out of affiliation with religious institutions. 24

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After explaining her shortage of specific divine messages, Gloria moved on to admitting that no one among her acquaintances in the church believes in her visions. She has a few friends who also receive visions, but otherwise she feels marginalised in her surroundings. In the church environment, she is seen as a demanding person who thirsts for recognition and authority. One of her co-religionists told me that she had noticed Gloria sleeping during a vigil in church and afterwards claiming to have had a vision of Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament.25 Even though this incident may support a general distrust in the authenticity of Gloria’s visions, nobody doubts the religious sincerity embodied in her staunch church activities. The lack of support might be due to Gloria’s personality, but it also reflects her position as a part of the Filipino community in Denmark. In general, the Filipinos take pride in being self-supporting migrants that excel in public invisibility. A Filipino video from 1995 named ‘Invisible among invisibles’26 captures the diasporic wish to blend in with local life in Denmark. The video portrays Filipinos in Copenhagen as fun-loving and hard-working citizens that enjoy living in Denmark. The marginality implied in being invisible is valuable for the Danish Filipino diaspora. By seeking authority as a visionary, Gloria simultaneously challenges the Filipino community’s main identity as invisible migrants. Gloria’s Religious Marginality In this volume, we understand religious marginality as a liminal condition that enables an engagement between the sociality of this world with the sociality of the beyond. To quote Laura Feldt’s introduction: ‘… religious marginality is precisely about ways of articulating, through media, the intersection between worlds, about putting into words that which lies at the edges of the human world, that which contributes to the delimitation of both worlds’. In my chapter, the mediation of religious marginality begins with Gloria’s encounters with the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ. She is the main mediator, and, in this sense, she places herself in the tradition of many Catholic visionaries before her. Although she could not establish a context around her encounter with the Virgin Mary in Berlin, she is part of a religious tradition that acknowledges the creative power of social and religious marginality. 25

Conversation with Editha, 08.03.17. Usynlig blandt usynlige. The video from 1995 by Filomenita Mongaya Høgsholm is accessible via youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6tbs8r5jf0 (accessed 25.11.17). 26

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In contemporary Catholic tradition, the overlap between religious and social marginality is fuelled by a long history of socially marginal visionaries who have often combined social unrest with innovative creativity. These marginal figures have often tended to be educated males during early Christianity, but during the Late Middle Ages the visionary activity rose among lay people, resulting in the contemporary cultural expectation within the Catholic Church that visionaries are often single women, adolescents, and children.27 In fact, the number of male visionaries and married women does not exceed 30 percent in the 19th and 20th century.28 The female and young profile is often supplemented by marginality in terms of social status and geography; visionaries are of humble origins and reside in rural areas.29 The modern visionary figure of the seer thus also reflects the religious values understood to be promoted by the Virgin Mary such as modesty, piety, and humility. In the case of adolescent girls, their social features match the Virgin herself.30 Marginality becomes, in this case, a necessary and relished distinction. When the intermediary agent is expected to be socially marginal in a modest way, the mediation of the vision is often left to other people. My point here is that marginality is a widely applied resource in contemporary Catholicism. The visionary tradition fosters the expectation that a certain form of social marginality (rural, female, young, uneducated) can be tied to the charismatic qualities of the seer as an authoritative figure. Gloria clearly taps into this visionary tradition. Yet, she does not live up to all its social characteristics, and her status as a migrant limits her possibilities, not only in terms of the lack of location but also because she is an elderly widow. Religious Authority in the Marian Devotional Culture Gloria is embedded in the Marian devotionalism modelled on apparitions in 19th and 20th century Europe such a la Salette, Lourdes, Fatima, and Medjugorje. This devotional subculture operates on the margins of the Roman Catholic Church’s institutional authority, cultivating themes of war

27 S.L. Zimdars-Swartz, Encountering Mary. From La Salette to Medjugorje (Princeton, 1991) 8; C.W. Bynum, Fragmentation and Redemption (New York, 1992) and Holy Feast and Holy Fast. The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women (Berkeley, 1987). 28 C. Maunder, Our Lady of the Nations. Apparitions of Mary in 20th Century Catholic Europe (New York, 2016) 51-54. 29 A.E. Matter, ‘Apparitions of the Virgin Mary in the Late Twentieth Century: Apocalyptic, Representation, Politics’, Religion 31 (2001) 125-53 at 128. 30 Christian, Visionaries, 53.

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against atheism, secularism, and the conversion of all sinners by way of prayer and penitence, mostly with an apocalyptic approach to history.31 In general, the Catholic Church as an institution keeps its distance from the majority of apparitions, categorising them as private revelations.32 As private revelations visions are perceived to confirm, but not modify, the existing doctrines, at least from the perspective of the Church.33 The split between private revelations and institutionally sanctioned visions has led to several forms of authority within the same Catholic tradition.34 On the one hand, the official Church operates from a traditional form of authority (in the understanding of Weber) while on the other hand several devotional groups dedicated to the legacy of Marian apparitions are founded upon the charismatic authority of the visionaries and the apparitions. This institutional ambiguity towards the charismatic elements in the devotional subculture is not without tension. Often the unsanctioned apparitions grow into devotional movements that flourish on the internet. Movements towards an individualised approach to authority have increased since Vatican II where the Church accepted more lay participation.35 Interestingly, most followers of the Marian subculture do not understand themselves as marginal within the Church. On the contrary, the visionaries and their networks believe to be central to the Christian teachings as they have direct access to the divine messages.36 This is also the case for Gloria. Through her visions of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary she believes to have a special knowledge that comes in the form of daily corrections aimed at her local congregational setting such as the critique of the depictions of 31 P.J. Margry, ‘Marian Interventions in the Wars of Ideology: The Elastic Politics of the Roman Catholic Church on Modern Apparitions’, History and Anthropology 20/3 (2009) 243-63 at 247. 32 Zimdars-Swartz, Encountering Mary, 9. 33 According to Church teachings, revelations adding to the body of Catholic faith ended in the apostolic times. Modern apparitions are seen as transcendent breakthroughs, reminding contemporary believers of their doctrinal basis, Bromley and Bobbitt, ‘Visions of the Virgin’, 23. 34 This plurality of forms of religious authority within the same Catholic tradition has been observed as a distinction between ‘official’ and ‘popular’ religion by Chris Maunder, but I am hesitant to give charismatic authority a ‘popular’ profile as it is also present as a pivotal force in ‘official’ religion. C. Maunder, ‘Marian Visionaries in Roman Catholicism as Popular Theologians: ‘The Lady of All Nations’ of Amsterdam’, Journal of Contemporary Religion 27/2 (2012) 291-304. Multilayered religious authority is also established as a novelty in the Church of Norway portrayed by Gilhus in this volume. 35 W.V. D’Antonio et al., ‘American Catholics and Church Authority’, in M.J. Lacey and F. Oakley (eds.), The Crisis of Authority in Catholic Modernity (Oxford, 2011) 273-92 at 277. 36 J. Krebs, ‘Transposing Devotion. Tradition and Innovation in Marian Apparitions’, Nova Religio 19/3 (2016) 31-51 at 40.

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Via Dolorosa in the church interior. Although Gloria’s visionary activity latches onto a well-established devotional subculture, she does not actively promote the apocalyptic aspects, but seems intent on focusing her special knowledge on the day-to-day practices within the Catholic congregations in Copenhagen. Gloria’s Social Marginality Gloria’s status as a Catholic Filipina migrant in a predominantly white, Protestant, and secular Scandinavian country informs part of her situation as an overlooked visionary. Even though we seek to expand the notion of social marginality to include its creative possibilities in this volume, migration as a marginal condition can have limiting effects on the contextualisation and mediation of a visionary event. Here, my theoretical underpinning comes from the social sciences where social marginality is understood in terms of resource flows and access to societal goods.37 Marginality is a widely used analytical framework for understanding phenomena on the fringes of an established centre. Metaphorically speaking, marginality has an inbuilt spatial orientation that has been analytically fruitful both in the sociology noir tradition of the Chicago school as well as the more positive understanding of marginality as resistance advocated for in feminist and post-colonial studies.38 In Robert Park’s original essay on the Marginal Man, he introduced a disturbing character, a man of several cultural orientations who tried to balance life in the States within opposing traditions.39 The result was a mentally confused person who might be able to combine his differentiated traditions with a creative result, but this was hardly ever the case. From this perspective, it is not surprising that Park’s idea of the marginal man became the lever for later studies of mental disabilities among migrants to the States.40 Yet, this version of the marginal man understands the notion of

37 R.J. Dunne, ‘Marginality: A Conceptual Extension’, in R.M. Dennis (ed.), Marginality, Power, and Social Structure: Issues in Race, Class, and Gender Analysis (Amsterdam, 2005) 11-27. 38 N. Kharlamov, ‘Boundary Zone between Cultural Worlds or the Edge of the Dominant Culture? Two Conceptual Metaphors of Marginality’, Journal of Intercultural Studies 33/6 (2012) 623-38 at 624. 39 R.E. Park, ‘Human Migration and the Marginal Man’, American Journal of Sociology 33/6 (1928) 881-91. 40 C.A. Goldberg, ‘Robert Park’s Marginal Man: The Career of a Concept in American Sociology’, Laboratorium 4/2 (2012) 199-217.

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margin as a boundary between several cultures. It has a relational quality which speaks to the contemporary era where mobility and global media, by definition, work from several cultural centres.41 The reason that I return to Park’s marginal man in the case of Gloria is that she is also placed in the boundary zone of several cultural and geographical orientations, embodying similar possibilities and limitations as the original figure. Park’s essay was primarily occupied with the mental faculties of the marginal man between cultures, and in this sense Gloria applies a transnational orientation common among migrants. The limiting element of being a marginal person/migrant has more to do with the lack of network and economic resources to which constant mobility can also lead. In Berlin, Gloria’s situation as a working migrant did not enable her to establish the stable network of relations that is necessary to gain authority locally. Although she is currently a permanent resident in Denmark with a known profile in the Filipino community, Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ have ceased speaking to her. The social marginality and invisibility of the Filipino migrant has somehow slipped into her visionary activity. Mediatisation and Marginal Actors In late modern society, discourses of religious marginality form part of a mediatised stream of cultural and religious figures that can be tapped into when necessary. The witch, the monk, and the prophet have all been so thoroughly integrated into the cultural fabric of Western societies that their religious significance is in many cases lost in the process of mediatisation.42 According to Stig Hjarvard, the functional differentiation associated with secularisation dovetails with the process of mediatisation, understood as the rise of authoritative and secular media institutions.43 These processes induce social change in the inner and outer workings of religious organisations because of the lack of control over the public (secular) opinion mediated in the press or on social media.44 In its original form, mediatisation theory has been criticised for a lack of awareness of

41

Kharlamov, ‘Boundary Zone’. Hjarvard, ‘The Mediatization of Religion’. 43 S. Hjarvard, ‘Three Forms of Mediatized Religion. Changing the Public Face of Religion’, in S. Hjarvard and M. Lövheim (eds.), Mediatization and Religion. Nordic Perspectives (Göteborg, 2012) 21-44 at 22. 44 Hjarvard, ‘Three Forms’. 42

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the social actors’ use of media.45 The theory tends to overemphasise the media institutions as separate and authoritative agents sui generis.46 Mediatisation theory suits the religious situation in the Nordic countries where a media logic does impact religious organisations such as the Catholic Church in a secularising way. But here I would like to follow up on the criticism related to how social actors can be the drivers of media development. The underlying assumption in mediatisation theory is that the media changes the social reality of religions and the religious. Yet the conflation of media and religion also fits broader societal changes related to different generations and their media behaviour. Contemporary Western societies is witnessing a generational replacement towards an increase in the distrust of traditional, religious institutions and a rise in individualised approaches to the religious, combined with technological knowhow in the younger generations. The so-called post-boomer generations (people born after 1975) are used to finding alternative authorities through the use of digital media,47 and they are important actors in the media arena. A focus on the social media users and their generational behaviour contributes further to our understanding of the situation of migrants such as Gloria. As already mentioned, in establishing a context for the transformation of a subjective religious experience into a public event, you need some form of media attention. Gloria’s visions have never been turned into collective narratives, not only because they have a private character but also because she has not been able to facilitate media attention. In Berlin, she did not have the means, and today her use of social media such as facebook is fraught with conflict as it repeats the social patterns of her local church environment: people do not believe her, and she has ‘unfriended’ some of her Filipino co-religionists because of internal disputes. On facebook, her acquaintances are more outspoken about their scepticism than in face-toface communication.48 So the social media is not a happy place for her, even though the devotional subculture in general flourishes on the internet. While late modern Scandinavian societies are generally affected by media-borne religious individualisation and the quest for authenticity,49

45 Regarding social actors from a gender perspective, see M. Lövheim (ed.), Media, Religion and Gender. Key Issues and New Challenges (New York, 2013). 46 D. Deacon and J. Stanyer, ‘Mediatization: Key Concept or Conceptual Bandwagon?’, Media, Culture & Society 36/7 (2014) 1032-44 at 1034. 47 R. Flory and D.E. Miller, Finding Faith: The Spiritual Quest of the Post-Boomer Generation (New Brunswick, 2004) 8-10. 48 Interview with Gloria, 28.03.17. 49 C. Taylor, Varieties of Religion Today: William James Revisited (Harvard, 2002).

