Prayer and Incantation on Early Christian Amulets: Authoritative Traditions, Ritual Practices, and Material Objects

Abstract

In this paper, I examine the manifold ways late antique Christian practitioners (ca. III–VII CE) negotiated the boundaries between Christian prayers and traditional amuletic practices. I supplement recent research, which has usefully demonstrated the overlapping characteristics of prayers and incantations, by focusing on the semantic range and principal traits of the term euchê (and its cognates) when it is present on Greek and Coptic amulets and ritual handbooks. My analysis is further augmented by a discussion of how some practitioners diminished or highlighted the material properties of prayers in their apotropaic and curative rituals.