CU Dissertations
-
- Food and Lay Piety in Late Antiquity
- Degree Awarded: Ph.D. Early Christian Studies. The Catholic University of America, This dissertation examines food as a vehicle of lay Christian piety, both imaginative and experiential, in late antiquity as depicted in the Greek homilies of John Chrysostom and the Coptic homilies of Shenoute of Atripe. It addresses two primary questions. First, how is food language deployed by preachers of the fourth and fifth centuries in the context of lay ascesis? Second, how do food practices shape the moral opportunities and identity maintenance of lay Christians? I take an anthropological approach to food as embodied material culture and employ cognitive metaphor, performance, and space/place theories, in order to bring homiletic texts into dialogue with documentary papyri, triclinia mosaics and domestic architecture, archaeology and urban space. In answer to the first question, I argue that food metaphors are particularly compelling imaginative models for lay piety because they are deeply embedded in lived experience. Chrysostom's metaphor of the "true fast" defines virtue as spiritual health and moderation, a model which depends for its coherence on Aristotelian virtue ethics and Galenic principles of health and dietary regimen. However, his ascetic definition of moderation remains in tension with the views of his wealthy audience, which I explore by analyzing household food expenditures in the papyrological archive of Theophanes. Shenoute elaborates a metaphorical system of virtue as fruit, the product of spiritual agriculture, which reflects Theophrastus' work on plants and raises deep-seated problems of moral agency. Here I draw upon botanical treatises and agricultural manuals to illuminate the extent to which these metaphors create powerful naturalizing discourses by mirroring the perceived realities and paradoxes of the natural world. To the second question, I observe that both homilists articulate their theological and moral concerns in the guise of regulating contested food behavior among their audiences. Through a study of the theatricality of Antiochene banquets, I argue that, for Chrysostom, the performance of virtue in the "domestic church" meets sharply localized resistance in the elite dining room. For Shenoute, a fundamentally monastic ideology of Christian meals helps to explain his often obscure and critical remarks on social dining, charitable hospitality, martyr festivals, and eucharistic practices in the lay community. In both studies, a picture of lay piety emerges in which food practices produce active networks of circulation, where a range of pious motivations and social values track along with the movements of food and people, linking personal ascesis with social obligation in the varied local landscapes of late antique Christian communities.
-
- Metaphors of Sickness and the Social Body in the Constantinian Era
- Degree Awarded: Ph.D. Church History. The Catholic University of America, Social body concepts in late antiquity shaped community by (1) defining the ideal society and by (2) serving to justify coercive measures meant to create or preserve it. This dissertation asks whether Constantine I and Constantius II used the language and/or concept of the social body to decide who was dangerous or beneficial to their community, what the line between them was, and what to do about it. This study first examines two common models of the social body in late antiquity. In the case of both models, the social body was commonly perceived as a real object. One was the Stoic model, in which the hierarchically organized, harmonious cosmos served as the ideal template for the social body. It was subject to the disease of social dissension. The other was the Pauline model of 1 Corinthians, in which the social body was subject to damage by the invasive disease of polluting guilt. Social disease was cured by social policy.The two models' different diseases had different effects on community policies. Those effects are examined in a case study of the third century Bishop Cyprian of Carthage and his Christian interlocutors. The case study distinguishes spreading guilt as a fear particular to the Pauline body from spreading talk as a fear of dissension. This distinction is applied in the analysis of Constantine and Constantius' letters and edicts. The analysis seeks to answer two questions of each of the emperors: "By what criteria did he judge what was good for or dangerous to the society which he ruled?" and, "How did he publicly justify the coercive steps he took to preserve his community?" The study shows that, for Constantine the ideal of the Stoic social body served as both the criteria by which he judged what was good for his society, and frequently as the justification for his coercive policies. For Constantius, the ideal of the Stoic social body served only as the justification for his coercive policies, but did not form the criteria by which he judged what was good for his society.