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Ritual Boundaries Magic and Differentiation in Late
Antique Christianity 1st Edition Joseph E. Sanzo Digital
Instant Download
Author(s): Joseph E. Sanzo
ISBN(s): 9780520399181, 0520399188
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christianity in late antiquity, 14

In Ritual Boundaries, Joseph E. Sanzo transforms our understanding of how early Chris-
RITUAL

sanzo
tians experienced religion in lived practice through the study of magical objects, such as
amulets and grimoires. Against the prevailing view of late antiquity as a time when only
so-called elites were interested in religious and ritual differentiation, the evidence presented
here reveals that the desire to distinguish between religious and ritual insiders and outsid-
ers cut across diverse social strata. Sanzo’s examination of the magical also offers unique
BOUNDARIES
insight into early biblical reception, exposing a textual world in which scriptural reading
was multisensory and multitraditional. As they addressed sickness, demonic struggle, and
Magic and Differentiation in Late Antique Christianity
interpersonal conflicts, Mediterranean people thus acted in ways that challenge our concep-
tual boundaries between Christians and non-Christians; elites and non-elites; and words,
joseph e. sanzo

RITUAL BOUNDARIES
materials, and images. Sanzo helps us rethink how early Christians imagined similarity and
difference among texts, traditions, groups, and rituals as they went about their daily lives.

“Joseph Sanzo refutes the current view of Christians living amicably alongside their
non-Christian neighbors, forcing us to completely rethink how we approach religion in late
antiquity. A truly revolutionary book!”—jan n. bremmer, author of Maidens, Magic and
Martyrs in Early Christianity

“Ritual Boundaries is a deeply stimulating work and a poignant exercise in the reading of
objects. This book takes up familiar words and images and reveals the remarkable—and
surprising—lives ‘lived’ in ancient Egyptian Christian practice.”—dylan m. burns,
author of Apocalypse of the Alien God: Platonism and the Exile of Sethian Gnosticism

joseph e. sanzo is Associate Professor of History of Religions at

Alexis A. Sanzo

Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and author of Scriptural Incipits on

Amulets from Late Antique Egypt: Text, Typology, and Theory.

joan palevsky imprint in classical literature

University of California Press
www.ucpress.edu

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos,

University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program.
Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more.

Cover design: Michelle Black

ISBN: 978-0-520-39918-1
Cover illustration: Jasper gem with an image of the crucified Jesus.
BM 1986,0501.1. Courtesy of the British Museum. © The Trustees
of the British Museum. All rights reserved. 9 780520 399181
 The publisher and the University of California Press Foundation
gratefully acknowledge the generous support of the Joan Palevsky
Imprint in Classical Literature.
 Luminos is the Open Access monograph publishing program
from UC Press. Luminos provides a framework for preserving and
reinvigorating monograph publishing for the future and increases
the reach and visibility of important scholarly work. Titles published
in the UC Press Luminos model are published with the same high
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 CHRISTIANITY IN LATE ANTIQUITY
The Official Book Series of the North American Patristics Society

Editor: Christopher A. Beeley, Duke University

Associate Editors: David Brakke, Ohio State University
Robin Darling Young, The Catholic University of America
International Advisory Board:

Lewis Ayres, Durham University • John Behr, St Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary,
New York • Brouria Bitton-Ashkelony, Hebrew University of Jerusalem • Marie-Odile Boulnois,
École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris • Kimberly D. Bowes, University of Pennsylvania
and the American Academy in Rome • Virginia Burrus, Syracuse University • Stephen Davis,
Yale University • Elizabeth DePalma Digeser, University of California Santa Barbara • Mark
Edwards, University of Oxford • Susanna Elm, University of California Berkeley • Thomas
Graumann, Cambridge University • Sidney H. Griffith, Catholic University of America • David
G. Hunter, University of Kentucky • Andrew S. Jacobs, Harvard Divinity School • Robin M.
Jensen, University of Notre Dame • AnneMarie Luijendijk, Princeton University • Christoph
Markschies, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin • Andrew B. McGowan, Berkeley Divinity School
at Yale • Claudia Rapp, Universität Wien • Samuel Rubenson, Lunds Universitet • Rita Lizzi
Testa, Università degli Studi di Perugia

1. Incorruptible Bodies: Christology, Society, and Authority in Late Antiquity, by Yonatan Moss
2. E
 piphanius of Cyprus: A Cultural Biography of Late Antiquity, by Andrew S. Jacobs
3. M
 elania: Early Christianity through the Life of One Family, edited by Catherine M. Chin
and Caroline T. Schroeder
4. The Body and Desire: Gregory of Nyssa’s Ascetical Theology, by Raphael A. Cadenhead
5. Bible and Poetry in Late Antique Mesopotamia: Ephrem’s Hymns on Faith, by Jeffrey Wickes
6. S elf-Portrait in Three Colors: Gregory of Nazianzus’s Epistolary Autobiography,
by Bradley K. Storin
7. G
 regory of Nazianzus’s Letter Collection: The Complete Translation, translated
by Bradley K. Storin
8. Jephthah’s Daughter, Sarah’s Son: The Death of Children in Late Antiquity, by Maria Doerfler
9. C
 onstantinople: Ritual, Violence, and Memory in the Making of a Christian Imperial Capital,
by Rebecca Stephens Falcasantos
10. Th
 e Narrative Shape of Emotion in the Preaching of John Chrysostom, by Blake Leyerle
11. M
 aking Christian History: Eusebius of Caesarea and His Readers, by Michael J. Hollerich
12. F
 rom Idols to Icons: The Emergence of Christian Devotional Images in Late Antiquity,
by Robin M. Jensen
13. V
 irgin Territory: Configuring Female Virginity in Early Christianity, by Julia Kelto Lillis
14. Ritual Boundaries: Magic and Differentiation in Late Antique Christianity, by Joseph E. Sanzo
Ritual Boundaries
 Ritual Boundaries
Magic and Differentiation in Late Antique Christianity

Joseph E. Sanzo

UNIVERSIT Y OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

University of California Press
Oakland, California

© 2024 by Joseph E. Sanzo

Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Department of Asian and North African

Studies

This book is based on research funded by the European Research Council

(ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation
programme (grant agreement No 851466). This book solely reflects the
author’s views and, therefore, the ERC accepts no responsibility for
the information contained therein. Research for this book has been
conducted at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Department Asian
and North African Studies.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons [CC BY-NC-ND] license.

To view a copy of the license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses.

Suggested citation: Sanzo, J. E. Ritual Boundaries: Magic and Differentiation

in Late Antique Christianity. Oakland: University of California Press, 2024.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/luminos.182

Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress.

isbn 978-0-520-39918-1 (pbk. : alk. paper)

isbn 978–0-520–39919-8 (ebook)

32 31 30 29 28 27 26 25 24 23
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Lex, Zack, Asher, and Violet
 C onte nts

Prefaceix
Abbreviationsxiii

Introduction1

part i. the discursive boundaries of rituals and groups

1. Ritual Boundaries in Late Antique Lived Religion27
2. Religious Boundaries in Late Antique Lived Religion42

part ii. the discursive boundaries of texts and traditions

3. Words, Images, Materials, and Gestures65
4. From Torture to Triumph: The Crucifixion of Jesus in Early Christian
Lived Religion89

Conclusions109

Notes115
References147
Index167
 Pre face

Although Ritual Boundaries is my second monograph, its origins predate my

first book (Scriptural Incipits from Late Antique Egypt: Text, Typology, and Theory
[Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2014]). As is the case with many research endeavors, its
beginning was a matter of happenstance. From 2008 to 2010, I was studying for my
doctoral exams at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). The sources
and academic literature of two of my exam fields (i.e., early Jewish-Christian
relations and ancient magic) drew my attention to the fact that several so-called
“magical” objects (see Introduction) appropriated anti-Jewish invective as part
of their ritual texts. Moreover, I quickly discovered that this particular interface of
magic and religious differentiation during late antiquity had not made any siz-
able impact on the scholarship devoted to early Christianity, early Judaism, early
Jewish-Christian relations, or late antique magic. I was able to explore this pecu-
liar link between early Jewish-Christian relations and ancient magical studies dur-
ing the 2009–10 academic year, when I was fortunate enough to receive an award
through the Graduate Research Mentorship Program at UCLA (under the super-
vision of one of my doctoral advisors, Ra‘anan Boustan). As part of this program,
I wrote a paper that brought together these two fields by analyzing a late antique
amulet from Egyptian Babylon (P.Heid. inv. G 1101), which highlighted the motif
of the persecuting “Jews.” A version of this paper was eventually published in the
Festschrift for S. Scott Bartchy, my other doctoral advisor (Sanzo 2014b). Needless
to say, the overlaps and relationships between ancient magic and early Jewish-
Christian relations—as well as the significance of these respective fields of inquiry
for late antique religious history, more generally—have continued to motivate my
research, figuring into a coauthored essay with Ra‘anan Boustan (Boustan and

