In studies of ecclesiastical authority and power in late antiquity, scholars would seem to have covered everything, and yet an important aspect of the urban bishop has long been neglected: his role as demonologist and exorcist. When the emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the realm, bishops and priests struggled everywhere to “Christianize” the urban spaces then still dominated by Greco-Roman monuments and festivals. During this chaotic period of upheaval, when congregants seemingly attended everything but their own “orthodox” church, many ecclesiastical leaders began simultaneously to promote aggressive and insidious depictions of the demonic. Dayna Kalleres investigates this developing discourse and the Church-sponsored rituals that went along with it, showing how shifting ecclesiastical demonologies and evolving practices of exorcism shaped Christian life in the fourth century.

Dayna Kalleres is Assistant Professor of Early Christianity at the University of California, San Diego.