Introduction: Approaching Popular Culture in the Ancient World

Laity Lives

“…As Grig notes, the concept "popular" has had pejorative overtones of unruly mobs or counter-culture, resulting in hierarchies such as religio vs. superstitio or other top-down, two-tiered models that pit so-called "high" culture against "low" culture, "folk" vs. "elite," and reinscribe false dichotomies within a shared culture. 16 Attention to more localized exemplars of "individuality" has been proposed to counterbalance and nuance religious identities. 17 Such attempts to de-center clergy are part of a larger effort to redescribe and rectify the category of "laity."…”

A Feast in Carthage: Testing the Limits of ‘Secularity’ in Late Antiquity

“… 122 Tert., De idololatria 14.4 ( CCSL 2: 1114). Surveys in Grig 2017: 238–9; Catarinella 2014 (483–93 on Augustine); Meslin 1970: 95–118.…”

“… 3 Markus 1997: 39, ‘De cette façon on paganisa une grande partie de ce qu'on n'avait pas contesté au paravant’ (‘In this fashion, they paganised a great part of that which had not hitherto been contested.’) Cf. recently Grig 2017: 245, who points to Peter Chrysologus, Serm. 155.5 ( CCSL 24B: 964), ‘Sed dicit aliquis: non sunt haec sacrilegiorum studia, uota sunt haec iocorum’ (‘But someone says, “These are expressions not of zeal for sacrilege, but of a desire for good times.”’)…”