"The Wailing of the People": The Lay Invention of Passion Piety in Late Antique Jerusalem

Abstract

Affective devotion to the suffering Christ has long been understood by scholars as a development of medieval Christianity. Indeed, prior to the ninth century in Byzantium and the eleventh century in the Latin West, few if any theologians encouraged such devotion. Yet the journal written in the 380s ce by the nun Egeria during her pilgrimage to Jerusalem, describes an intensely affective devotion on Good Friday, including the "wailing of the people." This article contextualizes and explains this early evidence for devotion to the suffering Christ. It shows that contemporary Jerusalemite theologians actively tried to suppress such devotion. They sought to suppress this style of devotion because of a critical attitude towards grief that had been borrowed from Stoicism and assimilated into most late antique theology. Lay people, including Egeria, held different attitudes towards grief and maintained robust funerary traditions despite clerical admonitions. Already in the late fourth century, lay people in Jerusalem developed affective devotion to the suffering Christ by interpreting the Passion through the lens of popular mourning customs and in defiance of the clergy.