Singing the Sacred: Music and the Holy in Ancient Christianity

A lecture with Professor Susan Ashbrook Harvey (Brown University), delivered at the University of Chicago on May 15, 2022. This keynote lecture opened a two-day “Recovering Hymnography Symposium,” presented by the Lumen Christi Institute, the Sheptytsky Institute of Eastern Christian Studies, and the Fordham Center for Orthodox Christian Studies.
Why were hymns important for ancient Christianity? What did music add to poetry? Singing was an indelible part of daily life in the ancient Mediterranean world: in household and civic spaces, in celebrations, in mourning, and in religious devotions of all kinds. In the New Testament, singing hymns was fundamental to early Christian worship. Why did hymns matter? How did Christians in antiquity render singing sacred for their own purposes, able to articulate their own distinctive religious truths? What could make music “holy”? And how?
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This program was made possible through a Vital Worship Grant from the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship, Grand Rapids, Michigan, with funds provided by Lilly Endowment Inc. This program was cosponsored by the University of Chicago Divinity School and the Theology Department at the University of Notre Dame.
For more information on the Recovering Hymnography Symposium, see our website: www.lumenchristi.org/event/20...