Lisa Bailey

This article uses the sermons in the anonymous collection known as the Eusebius Gallicanus to explore the ways in which preachers in fifth-century Gaul tried to build urban Christian communities, focusing particularly on the subset of sermons which deal with local saints. In these sermons preachers adapt a tradition of Christian language and thought to the specific circumstances they faced. They seize the opportunity provided by their subject matter to evoke a vision which is urban, localized, and which stands in contrast to more 'universal' conceptions of Christian community. Indeed it is a great thing, to offer our prayers in public and general celebrations, but a certain kind of festival should be judged even more excellent: to rejoice in local virtues. And therefore just as the cult of our native martyrs and the honour of our special patrons give their own particular joy, so they demand their own special devotion _ so that just as we are related to them by right of birth, because we sat on the lap of the one parent, so we lay claim for ourselves, in respect to them, upon the special right of piety and of grace, and we should approach them first with the devotion of faith, so that we shall deserve to have in heaven a civic fellowship with those whose fellow citizens we rejoice to be on earth. 1 In early medieval Christianity, local and universal articulations of identity and community co-existed. The church was both a particular congregation and the worldwide community of the faithful. Christians envisaged 1 'Magnum quidem est: publicis atque communibus dare uota sollemnitatibus; sed excellentior quaedam festiuitas iudicanda est: alumnis exsultare uirtutibus. Et ideo, indigenarum martyrum cultus, et honor specialium patronorum: sicut peculiare dat gaudium, ita proprium requirit affectum _ ut, sicut eorum per unius parentis gremium iure nascendi cognati sumus, ita nobis erga eos pietatis et gratiae priuilegium uindicemus, atque ad eos fidei deuotione prius accedamus, ut: quorum esse ciues gratulamur in terris, cum

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late antique Christians generally agreed that penance was powerful. They did not always agree, however, on who had control over that power: the clergy, the laity or god alone. The sermons of the eusebius gallicanus collection offer a fresh perspective on the difficulties pastors faced when exhorting their congregants to do penance and reveal the variety of ways in which they responded to the challenge. sin posed a problem. it threatened the coherence and identity of the Christian community, yet sinners could not simply all be excommunicated—there would quickly be no community left from which to exclude them. This became a more obvious issue over time. By the fifth and sixth centuries most Christians were baptized as infants. whereas Constantine and many of his contemporaries had delayed baptism for fear of subsequent sin, that option was no longer available to those born into the faith. The church had to find a way to allow sinners to be, and stay, within the church. 1 Augustine of Hippo was one of the most influential figures advocating an " incorporative " vision of the church. 2 faced with donatists who desired a church without blemish, augustine argued that this was impossible—that sin was an inevitable part of the human condition. anyone who lived even a moment after

An unusual episcopal letter from early sixth-century Gaul condemns two Breton priests for using portable altars in private homes and allowing women to take part in the liturgical service. Approaches to this letter have thus far focused narrowly on the behaviour of the women and what they can tell us about female ministry in the early medieval church. As a result, the portable altars have been relatively overlooked, yet it was these objects which enabled the priests to conduct services in such an irregular fashion. This article explores why portable altars were problematic for the church and why they provoked anxiety in the bishops. Although a short text, the letter tells us a great deal about what the early medieval Gallic episcopate was trying to achieve, and why bishops struggled to exert control even over the central rites of their religion. The liturgy of early medieval Gaul is manifestly very important, yet remains almost completely obscure to us. The sacrifice of bread and wine upon an altar, and their subsequent consumption, constituted the central ritual action of Christianity and participation in it marked membership of the church. As a result, the mass was one of the key ceremonies around which the Gallic church organised and defended its growing institutional power. Frustratingly, however, we know very little about what the early medieval Gallic liturgy looked like. Few sources survive to describe its intricacies or how it " worked " for participants—we are left instead to infer from later texts and to puzzle over fragments. This article focuses on one such fragment: a letter dating from the early sixth century, condemning a pair of Breton priests for irregularities in their use of a portable altar. Scholarly attention has focused, so far, on the very interesting suggestions made in this letter regarding the role of women in the liturgical service. Analysis, however, should not begin and end with this.

It was not enough to convert the peoples of Gaul to Christianity. The church needed also to effect a cultural transformation: to penetrate their ways of thinking about and understanding the world. Part of this involved altering expectations of divine justice: when it would come and what form it would take. This proved a challenge for the Christian clergy. In the Eusebius Gallicanus sermon collection it is possible to trace some of the efforts at explanation which pastors made in the fifth and sixth centuries. Against a background of high-level theological debate over issues of grace and free will, they attempted ground-level explanations of how God could be just despite allowing sinners to flourish, allowing the virtuous to suffer and condemning some to damnation. Preachers sought to make complex arguments accessible and understandable to the urban laity, but also, at the same time, to control and guide interpretation along 'suitable' paths. To do so they employed established rhetorical and argumentative techniques, but adapted these to the specific local challenges they faced. The result was a subtle but coercive assertion of power over the ways Gallic Christians understood their world and their place within it.