Having established the locations and contexts in which popular culture was both constituted and experienced in the previous two chapters, I now move on to focus on popular culture as seen by the late antique church, examining both constructions of this culture and projects for its suppression and christianization. I shall concentrate particularly on the sermons of Caesarius of Arles, for several reasons. The case of Caesarius offers the best opportunity to combine (and oppose) testimonies of differing kinds: as well as the large body of texts associated with Caesarius, the city of Arles, as we have seen, is one of the best-known cities of the late antique west. However, it is the content of his sermons and related material that is quite simply the most compelling for a study of late antique popular culture.

The sermons of Caesarius, in particular his Admonitiones,Footnote ⁴ can seem mind-numbing after a while, as the preacher returns time and time again to his favourite subjects for criticism. The homilies focus on aspects of Christian morality but also on lifestyle, encompassing issues of culture and what Pierre Bourdieu influentially called the habitus.Footnote ⁵ The first-time reader is struck by the sweeping breadth of Caesarius’ area of concern: no sin, it seems, is beneath his notice. Gossiping, drinking, singing and even talking in church all feature prominently in his sermons at one time or another. This group of sermons constitutes a comprehensive attack on the habits, predilections and activities of his congregation. This much has already been demonstrated by William Klingshirn, who expertly demonstrated the richness of Caesarius’ sermons as sources for the religious and social history of late antique Arles, and beyond.Footnote ⁶ My own project, as set out in the preceding chapters, is complementary, seeking to investigate the cultural, social and religious history of late antique southern Gaul through the prism of the study of popular culture. We shall see how episcopal discourse sets out to define correct behaviour through the lens of ‘religion’; however, the range of behaviours targeted go far beyond what we might define as narrowly ‘religious’.

The question of Caesarius’ ‘representativeness’ arises immediately. As we have already seen, Caesarius was not typical in the broader scheme of things, even if he was not that atypical as a bishop of Arles: he was an aristocrat, moulded by his ascetic training at Lérins. However, even in his own time and in his own region his approach to his congregation, and to popular culture, was not the only one. For instance, Lisa Bailey’s work has shown how the Eusebius Gallicanus collection of sermons provide an instructive contrast to Caesarius’ combative approach, offering a much more consensual and ‘fraternal’ approach to religious and cultural change within communities.Footnote ⁷ It is in fact the very extremity of Caesarius’ discourse that makes him a compelling crucial witness, in that in his rhetoric lies one part of the dialectic of popular culture, forged, as Stuart Hall has argued, in the nexus of competing forces, from above and below.

In what follows I shall first lay out what we might call the ‘Caesarian’ programme, as well as the problems posed by the bulk of our source material; that is, the writings produced by Caesarius himself, his close associates and his later editors. I shall then move on to look in more detail at the sermons themselves to examine close up Caesarius’ distinctively maximalist approach to his pastoral role, including his campaign to stamp out key areas of popular culture, including singing, dancing and scurrilitas, as well as his techniques for doing this. As I shall demonstrate, popular culture was problematized and targeted as never before. However, I shall show how the church also used aspects of popular culture in order to communicate with what was undoubtedly a wider audience, while attacking this culture at the same time. The key themes of democratization and christianization, as laid out in Chapter 1, are therefore central to this discussion.

Introducing the ‘Caesarian’ Programme

Let’s begin with the so-called Sermo 1 in order not just to lay out the contours of the episcopal programme but also to demonstrate both the opportunities and the problems posed by Caesarius’ sermons as a historical source. To begin with, there was no ‘Caesarian corpus’ of sermons as such in late antiquity.Footnote ⁸ Indeed, trying to identify a ‘pure’ Caesarian corpus is extremely difficult. Caesarius himself was in general far from original: he clearly utilized a ‘cut-and-paste’ mechanism in the writing of his sermons, which makes identification all the more difficult.Footnote ⁹ ‘Textual fluidity’ is thus a seriously understated characterization of the state of Caesarius’ tradition in the early middle ages, and this is something we need to bear in mind when reading a series of texts that proclaim themselves to be authoritative.

The corpus as we have it today – a large one of c. 240 sermons – is a modern creation, that of one remarkable individual, the Benedictine scholar Dom Germain Morin.Footnote ¹⁰ Morin worked on linguistic and stylistic grounds to create the ‘Caesarian’ corpus, including sermons previously edited under other names, and no fewer than fifty-seven sermons edited for the first time.Footnote ¹¹ While the achievement is huge, the subjective nature of identifying authorship based on solely internal criteria is undeniable.Footnote ¹² Morin constructed his ‘Caesarian’ corpus based on his own particular idea of what the bishop stood for, influenced strongly, not least, by Caesarius’ own Vita, written by his disciples shortly after his death.Footnote ¹³ The influence of this text is apparent in Morin’s decision to use the key topoi from Caesarius’ preaching, as described in the passage from the Vita given at the head of this chapter, in his thematic ordering of the sermons in his edition. Even assuming that ‘Caesarian’ sermons largely represent the bishop’s own words,Footnote ¹⁴ Morin’s ‘Caesarian’ corpus is an ideological construction of his own.

Ironically, and perhaps appositely, Sermo 1 is most likely not a sermon ad populum at all but a letter from Caesarius to his suffragan bishops, which Morin placed at the head of his collection of sermons, presumably to act programmatically for what follows.Footnote ¹⁵ While, unsurprisingly, much of the text is taken up with matters of proper episcopal behaviour, it also provides a useful whistle-stop, programmatic summary of matters of more general comportment, both lay and clerical; that is, the substantive elements of ‘unauthorized culture’ which are referred to throughout the Admonitiones and which will form the focus for the discussion that follows. Sermo 1 and related texts present a powerful discourse which constructs the concept of popular culture, while simultaneously attacking it.

The letter begins with Caesarius invoking a theme which is central to his construction of popular culture: rusticitas.

Thus the bishop begins by pairing his own rusticitas with that of the people of the parishes of the territory of Arles; he presents himself as a rusticus who speaks to the rustici. This is also a key theme in the presentation of Caesarius by his biographers, who provide a clearly programmatic discussion of the simplicity of Caesarius’ Latin at the start of each book of his Vita. First, in the opening prologue, the biographers (in something of a hagiographical cliché) apologize for the modesty of their language, citing a supposed saying of Caesarius himself in support: ‘Some avoid rusticity in speech, but do not turn from vices in life.’Footnote ¹⁷ At the start of Book 2, likewise, the biographers again assert the simplicity of Caesarius’ language, described as intended to communicate to the ‘learned and the simple alike’ (doctos simul et simplices).Footnote ¹⁸ This stress on a democratic language is programmatic across Sermo 1. Caesarius argues that in preaching there is no need for ‘worldly’ or even ‘pontifical’ language, which, he says, can ‘scarcely’ be understood by even a ‘few’.Footnote ¹⁹ He stresses this again near the end of the treatise,Footnote ²⁰ proceeding to the clear injunction that ‘my lord bishops should preach to the people in simple, ordinary language that all the people can understand’.Footnote ²¹