ix
x     Preface

Sanzo 2017) and forming the analytical center of my European Research Council
Project (Early Jewish and Christian Magical Traditions in Comparison and Contact;
grant agreement no. 851466 EJCM), of which this book is a part. Despite the title,
therefore, this book began with religious boundaries (see chapter 2).
But again, as the title implies, Ritual Boundaries is about more than this rela-
tionship between magic and religious differentiation. The late antique magical
objects also disclose the manifold ways early Christians negotiated the limits of rit-
uals, texts, materials, images, and traditions, to name just a few issues. These other
kinds of “boundaries,” which indeed play important roles in this book, likewise
reflect lines of research that have precedents in my earlier work. For instance, my
exploration into the domains of magical objects beyond the written word began
with a paper I wrote for a 2013 conference organized by Christopher Faraone
at the University of Chicago (“Ancient Amulets: Words, Images and Social Con-
texts”). That paper, which dealt with the relationships between words and images
in a Coptic spell for exorcism (Brit. Lib. Or. 6796[4], 6796) that includes a visual
depiction of the crucifixion scene (see chapter 4), was later published in Archiv für
Religionsgeschichte (Sanzo 2015). My work on this topic eventually led me beyond
the word-image interface to other dimensions of magical objects, such as mate-
rials, formats, and performances (see Sanzo 2016 and chapter 3). This interest
in magical practice beyond scribal boundaries (traditionally understood) also
stood behind my presentation at the 2019 Oxford Patristics Conference, which
investigated a jasper gem (BM 1986,0501.1) that includes a brutal image of Jesus
on the cross (see chapter 4). My research into the boundaries between proper
and improper rituals in late antique (Christian) imagination was published as an
essay in Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft (Sanzo 2019b). A modified version of this
essay appears as Chapter 1 of this book. In short, the central concerns of Ritual
Boundaries have followed—or perhaps haunted—me from graduate school until
the present day.
The broader themes of this book carry significance for fields of scholarly
inquiry well outside the study of late antique magic and even beyond early Chris-
tian studies. I have, therefore, designed Ritual Boundaries to appeal to as large
of an academic audience as possible. This intended readership has required me
to modify my normal writing habits in two primary ways. First, the reader will
quickly discover that the vast majority of ancient Greek, Coptic, Hebrew, or Syriac
words and phrases have been transliterated. My transliterations follow the conven-
tions specified in The SBL Handbook of Style, 2nd ed. (Kutsko et al. 2014). There
are, however, a few places where I felt that transliteration would be too confusing
or too cumbersome for the specialist in ancient magic. I have, therefore, written
these select words or phrases in the appropriate scripts. Second, I have used the
English translations of the titles for ancient and late antique literary sources except
in a few instances in which I thought that the English titles would cause more con-
fusion (e.g., references to the Didache and to Talmudic tractates).
 Preface    xi

The publication of my book coincided closely with the publication of the first
volume of Papyri Copticae Magicae (Dosoo and Preininger 2023). Although this
first volume—and subsequent volumes—will no doubt constitute the new authori-
tative collection of Coptic magical materials, the short publication time between
our respective books meant that, unfortunately, I was only able to incorporate into
my monograph the editors’ work on Leiden, Ms. AMS 9 (see introduction). It
should go without saying that I am very grateful to Korshi Dosoo and Markéta
Preininger for sharing the proofs of their analysis, edition, and translation of
Leiden, Ms. AMS 9.
In addition to this act of scholarly generosity, Ritual Boundaries also benefited
from the kind encouragement, financial support, and scholarly wisdom of numer-
ous people and institutions. First, my work on this book would not have gone
forward without the financial and administrative support of several universities,
research institutions, and their representatives. In this vein, I am eternally grate-
ful to Brouria Bitton-Ashkelony (Center for the Study of Christianity, Hebrew
University of Jerusalem); Martin Hose, Loren Stuckenbruck, and Knut Backhaus
(Distant Worlds: Munich Graduate School for Ancient Studies, Ludwig-Maximil-
ians-Universität München); John Burden and Peter Scott (Institute for Advanced
Studies, University of Warwick); Marianna Catinella, Andrea Rudatis, and the late
Marco Ceresa (Department of Asian and North African Studies, Ca’ Foscari Uni-
versity of Venice); and Eric Schmidt, Joel Kalvesmaki, and Jyoti Arvey (University
of California Press). The European Research Council also deserves special men-
tion for funding my research team and for providing a means by which scholars
like me, whose research falls outside the disciplinary “mainstream,” can find per-
manent academic positions. The amazing opportunities and assistance that these
people and institutions have given me have allowed me to pursue my research.
This book also tremendously profited from countless interactions with other
scholars. As is probably already evident from the words above, the mentorship and
now friendship of Ra‘anan Boustan has been one of the highlights of my academic
career. Ra‘anan’s impact on my way of thinking about (late antique) religion is noth-
ing short of profound. Several other scholars have offered me vital input on the
themes of this book or have supported my career with letters of recommendation,
collaboration, and the like: especially, S. Scott Bartchy, Gideon Bohak, Theodore de
Bruyn, Jacco Dieleman, Christopher Faraone, David Frankfurter, Richard Gordon,
Nils Hallvard Korsvoll, Sofie Lunn-Rockliffe, Yonatan Moss, Claudia Rapp, the late
James M. Robinson, Flavia Ruani, Ortal-Paz Saar, Jacques van der Vliet, Maude
Vanhaelen, and Lorne Zeleck. In addition, a range of scholars were gracious enough
to read earlier versions of this book (or parts of it) and provide informative—and
sometimes critical—comments: Alessia Bellusci, Ra‘anan Boustan, Mattias Brand,
Jan Bremmer, Dylan Burns, Rivka Elitzur-Leiman, David Frankfurter, Blake Jurgens,
Paolo Lucca, Ágnes T. Mihálykó, Michele Scarlassara, and Sandrine Welte. Their
invaluable input improved virtually every page of this monograph.
xii     Preface

Finally, I would like to thank my family for their unending support. I will for-
ever be grateful to my parents, Emanuel Joseph Sanzo (1936–2021) and Sharon
Kay Sanzo (1940–2022), neither of whom, unfortunately, saw the publication of
this book. Although they were not academics (and did not always understand the
academic life), my parents always offered me care, encouragement, and laughter. I
miss them both every day. Most of all, I thank my loving wife, Lex, and our three
children, Zack, Asher, and Violet, who, to varying degrees, endured the linguistic,
cultural, and practical challenges of following me around the world—from Los
Angeles to Jerusalem to Munich to Coventry to Los Angeles (again) to Venice to
Vittorio Veneto. This book would not have been possible without their love and
patience. I, therefore, dedicate Ritual Boundaries to them with all my heart.
Vittorio Veneto, Italy, July 2023
Joseph Emanuel Sanzo
 Abbreviati ons

Abbreviations of biblical books and Talmudic tractates follow the conventions

specified in Kutsko et al. 2014.
ACM Meyer, Marvin W., and Richard Smith, eds. Ancient Christian
Magic: Coptic Texts of Ritual Power. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1999.
ANF Robert, Alexander, and James Donaldson, eds. 1885–87. The Ante-
Nicene Fathers. 10 vols. Repr., Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994.
ARG Archiv für Religionsgeschichte
ASAE Annales du service des antiquités de l’Egypte
ASE Annali di storia dell’esegesi
BASP Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists
BN Biblische Notizen
DOP Dumbarton Oaks Papers
GMPT Betz, Hans D., ed. 1996. The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation,
Including the Demotic Spells. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
GRBS Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies
HTR Harvard Theological Review
JAC Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum
JECS Journal of Early Christian Studies
JQR Jewish Quarterly Review
JRS Journal of Roman Studies
LXX Septuagint
MT Masoretic Text
MTSR Method & Theory in the Study of Religion

xiii
xiv     Abbreviations

NRSV New Revised Standard Version

NKGW Nachrichten von der Königlichen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften
und der Georg-August-Universität zu Göttingen
PGM Preisendanz, Karl, ed. 1973. Papyri Graecae Magicae: Die
griechischen Zauberpapyri. 2 vols. Rev. ed. A. Henrichs. Stuttgart:
K G Saur Verlag.
Stud.Pap. Studia Papyrologica
Suppl.Mag. Daniel, Robert W., and Franco Maltomini, eds. 1990–92.
Supplementum Magicum. 2 vols. Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag.
ZAC Zeitschrift für Antikes Christentum
ZPE Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik
ZTK Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche
 Introduction

At the turn of the fifth century CE, Augustine of Hippo (354–430 CE) delivered a
sermon on John 1:34–51, the seventh in his homiletical series on the fourth gospel.1
In this sermon, the bishop of Hippo directed his ire against a now unknown local
blood festival that had apparently piqued the interest of some of his North African
congregants.2 Augustine responded in kind to this ostensible threat to Christian
purity, constructing a complex argument that highlighted through various exam-
ples the demonically inspired tactic of blending heathenism with Christianity.
Among the examples he noted was the deceptive use of Jesus’s name on tied ritual
objects or amulets (ligaturae), a practice he regarded as a clever and potent form
of ritual subterfuge:
For evil spirits contrive certain semblances of honor for themselves that they may in
this way deceive [decipiant] those who follow Christ. To such an extent, my broth-
ers, that they [i.e., demons] themselves, who seduce [seducunt] through tied ritual
objects [ligaturas], through spells [praecantationes], and through the artifices of the
enemy, mingle [misceant] the name of Christ in their spells; because they are no
longer able to seduce Christians so that they may give their poisons, they add some
honey so that what is bitter may lie hidden in that which is sweet and may be drunk
to ruin. To such an extent that I know that at one time the priest of that Pilleatus
used to say, “Even Pilleatus himself is a Christian.” Why is this, brothers, except that
Christians cannot otherwise be seduced?3

This discussion of amulets utilizes a range of metaphors (e.g., representation,

mixture, disguise, and mislabeling) that, taken together, vividly illustrates how
demons attempt to draw believers away from their god. From a historical perspec-
tive, Augustine’s criticisms of this hypothetical group of the deceived also disclose
a certain level of knowledge of actual late antique ritual practice; the extant amu-
letic record from this period provides countless examples of the apotropaic and
curative use of Jesus’s name.4

