Introduction

In the ancient church, human bodies were contested commodities. Early Christian writers frequently wrangled over the ethical implications of dress and bodily adornment, and sought to regiment various forms of physical interaction and movement within their communities, from sexual contact to pilgrimage travel. Bodies—and how they were used—functioned as privileged markers of Christian identity, as valuable capital in the complex economies of Christian discourse and practice. Nowhere was this more the case than in discussions about Christ's body and its relation to his divinity. While such christological discussions took place throughout the Mediterranean world, in this article I have a keen interest in the ways in which the body of Christ was represented in Alexandria and Egypt from the fourth through the eighth century. Specifically, I want to explore late antique Coptic Christian understandings of the incarnation, and I propose to do so from a new theoretical perspective.

Traditional treatments of ancient christology have tended to focus on dogmatic and systematic questions, emphasizing primarily the conceptual categories employed in doctrinal disputes, while devoting proportionately little attention to the implications christology had for the various ways people “lived out” their faith. This artificial split between “thought” and “action” (or between “mind” and “body”) in the study of religion has been critiqued in the past fifteen years by the ritual theorist Catherine Bell (among others), who has pointed out the strategic function of ritual in shaping people's perceptions of the world and in configuring human bodies in relation to that perceived world.¹

As I will argue, Bell's concern with “ritualized bodies” finds special application in the study of Coptic christology, especially given its characteristic emphasis on 1) the divine Word's life-giving transformation (or deification) of Christ's human body in the incarnation, and 2) Christians' salvific participation in that divinized body (e.g., through their partaking of the Eucharist).

Here, I want to use theories of ritual practice—and of the ritually constructed body—in order to show how the Coptic theology of the incarnation may have been enacted or performed. My particular interest is in the way that ritualized activities—such as the wearing of special forms of dress—helped shape late antique Christians' perceptions of their bodies and their world. As a case study, I will examine Coptic tunics with scenes from the life of Christ, and raise questions about how Christians in Egypt ritually “put on” the incarnation. How did the wearing of such images reflect and promote Coptic understandings of Christ, and of the incarnation as a saving event? What might such dress tell us about the practices that helped produce particular kinds of “Christian” bodies in late antique Egypt? In order to answer such questions, I will first examine the surviving evidence for such tunics, and then discuss recent theories about their social function. Finally, I will interpret this material evidence in light of ancient Christian discourses that exhorted the faithful to clothe themselves with immortality, and in light of ancient Christian controversies over the use of clothing with pictorial images.

Coptic Textiles with Scenes from the Life of Christ: A Brief Survey of the Evidence

In studying extant collections of Coptic textiles, one is struck almost immediately by how relatively rare visual representations of Christ are. Even rarer still are examples of narrative scenes from the life of Christ (as opposed to non-narrative, stylized representations of Christ enthroned or of the Christ child seated on the lap of the Virgin).²

The collection of textiles in the Musée du Louvre in Paris serves as an illustrative data sample. Out of a total of 1440 pieces documented in Pierre du Bourguet's 1964 catalogue of Coptic textiles in the Louvre, one finds only three undisputed representations of Christ. Of these three, only one displays a narrative scene from the Gospels—an eighth-century linen band with a scene of the Nativity (fig. 1).³

Evidence from elsewhere tells a similar story. A limited number of ancient and medieval Egyptian textiles (or textile fragments) displaying scenes from the life of Christ has been documented in museum catalogues and collections found in Europe, North America, and Egypt. And, even in the case of such surviving examples, their fragmentary state of preservation often precludes researchers from reconstructing their original setting and function. As a result, it is sometimes difficult to determine whether any particular scrap of textile had a monumental or liturgical function (such as on a church hanging or an altar cloth), or whether it originally was part of a person's dress.

In order to illustrate problems and possibilities in the study of this material, let me focus initially on two particularly rich, documented collections: 1) the Coptic textiles in the Victoria and Albert Museum, catalogued by Kendrick in 1922, and 2) the Coptic textiles in the Staatliche Museen in Berlin, catalogued by Wulff and Volbach in 1926. Taken together, these two collections constitute a veritable treasure trove of data in comparison to the relatively meager evidence preserved in other museums.

