Marked Bodies: Skin as Communicative Entity in Late Antique Hagiography

Abstract

This article analyses the communicative function of the skin, taking a Christian hagiographic text written in the early seventh century in the Sassanid Empire as a case study. The aim is to illustrate the creation of speech codes in Christian communities in the Sassanid Empire and their expression in the hagiographic literature, focusing on the representation of one aspect: the presence or absence of marks on the skin. By analysing these references and comparing them with other hagiographic testimonies, I shall explore how Christian communities in late antiquity constructed systems of meaning around the skin and used them to articulate their religious identity in relation to other communities. The Speech Codes Theory developed by Greg Philipsen is of relevance here, helping to elucidate how Christian communities, embedded in an agonistic socio-cultural, political, legal, and religious context where Zoroastrianism occupied the hegemonic spheres, developed a constellation of very specific meanings around the skin that enabled a perpetual process of creating, negotiating and defining a message of religious affiliation.