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VOLUME 41
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KATECOOPER Ventriloquism and the Miraculous in Late Antiquity
describes, for example, how the bishop of Smyma was bound at the Christianity and later antiquity, from Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the
stake as his executioners prepared to light the fire, the speech serves to Roman Empire to Dean Milman's History of Latin Christianity.4 Gibbon
record his instruction of the crowd who assembled to watch his execu- famously concluded that Christianity was 'corrupted' as a monotheistic
tion, but it has a further purpose, to instruct and fortify those who read religion by 'the vulgar'. The occasion for this corruption was of course
or hear the account of his death. Polycarp's courage in the face of the the rise of the cult of the saints, 'a popular mythology which tended to
flames is a sign of God's seal on his truth, even if his truth was not yet restore the reign of polytheism'.s
universally acknowledged. Brown took the 'two-tiered' model as the starting-point for a
After Constantine's conversion, martyr narratives continued to be now-famous critique. To be sure, the charge that cultic activity at the
produced despite the end of persecution. For post-Constantinian graves of the dead reflected' "pre-Christian" practices' against which
Christians, such as the author of the PassioSebastiani, and the other late bishops must take a stand was linked, in the minds of the bishops them-
martyr romances known as the gesta martyrum,3 the encounter between selves,to the idea that Christian belonging itself had been corrupted by
the Christian mattyf and his or her examiners or executioners became a the reign of Constantine. An explanation for why the Christian masses
focal point for repeated exploration of the meaning of the change that were insufficiently Christian, that loomed large in the imagination of
had taken place. To put it simply, post-Constantinian writers and audi- both fourth-century bishops and modem historians, Brown argued,
ences knew that their world had changed, and they believed that the was that of 'mass conversion', in which the rabble who gathered around
martyrs were responsible. Somehow, they imagined, the powerful an aristocrat, or around a miracle-worker, would suddenly take up the
discourse of the martyrs had yielded both earthly and heavenly fruit in Christian name - in imitation of the one or in awe of the other -
the conversion of their persecutors. The point of returning again and without any process of cultural or ethical instruction.
again to the mattyf and the mattyf's preaching was to understand how Brown suspected fourth-century bishops of inventing the phenom-
these words of power had worked upon their hearers, transforming the enon of 'mass conversion' as a way of accounting for the unsettling
empire as a result. perception that a transformation of Christianity was taking place on
* * * their watch. The idea of 'the vulgar' was thus not an invention of the
Enlightenment, but a reflection of the anxieties of the fourth-century
We turn now to approach the problem of the miraculous. In his influ- writers themselves.
ential 1981 study, The Cult of the Saints, Peter Brown suggested that %e 'two-tiered' model has created a landslide that may never have
twentieth-century scholarship on popular religion in Late Antiquity happened; and it has done so because only a landslide of 'the vulgar'
owed a great deal to the eighteenth-century suggestion ofDavid Hume into the Christian church could satisfy the demands of its system of
that a persistent opposition holds between the religious ideas of 'the explanation when faced with the rise within the Church of new forms
vulgar' and those ofleamed elites - a view which has since been widely of, apparently, 'popular' religious feeling~ But Brown thought that the
known in Brown's phrase as the 'two-tiered' model. Hume saw 'the
root of the change had little to do with the mysteries of 'popular reli-
vulgar' in Late Antiquity as the manifestation of an ever-present and gion, (a phenomenon which, with Momigliano, he suspected did not
unchanging force that drags against human society in its struggle exist).Rather, the uncomfortable developments of the fourth century
toward reason. Its influence on post-Constantinian Christianity was as reflected a tension between the biological family and the church as an
a kind of inertia influencing the newly Christianized mob to cleave to 'artificial kin group':
its own ancient practices and beliefs despite the best efforts of the
bishops. Brown in turn saw Hume's The Natural History of Religion as
having supplied the 'mental furniture' of classic treatments of early
4 Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints: its Rise and Function in LAtin Christianity (Chicago,
3 On the date and context of the rise of the gesta martyum, see Kate Cooper. The Martyr, 1981),13-1 $.
the Mamma and the Bishop: NetWorks of A1legiance in Early Sixth-Century Rome', Early 5 Quotation from Gibbon, ibid., 15. n. 55.