The Victoria and Albert collection contains nine textile pieces decorated with identifiable scenes from the life of Christ: five embroidered fragments from ancient tunics, along with four dyed linen fabrics, probably the remnants of wall hangings. The seventh- or eighth-century embroidered fragments include four roundels (orbiculi) and one probable shoulder band with various Gospel images: the Annunciation (fig. 2), the Last Supper, Mary Magdalene's witness to the resurrection of Christ, and two scenes depicting the Adoration of the Magi.⁴

Among the dyed linen textiles (fifth- or sixth-century), one finds scenes of the Annunciation, Nativity, Christ's healings and miracles, and a possible depiction of Judas's betrayal.⁵

The vast collection in the Staatliche Museen, Berlin, includes eight embroidered fragments with scenes from the life of Christ. One piece of linen textile shows the flight of the Holy Family to Egypt stitched in wool. It dates to the sixth- or seventh-century, and was originally found near the Upper Egyptian town of Achmim.⁶

The other seven textile fragments—all dated to the same period, and all from Achmim—display variations on the Nativity of Christ and the Adoration of the Magi. The first six of these seven Nativity fragments may in fact have originally belonged to the same tunic: in addition to one scrap of material of unidentifiable type,⁷ one finds in this scattered group three embroidered roundels⁸ and two other long, thin strips of cloth (clavi) that often functioned as decorative borders on tunics and other pieces of material (fig. 3a–b).⁹ This hypothetical reconstruction of a tunic featuring a repeated gospel theme is supported by the seventh and last of the Berlin Nativity fragments, which is a more fully preserved example of the same type. Here, the biblical scenes appear on a pair of clavi still attached to the remains of a woolen Coptic tunic (fig. 4).¹⁰ Each of two clavi present a formulaic representation of the three Magi arrayed in a vertical row below the Virgin and Child. There are also traces of another mirroring row of three Magi above the Virgin and Child.

The popularity of the three Magi as a visual motif on textiles is attested not only in the case of these examples from Berlin, but also in the case of a remarkably well-preserved, seventh-century tunic in the British Museum on which one finds multiple images of the Adoration of the Magi.¹¹

The scene appears on each of the six large roundels that adorn the front, back, and shoulders of the tunic (fig. 5a–b).

The clavus strips, which extend down the torso in front and in back, have a series of panels on which the same scene is rendered “in abbreviated form.”¹²

These tunics with double-clavi from Berlin and London provide all-too-rare glimpses of christological images in their original configuration on pieces of clothing. Contemporary parallels are few and far between. In an exhibition volume of Weavings from Roman, Byzantine, and Islamic Egypt in the Krannert Art Museum at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Eunice Dauterman Maguire documented one example of a child's tunic with Christian imagery, including a roundel with a scene of the Annunciation.¹³

However, the rest of the iconography on the garment remains enigmatic: it has not yet been possible to identify the figures on the two clavi with any certainty.

For a better basis of comparison, one may turn to a seventh- or eighth-century tunic in the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago with scenes from the life of Christ (fig. 6).¹⁴

Despite its more fragmentary condition and the enigmatic character of some of the images, there is enough preserved (as in the case of the Berlin and London examples) to reconstruct something of the garment's more varied “iconographic program.” The remains of the tattered linen tunic include a central section that would have covered much of the torso and part of the right shoulder of the wearer. Two clavi with hanging pendants decorate its front (fig. 7). One clavus is fully preserved, and displays a series of scenes from the Gospels. From top to bottom these scenes are the Visitation of Mary to Elizabeth, the Baptism of Christ, the Nativity, an unidentified standing figure, a bust of Christ with halo, and (on the hanging pendant) two unidentified figures without haloes. Only the lower half of the other clavus remains intact, and the surviving scenes are considerably more enigmatic: two unidentified standing figures, a possible representation of the Virgin Theotokos, and on the hanging pendant a male bust that resembles the figure of John the Baptist on the other clavus.

In addition to the clavi, five roundels belonging to this same tunic are extant. One roundel occupies the shoulder area of the main fragment, but is badly damaged; another mirrors the first in its iconography, which displays three as-yet-unidentified figures. While it is now detached from its linen host fabric, its original placement may have been on the other shoulder of the tunic. The three lower roundels bear scenes of the Nativity with only slight variations in color scheme. In each, the Christ child is flanked by two figures, presumably Mary and Joseph (fig. 8).

