Susan Ashbrook Harvey

Brown University

Hearing Holy Stories: the Agency of Listening in Late Antiquity

In this presentation, I hope to bring the work of ancient hagiographical listeners into view. What might liturgical participants have contributed to the remembrance of saints in Christian worship? I will argue that among late antique Syriac Christians, the liturgical listener exercised considerable agency in determining a saint’s story. The performative logistics of Syriac liturgies combined with the literary techniques of Syriac poetic genres to make this possible. Syriac authors often rendered these narratives in flexible terms: a saint could embody or exemplify more than one story. Adding voice, imagined or performing, to the narrative could raise further possibilities. Listeners contributed more than dutiful attention. Sometimes it was theirs to decide which story to hear, with what qualities of voice, and what implications for their own lives.