MedinJalEuropt 8 (1999). 297-317. 6 Ibid, 1.9- )0.
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Ventriloquism and the Miraculous in Late Antiquity
and to the problem of bringing alive for the Passio's audience the force
- and truth - of his preaching, readers, the pagan Celsus had ridiculed Christianity for the tendency of
* * * its practitioners to play to the excessivecredulity of the 'simple folk'.14
MacMullen concluded his argument with the seemingly logical
When we turn to our second theme, that of conversion, we encounter a suggestion that a pattern of elite conversion could only account for a
historiographicallandscape perhaps even more thorny than that of the fraction of the actual population who must have joined the movement
miraculous. In trying to understand the conversion of the ancient as it gathered force: 'if we are . , . to estimate Christianity as an historical
world to Christianity, modern historians have generally adhered to one force, that drew in scores of thousands, we must take account (even if
of two broad paradigms. The first, espoused by Arthur Darby Nock in we cannot quite enter his thoughts) of Everyman as well'.ls I have used
his 1933 study on conversion, suggests essentially that Christianity the phrase 'seemingly logical' because there is a gap in the logic.
attracted converts on the basis of its ethical magnetism. Nock under- MacMullen does not consider the possibility that elite and popular
stood conversion as a matter between an individual and his conscience. conversion were somehow interdependent. Rather, his 'Everyman' is an
It was
independent soul, otie who may well be swayed by demagoguery but
who nonetheless makes his own decisions based on the public record
the reorientation of the soul of an individual, his deliberate turning rather than peer pressure or the whim of his patron.
from indifference or from an earlier form of piety to another, a
In his attempt to be fair to 'Everyman', MacMullen scrupulously
turning which implies a consciousness that a great change is avoids imputing motivations other than the ethical or supernatural. He
involved, that the old was wrong and the new is right. 12 means to play fair with religious 'belie£' as he understands it, and to
Nock's idea of conversion as 'the reorientation of the soul' owed some- steer as far from reductionism or a crass consideration of material
thing, to be sure, to the idea of conversion as a 'watershed experience' motivations as his admittedly iconoclastic sensibility will allow.
described a generation earlier by William JamesY It goes without MacMullen puts his starting-point thus:
saying that this idea was patterned on the sensibilities of the elite male
in his capacity as a reasonable individual excluding consideration of any rewards that awaited new recruits _
rewards spiritual, social, emotional, and financial - which came
But in an influential study of 1983 Ramsay MacMullen asked what
only after conversion; for it seems fair to define our topic, conver-
was left of conversion without the elite male at the centre of the
sion, as that experience by which non-believers fIrst became
process. He suggested that at least two distinct types of conversion
convinced that the Christian God was almighty, and that they must
could be discerned in the sources for early Christianity. One type please himY'
applied to the elite man of reason who interested James and Nock,
while another involved crowds responding to direct or reported contact But the reader's ear should dwell on the phrase 'fIrst became
with the miraculous and was triggered by performances of divine convinced'. For both elites and Everyman, MacMullen clearly has in
power. As early as the late second century, MacMullen reminded his mind a scenario in which the individual is struck by a bolt of conviction
- by a message - before he or she knows very much at all about the
group attached to it, However ambivalent MacMullen may be toward a
model of conversion in response to preaching, his view of conversion is
very much centred on belief
12 Arthur Darby Nock, Conversion: the Old and the New in Religion .from Alexander the Great
to Augustine of Hippo (Oxford, 1933),7. Danny Fract, 'Explaining the Christianization of the It should have been within the powers of eloquence simply to talk
Roman Empire: Older Theories and Recent Developments', Sturis Eruairi 33 (1992-3),
5-119,8-9, situates Nock's views alongside those ofhis continental conttmporaries.
