Ritual Boundaries

In Ritual Boundaries, Joseph E. Sanzo transforms our understanding of how early Christians experienced religion in lived practice through the study of magical objects, such as amulets and grimoires. Against the prevailing view of late antiquity as a time when only so-called elites were interested in religious and ritual differentiation, the evidence presented here reveals that the desire to distinguish between religious and ritual insiders and outsiders cut across diverse social strata. Sanzo’s examination of the magical also offers unique insight into early biblical reception, exposing a textual world in which scriptural reading was multisensory and multitraditional. As they addressed sickness, demonic struggle, and interpersonal conflicts, Mediterranean people thus acted in ways that challenge our conceptual boundaries between Christians and non-Christians; elites and non-elites; and words, materials, and images. Sanzo helps us rethink how early Christians imagined similarity and difference among texts, traditions, groups, and rituals as they went about their daily lives.

“Joseph Sanzo refutes the current view of Christians living amicably alongside their non-Christian neighbors, forcing us to completely rethink how we approach religion in late antiquity. A truly revolutionary book!” — JAN N. BREMMER, author of Maidens, Magic and Martyrs in Early Christianity

“Ritual Boundaries is a deeply stimulating work and a poignant exercise in the reading of objects. This book takes up familiar words and images and reveals the remarkable—and surprising—lives ‘lived’ in ancient Egyptian Christian practice.” — DYLAN M. BURNS, author of Apocalypse of the Alien God: Platonism and the Exile of Sethian Gnosticism

JOSEPH E. SANZO is Associate Professor of History of Religions at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice and author of Scriptural Incipits on Amulets from Late Antique Egypt: Text, Typology, and Theory.