1
2     Introduction

At the same time, his use of the verb miscere (“to mingle”) in this context raises
questions of historical significance that evade simple answers. From whose per-
spective was Jesus’s name mingled? Did the demons/practitioners, the unsuspect-
ing Christians, and Augustine have the same interpretation of the Jesus-incantation
interface? In short, would all parties have agreed that a mixture of magical/heathen
and Christian elements had taken place? Apparently not. Although Augustine and
the deceitful demons/practitioners that he envisioned both seemed to have capital-
ized on a religious, ritual, or communal difference between the respective worlds
of Jesus and incantations—though from diametrically opposing religious postures
and motivations—the Christians who acquired such objects did not presumably
recognize this difference, at least not in the same way. That these Christians were
in Augustine’s mind “deceived” (cf. decipere) and “seduced” (cf. seducere) by this
supposed trick meant that they conceptualized ritual and religious taxonomies
differently than did he and his wicked counterparts. In fact, while Augustine
insists that such believers were now outside the faithful sheepfold, the believers
themselves apparently perceived no tension between their amuletic practices and
their Christian identities.5 According to Augustine, these hypothetical (Christian)
people would disagree with his condemnatory assessment, boldly proclaiming, for
instance, “I did not lose the sign of Christ.”6
Despite its rhetorical framing and clear theological biases, Augustine’s dis-
cussion of ligaturae reveals an ideological bifurcation centered around the
proper boundaries of Christian practice.7 In so doing, this anecdote hints at
the diverse visions of the limits of Christianity and Christian idiom that existed
in late antiquity, especially as it relates to the (textual) objects, rituals, and crises
of quotidian life.
Ritual Boundaries investigates the manifold ways in which late antique Medi-
terranean people—mostly Christians—engaged through their everyday practices
with notions of similarity and difference, good and evil, and propriety and impro-
priety, specifically in relation to religious belonging, ritual practice, and the limits
of texts (e.g., between words, images, materials, and gestures; between authori-
tative traditions). It seeks to accomplish this goal through detailed readings of
late antique amulets (of various types and materials) and grimoires and, to lesser
extents, curse tablets and other kinds of practices and texts associated with heal-
ing, exorcism, and cursing. Although the rituals and objects at the center of this
study are typically deemed “magical,” this book is not about magic, per se; instead,
the book uses ostensibly magical objects to reorient how we map the contours of
textuality as well as religious assimilation, cooperation, and especially differentia-
tion during late antiquity in so-called “lived religion” more generally.8
This latter emphasis on differentiation in late antique “lived religion” (see dis-
cussion below) neither operates according to a model of historical inquiry that
facilely divides elites from non-elites9 nor harks back to a now bygone era in late
ancient Mediterranean studies, whereby the writings and perspectives of church
 Introduction    3

fathers, monks, rabbis, and emperors were privileged to such a high degree that
they totally eclipsed the panoply of complexities and contradictions in late antique
lived reality. Often oriented around “great thinkers,” this defunct approach to his-
tory allowed the voices of a select few to drown out or frame those of Christians
from a range of social strata. Indeed, a discrete distinction between elites and
non-elites, coupled with a literary source-focused model of (ancient) history, car-
ries serious consequences for our reconstructions of the past, as historians have
long noted.
In the opening chapter of The Cult of the Saints (1981), Peter Brown demon-
strated that the scholarly study of the late antique cult of the saints had, up until
that time, been fundamentally shaped by a two-tiered model of religious change,
specifically organized around the categories “elites” and “non-elites.”10 For the
likes of Edward Gibbon (1737–94), who wrote under the influence of David Hume
(1711–76), this two-tiered model—in its nascent form—resulted in a devaluation
of the religion of late antiquity; according to this view, the greatest sin of the late
antique elites was their permissive attitude toward “popular” or “vulgar” religion.11
By the early 1980s, the two-tiered model appeared under a different guise.
Brown writes the following: “We have developed a romantic nostalgia for what
we fondly wish to regard as the immemorial habits of the Mediterranean country-
man, by which every ‘popular’ religious practice is viewed as an avatar of classical
paganism.”12 If the “modernism” of Gibbon’s era brought with it contempt for the
“popular” or “vulgar” religion of the masses, the “postmodernism” of Brown’s day
romanticized that non-elite religiosity. With a two-tiered model still at its center,
this newer approach to religious history, in Brown’s estimation, emphasized conti-
nuity over change to such a great extent that it obscured unique developments in
late antiquity, including especially the rise of the cult of the saints. Brown appro-
priately noted that developments in late antique religiosity could not be so easily
divided according to an elite versus non-elite dichotomy because “they worked
slowly and deeply into the lives of Mediterranean men of all classes and levels
of culture.”13
Despite Brown’s trenchant criticisms, the two-tiered model—and its accom-
panying distinction between elites and non-elites—has proved to die hard in late
antique studies. In fact, I contend that an even newer kind of two-tiered model—
likewise accompanied by a “romantic nostalgia” for “non-elite” religion—has
had a considerable influence on scholarship in the intervening years since 1981.
Although Christian continuity with Jewish, indigenous, pagan, or heathen prac-
tices still constitutes a robust field of scholarship (though not necessarily for the
same problematic reasons it did in the early 1980s),14 many scholars of late antiq-
uity now adopt a two-tiered approach to religious boundaries and identities that
casts non-elites and elites into positive and negative lights respectively. The late
antique Christian masses are said to have enjoyed a great degree of amicability
with their non-Christian neighbors, which reflected or resulted in “messy,” “fluid,”
4     Introduction

“blurred,” “porous,” or “permeable” boundaries. This generally peaceful posture, so

we are told, stands in marked contrast with the suspect predilections of the “ortho-
dox” Christian elites (e.g., Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Hippolytus, John Chrysostom,
and Augustine), who were preoccupied with religious and ritual differentiation and
establishing clear-cut boundaries between Christians and a host of Others (e.g.,
Jews, Pagans, heretics, and magicians).15 This two-tiered understanding of inter-
religious interaction—which, to be sure, is in large measure a response to the ear-
lier “great thinkers” models (see above) or conflict-oriented reconstructions (see
conclusions) of early Christian history—has not only penetrated the study of early
Christian literature; it has also made a deep impact on the fields of Christian (and
Jewish) archaeology and art history.16
Fortunately, a few recent studies have destabilized aspects of this bifurcated
view of religious interaction among early followers of Jesus and their neighbors.
Geoffrey Smith has argued that some ostensibly “heretical” texts, such as the
Testimony of Truth (from the Nag Hammadi archive), betray an interest in
religious differentiation—even appropriating the genre of the heresy catalogue.17
In a quite different scheme, Heidi Wendt has reframed both early Christian her-
esiologists, such as Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, and their heretical interlocutors
(e.g., Marcion and Valentinus) as “freelance religious experts,” vying for social,
economic, and ritual capital and attempting to marginalize one another along the
way.18 Finally, a complex view of early Jewish-Christian relations—as reflected in
literary sources primarily from the first two centuries CE—has emerged from a
2018 collection of essays dedicated to Joel Marcus.19 As the editors of this vol-
ume—aptly titled The Ways that Often Parted20—note, this collection of essays
“cumulatively illustrates how a variety of ways not only parted but also intermin-
gled—early and late, intentionally and accidentally, over and over again.”21
What emerges from these recent works is a portrait of a competitive world
of early Christian intellectual voices—not confined to traditional conceptions of ortho­
doxy—competing with one another and, more importantly for the concerns of
this book, framing and maligning one another through manifold discourses
of religious, ritual, and cultural alterity. Yet, although this research has usefully
contributed to the study of early Christian differentiation by situating early literary
writers within a robust agonistic context, the analytical parameters of these studies
(and the sources they discuss) leave views of religious difference among the late
antique Christian masses—including Christian ritual specialists and their clients,
who cut across the ostensible boundaries between “elites” and “non-elites”—for
the most part unaddressed.
Ritual Boundaries attempts to address directly the issues of religious, ritual, and
textual difference among such Christians with the help of magical artifacts (e.g.,
apotropaic, curative, exorcistic, and imprecatory objects), supplemented at times
with select patristic and monastic sources that condemn or discuss these ritual
materials. This “magical” evidence (see below) is particularly useful for assessing
 Introduction    5

the issue of differentiation among the Christian masses—again, not confined to

some putative category of “non-elites”—in part because these sources provide a
direct glance into the quotidian lives of believers and in part because amulets and
similar technologies are often presented (erroneously in my view) as one of the
premiere examples of cultural, religious, and ritual blending. Consequently,
these sources are often held up as an “obvious” domain of late antique social exis-
tence in which the desire for ritual and religious difference was unimportant,
unknown, or even unimaginable.
Although one cannot necessarily posit a general portrait of conceptions of
religious and ritual differentiation among such Christians on the basis of select
magical objects and early Christian texts, attention to this evidence undermines
two partly overlapping presuppositions in late antique studies that have rein-
forced many of the claims for blurred boundaries or the lack of concern for differ-
ence among these believers: First, that shared symbols, spaces, practices, and the
like necessarily imply friendly exchange or a lack of rigidly demarcated boundar-
ies; and second, that taxonomies of Christian symbols, rituals, and social contexts
among the Christian masses corresponded in a one-to-one fashion with those
articulated in ancient Christian literary sources and, by extension, in modern
scholarly studies. The challenging of these presuppositions ultimately supports my
contention that the impulse to differentiate, malign, and slander was much more
widespread in late antique Christianity than scholars now generally acknowledge.
By demonstrating that ritual and religious differentiation and invective infiltrated
diverse social strata in late antique lived contexts (see especially chapters 1 and 2),
Ritual Boundaries further disrupts the hard-and-fast distinction between elite and
non-elite religion that Brown began to deconstruct over forty years ago.
But magical objects not only testify in interesting ways to ritual and religious
boundaries. They also offer us interesting portraits of other kinds of relation-
ships, for which the metaphor “boundary” and related terms have been used.
Indeed, political/geographical metaphors, such as “boundary,” “limit,” and
“border,” have provided—and continue to provide—productive analytical frame-
works for investigating and understanding the combinations, fusions, and rup-
tures at the interstices of texts, images, materials, and bodies. As I will illustrate
in chapter 3, the magical objects help expand our notions of the relationships—
or “boundaries,” if you will—among and between these latter categories in early
Christian lived religion.
In so doing, the magical evidence helps us reimagine late antique religious
experience and contributes to the study of late antique books, reading practices,
and the so-called “New Philology.” The classic works produced by scholars, such as
Colin Roberts, William A. Graham, Guglielmo Cavallo and Roger Chartier, Harry
Gamble, and Roger Bagnall, have usefully detailed ancient reading habits (for
instance, silent reading), the important role and prices of codices in early Christi-
anity, and the necessity to move beyond purely textual analyses of manuscripts, to
6     Introduction