13 In his Gifford Lectures of 190 1-02, printed as The Varieties of Religious Experienu: a 14 Ramsay MacMullen, 'Two Types of Conversion to Early Christianity', Vigiliae
Stuay in Human Nature (London, 1902). Indeed, Nock wrote the introduction to the 1960 Christianae 37 (1983), 174-92, 187. Sce also his ChristionityandPaganism in the 4th to 8th Century
(New Haven, cr, 1997).
reprint of Jam cs's volume (Glasgow, 1960); the relationship between the two is discussed by
1S MacMullcIl, 'Two Types of Conversion', 188.
FaUSto Parente, 'L'idea di convexsione <laNock ad oggi', Augustilliallum 27 (1987), 7-25, 7-8.
16 MacMulIen, 'Two Types of Conversion', 18+
28
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KATECOOPER
Ventriloquism and the Miraculous in Late Antiquity
people into belief Was the job so difficult? But instead, what is ordi- Christianity on the basis of a deeply considered understanding of
narily attested in conversion-scenes are responses to demonstrations of Christian preaching. To repeatedly access new recruits in the millions,
superhuman power: perceived as miracles, in turn they were perceived he argued, the Christians would have had to reach far beyond the sliver
as proofs of genuine divinity attaching to whatever deity was invoked of the population who made spiritual decisions on the basis of a sophis-
and creditedP
ticated grasp of theological concepts.
Here as elsewhere, MacMullen has made an invaluable contribution But not all means of reaching a wide audience involve crowds or
to our understanding of what might be called a late ancient 'theology of miracles. In his 1996 study, The Rise of Christianity: a Sociologist Recon-
divine empowerment', in which figures such as Constantine gave their siders History, Rodney Stark has called attention to the importance for
allegiance to the God who seemed best able to serve as protector and early Christianity of two themes which emerge from demographic and
champion. We will see below, however, that once our source base is
fieldwork-based study of nineteenth- and twentieth-century American
widened to include the martyr acts and later gesta martyrum, we do in groups that achieved explosive religious growth. The first is a matter of
fact encounter numerous scenes of preaching. In these texts preaching arithmetic. If a group is able consistently to sustain a growth rate of
and the miraculous are represented as working in unison rather than circa forty per cent per decade - the rate achieved, for example, by the
opposition. Why remains an open question. Perhaps the post- Mormons - by the third century of growth the numbers involved will
Constantinian authors of the gesta were aware of the imaginative power tip dramatically into the millions.19 The point here is that seemingly
of the miraculous, and wished to ensure that it was firmly tethered to modest gains - each member of the faith attracts less than one convert
an acceptable Christian message. Alternately, they may simply not have every two decades - will begin over time to 'add up', through a process
perceived the two modes of conversion as standing in opposition. similar to the compounding of interest Converting a hundred thou-
Before we take up this question, however, we must consider the
sand souls does sound like something that should involve large and
changing scholarly understanding of the social 'rules' by which reli- dramatic events, but if a million evangelically-minded brethren each
gious groups achieve the kind of startling demographic expansion that engage in a quiet chat here and there with friends or relatives, the
characterizes fourth -century Christianity. growth can seem to happen 'by itself'. On Stark's view, a thousand
* * * low-key conversations between friends are worth more than one Cecil
One of Mac Mull en's central aims in his work on conversion has been to B. De Mille-style extravaganza.
