Ritual Systems, Ritualized Bodies, and the Laws of Liturgical Development

Abstract

The “laws” of comparative liturgical development (Baumstark, Taft) are derived from pre-modern liturgical texts and the findings of early biology and linguistics. Yet Christian liturgy is not an organically evolving species; it is a ritual system, a cultural, political, self-regulating, self-reproducing set of rites that are used to interpret and correct one another. Focusing on the reception of new practices by practiced communities, a performance theory approach spotlights the systemic interrelationships of rites and the ritual habitus of human bodies. A ritual system makes particular meanings seem natural, permitting some new liturgical developments, impeding others. Ritualized bodies constrain rapid changes, while the entrance of bodies ritualized in a different system changes the environment, leading some to attempt to reinforce the status quo. Technologies for passing on liturgies are developed and used when a crisis demands change or imperils valued practice. Accounting for differences in liturgical recording, early and medieval liturgical reception may inform our understanding of the colonial expansion of liturgy, when technologies for transmitting liturgical rites were brought to bear on bodies ritualized in indigenous systems of the Americas, Africa, and Asia. Performative evidence from the colonial context may in turn help interpret ambiguous sources from earlier periods.