The theology of Leviticus is also deeply concerned with holiness in time and setting a liturgical rhythm for the people of Israel. The focus on cultic calendars and seasonal festivals is important in understanding how Leviticus views holiness. The rhythms of the people are directed by God’s creation in Genesis and his salvific works in Exodus. These are tied into seasonal harvest and celebrations for the flourishing of God’s people.

Augustine’s liturgical preaching is integral to his conception of the liturgical celebration as rendering present the unrepeatable saving acts of Christ. During the liturgical season from Lent to Easter, the north African bishop is consistently preoccupied with the present effectiveness of the mysteries of Christ’s death and Resurrection. During Lent, he invites his congregation to fashion a cross for themselves – through prayer, fasting, and alms – for the sake of communion in Christ’s crucifixion. On Good Friday, he invites his listeners to contemplate the suffering of the impassible God and to safeguard the integrity of the Church that is the fruit of his suffering. In the Easter celebrations, he instructs his flock to be strengthened in their Easter faith through participation in the Eucharist and through performance of works of mercy, and to hold fast to the objective content of their faith in the genuine corporeality of the Risen Lord. He guides them into an experience of Easter joy as a proleptic participation in the eternal joy of the Church’s communion in the body of the Risen Lord, which can only be attained through a sharing in his Crucifixion.

The medieval transmission of Augustine’s preaching, in particular that of the Sermones ad populum, has had a significant impact on which parts of his vast homiletic corpus have survived and what state the texts find themselves in after a millennium of being copied by medieval scribes. This chapter will sketch a broad overview of the way Augustine’s sermons were transmitted, focusing in particular on their dynamic organization in sermon collections throughout the Middle Ages. It will discuss the implications of the modes of transmission and the medieval afterlife of Augustine’s preaching for the usability of these sermons as primary sources.

Papal ceremonial acted as a language through which the pope and clergy described Catholic identity, history, and moral ideals, establishing a liturgy and ceremonial practice that could be adapted to changing circumstances in Rome and beyond. Topography did not restrict papal ceremonial but enhanced it. Rather than seeing the pope as a prisoner of his ceremonial, as some stereotypes do, this chapter explores papal ceremonial as a language that articulated narratives of authority, responded to crises, and bridged gaps. From late antiquity through the twenty-first century, liturgy, politics, urban administration, and pilgrimage/tourism grew together in cities across the Christian world. As technology has eased communication and travel, the pope has sought more direct ways to speak to Catholics, yet the public maintains an interest in the papacy that grew out of fascination with its premodern ceremonial character.

Chapter 3 traces the history of bowing at the name of Jesus, one of the ritual actions inherited from the medieval church which survived into the post-Reformation period. Although it was included in the 1559 Injunctions, most Elizabethan writers regarded it as a matter of indifference and assumed it would gradually die out of its own accord. Yet in the early seventeenth century it unexpectedly resurfaced as a point of theological debate when some divines argued that it was directly commanded by scripture. The chapter challenges the idea that theological controversy was conducted at a high academic level with little relevance to the lives of ordinary people. The dispute over bowing originated in polemical exchanges between Protestants and Catholics in Westphalia, which were taken up by the Reformed theologian David Pareus at Heidelberg, and then spilled over into the Church of England when Pareus’s writings were translated into English. But while it began in Latin works of religious polemic, it also led to conflict at a parish level, and a study of these parish conflicts shows that the lay opponents of bowing were often very well informed about the theological issues.

This loosely argued manifesto contains some suggestions regarding what the philosophy of religion might become in the twenty-first century. It was written for a brainstorming workshop over a decade ago, and some of the recommendations and predictions it contains have already been partly actualized (that’s why it is now a bit "untimely"). The goal is to sketch three aspects of a salutary “liturgical turn” in philosophy of religion. (Note: “liturgy” here refers very broadly to communal religious service and experience generally, not anything specifically “high church.”) The first involves the attitudes that characterize what I call the “liturgical stance" towards various doctrines. The second focuses on the “vested” propositional objects of those attitudes. The third looks at how those doctrines are represented, evoked, and embodied in liturgical contexts. My untimely rallying-cry is that younger philosophers of religion might do well to set aside debates regarding knowledge and justified belief, just as their elders set aside debates regarding religious language. When we set aside knowledge in this way, we make room for discussions of faith that in turn shed light on neglected but philosophically interesting aspects of lived religious practice.

This Introduction lays the foundation for the book by showcasing the interdisciplinary methods and parameters employed in this study of the marriage process from late antiquity through medieval Byzantium.

This chapter introduces readers to the main source for marriage ritual, namely the Byzantine priest’s service book known as the euchologion. A brief typology of Byzantine euchologia is given, and a discussion of the benefits and methodological limitations in the use of euchologia for the writing of cultural history.

This Conclusion brings together some of the major contributions of this volume and discusses how marriage in Byzantium overlaps with and differs from post-Byzantine practices employed in the contemporary Eastern Orthodox Church.

Betrothal was originally an independent rite that solemnized a promise to marry and also had legal and canonical ramifications in Byzantium. This chapter analyzes the ritual gestures employed in betrothal across the Eastern Mediterranean world, such as the exchange of rings or other gifts. It also discusses the ecclesiastical prayers recited at Byzantine betrothals and what they reveal about theological perceptions of marriage, as well as family roles and domestic practices.

This chapter and the next probe genres and subgenres whose formal schemes, whether fully codified or not, afford powerful energetic templates. Chapter 9 focuses on the polyphonic mass, laying out some of the genre’s conventions while wrestling with recent discourses about the idea of musical unity in five-movement mass cycles. A concluding section explores the limitations of a holistic, genre-based approach through the example of the five-voice tenor motet.

During the age of devotion, monasteries were the dominant institutions for the production, preservation, and consumption of books. This chapter uses a spatial device to map the character and range of monastic writing and reading. Monastic book consumption is described in terms of three zones. The first zone is the church, with the books needed for the performance of the liturgy and to support services every day of the year. The second zone can be represented by the refectory or other communal space, where the monastic Rule advised that, rather than engage in idle chatter, the brethren should listen to the reading of instructive and edifying texts. The third zone is the individual cell, the zone of texts for private reading. The chapter’s main temporal focus is on the period from the late fourteenth century to the end of the fifteenth century, the main age of monastic expansion.

This chapter provides a survey of ecclesiastical and monastic organisations and how lay people engaged with them. There was no singular ‘Frankish Church’. There was considerable variation in what people wanted, how the liturgy was arranged, access to church councils and books, and how communities connected to Roman, English, Irish, Spanish, or Byzantine religious worlds. Communities were united by relatively compact beliefs, not least the need for imminent moral reform and penance ahead of an inevitable appearance at Judgement Day – whether it was at hand or far in the future.

The presence and power of Jesus in early Christian material culture are mediated through texts, visual depictions, and other objects, representing and re-presenting Jesus across various contexts. Focusing especially on the first five centuries ce, the analysis addresses Jesus in the materiality of text, liturgy, relic, and symbol, revealing early Christian theologies and practices that resonate in later historical periods and highlighting the complex dialectic of Jesus’s presence and absence in material forms.