Christian Pedagogy and Christian Community in the Fifth- and Sixth-Century Mediterranean

Abstract

This dissertation studies Christian pedagogy, through preaching as well as by less explicit means, in order to reconstruct what ordinary Christians in the fifth and sixth century learned about Christianity and thus how they understood themselves in relation to their local Christian communities and the wider community of a universal church. This approach moves outside the traditional narrative of late antiquity wherein theological controversy was negotiated among the elite. Ordinary Christians who attended the liturgy and tried to live as part of a Christian community as they were taught experienced Christianity as a much simpler and more unified structure, which arguably gave them a source of stability in a politically fraught time.

The analysis takes the form of two case studies, one from the eastern Mediterranean and one from the western, both to emphasize the diversity of experience among Christian communities and to demonstrate that the different local Christian communities from all regions of the Mediterranean world were part of a single, though variegated, phenomenon. The first case study examines the homilies of Hesychius of Jerusalem and the Jerusalem liturgy from the first half of the fifth century. Through his preaching and the sensory experience of the liturgy, Hesychius taught his congregations to understand Christ as both human and divine, and how to encounter the divine as a community in the liturgy. The second case study considers the early sixth-century sermons of Caesarius of Arles and the numerous church councils he led in order to regulate the conduct of the clergy, including their interactions with ordinary Christians. In his sermons, Caesarius taught Christians how to demonstrate their belonging in a Christian community by acting virtuously. His life and legacy further communicated the same lessons of community and virtue that he taught by preaching.

In these case studies, I argue that bishops and priests taught their congregations that their faith in God, their clergy, and their Christian community made them part of a universal Christian church, despite the higher clergy’s simultaneous participation in controversies over establishing an orthodox faith. By focusing on how clerics communicated vertically with ordinary Christians, rather than horizontally among themselves, I demonstrate that bishops and priests taught unity to their congregations and provided positive instructions for how they could demonstrate their faith in a universal Christian church. If the way ordinary Christians experienced Christianity was informed by how they learned about it, then they could rely on their church for continuity and stability even as the church as a whole was in constant flux.