Martyre et ritualité dans l'Antiquité tardive. Horizons de l'écriture médiévale des rituels

Martyrdom and Rituality: Late Antique Horizons of Medieval Texts depicting Rituals. P. Buc. The Early Middle Ages owed their understanding of political rituals to Late Antique constructions. Early Christian narratives could imagine martyrdom as the takeover by their community of a civic ritual central to the dominant political culture, public execution in the arena. This interpretative assertion of Christian superiority was built on the gentile understanding that ceremonies are foundational as well as on gentile forms of legitimization and opposition. Good, consensual ritual became the perquisite of the new group; pagan rituality became anti-ritual or structurally disorderly order. The post-Constantinian writers adopted this dichotomy to characterize, polemically, secular political potestas or heretical groups, as well as to give meaningfulness to time and place in a changed world.Buc Philippe. Martyre et ritualité dans l'Antiquité tardive. Horizons de l'écriture médiévale des rituels. In: Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales. 52ᵉ année, N. 1, 1997. pp. 63-92