name just a few important contributions.22 This research has proved to be indis-
pensable for the study of early Christianity and late antiquity more generally by
promoting and illustrating an approach to manuscripts and texts that takes into
consideration all the features of the object in/on which the words were written.23
The use of the extant magical record to better understand the history of books
and reading is a line of methodological inquiry still in its infancy.24 Neverthe-
less, this nascent area of research promises to make a considerable impact on the
study of textual artifacts and their reception since magical objects engage with
domains, such as textuality, materiality, and visuality, in unexpected and creative
ways (see chapters 3 and 4). The complex interaction of these domains becomes
especially evident when one examines from a synthetic perspective the several
recent monographs and collected volumes that have usefully drawn attention to
the intersections of ancient magic and ancient scribal culture,25 material culture
(and archaeology),26 authoritative traditions,27 and visual culture,28 to name just
a few. Although such volumes tend to focus on only one dimension of ancient
magical objects, the magical artifacts themselves are typically not confined by our
notions of text, material, image, and the like. As we will see in chapter 3, one late
antique Christian amulet, P.Oxy. 8.1077, seeks to achieve ritual efficacy by merg-
ing verbal, visual, material, and performative dimensions. This amulet and others
thus help us gain a better understanding of the text-material-support interface by
underscoring the diverse entanglements of texts, on the one hand, and the materi-
als, formats, images, and ritual performances contiguous with them, on the other.
Such combinations can also shed light on the diverse ways people engaged
with authoritative traditions, such as the Bible, in late antique lived religion. As I
will also highlight in chapter 3, even the Jewish and Christian practitioners who
cited the same biblical passage (MT Ps 91:1 = LXX Ps 90:1) reveal different merg-
ers of text, materiality, body, and performance through the ritual and material
formats at their disposals. An incantation bowl penetrated the human senses with
this sacred tradition differently—and required different kinds of gestural perfor-
mances to read and write the text—than an amuletic armband or a pendant or
a ring. Biblical reception and the religious experiences it engendered were not
merely or purely textual phenomena.
Attention to the interface of word and image, in particular, can also yield
important insights into historical developments, hermeneutical complexities, and
scholarly rubrics associated with well-established authoritative traditions in late
antique lived religion. For instance, there has been a recent trend in scholarship
to push a triumphal interpretation of the crucifixion of Jesus as a visual symbol to
an earlier period of late antiquity.29 An early magical gem now housed in the Brit-
ish Museum (BM 1986,0501.1), whose image has been understood as preserving
a triumphal interpretation of the crucified Jesus, has served as a kind of linchpin of
this new scholarly position; however, as we will see in chapter 4, scholars have not
taken into sufficient consideration contextual developments in both Christianity
 Introduction    7

and in magical practice during late antiquity when assessing this gem’s visual and
verbal characteristics. Attention to these developments allows us to reassess the
word-image interplay on the gem and, consequently, to recontextualize the gem’s
presentation of Jesus in dialogue with ancient beliefs about the restless dead.
But this early gem’s negative presentation of Jesus’s crucifixion was not the
end of the story. In fact, an early seventh-century CE exorcistic spell written
in Coptic (Brit. Lib. Or. 6796[4], 6796), which gives us the most elaborate late
antique presentation of the crucifixion of Jesus through both word and image on
a magical artifact, presents Jesus’s death in highly triumphal terms. Accordingly,
the coordination of the verbal and visual domains on these two late antique
magical artifacts reveals two completely different understandings of the cruci-
fixion of Jesus: Jesus’s crucifixion as a triumphal death and Jesus’s crucifixion as
a shameful death. By giving voice to the visual-verbal interplay in these sources,
we not only reveal a range of possible interpretations to this foundational Chris-
tian myth in late antique lived contexts. In so doing, we also gain insight into
historical developments in the magical use of Jesus’s death during “late antiq-
uity” and undermine the simple scholarly application of generic terms, such
as “(ritual) power”: in both cases, the crucifixion of Jesus was certainly per-
ceived to be “ritually powerful”; however, the respective power dynamics in
these sources were grounded in diametrically opposite perspectives toward the
(untimely) death of Jesus.30
Ritual Boundaries thus seeks to insert the so-called “magical” evidence into
diverse scholarly discourses in late antique studies. It is my hope that this book will
contribute to a growing body of scholarship that has recognized the importance of
this material evidence for our understanding of late antique religion and culture
and will, therefore, help move magic out from the margins of late antique studies
to a more central position in the field.31

TERMINOLOGY

The academic study of late antique religion and magic has been marked by a preoc-
cupation with terminology. Studies abound with detailed discussions of “religion,”
“magic,” “Christianity,” “Judaism,” and the like. Although I will nuance, rearrange,
and mix up many of these and other terms throughout the book, there are several
scholarly categories—albeit with overlapping traits—that interact with some of
my fundamental concerns and thus warrant extended introductory discussions.
As will become evident in these terminological analyses, the continuities, partial
overlaps, and, of course, ruptures among and between late antique and scholarly
taxonomies are important to highlight and, therefore, represent prominent points
of discussion throughout this study. In this sense, Ritual Boundaries also addresses
the complex and ever-changing boundaries between scholars and the late antique
sources they investigate.
8     Introduction

Magic
My insistence on the use of the term “magic” in this study might strike some
as odd, unnecessary, or even flat-out wrong. After all, what is “magic”? How
might we distinguish “magic” from other spheres of ancient social existence
(e.g., “religion” and “science”)? To be sure, I certainly appreciate the well-
established problems with the term, including the following: imprecision in
scholarly usage; outmoded biases against the category (e.g., coercive magic vs.
supplicative religion); its theological and colonial vestiges; differences between
the English rubric “magic” (or its equivalents in other modern languages) and
ancient terminology (e.g., mageia); and the considerable overlaps between “mag-
ical” rituals and “religious” rituals in late antique social reality.32 But the heuris-
tic utility of “magic” is not necessarily impeded by these problems;33 nor, more
importantly, is it necessarily contingent on new definitions that creatively navi-
gate around such shortcomings.
In this vein, I will not offer any definition of “(late antique) magic.” Instead, the
specific parameters of my study require that I reframe the issue of terminology
entirely through a set of guiding questions that prioritize taxonomy over against
definition: what scholarly category can most usefully illuminate the overarching
concerns of this particular study? And what is the most useful way to engage with
that category, again for this particular study? My answers to these two questions
are: (1) magic and (2) from a scholarly oriented perspective.34
Specifically, I approach the category magic here primarily as an inherited ana-
lytical rubric, which, on account of longstanding scholarly convention, intuitively
gathers together certain objects, rituals, and concerns. “Magic” has in fact been
the dominant term used to label and frame apotropaic, curative, exorcistic, and
imprecatory sources and their primary objectives, as is evident from the titles
of the volumes in which most of these textual objects have been published and
(re-)edited: for instance, Papyri Graecae Magicae (cf. The Greek Magical Papyri
in Translation);35 Greek and Egyptian Magical Formularies;36 Supplementum Magi-
cum;37 Ancient Christian Magic;38 Amulets and Magic Bowls;39 Magic Spells and For-
mulae;40 Testi della magia copta;41 Papyri Copticae Magicae.42 Even those who deny
the heuristic utility of the term recognize its stubborn persistence in scholarly dis-
courses about the objects and concerns in these collections.43 In short, there is a
high level of agreement in scholarship concerning the objects, texts, and concerns
that have been classified as “magic.”
The consistency in the scholarly classification of magical items, however, stands
in marked contrast to the manifold ways scholars have defined magic. Is it an irra-
tional form of pseudoscience (in the tradition of Sir James George Frazer)? Or
should we follow Émile Durkheim in thinking about magic as mostly a private
action? Is it a replacement or substitute for science in instances in which there
is insufficient technological development (as Bronisław Malinowski has argued)?
None of these definitions—nor the others that have been offered—have satisfied
 Introduction    9

scholars because they either restrict the evidence too much or are too general to
illuminate many research questions.44
This heuristic difference between taxonomy and definition is, of course, appli-
cable to terms other than magic. Brent Nongbri makes a similar observation about
religion when he writes, “When I ask my students to define religion, they generally
respond with a wide range of conflicting definitions, but they usually can agree
on ‘what counts’ as religion and what does not.”45 But, rather than this being a
problem (as Nongbri seems to suggest), there is much value in this basic agree-
ment, especially for certain scholarly pursuits. Much like Nongbri’s students, I am
relatively confident that, if I were to give scholars of antiquity a list of texts, objects,
and the like (e.g., amulets, liturgies, legal proceeding, prayers, and medical trac-
tates) and tell them to place these terms into categories, such as religion, magic,
science, and law, I would find a considerably high degree of agreement. Yet, if I
told those same scholars to define “religion,” “magic,” “science,” or “law,” I would
get several completely different responses.
To summarize, there has never been scholarly agreement about the proper defi-
nition of magic, but scholars tend to agree on how magic fits within a taxonomy
of late antique phenomena (i.e., which sources and concerns are in the category
“magic,” and which are outside it). All inherited theological and cultural biases
notwithstanding, this well-established taxonomic tradition in late antique stud-
ies apropos of magic can serve as an important point of orientation for certain
research questions. A scholarly oriented taxonomic approach to magic is especially
fruitful for my purposes since my broader argument is that select qualities associ-
ated with this rubric in scholarly imagination have structured the way that schol-
ars have approached the sources deemed magical and their implications for late
antique religious history.
Magic—like all our research categories—has a host of contiguous attributes
in scholarly usage.46 Among the attributes of ancient and late antique magic that
reside at the analytical center of this study are its supposedly “syncretistic” (see
below), non-normative, and/or boundary-blurring character. Such descriptors
are everywhere in scholarly literature and, in some cases, fundamentally structure
academic discussions about magic. The assumption that ancient and late antique
magical objects (almost) always resisted clear-cut boundaries not only frames
the study of (ancient) magic itself—that is, the problem of separating magic from
religion, science, and so on—but it also orients the perceived appropriateness or
applicability of the scholarly use of magical artifacts to address other kinds of pre-
modern boundary demarcation, including the lines between Christians and vari-
ous religious and ethnic Others.
One of the principal contentions of this book is that the sources behind the
scholarly rubric “magic” were often concerned with religious and ritual boundar-
ies and even with what we might call identity. By attending to the specific ways
in which some of these objects constructed clear-cut boundaries, we can thus
10     Introduction