The final surviving pieces of this artifact are the remains of the sleeve bands, now detached from the main portion of the tunic. Even though the right band is virtually complete, its iconography is again somewhat enigmatic (fig. 9). In the middle of the panel, one observes a familiar scene of Christ's baptism. Less easy to identify are two figures standing on either side of this central image: on the right, a man—probably Christ himself—adorned with a cruciform nimbus; on the left, a haloed woman dressed in blue. They face each other, and the male figure gestures to the woman with his left hand upraised. What we have here is probably a scene of Christ's encounter with the Samaritan woman (John 4:1–42), or alternatively one of the healing scenes from the Gospels. Finally, at the far left and right of this full sleeve band are two woven images that show solitary figures approaching the Virgin Mary with some sort of offering while she sits on a chair or couch with the infant Christ in her lap. A similar scene is rendered on the fragmentary remains of the other sleeve band (fig. 10). While there are problematic elements in these parallel scenes that still require explanation (in particular a disembodied head in the scene on the right!), these images are probably still best explained as replications of the Adoration of the Three Magi in abbreviated form (where one Magus in each scene stands for the full company).¹⁵

The Social Function of Images Worn on the Body:

and

This brief (and by no means complete) survey of textiles featuring scenes from the Gospels prompts questions about the social function of such images and the garments on which they appear. Were gospel-decorated tunics worn by priests as liturgical vestments? Probably not—while liturgical vestments with Christian scenes are in evidence from the later Byzantine period, there is no indication in late antique sources of such usage.¹⁶

The question then remains: who wore this kind of clothing, and for what purpose? How were tunics with images from the life of Christ perceived by ancient viewers, and by their wearers?

Articles by Gary Vikan and Henry Maguire (both written in 1990) help us begin to address these questions. In studying pilgrimage art embossed on pewter flasks (ampullae) from around the year 600 C.E., Gary Vikan observes how pilgrim supplicants to the holy places were frequently portrayed in the guise of the Magi, with “bushy beards and flowing hair” and “exotic clothing” such as pantaloons and Phrygian caps.¹⁷

In addition, Vikan notes the striking prominence of Magi themes on other pilgrimage paraphernalia. For example, on a series of earthen pilgrimage tokens with biblical scenes constituting “a nearly complete Christological cycle” (including the Annunciation, the Nativity, the Adoration of the Magi, the Miracle at Cana, the Transfiguration, the Entry into Jerusalem, the Crucifixion, and the Women at the Tomb), the Magi appear on nearly forty percent of the tokens, more than twice as often as any of the other scenes.¹⁸ Similarly disproportionate attention is shown the Magi on pilgrimage jewelry like fibulae and pendants.¹⁹ Why did the Magi garner such attention in ancient pilgrimage art? Why did early Christian artists and artisans portray their pilgrim contemporaries as latter-day Magi? For Vikan, the answer lies primarily in the mimetic ethos of late antique pilgrimage practice. The Magi who traveled from afar to visit the Christ child were seen as models for imitation by early Christian pilgrims who journeyed to the Holy Land (and, by extension, to other sacred sites): “As foreign travelers and bearers of votive gifts, pilgrims in effect became Magi and the goal of their pilgrimage—whether holy site or holy man—became Christ.”²⁰

What are the implications of Vikan's work for reconstructing the social function of Coptic tunics bearing images from the Gospels? In my brief survey of documented textile remains in London, Berlin, and Chicago, I made note of the formulaic ways that Magi scenes were recycled on Egyptian clothing—sometimes interspersed with other gospel images, sometimes as the dominant iconographic motif. Could it be that such clothing was designed with pilgrimage practice in mind, as a way that Christian pilgrims visually assimilated themselves to their famous biblical predecessors? It is not inconceivable that this was one way that such garments were put to use. In this context, it is also noteworthy that one of the textile fragments from Berlin bears images of the Holy Family's flight to Egypt (fig. 11).²¹

Another example appears in the Coptic Museum in Cairo, “an ornament of a tunic in the shape of a square” that renders the flight of the Holy Family to Egypt in wool (fig. 12).²² These fragments date between the fifth and the seventh century, the period during which pilgrimage to Holy Family sites in Egypt began to burgeon in Middle and Upper Egypt.²³ In visiting such sites (or in visiting the Holy Land proper), is it possible that some pilgrims may have donned special attire—attire that visually reflected their self-perception as persons imitating biblical models?