As pointed out many years ago by Erich Auerbach in his classic work Literary Language and Its Public in Late Latin Antiquity and in the Middle Ages, Caesarius not only refuses to apologize for the uncouthness of his Latin but he also demands a similarly direct style, aimed at the widest possible audience, from his fellow bishops. Sermo humilis was embraced by late antique Christian writers and theorists as suitable not only for lowly subjects but also for the most sublime of all.Footnote ²² Interestingly, we can contrast the cases of Caesarius and Hilary. Hilary’s biographer claimed that Hilary would vary his levels of speech, and while adopting a simple style for ‘rustics’, he would raise his game for those instructi in the congregation.Footnote ²³ Caesarius, however, advocated the use of a simple style in all cases.Footnote ²⁴ His Latin has traditionally come under harsh attack from philologists, although recent scholars have tended to be more sympathetic.Footnote ²⁵ It is indeed on the basis of philological analysis that Caesarius has been analysed as a key figure in the ‘democratization of culture’. Auerbach described Caesarius as the first medieval author on the basis of his prose style.Footnote ²⁶ Aaron Gurevich began his Medieval Popular Culture with Caesarius, arguing that it was thanks to the bishop of Arles, with his use of sermo humilis, that a new stage of culture began.Footnote ²⁷ We should not forget, nonetheless, that, simple as it seems, Caesarius’ prose was in fact very carefully crafted, part of a deeply ideological ‘democratizing’ project.Footnote ²⁸ He indeed returns, tellingly, to the theme of his ‘rustic’ Latin in his closing peroration to his fellow bishops, with a self-deprecating reference to the irritation his rusticissima suggestio might have caused the ‘learned’ ears of his audience.Footnote ²⁹ This is a very nice example of Caesarius’ carefully crafted and ideologically focused rhetorical rusticitas.Footnote ³⁰

Rusticitas appears here as a topos which the aristocratic bishop employs of himself as part of his ideological and rhetorical armoury. It is double-edged as an ideological and rhetorical weapon, however: it is also a topos he uses to label others with a rather different ideological aim in mind. In the view of Klingshirn, rusticitas functions for Caesarius more as an ideological than a sociological construct.Footnote ³¹ Conrad Leyser has argued that the figure of the rustic is primarily a foil with which to rebuke an urban audience.Footnote ³² Nonetheless, even if the term is used to rebuke those of unimpeachably high social standing and education, its valency comes from what we can reasonably call a class connotation: an association with ignorance and lack of culture. Such associations are consistently used to stigmatize aspects of culture disliked by the church – as we shall see in Chapter 6, in the case of the festival of the Kalends, attacked in this way in both west and east. Gregory of Tours’ use of rusticitas, as discussed by Peter Brown, is also relevant here: Brown defines it as ‘boorishness’ and notes its opposition to reverentia, which he associates with ‘a precisely delineated image of ideal human relations’, which betrays ‘the long grooming of late-Roman aristocratic society’.Footnote ³³ There is indeed plenty of traditional snobbery to be seen in patristic texts, including the sermons of Caesarius, as Igor Filippov notes, drawing attention to how Caesarius sneers at ‘rustics’ getting drunk on homemade booze.Footnote ³⁴ We might also wonder how far the prevalence of complaints about rusticitas indicates an aristocratic response to ongoing changes to the built environment and shifts in the relationship between town and country. Ultimately, the use of the charge of rusticitas by Caesarius and others is aimed at a wide audience, part of the growing claim of the church to discipline society.

Despite the persistent disinclination of many of today’s historians to talk in terms of class, it is clear to me that our late antique authorities present an upper-class attack on and stigmatization of lower-class behaviour.Footnote ³⁵ Caesarius thinks and speaks as both an ascetic and an aristocrat. He pairs rusticitas with imperitia – lack of knowledge or expertise, or ignorance. The choice of imperitia is surely not a coincidence: its opposition, peritia, in the sense of expertise, was a key concept for John Cassian who used it to stress his spiritual and moral authority.Footnote ³⁶ However, the concept of rusticitas, bolstered by the tools and themes of ascetic ideology, was used by members of the elite to stigmatize aspects of elite behaviour that were felt to be unpalatable by smearing them with lower-class connotations.Footnote ³⁷ Hence the interaction between elite and non-elite that was new in late antiquity constituted both the opportunity and the ideological imperative to mould non-elite behaviour according to elite values. At the same time, we can see, in a parallel process, the clear attempt by a new, often ascetically trained, Christian elite to mould what was correct – indeed, elite – behaviour, using what is ultimately the language of class.

The moulding of lay behaviour, both ascetic and elites, in the hands of Caesarius (at least as presented in the textual tradition) is a substantial enterprise. Sermo 1 contains a number of strikingly coercive images of the bishop. It is worth quoting this passage at length:

The image of the watchman/speculator comes from Ezekiel: Fili hominis, speculatorem dedi te domui Israel, et audies de ore meo verbum, et annuntiabis eis ex me.Footnote ³⁹ As discussed by Conrad Leyser, this notion of the bishop represents a distinctive ascetic model, developed by Augustine in a widely transmitted sermon, used for the anniversary of bishops’ consecrations, and then used again by Caesarius’ teacher Pomerius.Footnote ⁴⁰ Leyser has shown how each author uses the metaphor differently, with Caesarius using it ‘to legitimate a regime of intimate episcopal supervision’.Footnote ⁴¹ In Sermo 1 Caesarius describes the bishop as ‘an inspector on a lofty site’,Footnote ⁴² the eyes in the head of ChristFootnote ⁴³ and the pilot of a ship, directing the ship of the church.Footnote ⁴⁴ The bishop indeed appears as a policeman, involved in the surveillance and control of his congregation.Footnote ⁴⁵ He should use fear, where necessary, and even corporal punishment:

Indeed, as well as exhorting his fellow clergy to use physical coercion, elsewhere Caesarius encourages his flock to whip, beat and shackle the stubborn and recalcitrant,Footnote ⁴⁷ as well as telling them to inform on these miscreants ‘in secret’.Footnote ⁴⁸ On occasion, too, he would lock the doors during the liturgy in order to keep his congregation from leaving church.Footnote ⁴⁹

According to Caesarius, the episcopal speculator is to guard, through his preaching, against all the sins, major and minor, of his congregations. These sins are then to be expiated through ritual practices – fasting and prayers – as well, in accordance with a widespread pastoral strategy, as almsgiving.Footnote ⁵⁰ Ritual practice and physical punishment alike have a role to play but it is the spoken word that Sermo 1 promotes as the most powerful tool of all. Caesarius warns that no episcopal excuses for failing to preach would be accepted on the day of judgement.Footnote ⁵¹ It is indeed apt that his hagiographers describe Caesarius as wielding his preaching ‘like a weapon’.Footnote ⁵² He saw the word of the bishop as a crucial weapon in an ongoing battle, with preaching essential in rural areas, as well as in towns.Footnote ⁵³ It is with this in mind that the Council of Vaison in 529 enshrined the right of presbyters and deacons, as well as bishops, to preach.Footnote ⁵⁴