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Gloria’s case brings out how mediatisation might mean different things to different generations. As an elderly migrant, Gloria’s situation offers an interesting case as she acts transnationally in her use of social media, following global Catholic devotional groups and keeping up with relatives in faraway places. Yet she does not expand her visionary narrative digitally to claim authority as she is also loyal towards the Catholic institution and its routinized and traditional authority. In this sense, she represents her generation, a generation that has a greater trust in, sense of allegiance towards, and affiliation with societal institutions. Finally, to master processes of mediatisation, you need to have access to the right media such as a reliable internet supplier. In practice, media mastery requires a smartphone, something Gloria does not own. Social Marginality and Religious Mediatisation: How and Why Private Revelations Remain Private In this volume, we investigate how media are fundamental for understanding shifts or mutations in religious authority by way of religious and social marginality. Gloria’s private revelations are only mediated by her own oral narratives of the events, and that form of mediation has not proven authoritative enough to establish a context around her visions in the contemporary mediatised society. Although she places herself in a devotional tradition where certain forms of social marginality are well established as fruitful means for mediating what is framed as divine presence, Gloria’s social marginality as a migrant keeps her from taking advantage of the established Catholic codes of recognition. This is especially important when it comes to mediatisation and the physical location of a vision. Religious mediatisation mostly frames the collective aspects of religion, narrating a somewhat secular and media-friendly version of public religion. Gloria’s visions do not pass as collective religion in its contemporary form. Her movements as a work migrant enable mobility through diverse national terrains, but the same movement hinders the establishment of a physical location of visionary activity, support networks and resources aimed at activities at the site. Despite the prolific visionary activity on the internet and the possibilities of establishing digital locations, Gloria does not gain authority from her use of social media. Her contemporary visions comfort her in silence. As private revelations, they remain private.

XII. PRAYERS AND STORIES AS MEDIA AND MATERIALITY: CHANGING SOURCES OF AUTHORITY IN THE EMERGING CHURCH MOVEMENT Sebastian Schüler

In 2010, when I was a visiting researcher at the Department of Anthropology at the University of California in San Diego (UCSD), I was still in the beginning of my research on a small evangelical prayer movement called ‘24-7Prayer’ that had originated in the South of England. My mentor at UCSD, Joel Robbins, mentioned that there was a Christian prayer room on the campus of UCSD and so – as an anthropologist of religion – I decided to go have a look. When I entered the room, I was astonished by the fact that it looked so similar to all the 24-7Prayer-movement prayer rooms I had visited so far. There were big paper sheets on the walls on which to draw and write prayers and poems. There were cushions on the floor to sit or lie down on, instruments in the corner, and a bunch of utensils with which to express your prayers in an individualistic and artistic manner. I was curious how these similarities could be explained. After asking my way around for a while, I found one of the initiators of this prayer room. At that time, he was a student and an active member of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, a popular evangelical campus ministry organisation.1 I asked what gave him the idea for setting up this prayer room and he mentioned a book that he had read and which had inspired him, Pete Greig’s Red Moon Rising. At that moment, I realised that the 24-7Prayer-movement was not as marginal and subversive as it sometimes presents itself: Pete Greig could be regarded as the founder of this movement. His book has made its way into mainstream evangelicalism. As this short anecdote about the 24-7Prayer-movement demonstrates, it is sometimes difficult to define who is at the margins and who is at the 1 P.A. Bramadat, The Church on the World’s Turf: An Evangelical Christian Group at a Secular University (Oxford, 2000).

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centre, as it is a matter of perspective. In this contribution, I will therefore explore the anecdote’s subject further, and move on to analyse the role and place of the 24-7Prayer-movement within the context of contemporary evangelicalism in order to discuss the functions of media and materiality in the discourse on marginality and its influence on authority in the movement. My research is based on several field studies with participatory observations and interviews I have conducted in Great Britain, Germany, Spain, and Macedonia from 2009 to the present. The 24-7Prayer-movement can be understood as a typical expression of the broader so-called Emerging Church Movement (ECM), a conglomeration of different local churches, loose networks, and smaller movements that all together have produced a discourse on the role of Christianity in a postmodern era.2 This discourse can be characterised by its emphasis on creative spirituality, post-modernity, and criticism of institutional religion. At the same time, it usually differentiates itself from mainstream Evangelicalism with its seeker-driven mega-churches, consumer oriented products, and rigid political and moral opinions. ‘Emerging evangelicalism is best defined as a movement of cultural critique grounded in a desire for change.’3 In addition, this new generation of evangelical Christians is looking for new ways to express and experience their faith in a more artistic, simplistic, and holistic manner.4 But there is more to it than a bohemian attitude: Not only do they participate in an intellectual discourse on

2 For an academic analysis of the Emerging Church Movement see: M. Guest and S. Taylor, ‘The Post-Evangelical Emerging Church: Innovations in New Zealand and the UK’, International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church 6/1 (2006) 49-64; S. BaderSaye, ‘Improvising Church: An Introduction to the Emerging Church Conversation’, International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church 6/1 (2006) 12-23; J.S. Bielo, Emerging Evangelicals: Faith, Modernity, and the Desire for Authenticity (New York, 2011); J. Packard, The Emerging Church: Religion at the Margins (Boulder, 2012); M. Freudenberg, ‘The Emerging Church as a Critical Response to the Neoliberalization of the American Religious Landscape’, Politics and Religion 2/9 (2015) 297-319. Some of the main religious contributions to the discourse about the Emerging Church Movement are: D. Kimball, The Emerging Church: Vintage Christianity for New Generations (Grand Rapids, 2003); B. McLaren, A Generous Orthodoxy (Grand Rapids, 2004); R.S. Smith, Truth and the New Kind of Christian: The Emerging Effects of Postmodernism in the Church (Wheaton, 2005); E. Gibbs and R. Bolger, Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Culture (Grand Rapids, 2005); D.A. Carson, Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church (Grand Rapids, 2005). 3 J.S. Bielo, ‘“FORMED”: Emerging Evangelicals Navigate Two Transformations’, in B. Steensland and P. Goff (eds.), The New Evangelical Social Engagement (Oxford, 2014) 31-49 at 32. 4 S. Schüler, ‘Establishing a ‘Culture of Prayer’: Holistic spirituality and the social transformation of contemporary Evangelicalism’, Annual Review of the Sociology of Religion  4 (2013) 263-80.

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postmodernity, they also engage in activities fostering social justice,5 live a communal life (New Monasticism),6 and create and perform their own narratives of marginality.7 In my analysis of this evangelical movement, I aim to demonstrate that the concept of ‘believing without belonging’, as it was introduced by British sociologist Grace Davie,8 can serve as an apt starting point for understanding some of the religious and social changes in contemporary Evangelicalism, but that it also needs some re-evaluation to make more sense of recent developments. In doing so, I will focus on the role of media culture and materiality to show how concepts and sources of authority have changed in the ECM compared to mainstream Evangelicalism – or at least offer some framings of how the intentions and performances of the ECM to renew Christianity from the margins can be explained. With this analysis, I will also demonstrate a new emphasis in the media culture of the ECM that can be best characterised as a shift from ‘mediatisation’ in terms of the influence of modern (mass) media on religion to ‘intermediality’ in terms of the use of shifting forms of media and their entwinement with material culture to foster a shared sense of (a marginalised) reality. Before I turn to the case study of the 24-7Prayer-movement, I will briefly introduce some central aspects of the discourse surrounding the ECM by taking a closer look at some of their main protagonists. From Modernity to Postmodernity: Believing and Belonging in the Emerging Church Depending on the observer’s perspective, evangelical Christianity can be considered as anti-modern, reactionary, and rigid on the one hand, and on the other as modern, conservative, and culturally adaptive. To a certain extent both perspectives are correct. Many mainstream (not to be confused with mainline9) evangelicals are politically and morally conservative, 5

B. Steensland and P. Goff (eds.), The New Evangelical Social Engagement (Oxford, 2014). W. Samson, ‘The New Monasticism’, in Steensland and Goff, The New Evangelical Social Engagement, 94-108. 7 Packard, The Emerging Church. 8 G. Davie, ‘Believing without Belonging: Is this the Future of Religion in Britain?’, Social Compass 37/4 (1990) 455-69. 9 In the USA, the term mainline Protestant church refers to denominations such as the United Methodist Church, Presbyterian Church, Episcopal Church, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and others, which usually stand for a moderate, liberal theology and who were a majority of Protestant Christianity until mid 20th century. Today’s mainstream Protestant churches in the USA are evangelical, fundamentalist, and charismatic denominations. 6

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anti-evolutionist, anti-gay, and anti-abortion.10 Yet, they engage modern technology, modern lifestyles, and even popular culture. Especially the generation born between the mid-sixties and mid-eighties grew up in churches and congregations with bands playing pop and rock music for worship,11 with multi-media-technology such as lightshows and video projections, and with cool pastors who preached in shorts and T-shirts rather than in suits. In the US, these evangelicals usually voted Republican since the relationship between evangelicals and the GOP became well cemented during the era of the Moral Majority and Focus on the Family campaigns from the 1960s to 1980s.12 By calling these kinds of evangelicals ‘mainstream’, I start from the observation that they have become one of the most influential and widespread forms or versions of global Evangelicalism today,13 even though the term Evangelicalism itself is still more problematic and complex.14 However, there are different aspects and theories about why mainstream Evangelicalism became successful. According to Miller,15 it was the Evangelicals’ ability to adapt to modern (pop-) culture that made them successful and helped them to become a global mainstream Protestant movement. Another reason for their success could be found in the ways Evangelicals have made use of modern media such a radio, television, or the internet.16 Certainly, many variations of Evangelicalism exist today and recent anthropological research17 has shown that also classical distinctions between Evangelicals, Charismatics, and Pentecostals no longer count for many of the younger, mostly non-denominational churches.18 Still, for instance, one of the most widespread – and therefore mainstream – theologies within Evangelicalism today is the so-called prosperity Gospel, also known as the

10 R. Balmer, Evangelicalism in America (Waco, 2016). B. Hankins, American Evangelicals: A Contemporary History of a Mainstream Religious Movement (Lanham, 2008). 11 D.W. Stowe, No Sympathy for the Devil: Christian Pop Music and the Transformation of American Evangelicalism (Chapel Hill, 2013). 12 Hankins, American Evangelicals. 13 M. El-Faizy, God and Country: How Evangelicals Have Become America’s New Mainstream (New York, 2006). S.P. Miller, The Age of Evangelicalism: America’s Born Again Years (Oxford, 2014). 14 S. Coleman and R.I.J. Hackett (eds.), The Anthropology of Global Pentecostalism and Evangelicalism (New York, 2015). R. Balmer, Evangelicalism in America (Waco, 2016). 15 Miller, The Age of Evangelicalism. 16 S.M. Hoover and N. Kaneva (eds.), Fundamentalisms and the Media (London, New York, 2009). 17 Coleman and Hackett, The Anthropology. 18 M. Clawson and A. Stace (eds.), Crossing Boundaries, Redefining Faith: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Emerging Church Movement (Eugene, 2016).

