Books by Joseph E Sanzo
The artificial separation of the humanities from the so-called hard sciences needs to be challeng... more The artificial separation of the humanities from the so-called hard sciences needs to be challenged with ever more strength in the face of the current environmental crisis – a cultural, epistemological, axiological, as well as ecosystemic crisis. According to Peter Finke (2006), the disciplinary divide is clearly defused when talking in terms of “cultural ecosystems”, which emerge in coevolution with natural cycles and generate their own patterns of consumption and circulation of matter and energy. From this perspective, religion and philosophy, but also art and literature, are such cultural ecosystems. Looking across the nature-culture and human-environment relations through the lens of the environmental humanities challenges the established epistemologies of the disciplines concerned. It becomes thus relevant to ask: to what extent do religious and spiritual philosophies interact with other ecosystems in an age of far-reaching ecological crisis? What impact do artistic and literary representations of various forms of ecomysticism have on how we think about and navigate the surrounding environment? What is the contribution of a cross-cultural and inter-religious dialogue to a renewed appreciation and even veneration of nature that does not renounce practical and socio-political implications?
On the one hand, a prominent trend in ecocriticism – the so-called “material turn” – seems to exclude possible interactions with religious and spiritual approaches to the environment. On the other hand, spirits as much as stories can be seen as coming to matter – as Serenella Iovino and Serpil Oppermann (2014) as well as Kate Rigby (2014) have convincingly argued. That is to say, materiality should be interpreted as an entanglement of interconnected human and more-than-human agencies and discourses, between and through which some kind of affectivity, or vitality, or indeed spirituality, freely moves. In this view, even a subjective mystical experience is part of a material interaction. Not by chance, the awareness of the unity and mutual interrelation of all (material) things and events is central in many spiritual traditions. The ultimate, indivisible reality manifested in all things, and of which all things are parts, is variously referred to as Brahman in Hinduism, Dharmakaya in certain Mahāyāna texts of Buddhism, and Tao in Taoism. Even in European Christianity, especially in Francis of Assisi and in Thomas Aquinas’ theology, God is present everywhere in everything. Similarly, Islam and Judaism celebrates the sacredness of all created things. Moreover, the spiritual dimension of material ecocriticism resonates with a number of Indigenous peoples' cultural narratives. The interconnectedness of all things is only one among many concepts that, arising from different and yet comparable religious traditions, bears the potential for a fruitful understanding of humanity’s relationship with the more-than-human worlds – together with the notion of kenosis (i.e. ‘emptying’ of self), cross-species gratitude, benevolence, compassion, and harmlessness, to name but a few. Finally, in the last few years there has been a rising interconnection between religion and ecology, in both institutional religions
(e.g. the Catholic Laudato Sì) and alternative religious movements (e.g. the new phenomenon of Ecospirituality) (Becci 2021).
In this international, cross-disciplinary conference, we aim to investigate the literary, philosophical, anthropological, and political aspects of an ecological rematerialisation of religions and spiritualities, in dialogue with the ever-growing academic production related to the connection between religious thinking and environmental praxis (Jones 2005; Taylor and Kaplan 2005; Lodge and Hamlin 2006; Jenkins 2010; Bellarsi 2011; Runehov and Oviedo 2013; Grim and Tucker 2014; Armstrong 2022).
In Ritual Boundaries, Joseph E. Sanzo transforms our understanding of how early Christians ex... more In Ritual Boundaries, Joseph E. Sanzo transforms our understanding of how early Christians experienced religion in lived practice through the study of magical objects, such as amulets and grimoires. Against the prevailing view of late antiquity as a time when only so-called elites were interested in religious and ritual differentiation, the evidence presented here reveals that the desire to distinguish between religious and ritual insiders and outsiders cut across diverse social strata. Sanzo’s examination of the magical also offers unique insight into early biblical reception, exposing a textual world in which scriptural reading was multisensory and multitraditional. As they addressed sickness, demonic struggle, and interpersonal conflicts, Mediterranean people thus acted in ways that challenge our conceptual boundaries between Christians and non-Christians; elites and non-elites; and words, materials, and images. Sanzo helps us rethink how early Christians imagined similarity and difference among texts, traditions, groups, and rituals as they went about their daily lives.