Caesarius and his biographers alike thought preaching a powerful weapon – but (how) did it work? Lisa Bailey applied the work of the anthropologist Maurice Bloch to her study of sermons, showing how the formalization of language works to control discourse. Bloch discussed the role of formalized speech both in and as ritual, arguing that ritualized language acts coercively, as a ‘form of social control’.Footnote ⁵⁵ Bailey makes the case for seeing sermons in this light: ‘Highly formalised language is coercive, attempting to dictate appropriate responses and reactions and, in its most effective forms, making contradiction or negation impossible by virtue of its internal structures. It is efficacious because it is intangible. It communicates without explanation and therefore cannot be argued with.’Footnote ⁵⁶ We should further note that the sermon is of course just one part of the liturgy, where different elements work together in order to construct religious authority in various ways, notably through performance.Footnote ⁵⁷

Preaching, according to Caesarius, should be simple, and was therefore something that could be done by all members of the clergy.Footnote ⁵⁸ Those unable to preach their own sermons should read out those composed by others.Footnote ⁵⁹ The Vita tells us that Caesarius had copies of his own sermons made to be used in other churches as far away as Spain.Footnote ⁶⁰ Indeed, Morin’s Sermo 2 purports to act as a preface to a book of sermons (a libellus) to be used in parishes and read by presbyters and deacons.Footnote ⁶¹ Sermo 2 is not quite what it seems, however, having been constructed by Morin out of two different texts, with different manuscript histories.Footnote ⁶² In fact, a much wider distribution of Caesarius’ sermons is not really discernible in the manuscript tradition, at least outside the monastic context, and they certainly did not receive contemporary ‘success’ on anything like the scale of the ‘Eusebius Gallicanus’ collection.Footnote ⁶³ Nonetheless, the making and dissemination of these collections aimed not just to spread preaching but also, of course, to spread a safely authorized (and authoritative) version of preaching.Footnote ⁶⁴

Like any traditional member of the Roman elite, Caesarius was certain that he could distinguish between authorized and unauthorized speech. Nonetheless, in Sermo 1 even the clergy themselves are seen as prone to indulging in inappropriate talk. Caesarius writes that they need to avoid ‘idle speech and biting jokes’ (otiosis fabulis et mordacibus iocis).Footnote ⁶⁵ This kind of inappropriate speech is attacked frequently in the Admonitiones,Footnote ⁶⁶ as we shall see later. Sermo 1 is only one of a series of texts that attest to a concern that clergy too are participating in activities which we might choose to consider under the rubric of popular – that is, unauthorized – culture, the nature of which we shall discuss later. This serves as an important reminder that, first, ‘popular culture’ does not apply only to a narrow sociological group and, second, cultural change can be seen to move ‘upwards’ as well as ‘downwards’. This is the way in which we can best understand the process whereby Caesarius and his colleagues used the concept of rusticitas itself as a tool with which to discipline all society, clerical and lay, ‘elite’ and non-elite alike.

Indeed, we might wonder if Caesarius was expecting there to be any ‘real’ rustics in the congregation. Who made up the audience of the sermons the bishop sought to have delivered so widely? In previous chapters we looked at the location of churches in both city and countryside. The city of Arles, as we saw, possessed several churches in addition to the seat of the bishop, the cathedral, including several other possible sites for preaching such as the cult sites associated with St Genesius. We then saw how the diverse territorium of Arles (see Map 5) included a number of smaller and larger church buildings in a variety of different landscapes, associated with varying forms of social organization and ecclesiastical status.Footnote ⁶⁷ But who was actually in the congregation? Debate continues regarding the economic and social composition of the preacher’s audience in late antiquity. Ramsay MacMullen was the most steadfast proponent of the view that the real-life audience was far from broad, but was rather made up almost exclusively of the economic and social elite, estimated more precisely as the top 5 per cent in his most recent work.Footnote ⁶⁸ Even if we do not want to take quite as hard a line as MacMullen on the make-up of the preacher’s audience, we can certainly agree that late antique bishops felt most comfortable addressing their social equals, or near-equals. Karl Brunner indeed concludes that Caesarius aimed his preaching at a prosperous ‘Mittelstand’ (middle class).Footnote ⁶⁹ On one occasion Caesarius expresses concern that the mass not be too prolonged, in order not to detain the poor and craftsmen.Footnote ⁷⁰ However, on several other occasions he is clearly speaking as one dominus to another, such as when he enjoins corporal punishment upon recalcitrant offenders.Footnote ⁷¹ Overall, Caesarius’ sermons seem therefore to conform to the broader late antique picture and should certainly not be taken as unmitigated communications de haut en bas, as it were.

While both the Vita and Caesarius in his own works stress his role as preacher to the people, we have already seen that we must be sceptical. Conrad Leyser has argued, in a significant contribution, that this vision of Caesarius as popular preacher is a construction, an ‘icon’, an image aimed not at ‘the peasant farmers of Provence, but the rich and urbane clergy and laity of Arles’.Footnote ⁷² The ideological construction of Caesarius as the exemplar of a popular speaker is in itself an important piece of evidence for the ideological project that I am seeking to deconstruct. As we shall see, while deliberately using ‘democratic’ language, Caesarius was in fact engaged in a concerted attack on a range of aspects of non-elite behaviour and culture while also stigmatizing the behaviour of their social superiors, not least through his attack on rusticitas. We can see the bishop claiming the unique authority to discipline culture at all levels of society. We have a triangulation between bishop, secular elite and non-elite that we will explore in the chapters that follow. For now, we will look more closely at the Admonitiones themselves, sermons that can be seen as distinctively authoritative, in various ways. I shall first turn to look at the approach to the body, a crucial field for the exercise of power.

Disciplining the Rustic Body

Let’s begin with a striking passage, in which Caesarius offers his sermon as a mirror, held up to his congregation to show the people their own sinful behaviour. It is an arrestingly embodied image of Christian identity, where the congregation are imagined as a woman about her toilette.

William Klingshirn discusses this use of the image of the mirror in his exemplary study of Caesarius: ‘if so, it was a mirror of a peculiarly distorted and selective kind, which represented only those aspects of attitude or behavior the bishop could observe for himself or learn from others, reflected only those matters he chose to discuss, and presented only those interpretations he chose to present’.Footnote ⁷⁴ Indeed, we simply cannot accept Caesarius’ claim that he represents the behaviour of his congregation transparently and neutrally. We might in fact choose to see the mirror operating in another direction; that is, we might instead argue that the picture of the congregation that we gain from his sermons is often in fact most revealing of the bishop’s own pastoral priorities and strategies.Footnote ⁷⁵

Caesarius’ analogy of the mirror is used to make a highly tendentious, ideological claim. It is thereby deeply revealing of his methods and of his interest in the habitus of his congregation, including a concern with bodily deportment and practice. This even extends to the dress of his flock: elsewhere small sins are compared with spots or tears on clothing – and Caesarius reminds his flock that none of them would wish to wear a dirty tunic to church.Footnote ⁷⁶ The scholar of lived religion Meredith McGuire has highlighted the importance of matters to do with the body, and bodily propriety in policing the boundaries of the ‘sacred’ and ‘profane’ (a central interest for Caesarius): ‘Most reform movements – Protestant and Catholic alike – emphasized bodily control and propriety, especially regarding sexuality. This development had strong religious connotations, but it was also part of the larger “civilizing process” that was linked to the differentiation of social class elites.’Footnote ⁷⁷

