The Exorcist and the Rabbi: Hebrew divine names in Christian prayer, 750-850
This dissertation examines early Carolingian baptismal and exorcistic rites through the lens of a liturgical hymn titled <em>Deus pater piissime</em>. This hymn uses Hebrew divine names and Greek formulae to create invocations closer in style to the language of adjuration than to prayer....
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| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | English Latin Hebrew |
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2024
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| Summary: | This dissertation examines early Carolingian baptismal and exorcistic rites through the lens of a liturgical hymn titled <em>Deus pater piissime</em>. This hymn uses Hebrew divine names and Greek formulae to create invocations closer in style to the language of adjuration than to prayer. An investigation of the origins of this unusual combination illuminates the relationship between religious conversion, liturgy, and imperial expansion; it also shines a light on the elasticity of boundaries separating religious prayer from magic. The analysis builds on the work of historians such as Kelly (1985), Keefe (2002) and Phelan (2014) and expands on it by highlighting the role played by Visigothic and Jewish tradition in the development of baptismal liturgy at a crucial moment for the formation of Carolingian identity. This study also tests the notion of static cultural boundaries between Christian and Jewish intellectuals, interrogating the hymn’s use of Hebrew divine names in the light of scholarship by Burton Van Name Edwards (2022) and Heil (2024). Placing the hymn in the broader context of exorcism and performative ritual, I trace its adjurational formulae to late antique Christian and Jewish apotropaic texts. These were most likely transmitted directly from magic or mystical Jewish sources, rather than Patristic texts. |
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