Feb 14
"When Eucharists Attack: Policing the Body in Ancient North Africa"
Tue, February 14, 2017
• 12:00pm
- 1:00pm (1h) • Leighton 304
Sometime in the spring of 251 A.D., Cyprian of Carthage announced that several eucharistic disasters had taken place in his town. Some lapsed Christians, he claimed, had attempted to receive the eucharist, but found their efforts frustrated when the consecrated food instead choked them, induced vomiting, set itself on fire, or dissolved into ash.
This talk explores how Cyprian used the discourse of a self-policing, sacrificial eucharist to control the boundaries of his congregation in the aftermath of the Decian persecution.
Event Contact: ssaari