She notes further, again with the early modern period in mind:

This seems strikingly familiar, and reminiscent too of Caesarius’ preaching. The body represents a central domain for the exercise of episcopal authority for an ascetic programme such as his. William Klingshirn has already written insightfully on Caesarius’ focus on bodily gesture and ‘ritual action’,Footnote ⁷⁹ citing the work of Pierre Bourdieu to elucidate his analysis of Caesarius’ focus on posture and gesture.Footnote ⁸⁰ I think we can take this engagement with Bourdieu further in studying popular culture, firstly by thinking how we can use his concept of the habitus: the interplay or nexus of structures in the conduct of everyday life. According to Bourdieu, this habitus is where the individual and society meet.Footnote ⁸¹ Next, we can take Bourdieu’s notion of bodily hexis: the expression or embodiment, of all the factors that make up our habitus. According to Bourdieu: ‘Bodily hexis is political mythology realized, em-bodied, turned into a permanent disposition, a durable way of standing, speaking, walking, and thereby of feeling and thinking.’Footnote ⁸² Symbolic power works in part through the control of other people’s bodies, with ‘seemingly innocuous details’ combining to ‘inscribe the most fundamental principles of the arbitrary content of a culture’.Footnote ⁸³ As Bourdieu argued, it is through this kind of cultural communication, for instance through body language, that we both learn and express our place in society.Footnote ⁸⁴ It would be wrong, again, not to draw attention to the element of class at play here. David Gartnam puts it neatly: ‘Because the habitus of different classes shape different tastes for culture, the field of culture is a misrecognized and symbolic expression of conflict between the classes, especially between the dominant (bourgeois) class and the dominated (working) class.’Footnote ⁸⁵

As has been widely shown for classical antiquity, elite status was widely and deeply embodied, as indeed expressed in Bourdieu’s concept of bodily hexis.Footnote ⁸⁶ A certain gravitas of posture was expected of the elite Roman male. There were well-established dichotomies between elite behaviour and non-elite behaviour, as well as between male and female. The elite male was still and slow, for instance, while the lower classes dashed about.Footnote ⁸⁷ The elite male, as personified by the ideal orator, was supposed to possess a pleasant speaking voice, but derogatory remarks were made about the supposedly guttural noises made by the lower classes. For instance, Ammianus Marcellinus, attacking the pastimes of the Roman plebs, was scornful of the guttural noises made by ‘the multitude of lowest condition and greatest poverty’: they ‘quarrel with one another in their games of dice, making a repugnant sound by drawing back the breath into their resounding nostrils’.Footnote ⁸⁸ The lower classes were seen as generally coarse.Footnote ⁸⁹ The advent of Christianity certainly did not put an end to such class-based prejudices.

As Klingshirn has discussed, Caesarius prescribes a whole series of bodily practices, as part of the construction of the Christian habitus. Some of these clearly function as a ritual preparation for the liturgy: for instance, the congregation are exhorted to prepare for church services through abstinence from sex and sin.Footnote ⁹⁰ While the ascetic agenda here is obvious, it does not provide a complete explanation or interpretative model. Caesarius’ attempts to mould deference, passivity and of course obedience are striking. He wished to inculcate not just discipline but also deference in his congregation, and deference has an important bodily component. As Maud Gleason has put it, ‘[d]emeanour expresses – or extorts – deference, an awareness of one’s place in relation to others’.Footnote ⁹¹ Caesarius exhorts his congregation to uphold the correct demeanour (and even dress!) in church, as if in the presence of the powerful.Footnote ⁹² This proper deference involved the correct bodily language and posture: the appropriate bodily hexis. Posture is a concern in several sermons: the congregation are exhorted to stand, not loll or lie, for the lessons and the sermon, and kneel, or bow the head if infirmity prevents them from kneeling, for prayer.Footnote ⁹³ The correct mental attitude stems from bodily practices: chanting the words of the psalms is a prelude to the begetting of holy thoughts.Footnote ⁹⁴

The model of authority represented by Caesarius himself is harshly patriarchal and not infrequently embodied and indeed physical. As we have already seen, he encourages heads of households to use physical force and restraint where necessary. His pastoral metaphors are stark: he favours presenting the bishop as a doctor, casting out illness with a bitter medicine, cutting with an iron knife or cauterizing.Footnote ⁹⁵ It is by ‘harsh preaching’ (aspera praedicare) alone that ingrained sins can be corrected.Footnote ⁹⁶ Caesarius also expects his congregation to correct their sins through a highly disciplined series of bodily practices. As common in patristic discourse, he presents the Christian life as a constant battle, especially where the body was concerned; for instance, ‘amongst all the struggles suffered by Christians, those involving chastity are the toughest, for the battle is daily, and victory is rare’.Footnote ⁹⁷ The ascetic nature of Caesarius’ programme is of course crucial here but, as already noted, ascetic discourse is almost seamlessly blended with elite/ist discourse.

Let’s return to the metaphorical matrona looking in the mirror. She is pictured as merely readjusting her appearance, but Caesarius uses an emotive word: foeditas, disgustingness, or hideousness, to describe the behaviour of his congregation. On many occasions he appeals to the congregation’s emotions of self-disgust and shame in his attempts to reform their behaviour. In a series of sermons on drunkenness, for instance, Caesarius presents drinking, a common facet of masculine behaviour, not just as disgusting but as representing a loss of bodily control, a loss of bodily integrity, a loss of proper masculinity.Footnote ⁹⁸ As Lisa Bailey has noted, Caesarius here explicitly offers his audience of ‘rustics’ a traditional elite Roman ideology of the body.Footnote ⁹⁹ In this respect we can indeed see a ‘democratization’ of Roman bodily ideology as part of a reform process similar to that outlined by Meredith McGuire.

The image of the matrona on the one hand and the emphasis on masculinity on the other both remind us how discourses surrounding popular culture tend to be highly gendered. As so often, women come under particular focus, and indeed attack.Footnote ¹⁰⁰ As we saw, Caesarius’ imagined ideal audience member is clearly an elite male head of household. However, as so often, women could be good to think with, or rather to use both to denigrate certain types of behaviour and/or to denigrate women themselves by association with this behaviour.Footnote ¹⁰¹ Sometimes the bishop takes special pains to specify that he is attacking the behaviour of both men and women;Footnote ¹⁰² at other times he stresses that it is primarily women who are at fault.Footnote ¹⁰³ For instance, as so often in the ancient world, he associates women in particular with superstitious behaviour.Footnote ¹⁰⁴