Ancient Magic Then and Now, 2020
Edited Volumes by Joseph E Sanzo
Archiv für Religionsgeschichte 17 (2015).
Papers by Joseph E Sanzo
This fellowship will be part of the new Center for the Study of Lived Religion (CSLR) at Ca' Fosc... more This fellowship will be part of the new Center for the Study of Lived Religion (CSLR) at Ca' Foscari University of Venice, which is dedicated to the academic study of the everyday religious practices of people – both past and present – from around the world. This center will support the study of all so-called world religious traditions, while simultaneously encouraging critical reflection on the boundaries of/between those traditions and on foundational rubrics in religious studies, including the category religion itself. Drawing upon the methodological and theoretical approaches of the ERC Starting Grant project “Early Jewish and Christian Magical Traditions in Comparison and Contact” (EJCM) and of the ERC Advanced Grant Project “Lived Ancient Religion” (LAR; 2012–2017), CSLR will focus on six central, comparative aspects of lived religion: (1) cultural adaptation, appropriation, and differentiation; (2) religious competence and specialization; (3) situational or contextual meaning (as opposed to meaning derived from ostensible “worldviews”); (4) materiality, visuality, and textuality; (5) gender and race; and (6) landscape. In conjunction with this interpretive framework, CSLR will privilege research on material artifacts (e.g., amulets, votives, tokens, and manuscripts), archaeological contexts, and religious performances. Taken together, the events and projects of CSLR will operate within a robust theoretical and methodological framework in order to examine lived religious beliefs, experiences, performances, and interactions comparatively within and across all traditions, regions, and times.
Questions about this fellowship should be directed to the Director of The Center for the Study of Lived Religion, Joseph E. Sanzo ([email protected]).
This interdisciplinary project will contribute to the study of both Mediterranean magic and Jewis... more This interdisciplinary project will contribute to the study of both Mediterranean magic and Jewish-Christian relations during late antiquity (III–VII CE) by providing the first sustained, comparative analysis of early Jewish and Christian magical texts and objects (e.g., amulets and incantation bowls). In particular, EJCM will focus on the similarities, differences, and contacts between these traditions in five central areas of their magical practices: biblical texts and traditions; sacred names and titles; healing and demonic protection at the interface of literary and material sources; the word-image-material relation; and references to illicit rituals. Accordingly, EJCM will illuminate the dynamics of religious assimilation, cooperation, and differentiation in the everyday lives of ancient Jews and Christians.
Scholarship over the past several decades has properly recognized that slanderous statements agai... more Scholarship over the past several decades has properly recognized that slanderous statements against magic were not typically meant to describe accurately the practices depicted (e.g., the use of amulets or curses). Instead, individuals (e.g., ecclesiastical leaders) seem to have used such accusations and condemnations of magic to consolidate their power, to divide religious insiders from outsiders, or to support their preferred taxonomies of proper and improper rituals. Accordingly, scholars have tended to draw a firm distinction between those who condemn magic, on the one hand, and practitioners of magic, on the other hand. This paper investigates an intriguing Coptic codex (Leiden, Ms. AMS 9 [VI–VIII CE]), which both refers to itself as an amulet (phylaktêrion) and utilizes highly theological polemic against ritual experts and various ritual practices. With late-antique ritual objects as well as monastic and patristic discourses against magic as comparative sources, this paper argues that artifacts, such as Leiden, Ms. AMS 9, do not blur the boundaries between religion and magic (as is often claimed), but simply reflect different configurations of such categories – no less stringently defined than those of ecclesiastical leaders.
You can also find a more developed version of my argument in my recent monograph, Joseph E. Sanzo, Ritual Boundaries: Magic and Differentiation in Late Antique Christianity (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2024), pp. 27–41 (the entire monograph is available for free online: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520399181/ritual-boundaries).