In evaluating ampullae, tokens, and jewelry as artifacts of early Christian pilgrimage, Vikan goes on to recognize their common function as objects “made to be worn or carried as amulets,” and argues that the representation of the divinely-guided Magi on these objects would have conveyed to their wearers a sense of “sympathetic magic” and divine protection.²⁴

H. Maguire, in his article, “Garments Pleasing to God,” published the same year, argues that clothing with Christian imagery would have had a similar apotropaic function. He writes, “The Christian narratives on household textiles were not directed at readers or church-goers in order to engage or instruct. Rather, they were directed at an unseen audience, being intended to invoke the aid of the holy powers and to block the strength of supernatural malice.”²⁵ In arguing for this specific social function of domestic textile designs, H. Maguire notes several features of those designs that approximate the structure of ancient magic charms—in particular, the selectivity, repetition, and compression (or abbreviation) of gospel scenes. Indeed, the depiction of Christ's miraculous acts of healing on Coptic tunics (seen also on pieces preserved at the National Museum in Copenhagen and the British Museum in London)²⁶ may very well have been understood to protect the wearer from disease or sickness.

The protective function of such garments would also surely have informed their use in burial settings. Almost all the tunics extant today were originally recovered from Egyptian graves. In some cases, the deceased were dressed in clothing that had seen previous use in life (as evidenced by the wear of fibers); in other instances, however, the deceased were dressed in tunics that were made—or specially altered—for the burial rite itself. In the case of the child's tunic mentioned above, E. D. Maguire has noted that “the unmatched length of the clavi, and their mounting in such a way as to hide their worn condition as much as possible, indicate that they were sewn onto the garment either before or after the child's death, in the hope of heavenly protection.”

²⁷

The common inclusion of amulets in ancient Egyptian burials²⁸

was tied to this cultural concern to preserve the deceased from baleful or malevolent influence. This practice continued into the early Coptic period among the Christianized population in Egypt, despite the often-virulent opposition of church leaders.²⁹

One piece of evidence for this is a fourth-century papyrus codex that includes a set of instructions said to be given by Jesus to his disciples concerning the use of a stone amulet (

) designed to protect them on their journey to heaven after death.

³⁰

Were tunics with scenes from the life of Christ, when used in funerary settings, similarly designed to ward off ill fortune and garner divine favor in a person's passage to the afterlife?

The studies by Vikan and H. Maguire prove extraordinarily valuable in helping us begin to imagine the ways that Coptic textiles may have been used in everyday life, and how those uses correlate with particular religious views and practices in late antiquity. Of course, the social functions that they highlight would not have been mutually exclusive. For example, tunics with Christian imagery may have been perceived as having both mimetic and apotropaic functions for the wearer in the context of specific practices like pilgrimage and even burial, where the deceased was often conceived of as embarking on a journey to the heavenly Jerusalem.³¹

Scenes of the three Magi embroidered on the burial tunic may have been seen as emblematic of that journey, and as having the added benefit of warding off evil spirits that potentially threatened to disrupt one's passage into the next life.

However, despite the insights we can draw from Vikan and H. Maguire, I believe it may be possible to say something more about the significance of such christological images woven into the fabric of Coptic dress, and thereby to set the mimetic and apotropaic functions of these images within the larger context of Coptic theology and ritual practice. I want to allow the two questions I raised in my introduction to guide my reflections during the rest of this article. First, how did the wearing of such images reflect and promote Egyptian understandings of Christ and, more specifically, of the incarnation as a saving event? Here I want to situate this christological iconography in the context of traditional Egyptian doctrines of the incarnation and

, the “divinization” of human beings through “participation” in Christ's incarnation. Second, what might such dress tell us about the ways in which Egyptian christological conceptions were ritually enacted—about the practices that helped produce particular kinds of “Christian” bodies? In pursuing this second question, I intend to draw on insights from ritual and performance theory to try to get a better sense of how Coptic Christians in late antiquity, through the donning of what I would identify as ritualized dress, “performed” bodies that participated “iconically” in the divinized body of the incarnate Word.

Putting on Christ: The Art of Dressing Divinely

My interest in turning my discussion toward Coptic theological understandings of the incarnation is not a gratuitous one. It is based not only on the thematic character of the images themselves, but also on ancient testimony about the wearing of clothing embroidered with scenes from the life of Christ, and about the controversies such clothing engendered.

One source of support for the christological function of fabrics embroidered with biblical motifs is a fifth-century sermon from the Egyptian archimandrite, Shenoute of Atripe.