Stark's second and perhaps more startling point is that an individ-
give a rational account for how Christianity grew as rapidly as it did
across the fourth century. The figures for Christian affiliation seem to ual's initial reaction to the 'message' of a religious movement does not
govern whether or not he or she will eventually convert To be sure,
have mushroomed from something like a tenth of the Empire's popula-
tion of roughly sixty million at the beginning of the century to some- after the fact both the convert and the agent of conversion perceive the
'message' as having been the crux of the matter, but fieldwork on
thing like a half - roughly thirty million - by the century's end if not
before.18 MacMullen understandably questioned whether two to three 'before' and 'after' perceptions shows that among the group of contacts
million people per decade (or perhaps far more if the thirty-million who do eventually join a movement, there is not an unusually high
evaluation of a group's message after the first substantial contact, as
mark was reached by 350 as some scholars believe) were converting to
against the reaction of other individuals who do not eventually convert.
Stark characterizes the early American followers of the Reverend Sun
17 Ramsay MacMullen, 'Christianity Shaped through its Missioa', in Alan Kreider, ed.,
The Origins of ChristmJom in the West (Edinburgh, 200 I), 97- 117, 98-9. Myung Moon who were the focus of his fieldwork with John Lofland
18 The numbers (six million and thirty million respectively, against an estimated popu- in the early 1960s:
lation of sixty million in 'the Mediterranean world', are MacMullen's ('Christianity Shaped
through its Mission', 10). Their shape aligns fairly well with those cited by Rodney Stark, The
Rise of Christianity: a Sociologist Reconsiders History (Princeton, NJ, 1996), 5-1 I, although Stark
believes the fifty per cent mark was reached earlier, by around 350, and, as we will see below,
19 Stark, Rise cif'Christianity, 5-11, drawing on Rodney Stark, The Rise of a New World
has a very different idea of how the numbers were achieved. Faith', Review tifRrligiolls Restarch 26 (1984),18-27.
30 31
KATECOOPER
Ventriloquism and the Miraculous in Late Antiquity
20 Stark, Rise of Christianity, 19, drawing on John Lofland and Rodney Stark, 'Becoming a Interpersonal Bonds and Recruitment
(1980),1376-95_ to Cults and Sects', American Journal of Sociology 85
W orId-Saver: a Theory of Conversion to a Deviant Perspective', American Sqciological Review
30 (I96S~ 86z-7S. _
23 MacMullen himself has called attention to this fact, in e.g. 'Christianity Shaped
through its Mission', 106-9.
21 Stark, Rise of Christianity, 17-18, with discussion of the 'control theory of deviant
behavior' underlying the analysis.
24 AIan Kreider, 'Changing Patterns of Conversion in the West', in idem, ed., The Origins
22 Ibid., 18; see also Rodney Stark and William Sims Bainbridge, 'Networks of Faith: of Christendom, 3-46 (here, 34), citing Sermons 88.u-13 and 14-4 respectively, in the transla.
tion ofEdmund Hill (New York, 19c)o-~
32
33
KATECOOPER Ventriloquism and the Miraculous in Late Antiquity
minority? This was the question Augustine and others asked after the age of Constantine, the Passio Sebastiani has received little or
themselves. no attention from scholars concerned with conversion and the miracu-
In a well-known passage of De catechizandis rudibus, his treatise on lous in early Christianity. This is perhaps because there is an obvious
how to handle enquirers - potential converts - Augustine recognized time lapse of at least a century in these accounts between the author's
that an enquirer's motivation might well be less than edifying. It might day and that of the events recounted. The texts cannot, therefore, be
be 'the hope of deriving some benefit from men whom he thinks he read as an unmediated reflection of pre-Constantinian realities. But the
could not otherwise please, or to escape some injury at the hands of process of mediation by which a fifth- or early sixth-century writer
men whose displeasure or enmity he dreads'.25The trick was to collude attempted to understand the heroism ofDiocletian's generation holds a
in the deception, in the hope of helping the enquirer to actually clue, it will be argued below, to the wider problem of how ancient and
become what she or he wished to seem to be - a person on whom medieval Christians perceived the age which they understood as the
Christian teaching had made a life-changing impression. To this end, great age of conversion.