Indeed, most relevant of all in this discussion of bodily hexis is the specific focus on the behaviour of women, especially young women, in Sermo 78.Footnote ¹⁰⁵ The bishop attacks the posture of ‘some of our daughters’ who do not maintain the appropriate posture during the lessons but instead lie on the floor of the church.Footnote ¹⁰⁶ In what can only be described as a misogynistic jibe, Caesarius suggests sarcastically that these ‘daughters’ would stand up alright if they were offered jewels and gold.Footnote ¹⁰⁷ He addresses these young women directly (Rogo vos, filiae), asking them to listen, before making an analogy which involves them being ‘justly rebuked and slapped’ (objurgo … caedo). Playing with gender, the bishop goes on to ask the girls to imagine him as their (spiritual) mother (matrem … animarum vestrarum),Footnote ¹⁰⁸ providing spiritual care and ornamentation, although he subsequently returns to the safer position of ‘paternal solicitude’.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ In his sermons Caesarius thus demonstrates just how fully he had inherited traditional notions of gender from Roman moralizing discourse. This is not to say, however, that he did not challenge other aspects of traditional gender morality: in particular, he attacked the double standards applied to male and female sexual continence.Footnote ¹¹⁰ However, in general Caesarius’ views correspond very predictably to what we would expect from his class and sex. We can also note one final example, where he extends a metaphor regarding the body as the ancilla and the soul as domina. He depicts the maidservant as (perversely) adorned with precious ornaments and luxurious clothes. In a deeply class-suffused aside, the bishop comments that just as the soul is of far greater worth than the body, so too is the mistress of greater worth than the maidservant (multo amplius mereatur domina quam ancilla).Footnote ¹¹¹

The external bodies, as well as the interior souls, of the Christians of Arles, as we have seen, came under the strict disciplinary focus of their bishop. Certain activities of these bodies came under special (and often gendered) scrutiny, and were subjected to a powerful discourse of de-authorization. What we are unpicking here is a discourse that de-authorized certain types of (bodily) activity, largely in line with traditional Roman elite masculine values, now further bolstered by ascetic ideology. Although the case of Caesarius’ moralizing discourse is that of an aristocrat, presenting familiar elite views, what is of course unusual is that he is purportedly offering this critique to a wide audience and can therefore be seen as offering something of a ‘democratization’ of traditional elitist Roman bodily ideology, as well as a democratization of ascetic regimen. Importantly, at the same time, this is paired with a comprehensive and ongoing stigmatization of popular behaviour, as I shall go on to explore further.

Scurrilitas, Singing and Dancing

The bodies of Caesarius’ congregation, as I have shown, were seen as in need of discipline, both within and outwith the liturgical context. The bishop called for obedient and decorous bodily praxes. These praxes extended beyond posture – to speech, song and dance, along with, as we shall see, the related concept of scurrilitas, which served to stigmatize popular culture comprehensively. We shall see, finally, how again gender played a role in these discourses.

Sermo 6 is a good place to start looking at the interrelation of these elements and to examine Caesarius’ discursive and pastoral strategy.Footnote ¹¹² This sermon has been examined on a number of occasions because of the interesting discussion of literacy it contains and for what it reveals about Caesarius’ wider pastoral strategy, but it repays further attention here.Footnote ¹¹³ The dramatic situation is as follows: Caesarius has arrived at a rural parish, which he says he visits two or three times a year. (This seems more frequent than commonly but of course represents an important part of his pastoral strategy: the Vita depicts him travelling frequently around the large geographical territory of Arles.)Footnote ¹¹⁴ After some brief but warm introductory words, the bishop moves straight to the point of the homily: the obligation for Christians to read the scriptures. In what follows, the bishop ‘imagines’ the response of his audience, using a tactic common in ‘popular’ preaching: ‘they’ say, firstly, that they have no time to read and, secondly, that they do not know how to read. Caesarius will not accept either imagined answer and launches into an attack on the types of activities pursued by the local congregation in preference to reading the scriptures.

The first sinful activities are to do with speech: ‘Let us remove from ourselves vain tales [fabulae vanae] and biting jokes [mordici ioci]; let us reject idle and dissolute conversations [sermones otiosi ac luxuriosi] as much as we can.’Footnote ¹¹⁵ After attacking excessive eating and drinking, Caesarius goes on to make a parallel between body and soul: ‘our flesh is weakened by drunkenness, and our soul is probably weakened by obscene talk [turpiloquia] and buffooneries [scurrilitates]’.Footnote ¹¹⁶

These expressions and scenarios are common in the Admonitiones. Here, as elsewhere, we find speech that is inappropriate, in terms of content, on various grounds. It might simply be otiosus (idle);Footnote ¹¹⁷ it might have associations with fiction (fabula).Footnote ¹¹⁸ Both terms are used to mark out certain types of speech as lacking in authority. It might also be libellous or satirical.Footnote ¹¹⁹ Inappropriate speech is also frequently described as obscene and shameful – the term turpiloquia recurs frequentlyFootnote ¹²⁰ – or as a sin of impurity, a particularly perilous sin of the mouth.Footnote ¹²¹ Leyser has perceptively noted that the prime site of unclean speech is the ‘people’, especially those of the countryside:Footnote ¹²² rusticitas strikes again! The term scurrilitas, which recurs on a number of occasions in Caesarius’ sermons, combines several of these types of inappropriate speech.Footnote ¹²³

Scurrilitas can be identified variously as story-telling,Footnote ¹²⁴ clowning and joking: all types of informal performance that had been part both of traditions of popular culture and of discourses attacking this popular culture. In Chapters 1 and 2 we looked at popular entertainment in the ancient world and what we can say of its fate in late antiquity. Although as we saw traditional theatrical performances were most likely no longer taking place in late antique Arles, this did not necessarily mean an end to less formal types of performance. Indeed, we can potentially see the cessation of traditional theatre as providing the space for the development of smaller, do-it-yourself alternatives that we can see as characteristic of late antique popular culture.

If we turn briefly to the homilies of Valerian, bishop of the Provençal episcopal see of Cimiez in the mid-fifth century, we find concern about the influence of language from the stage on the language of the Christian community. In one sermon Valerian imagines a member of his congregation on the stage, imitating a ‘harlot’;Footnote ¹²⁵ in another he complains about the use of ‘theatrical words’.Footnote ¹²⁶ Concerns about the shameful and polluting influence of the theatre are neither new in late antiquity nor uniquely Christian. The Roman mime in particular was consistently despised by the Roman elite as a ‘low’ form. Indeed, we can see the Roman mime as a prime example of ‘unauthorized culture’: it seems in some sense at least to have staged an ideological challenge to the dominant social order, and in response was consistently met with vitriol by the elite.Footnote ¹²⁷ By its very nature – the need for only a small troupe, the central role of improvisation – mime was well suited to continuity beyond officially funded spectacles. It is not surprising, then, that Yitzak Hen has been able to show the persistence of forms of the mime into the Merovingian and even the Carolingian eras, at least according to the ecclesiastical sources.Footnote ¹²⁸ Hagiographical texts provide a number of cases of appearances by mimes and mime actors, and as late as the eighth century Alcuin claims Augustine as an authority against bringing ‘actors, mimes and dancers’ into one’s home.Footnote ¹²⁹ As we saw in Chapter 2, church canons were concerned about the clergy themselves attending social occasions where dancing took place,Footnote ¹³⁰ and I shall look at dance in more detail later.