This chapter explores the literature of the nascent Jesus movements and emergent Christianity wit... more This chapter explores the literature of the nascent Jesus movements and emergent Christianity with its varying attitudes toward illegitimate ritual, in particular with such terms as magos, pharmakeia, manteuomai, and perierga. The chapter looks first at Christian narrative depictions of illegitimate ritual, followed by sin-lists that include references to illegitimate ritual practices, canon lists, and imperial legislation. Finally, the chapter turns to “discursive contexts” that framed the illegitimacy of certain ritual practices in terms of the demonic.
Ancient Magic: Then and Now, edited by Attilio Mastrocinque, Joseph E. Sanzo, Marianna Scapini , 2020
The paper enters into the long-held scholarly debate over the heuristic value of the rubic “magic... more The paper enters into the long-held scholarly debate over the heuristic value of the rubic “magic” for the study of antiquity. In particular, I deconstruct the recent approaches of David Aune and Bernd-Christian Otto, both of whom (in the spirit of Jonathan Z. Smith) have called for the universal replacement of the rubric magic with more specific terms for ancient religion (e.g., amulet, healing, cursing). Although I fully acknowledge the problems with magic that Aune and Otto identify, I contend that their approaches to religion – including their disaggregating methodology – are likewise susceptible to deconstructive analysis. Contrary to Aune and Otto, I further argue that magic does in fact possess explanatory power for certain research questions pertaining to antiquity. We must thus balance the occasional need for deconstructing magic with the occasional need for depolying magic as a heuristic device. In conclusion, I highlight that this balanced approach will require that we adopt a more flexible stance toward scholarly categories and taxonomies more generally.
You can also find a more developed version of my argument in my recent monograph, Joseph E. Sanzo, Ritual Boundaries: Magic and Differentiation in Late Antique Christianity (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2024), pp. 8–11 (the entire monograph is available for free online: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520399181/ritual-boundaries).
This article traverses the disciplines of ancient magic and early Jewish–Christian relations by f... more This article traverses the disciplines of ancient magic and early Jewish–Christian relations by focusing on and offering a new approach to Christian amulets and spells that utilize elements, which scholars have identified as “Jewish.” This paper challenges the contemporary scholarly practice of dividing the language on a given amulet or spell into the categories “Christian” and “Jewish” based solely on origins or idealized conceptions of Christianity and Judaism. Instead, it draws on insights from recent scholarship on exoticism, indigenization, and syncretism in order to demonstrate the various ways Christian practitioners approached divine names (e.g., Iaô, Sabaôth, or Adônai) and other elements that scholars have labeled “Jewish.” While some Christian practitioners treated elements, which were originally “Jewish,” as completely Christian, others seem to have capitalized on the “Jewish” exoticism of such elements. Moreover, this paper highlights Christian amulets and spells that include ostensibly “Jewish” idioms, but which also reflect language of religious differentiation between Christians and Jews. These cases acutely demonstrate that the very same practical conditions that promoted symbolic exchange across communal boundaries could also support religious differentiation. What is more, these artifacts reveal a disjunction between prevailing scholarly taxonomies of “Jewish” and “Christian” elements and ancient categories of religious difference in so-called “lived” contexts. This manifest disparity creates a hermeneutical barrier between scholar and ancient artifact. The article thus calls for greater attention to how – if at all – each artifact reflects the symbolic boundaries between Christians and Jews. We conclude that the burden of proof ought to fall on the shoulders of scholars who think that a given Christian practitioner utilized putatively “Jewish” elements as such.
This article revisits questions about the text and function of P. Berol. 11710, a sixth-century C... more This article revisits questions about the text and function of P. Berol. 11710, a sixth-century CE (or later) papyrus artefact. Specifically, it responds to the lines of scholarship initiated by Hans Lietzmann, whose original edition of P. Berol. 11710 in 1923 claimed that this papyrus artefact was an amulet that preserved an apocryphal gospel. While most scholars have agreed with Lietzmann's assessment of P. Berol. 11710, more recent scholarship has called both of his claims into question. In this essay we contend that while the extant evidence does not allow us to confirm an amuletic designation in particular, P. Berol. 11710 was most likely designed to play a role in an apotropaic or curative ritual—whether as an applied amulet or as a formulary (i.e. a non-applied exemplar for making an amulet). With this general apotropaic/curative identification in mind, we challenge the claim that it preserves an apocryphal gospel and modify prior reconstructions of P. Berol. 11710.
