Georgia Frank: Laity Lives: Reclaiming a “Non-”Category

In recent decades, academic reference works about late ancient Christianity reveal an ambivalent relationship to the concept laity. If it earns an entry -- often it does not—the term is typically defined through a series of “non”-categories: e.g., non-clerical, non-monastic, non-ascetic, non-elite. These binaries often lead to a characterization of the laity as passive, with sporadic displays of “resistance,” “subversion,” or simply “unruliness.” The term’s heuristic value has been justly called into question, prompting one editor-cum-contributor to declare “laity” nothing other than “a well-intentioned mistake.” Whereas some scholars have called for retiring this misguided concept, I aim instead to rehabilitate it as a useful category for reclaiming dimensions of lay religiosity in late antiquity. Drawing from sermons, saints’ lives, hymnography, and liturgical books for Greek-speaking Christians, I will consider how recent theorists of religious studies have opened the way for more fruitful approaches to embodiment and “agency” as they relate to lay piety.