Scurrilitas in the middle ages signified buffoonery, jesting, a coarse form of humour. For Christian moralists it was certainly a sin, often found together with turpiloquium, a pairing clearly influenced by the Vulgate.Footnote ¹³¹ Later medieval literature also paired these two as key forms of self-consciously deviant oppositional and anti-clerical speechFootnote ¹³² and here we can build an interesting link back to another important, and longstanding, association between scurrilitas and popular culture. Scurrilitas was associated canonically with the figure of the scurra, the jester, familiar throughout Latin literature and culture. The scurra was often associated with malicious speech (note that Caesarius’ juxtaposes detractiones and scurrilitates).Footnote ¹³³ The scurra was also associated (negatively) with popular literature.Footnote ¹³⁴ Scurrilitas is thus associated with various aspects of popular culture, as enjoyed by ‘the people’, both as spectators and participants. In Caesarius’ sermons it is frequently accompanied by two other activities which we can definitely associate with ‘unauthorized culture’: singing and dancing, and I shall go on to discuss the place of these activities in discourses against popular culture.

In Sermo 6 it is singing that Caesarius finds especially irritating, in particular the facility of his rural congregation for memorizing songs, which he terms diabolical and shameful: ‘How many countrymen and how many countrywomen can remember diabolical and shameful love songs and sing them continually!’Footnote ¹³⁵

At issue for Caesarius was the ability and propensity of these ‘rustics’ to memorize love songs while claiming to be unable to learn Christian texts, including the creed:

Whatever he claims here, Caesarius would of course have been only too aware of the reasons why his congregation could remember the words of songs but not of bible passages: the connection between song and memory was well known in the ancient world.Footnote ¹³⁷ We can, for instance, turn to Augustine’s unhappy memories of the schoolroom, chanting his times-tables, in what he describes as an odiosa cantio.Footnote ¹³⁸ As bishop, Augustine himself harnessed the power of song and its relationship with memory in his campaign against the Donatists, composing the ‘Psalm against the Donatists’, which he wanted ‘to reach the knowledge of the very humblest folk and of the inexpert and the instructed and, as far as possible, to stick it in their memories’.Footnote ¹³⁹ We shall return to the use of song as a pastoral tool shortly, but for now we shall stay with more ‘diabolical’ lyrics.

Attacks on secular singing are found in a number of late antique and early medieval ecclesiastical texts.Footnote ¹⁴⁰ Sermo 6 is also just one of many occasions on which Caesarius berates his congregation for singing songs categorized as ‘dissolute’ (luxuriosa) and ‘shameful’ (turpia), as ‘inimical to chastity and honesty’.Footnote ¹⁴¹ Furthermore, as so often is the case when it comes to aspects of popular culture disliked by the church, singing is presented not just as immoral but as actually diabolicus.Footnote ¹⁴² Caesarius was of course not the first Christian writer or preacher to attack worldly songs: Jerome, for instance, complained about cantica mundi (comprising turpia verba).Footnote ¹⁴³ We might wish that our Christian clerics had sought to share some of these shameful lyrics: we are rather in the dark when it comes to the format and content of late antique songs. Valerian of Cimiez evokes both the insidious seductiveness of song and the dangerous affective power of music, including the ‘tingling’ zither, the organ and the flute.Footnote ¹⁴⁴ This would refer to a rather more skilled type of performance, however, than we can envisage taking place on a day-to-day basis.

Ecclesiastical critics were concerned not just with the songs themselves but also with the environments in which they were sung – and these included liturgical, or rather paraliturgical, contexts. Dodgy songs made up a standard part of the package of inappropriate behaviour that was frequently associated with church vigils in ecclesiastical texts, and they were censured in church councils, as well as sermons.Footnote ¹⁴⁵ Augustine frequently berated dubious singing in rambunctious celebrations of the cult of the martyrs that he sought to denigrate.Footnote ¹⁴⁶ That Caesarius too complains about singing in this context is therefore to be expected.Footnote ¹⁴⁷ Saints’ vigils are not the only ritual context involved; dodgy singing is also associated with a rather different paraliturgical context: the funeral.

In the classical world, singing was closely associated with the funeral: the singing of dirges by paid mourners in particular was seemingly still prevalent in late antiquity. Valuable evidence from the wider late antique world comes, as so often, from John Chrysostom. John objected to the continuation of this practice at Antioch, and counselled the bereaved instead to invite clergy and the poor to sing for the souls of the dead.Footnote ¹⁴⁸ In his study of the history of Romance song John Haines argues for the persistence of this tradition in the Latin west as well, but it is in fact difficult to trace it this far back securely.Footnote ¹⁴⁹ The type of singing generally mentioned in connection with funerals in later medieval sources, such as found in the work of Burchard of Worms, sounds rather more cheerful than the traditional planctus, and is paired with dancing.Footnote ¹⁵⁰ Interestingly, female-led mourning practices that included dancing, or at least rhythmic movement as well as lament, are also traceable in Jewish and Islamic material from late antiquity and beyond.Footnote ¹⁵¹ Nonetheless, the association of singing (and dancing) with women, at least in the Latin ecclesiastical tradition, is clearly part of a powerful misogynistic discourse.Footnote ¹⁵²

Singing and dancing, again in combination, are also associated in ecclesiastical texts with ‘paganism’. This accusation clearly does have a basis in actual practice: hymn singing was associated with a wide range of cults in the classical world; there are also a number of references to sacred dance.Footnote ¹⁵³ In late antiquity attacks on ‘pagan’ festivities sometimes included references to both singing and dancing, such as Gelasius’ complaint about cantilenae turpes in his famous condemnation of the Roman Lupercalia at the end of the fifth century.Footnote ¹⁵⁴ Gregory of Tours gives a highly coloured account of the worship of a statue of Berecynthia in Autun, including the detail that cantantes et saltantes were involved (before the bishop saved the day, converting all those present).Footnote ¹⁵⁵ As we shall see in Chapter 6, song and dance were frequently mentioned in attacks on the festival of the Kalends. Indeed, they formed part of a now familiar collection of negative associations, along with dubious versions of Christianity, ‘paganism’ and the role of women.

It is worth taking a closer look at the terminology used. A number of the texts discussed above refer to the chorus/choros/chorea, whether in association with singing or not, which can again be paralleled in several other texts.Footnote ¹⁵⁶ Caesarius refers to the leading (duco) of the choros in several sermons.Footnote ¹⁵⁷ What can we envisage here? Generally, scholars have imagined a circular, sung dance, classical in origin, which evolved into the ‘carol/e’, or ‘ring dance’ in the medieval Latin west.Footnote ¹⁵⁸ Such a dance appears in the second-century ‘apocryphal’ Acts of John, which contains the famous ‘dance hymn’, likely a third-century interpolation of Syrian origin. In this text Christ himself invites his disciples to dance in a circle and sing together; this dance has variously been associated with different Hellenistic traditions, mystery religions and ecstatic dancing.Footnote ¹⁵⁹ We shall look at liturgical dancing later, but for now we will stay with the profane sort.

