Thursday, November 25, 2021

Charlotte Roueché on Acclamations in Antiquity

 In his article King Benjamin's Discourse: Context, Complexity and Fruitfulness, Kevin Christensen recalled an experience he had on his mission in Leeds, England:

 

While I was serving in on a mission in England in 1973-1975, one of my investigators made a comment regarding King Benjamin’s speech.  He pointed to the chapter 4, verse 2, where it describes the multitude “crying aloud with one voice, saying, “O have mercy and apply the atoning blood of Jesus Christ.”   He had a problem with the text reporting that everyone fell to the earth, and everyone made the covenant.

 

“People don’t behave that uniformly,” he said.  “Not everyone would have accepted it.  Some would have refused.”

 

At the time, the best I could do was to remark that, “It was a good speech.”  Not surprisingly, this didn’t impress him.

 

Such acclamations were known in antiquity (see the article linked above and other resources referenced therein). Such took place during various Christian councils, including Chalcedon (451). Commenting on this phenomenon, Charlotte Roueché wrote:

 

One of the more startling aspects of the conciliar acts is the regular recording of acclamations. To a modern reader, they appear intrusive and inappropriate, not least because in modern writing-based societies, cheering and shouting by groups has become increasingly marginalized; it is associated with disorder and disruption, even if it has an established role in certain situations, such as sporting events. . . . But in a pre-individual society, such shouts have a very different significance.

 

Acclamations can be found throughout the ancient Near East, and in both the Jewish and the Graeco-Roman tradition. Their primary function must be one of communication in a non-literate form. In both cultures they seem to be closely associated with religious practice. When the people of Ephesus were being encouraged to oppose the Christian apostle Paul, the crowd in the theatre was encouraged to shout the cult acclamation ‘Great is Artemis of the Ephesians’. This will have been a familiar chant from their normal religious ceremonies; it is therefore understandable that they proceeded to repeat the acclamation over a period of two hours (Act. Ap. 19:32-41). The fullest account of this aspect of acclamations is still the study, written in 1920 by Peterson, of the acclamation ‘One God’, a pre-Christian acclamation which was enthusiastically adopted by Christian assemblies, and can be found in conciliar acts, e.g. at Chalcedon, εις θεος ο τουτο ποιησας (‘It is the one God who has done this’, Chalcedon VI. 13) (Erik Peterson, Heis theos: epigraphische, formgeschichtliche und religionsgeschichtliche Untersuchungen [Göttingen, 1920]).

 

In all these situations the role of acclamations is seen as positive and reinforcing: the verbs used in the ancient texts, translated as shouting or crying out, have an inappropriately negative connotation in English. But the liturgies of the churches have retained that role for acclamations, although a modern description would perhaps use the term ‘chant’; even the simplest of rituals has retained the function of ‘amen’. This reflects the most essential function of acclamation, as an expression of assent. It also expresses that assent as shared and unanimous. In a recent study, Angelos Chaniotis has pointed to the importance of such ritual vocalism in confirming the bonds both among participants and between them and the divinity in Greek religious ritual (Angelos Chaniotis, ‘Rituals between Norms and Emotions: Rituals as Shared Experience and Memory’ [2006]: 226-30).

 

But acclamations also had a long history of secular usage, firstly as an indication of assent. Documents record decrees as being approved by acclamation—so the councillors ‘shouted in support’, epeboesan, at Tyre in 174 A.D (OGIS 595). The formality of this process is confirmed by an inscription from Mylasa, where the acclamations, in Greek, are preceded by the Latin formula ‘succlamatum est’ (Die Inschriften von Mylasa (Bonn) [Blümel, 1987-8], 241). The simplest acclamation was simply one of assent—in Latin placet; this is found, for example, in the Acts of the Council of Sardica in 343, where assent is invited by the phrase : Si hoc omnibus placet, followed by Synodus respondit: Placet (Mansi III, 23B, 23D, 24C, cf. 23A). But another way to express such assent was to pick up a proposed phrase—for example αξιον, ‘worthy’, as in the later church liturgies. This kind of acclamation, underpinned the awarding of honorific epithets and titles, such as philopatris, patriotic, or ktistes, founder of the east; John Chrysostom describes the acclamation of a benefactor in the theatre, απαντες κηδεμονα καλουντες (De inan. glor. 4). Similarly in Rome Livy can conceive of Camillus being acclaimed as Romulus ac pater patriae, conditorque (5.49.7). Under the empire, emperors came to be acclaimed regularly by the Senate—so Pliny, Panegyricus 75.2. (Charlotte Roueché, “Acclamations at the Council of Chalcedon,” in Richard Price and Mary Whitby, eds., Chalcedon in Context: Church Councils 400-700 [Translated Texts for Historians, Contexts 1; Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2009], 169-77, here, pp. 169-70)