Ministries of Song

Ministries of Song is a tour-de-force study of the power of women's ritual singing in late antique Syriac Christianity. Beyond the familiar roles of female saints and nobles, Syriac churches cultivated a flourishing but often-overlooked tradition of women's sacred song. Their music comes alive as Susan Ashbrook Harvey uncovers the ways these now-nameless women performed a boldly sung teaching ministry and invited congregations to respond aloud. By exploring their ritual agency, Harvey shows how these choirs helped to shape the formative ethical and moral lives of their congregations and communities. Women's voices both real and imagined enriched the ritual and devotional lives of Syriac Christians daily and weekly, on ecclesial and civic special occasions, in sorrow or joy with authoritative theological significance and social and political resonance. Arguing for the importance of liturgy as social history, Harvey shows us how and why women's voices mattered for ancient Syriac Christianity and why they matter still.

Susan Ashbrook Harvey is the Willard Prescott and Annie McClelland Smith Professor of Religion and History at Brown University, specializing in Syriac and Greek Christianity of the late antique and Byzantine eras. She is author of Scenting Salvation: Ancient Christianity and the Olfactory Imagination.