Augustine advised, the process of instruction before admission to the There has long been a consensus among scholars and theologians
catechumenate should include, in Kreider's phrase, 'a sixty-minute that the post-Constantinian passiones of the martyrs were the product of
narration of salvation history from creation to the judgement day, fertile literary imaginations, based in at least some instances on names
culminating in exhortations to good behaviour'.26This narratio or 'sum- remembered in undifferentiated lists of the martyred handed down
mary of the Faith' would serve as a kind of public warning to the through the churches. The details of these texts are in all likelihood the
enquirer of what she or he was signing up to. product of invention, a point recognized by the Bollandist attempts to
sift 'fact' from 'fiction' in the lives of the saints. Influential here has
Augustine's narratio would offer a model for ambitious churchmen
of later generations, particularly in the Carolingian period, though been Hippolyte Delehaye's maxim, drawing on Gregory the Great, that
there is reason to believe that its function shifted from being a prelude there is only one life of the saints, of which individual lives are mere
to catechism to being all that was left of the catechism itsel£ For the instances.But however shaped by the forces of pious invention, the gesta
children born to Christian families - those who did not come to the martyrum served as one of the most important fora in which Christian
faith through conversion - there is no record of formal instruction in thinkers could explore the historical process through which the Empire
the early medieval period.27 But this does not mean, of course, that had become Christian.28It seems appropriate, therefore, to leave in
there is no evidence for transmission of Christian ideas to the faithful. suspension the question of whether the gesta are an accurate reflection
We will see below that hagiography may have taken over as the of pre-Constantinian events, and to focus instead on how they reflect
medium through which Christian' content' was rehearsed for both new the concerns of post-Constantinian writers and audiences. Instead of
and hereditary members of the faith. seeing an ethical or rational approach to faith as standing in tension
* * * with belief in the miraculous, it is the ethical dimensions of the mirac-
ulous that the Passio Sebastiani stressed, reflecting the miraculous inter-
With this in mind, let us return to the Passio Sebastiani. Though the vention in history that was the rise of Christendom. Signs and wonders
account purports to describe a martyrdom under Diocletian and were there to be found not only in the virtutes - the acts of miraculous
Maximian, both of whom abdicated in 305, it is likely to have been power - but in the ethical life to which Christians were called, the
written in the fifth or even the early sixth century. Therefore it is as a every-daymiracle of Christian fellowship, and the Word made flesh in
document of the imagination, rather than of the historical record, that the person not only ofJesus but of his saints.
it concerns us. Like the other gesta martyrum, martyr romances written In telling the story of Sebastian's career, from the time he is discov-
ered as a Christian until his death and burial, the Passio Sebastiani shows
25 De catechizandis rudibus, 5.9, ttanS. and cie. Kreider, 'Changing Patterns', 32·
26 Kreider. 'Changing Patterns', 32. based on De catechizanJis rudibus, 13.18 and
16.25-25'49. 28 On the gesta as a response to earlier Christian literature, see Kate Cooper, The Virgin
27 K.reider,'Cbanging Patterns'. 41. and the Bride: Idealized Womanhood in Late Antiquity (Cambridge. MA. 1996), u6- 19.
34 35
KATECOOPER
Ventriloquism and the Miraculous in Late Antiquity
a deep imaginative engagement with the problem of preaching and
conversion, and with the effects of Christian belief on the household, While the twins are imprisoned, Sebastian comes to preach to them
both Christian and pagan. The passio centres on a sequence of conver- and those gathered around them. The speech is accompanied by mirac-
sions, and in each instance the new convert has a different constellation ulous signs:
of family relationships which must be re-constituted in light of the for almost an hour he was illuminated by a tremendous light
conversion. What is noteworthy here is that it is not necessarily the coming from Heaven. And beneath this very splendour, he was
paterfamilias who converts ftrst, carrying his dependents along with him
covered in an entirely white mantle by seven most bright angels.
