Marked Bodies: Skin as a Communicative Entity in Late Antique Hagiography. (original) (raw)

This article analyses the communicative function of the skin. Taking late antique Christian hagiographic texts as a point of departure, the aim is to illustrate the creation of speech codes in Christian communities in the Sassanid Empire and their expression in the hagiographic literature. It focuses on the presence or absence of marks on the skin and, by analysing these references and comparing them, the paper examines how Christian communities in late antiquity constructed systems of meaning around the skin and used them to articulate their religious identity in relation to other religious communities. The Speech Codes Theory developed by Greg Philipsen is of relevance here, helping to elucidate how Christian communities in the Sassanid Empire, embedded in an agonistic socio-cultural, political, legal, and religious context where Zoroastrianism occupied the hegemonic spheres, developed a constellation of specific meanings around the skin that enabled a continuous process of creating, negotiating and defining a message of religious affiliation.