The verbs usually used for dancing, often in combination, are ballo and salto, the latter being particularly associated with pantomime dancing. Dancing was an activity viewed with suspicion and scorn by patristic writers, building on a broader classical tradition in the same vein. The association with pantomime dancers, and performers of other kinds, is an important (though not the only) reason for this disdain. We can here again trace a direct line back to traditional elite discourse, which disparaged dancing as distinctly unauthorized, as an activity unfit for the respectable (male) citizen. These worries were most apposite, and visible, in the classical world in the case of oratory, where we can see an often polemical focus on supposed affinities between the arts of the rhetor and those of the dancer.Footnote ¹⁶⁰ In late antiquity the pantomime was a focus of ire among ecclesiastical authors, who were suspicious first of the sexual ambiguity of the pantomime dancer but also of his captivating effect on the audience.Footnote ¹⁶¹ It is not surprising that Caesarius used the verb salto as the term most associated with the pantomime. Dancing, it is persistently claimed, is not something performed by a normal person – or, rather, man – unless insane or indeed, as we shall see, when drunk: this is something avowed by both Cicero and Caesarius.Footnote ¹⁶² It is certainly not considered as an art that would be performed by a respectable male, the usual imagined audience of our preachers. And so we return to the theme of bodily hexis and its class associations: dancing as an uncontrolled, irrational bodily practice is the antithesis of the controlled bodily composure expected by ancient rhetors and late antique preachers alike. Furthermore, the association of dancing with women was seen as especially scandalous. The connection with sexuality made it a particularly unpalatable activity for respectable women to perform, while professional female dancers were seen as dangerously corrupting to men.Footnote ¹⁶³

This takes us to our final context for singing and dancing: the secular convivium, which was seen as a prime site of scurrilitas.Footnote ¹⁶⁴ The singing and dancing that went on here would have involved the participation of the guests themselves but also performances by hired professionals.Footnote ¹⁶⁵ According to Caesarius, congregations should be instructed neither to hire nor even observe a range of performers at convivia, identified by the variant manuscript traditions as dissolute singers (luxuriosi cantatores … cantatrices), players of games (lusores) and dancers (saltatores), all of whom are described as being ‘inimical to chastity and virtue’.Footnote ¹⁶⁶ Dancers are presented across ecclesiastical texts, as Ruth Webb writes, as ‘dangerously sexual beings’; we can contrast this picture with the more workaday evidence provided by surviving papyri contracts for the hiring of female dancers.Footnote ¹⁶⁷ It is the presence of these professionals, performing sexually alluring songs and dances, that meant that weddings and other feasts were seen as inappropriate for clerics, specifically, to attend.Footnote ¹⁶⁸ Even more than at the vigils for the saints and the dead, the danger of excessive alcohol consumption was especially high at the convivium. In one sermon Caesarius attacks what he sees as a deadly combination in an especially striking example of rolling rhythmic prose, criticizing those who would destroy themselves and others: ut inebriando, ballando, verba turpia decantando, choros ducendo et diabolico more saltando (the English translation can scarcely do this justice: ‘by getting drunk, dancing, singing shameful songs, leading the chorus and pantomiming in diabolical fashion’).Footnote ¹⁶⁹ Alcohol is identified as the key factor which loosened inhibitions and provoked singing, dancing and sexual licence. As we saw, Caesarius’ sermons contain many denunciations of excessive drinking, often discussed in terms of the threat it posed to masculinity.Footnote ¹⁷⁰ Once more, we see the importance of gender in discourses surrounding popular culture.

How far can we actually identify ‘popular’ practices in the types of drinking party attacked by Caesarius? We might indeed suspect that the bishop is aiming his critiques squarely at the social elite, seeking to discredit their activities by linking them with the behaviours of the rustici. While this is clearly part of what is going on, the evidence of ceramic and other finds in small sites in the countryside, as we saw in Chapter 3, does in fact support the notion that a wider range of people now had access to imported food and drink than we might originally assume.Footnote ¹⁷¹ As established in Chapter 3, our rural ‘non-elite’ is a broad category: we can certainly imagine the better-off peasants and artisans as those targeted here, as borne out by the evidence from small sites across the region.

So what was the pastoral solution to this cocktail of unacceptable behaviour? Song and dance, as we have seen, were linked to ‘pagan’ religiosity, profane behaviour in general, challenges to accepted gender norms and sexual immorality. However, bishops were well aware of the pull these activities exerted on Christians – even, at times, on their fellow clerics. Secular dancing was simply beyond the pale, according to its clerical critics, and could not be rehabilitated. Ruth Webb has wondered whether it is the non-verbality of dance that rendered it so particularly suspect:Footnote ¹⁷² dance stood in opposition to the logos, to rationality and rhetoric, classically and consistently gendered as male. Karin Schlapbach in a fascinating monograph on dance discourse in antiquity discusses the disruptive potential of dance as an ‘intersubjective experience’.Footnote ¹⁷³ Moreover, dance offered, at least potentially, an opportunity for unregulated female self-expression. Ruth Webb asks: ‘[m]ight we … glimpse the importance of dance for women as a means of expression, an alternative to the male discourse that was closed to all but the educated few?’Footnote ¹⁷⁴ The physicality of dance rendered it suspect for Augustine, who refers to the attempts of his colleague Aurelius to outlaw dancing as part of a package of reforms at Carthage.Footnote ¹⁷⁵ As Brent Shaw comments: ‘the mobilizing of certain repetitive body movements was closely associated with ritual chanting and singing. All these practices were connected with collective behaviour that was potentially a precursor to aggression and violence.’Footnote ¹⁷⁶ While this was especially moot in the febrile and highly conflictual North African context, it is evident the disruptive potential of dance was felt, and feared, more widely.

Could dance ever be rehabilitated? David famously danced for joy in the Old Testament, while Jesus criticized those who would not dance or cry.Footnote ¹⁷⁷ Scattered references to liturgical dance in early Christian literature show a range of views and practices, as we would expect. While linked with heretical traditions in heresiological texts, it would be more accurate to see dancing as associated with certain local traditions.Footnote ¹⁷⁸ Even in late antiquity a more positive concept of dance as an offering to God and to the saints can occasionally be found: Giselle de Nie points to two unusually positive references to dancing in texts from late antique Gaul. Although we have already seen Gregory of Tours associating saltantes with a supposed pagan cult, he was nonetheless happy to imagine saints engaged in a joyful tripudium in heaven in his account of the miracles of St Julian. The anonymous preacher of a sixth-century sermon on Martin of Tours also imagines the church across the world engaging in an exultant tripudium.Footnote ¹⁷⁹ Even in the Western ecclesiastical tradition, dance could be seen as a positive offering, if in a safely spiritualized, metaphorical version – but clerics remained highly suspicious of real-life liturgical dancing.Footnote ¹⁸⁰

Liturgical singing was a different matter and was viewed much more positively. Evidence of singing as part of the Christian liturgy goes back to the New Testament,Footnote ¹⁸¹ while Pliny the Younger famously refers to hymn singing in early second-century Bithynia.Footnote ¹⁸² Early Christian ritual was hereby in line with wider Mediterranean religious practice. As with other aspects of early Christian practice, the form of liturgical singing itself was far from uniform, but the works of Ambrose would be foundational in the late antique and early medieval west. Ambrose’s use of massed antiphonal singing to mobilize his congregation in the ‘Basilica crisis’ in Milan in 386 is rightly famous.Footnote ¹⁸³ Ambrose was very much aware of the potential affective power of liturgical singing; he alludes to it in a letter, writing that his enemies in the imperial court had accused him of using his songs almost as magical charms, playing on the double meaning of carmen.Footnote ¹⁸⁴ He made adept use of the form of the hymn to translate theological concepts and thereby his own doctrinal teaching.Footnote ¹⁸⁵ As we have already seen, Augustine, famously a witness and admirer of Ambrose’s use of music,Footnote ¹⁸⁶ made use of song as an ideological weapon himself with his (in)famous ‘Psalm against the Donatists’.Footnote ¹⁸⁷