In this paper, I explore the creative use of biblical traditions in so-called "magical" texts thr... more In this paper, I explore the creative use of biblical traditions in so-called "magical" texts through a detailed analysis of the crucifixion tradition on Brit. Lib. Or. 6796(4), 6796, a seventh-century CE spell for exorcism. I examine three overlapping ways in which the practitioner interacts with the crucifixion story: selection and arrangement of pre-existing traditions; invention of new elements of the story; and the juxtaposition of word and image. I then reflect on the implications of the crucifixion tradition in this spell for analyzing the relationship between biblical traditions and metonymy in "magical" texts, more generally.
The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Attila, ed. Michael Maas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 358-75.
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Books by Joseph E Sanzo
On the one hand, a prominent trend in ecocriticism – the so-called “material turn” – seems to exclude possible interactions with religious and spiritual approaches to the environment. On the other hand, spirits as much as stories can be seen as coming to matter – as Serenella Iovino and Serpil Oppermann (2014) as well as Kate Rigby (2014) have convincingly argued. That is to say, materiality should be interpreted as an entanglement of interconnected human and more-than-human agencies and discourses, between and through which some kind of affectivity, or vitality, or indeed spirituality, freely moves. In this view, even a subjective mystical experience is part of a material interaction. Not by chance, the awareness of the unity and mutual interrelation of all (material) things and events is central in many spiritual traditions. The ultimate, indivisible reality manifested in all things, and of which all things are parts, is variously referred to as Brahman in Hinduism, Dharmakaya in certain Mahāyāna texts of Buddhism, and Tao in Taoism. Even in European Christianity, especially in Francis of Assisi and in Thomas Aquinas’ theology, God is present everywhere in everything. Similarly, Islam and Judaism celebrates the sacredness of all created things. Moreover, the spiritual dimension of material ecocriticism resonates with a number of Indigenous peoples' cultural narratives. The interconnectedness of all things is only one among many concepts that, arising from different and yet comparable religious traditions, bears the potential for a fruitful understanding of humanity’s relationship with the more-than-human worlds – together with the notion of kenosis (i.e. ‘emptying’ of self), cross-species gratitude, benevolence, compassion, and harmlessness, to name but a few. Finally, in the last few years there has been a rising interconnection between religion and ecology, in both institutional religions
(e.g. the Catholic Laudato Sì) and alternative religious movements (e.g. the new phenomenon of Ecospirituality) (Becci 2021).
In this international, cross-disciplinary conference, we aim to investigate the literary, philosophical, anthropological, and political aspects of an ecological rematerialisation of religions and spiritualities, in dialogue with the ever-growing academic production related to the connection between religious thinking and environmental praxis (Jones 2005; Taylor and Kaplan 2005; Lodge and Hamlin 2006; Jenkins 2010; Bellarsi 2011; Runehov and Oviedo 2013; Grim and Tucker 2014; Armstrong 2022).
Edited Volumes by Joseph E Sanzo
Papers by Joseph E Sanzo
Questions about this fellowship should be directed to the Director of The Center for the Study of Lived Religion, Joseph E. Sanzo ([email protected]).
You can also find a more developed version of my argument in my recent monograph, Joseph E. Sanzo, Ritual Boundaries: Magic and Differentiation in Late Antique Christianity (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2024), pp. 27–41 (the entire monograph is available for free online: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520399181/ritual-boundaries).
You can also find a more developed version of my argument in my recent monograph, Joseph E. Sanzo, Ritual Boundaries: Magic and Differentiation in Late Antique Christianity (Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2024), pp. 8–11 (the entire monograph is available for free online: https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520399181/ritual-boundaries).