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‘health and wealth’ Gospel, which entails the belief that financial blessing and physical well-being is always the will of God and comes automatically as the result of a strong faith in God.19 In addition, the rise of mega-churches around the globe went hand in hand with the distribution of this kind of theology. Despite global, mainstream Evangelicalism being conservative and prosperity driven, there are also some marginal movements within it that not only demonstrate the great variety of Evangelicalism but also have a considerable impact on the global Evangelical discourse and on local practices of authority. One of these movements that most clearly challenges religious authority in contemporary Evangelicalism is the so-called Emerging Church Movement (ECM), a marginal movement within global Evangelicalism despite having gained some momentum in recent years. I use the term ECM as an umbrella term that includes some of the main characteristics coming from this field (and to which I will turn in a moment). However, the ECM is not a homogenous movement and not all individuals, movements, or networks that share characteristics and attitudes found in the ECM identify themselves as part of the ECM, even though they sometimes sympathise with it. In addition – and to make it even more confusing – there are several movements and networks with names such as the Missional Church Movement, the Simple Church Movement, the Organic Church Movement, the 24-7Prayer Movement, the Refresh Movement or the Fresh Expressions Movement – just to name a few, all of which express ideas that are also central to the ECM and which I therefore subsume within the term ECM. The term ECM is thus problematic as an academic category since it is hard to define exactly what it is and who belongs to it.20 Insiders as well as scholarly outsiders of these movements have used different terms to describe and characterise the ECM, such as ‘progressive Evangelicalism,’ ‘postmodern Christianity,’ ‘New Evangelicals,’ ‘Post-Protestants,’ ‘Post-Evangelicals,’ or the ‘Evangelical Left.’ But what are all these labels about? Well, most of these churches, movements and networks share a common vision of a postmodern church that critically reflects on the ties between Evangelicalism and modernity, including modern ideologies such as materialism, stable institutional growth, and consumerism. They aim for a conversational approach that transcends labels of Evangelicalism such as conservative and liberal, fundamentalist and modernist. On a practical level, they are unified 19

K. Bowler, Blessed: A History of the American Prosperity Gospel (Oxford, 2013). G. Ganiel and G. Marti, The Deconstructed Church: Understanding Emerging Christianity (New York, 2014). 20

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in the idea of a simple church with very few structures; this also allows for new, experimental ways of doing worship, evangelism, and building communities. Most of these movements originated in so-called Western societies, especially the USA, Europe, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. And most initiators and supporters of these movements, usually between twenty and forty years old, have had access to higher education and follow a bohemian or alternative lifestyle. Representing this milieu, Dan Kimball, in his book They like Jesus but not the Church,21 has criticised Evangelical Christians for having created their own subculture within society. He argued that especially younger Christians are ‘too busy inside the church to know those outside of the church’.22 For him and other authors within the ECM, this is the result of the proclaimed culture wars in the USA.23 Kimball and others summarised the situation for Evangelicals in the 1990s and 2000s accordingly: Evangelical Christians, on the one hand, became absorbed in their own subculture and became afraid of secular culture as the realm of the devil. Non-Christians on the other hand, perceived Evangelicals as anti-modern, narrow-minded fundamentalists. However, evangelical authors and pastors such as Dan Kimball, Rob Bell, Shane Claiborne, and Mark Driscoll observed this split between Evangelicalism and secular culture with regret, and envisioned instead a change in Evangelicalism, leading to what has become the ECM. Kimball has, for example, stated that ‘I probably wouldn’t like Christians if I weren’t one,’ and [elsewhere] pointed out: ‘We don’t realise how Christians have come across to people over the past 20 years or so. There are a lot of negative stereotypes that people outside the church have of us, and we need to pay attention.’24 Hence, the ECM is characterised as critical of institutionalised Christianity25 and of right wing, conservative Evangelicalism with its aggressive missionary engagement. Most of ECM Christians see themselves as a generation of Christians who are embarrassed about what Evangelicalism has become. Many have voiced critique against tight church structures with authoritarian pastors whose predominant goal is to bring more people to church. In fact, the rise of mega-churches around the globe

21 D. Kimball, They like Jesus but not the Church: Insights from Emerging Generations (Grand Rapids, 2007). 22 Kimball, They like Jesus, 13. 23 J.D. Hunter, The Culture Wars: The Struggle to Define America (New York, 1991). 24 http://www.christianitytoday.com/pastors/2009/november-online-only/q3.html. 25 Packard, The Emerging Church.

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has become one of the dominant institutional organisations in Evangelicalism known for their authoritarian character.26 Anthropologist Miranda Klaver, working on styles of authority in Pentecostal Megachurches, has put it this way: ‘Pentecostal megachurches in different parts of the world, because of their size and success and presence in the online world, operate as authoritative centres of divine blessing, inspiration and even God’s presence.’27 Accordingly, many ECM members criticise this development and the styles of worship typical for megachurches because they aim at arousing emotions rather than contemplating Jesus. Another critical aspect they point to is the segregation of the church community through specialised programs especially in mega-churches (for instance programs for teenagers, for engaged couples, for prayer, for mission, for social work, and so on). This demonstrates that there is an observable shift of authority at the margins of contemporary Evangelicalism that perhaps is now also entering the mainstream. For example, in their recently published ‘Evangelicals and Sources of Authority’, the editors Klaver, Paas, and van Staalduine-Sulman observe a more general shift of authority in Dutch Evangelicalism: ‘In the past two decades, however, a shift from traditional interpretations of the Bible to an emphasis on individual experiences and emotions has been discernible, with varying implications. It is time to acknowledge that the evangelical movement is no longer stuck in conservatism, but is willing to enter new debates with changing sources of authority.’28 The intriguing question here is why and how some evangelicals aim for new sources of authority. Most evangelical Christians would agree that their main sources of authority are Jesus, God, and the Bible, and this is also true for the ECM. However, within Evangelicalism we find different forms of media culture (see this volume’s introduction) that have been established over the last two or three decades, and which also serve as sources of authority. The consumption of particular media, such as megachurch services, Christian self-help books, Christian fiction, and Christian music does not replace these main sources of authority but offers guidance in an everyday Christian life, and influences opinions on ethical and moral 26 S. Ellingson, The Megachurch and the Mainline: Remaking Religious Tradition in the Twenty-First Century (Chicago and London, 2007). T. Kern and U. Schimank, ‘Megakirchen als religiöse Organisationen: Ein dritter Gemeindetyp jenseits von Sekte und Kirche?’, Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie 65 (2013) 285-309. 27 M. Klaver, ‘Pentecostal pastorpreneurs and the global circulation of authoritative aesthetic styles’, Culture and Religion 16/2 (2015) 146-59 at 146. 28 M. Klaver et al. (eds.), Evangelicals and Sources of Authority (Amsterdam, 2016).

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questions. As such, these media cultures function as important sources of authority within global Evangelicalism. Movements such as the ECM have begun to challenge the media culture of mainstream Evangelicalism both by criticising institutionalised religion such as mega-churches with their ‘sensational devotions’,29 and by introducing alternative media cultures that bring forth specific aspects of materiality and spirituality as new (ancient) sources of authority. The ECM’s aim to resist institutionalisation calls to mind the phrase ‘believing without belonging’, coined by sociologist Grace Davie in 1990.30 Based on surveys of church membership and personal belief in Britain, Davie argued, contrary to common secularisation theory, that many people in Britain (and in Europe) still hold religious beliefs even though they no longer are church members or do not join in church activities. These findings support Davie’s theory of religious individualisation. In 2011, sociologist Abby Day presented a more qualitative study. In her book Believing in Belonging she argued that people’s belief in ‘something’ usually results in creating social relationships.31 Belief is thus not only an individual matter but also a social one. As we will see in the following, in the case of the ECM and especially the 24-7Prayer-movement the attitude of believing without belonging has also lead to a believing in belonging by means of shifting sources of authority moving towards the religious self and personal relationships. Even though the religious landscapes in the USA and Europe were and are still quite different, the ECM emerged in both continents almost simultaneously at the end of the 1990s, and it may thus be said to stand for a common critique against common forms of institutionalised religion, and particular media cultures, in contemporary evangelicalism. Summing up this section on the ECM, we can say that this movement – although it is very heterogeneous – represents a typical reform movement, which aims at social and spiritual changes in contemporary Evangelicalism. One of the most intriguing aspects of this movement is therefore that it cannot be characterised as just another ‘Great Awakening’, where religious experience is usually mediated through highly emotional arousals and in which the religious authority is seen and represented in so-called manifestations of the Holy Spirit. Rather, similar to what we can find in contemporary esotericism and spirituality, individuals in the ECM are engaged in 29 J. Stevenson, Sensational Devotion: Evangelical Performance in Twenty-First-Century America (Ann Arbor, 2013). 30 Davie, ‘Believing without Belonging’. 31 A. Day, Believing in Belonging: Belief and Social Identity in the Modern World (Oxford, 2011).

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a constant work on the religious self. Accordingly, the religious self becomes authoritative in and of itself through different kinds of media usage such as contemplative prayer, mystic experiences, artistic expressions, social engagement, or storytelling. In the following I will show how this is put into practice by taking a closer look at one of the ECM movements, the 24-7Prayer-movement. From Vision to Visualisation: Media and Materiality in the 24-7Prayer-Movement Pete Greig, mentioned above, is a British pastor who founded the 24-7Prayer-movement in 1999. Back then, Greig was a youth pastor at Evangelical Revelation Church in Chichester, South England. The founding myth of that movement, as told by Pete Greig in his first book32 entitled Red Moon Rising, goes as follows: Young surfer Pete Greig was hitchhiking through Europe. One night, when he slept in his tent on a Portuguese beach, he received a vision from God: He writes: ‘My eyes were opened and I could “see” with absolute clarity before me the different countries laid out like an atlas. And from each of these nations I watched as young people arose out of the pages, crowds of them in every nation, a mysterious, faceless army silently awaiting orders.’33 Following this miraculous vision, Pete continued his journey until he arrived in Herrnhut, east of Dresden in Germany, where he discovered the origins of the Moravian Movement founded by Nikolaus Ludwig von Zinzendorf in the eighteenth century. He also learned about a nonstop prayer chain that Zinzendorf had initiated in 1727 that ran for 100 years. With this in mind, Pete returned to his church in Chichester and started an experiment. He asked his congregation to create a prayer room in the church building where prayer could be expressed in a creative and personal way, and where the church community should try to pray nonstop for an entire month. The church organised a prayer schedule with slots of one or two hours for each one to pray before someone else took over, making sure that the prayer chain ran continuously for one whole month. They indeed prayed for two months, during which the word of this ‘miracle’ spread across the country, and inspired others to do the same and to join the prayer chain. A first website was put up in order to organise that prayer 32 P. Greig and D. Roberts, Red Moon Rising: How 24-7 Prayer is Awakening a Generation (Lake Mary, 2003). 33 Greig and Roberts, Red Moon Rising, 33.

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chain, and thus 24-7Prayer was born. The experiment ‘accidentally’ – as Pete Greig continually emphasises – initiated a global nonstop prayer movement. Shortly after, Pete Greig published the book Red Moon Rising telling this story and thus contributing to the success of the movement. In addition to the prayer chain, local groups were founded and called ‘Boiler Rooms,’ intended as places where people could live together or meet on a daily basis in order to join in prayer or for meals. While the prayer chain seemed to have run automatically and got somewhat ‘out of control’, the movement itself concentrated on these Boiler Rooms, making sure that they did not become another church institution but would instead function as a hub for creativity, prayer, and social justice. As a result, Andy Freeman, another protagonist of the 24-7Prayer-movement, wrote a book together with Pete Greig in 2007 called Punk Monk: New Monasticism and the Ancient Art of Breathing,34 in which they elaborate on the idea of Boiler Rooms and the intended shift from institutions to communities. The idea of communities as places of prayer inspired by the (Celtic) monastic tradition is quite common in the ECM.35 Along with these and additional other books by Pete Greig and other pioneers of the movement, several short online videos were also produced that propagated the idea that Christian everyday life should be embedded in and emerge out of prayer. Accordingly, the titles of these videos are, to name a few: ‘prayer as a movement’, ‘prayer as community’, ‘prayer as creativity’, ‘prayer as justice’, and ‘prayer as mission’. In this way, prayer became the source of authority for all kinds of everyday activity, and it was visualised through online tutorials and videos. Because Pete Greig founded the movement, one would expect him to be its leader. However, he usually avoids being identified as the head of the movement. Instead he emphasises the momentariness and messiness of the movement by often stating that the movement is not a brand made to last. In his view, it is more important to stay flexible and dynamic rather than to become just another religious institution. This idea of flexibility and being a movement that keeps on moving and changing represents a core attitude36 that also says much about the place and role of religious authority in 34 A. Freeman and P. Greig, Punk Monk: New Monasticism and the Ancient Art of Breathing (Ventura, 2007). 35 Samson, The New Monasticism. 36 See also the video ‘prayer as a movement’ in which people move their bodies and are asked to characterize the movement in three words: https://24-7prayer.com/video/prayeras-a-movement# (last access on May 11th, 2017).

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the movement. Authority is moved away from structures and institutions and given to the creativity of the individual who aims at sustaining a permanently unsettled life.37 However, when authority is not stably located in doctrinal teachings and hierarchies, the establishment of religious authority is a complicated process that needs to be mediated and materialised in the believers’ everyday life. Accordingly, stories and prayers have become the central vehicles of authority in the movement. The movement’s most recent video (2017), for instance, visualises a poem called ‘The Vision’ written by Pete Greig in the first prayer room in 1999. The poem begins like this: So this guy comes up to me and says, ‘What’s the vision? What’s the big idea?’ I open my mouth and words come out like this… The vision? The vision is JESUS – obsessively, dangerously, undeniably Jesus. The vision is an army of young people. You see bones? I see an army. And they are FREE from materialism. They laugh at 9-5 little prisons. They could eat caviar on Monday and crusts on Tuesday. They wouldn’t even notice. They know the meaning of the Matrix, the way the west was won. They are mobile like the wind, they belong to the nations. They need no passport. People write their addresses in pencil and wonder at their strange existence. They are free yet they are slaves of the hurting and dirty and dying (…).