³²

The Coptic sermon, dubbed by its modern editor as a “catéchèse christologique,” dwells on the incarnation and the preexistence of Christ (“the birth of the Savior and his divinity”) in relation to Mary's role as Theotokos. What is interesting is that Shenoute uses embroidered images “on linen items” (

) as testimonies or proofs (

) of such doctrines.

³³

In fact, he relates to his listeners a conversation he recently had with some of his monastic brothers as they were inspecting textiles adorned with images of apostles, prophets, the Savior (

), and the “holy Mary Theotokos” (

), and actually describes how he used the embroidery as a didactic tool in identifying and correcting some of the monks' crypto-Nestorian christological errors.

³⁴

Another important ancient source attesting to this practice comes from a fourth-century homily by Asterius, bishop of Amaseia, a town located in northern Asia Minor (modern Turkey). In this sermon, Asterius speaks out strongly against those who dress themselves in clothes adorned with gospel-images, as well as those who produce them:

H. Maguire cites this passage in support of his argument that garments embroidered with gospel images were primarily worn by lay persons and that they had an apotropaic function in late antiquity. He focuses his attention especially on Asterius's claim that certain people considered themselves “to be religious and to be wearing clothes that are agreeable (or pleasing) to God.” Indeed, H. Maguire ends his quotation of Asterius with this phrase, and interprets it to mean that, by means of such clothing, certain early Christians were seeking to obtain divine “favor” or protection.³⁶

H. Maguire's reading of this phrase is prescient, but he misses out on a crucial aspect of Asterius's commentary by breaking off his quotation at this point. In what follows, Asterius goes on to forbid his listeners from depicting Christ on their clothing because, according to him, “that one act of humility, the incarnation,… is sufficient unto Him” (

). I would argue, here, that Asterius is not simply expressing a rote aniconic sentiment, but instead is giving us a subtle insight into one aspect of the theology espoused by those who engaged in such practices. Why does Asterius feel it necessary to say that Christ's incarnation was “sufficient” in and of itself? We know that the sufficiency, and indeed the very nature, of Christ's incarnation was a contested issue in the theological debates of the fourth and fifth centuries. Did Asterius's opponents on this issue perhaps see the incarnation not as an isolated and autonomous act, but rather as an act that called for (and indeed required) certain kinds of human participation and agency? Wearing clothes with images from the Gospels may have been one way that certain early Christians believed they were mimetically (and visually) assimilating themselves to Christ's incarnation.

The notion that Christians were called to assimilate themselves to Christ was, of course, not a new one. It had roots in the first-century writings of Apostle Paul, who often used the metaphor of dress to describe what this assimilation was supposed to look like. For Paul, baptism was a privileged ritual locus of identification with Christ, one in which disrobing and re-robing were constitutive gestures. Thus, in the baptismal formula of Gal 3:27, Paul writes, “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ.”³⁷

In Rom 13:14, he exhorts his readers in similar fashion to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ.”³⁸ In other later New Testament literature, this baptismal metaphor of dress was employed more explicitly to express the notion of human participation in the divine. Thus, the writer of the deutero-Pauline letter to the Colossians claims that the Colossian Christians “have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed (themselves) with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator” (3:9b–10).³⁹

These Pauline images took on a special resonance in late antique Alexandria and Egypt, especially in conjunction with the parallel notion (from 2 Pet 1:4) that Christians are enabled to become “participants in the divine nature.”

⁴⁰

The first Alexandrian Christian writer to connect these themes was Clement of Alexandria, who lived and wrote in the early third century. In his sprawling treatise entitled The Instructor (Paedagogus), Clement celebrates the fact that the Word has “remodeled the one born of earth into a holy and heavenly being.”⁴¹

Exhorting his readers to “meditat(e) on the heavenly way of life according to which we have been deified (

),” he describes how, with the help of the Word, we are to be “well-girded up” (

) in readiness for our journey toward “an eternity of well-being” (

).

⁴²

Later, in book two of the same work, in the midst of a stinging critique of people preoccupied with fashion and finery, Clement celebrates the fact that “those who attend at the court of heaven around the King of all, are sanctified in the pure garment of the soul, that is, the flesh, and in this way they so put on incorruptibility” (

).

⁴³

He then goes on to contrast the luxurious worldly garment (

) with “the pure vestment, woven of faith, of those who have been shown mercy” (

).

