This final substantive chapter looks in detail at the festival of the Kalends of January as an extended case study for the persistence of popular culture in late antiquity. This distinctively late antique festival is examined from a number of angles, looking at its official and informal, public and private dimensions. Next, the longstanding ecclesiastical critique of the festival as ‘pagan’ is discussed. Key themes of the festival are then considered in turn, starting with the role of festive licence, often seen as a central feature of popular culture more broadly. The Kalends masquerades, including dressing up as animals and in the clothes of the opposite sex, are explored. Next the important element of gift exchange is discussed, providing a way in to look at the social and economic dimensions of the festival. In this way this chapter shows the continuing role of the festival in negotiating the unequal yet broadly stable social relations of late antique Provence, despite the hostility of the church.

This chapter looks at popular culture through the lens of lived religion, with a particular focus on the late antique countryside. After an initial discussion exploring the dimensions of ‘lived religion’, it is then explored through two extended case studies. The first looks at ritual practices associated with the midsummer feast of John the Baptist, including ritual bathing. The second case study looks at ritual activities aimed at mitigating the effects of hail, a persistent threat to agriculture and viticulture in the region. These rituals, and the responses from church and secular elites and authorities alike, are examined in their social and economic context. A range of different types of evidence is considered, from charms through to imperial legislation, as well as ecclesiastical texts of various kinds.

This chapter introduces key structures and developments in the cities of late antique southern Gaul as relevant as contexts for the development of popular culture at this time, with reference to archaeological as well as literary evidence. While Arles and Marseille come under particular focus, other smaller urban centres including Aix and Narbonne are also considered. The general built urban environment is discussed first, then the occupations, social status and identities of the cities’ inhabitants. Next, the impact of the church upon the late ancient city, social and political as well as topographical, comes into focus. Urban social relations are examined before the final section looks at the transformation of performance and leisure in late antiquity.

This chapter focuses on popular culture as seen by the late antique church, in particular as visible through the sermons of Caesarius of Arles. First the key features of Caesarius’ opus are introduced, along with the methodological problems it poses for scholars, including a close discussion of Serm. 1. Caesarius’ ideological programme is discussed, including his use of the concepts of rusticitas and imperitia. The bishop’s concern with the bodily habitus of his congregation is considered next, then his attack on scurriltas, singing and dancing as key features of popular culture. This chapter therefore considers popular culture both substantively and discursively, while exploring the ways in which Caesarius and the church sought to appropriate elements of this popular culture, while at the same time seeking to oppose it, in an ongoing dialectic.

This introductory chapter first defines what is meant by popular culture, with a discussion of different scholarly and theoretical approaches. Next discussion homes in on specifically ancient popular culture, making particular use of relevant comparative material from Pompeii and Aphrodisias. Then the particular geographical and chronological focus of the book – southern Gaul in late antiquity – is introduced, with a discussion of the region’s political and social history in the period. This is followed by an introduction to the dominant figure of Caesarius, bishop of Arles from 502 to 542. The chapter ends with a discussion of sources and guiding methodological principles.

The history of conciliarism during the first millennium is also the story of episcopal corporatism. During this period, hundreds of episcopal councils assembled throughout the Latin West. Primarily regional meetings, these defy easy generalizations as regards their priorities and agendas and their influence on religious policy and practice. Despite their diversity, however, they constituted an institutional mechanism for bishops to craft rules whose authority was predicated chiefly on the consensus of the bishops as legislators. Collectively, bishops contributed to a growing body of ecclesiastical norms, which had yet to be fully delineated or codified. While promulgating policies for their immediate context, bishops consciously grounded their work in authoritative precedent, reaffirming both their shared corporate identity and authority and their role in the continuation of the apostolic tradition.

Christian leaders and scholars during the first millennium in the West were preoccupied with written norms and corrective practices. Law (lex) during this era needs to be understood in a broader normative context. This introductory chapter provides historical and historiographical background to the specialized chapters that follow, explores the notions of lex, ius, norma, regula, and canon, and proposes an overarching schema of four normative fields, as understood by authors of the period: laws, canons, penitential prescriptions, and monastic rules, with their corresponding normative practices and textual compilations. The legal status of conciliar canons and papal decretals during this era is problematic. Although scholars today usually construe these as constituting a body of law, Isidore of Seville did not, and authors of the era usually treated laws (leges) and canons as distinct but complementary categories. The final section of the chapter examines this problem, proposing several fields of inquiry that would shed light on it, and suggesting that canonical collections, as a genre, were practical but not attached to any particular application.