In his poem, Greig highlights the idea of marginality as a powerful source of Christian identity. His initial question about ‘the vision’ and the ‘big idea’ – asked by a stranger – already indicates a certain scepticism towards life in general and maybe towards Christianity in particular. The answer to this question then somehow mysteriously flows out of his mouth, as if God himself is speaking through Greig. However, the message is both simple and radical: It is simple, because it lacks any theological or denominational context by stating that the vision is Jesus. Yet, this simplicity is communicated as something radical for the followers’ personal identity. It laims that Christians (or indeed merely followers of Jesus?) are free from modern materialism and stereotyped lifestyles, and that they are free and committed to serve the poor and invalid.

37

Packard, The Emerging Church, 61.

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The poem clearly taps into a typical idea of marginality that can be observed already at the beginnings of Christian history38 with Jesus himself serving as a role model of a social outlaw. By addressing the ‘9-5 little prisons,’ Greig criticises the ideal of a modern working ethos that aims for material and monetary safeguard and opposes this ideal with the fluidity of postmodern lifestyles, which are also stylised as anti-material in nature. The poem thus draws an ideal picture of Christian believers as unbound from all kinds of institutional structures, religious theologies, and social habits. It offers the idea of a Christian maverick who is not religiously deviant, but socially, culturally, and religiously (self-)marginalised and that from this (perceived) marginal position a new (self-)empowerment to induce social change will arise. The representation of marginality as a core concept of Christian identity in this poem thereby also reframes classical Evangelical ideas of authority such as empowerment through charismatic worship by authorising the religious Self. I will return to this below. The poem itself became a story of success after it went viral on a number of social media shortly after it was written in 1999. Pete Greig later stated: ‘It wasn’t a big deal, just a very personal thing – trying to work out the call on my life and why I was awake at 3am praying when others were tucked up in bed!’ … I didn’t realise any of this (the poem going viral, S.S.) until someone in Canada emailed my own poem to me saying they had come across it and thought I might like it.’39 Shortly after this took place, Pete Greig wrote a book called The Vision and the Vow: A Call to Discipleship.40 In his book he tells the story of his poem going viral and about the importance of story-telling in our age. Now, almost seventeen years after it was written, a short video about the poem was produced and released online (2017).41 The production was crowd-funded through the movement’s website and newsletter. The video begins with the words: ‘September 1999, Graffiti appears on the walls of a warehouse in southern England. It’s a call to arms that comes to be known to millions simply as… The Vision’. Here, the video not only presents and visualises the poem but also highlights its success of reception as a story of its own. In the video, we see mostly young and energetic people in everyday activities such as doing sports, walking the streets, or walking in the forest. The pictures are often shot in slow motion with close-ups of the faces, 38 J.N. Bremmer, ‘Symbols of Marginality from Early Pythagoreans to Late Antique Monks’, Greece and Rome 39/2 (1992) 205-14. 39 See: https://www.24-7prayer.com/thevisionpoem (last access on May 11th, 2017). 40 P. Greig, The Vision and the Vow: A Call to Discipleship (Lake Mary, 2004). 41 See: https://www.24-7prayer.com/thevisionfilm (last access on May 31st, 2017).

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which increases the impression that the people shown in this video are in a state of contemplation. The poem is presented as a rap-song and the music starts off slowly while getting more pulsatile toward the end of the video. What is striking is the discrepancy between the martial words of the poem and the pictures of young, cool, and hip people. The poem talks about an army of believers and propagates an anti-materialist, anti-mainstream attitude to society whereas at the same time the pictures show ordinary young people doing arts, playing music, or doing sports. This, to some extent, represents the ways in which the 24-7Prayer movement aims at transforming evangelicalism as well as secular society from within through propagating a particular religious lifestyle that is characterised by a contemplative spirituality that imparts authenticity to the believers. Bielo42 also emphasised how emerging Evangelicals attempt to undertake the establishment of an authentic lifestyle through community-living and so-called ‘missional’ engagement. The term ‘missional’ is common in the ECM and is thus distinguished from ‘mission’ in as much that ‘missional’ is understood as a more holistic approach to reaching out to people in everyday activities rather than mission understood as bringing people to church for proselytism.43 In the 24-7Prayer-movement, prayer is understood as a practice for contemplating and reflecting on one’s own identity and the role of spirituality in culture and society. Indeed, the video uses only a few religious symbols and concentrates mostly on people praying and worshipping without any clear indication of religious or denominational affiliations (except for a rabbi who appears twice in the video). The movement thus fits the ‘spiritual but not religious’-discourse44 in contemporary western society that can usually be found in the esoteric milieu but also appears more and more often in nondenominational Christianity. In the video, 24-7Prayer portrays itself as a movement of cool social and religious misfits who live at the margins of mainstream Christianity and who claim a sort of post-traditional or postmodern reflexivity for themselves that serves as a resource of authority. This self-marginalisation also results in a turn toward welfare for the socially deprived. Topics of social justice and practices of social engagement in local communities and neighbourhoods can be found among many emerging Evangelicals who turn 42

Bielo, Emerging Evangelicals. Schüler, ‘Culture of Prayer’. 44 R.C. Fuller, Spiritual, but not Religious – Understanding Unchurched America (New York, 2001); R. Wuthnow, After the Baby Boomers. How Twenty- and Thirty-Somethings are Shaping the Future of American Religion (Princeton, 2007). 43

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their backs to mega-church organisations and their prosperity gospel. This is nicely depicted in the title of religious author Diana Butler Buss: Christianity for the Rest of US: How the Neighborhood Church Is Transforming the Faith.45 The poem functions as a medium for this idea of self-marginalisation and becomes materialised in the video, which – again – is a medium for telling stories. This concept of story-telling, also known as narrative theology, plays an important role in the ECM. In fact, the sheer practice of story-telling and the constant emphasis on the idea that every individual Christian carries an important story has become a sort of meta-narrative within the movement. The production of online videos reinforces the role of narratives as sources of personal authority and identity-formation. The movement continuously creates a story about itself as the manifestation of the story of God with his people. Thus, this meta-narrative functions as an important source of authority for the believers, who get the feeling that they participate in an ‘ongoing story of God with his people’. As mentioned before, the idea of prayer-rooms where prayers can be expressed creatively is itself a story of success. Churches all over the world from Europe to Brazil and from the USA to China have adopted this idea. 24-7Prayer not only initiated this international and interdenominational network of prayer, but also established a certain aesthetic for the creation and decoration of such prayer rooms. In 2009, Greig published his book The 24-7Prayer Manual: Anyone, Anywhere Can Learn to Pray like Never Before,46 including a step-by-step description of how to put up and decorate a prayer room with paper sheets on the wall on which one can creatively draw and write down prayers. This idea of experimenting with prayers indicates a shift from the authority of standardised prayers or typical charismatic prayer styles to more individualised and temporary or shifting styles of prayer that can take over the role of authority in the lives of the believers. The 24-7Prayer rooms all around the world create and evoke a sense of the religious self as a source for authority by highlighting creativity and the arts as forms of prayer. In addition, the decorated prayer rooms serve as materialised prayers themselves. One who enters such a room can contemplate and gaze at the artistic expressions others have left there. This also demonstrates a shift from textual and institutionalised forms of

45 D. Butler Bass, Christianity for the Rest of US: How the Neighborhood Church Is Transforming the Faith (New York, 2006). 46 P. Greig, The 24-7Prayer Manual: Anyone, Anywhere Can Learn to Pray like Never Before (Colorado Springs, 2009).

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authority to performative and aesthetic dimensions of authority. The performance of this media culture must therefore be understood in a broad sense; on the one hand, it refers to the practice of prayer and the discourse about it that works as the main identity marker of the movement. It also refers to the materiality of the prayer rooms that have been created and distributed on a global level. The very aesthetic of these prayer rooms also functions as an identity marker of the movement. On the other hand, the term media refers to the online resources such as websites and videos, which visualise and therefore propagate the idea of marginality via the Internet. The use of prayers and stories as a form of media within the 24-7Prayermovement can also be characterised as a shift from mediatisation within mainstream Evangelicalism to practices of intermediality within the ECM. Unfortunately, the term mediatisation has been used very differently so far47 but usually refers to the role and influence of postmodern media such as radio, television, or the Internet in society in general and in religion in particular. An early definition, given by Jay Blumler and Dennis Kavanagh, is that mediatisation is ‘the media moving toward the center of the social process’.48 This means that late modern religious practices are often understood to be dominated by technological and digital media that were supposed to support religious communication but ended up in becoming itself part of the religious practice and thereby imposed a sort of media logic on religion.49 Even though the influence of media on religion can be tracked down throughout religious history50 one could argue that the invention of digital media in late modernity has significantly speeded up this process of mediatisation (not only) in the realm of religion. Mainstream Evangelicalism is a good example of this process where the professional use of media technology, such as light shows and huge display screens in mega-churches but also the facilities to process services and information via Television, Internet, and social media, come to impact religious transformations. However, not all modern Evangelicalism can be reduced to Televangelism and other forms of mediatised religion. Still, mediatisation is a central feature for the public perception of modern Evangelicalism. The ECM and other postmodern Evangelicals have reacted to 47 D. Morgan, ‘Mediation or mediatisation: The history of media in the study of religion’, Culture and Religion 12/2 (2011) 137-52. 48 J.G. Blumler and D. Kavanagh, ‘The Third Age of Political Communication: Influences and Features’, Political Communication 16 (1999) 209-30 at 211. 49 Morgan, ‘Mediation or mediatisation’. 50 Morgan, ‘Mediation or mediatisation’, 150.

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modern media culture and criticised this aspect of mainstream Evangelicalism51, and – as a remedy – they have stressed other forms of media and mediation such as creativity in prayer, material objects in prayer-rooms, personal story-telling, and contemplative spirituality. Nevertheless, they also take part in the mediatisation process by professionally running their website, producing online videos, and using other forms of social media. However, what is crucial for the ECM is its intermediality of communication which they use actively in order to produce a sense of a marginal identity and to reframe authority. Intermediality – as understood here – refers to the use of various media and their entwinement with material culture and objects. The poem of Pete Greig, for example, was first written on a wall in a prayer-room, then it went viral on different social media, whereupon it fused with the story of going viral and was printed in a book covering that story, and finally was transferred into and produced as an online video. In this way, the poem was not only distributed via different media forms but also connects media and materiality in an intermediate way that reframes the use of media and materiality within the 24-7Prayer-movement in an attempt to transform authority. Whereas authority in mainstream Evangelicalism is produced and communicated through forms of mediatisation such as Televangelism, charismatic empowerment, and high-tech performances in mega churches, authority in the ECM is produced and communicated through intermediality such as contemplative prayer-rooms, personalised story-telling, the appeal to creativity, and a shared sense of being at the margins of Evangelical Christianity. The indicated shift towards intermediality further points to the self-image of the ECM as construed in contrast to mainstream Evangelical in terms of focussing on ‘holistic spirituality,’52 meaning the integration of the religious domain into other domains of social and cultural life and into everyday-life. Although we can find all sorts of every-day religiosity also in mainstream Evangelicalism, such as devotional fitness53 or other sub-cultural adaptations, the ECM differs from this in two main aspects. Firstly, they perform their identity as countercultural and therefore marginal vis-à-vis mainstream Evangelicalism, and secondly, their aim is to be more integrative towards secular culture rather than copying secular culture in an evangelical fashion (such as in devotional fitness). 51

Bielo, Emerging Evangelicals, 15. Schüler, ‘Culture of Prayer’. 53 M. Radermacher, Devotional Fitness: an Analysis of Contemporary Christian Dieting and Fitness Programs (Cham, 2017). 52

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Media and materiality thus go hand in hand with the performance of marginality in the 24-7Prayer-movement: The establishment and spread of prayer rooms as materialised spaces for creative prayers implicate and transport the idea that, first, even though someone perceives him- or herself only as a marginal figure in global Christianity, he or she can contribute to changing the world through prayers. Second, this performance of marginality as something positive also empowers the individual person by means of the idea of (maybe) being an important contributor to a religious movement of social change. The sense of a global, virtual connectedness through prayer rooms thus includes at least two aspects. These are, first, the impression of being only a marginal figure in a global condition and thus remote from any official authority, and, second, the awareness of being a part of a greater whole and thereby a self-based authority who can bring change to the world by rolling up one’s sleeves. In this way, the marginality discourse that can be found within the movement functions both as media and materiality: it becomes incorporated through the acts of prayers and telling stories (about marginality), as well as distributed and performed through old and new social media such as paper-books, sheets of paper tacked onto prayer room walls, and well-arranged short internet videos; a media culture that stresses shifting, short-lived, and temporary media forms. Accordingly, ‘(r)eligious authority does no longer emanate automatically from a stable religious congregation’54 but can be attributed to the religious self especially in the context of a discourse of religious marginality. From Subjectivity to Reflexivity: The Authorisation of the Religious Self The ongoing discourse of marginality and the related change of authority within the 24-7Prayer-movement that has been analysed thus far is an example of a broader shift within contemporary Evangelicalism that I have labelled The Emerging Church Movement. But how does this shift of authority towards the religious self differ from other forms of subjectification within the mainstream evangelical and charismatic movements? To be able to answer this question it is important to note that especially the charismatic and Pentecostal movements are usually characterised by their emphasis on subjective experiences and emotional expressions.55 The

54 M. Witte et al., ‘Aesthetics of Religious Authority: Introduction’, Culture and Religion 16/2 (2015) 117-24 at 120. 55 A. Corten, Pentecostalism in Brazil: Emotion of the Poor and Theological Romanticism (New York, 1999); P. Alexander, Signs and Wonders: Why Pentecostalism is the World’s Fastest-Growing Faith (San Francisco, 2009).