⁴⁴

This confluence of themes—becoming divine, putting on immortality—found significant development in the writings of Athanasius and Cyril, the two theologians who definitively shaped Alexandrian christology during the theological controversies of the fourth and fifth centuries. For both of these writers, the Christian's assimilation to Christ was conceived of as a form of deification or divinization (

). The logic went as follows. In taking on a human body, the divine Word enlivened—or deified—that body (the body of Christ), and, by extension, the Word likewise transformed and enlivened all of human nature, transforming it from the mortal to the immortal, from the corruptible to the incorruptible.

⁴⁵

Thus, Athanasius writes in his treatise On the Incarnation: “For (the Word) became human (

) in order that we might be made divine (

).”

⁴⁶

Here, Athanasius' words echo those of Clement of Alexandria in his Exhortation to the Greeks (Protrepticus): “The Word of God became a human being, so that you might learn from a human being how a human may become God.”⁴⁷

Elsewhere, in his second discourse Against the Arians, Athanasius elaborates on this idea:

In this particular way, soteriology and christology come together for Athanasius: as he describes it, the divine Word “has been made manifest to us in a human body for the sake of our salvation (

).”

⁴⁹

Cyril similarly describes the incarnation as being “for the salvation of us who are on the earth,”

⁵⁰

and as the means by which “we, having become partakers of the divine nature, shall ascend to life and incorruptibility” (

).

⁵¹

However, for him, it is the Eucharist that becomes a privileged locus for this human corporeal participation in the divine. By ingesting the eucharistic elements—viewed in a “real” sense as the body and blood of Christ—the Christian physically unites him- or herself with Christ's incorruptible (deified) body: “The Son comes to dwell in us corporeally as a human being, having become commingled and united (with us) through the mystery of the Eucharist.”⁵²

It is worth highlighting here the way in which Athanasius (and Cyril after him) often articulated this salvific transaction in unapologetically bodily terms, and (as in the case of Clement) used the image of clothing oneself with Christ as a metaphor to describe what participation in the divine might look like for human bodies. In his treatise On the Incarnation, Athanasius writes, “For being over all, the Word of God, … the incorruptible Son of God, being joined with all by means of a like nature, suitably clothed all with incorruption.”

⁵³

Later in the same work, Athanasius emphasizes the mimetic correspondence between the Word's life-giving act of “putting on” a body and our “putting on” immortality: “For this reason, the Savior suitably clothed himself in a body (i.e., ‘put on a body,’

), in order that the body, having been woven together with life (

), should no longer remain in death as a mortal thing, but instead, when it had clothed itself in immortality (

), should thenceforth rise again and remain immortal. For, once it had clothed itself with corruption (

), it would not have risen again unless it had clothed itself with life (

).”

⁵⁴

Finally, in his Festal Letters, Athanasius uses similar language to describe the human assimilation to the divine image. In particular, he urges his Egyptian readers to “put on our Lord Jesus” and to be “clothed with him” by enacting specific virtues.⁵⁵

Later, he goes on to interpret the parable of the prodigal son—especially, the father's act of clothing the prodigal in sumptuous garments upon his return home—as an extended metaphor for God's recreation of humankind “in the image of the glory of Christ.”⁵⁶

In comparison to Athanasius, Cyril's emphasis on the indivisible union of the human and divine in Christ, and his opposition to Nestorius's so-called two-nature christology, made him increasingly reticent about using metaphors of dress to describe the Word's union with the body in the incarnation. In his view, such language might suggest that this union of human and divine was merely superficial (and potentially reversible).

⁵⁷

For Cyril, it was necessary to emphasize that this union was, rather, thoroughgoing and permanent in effect. However, even while Cyril increasingly eschewed notions that the Word merely “put on” the body, he continued to use such language to describe human participation in the new divine reality inaugurated by the incarnation. A vivid example appears in his Commentary on John, where he observes that “those who through faith in Christ have been called to adoption as God's sons (

) have put off the poverty of their own nature; having been splendidly attired (

) with the grace of the one who honors (them), as if dressed in a radiant garment (

), they ascend to a status beyond nature.”

⁵⁸

How does the christological language of Athanasius and Cyril inform my study of Coptic tunics? The tunics that I have been examining in this paper raise the possibility that, in late antique Egypt, discourses of “putting on” Christ were not always restricted to the metaphorical realm. Indeed, I would like to suggest that the representation of gospel scenes on Coptic clothing helps us envision one way that Egyptian Christians enacted such discourses through ritualized dress.

