Hymns in 4th century Religious Clashes in Constantinople and elsewhere: Shared Cultural Patterns or Unifying Discourse? (original) (raw)

Hymns in 4th century Religious Clashes in Constantinople and elsewhere: Shared Cultural Patterns or Unifying Discourse?

Different doctrinal parties are reported by the early church historians (Socrates, Sozomen and Theodoret) to be involved in episodes of urban confrontation in course of the so-called “Arian controversy” in the 4th century AD. E.g. Socrates says that choirs of “Arians” rallied Constantinopolitan streets singing hymns to challenge the Nicene partisans (HE 6.6-7). A similar pattern of use of doxological texts to express partisan unity of the “orthodox” is followed in Alexandria in early 350-ies, according to Theodoret (HE 3.17). These accounts of use of hymnic texts to form the militant doctrinal identity of the Nicene and non-Nicene parties can be interpreted as evidence for a peculiar cultural pattern of urban religious clashes (at times violent) shared by communities across the empire, from Constantinople the provinces. This approach to textual evidence of the early hymnic practices has generally been privileged in the scholarship. However, such stance seems to neglect the problem of literary topoi used in the presentation of the “Arian” clashes. Arguably, the early church historians were exposed to the anti-Arian heresiological discourse already in place from mid-4th c. on, and many of their accounts can be shown to have been influenced by this discourse, including those of using hymns in urban clashes. In this case, the identification of this universal cultural pattern surfacing across empire becomes problematic. A case can be made for a unifying “orthodox” discourse expressed in the early church historians rather than a unified cultural practice. In disentangling the effects of the heresiological discourse on the early accounts of hymns in public clashes, we can to approach one aspect of the cultural unity or difference between the 4th century Constantinople and other urban centres.