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manifestations of the Holy Spirit in the body of the individual believer that is expressed through ‘speaking in tongues’ and other physical reactions not only count as signs of wonders believed to cause physical and psychological healings. They are also seen as evidence of religious authenticity and social (denominational) affiliation. More traditional Evangelicals have always eyed, often with disgust, these emotional expressions as hyperbolic and theatrical types of behaviour and as theological aberrancies.56 However, the success of Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity in the 20th century has often been explained by their emotionality and easily accessible theological messages (the prosperity gospel). They have therefore been regarded as evidence of a broader change in the religious landscape, indicating a shift from traditional religiosity to modern forms of religiosity emphasising aspects of self-awareness, emotionality, bodily experiences, and healings.57 So how does the ECM differ from this kind of religious subjectivity? On the one hand, the kind of subjectivity that has been described above for the ECM can be characterised by its reflexive attitude towards social change and cultural identity in a globalised world. On the other hand, this ‘posttraditional’ reflexivity is achieved through an emphasis on prayer as a spiritual and contemplative practice that is both private and public at the same time. As we have seen above in the case of The Vision video, contemplation and prayer is illustrated as something private that happens inwardly. At the same time, the practice of prayer and contemplation is performed in public spaces and is embedded in everyday activities. Similarly, the already mentioned Boiler Rooms and the prayer rooms represent places where prayer takes place as something private and as a collective activity through the network of prayer chains and through the artistic expressions of the prayers that can be gazed upon by others. Through this performance of prayers, they become connected into a public network that leaves traces at certain intersections and this way gets materialised. Diana Butler Bass, for instance, a religious scholar and author (who can be related to the ECM) also observed a shift from denominational Christianity to more loose forms of Christian movements and networks that rests on a stronger interest in spirituality. In her book Christianity after Religion: The End of Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening, she asks: 56 M. Scheer, ‘Feeling Faith: The Cultural Practice of Religious Emotions in nineteenth-Century German Methodism’, in M. Scheer et al. (eds.), Out of the Tower: Essays on Culture and Everyday Life (Tübingen, 2013) 217-47; B. Hitzer and M. Scheer, ‘Unholy Feelings: Questioning Evangelical Emotions in Wilhelmine Germany’, German History 32/3 (2014) 371-92. 57 A. Anderson, An Introduction to Pentecostalism (Cambridge, 2004); Coleman and Hackett, The Anthropology.

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‘Prayer, preaching, Pentecostal gifts, and progressive theology and politics – these were the pathways of past awakenings. What is the way today? How can people participate in the spiritual renewal that is reshaping the world now? What can we do about it?’58 She argues that spiritual awakenings in Christian history have always been characterised by their public performances such as preaching in theatres or stadiums. Here she identifies the strongest transformation for contemporary emerging evangelical Christianity: ‘The difference between performance then and now is obvious: in earlier ages, there existed a more distinct boundary between public and private space (…) This (new, S.S.) awakening is being performed in the networked world, where the border between sacred and secular has eroded and where the love of God and neighbor (…) is being staged far beyond conventional religious communities.’59 This does not mean that the online world is the only place where such performances take place. On the contrary, in the ECM we see a strong emphasis on participation, not in church activities, but in everyday activities in the neighbourhood, in local social programs, or through responsible relationships. Bass also makes this observation and – as a religious author herself – reasons: ‘To perform awakening means we all must participate – sometimes as actors, sometimes as audience, as directors, writers, stagehands, set designers, ushers – rather like a community theater, all with interchangeable roles.’60 For Bass the dissolving of such roles and structures, and of public and private spheres, best characterises contemporary Christian spirituality and leads to the emergence of a new spiritual awakening. Her views as an insider therefore coincide with my own observations from the outside about the 24-7Prayer-movement. However, I argue that it is exactly this dissolving of public and private spheres, and the aim to embed contemplative activities into everyday social practices that is characteristic for the ECM and this is what results in a reflexive attitude and the authorisation of the religious self. The ECM can therefore be understood as a typical example of late modern religious transformations, which ‘indicate that Western societies are generally moving towards greater pluralism and personalisation in articulations of religious identity.’61 As I have demonstrated, this ‘experimental-practical 58 D. Butler Bass, Christianity after Religion: The End of Church and the Birth of a New Spiritual Awakening (New York, 2012) 255. 59 Bass, Christianity after Religion, 258. 60 Bass, Christianity after Religion, 261. 61 L. Feldt, ‘Contemporary fantasy fiction and representations of religion: playing with reality, myth and magic in His Dark Materials and Harry Potter’, Religion 46/4 (2016) 55074 at 568.

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attitude’62 can be found not only in new-age religiosity and popular religions but also in Evangelicalism that usually counts as rigid, fundamental, and stable within in its own dynamics of awakenings. Similarly, anthropologist James Bielo has argued that emerging Evangelicals aim to navigate two transformations at once, the personal self’s transformation as well as social or public transformations.63 According to Bielo, emerging Evangelicals distrust organisations and therefore aim at integrating these two transformations at once in everyday life by highlighting the need for combining spirituality and social engagement. Paraphrasing one of his interview-partners he summarises: ‘Meaningful change is only truly possible at the local level and will happen when Christian communities (i.e., house churches) bridge personal and neighborhood transformation.’64 Similar arguments and examples can also be found in the strong emphasis of the 24-7Prayer-movement on almost holistically integrating prayer, mission, and social engagement.65 This way of creating a new religious self-conception that positions the self as source of authority and which is able to react to social and cultural changes by aiming at personal and public transformations I understand to be an expression of what sociologists have called reflexive modernity. Accordingly, what we find in the ECM can maybe best be described as a shift from emotional and charismatic forms of subjectivity to reflexive forms of religious subjectivity. This kind of reflexive religiosity, which still sticks to a particular belief content, is thus integrated into everyday life and thereby adapted to different social domains. This stands in contrast to mainstream Evangelicalism’s strategy of copying every aspect of secular popular culture and to interpret it anew from a religious perspective (such as devotional fitness and dieting).66 The sociological idea of a reflexive modernity hinges on the idea that the late (or second) modernity opposes the first (earlier) modernity and its institutions (from nation states and politics to family and religion), since these institutions seem to fall apart under the impact of cultural and economic globalisation and individualisation.67 Sociologist Ulrich Beck, for instance,

62

Feldt, ‘Contemporary fantasy’, 568. Bielo, Formed. 64 Bielo, Formed, 46. 65 Schüler, ‘Culture of Prayer’. 66 Radermacher, Devotional Fitness. 67 U. Beck et al., Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order (Malden, 1994). 63

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sees these developments as a result of what he calls a ‘risk society,’68 a modern society that has to deal with increasing social and individual insecurities caused by modernity itself. While modernity created strong divisions between social groups and milieus, these authors also assume that social progress and change leads to reforms and social re-organisations, which stem from treating modern social developments reflexively. This means that people take advantage of their capacity to alter their place in the social structure. According to this theory, those individuals or groups who do not have access to or interest in making use of this capacity and who show a low level of reflexivity, will be shaped solely by their direct environment rather than adapt to social and cultural changes. The term reflexive subjectivity is, however, misleading when understood as an intellectual approach to a changing world. In fact, ‘(r)eflexive modernisation theory is critiqued for its empty and homogeneous view of reflexivity stemming ultimately from the absence of a theory of the subject.’69 The sociologist David Farrugia argues that reflexivity has too long been understood as a disembodied rationale that now needs to be connected with ‘principles of practice theory’ in order to build a solid sociological theory of the reflexive subject. What we find in the example of 24-7Prayer, respectively the ECM, is just that, an attempt to bring together an intellectual discourse about postmodern culture with a social practice (prayer and welfare) that is deeply embedded in everyday activities, everyday media and everyday forms of materiality. In this way, Christian spiritual subjectivity – as we can find it in many awakening movements – gets transformed into and is performed as a reflexive spirituality that gives authorisation to the religious self. The individual believer is thus not only a recipient or vehicle of spiritual awakening who experiences and performs religious and pious subjectivity through emotionality, but the individual believer is also the producer of spiritual awakening in that he or she coordinates personal subjective spirituality in accordance with public movements and activities – thereby being an active actor, audience, and director simultaneously, and also mixing the religious with other domains so that the borders between the religious and the secular seem to vanish, at least in the perception of the believer.

68

U. Beck, Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity (New Delhi, 1992). D. Farrugia, ‘The reflexive subject: Towards a theory of reflexivity as practical intelligibility’, Current Sociology 61/3 (2013) 283-300. 69

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Conclusion Whether the ECM is on the margins of something is a question of perspective. Within global contemporary Evangelical Christianity and by numbers the ECM is certainly a marginal phenomenon. Yet it has also gained popularity and has been an important influence on the religious discourse in contemporary Evangelicalism. In addition, its impact on current ideas of religious authority – via the use of old and new media – is evident. The use of online media such as websites, videos, and a weekly newsletter with online links to video messages can explain the success of this movement only in parts. Its success rests as much, if not more, on the subversive attitude concerning the role of religious authority and the centring of the religious self as a source of authority that is independent from institutionalised structures. More importantly, this shift in authority is accomplished through the triggering and embedding of an aesthetic dimension of authority in the believers’ everyday lives. The practices of prayer and story-telling become central for deploying the religious self as a source of authority. Prayers create stories, which become materialised in poems, videos, blogs, books and art that serve as material packages for distributing the theological message of the ECM.70 This particular message can be characterised as a religious attitude that puts forward spiritual experience as a personal and public affair and embeds religion in everyday activities, not as a clearly separate sacred realm, neither spatially nor temporally. The 24-7Prayer-movement, for example, started with the idea that all religious activities that are supposed to foster social change should start from contemplative prayer and not as rational, missionary, church-based strategies. The central ideologies behind this attitude are thus, on the one hand, a certain organisational messiness through ‘sustaining permanently unsettled lives’,71 and on the other hand, a holistic ideology that aims at integrating personal and social transformations.72 The phrase ‘believing without belonging’,73 coined by sociologist Grace Davie, refers to a mismatch between what people believe and their actual religious affiliations and practices. From this observation Davie and others reasoned against secularisation theory and for an individualisation 70 P.E. Teusner, ‘Imaging Religious Identity: Intertextual Play Among Postmodern Christian Bloggers’, Online – Heidelberg Journal of Religions on the Internet 4/1 (2010) 11130. 71 Packard, The Emerging Church, 61. 72 Bielo, Emerging Evangelicals; Packard, The Emerging Church; Schüler, ‘Culture of Prayer’. 73 Davie, ‘Believing without Belonging’.

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of religious beliefs in the contemporary era. Accordingly, the phrase ‘believing without belonging’ seems also to fit my own observations of the ECM, or perhaps better: they believe while attempting to rebel against a too rigid form of belonging, and thereby they attempt to create more mobile forms of belonging. Similarly, I have suggested that the process of religious individualisation – at least in contemporary Evangelicalism – first led to an emphasis of emotionality and subjectivity in the charismatic movement, and later resulted in what I have called a reflexive subjectivity in the ECM accompanied by a critique of the modern Protestant forms of subjectivity and performance of emotionality. However, it is also clear that ‘believing without belonging’ only partially describes the social transformation in the ECM. Rather, we can find a certain need for affiliation, even if not in the form of traditional church organisations, and a longing for a certain conformity of one’s personal beliefs with one’s religious practices and belonging (what is often termed ‘holistic’ within the ECM). This has led to new ways of creating a religious identity; an identity not marked by denominational or organisational belonging but by belonging in loose, shifting and temporary networks of like-minded believers, and by affiliation through personal relationships. This practice of a fluid community rests on the ideology of holistically integrating personal and social transformations by means of marginalisation and thereby authorisation of the religious self.