recalibrate how we talk about late antique religious and ritual boundaries more
generally, especially as it relates to so-called lived contexts. In short, I will take
this scholarly constructed corpus of “magical” materials, which is often seen as
irrelevant for questions of late antique boundary demarcation, religious and ritual
differentiation, and notions of text and reading, and I will apply that corpus to
those very academic discourses. Magic is precisely the best overarching category
for the larger task at hand.
Two qualifications, however, are in order: First, one should not get the impres-
sion from these introductory words that the assumptions behind the construction
of the scholarly corpus of magical objects were completely disconnected from the
world of late antiquity and its key terminology (e.g., mageia). There are in fact
important correspondences between the taxonomies of scholars and those opera-
tive in the late antique world, including in both the magical and literary records.
Beginning in late antiquity, we start to find groupings of ritual practices and prac-
titioners, especially by Christian authors, in ways that align quite closely with our
notions of magic (at least in its negative sense).47 This is especially evident in the
canons of ancient church councils. In addition to an early Coptic version of
the Apostolic Tradition, which lists a range of ritual experts to be excluded from
baptism unless they repent (e.g., magicians, fortune tellers, and those who make
amulets), there is a late fourth- or early fifth-century CE Phrygian canon that has
been falsely attributed to a single Council of Laodicea.48 This canon reads:
Those who are of the priesthood, or of the clergy, ought not be magicians [magous],
enchanters [epaoidous], numerologists [mathēmatikous], or astrologers [astrologous];
nor ought they make what are called amulets [phylaktēria], which are chains for their
own souls. Those who wear [amulets], we command to be cast out of the Church.

Such ecclesiastical canons demonstrate that Christians had begun by the late
fourth or early fifth century CE to conceptualize illicit ritual activities and their
practitioners as a distinctive threat.
We also find that the practice of writing charaktēres was common in the various
kinds of objects and texts we call “magical” (e.g., the Greek Magical Papyri, amu-
lets, defixiones [curse tablets]), but was rarely—if ever—found in other kinds of
objects. Ancients seemed at times to be highly aware that this scribal practice was
a distinctively ritual phenomenon. For instance, several magical objects, including
P.Haun. III 51 (= Suppl.Mag. 23), a fifth-century CE Greek amulet for healing that
I will discuss in chapter 3, not only inscribes charaktēres, but also invokes these
charaktēres by name. We read, “Holy inscription and mighty charaktēres, chase
away the fever with shivering from Kalē, who wears this phylakterion.” The high
authority that ritual practitioners invested in this scribal practice was not lost on
the Christian critics of ancient amulets. Thus, Augustine writes the following:
Among superstitious things is whatever has been instituted by men concerning the
making and worshiping of idols, or concerning the worshiping of any creature or any
 Introduction    11

part of any creature as though it were God. Of the same type are things instituted
concerning consultations and pacts involving prognostications with demons who
have been placated . . . These are the endeavors of the magic arts [magicarum artium]
. . . Here also belong all the amulets . . . whether these involve incantations [praecan-
tationibus], or certain secret signs called “characters” [caracteres].49

In other words, both ancient practitioners and those who criticized them attest
to the ritual significance of this scribal practice for the range of objects, texts, and
practices we call “magical.”
But, of course, most late antique practitioners did not consider their rituals to
be magical in any way, shape, or form.50 This manifest disjuncture between long-
standing scholarly convention, on the one hand, and native understandings in
the late antique artifacts themselves, on the other, can occasionally interfere with
analysis. This occasional interference leads us to our second qualification: although
magic remains the overarching category for the book as a whole (for the reasons
specified above), the research questions that inform individual discussions in
the chapters at times require a different way of classifying the sources. As we will
see in chapter 1, it is helpful to recast certain “magical” objects as “religious” to
facilitate their comparison with select monastic and patristic sources that have
similar approaches to illicit or harmful ritual. Although both ostensibly magical
and religious materials slander certain rituals as evil, illicit, or harmful, the schol-
arly bifurcation of the sources into the categories “magic” and “religion” has often
given the impression that the negative presentations of ritual in these respective
sources are fundamentally dissimilar: practical anti-magical rituals versus theo-
logical/ideological condemnation of magic. By placing the magical objects under
the same category as patristic sources (in this case, “religion”), we can dissoci-
ate them from a purely pragmatic framework and thus better contextualize their
rhetorically, culturally, and theologically sensitive strategies for combatting rituals
considered wicked.
As I hope to illustrate throughout this study, the heuristic utility of analyti-
cal categories such as magic for the study of the late antique world is ultimately
contingent on their explanatory power for specific scholarly pursuits.51 In my esti-
mation, therefore, our taxonomies must remain flexible and open to adjustment,
reconfiguration, and even deconstruction, thereby allowing us to balance our
driving research aims, among other things, with the scholarly presuppositions and
traditions operative in each instance.

Amulet
As noted above, Ritual Boundaries will draw from the published corpora of late
antique amulets, which, given their additional magical designation, have been
largely ignored in the study of late antique boundary demarcation.52 Accordingly,
the cross-cultural anthropological term “amulet” appears in this study as a rubric to
discuss a range of ancient and late antique ritual practices and objects (see below)
12     Introduction

and, occasionally, to translate native words, such as amuletum, ligatura, periapton/

periamma, and phylaktērion (phylaktēria [plural]).53 Much like magic, the noun
amulet has recently been subjected to considerable scrutiny in late antique studies.
Since I have predicated my approach to magic—and, by extension, amulets—on
a relatively high degree of scholarly agreement, it is important to engage critically
with the growing scholarly trend to reconsider the functions of objects previously
designated as amulets.
In their seminal checklist of early Christian amulets and formularies, Theodore
de Bruyn and Jitse Dijkstra put forth a series of criteria or characteristics that they
used to help identify objects as amulets.54 In particular, they assessed the objects
based on the presence of the following features:
adjurations or petitions, esoteric words [voces magicae] or signs [charaktēres], letters
or words arranged in shapes, strings of vowels, short narratives that relate events
associated with the divine world to the matter at hand [historiolae], and phraseology
often found in charms and spells.55

In addition to these features—the taxonomic complexities of which they duly

note—de Bruyn and Dijkstra also highlighted other kinds of characteristics that
can be used to help identify an amulet, such as the use of certain biblical tradi-
tions (e.g., LXX Ps 90 and the Lord’s Prayer) or evidence of rolling or folding.56
With these diverse criteria in mind, they divided the relevant manuscripts into
three groups that progressively descend in their probability of amuletic design:
(1) certain; (2) probable; and (3) possible.57 It is worth noting that Dijkstra and de
Bruyn did not challenge the amuletic status of any of the objects at the center of
my analysis.
More recently, Peter Arzt-Grabner and Kristin De Troyer have provided a more
critical approach to this topic, emphasizing the necessary presence of clear “magi-
cal” elements (e.g., invocations, charaktēres, and voces magicae) to justify a “cer-
tain” amuletic rating. Consequently, Arzt-Grabner and De Troyer take issue with
de Bruyn and Dijkstra’s claim that the presence of a relevant biblical passage could,
in and of itself, be indicative of amuletic design.58 For Arzt-Grabner and De Troyer,
such biblical passages could theoretically reflect a range of functions, including:
a short text that somebody wanted to keep and read from time to time, be it as a
prayer or just a beautiful poetic text; or it may have been a scribal exercise from a
practicing priest or student, or an ornamental piece produced at school, maybe to be
used as a gift for a beloved person.59

Armed with this more “exclusive” approach, Arzt-Grabner and De Troyer argue
that some of the objects that Dijkstra and de Bruyn considered amulets should
be reclassified. Although most of the artifacts that they reclassify are not relevant
for my purposes, one object whose amuletic status they dispute plays a role in
this study: P.Oxy. 8.1077 (cf. chapter 3). Arzt-Grabner and De Troyer argue that
there is no “hard evidence” that P.Oxy. 8.1077 was designed to be an amulet.60 They
 Introduction    13

therefore entertain other interpretations for this artifact. Arzt-Grabner and De

Troyer ask:
Is it not possible that this sheet of parchment . . . could have been a text about Jesus’
healing power, artificially designed in an educational context or as a gift for another
person, e.g., someone with medical skills?61

They continue:
And as the producer put so much effort into the careful display of so many features,
some of them unique, we have to ask why he or she did not attach a single certain
magical marker, e.g., a magical character or a vox magica?62

