ABSTRACT
It is my pleasure to comment on two papers, which probe at the making of authority within the Byzantine Church. I use the word Church in its widest sense, meaning the institutional frameworks within which Christian life was organised with the aim of promoting faith and salvation. Jane Baun’s analysis of the rituals which marked the coming into the world and coming of age demonstrates the truly fruitful eect anthropological concepts and style of observation have had on historical inquiry. Invoking in her title the seminal work, now a century old, of Arnold Van Gennep on ‘rites de passage’, she explores the unique authority embedded in Byzantine Christian rituals as these imparted identity, sense of self and a place within a community. She demonstrates the great creativity of the ritual eld. Within its authoritative templates the human life cycle imitated that of Christ – in baptism, in the Eucharist. But she also shows that these templates – authoritative, grounded in Scripture, the privilege of priests – responded in a supple manner to dilemmas and anxieties arising from the community. A good example is her discussion of the ritual for sluggish pupils, based on a prayer eis paidin kakoskopon: it includes fast prayer, anointing in wine, recitation of prophecies over the child’s head, and more. is procedure took place in the church, imitating liturgical action with candles and Alleluias. e Church clearly imparted its authority upon these well-meaning attempts of anxious parents: the authority of its language, of its lexicon of rituals, of its space.
