Susanna Elm - Laughter and the Heretic: Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa on Eunomius

Laughter played a distinct role in a number of Greek texts. Used in the context of agonistic display, authors use derisive laughter to denigrate opponents. Such denigration often served as proof of the author’s superior claim to truth. Ridicule thus formed part of a linguistic array of compulsion and force aimed at battling to the ground an opponent and his competing truth claims. Regardless whether an actual public disputation occurred, the scenes in which the opponent is felled by contemptuous laughter are staged as public events, so that an implied audience could witness such irrefutable demonstrations of the author’s superiority (Gleason, “Galen’s Anatomical Performances;” ead., “Shock and Awe”).  Mechanisms of humiliation among homogeneous communities of educated men have remained understudied–especially the community on which this communication focuses: fourth century Greek Christian authors. What language of compulsion did, for example, Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa use show-casing their defeat of doctrinal opponents such as Eunomius? What role does derisive laughter play? My contribution-part of my current project on slavery and constraint-identifies mechanisms of humiliation among educated, elite men allied by a religion that praises humility and makes much of being God’s slave to ask what influence such language exercised on traditional literary strategies of humiliation.