Catherine Bell has defined “ritualization” as “a way of acting that is designed and orchestrated to distinguish and privilege what is being done in comparison to other, usually more quotidian, activities.” In other words, ritualization involves “specific strategies for setting some activities off from others, for creating and privileging a qualitative distinction between the ‘sacred’ and the ‘profane.’”⁵⁹

In the process, a “privileged contrast” is established in which a particular action (or set of actions) “differentiat[es] itself as more important or powerful.”⁶⁰ Ancient Coptic tunics with scenes from the life of Christ were a form of “ritualized dress” in that they marked the bodies of their wearers differently from bodies dressed in “everyday” wear. In the end, what was produced were “sacralized” bodies—bodies that visually identified themselves with the incarnation of the Word.

To borrow language from performance theory, such tunics became means by which christological realities were performed and im-personated.⁶¹

As Stanley Tambiah has observed, “cosmological constructs are embedded… in rites” and ritualized gestures “in turn enact and incarnate cosmological conceptions.”⁶² Here, the visual marking of clothing may be seen as a way of “playing” with one's bodily condition as a means of “realizing” a particular kind of ritualized body.⁶³ Fashion becomes a way of fashioning self⁶⁴—in this case, a self “imaged” by the life of Christ.

Ritual theorists have long recognized the transformative character of ritual activity. For example, Victor Turner, in commenting on the reflexivity of ritual performance, writes that such performance involves “acting upon the self-made-other in such a way as to transform it.”⁶⁵

Ritual practice becomes a means of “actualizing” a new social or ontological status for the participant, of “carry[ing] participants across limens, [and] transforming them into different persons.”⁶⁶ As in the theater, clothing (or costume) plays a key part in such transformations: what one wears is designed “to ‘make believe’ in the literal sense—to help the performer make her/himself into another person or being… and to manifest this presence here and now.”⁶⁷ In the fragments of these Egyptian tunics from late antiquity, is it possible that we are seeing traces of the ways that devout Copts ritually enacted—performed, if you will—a divinized body, a body visually transformed from corruptibility to incorruptibility by the incarnation of the Word?

Contested Bodies: Reconstructing a Late Antique Controversy over Clothing

Let me return briefly to the text from Asterius of Amaseia and his objections to the wearing of “christological” garb. We know from Asterius that the wearing of clothes adorned with images of Christ was a contested practice in the early church (at least in some places). What was at the root of such controversy? One detail from Asterius's homily may give us a clue. He identifies “rich men and women” in the church as the ones who were commissioning and wearing clothing embellished with scenes from the Gospels.⁶⁸

This makes sense economically (such clothing would have been an expensive commodity), and it also helps explain the relative scarcity of such gospel scenes among surviving textiles in relation to other more common decorative motifs. Price was one factor that would have contributed to the “ritualized” character of such clothing—that is, to the ways that the images embroidered on the cloth marked such clothing as having a differentiated status in comparison to more generic, “unmarked” dress.

However, Asterius's identification of the wearers as “rich men and women” also may explain something about how his theological objections were intimately intertwined with concerns about social and ecclesiastical authority. There is evidence from various locales in the early church that bishops and influential laypersons (or aristocratic families) continued to vie over patronage claims and the exercise of authority. The cult of the martyrs was one well-known locus for such conflict.⁶⁹

Asterius's objections to what “rich men and women” were wearing may reflect a similar dispute, one that likewise involved the adjudication of ritual practices and of access to spiritual power. The issue at stake was one of ritual agency. Victor Turner notes that, within communal contexts of ritual activity, participants are “subdivided as to allocate to some the roles of agents of transformation and to others those of persons undergoing transformation.”⁷⁰ However, given the reflexivity of ritual practice, a participant can sometimes simultaneously fulfill both of these roles—as agent of transformation and as person undergoing transformation. Asterius's objection seems to have been that those wearing images of the incarnation were somehow usurping Christ's proper role as the agent of transformation: they thought their clothes would please (and perhaps appease) God. His concern seems to have been to safeguard the agency of Christ in the incarnation, and perhaps to privilege the bishop as the mediating ritual agent for such processes of transformation. In the process, he was also effectively seeking to delimit or restrict the contexts in which lay bodies could be ritualized (and thereby transformed). This strategy would have cohered with contemporaneous efforts by other fourth- and fifth-century church leaders to mark the sacraments administered by authorized priests—especially baptism and the Eucharist—as privileged contexts for the ritualized transformation of lay bodies.