Although Arzt-Grabner and De Troyer are willing to classify this artifact as “pos-
sibly produced as an amulet,” they do not find any clear evidence indicating that it
should be classified among the objects that were “certainly” amulets.
To a large degree, my taxonomic approach to the category “magic”—and, con-
sequently, “amulet”—sidesteps Arzt-Grabner and De Troyer’s recent challenge to
the amuletic status of P.Oxy. 8.1077 and any specific designation one might assign
to this artifact moving forward: although some scholars might follow Arzt-Grab-
ner and De Troyer in disputing—on papyrological or other grounds—the claim
that P.Oxy. 8.1077 was originally designed to be an amulet, there is no doubt that
commentators over the past century have consistently referred to this object as
an amulet and placed it in collections devoted to amulets and “magic.”63 And it is
precisely this long-standing scholarly classificatory tradition that informs my prin-
cipal use of nomenclature and my guiding research questions. Nevertheless, it is
useful to engage with Arzt-Grabner and De Troyer’s analysis of P.Oxy. 8.1077 since
it raises much larger questions about the functions of manuscripts in antiquity
more generally. In particular, their essay is a useful starting point for discussing
the possibility that an object might have served multiple functions for a single user.
Arzt-Grabner and De Troyer appropriately note that scholars have often taken
a “magical” or “amuletic” function of P.Oxy. 8.1077 (and other objects) for granted.
From their perspective, such scholarly assumptions are unwarranted or at least
premature because the scribe behind this manuscript has not included any “magi-
cal” markers (e.g., charaktēres or voces magicae). They therefore postulate other
possible functions for this artifact (e.g., as an educational aid or a gift). One thing
worth noting about their assessment of P.Oxy. 8.1077—as well as that of prior com-
mentators—is the operative assumption that there is only one answer to the ques-
tion of function; an object is either an educational device or an amulet or a gift. Yet,
while it is likely that most objects were designed with one primary use in mind, it
is worth asking if the nature of the late antique evidence compels us to classify and
conceptualize manuscripts in such monofunctional terms.
There is strong evidence suggesting that objects often served multiple func-
tions—at least for their users. The late antique literary record is replete with
descriptions of situations in which, for instance, gestures and artifacts typically
14     Introduction

associated with devotional, liturgical, or educational activities also served on occa-

sion apotropaic or curative functions; whether we think of Saint Antony’s gestur-
ing of the cross to thwart “magic” (mageia) and “poison” (pharmakeia)64 or Saint
Augustine’s praise of the man who sought healing by placing his head on a gospel
artifact (see chapter 1),65 the extant evidence from late antiquity makes it abun-
dantly clear that objects and practices could serve a range of functions depend-
ing on their context.66 On a theoretical level, this multiplicity of functions finds
resonance with the sociological work on multiple identities by scholars, such as
Bernard Lahire, who have demonstrated how individuals can align themselves
with different groups depending on the situation and context.67 Within this line
of scholarship, individuals do not possess a single identity, but activate different
“identities” (e.g., religious, civic, and familial) depending on the circumstances at
hand.68 Manuscripts, objects, and even ritual gestures seemed to have worked in
a similar way.69
The apotropaic or curative extension of certain practices and objects, in partic-
ular, might relate to the penetration of disease and the demonic into multiple areas
of early Christian life. In addition to biblical traditions of healing and demonic
battle (e.g., the healings and exorcisms of Jesus and his followers)70 and metaphori-
cal titles with curative connotations ascribed to Jesus (e.g., sōtēr and iatros [cf.
Mark 2:17]), apotropaic/exorcistic concerns and healing were embedded into the
very fabric of early Christian ritual culture. Exorcism, for example, was part of
the early rites of baptism,71 and the liturgy included requests for the healing
of the sick.72 Furthermore, as the research of David Brakke, David Frankfurter, and
Dayna Kalleres (among others) has shown, demonic struggle thoroughly informed
virtually every aspect of late antique life, especially in monasteries (where much of
the scribal training and activity took place).73
Although late antique manuscripts, objects, and gestures probably functioned
in a range of ways in lived practice, my scholarly taxonomic approach to amulets
is not arbitrary since most of the objects under consideration in this study seemed
to have primarily served apotropaic or curative functions. In fact, many of these
objects self-identify using terms such as phylaktērion. Although P.Oxy. 8.1077 does
not include any “magical” symbols like charaktēres, there are good reasons to think
that it was primarily created and used as an amulet. This relatively small artifact
(11.1 cm × 6 cm) was not only folded; its text also has a very strong emphasis on
healing. For instance, the scribe has modified the Matthean title to read “curative
Gospel According to Matthew,”74 and he provides a modified citation of Matt 4:23–
24, which emphasizes diseases even more than the biblical text does. I consider it
more likely that it was primarily designed for curative purposes (i.e., an amulet)
than for an educational context or as a gift for a someone with “medical skills,” as
Arzt-Grabner and De Troyer have hypothesized. Nevertheless, it is worth stressing
that, given the multifunctionality of objects in the late antique world, my analysis
does not go forward under the assumption that P.Oxy. 8.1077 or any of the objects
 Introduction    15

I address were made solely for curative or apotropaic concerns or were used only
as amulets. To state the matter a bit differently, we might reasonably assume that
a papyrus inscribed with a biblical healing narrative about Jesus, such as P.Oxy.
8.1077, might have had a given function when worn at church; however, it is likely
that same object served a totally different function when the carrier was sick or
afraid of demonic attack.

Ritual
The word “ritual” also warrants an introductory discussion. Despite the problems
scholars have identified with the term “ritual,” I think that this anthropological
rubric can be analytically productive.75 I use “ritual” in this study in three partly
overlapping ways. First, although the term “ritual” could in fact apply to a range of
phenomena in the late antique Christian world,76 “ritual” is used in the majority
of cases in this study as a synonym for “magic” or “magical” and thus in refer-
ence to the amulets and handbooks, as well as their texts, practitioners, and clients
(with the implicit caveat that such texts, objects, practices, and people also par-
ticipated in other domains of ancient social existence [see the discussion of magic
above]). This usage of the term, which more or less follows scholarly convention
in the study of late antique magic, is especially operative when I use phrases such
as “ritual practice” and “ritual practitioner.”77
Second, “ritual” in this book occasionally takes on a more specific sense,
denoting the activities, practices, gestures, or performances at play in the magi-
cal objects. This usage stands behind phrases such as “the rituals, texts, objects,
and concerns that we call ‘magical.’” This juxtapostion of the term “ritual” with
these other rubrics, however, is not meant to imply a discrete distinction between
domains, such as texts, beliefs, and rituals; rather, such lists are designed to stress
for heuristic purposes the diverse dimensions that make up—or could make up—
the categories “magic,” “religion,” and the like. In this way, the specific sense of
“ritual” also applies to contexts that could be alternatively characterized as “magi-
cal” (improper) or “religious” (proper) depending on the viewer’s perspective.
Consequently, the term “ritual” offers a more neutral starting point for my discus-
sion of perceptions of alterity, impropriety, and harm in the quotidian practices
slandered in both literary and material sources—evidence I eventually classify
together under the larger comparative rubric “religion” (see chapter 1).78 In those
few instances in which I have decided to translate ancient terms (e.g., mageia) in
such slanderous texts with the rubric “magic” for brevity’s sake, the reader should
understand this rubric to mean “improper ritual practice.”
Finally, the word “ritual” is used in this study to underscore a broader dis-
cursive context. This latter sense stands behind the heuristic distinction I make
between “ritual boundaries” (see chapter 1), which engages with late antique views
and stereotypes of proper and improper practices to deal with sickness, demonic
struggle, and interpersonal conflict, and “religious boundaries” (see chapter 2),
16     Introduction

which focuses on the perceived boundaries between Christians and non-

Christians (especially “Jews”). The reader should not intuit from the structural
division between ritual and religion in this book any interest on my part in rei-
fying the (Protestant) ritual-belief binary or the thought-action distinction; nor
does this division signal my participation in the myth-ritual debate.79 Instead, this
division is designed to highlight, through two key examples, how early Christians
erected, maintained, and promoted boundaries between themselves and diverse
kinds of Others in their everyday lives.

Syncretism
Despite the criticisms leveled against syncretism in the field of religious studies
more generally, this category is ubiquitous in scholarly descriptions of the lan-
guage found on ancient and late antique magical artifacts.80 As one scholar has
put the matter, “if syncretism is to be found anywhere, it is in the world of ancient
magic.”81 In most cases, the term is merely applied (sometimes in scare quotes)
to objects whose thematic content crosses the idealized and well-defined schol-
arly boundaries between Egypt, Greece, Rome, Judaism, Christianity, paganism,
or gnosticism.82 Others, however, have attempted to bring more specificity to
the phenomenon of syncretism in ancient and late antique magic or situate this
rubric within a more robust theoretical and methodological framework.
Carla Sfameni has examined the “extraordinarily complex mixture” of reli-
gious elements in select PGM texts and magical gems, arguing that they reflect
“a particular kind of syncretism with clear enotheistic [sic] tendencies.”83 In
particular, Sfameni draws on the work of scholars, such as Françoise Dunand
and Pierre Lévêque,84 and thus contextualizes the juxtaposition of various
divine names (e.g., Iaō Sabaōth, Abrasax, Agathos Daimōn) in the late antique
magical texts and objects within a broader henotheism in Roman Egypt,
whereby devotion to one god did not necessarily preclude the use of or rever-
ence for other divinities.85 These elements, for Sfameni, cannot be separated
into their constituent parts because they fit together into a coherent “world
system” or “Hellenistic religious syncretism” that is tailored to the practical
orientation of the magician’s craft.86 From this perspective, therefore, the syn-
cretism behind the magical objects from late antiquity is a sound whole based
on the mixture of “elements of different religious traditions in order to reach
a specific aim.”87
Although Sfameni’s broader claims about (1) a single, coherent “Hellenistic
religious syncretism” that (2) found particular expression in a discrete domain
of late antiquity (i.e., magic) are unconvincing, her basic contention that objects,
which seemingly invoke entities from “different religious traditions,” should not
be reflexively understood as a mere hodgepodge of independent elements is
well taken.88 As I will detail in chapter 2, many Christian magical objects reveal
an already existing absorption or assimilation of “foreign” elements into the
 Introduction    17

practitioner’s exclusionary configuration of Christianity and, accordingly, demand

that we recalibrate our scholarly usage of categories, such as “Christian” and “Jew-
ish,” especially as it relates to late antique lived religion.
David Frankfurter has recently developed, through a series of publications,
what I regard to be the most robust approach to and able defense of the category
“syncretism” for the study of late antiquity, including for the academic study of the
rituals, objects, and concerns we would call magical.89 Eschewing the fallacy of
“pure” religions that has been one of the problematic hallmarks of syncretism in
past usage, Frankfurter rectifies this term as follows:
Syncretism should cover the ongoing process by which a religious tradition—in the
form of lore, materiality, authority, and charismatic figures—is indigenized and ren-
dered comprehensible in particular cultural domains.90

