Unfinished Christians: Ritual Objects and Silent Subjects in Late Antiquity by Georgia Frank (review)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:

• Unfinished Christians: Ritual Objects and Silent Subjects in Late Antiquity by Georgia Frank
• Naomi Janowitz

Georgia Frank
Unfinished Christians: Ritual Objects and Silent Subjects in Late Antiquity
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023
Pp. 208. $59.95.

Georgia Frank's evocative volume reflects the popular turn to material objects in the study of religion. This new emphasis on artifacts reflects frustration with linguistic or discourse models that have gained traction in the past decades. Some objects have always played a role in the study of religion. What is new is an attempt not to regiment the meaning of objects apart from theology but instead to see if the objects have something distinct to say when they "talk" (Lorraine Daston, Things That Talk: Object Lessons from Art and Science [New York: Zone Books, 2008]). Two problems emerge in these studies. First is the question of what qualifies as an object. For the recent volume Ritual Matters: Material Remains and Ancient Religion, the category of objects includes monuments, organic and vegetable remains, crafted items, written documents, and figurines (Moser and Knust [Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2017], 4). In contrast, in her recent study, The Lives of Objects: Material Culture, Experience, and the Real in the History of Early Christianity, Maia Kotrosits adds "internal objects" following the psychoanalysts Donald Winnicott and Melanie Klein. Adding these mental constructs highlights the "hazy boundaries of subjects and objects, animate and inanimate" (Kotrosits [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020], 8). Second, if objects have representational meanings, that is, if they "stand for" something, what representational theories are necessary to locate these meanings?

On the first point, Frank draws her boundaries about objects by looking to Stowers's "religion of everyday exchange" (Stanley Stowers, "Theorizing the Religion of Ancient Households and Families," in Household and Family Religion in Antiquity, ed. Bodel and Olyan [Oxford: Blackwell, 2008], 5–19) and, within that, emphasizing rituals. Chapter One outlines Frank's choice to focus on Christian worshipers since ordinary Christians left few autobiographical writings: what acts did worshipers engage in, and what objects did they interact with while they were doing them? Specifically, Frank draws on descriptions found in sermons, liturgical instruction books, and festal hymn books to evoke the physical world of Christian worship (fourth to sixth centuries). Anthropologists have long noted the "sensuous interface of ritual, where discourse is itself most obviously a palpable thing, publicly accessible to the senses simultaneously as it circulates in a sensible ambience" (Greg Urban, Metaphysical Community: The Interplay of the Senses and the Intellect [Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996], xiv). Avoiding notions of laity that emphasize passivity, Frank turns to crafting and immersive storytelling where Christians found new relationships with sacred time and space as well as shaped their identity as Christians.

In Chapter Two, she investigates the experience of being in a baptistry, a site of physical practices and material interactions. Baptistries are a type of workshop, in this case for making people into Christians. The participants were themselves familiar with workshops as part of their daily lives. John Chrysostom finds this [End Page 145] analogy useful for helping Christians interpret their experiences as they stand, sit, listen, and recite. Baptism becomes a process with specific tools and goals, and Christians understand the need for an expert craftsman as guide. The special value of craft language, Frank posits, is the attention to gradual change and the need to "work" on the material being transformed (34). Catechumens can see themselves as both objects and makers (39).

Chapter Three turns to processions and portabilia. These processions were highly participatory. Processions as protests, celebrations, and instruments of social change occurred in the cities and in the countryside, shaping Christian identity through the carrying of crosses, holy books, candles, and relic containers (54). More unusual items were also carried, such as a female ascetic, as described in the Life of Pelagia. The processions enacted the calendar while creating sacred space in their wake.

Feast day liturgies are addressed in Chapter Four, along with sermons that recount and elicit complex emotions from the audience as part of the recitation of central historical occurrences. Gregory of Nyssa's nativity homily, for example, invokes...