Meal Practices

During the first two centuries of their history, Christians experimented extensively with what they called their meals, what they did during them, and where, when, how often, and with whom they conducted them. As a result of this process, these meals became significantly ritualized. Despite the scarcity of evidence regarding these meals, the chapter shows that adopting recent cognitive theories of ritualized behaviour, ritual efficacy, and ritual competence allows us to identify certain developmental trajectories in this process. The chapter presents a theoretically grounded overview of the most relevant sources. Since the focus is specifically on the ritualization of these meals from a cognitive perspective, their social function is not considered.

Women’s Rituals and Women’s Ritualizing

Although women participated in the early Christian rituals described elsewhere in this book, it would not be accurate to presume that their participation was in any way identical to that of men, nor even to the elite men whose evidence forms the basis of scholarly discussions. This chapter focuses on women’s ritualizing in relation to their bodies, the domestic sphere, in women-only religious communities, and in relation to the ecclesial hierarchy. It suggests that in some cases the approaches used by contemporary ritual theorists are insufficiently nuanced to allow for gender difference.

Christian Initiation

The limited evidence for Christian initiation practices in Syria and North Africa in the third century suggests ritual patterns that differed from each other in some ways but followed the three-stage structure of rites of passage outlined by Arnold van Gennep, even if the first and third of the stages were relatively undeveloped at that time. The fourth century saw the elaboration of these together with the temporal contraction of the middle or liminal phase in the rites of Syria and Milan, as well as in the variant practice of the city of Jerusalem.

Introduction

This chapter offers a guide to the reader for understanding the nature of ritual studies as an emerging interdisciplinary field, with particular emphasis on its relevance to the study of the history of early Christianity. Three characteristics are singled out. Ritual studies is distinguished by: (1) a pluralistic approach to the definition of ‘ritual’; (2) an increased interest in theory; and (3) the application of interdisciplinary perspectives on ritual. The chapter also responds to the criticism that has been raised against using the concept of ritual and ritual theory in the study of past rituals and argues that ritual theory enriches historical and textual analysis of early Christian materials in a number of ways. Ritual theory contributes to drawing a more complete picture of early Christian history and offers a corrective to a biased understanding of early Christianity as a system of beliefs and practices. Finally, examples from the present Handbook are taken to demonstrate how the ritual perspective creates a platform for interdisciplinary collaboration and integrative approaches which both stimulate new questions and enrich old ones.

Ritualization and Ritual Invention

In the lexicon of ritual theory, the notion of ritualization bears a heavy load. The concept aims to account for both the origins and functions of ritual (at both the biological and cultural levels), as well as inform reflection on the meaning and merit of ritual and even ritual theory. Broadly, ritualization refers to modifications in behaviours (or actions) that, when combined, stereotyped, formalized, and repeated eventuate in recognizable rites (or rituals). Ritualization is to ritual as a tree is to a house or a gear to a bike. Since ritualization is especially concerned with processes, the concept is important to discussions of the dynamics of ritual—its origins, changes, adaptations, and developments. Different theorists, however, use the concept in quite specific, sometimes antithetical, ways.

Ritual and Orthodoxy

Study of Christian origins typically separates the development of orthodox doctrines from community rituals of baptism, eucharist, or anointing of the sick and dying. Ritual studies are an appendix to arguments over the truth of teachings about God, the nature of Christ, salvation, and the canon of Scripture. This chapter argues that emerging Christianity was primarily a community that gathered to engage in ritual activities. Its rituals of baptism and eucharist are at the core of community identity in 1 Corinthians and Romans. The energy fuelling intra-Christian disputes reflects anxieties over the effectiveness of ritual celebrations in the pluralistic setting of early Christian assemblies. Both poetic fragments in Christian texts and artistic settings like the baptistery at Dura Europos demonstrate the powers of ritual to reconfigure participants’ vision of the self in the cosmos. Valentinian, Marcionite, and Manichaean authors and their orthodox opponents mirror diverse ritual praxis.

Ritual and Texts

This chapter focuses on the general problem pertaining to the relationship between ritual and text. What does it mean, when texts include references to ritual or resonate with language that originates in a ritual setting? There are at least three different problems pertinent to this relationship: (1) the relationship between the actual ritual and the text that purports to describe or evoke the ritual to the intended addressees of the text; (2) the question of rhetorical persuasiveness achieved by the evocation of ritual in the minds of the intended recipients; (3) the question of written texts which individually may become objects of ritual as is well known from Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The chapter discusses all three issues and lays stress on ritual as a bridge that may enhance the plausibility of conveying the text to the recipients. In order to understand this, the chapter makes a detour to Peircian semiotics and argues in the vein of Roy Rappaport that ritual by virtue of its conjunction of indexical and symbolic components is crucial for achieving this effect. Ultimately, an overall Durkheimian view of ritual is espoused in which ritual (and cult) are seen as a prerequisite for creating and preserving culture and obtaining maintaining cultural cohesion.

Ritual and Cooperation

Supernatural beliefs and ritual activities co-occur, suggesting that the evolutionary functions of beliefs and rituals might be linked. However, this link has not received sufficient attention in the evolutionary literatures on religion. This chapter reviews how ‘commitment signalling’ theory explains the co-evolution of religious beliefs and rituals, focusing on religion’s role in cultural evolution of cities and states. Religious rituals and religious beliefs conspired to support the evolution of cooperative trade networks, as well as the evolution of normative, intergenerational social inequality.

Wedding Rituals and Episcopal Power

This chapter offers a survey of the development of Christian marriage rituals in the first four centuries. It pays special attention to the emerging role of bishops in the ‘consecration’ of Christian marriage through rituals of blessing and veiling. Using categories derived from the ritual theory of Catherine Bell and Pierre Bourdieu, the chapter argues that by displaying ‘ritual mastery’ in this area, the Christian bishops in late antiquity were able to define new symbolic boundaries and thereby enhanced their own authority as ritual agents.

Communal Meals

This chapter begins by briefly discussing the prevalence of communal meals in the Roman world and then turns attention to the form and setting of communal dining. Such meals were framed as semi-public events. While not everyone was invited—indeed, only a small cadre of the especially chosen took part—banquets were often located and structured so that they could be observed. Within the meal setting itself, seating arrangements were such that each participant was also an observer. The bulk of the chapter examines how communal dining rituals model the values of the surrounding culture while also serving to mirror these values back to the banqueters, thus reinforcing and legitimating these values within the group. While meal rituals have the potential to challenge societal norms, in practice, the replication of cultural values reinforce the dominant social order.