This abecedarian ‘Psalm’ consists of twenty twelve-line stanzas, each starting with a different letter of the alphabet, as well as a thirty-line epilogue, with a recurring antiphonal refrain, presumably to be sung by the whole congregation: Omnes qui gaudetis de pace, modo verum judicate. The composition is strikingly unclassical and has often been derided as ‘doggerel’.Footnote ¹⁸⁸ It relies on rhythmical stress rather than metre, and rhymes, each line ending with -e or -ae. Brent Shaw has described the Psalm as ‘the Western world’s first known pop song, although given its epic length (Vincent Hunink estimates it would take c. 35 minutes to perform!), one might wonder how often it was actually performed.Footnote ¹⁸⁹ Augustine’s composition is, nonetheless, a clear example of the way in which the church could harness the ‘democratization of culture’ to pursue ideological ends.Footnote ¹⁹⁰

The use of singing in church, apart from its affective and doctrinal aspects, could also have more mundane benefits, although no less important from the pastoral point of view. Ambrose himself gave a straightforward account of the benefits of the introduction of congregational singing:

Ambrose here refers to the unifying quality of congregational singing (in which women, as well as men, were permitted to join in) – however, first of all he refers to the use of this singing in bringing about silence in church. Singing was an important mechanism for regulating behaviour in church, a major concern of Caesarius, as we have seen. The bishop of Arles would indeed follow along the same path.

Caesarius, as far as we know, did not compose his own songs for his congregation; however, the Vita recounts his long struggle to get the congregation at Arles to chant psalms during the liturgy, a project also referred to in his own preaching.Footnote ¹⁹² This use of song was part of his broader campaign to reform popular behaviour. As recounted in the Vita: ‘Additionally, he ordered the laity to learn psalms and hymns, and to sing sequences and antiphons in a loud and rhythmic voice like the clergy, some in Greek, others in Latin. He did this so that they would not have time to be occupied with gossip in church.’Footnote ¹⁹³

As discussed in Chapter 2, the detail that the psalms were sung in both Greek and Latin is intriguing, and can be seen as evidence for a congregation that included Greek speakers, most likely as members of the urban non-elite. The chanting of psalms is presented as a pious alternative to the insubordinate behaviour, chatter and gossip the bishop decried: that is, it was clearly a method for the inculcation of correct, Christian behaviour. We have already looked at Caesarius’ attempts to instil the correct bodily hexis, the correct bodily ideology, including ‘respectable’ posture, and what the aristocratic bishop considered due deference. We saw how talking in church, particularly by women, was a frequent topic of concern for the bishop, and so this is the context in which we are to understand his joy when he finally succeeded in getting his flock to chant the psalms in church. The idea was that the act of singing would, in due course, inculcate the correct Christian behaviour, as chanting the words of the psalms would help to beget holy thoughts. Nonetheless, the ever-vigilant Caesarius warned his congregation that their lifestyle needed to accord with the holy words of the psalms: singing in itself was not enough.Footnote ¹⁹⁴

Caesarius was not just concerned about behaviour within the walls of the church: he also wanted his congregation to take their new Christian praxes outside the church. He wanted his congregation to replace their singing of dirty songs with the memorization of the psalms while at home. This takes us to a pastoral strategy which was to offer, where possible, adaptation or substitution rather than prohibition alone. While actual dancing was seen as irredeemable, inappropriate songs and dubious speech could be replaced with reading, reciting and authorized singing.Footnote ¹⁹⁵ However, even substitution was not always successful, nor was clerical success inevitable: here some later anecdotes are suggestive. In the early eleventh century, Bernard of Angers wrote that he was at first shocked to learn that the monks of Ste. Foy at Conques allowed the local peasants to keep their vigils at the saint’s shrine, singing cantilenis rusticis. He explains that the monks had decided this tolerance was the best way to keep the crowds coming and declares himself to have eventually been persuaded of this point of view – allowing the dodgy songs to continue was the best strategy for dealing with such simple folk.Footnote ¹⁹⁶ Somewhat closer in time to Caesarius, Venantius Fortunatus’ Life of Radegund includes an anecdote that features local musicians, singing and playing cithars, this time adapting sacred songs in a rather more worldly direction.Footnote ¹⁹⁷ However seriously we take such a tale, it reminds us again that cultural interactions and adaptations could work in various directions. Popular culture was at times adapted, appropriated and indeed interpellated by elites and institutions.

In this chapter I have explored a model of popular culture, associated with scurrilitas and disreputable bodily movement, that is very much an ideological construction, built from the not always congruent currents of traditional elite and contemporary ascetic thought. However, that is not to say that it bears no resemblance at all to real-life behaviour and indeed ongoing social and cultural change. While traditional locations for large-scale entertainment had increasingly disappeared, alternative, less formal performance and participation could take their place.Footnote ¹⁹⁸ As we saw, Valerian of Cimiez worried that members of his own congregation had themselves become performers, to the detriment of their spiritual standing. ‘Do-it-yourself’ entertainment was also clearly not limited to urban settings, as we shall see most clearly in Chapter 6, where we will look at the social and economic meanings of festive performance.

Conclusions

In this chapter I have looked at the ways in which clerical discourse in southern Gaul, in particular the sermons of Caesarius of Arles, both constructed and contested popular culture. Popular culture was stigmatized through the use of several different, but complementary, discursive strategies. It was associated with rusticitas, with lower-class peasants. Popular culture was also associated with scurrilitas, as unauthorized and as inherently disreputable or infamis. It was associated with femininity and with improper gender roles. Finally, it was associated with the profane, the ‘pagan’ and the ‘superstitious’. At the same time, through the use of would-be authoritative discourse, the bishop embarked upon his own programme of cultural communication (which we have looked at in terms of a model of ‘democratization of culture’) and substitution. I have argued further that complaints about rustic behaviour, as well as being targeted at social elites, can also be related to the behaviour of real-life members of the non-elite, who had new access to consumer goods in the countryside of late antique southern Gaul, a development unwelcome to an aristocratic bishop.

It is important not to let Caesarius have the last word. Firstly, this ecclesiastical discourse was not as widely, let alone as successfully, diffused as Caesarius would have wished. Secondly, the highly ideological discourse of Caesarius provides just one part of the dialectic in which popular culture was constructed. Having spent this chapter building up a picture that gives the view ‘from the pulpit’, as it were, the next chapter will take a different approach to looking at the activities of the people of late antique southern Gaul. In what follows, I shall attempt to contextualize the behaviours of the laity as part of an analysis that seeks to understand late antique popular culture in its own context, in its own terms: not just those of bishops.