One of the most striking features of the history of early Christianity is the rapid growth of a firm distinction, already well under way by the second century, between its priestly class, ranked in clerical orders, and its people or ‘laity’. In the centuries to follow, a growing esteem for special members of the laity such as martyrs and, later, ascetics, consecrated religious and professed widows, led to the creation of a further distinction between the ordinary laity, the vast majority of the Christian population, and the extraordinary laity, small in numbers but high in status. The result can be seen in Isidore of Seville (Etym. 7.11–14), who divided members of the post-apostolic church into martyrs (11), clergy (12), monks (13) and ‘the rest of the faithful’ (14). It is in this last chapter that Isidore defines the word ‘lay’: ‘Laicus popularis. Λαός enim Graece populus dicitur’ (Etym. 7.14.9) (paraphrasing Eucherius, bishop of Lyon, Instructiones 2, line 447 [CCSL 66: 214]).
Difficult to study for a variety of reasons, the laity and lay Christianity have recently been the subject of increased attention within the fields of patristics, early Christian studies and medieval history. In this book B. focuses on the laity in Gaul (Roman and Merovingian) between 400 and 700. She is interested both in definitions of the laity, evident in the words and actions of clerics and non-clerics alike, and in the Christianity that lay people practised. Because they constituted so high a proportion of the population, B.’s description of their religious practice at times resembles a survey of lived Christianity itself in Gaul, despite not quite taking on this ambition.
The book is divided into an introduction and six chapters, with a brief conclusion. It features extensive endnotes and a bibliography that includes primary sources and much, but not all, of the most frequently cited secondary literature. In addition to surveying the main sources of evidence (pp. 8–18) and summarising the chapters (pp. 18–19), the introduction outlines the problems of definition that the concept of a laity raises (pp. 1–6) and argues against a set of assumptions about lay Christianity that B. terms ‘the negative trajectory’ (pp. 6–7). This is the view that ‘the laity, like the Roman Empire, are always declining’ (p. 7). What B. maintains instead is that lay Christianity in late-antique Gaul was marked not so much by a ‘unidirectional’ trend towards greater clerical control, as by widespread lay agency and diversity of practice and belief. The chapters that follow are meant to illustrate this view with a series of case studies rather than a comprehensive survey (p. 18). That they largely do so is a measure of the book's success.
Problems of definition are the main concern of Chapter 1, ‘Laity, Clergy and Ascetics’. Ascetics complicated the neat division between clergy and laity that some normative texts wanted to maintain by drawing attention not to the powers conferred by ordination (little mentioned in the sources, according to B., p. 22), but rather to the status that could be earned by rejection of the world. This helped to define lay men and women, by contrast, as people of the world – saeculares – a label that could lead to lower expectations of their capacity for a Christian life. Because the minor clergy (readers, door-keepers, acolytes, exorcists) lived a life closer to the world (in marriage, for instance), they too complicate the picture, as do, on the other side of the equation, lay people still in the world who also served the church (pp. 44ff.). B. illustrates these complications with well-chosen examples, especially from Gregory of Tours, whose writings illuminate many aspects of ordinary life in late-antique Gaul.
Chapter 2, ‘Environments’, discusses ‘clerical intentions’ and the lay uses of sacred space (churches, chapels, oratories, tombs) and sacred objects, including those used publicly (liturgical vessels) and privately (amulets, relics). This is potentially an enormous topic, the subject of commentary in sermons (especially those of Caesarius of Arles), hagiographical writings and church councils, not to mention a growing body of archaeological evidence. B. maintains control over the subject by keeping her eye on problems of clerical control and lay agency as she surveys the materiality and spatiality of religious practice.
Chapter 3, ‘Urban Case-Studies’, aims to illustrate the regional diversity of lay Christianity by examining the religious topography of four relatively well-documented cities: Arles, Lyon, Trier and Tours. Citing S. Esmonde Cleary's observation that ‘Roman cities were machines for producing Roman citizens’, B. asks ‘how these very different cities worked to create different kinds of religious citizens’ (p. 75). Her answer at the most basic level is that they presented ‘multiple religious foci’ that increased opportunities for lay piety and reduced the degree of clerical control (pp. 100–1). At the same time she shows how scholars of urban Christianity in Gaul have gone about their work, especially contributors to the project and series Topographie chrétienne des cités de la Gaule (1986–2014). Unfortunately, the project's final, two-part volume, published late in 2014, does not seem to have appeared in time for its updates, summaries and corrections to be incorporated into this book. But B.’s account takes a good deal of recent research into account, and although some details may now need revision, the main lines of her argument are not affected.
In the two chapters that follow, B. explores the dimensions of lay piety, with Chapter 4 focusing on formal religious ceremonies, ‘Rituals’, and Chapter 5 on the actions of everyday life, ‘Behaviours’. Here, she takes the opportunity to show that despite clerical control over the Eucharist, processions, Rogations and other rituals, and sustained clerical attempts to prescribe behaviour, especially through sermons, lay Christians found ways to act on their own. Examples of lay agency include reserving the Eucharist for private administration later (p. 110) and celebrating the Lord's day in ways that clerics found either too lax or, perhaps not as surprising as it might seem, too strict (pp. 130–2). The charity practised by lay Christians is exemplified at several points. A vivid example is the long-lived merchant Agapus of Lyon (pp. 91, 117–18, 126), whose metrical epitaph of the year 601 (CLE 1621) uses a metaphor from maritime trade to describe his care for the poor (nam fuit iste stacio miseris et portus eginis) (A.-C. Le Mer, C. Chomer et al., Lyon: Carte archéologique de la Gaule 69/2 [2007], p. 659, no. 15).
The final chapter, ‘Knowledge and Belief’, attempts to take seriously the theological content of lay Christianity in Gaul against the ‘condescension towards the intellectual interests and capabilities of “ordinary people”’ that B. observes in past scholarship (p. 140). Drawing on the sermon collections of Caesarius and the Eusebius Gallicanus preachers, she outlines what the clergy wanted lay people to know. This included biblical stories, Psalms, prayers and fundamental doctrines such as the incarnation, the nature of Christ and the afterlife. Dialogue, the exploration of doubt and theories of reciprocity between human and divine all served as mechanisms through which lay instruction was undertaken and demonstrated, even if the results did not always meet clerical expectations. The brief survey of epitaphs with which the chapter ends offers a glimpse into lay attitudes towards the afterlife, perhaps less difficult to document than other theological beliefs, but still an elusive element of religious experience.
Although it is not itself a study of lived Christianity in late Roman and Merovingian Gaul, the written and material evidence that B. analyses here offers many of the elements that such a study would include, with lay experience at its centre rather than its periphery. Her book can be recommended to any reader with an interest in the rich religious culture that flourished in the last phases and long aftermath of Roman imperial rule in Gaul.