Central to Frankfurter’s understanding of syncretism is the notion of “agency”—a

term that is meant to denote the active and creative reinterpretation, reworking,
and distribution of cultural elements toward a particular objective.91 From this
perspective, syncretism represents an “ongoing process,” whereby one can never
say, for instance, “a culture or town ‘is Christianized.’”92
This nuanced approach to syncretism can fruitfully highlight the ever-shifting
forms of religious traditions, such as Christianity, across time and space. As Frank-
furter demonstrates, the late antique ticket oracle that addresses Saint Leontius’s
god at his Christian shrine in Tripolis is not tantamount to a persistence or “sur-
vival” of some “pagan” antecedent but stands as a testament to a particular mani-
festation of “Christianization” in a local context.93 Such instances of syncretism
could function, for example, as a means by which “Christianity gained legitimacy,
authority, and quotidian relevance in Egypt.”94
But, as useful as this general model is for tracing the manifold manifestations
of “Christianization” over the longue durée, such visions of syncretism and agency
have difficulty accounting for the late antique taxonomies operative in specific
texts. As a result, this approach can obscure exegesis and, by extension, can even
augment historical analysis; the possible connotations, associations, and valences
of the diverse religious building blocks in a given text are, by and large, eclipsed by
a single analytical rubric.95 Accordingly, syncretism in this view tends to conflate
what I would regard as two discrete modes of agency: the active or intentional
application of difference, foreignness, or exoticism to one’s ritual text, on the one
hand, and the ritual use of an already indigenized or assimilated component that
happened to originate in a different cultural or religious context, on the other.96 As
we will see below, this basic distinction is necessary for understanding the ritual
poetics of certain magical texts. Was Iaō Sabaōth, for instance, a “Jewish” or a
“Christian” divine name for a given practitioner? Did such a distinction matter
for his ritual purposes? In at least some cases, the scholarly mislabeling of such a
moniker—or the automatic or general application of an analytical rubric, such as
18     Introduction

“syncretism,” to its use—can fundamentally invert the conception of ritual purity

that the practitioner was trying to promote.
To be sure, Frankfurter is highly attuned to the instability of ancient notions of
“Christianity” and of other categories as well as to how such ideas might conflict
with our inherited scholarly taxonomies. Commenting on practices like the so-
called “Land of Egypt” oracle, Frankfurter writes the following:
it is only the modern Egyptologist or historian who recognizes the peculiar “Egyp-
tianness” of these materials and tries to disentangle them from their contexts to
stand alone as “survivals,” for the texts themselves show no awareness of engaging
non-Christian or repudiated religious traditions, nor is there evidence of others’—
reformers’—censure of these kinds of interests or texts . . . We must be careful about
isolating material as somehow “more Egyptian,” as “survivals,” when there is no evi-
dence that the scribe himself thought he was moving into an archaizing or heathen
mode of composition.97
Frankfurter’s words against isolating the textual elements in a given text based
on origins not only resonate to a degree with Sfameni’s approach (see above), but
they also gesture toward a methodological point on Christian magic that Ra‘anan
Boustan and I noted in another venue (and that I will develop further in chapter 2):
unless there are reasons to think otherwise, elements that appear on a Christian
magical artifact that seem to us to reflect diverse religious traditions should be
treated as part and parcel of a Christian system.98 As I will underscore through-
out this study, it is precisely this disjuncture between ancient and scholarly tax-
onomies that has played a fundamental role in promoting the idea that religious
and ritual boundaries were only an “elite” concern; the automatic application of a
single term—in this case, “syncretism”—to every instance in which a late antique
artifact juxtaposes elements that seemingly represent different ancient “religions”
can obfuscate—and has obfuscated—these and other taxonomic issues and, con-
sequently, distorts our vision of late antiquity.
Indeed, attention to questions of taxonomy is not merely useful for address-
ing a few ritual texts. As I also attempt to show in chapters 2 and 3, the portrait
gleaned from the taxonomically focused hermeneutic that orients my analysis also
provides insight into the fluctuating dynamics of religious and ritual similarity and
difference in late antiquity more generally. In so doing, this approach to symbolic
reception and its concomitant results undermines a central methodological tenet
in late antique studies—namely, that a single artifact juxtaposing elements that
originated in different religious communities (necessarily) signals blurred bound-
aries or even friendly relations between such communities. As we will see, divine
and angelic names that originated in “Hebrew” or “Jewish” contexts could form
integral parts of magical texts that bolster or construct ritual purity through harsh
invective against the “Jews.” At stake in this analysis is nothing short of our basic
conception of the boundaries between religious groups in late antiquity, at least in
lived contexts.
 Introduction    19

Given the focus of my study on questions of religious differentiation, as well as the

hermeneutical and historical generality intrinsic to the category “syncretism,” I will
limit my use of this term to only those situations in which it is clear or likely that the
practitioner intentionally played on the foreignness or exoticism of religious differ-
ences in his texts, without, of course, implying notions of incoherence or “mere mix-
ture.”99 By contrast, I will employ the term “assimilation” to refer to those instances
in which the word, divine name, or concept used has (mostly) lost its original mean-
ing for the practitioner as a result of its absorption into a new (dominant) cultural
context. This distinction follows in part a methodological schema articulated by the
historian of Japanese religion Michael Pye (see discussion in chapter 2).100

Lived Religion
Though emerging out of earlier French sociological research on la religion vécue,
the first phase of what might be usefully deemed “lived religion” is often identi-
fied with the work of Robert Orsi.101 This initial phase of research on lived religion
was focused primarily on North American religious traditions, with particular
attention to the everyday practices and rituals of ordinary believers.102 Subsequent
work expanded the analytical scope and highlighted, to a greater degree, per-
sonal religious experience,103 often framed in contrast to the proscriptions about
proper religious behavior and belief of “official” religious institutions.104 More
recent scholarship has, for instance, underscored the role of the body and embodi-
ment105 and the problems associated with defining “religion” within the context of
daily habits, rituals, and the like.106
In Ritual Boundaries, I will use the term “lived religion” in two principal ways,
neither of which relies on the elite–non-elite binary. On a general level, I will
use this term as a shorthand for what we typically deem “religious” as it relates
to issues of daily life in late antiquity.107 In light of the analytical parameters of
the book, I will especially attend to quotidian concerns connected with health,
demonic attack, and interpersonal conflict. In this general sense, the late antique
artifacts, rituals, and concerns scholars deem magical constitute a subspecies of
“lived religion.” On a more specific level, I will draw on scholarship that has disag-
gregated this term to help identify, clarify, and analyze a range of cultural strategies
in everyday existence during late antiquity.
My more specific usage of the rubric “lived religion” is based in large part on
the research developed by the project, “Lived Ancient Religion” (LAR), funded
by the European Research Council (2012–17). The LAR project was explicitly
designed to provide a strong theoretical and methodological grounding to this
field of study, with particular attention to evidence from the ancient world (which
is important for our purposes). In a series of publications, this group, led by Jörg
Rüpke, has offered a new approach to the category “lived religion.” They organized
the concept around four key overlapping concepts. First, the team highlighted the
category “appropriation,” which they defined as the contextual deployment of
20     Introduction

existing cultural elements for individual or group aims.108 Their second concept
was “competence,” which referred to specialized or professional knowledge and
skills that could be utilized in a wide range of private and public performative
contexts.109 The third term, “situational meaning,” operated from the assumption
that “religious meanings” in antiquity were contextual and thus not contingent on
ostensible worldviews.110 Finally, the team underscored “mediality,” which focused
on “the roles of material culture, embodiment and group-styles in the construc-
tion of religious experience.”111
Scholars working within and in express dialogue with the LAR project have
made considerable progress in the study of ancient religion, especially as it relates
to materiality or “mediality.” For instance, Emma-Jayne Graham’s work on hand
votives from mid-Republican Italy has synthesized the research of thinkers, such
as Bruno Latour on Actor-Network theory and Oliver Harris and Craig Cipolla on
“assemblages” (i.e., how sensory/emotive qualities of material objects merge with
human bodies, thoughts, and actions), and has accordingly underscored the ways
in which people and “things” become “entangled” within various kinds of depen-
dent relationships.112 As Graham notes:
religion [can be studied] as a form of embodied knowledge which is both produced
and “felt” through the lived performance of activities and movements that encom-
pass both the human body and the rest of the material world.113

Although the four dimensions of lived religion that the LAR team has under-
scored inform various discussions throughout the book, I frontally engage with
their approach—and that of their colleagues, such as Emma-Jayne Graham—in
chapters 2 and 3, especially attending to the categories “situational meaning” and
“mediality.” These respective dimensions help me assess the question of religious
identity among the Christian amulets (chapter 2) and illuminate salient features of
the religious experiences that some amuletic rituals engendered (chapter 3).

K EY T H E M E S A N D S OU R C E S

I will engage with a range of themes and draw from multiple sources—including
literary texts and various types of material objects. That said, one motif and one
artifact play recurring roles in this book.

The Crucifixion of Jesus

Ancient crucifixion and its derivative symbols have recently become quite
fashionable topics in early Christian studies and adjacent disciplines. In addi-
tion to a sourcebook of extrabiblical evidence for ancient crucifixion,114 the past
decade or so has witnessed the publication of sizable monographs devoted to
related topics, including the archaeological and literary evidence for ancient
 Introduction    21

crucifixion115 and perceptions of the cross and crucifixion in antiquity.116 Col-