INDEX OF NAMES AND SUBJECTS Laura Feldt

Abgar, king of Edessa: 60, 63 Abraham: 83 Acts of Justin: 119-120, 122-123 Administrative documents: 119 Aesthetics, aesthesis: 70 Aesthetics of silence: 109 Affordances: 11, 12, 71, 73 Age: 198, 222 Agency: 1, 9, 64, 66, 137, 146, 156, 222, 245 Alciati, Roberto: 76 Alexandria: 29, 30 ‘All over the place’: 207 Alternative spirituality: 17, 139, 197 Alterity: 137, 139 Ambiguity: 64-65, 82, 119, 184 amicus Dei: 42 amicus Caesaris: 42-43, 45 amulet, amuletic: 49-51, 53-56, 59-60, 62-63, 65-67 ancient letters: 76-77 Andrew the Fool, Life of: 106-107 Angel, angels, Angel School, angel therapy: 5, 58, 64, 83, 109, 137, 139, 142, 152, 154, 199, 208, 214 Anglo-Saxon: 160-161, 164, 166 Animals, animal skins: 32 Anne Koldings: 178 Anne, Princess: 178 Anti-Jewish sentiment, anti-Jewish actions, persecution: 156, 167-168 Antoninus Pius: 118-119, 131-132 Antony, Antonius: 27, 28, 30, 31, 32, 35-37, 40-41, 45, 59

Antony, Life of: 14, 23-45, 31, 37, 38-42, 45, 74, 84 Apa Ammonios, St: 51 Apa Anoup: 66 Apocalypse, apocalyptic tradition: 55, 58-59, 154, 172-177, 186, 219-220 Apolito, Paolo: 210, 212 Apologetic literature, Apologists, apologetic purposes: 119, 127, 132 Apophtegmata patrum: 52 Apology 1, Justin: 17, 117-134, 118, 121-122 Apostle, apostles: 198 Apotropaic, protective function: 60, 62, 66, 79, 109-110 Apparition, apparitional context: 212215, 217, 219 Arendt, Hannah: 8 Arians: 28, 93 Armentarius: 74-75, 78-79 Arguments in stone: 93 Ascetic, ascetics, asceticism, terms of: 1-2, 6, 15, 23, 24, 30, 31, 32, 34, 35, 40, 43, 45, 49, 69, 71-76, 79, 81, 86, 88-89, 94-95, 98, 102 Athanasius: 14, 23, 27, 28, 29, 31, 32, 35-37, 40-45, 58, 84 Athenagoras of Athens: 119 Augustine: 24, 37, 42 Aural: 158 Aurelius, Marcus: 118-119, 132 Authenticity: 19, 131-132, 204, 217, 222, 237 Authorship, notions of: 101

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Authority, authorities, authority mutations: 2-3, 6-8, 16, 19, 20, 21, 48, 54, 64, 66, 70, 75, 84-86, 88, 89, 91-92, 119-120, 122, 124, 133, 135, 138, 142, 144, 148-149, 151, 156, 160, 165, 180-181, 193, 196, 200, 202-203, 208, 213-214, 217219, 221, 223, 225-226, 229, 231235, 238-241, 246 Bagnall, Roger: 35, 38 Barlaam and Iosaphat, Life of: 106-107 Basil: 74 Basil the Younger, Life of: 106-107 Basiledians: 123 Bass, Diana Butler: 238, 242-243 Beck, Ulrich: 244-245 Bells: 47-48 Believing without belonging (Davie): 227, 232, 246-247 Belonging, believing and behaving: 203, 227 Benedict, Benedictines: 159, 166 Berlin: 215, 217, 221-222 Biblical writings, Bible, scripture: 35, 39, 49-50, 53, 58-62, 64, 67, 76, 112, 160, 184, 197, 231 Bibliomancy: 59 Bielo, James S.: 237, 244 Biography, biographical, biographies: 26, 27, 28, 31, 37, 43, 135 Bishop: 39 Bjørnson, Bjørnstjerne: 135, 137, 149, 151, 153 Blood: 168, 184 Blumler, Jay: 239 Body, body ideals, bodily gestures, body technology: 33-34, 47, 69, 72, 86, 88, 112, 144 Bohemian attitude: 226, 230 ‘Boiler Rooms’: 234, 242 Book, books: 38, 43, 58, 61, 65, 67, 93, 115, 240

Bosch, Hieronymus: 45 Boundary, boundaries: 5, 221 Brakke, David: 36, 58 Brandes, Georg: 151 Braun and Gatzweiler: 4 Bread: 77-79 Bridget of Sweden: 156 Brown, Bill: 88 Brown, Peter: 45, 86, 93 Bruun, Christopher: 149-150 Buddha, Life of: 107 Building, buildings: 48 Burke, Peter: 146 Byzantine literature: 16, 58, 65, 97, 99 Byzantine Christianity: 98-100, 105106, 112, 115-116 Calendar of saints: 99 Cameron, Averil: 23, 27 Candle: 47 Canonisation: 99, 104-105, 114, 169 Carolingians: 94 Cassian: 74, 76 Catholicism, Catholic: 19, 20, 171-172, 179, 209, 211, 213-215, 217-218, 220, 223 Celebrity, celebrities: 196, 208 Chalice: 57 Chancel-screen: 169 Charisma, charismatic: 6-9, 14, 19, 39, 47-50, 64-67, 136, 143, 156, 158, 170, 193, 198, 203-206, 208, 236, 244 Charismatic forms of Christianity: 228, 241-242 Childbirth: 53, 65, 161 Childhood, children: 101, 136, 153, 159, 161, 163-166, 169-170, 172-173, 186 Child murder: 166-168, 170 Clairvoyant, clairvoyance: 136, 153, 193-194, 204 Christ: 27, 28, 53-54, 60, 87, 90, 112, 115, 171, 177

index of names and subjects Christian, William: 213 Christian III, king of Denmark: 179 Christian IV, king of Denmark: 179180, 183 Christianisation: 35 Christian assemblies: 123 Christina of Markyate: 169 Chrysopolis: 104 Cistercian: 166-167, 170 Cîteaux, order of: 159 Claiborne, Shane: 230 Clark, Lynn Schofield: 200 Clark, Stuart: 174 Clement of Alexandria: 100 Clergy, priest, priests: 33, 38, 39, 140 Clothes, garments: 32, 39, 47-48, 72 Codex, codices: 62-63 Cold case investigation: 160, 163 Collections of saint narratives: 99, 116, 169 Cologne, 53-54 Commodities, commodified religion, commodification: 131, 212-213 Communion: 185 Communism: 215 Complementary therapies: 202-203 Confessions, Augustine (Confessiones): 42 Constantine, and Constantine, Life of: 27, 34, 44 Constantine VII Phyrogennetos: 105 Constantinople: 97-98, 102 Contemporary religion: 19, 21, 198208, 209-223, 225-247 Context, establishing a social context: 212-213, 215, 217 Copenhagen: 177, 216-217 Coptic language, Coptic literature: 31, 34, 35, 39, 49, 52, 56, 65 Copying: 131-132 Counter-reformation: 169 Court protocols: 171 Cows, bewitched: 186-187, 190

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Creation: 58 Creative, creativity: 119, 133-134, 136, 156, 209, 217-218, 220, 226, 234235, 238, 240 Crescens, the Cynic: 121, 124 Cribiore, Raffaella: 33 Criticism: 197-198, 226, 230 Crocodiles: 29 Cryptography: 51-52 Crysostom, John: 62 Cross: 47-48, 59-60 Culture, cultural tradition, cultural heritage: 71-72, 81, 92, 205 Culture wars: 230 Cunning, cunning men and women: 136, 139, 145-147, 154, 182-183, 187, 191 Cyril of Scythopolis: 41 Dahl, Per Arne: 206 daimôn: 30 Daniel the Stylite, and Life of: 65-66 Davie, Grace: 227, 232, 246 Day, Abby: 232 Debray, Regis: 11 de gratia Christi (Augustine): 37 Demonax the Cynic: 26 Demonization: 1, 3, 6, 18 Demons, devil, Devil’s mother: 5, 24, 27, 32, 35, 48, 64, 70, 81, 86-88, 95, 103, 172, 174, 177-181, 184185, 188-191 Denmark, Danish: 18, 141, 171, 173174, 177-178, 191, 210-211, 215-216, 221 Denomination, denominational, nondenominational: 228, 237-238, 242, 247 Denunciations: 131 Desert: 24, 25, 30, 31, 41, 49, 51, 72, 74, 80, 82 Dessoir, Max: 153 Deviation: 5-6

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Devotional poetry: 98 Dialogue with Trypho: 120, 122-123 Diana: 87 diegesis: 36 Disaster: 172-173, 175-177, 190-191 Divination: 147, 204 Dogma, doctrines: 203, 206, 219, 235 Douglas, Mary: 65, 143 Dream, dreams, dream interpretation: 160-161, 214 Driscoll, Mark: 230 Dunn, Marilyn: 76 Durkheim, Durkheimian: 213 Easter: 159, 164 Eating: 78-79, 95 Ebbesen, Lauritz, of Skanderborghus: 183 Education: 33 Egypt, Egyptian: 14, 15, 32-34, 38, 39, 40-41, 47-51, 65, 70, 72 Elijah: 39 Elisha: 39 Elviva: 160 Emerging Church Movement: 20, 225247 Emotions, emotional practices, emotional spaces, emotionality: 19, 71, 73-79, 171, 176, 178, 184, 188191, 206, 231-232, 241-242, 244245, 247 Emperor, see imperial Energy, energies: 204 England, English: 156, 159, 167, 225, 226, 232-233 Epilepsy: 137-138, 141, 144, 154 Epistolography, epistolographic traits: 70, 74-76, 79, 84 Erlandsen, Arvid: 194-195 Eschatology, eschatological: 107, 190 Eske Bille of Mariager: 183 Esoteric, esotericism: 136, 152, 237 Eucharistic ritual, Eucharist: 57, 78-79, 185

Eugendus: 65-66, 69-70, 74, 76, 79-80, 83-87, 89-90 Euphrates, the philosopher: 128 Eusebius: 27, 118-119, 123 Eustathios Boilas: 106 Evagrius of Antioch: 42 Evangelicalism: 19, 20, 225-247 Evaristos: 105 ‘Everywhere’ (religion everywhere): 201, 207 ‘Evil women’, ‘Evil people’, evil powers: 18, 171, 183-185, 187-188, 190-191 exempla: 61, 71, 89, 168 Exclusion: 3-4, 159 Exile, banishment: 97, 104, 113, 116 Exorcism: 81, 86 Exoticism: 120 Expert systems: 201-202 Fabiola, Jerome’s letter to: 37 Fantastic, fantasy: 70, 75, 82-89, 91, 93, 95 Farrugia, David: 245 Fascination, fascinatory aspects: 3 Feldt, Laura: 165, 217 Feminist: 220 Fiction, fictive: 36, 119, 126-127, 231 Filipino, Philippines: 19, 209-211, 214, 217, 220-222 Film: 195-196, 201, 234, 236-241, 246 Flaubert: 45 Flavia Neapolis, Nablus: 118, 120 Flexibility: 234 Fløttum, Johann: 153 Folk religion: 17, 135-138, 146, 149, 152, 198 Folk high school: 149-150 Folklore, folklorist: 135-137, 139, 144, 146, 149, 152, 154, 184 Force that Heals, The (Snåsamannen biography): 195 Forest: 71, 74, 80-81 Fosse, Ivar: 154 Francis of Assisi, Franciscans: 156, 170

index of names and subjects Frange (Theban holy man): 66 Franks: 74, 92 Freelance religious specialists, religious experts, religious entrepeneurs: 120, 124, 127, 201, 207 Freeman, Andy: 234 Fresh Expressions Movement: 229 Friend, friends: 42-43, 45, 75, 77-78, 86 Fundanus, Minicius C.: 131 Furedi, Frank: 7-9, 202 Føutin, Karen: 184-186, 190-191 Garments, clothes: 32, 39, 47-48, 72 Gaul, Gallic: 14, 15, 69-72, 74, 93-94 Gausdal: 136, 141, 144, 147-149 Gell, Alfred: 15, 64 Gemeinhardt, Peter: 25, 30, 35 Gender: 156, 158, 185, 218 Generations, generational changes: 222, 236-237 Genesis: 83 Genre: 18, 76, 169 Germany, German: 210, 215, 225, 233 Ghost, ghost stories: 146, 204 Gilhus, Ingvild S.: 120 Gjerstad, Joralf: 19, 153, 193-208 Globalisation, global: 200, 220, 241, 244 Gloria: 210-223 Gloucester: 166 Godric of Finchale: 169-170 goēteia: 52 Gold pendants: 62 Goody, Jack: 51 Gordian III, emperor: 130 Gospel, gospels: 38, 53, 58-59, 61, 67, 77, 193, 197, 205 Gospel of the Lots of Mary: 59, 62 Gospel of Luke: 77-78 Gospel of Mark: 87 Gospel of Matthew: 63 Graffiti: 47 Granianus, Q. Licinius Silvanus: 131

