Oxford University Press Christianization and Commonwealth in Early Medieval Europe: A Ritual Interpretation

Christianization and Commonwealth in Early Medieval Europe re-examines the alterations in Western European life that followed widespread conversion to Christianity-the phenomena traditionally termed "Christianization". It refocuses scholarly paradigms for Christianization around the development of mandatory rituals. One prominent ritual, Rogationtide supplies an ideal case study demonstrating a new paradigm of "Christianization without religion." Christianization in the Middle Ages was not a slow process through which a Christian system of religious beliefs and practices replaced an earlier pagan system. In the Middle Ages, religion did not exist in the sense of a fixed system of belief bounded off from other spheres of life. Rather, Christianization was primarily ritual performance. Being a Christian meant joining a local church community. After the fall of Rome, mandatory rituals such as Rogationtide arose to separate a Christian commonwealth from the pagans, heretics, and Jews outside it. A Latin West between the polis and the parish had its own institution-the Rogation procession-for organizing local communities. For medieval people, sectarian borders were often flexible and rituals served to demarcate these borders. Rogationtide is an ideal case study of this demarcation, because it was an emotionally powerful feast, which combined pageantry with doctrinal instruction, community formation, social ranking, devotional exercises, and bodily mortification. As a result, rival groups quarrelled over the holiday's meaning and procedure, sometimes violently, in order to reshape the local order and ban people and practices as non-Christian. Review Ristuccia has written an excellent book that presents a thoughtful contribution to the field. This is an intriguing analysis of Rogationtide and the changing meanings and use of this feast in the early medieval period and beyons. It is highly recommended. ― Caitlin Corning, Fides et Historia Ristuccia's book gives us much to consider. His laudable efforts have reconstructed the feast from disparate and often difficult sources, whose interpretation requires great care and invention. Moreover, the book's theological emphasis and its reframing of early medieval Christianity place it within a growing body of scholarship that enriches our understanding of the early medieval world, while also revealing the ideological and hierarchical forces that shaped the lives of early medieval Christians. ― Matthew Bryan Gillis, Reading Religion About the Author Nathan J. Ristuccia is a historian specializing on the history of ancient and medieval Christianity. He received his doctorate in Medieval Studies from the University of Notre Dame. After working for several years as a Collegiate Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago, he now teaches Latin at Rockbridge Academy.