lectively, these studies have greatly developed the work of earlier pioneers on
the subject, such as Martin Hengel117 and Heinz-Wolfgang Kuhn,118 and have
thereby complicated the nature of (Roman) crucifixion—Jesus’s and otherwise—
as a historical phenomenon and as a subject of ancient (Christian) imagination
and reflection.
Ritual Boundaries places considerable emphasis on the theme of the cruci-
fixion of Jesus for two primary reasons. First, the crucifixion of Jesus—and its
contiguous symbols—emerges as one of the main biblical themes used in late
antique magic. Again, many late antique ritual experts clearly thought that the
crucifixion of Jesus was relevant for their rituals. In chapter 4, which is specifi-
cally oriented around the theme of the crucifixion, we will engage with what is
probably the most extensive reflection on Jesus’s crucifixion in a so-called magical
context: Brit. Lib. Or. 6796(4), 6796 (= ACM 132)—a seventh-century CE Coptic
spell for exorcism.119 Indeed, the practitioner creatively engages with the cruci-
fixion on multiple levels: he makes reference to a prayer that Jesus is supposed
to have said on the cross, a prayer that juxtaposes details from various sections
of the canonical gospels, especially the Gospel of Matthew (including the refer-
ence in Matthew’s gospel to the dead coming out of their tombs); he details a
conversation between the crucified Jesus and a “unicorn” (papitap nouōt), whom
Jesus ultimately rebukes and casts away; and he incorporates a drawing of the
crucifixion scene into this spell, which includes images of the crucified Jesus
and the criminals (who are labeled Gēstas and Dēmas [cf. Gospel of Nicodemus
(Gos. Nic.) 9:5; 10:2]).120 As I will argue in chapter 4, the triumphal presentation
of Jesus’s crucifixion in Brit. Lib. Or. 6796(4), 6796 stands in marked contrast
to the presentation of a magical jasper gem now housed in the British Museum
(BM 1986,0501.1), which includes an image of Jesus on the cross in profile. In my
estimation, the violent way Jesus is depicted on this gem is best explained in com-
parison with the broader restless-dead motif, whereby, among other things, those
who had died violently (bi[ai]othanatoi) were understood as particularly useful
to invoke for magical purposes.
But of course not all practitioners fixated on the crucifixion to the degree found
in these two objects. In some cases, the crucifixion could be incorporated into a
much broader portrait of the life of Jesus. For instance, several amulets reference
the crucifixion as part of their engagement with a creed—whether a preexisting
creed or an invented creed. Thus, P.Turner 49 (= Suppl.Mag. 31) cites a modified
version of the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, whereas P.Haun. III 51 (= Suppl.
Mag. 23), a fifth-century CE Greek amulet (see chapter 3), incorporates the cru-
cifixion into an otherwise unknown creed: ҠChrist was born, amen. Christ was
crucified, amen.121 Christ was buried, amen. Christ arose, amen.” The ritual efficacy
associated with the combination of these elements from the life of Jesus was almost
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
là-bas, à Genève, j’ai appris que je ne pouvais devenir votre
femme…, qu’une raison très grave me le défendait.
— Et vous n’avez pas voulu même me faire connaître cette
raison !… Pourquoi, Lilian, ne m’avoir pas demandé ce que je
pensais de l’obstacle auquel vous faites allusion ?
— C’était impossible ! fit-elle passionnément.
— Et voilà pourquoi vous m’avez écrit des choses si cruelles,
vous avez voulu me faire douter de vous ! Pourquoi vous vous êtes
calomniée…
Elle l’interrompit :
— Oh ! pardonnez-moi… j’ai eu tort… mais je souffrais tant, je ne
réfléchissais plus ! Je savais seulement que je ne pouvais plus vous
revoir, que je devais tout faire pour vous détacher de moi, pour que
vous m’oubliiez, car, cela, il le fallait absolument ?…
Il gardait toujours les mains tremblantes serrées dans les
siennes.
— Lilian, répondez-moi, je vous en supplie… Aviez-vous donc
pour moi si peu d’affection que vous acceptiez ainsi sans hésitation
l’idée que nous ne nous retrouverions peut-être jamais ?
Elle avait une telle soif de sincérité que l’aveu jaillit de son cœur
tout frémissant.
— Parce que votre bonheur m’était mille fois plus cher que le
mien, je me suis résignée à être séparée de vous… Du moins, j’ai
essayé de me résigner !
Une sorte de sourire étrangement lumineux passa sur la
physionomie grave de Robert et détendit ses traits.
— Alors écoutez-moi, Lilian. Vous m’avez demandé tout à l’heure
pourquoi j’étais revenu ? C’est que je ne vous avais pas rendu votre
parole, moi, que je vous considérais toujours comme mienne et
voulais retrouver mon trésor… Seulement…
Il s’arrêta, se pencha vers elle, et sa voix devint basse et tendre
comme s’il eût eu peur de l’effrayer.
 — Seulement, ce n’est plus Lilian Evans que je désire pour
femme, mais Lilian Vincey…
Elle se rejeta en arrière avec un cri d’indicible souffrance et
cacha son visage dans ses mains.
— Mon Dieu, vous savez !!! Oh ! qui vous a dit ?…
— Alors vous pensez que je vous aurais ainsi laissée disparaître
sans chercher à connaître le motif qui entraînait ma Lilian à se
dérober à sa promesse ?
— Mais maintenant, vous le connaissez !… Pourquoi êtes-vous
ici ?… Pourquoi n’avez-vous pas eu pitié de moi et me rappelez-
vous mon pauvre rêve fini ?… J’ai trop souffert, je n’en puis plus !…
Les mêmes mots lui venaient aux lèvres que sa mère avait
prononcés des années auparavant. Il l’enveloppa d’un regard de
suprême tendresse :
— Ma pauvre petite enfant, murmura-t-il.
Et il écarta les doigts minces qui voilaient le visage pâli.
— Lilian, mon enfant chérie, regardez-moi. Vous me demandez
pourquoi je suis venu vous trouver ? Est-ce que vous ne le savez
pas ?… Est-ce que depuis longtemps vous n’avez pas compris à
quel point je vous aimais… Et maintenant que je vous ai près de
moi, aurez-vous le courage de me repousser ?
Elle eut la tentation poignante de répondre à cet amour qui
s’offrait généreusement à elle en dépit de tout, d’oublier auprès de
cet homme, prêt pour elle à tous les sacrifices, la douloureuse
épreuve qu’elle venait de traverser, de s’abriter sous sa protection
mâle et dévouée. Mais elle l’aimait trop pour ne pas songer à lui
seul, malgré l’élan éperdu de sa jeune âme qui l’emportait vers le
bonheur possible.
— Oui, je dois vous repousser, reprit-elle, raidie contre son
ardent désir. Je ne puis être votre femme ! Je ne puis vous apporter
un nom déshonoré… Je ne veux pas que vous puissiez être insulté
peut-être à cause de moi. Dans Paris, tout le monde connaîtrait bien
vite cette cruelle histoire…
 Il passa la main sur son visage. Ce qu’elle disait là, durant des
nuits entières, il y avait réfléchi depuis le jour où Isabelle de Vianne
lui avait fait sa terrible révélation, depuis qu’en Angleterre, il avait
appris tous les détails du procès de Charles Vincey. L’âme déchirée
et irrésolue, il était arrivé à Lugano sachant y trouver encore la
famille Lyrton, altéré d’entendre parler de Lilian. Était-elle
responsable, elle, l’enfant adorée, du crime de son père, le seul qui
eût failli dans les deux vieilles et respectables familles dont elle
descendait, et que lady Evans représentait aujourd’hui, toute la
première, avec tant de dignité ?
Et cependant il avait hésité. Elle le connaissait bien, Lilian,
sévère, inflexible par nature sur les questions d’honneur, jaloux que
pas une ombre ne passât sur sa réputation d’homme. Il avait hésité
malgré la révolte de son amour, jusqu’au jour où les naïves
confidences d’Enid lui avaient révélé que Lilian souffrait, lui prouvant
en même temps que la jeune fille avait toujours ignoré la
malheureuse destinée de son père. Alors, soudain, les scrupules
hautains qui l’arrêtaient avaient été emportés comme des feuilles
mortes par un tourbillon de tempête…
Et maintenant qu’il l’avait revue, qu’il la retrouvait toujours la
même, délicate jusqu’au scrupule, qu’il subissait de nouveau le
charme de sa jeunesse franche, passionnée et fière, il comprenait
qu’aucune insulte ne serait capable de l’atteindre quand elle,
l’aimée, serait auprès de lui… N’avait-il pas, un jour, au château des
Crêtes, souhaité, dans l’absolue sincérité de son âme, de lui faire un
avenir heureux et béni, autant qu’une puissance humaine pouvait le
permettre…
— Lilian, reprit-il avec la même tendresse absolue et grave, il ne
faut plus songer au passé, ni à un malheureux homme qui a expié
durement ses folies, mais à tous ceux de votre famille qui ont été
des gentilshommes, à votre mère, dont le nom est sans tache… Il
faut oublier, comme je le fais, cette triste histoire dont bientôt
personne ne se souviendra plus… Il faut avoir confiance en moi
surtout, ma Lilian… Je vous jure que jamais un mot offensant ne
pourra monter jusqu’à vous…
 Il vit qu’elle allait parler… mais il l’arrêta d’un geste. Il ne voulait
plus entendre une parole de refus tomber des lèvres chères…
Autour d’eux, c’était toujours ce grand silence qui permet aux âmes
de se parler ; à peine, au loin, une faible sonnerie de clochettes. La
lumière se faisait plus douce et l’horizon se voilait sous l’approche
du crépuscule. Dans cette brève minute de silence entre eux, Robert
Noris eut la vision rapide de son existence passée dont le vide l’avait
si souvent accablé ; ce but, cet aliment suprême de la vie qu’il avait
tant désiré rencontrer, il le possédait enfin ; il lui était donné de se
dévouer, jusqu’au sacrifice de son légitime orgueil d’homme, au
bonheur d’un être cher…
— Lilian, acheva-t-il, et sa voix résonnait suppliante, j’ai vécu
longtemps isolé, même au milieu de la foule, triste jusqu’au plus
profond de mon âme, avec la conviction désolante que je dépensais
inutilement mes heures ;… aujourd’hui, tout ce que je n’avais pas,
tout ce dont le manque m’a si souvent fait souffrir, vous pouvez me
le donner… Vous êtes toute ma joie, tout mon espoir ; par vous
seule, je puis être heureux… Ma chère aimée, n’écoutez plus votre
orgueil. Ayez pitié de moi, et, comme à Vevey, dites que vous serez
ma femme…
Elle avait courageusement lutté, mais elle était vaincue. Elle le
regarda de ses yeux pleins de lumière ; et alors, sans un mot, elle
vint s’abattre palpitante et brisée sur ce cœur de sceptique qu’elle
avait rendu capable d’aimer et de croire, et qui lui appartenait
désormais tout entier…

FIN
 PARIS
TYPOGRAPHIE PLON-NOURRIT ET Cie
Rue Garancière, 8.
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