(although this paradigm is indeed present). Rather, different families are
reached through 'ftrst contact' with different members of the And a youth appeared next to him, giving him peace and saying,
'You will always be with me'.29
household.
The story opens with Sebastian, a military commander favoured by Sebastianthen begins to heal the sick. First Zoe, who has been mute for
the emperors. giving solace to two Christian viri inlustri, the twins sixyears.Sebastiansays,
Marcus and Marcellianus, who have been imprisoned along with their If I am a true servant of Christ, and if everything was true which
slaves on the charge of being Christian. Their families obtain a stay of this woman heard and believed from my mouth, let my Lord Jesus
thirty days from the Urban Prefect, Agrestius Chromatius, in the hope Christ command that the faculty of speech should return to her,
that through pity or persuasion their wives and children can sway the and let Him who opened the mouth of the prophet Zaccariah open
young men to give up their folly. The passio thus takes up the conver- her mouth:'o
sion theme with the Christian twins attempting to hold firm in their
conviction against the entreaties of their friends on behalf of their Zoe's fIrst words are, 'blessed are you, and well-spoken is the sermon of
family responsibilities - the parents, wives, and children whom their your mouth!' The point here is that Zoe's miraculous speech echoes
death will leave bereft. In the face of persecution, the friends argue, it is and reinforces that of Sebastian.The healing itself stands as a proof of
the young men's responsibility to give up the faith, return to their the validity of Sebastian's preaching, a test of his status as a channel of
homes, and fulfil their obligations. The passio emphasises the difficulty divine power that is passed with flying colours. But the healing breaks
of holding fIrm in the face of this kind of pleading in greater detail than Zoe's silence, and her miraculous echo ampliftes the power of the
do any of the pre-Constantinian martyr acta, even the well-known martyr's word. Thus the miracle serves as spiritual punctuation to seal
Sebastian'struth.
prison diary of Vibia Perpetua which recounts at some length her
father's pleas that she take pity on his grey head. Zoe's confession of faith leads immediately to a development that
This leads to a verbal sparring match in which the families are pitted seems to reflect the relational conversion pattern discussed by Stark.
against Sebastian, who wins the day with his praise for the joys of eter- 'Moreover Nicostratus, her husband, when he saw that such was the
nity over the fleeting pleasures of this life. What saves the men from virtue of Christ in his solemn wife, began to turn his feet towards
giving in to pity is the constant preaching of Sebastian, who reminds Sebastian'.31Nicostratus then makes a speech to the young men who
them again and again of how brief their earthly sufferings - and those have been imprisoned in his house, asking to be allowed to hide them
of their families - will be, and how great their rejoicing in the realms of
eternal light. There is uncertainty whether their father Tranquillinus 29 Passio Sebastiall; ~3 (ActaSS, 11Jan., 268): 'per unam fere horam splendore nimio de
and mother Marcia will follow the twins Marcus and Marcellianus to caelo veniente illuminatus est, & sub ipso splendore, candidissimo pallio amictus est ab
the faith, but they eventually do. Sebastian begins to have his effect fIrst angelis septem
mecum eris', clarissimis, & iuvenis apparuit iuxta eum dam ei pacem, & dicens: Tu semper
in the conversion of Zoe, the wife of the official in whose home the 30 Passio Sebastiall; 2i (ibid,): 'Tunc B. Sebastianus dixit: Si ego verus Christi servus sum,
young men are held under arrest, and eventually on sixty-eight men & si vera sum omnia, quae ex ore meo haec mulier audivit & credidit, iubeat Dominus meus
Jesus Christus, ut redeat ad earn officium linguae, & aperiat os eius qui aperuit os Zachariae
and women gathered in the house, many of them future mart}.rrsof Prophetae sui; & fecit crucem in os eius. Arque ad hanc vocem S. Sebastiani, exclamavit
Rome.