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Great Britain: 156, 159, 167, 225, 226, 232-233 Greek: 33, 34-35, 38, 39, 41, 49, 51-52, 84, 100, 119, 129 Gregontios Bishop of Taphar, Life of: 106 Greig, Pete: 225, 233-234, 236, 238 Gregory of Nazianzus: 4 Gundersen, Kristian: 196-197 Hadrian: 118-119, 131-132, 134 Hagiography: 14, 18, 38-95, 82, 90, 98-100, 106-107, 112, 114, 156, 159160, 169 Hamman, Adalbert-Gautier: 120 Hansen, Bjarne Håkon: 196 Hauge, Hans Nielsen, Haugians: 141, 145, 150 Haugen, Marcello: 153 Healer, healing: 16, 17, 19, 53-54, 59, 61, 64-65, 70, 79, 81, 86-87, 89, 136-137, 145, 150-151, 165, 181182, 186-188, 193-197, 202, 204, 206-208, 242 Heavenly book/s: 58-59 Hebrew: 43, 58, 165 Hegemony: 159 Heider, Jörg: 11 Helinand of Froidmont: 167 Hell: 177 Hellenised, hellenised elite: 31, 33 Hemmelige kunster: 181 Hemmingsen, Niels: 179 Henriksen, Jan Olav: 206 Henry III, king: 168 Henry of Sprowston: 164 ‘Here, there, and anywhere’: 201, 207 Heresy, heretical, heretic: 99, 112, 158 Herod: 144 Hero, heroism: 160 Herrnhut: 233 Hesycast movement, position: 100 Heterodox, heterodoxy: 150 Heyerdahl, H.O.F.: 143

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Hildegard of Bingen: 156 Historia monachorum in Aegypto: 41 historiola: 53 Hjarvard, Stig: 193-194, 196, 200, 210, 221 Hoffuens, Bodil Ibsdatter: 186-190 Holiness: 32 Holy Land: 41 Holy man: 45, 50, 64-67, 86, 91, 95 Holy text: 101 Homer: 58 Hoover, Stewart M.: 200, 206 Horsfield, Peter: 13, 93, 205 Household: 174, 179, 181 Hsia, Ronnie: 169 Hugh: 167 Humility: 108, 115 Hymn, hymns, hymnal: 97, 107, 109111, 115-116, 139-140, 142-143 Hymn 1, of Symeon: 110 Hymn 21, of Symeon: 103 Hymn 32, of Symeon: 112 Høyer, Johan G.: 144 Iamblichus: 30 Iconic, iconic function, icons and imagery: 60, 63, 66, 99-100, 103, 176 Iconoclastic struggle: 99-100 Identity: 81, 159, 169, 199, 236, 238239, 243 Illocution, illocutionary act: 54, 56 Illumination: 109, 115 Imitatory culture: 75, 78-79, 84, 89 Imperial authorities, imperial government, emperor: 99-102, 106, 116, 118, 124-129, 131-133 Incantation/s: 47, 51, 55-57, 66 Individual, individualistic, individualism, individualisation: 151, 200, 209, 219, 222, 225, 231-232, 238, 241-242, 244, 246-247 Indulgence: 172

Inscription: 130 Institutionalised religion: 153, 200, 205, 219, 221-223, 226, 230-232 Intermediality: 20, 201, 208, 227, 239240 Intermediary agents: 5 Internet: 201, 214, 219, 222-223, 228, 231, 233-234, 236, 238-240, 243, 246 InterVarsity Christian Fellowship: 225 Invisibility: 217, 221 Iohannes, John: 74-75, 78-79 Isaiah: 58 Islam: 199 Jacob: 83 Jakobsen, Rolv Nøtvik: 197 James VI of Scotland: 178 Janson, Kristoffer: 150-151 Jarmann, Jens Peter (Sheriff): 143-144 Jensen, Rasmus: 187 Jerome: 27, 29, 37, 43-45 Jerusalem: 41, 211 Jesus: 60-61, 63, 66, 136, 193, 197-198, 203, 205, 210-211, 217, 219, 221, 231, 235-236 Jews, Jewish: 18, 72, 156, 158-163, 166170 John, Iohannes: 78-79 John the Baptist: 144 John of Damascus: 103 Joralf Gjerstad: 19 “Judaize”: 158 Judgment Day: 172, 174, 177 Jura Fathers, Life of: 15, 69-95, 73 Justin Martyr: 17, 118-119, 122, 117134 Jutland: 183-184, 186 Kapaló, James: 138, 142 Kaufmann, Suzanne: 212 Kavanagh, Dennis: 239 Kidnapping: 162

index of names and subjects Kimball, Dan: 230 King’s lieutenants: 171, 180-182, 186187, 190-192 Klaver, Miranda: 231 Klåpe, Ole Pedersen: 142, 144-145, 150 Kolloen, Ingar Sletten: 195-196, 201 Koma: 32 Kraft, Siv Ellen: 199 Kronos, Temple of: 130 Labile interpellation: 78 Lampe, Peter: 123 Landstand, Magnus B.: 148 Late modern religion, postmodern religion: 213, 226-227, 236-237, 239, 242-243, 245 Latin: 41, 43, 72, 84, 102, 158-160, 165, 169 Law Code, Danish: 174 Laying on hands: 142, 193, 206 lectio: 79, 84-85, 90, 95 Legenda aurea: 99 Legends: 146-148, 150, 154 Leper, lepers, leper hospital: 163-164 Lérins, Lérinian: 72, 76, 85, 94 Letters: 15, 27, 35, 37, 40, 58, 65, 69, 70-71, 75, 77, 79, 85-89, 91, 95, 116, 124, 127, 131-132, 145, 154 Lied, Liv I.: 12 Lincoln (town): 167-168 Lincoln, Bruce: 8 Liminal, liminality: 5, 14, 52, 217 Linen: 187-188 Literacy: 35, 52, 55, 67, 93 Literary culture, literary media, literary strategies, traits: 33, 35, 43, 49, 70, 72, 79, 83-84, 88, 91, 93-96, 98, 107, 112, 132, 134, 154 Liturgy: 47, 55-57, 64, 105, 107, 156 Logos: 112 Lourdes: 212-214, 218 Lucian: 26 Lupicinus: 69, 74, 76, 79-82, 84

255

Lutheran, Lutheranism, Lutheran theologians, Lutheran princes, Lutheran churches: 18, 171-174, 177, 179-180, 182, 190-192, 203208, 210, 216 Magic, magical: 49-50, 52-53, 55, 59, 61-62, 64, 66, 70, 81, 83, 87, 89-90, 142, 181-182, 184 Maid: 163 Mainstream: 228, 237, 239-240 Mamas monastery: 103-104 Manichaean: 38 Manila: 214 Mantle: 39 Manuscript tradition, manuscript culture: 132, 166 Marcion, Marcionites: 123 Margin, margins: 154, 156, 182, 218, 225, 227, 231, 237, 240, 246 Marginal Man: 4, 210, 220-221 Marginalisation, marginalised figures: 147-149, 154, 156, 159, 163, 168, 171-173, 175, 179, 182, 190-191, 217-218, 247 Marginality narratives: 17, 18, 66-67, 69, 75, 80, 115, 136-137, 146, 151152, 155, 158, 169-170-171, 175, 190, 198-199, 227 Marginality, performance / practice of: 7, 32, 42, 64-67, 69, 71-72, 75, 80-81, 84-85, 90-91, 100, 108, 113, 115, 120, 143, 170, 204, 225, 227, 235-236, 238-239, 241 Marginality, religious discourses of: 1-4, 6, 14, 16, 21, 31, 32, 49-50, 66-67, 69-70, 72-73, 80, 98, 120, 135, 155, 160, 171, 193-194, 198199, 209, 215, 217-218, 226, 235236, 239 Marginality, social: 1, 3-4, 6, 16, 18-19, 21, 31, 35, 42, 97, 119, 135, 137, 142-144, 151, 155, 158, 168-169,

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171, 184, 193-194, 199, 208-209, 215, 217-218, 220, 223, 229, 237 Marginality, spatial: 31, 32, 35, 48-49, 69-72, 80, 87, 94-95, 114, 156, 193, 198, 208, 218, 220 margō: 5 Marina, monastery of: 103-104 Market, marketisation: 213 Marseilles: 94 Martin, Life of: 74, 84, 89 Martine, F.: 81 Matriarchy: 185 Martyr, martyr themes, martyr terms, martyr motifs, martyrs, cult of: 30, 31, 32, 40, 44-45, 109, 115, 118, 122, 144, 159-161, 164-165, 169-170 Mary, virgin Mary, Marian tales, Marian apparitions, Marian devotion: 55, 59, 161, 167, 210-211, 214-215, 217-219, 221 Materiality, material, materialise: 2, 10, 11, 15, 20, 47-48, 50-51, 56, 57, 58-59, 61-62, 66-67, 70, 73, 88, 92, 158, 168, 214, 225-227, 232, 235, 240-241, 245 Maximinus Daia: 30 McGuire, Brian Patrick: 167 Mechanical reproduction: 169 Media, mediality, mediation: 1-2, 6-10, 11, 12, 13, 15-16, 21, 45, 50, 57, 63, 67, 69-71, 73-76, 78-79, 82, 84, 92, 95, 118-119, 121, 124, 132, 139, 153, 156, 158, 169, 171, 173-174, 192194, 196, 200-201, 206, 208-209, 212-213, 221, 225-226, 233, 235, 239-241, 245 Media appropriation: 17, 133-134 Media consumption: 133, 231 Media culture: 13, 133, 194, 200, 221, 227, 231-232, 239 Media, digital: 222-223, 239 Media-objects: 7 Media of presence: 71, 223, 231 Media production: 133

Media, social: 2, 11, 20, 209, 221-223, 236, 239-240-241 Mediatisation: 19, 20, 124, 193-194, 200-201, 208, 210, 221-223, 227, 239-240 Mediator: 50, 55, 65, 67, 86, 217 Medieval, middle ages: 18, 156 Medicine, alternative: 197, 202, 207 Medicine, evidence-based: 202, 207 medium: 11, 13, 38, 47, 55, 59, 70-71, 83, 86-89, 91, 100, 108, 112, 115, 118, 126-127, 130, 133-134, 144146, 238 Mediumship: 136 Mediterranean: 63 Medjugorje: 211, 214, 218 Mega-churches: 226, 229-232, 238239 Melito of Sardis: 119 mêlôtê: 39 Mendels, Doron: 118 Menologion: 105-107 Menstruation: 214 Merovingian: 69 Metaphor, metaphorisation: 72 Meyer, Birgit: 1-2, 48 Meyrowitz, Joshua: 11 Migration, migrants: 4, 20, 210, 214215, 217-218, 220-223 Millar, Fergus: 124 Miller, S.P.: 228 Minns, Dennis: 126 Minority-majority: 158-159, 209-210 Miracle narrative: 104, 135-136, 142, 148-151, 165-166, 170, 195, 197198, 203, 206-207, 211, 233, 242 Mise-en-abyme: 70, 95 Mission, missionary activities, missional: 122, 237, 244 Missional Church Movement: 229 Modernity, modern, modernisation: 154, 213, 228-229, 244-245 Monasticism, monastic, monks, monastery: 14, 15, 30, 36, 37-38, 39,

index of names and subjects 40-41, 43-45, 47-48, 51-52, 55-57, 59, 67, 74-76, 78, 81, 83-85, 87, 89-91, 93-95, 98, 102-105, 159160, 162, 167, 169, 221, 227 Monasticism, New: 227, 234 Money: 197-198 Monmouth, Thomas of: 18, 159, 161163, 165, 167, 170 Monster, monstrous, monstrosity: 3, 6, 82 Mont St Michel: 166 Moore, R.I.: 158 Moravian Movement: 233 Morgan, David: 2 Mount of Olives: 41 Mountain, mountains, mountainous: 25, 44, 70, 73, 80-81, 86 Munk, Peder: 178 Music: 237 Mystic, mystical, mystery, mysticism: 6, 16, 77, 91, 97, 100, 102, 109, 111, 114-115, 154 Mystical poetry: 97-98, 100, 102, 108109, 116 Mythology, mythologies, mythological: 1, 33, 75, 80 Mythology, Greek: 33, 43 Nag Hammadi: 55 Narrator: 74 Narrative, narrativity, narrative ploys, strategies, story/stories: 16, 17, 137, 151, 154, 159, 163, 165, 168, 185, 190-191, 197, 213-214, 222-224, 235, 238, 240-241, 246 National romanticism, romantic nationalism: 136, 138, 146, 149-150, 199 Near Eastern: 63 Neo-Platonic: 100 New Age: 198-199, 204-205, 207-208, 244 New Christianities in Africa, Asia: 10 Newspapers, news media: 146-147, 149150, 194-198, 199, 201, 205, 213

