Charles Cosgrove, Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary
In 362 CE, a group of women, led by a deaconess named Publia, stood in front of her house in Antioch and sang psalms against Emperor Julian as his entourage passed by (Theodoret of Cyr; Rosen; Teitler). This is one of the earliest known instances when Christians used song to make a public statement in the decades following the Edict of Milan.
By the late fourth century, Christian bishops, particularly those who were wealthy and socially advantaged, felt emboldened by the critical mass of their co-religionists to exert political influence or at least to resist incursions of imperial power in the ecclesiastical domain. Yet they lacked traditions and institutions for exerting and displaying their new public status and power (Brown). In the process of adapting available models, they found that certain longstanding practices of home and church could be effectively exhibited on a large scale in public spaces. Mass singing of biblical psalms and Christian hymns in public processions was one vehicle of choice.
Several exceptionally noteworthy processions have been recorded. In each case, imperial power was implicated. In 361, Emperor Julian ordered that the bones of the martyr Babylas be removed from Daphne to Antioch, which caused an uproar in the church. The Christian community eventually took charge and conducted the remains to a new shrine, singing biblical psalms to which they added a nonbiblical refrain phrased as a thinly veiled attack on the emperor (Chrysostom, Sozomen, and Theodoret of Cyr; Rosen; Carruthers).
The use of a procession to transfer relics is also recorded for Constantinople under John Chrysostom. In 398, certain martyr relics were conducted with psalmody from the city to a church in nearby Drypia with Empress Eudoxia in the lead (Chrysostom; Maraval). During this same period, a group of Arians began demonstrating in the streets of Constantinople by singing songs that specifically challenged the Orthodox. Supported by the empress, Chrysostom arranged for a counter demonstration, a splendid procession with hymns composed by one of the empress’s eunuchs. Bloodshed ensued as the two groups came to blows (Socrates and Sozomen; Pfeilschifter; Avdokhin).
Some years earlier, when Ambrose contended with Emperor Theodosius over control of Milan’s cathedrals, he, too, discovered the use of song for political ends (Ambrose, Paulinus of Nola, Augustine). When the faithful were gathered in the cathedral(s) surrounded by imperial troops, Ambrose directed that they sing hymns. The hymns were his own compositions and helped solidify the people’s loyalty to him. The struggle culminated with a dominant Ambrose demonstrating his victory over the emperor by staging a song-infused procession of martyr remains to the Basilica Ambrosiana. Ambrose dressed this parade in the style and iconography of imperial triumphs (San Bernardino; Kritzinger).
In all these instances, from the anti-imperial psalmody of Publia and her friends to the hymnody of Ambrose’s procession, song served a public purpose, functioning not only to communicate in words but also to strengthen social solidarity and to symbolize, in association with visual displays, new forms of public identity and assertions of power.