mulier voce magna, diccns: Beatus es tu, & benedictus sermo oris tui .. ,',
31 Pa.mo Sebastialli 24 (ibid,),
36
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KATECOOPER Ventriloquism and the Miraculous in Late Antiquity
or better yet to suffer in their stead. The twins respond with praise for elite conversion, with two literate aristocrats testing each other's
his alacrity: '... your faith has arisen from the Master, and everything knowledge of Roman history and Roman ethics.
which an education of many years could scarcely confer, you have Chromatius is finally worn down by an elaborate explication of the
learned in the space of an hour'.32 It should not go unnoticed that metaphor of the soul as a ring lost in a sewer, which of course repre-
Nicostratus has in fact given no evidence whatever that he is aware of sents the body. (The irony that Sebastian's own body will be thrown
the 'content' of the Christian faith, and indeed there is no indication into Rome's great sewer, the Cloaca Maxima, will not have been lost on
that he was present while Sebastian preached in his house. the Passio's audience.) Chromatius offers to pay Tranquillinus for his
With the next conversions, however, we seem to be squarely in healing, but TranquiIlinus tells him that his body can only be healed
MacMullen territory. When another high official, Claudius the once his mind turns to the Truth. He then asks that Sebastian be
commentariensis, converts, not only does he bring along his two sons for brought to him. Once it becomes clear, however, that Chromatius
healing, but he is accompanied by his wife and extended family for intends to convert along with his son, Sebastian warns against an
baptism. Meanwhile, Nicostratus brings to the font thirty-three attempt to abuse his powers.
members of his own household. The model of conversion at play here
Look to it lest you wish to be made a Christian. having been led
is clearly that of the head of household who speaks for the members of
only by the recuperation of your body. Rather let you make your
his entourage - despite the fact that Nicostratus, of course, has been
mind pure so that you can see the reason for the truth. For unless
guided by the example of his wife. Tranquillinus, the father of
you recognize who your Creator is, you will not be able to fmd the
Marcellianus and Marcus, converts too, this time in response to the
health which you seek.33
example of his Christian sons. This represents a radical departure from
his role as a Roman paterftmilias - in adopting the conviction of his It is important to notice that despite the fact that he is speaking to the
sons, Tranquillinus has allowed youth to guide age rather than being Urban Prefect of the city of Rome, one of the highest officials in the
guided by the older man's wisdom and authority. But in responding empire, Sebastian is precisely dealing here with the issue of conversion
with alacrity to the revelation brought by his sons, Tranquillinus has for the sake of access to advantages offered by membership in the faith
shown that his wisdom is great indeed. community - that access to miraculous healing, once its efficacy is
When the thirty days are over, the young men are brought before accepted,stands as a symbol for the benefits of belonging which Augus-
the urban prefect Agrestius Chromatius with whom we began. Now tine and Stark saw important as a motivation within the conversion
Tranquillinus must give account for his sons, and for his own perfor- process. In the eyes of the Passio, MacMullen's distinction between
mance in delivering them from their Christian superstition. When 'elite' and 'mass' conversion wears thin indeed.