257

Nicomachus: 25 Niketas the Paphlagonian: 107 Niketas Stethatos: 16, 97-98, 101-104, 106, 111-112, 115-116 nomina sacra: 59 Nordeng, Elisabeth: 199 Nordgården, Knut Rasmussen: 17, 136, 138, 141-144, 147, 151-153, 155 Nordic churches, Nordic countries: 205, 222 Norman: 156, 159, 161 Norway, Norwegian: 16, 17, 19, 135137, 149, 153, 173, 178, 193-195, 198-199, 201-202, 205, 208 Norwegian Unitarian Church: 151 Norwich: 156, 159-160, 166, 168-169 Nostalgia: 19, 199, 208 Nygaard, Paul H.: 148 Occult: 150 Oil: 34, 47-48, 56-57, 64, 66, 89 Olav, saint: 205 Old age: 29 Old Testament: 136, 205 Olin, Margreth: 195 Olivelle, Patrick: 143 Oliveto Citra: 212-213 Oracle, oracular: 58, 62, 64 Orality, oral performance, oral tradition: 128, 146 Organic Church Movement: 229 Origen: 34, 100 Orpha: 56 Orphamiel: 56 Orsi, Robert A.: 215 Othering: 1, 3, 18 Pachomius: 39, 74 Pagan, Pagans: 28, 32 paideia: 28 Palestine: 41 Palladius, Peter: 171, 175, 185 pallium: 120 Pamphlets: 175, 177-179, 190

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Paphlagonia: 102 Papyrus, papyri: 59, 64 Paraphernalia: 212 Park, Robert E.: 4, 210, 220-221 Parvis, Paul: 126 Pascha, Pesach: 162 Paul: 30 Paul, the Hermit, Life of: 43-45 Peasant, see Rural Pentecostalism, Pentecostal: 228, 231, 241-243 Peripatetic school, the: 120 Persecution, persecutions: 31, 32, 44, 136-137, 139, 148, 158, 167, 181 Peter: 80 Peter, Andrew and Paul, vision of: 89 Petition: 17, 118-119, 124-130, 134 Philokalia: 100 Philosopher, philosophy: 28, 35, 119121, 123, 127, 129, 133, 141 Phoibammon, son of Athanasios: 55 Pilgrim, pilgrimage: 94, 143 Plato, Platonism, Platonic: 28, 120, 129 Poetry, poet, poems: 16, 135, 149, 236238, 246 Ponticianus: 42-43, 45 Popular religion, popular culture: 136, 138, 146, 153-154, 158, 200, 228, 244 Porphyry: 26, 27 Postmodern era, postmodern religion: 226-227, 236-237, 239, 242-243, 245 Potter, Harry: 103 Poverty, poor: 140-141, 155-156, 170, 182 Power, powers: 1, 17, 39, 47, 51-53, 57-60, 62, 64, 66, 69-71, 86, 89, 91-95, 116, 136-138, 151, 154, 156, 187-188, 195-196, 203-206 praefatio: 76 Prayer chain: 233 Prayer movement, 24-7, prayers as media: 19, 225-247

Prayer room: 225, 234, 238, 240-242, 246 Prestige: 131 Priest, priests, clergy: 33, 38, 39, 70, 85-86, 89, 91, 94-95, 140, 144, 203, 208 Princess Märtha Louise: 199, 208 Print cultures: 12, 13, 168, 206, 208 Prophet, prophetic: 135-136, 139, 145, 149-151, 154, 221 Prosperity gospel: 228-229, 238, 242 Protestantism, Protestant: 140, 158, 170, 173, 179, 210-211, 220, 247 Psalm/s: 59, 61 Psalm 131: 80 Pseudo-Dionysios: 100 Psychic research: 153 Publication, publicity, public attention: 126, 134, 212-215, 242-244 Punk Monk (Freeman and Greig): 234 Pyrrhus, Aurelius: 130 Pythagoras, Pythagoreans: 25, 26, 28, 29, 30, 31, 35, 37, 43, 120 Quadratus of Athens: 118 Queen of Norway: 196 Rapp, Claudia: 36 Rational-legal authority: 205 Reader, reading: 71, 78, 84, 90-91, 133, 154 Readership: 23, 24, 35, 36, 38, 41 Reception, reception culture: 36, 38, 41-45, 70, 73-79, 84, 149, 189 Red Moon Rising (Pete Greig): 225, 233-234 Reflexivity: 241-242, 244-245, 247 Reformation: 13, 171, 173, 183, 185, 190, 204-205 Refresh Movement: 229 Reitzenstein, Richard: 25, 29, 31, 36 Relics, reliquary: 47-48, 95 Religion: 2, 92, 199, 223 Religion, folk – see Folk religion

index of names and subjects Religion, media and culture: 9-10, 13 ‘Religionification’: 194, 208 Religious field: 137-138, 146, 152-153, 168 Religious institutions: 156, 194, 200201, 219, 221-223, 226, 230-232, 235 Renunciation: 43 Republican, Republicans: 228 Resen, Hans Poulsen: 180 Revelation, and Revelation, Book of: 141-142, 145-146, 175, 212, 216, 219, 223 Rhetoric: 137, 152, 160 Rituals, ritual expertise, ritual composition, ritual efficacy, ritualisation: 49-50, 52-54, 56, 59, 64, 66-67, 168, 181, 184-185 Robert of Torigni: 166 Robbins, Joel: 225 Rohde, Hanne Kristine: 195 Roldanus, Hans: 27, 31 Roman Catholic: 209-211, 213-215, 217218, 220, 223 Romanus (Jura monk): 69, 74, 76, 79-81, 83-84 Romanus Melodos: 107 Rome, Roman empire: 45, 92-93, 118, 120, 122, 124, 133-134, 172, 211 Rosary: 214 Royal patronage: 74 Rubens: 45 Rubenson, Samuel: 27, 28, 77 Rural inhabitants, rural life: 136, 140142, 149-150, 153-154, 165, 169, 198-199, 208, 213-214, 218 Rusticus, Junius Q.: 122 Sanctification: 100, 116 Sailing season: 36-37 Saint, saints: 5-6, 16, 20, 27, 48, 59, 64, 66, 69, 81-82, 86, 97-101, 105-107, 111-112, 115-116, 137, 149-152, 154, 159-160, 169, 209

259

Samuel: 136 Sanzo, Joseph: 61 Satornalians: 123 Saxon, Saxons: 156 Scandinavia: 62 Schiøtz, Cato: 195 Science, scientific: 135 Scotland: 178 Scribe, scribal: 50-51, 53-55, 59-60, 6465, 67 Scripture: 49-50, 52, 54, 56, 59-62, 64, 67, 76, 112, 203, 206 Second Sophistic: 129 Secularisation, secular: 146, 194, 200, 208, 216, 219-222, 230, 232, 237, 240, 245-246 Secret names: 58, 66 Sect: 145 Seekers: 226 Selberg, Torunn: 197 Self, religious: 20, 116, 233, 236, 238, 241-247 Self-formation: 72, 91, 95 Sensational forms, senses, sensory, sensational devotion: 48, 50, 71-73, 232 Serapion of Thmuis: 25, 37, 38 Severus, Sulpicius: 78, 89 Shenoute of Atripe: 47, 64 Ship, ships: 171, 179 Sibylline books: 58 Simple Church Movement: 229 Sin, sinning, sinners: 172, 174, 176, 178180, 182, 186, 191-192, 219-220 Singsaas, Tor: 204 Skaptopara inscription: 130 Skar, Johannes: 136, 142, 154 Skeel, Jørgen, of Kalø: 183-184, 186 Skinner, skinners: 160-161 Smith, Jonathan Z.: 19, 120, 194, 201 Snake: 188 Snåsamannen, the man from Snåsa: 19, 153, 193-208 Social distinction: 130

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Social media, see media, social Socialism: 136 Sociology noir, Chicago school: 220 Sodom and Gomorrah: 176 Sorcerer, sorcery: 194-195 Soul: 27, 172 Spatial, spatiality: 19, 31, 80, 95, 220 Spatial model: 194, 201 Spatial practice: 72 Spirit, spirits: 27, 57, 137, 232, 242 Spiritual contemplation: 71, 237, 240, 242 Spiritualism: 136, 152 Spirituality: 152-153, 198-199, 207, 232, 237, 240, 242-246 State church: 151, 203, 205 Stephen, bishop of Nikomedia: 102-103, 105 Stethatos, Niketas: 16, 97-98, 101-102, 104-106, 111-112, 115-116 Stoicism: 120 Studios, monastery of: 102, 105 Suffolk: 159, 166, 169 Sulpicius Severus: 78, 88 Superstitious, superstitions: 147, 151152 Syagria of Lyon: 88 Symbolic capital: 120 Symeon Eulabes: 97-98, 100-104 Symeon the New Theologian, and Life of: 16, 97-104, 106, 108, 111-113, 116 Symeon Metaphrastes: 105, 107 Synagogue: 162 Synaxarion: 105 Synkellos: 103 Syria, Syrian: 38, 41, 43 Space, spatiality: 2, 69-71, 80, 198, 213214, 220 Strategic/tactical: 1, 2, 12, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 137-138, 144, 146, 149, 154 Subjectivity: 241-242, 244-245, 247 Sweden, Swedish: 141, 149 Sweet smell, sweet fragrance: 164

Tatian: 123 Tebtunis: 130 Technologies of the self: 1, 91, 95, 100 Television: 195-196, 201, 204, 213, 228, 239 Temesuar, Transylvania: 175-177 Temple: 33 Textuality, textualisation: 47-48, 60-62, 66-67, 100, 146 Thaulow, Hans Henrik: 140, 142-145, 150 theodidaktos: 35, 36, 198 Theophilus: 67 theos: 30 Theosophy, theosophists: 152 They like Jesus, but not the Church: 230 Thing theory: 88-89, 91 Thirst: 91 Thmuis, Serapion of: 25 Thomassen, Einar: 123 Thompson, John: 133-134 Tomb, tombs: 95 Torah: 72 Translation: 41-42, 107, 119, 175 translatio: 105 Trent: 168 Trials: 171, 179, 182-183, 187-188, 190191 Trier: 177 Trisagion: 56 Troldfolk, trolddom, troldkvinde: 180181, 186 Trondheim: 204 True witches (rette troldfolk): 181, 189 Typen der Herrschaft: 92 Unlettered, illiterate: 32, 33, 35, 55, 67, 84, 92, 137, 154 Urban life, urban society, urbanisation: 163, 166, 198, 200, 213 USA: 232, 238 Vagina: 214

index of names and subjects Valentinus, Valentinians: 121, 123-124 Valkendorff, Christoffer: 178 Vatican II: 219 Vernacular religion: 138, 158 Verus, Lucius: 118 Via Dolorosa: 211, 220 Viborg: 189 Video, see Film Vienna: 176, 178 Virgins: 32 Vis-Knut: 17, 135-136, 138, 148, 150151, 154-155 Vision, visionary: 143, 164, 209-213, 215-220, 222, 233 Vision, The (Greig): 235, 242 Vision, The, and the Vow (Greig): 236 Visual, visual arts, visual culture, visuality, visualisation, images: 45, 48, 156, 169-170, 174-176, 184, 191, 206, 211, 219-220, 233 Vita Antonii: 14, 23-45, 37, 38, 39, 41, 73 Vita Patrum Iurensium: 69-95 Vita Sancti Martini: 74, 84, 89 Voltaire: 141 Warm-hearted and with Warm Hands (Snåsa-mannen’s biography): 194 Wealth: 106 Weber, Max, Weberian: 8, 92, 200, 206, 219

261

Welshman, Welshmen: 156 Westall, Richard: 29 Western forms of Christianity: 10, 92, 94, 230, 237, 243 Wild animals: 49, 81 Wild man/men: 5, 80, 84 Wilderness: 1, 15, 49, 69-72, 74, 75, 79-81, 87, 91, 94-95, 199 William of Norwich, Life and Passion of: 18, 159-162, 164-165, 167-168 Wing formation charm: 54 Wisdom, divine: 36, 198 Wisdom, wise: 147, 198 Witch, witches, witch hunts, witchcraft, burning of witches: 6, 18, 158, 171175, 177-179, 182-184, 186-192, 221 Wittenberg: 172 Writing: 58, 78, 90, 113, 115, 124, 132, 134, 205 Writing, charismatic: 15, 51, 58, 63, 64, 75, 93 Writing, magical use of: 15, 50, 52-53, 55, 63-64, 66, 75, 88-89, 93 Writing under pressure: 37 Wulfric of Haslebury: 170 Wulward: 160 Zinzendorf, Nikolaus Ludwig von: 233

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