Chromatius asks Tranquillinus whether his sons are ready to offer With this in mind, our final thoughts will be about the verbal and
sacrifice, Tranquillinus replies by revealing that he has converted to narrative characteristics of the martyr's preaching as represented in the
Christianity. Passio. The moment of'ventriloquism', as I have called it - in which the
The conversation turns to a·sparring match between the two men, martyr is portrayed as speaking with divine power or authority - is
with Chromatius accusing Tranquillinus of insanity and Tranquillinus reflected in two distinct kinds of speech. The first type is that in which
boasting his good health of soul and body. Then Tranquillinus begins the speaker summarizes large swathes of information about the Chris-
to extemporize on the failings of paganism as a religious system, tian faith drawn from biblical or liturgical sources, often using
followed by a debate between the two men over whether the histories specialistvocabulary. This speech type resembles nothing so much as
of Livy show that the Gods failed to protect the Empire from attack Augustine's na"atio, the 'summary of the Faith' to which aspiring
even in the days where traditional cult was perfomed with care and catechumens were to be treated before being admitted to formal
precision. The scene seems intended almost as a text-book example of
38 39
"
~f
KATECOOPBR Ventriloquism and the Miraculous in Late Antiquity
instruction. The narratio rehearses the 'meaning' of the Christian tradi- direct evidence for their attempt to do so. Indeed, the belief of the
tion, over and over again for an audience who might well encounter the miracle's recipient and the virtus or miraculous power of the martyr or
P(lSSio annually on the feast day of the saint. It may be useful to under- holy man created a sort of virtuous circle in early Christian narrative,
stand the martyr's speech in this mode as an idealized account of one whose force was amplified by the dynamics of narrative and repre-
conversion preaching, one which set in motion a 'feedback loop' sentation when the story was re-told to a newaudience.36
involving the audience who would have heard or read the text.34In this With this in mind, it may be appropriate to see the two types of
sense, repeated exposure to the hagiographical narratives around speech proposed by the Passio Sebastiani as reflecting two different and
Sebastian and the other Roman martyrs would have performed a func- complementary strategies vis-a-vis the Passio's intended audience. The
tion similar to the renewal of baptismal vows, reminding the Christian attempt to compress substantial Christian content into a summary
laity or monastic communities of the terms of the faith - or even which could bear frequent repetition must have served, in an extended
instructing afresh those who were new to Christian belonging. way, a function not dissimilar to the liturgical repetition of the Creed.
The second mode reflects a concern for 'plain speech', using short By contrast, the sharp and vivid language of the staccato speeches may
paratactic constructions and unpretentious vocabulary. The staccato have been designed to serve as a catalyst toward a new level of engage-
effect of these short speeches is striking, and they often occur at the ment - relationship might be a better word - with God through his
climactic moment of conversion or healing.35Both the words of mirac- saints. This may well echo a distinction made by Augustine between
ulous power of the martyr and the words of confession by the newly what he called 'the long, twisting lanes of speech' in the here and n0w37
healed or converted can take this form: the staccato speech can function and the epiphany of discourse that will be possible in the heavenlyJeru-
as trigger or as punctuation. The staccato speeches give a vivid illustra- salem.38(The locus classicus of this latter mode of eschatologically
tion of the power of the Christian word - often phrased in language charged, transparent communication among Christians is Augustine's
drawn directly from the words of Jesus - which seems keyed to what is account in Book Nine of the Confessions of his conversation with
possibly a new concern to reach audiences with sharp and lively Monica at Ostia just before her death.) The Passio Sebastiani can be said
phrasing, in a way comparable to what can be seen in contemporary to make its own contribution to the post-Augustinian discussion of
sermons. Christian disciplina by offering a distinction between what might be
To say that the miraculous was perceived as 'causing' belie£: called credal and eschatological modes of didactic speech.
however, is not entirely accurate,.because belief in turn was understood To be sure, the textual strategies of the Passio engage with a wider
as a source of miraculous power. Early medieval writers were deeply change in the attitude to rhetoric and authority during this period.
interested in what they perceived as a synergy between God's extra- Christians in late fifth-and early sixth-century Italy were deeply
human agency and His ability to act through human beings. Their concerned by the difficulty of attaining in their speech what one writer
belief only whetted their interest in understanding the social structure called puntatis index loquella, 'the small voice which is the measure of
of this process, and the post-Constantinian martyr narratives offer purity'.39Sources as diverse as the Rule of Saint Benedict and the anony-
40 41
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KATECOOPER
Ventriloquism and the Miraculous in Late Antiquity
42
43
;
KATECOOPER
Ventriloquism and the Miraculous in Late Antiquity