Worldviews and Communal Boundaries

Abstract

This chapter examines liturgical commentaries and patriarchal legislation, which are taken for granted in the ecclesiastical and political history of the chronicles. It shows how the liturgy created a self-contained, self-sustaining worldview in households that would have welcomed the church's policing of marriage to outsiders. It also talks about Muslim military success, which was irrelevant to the soteriological purpose of the church and Christian history that was forced to focus on the events of Christ's life. The chapter argues that the legislation of the period reveals the increasing administrative sophistication of the church's revenue raising and its intervention in the arrangement of marriages and betrothals. It suggests that in regions that saw the settlement of powerful, militarized Arab groups, the heads of Christian households would have welcomed the church's policing of marriage to outsiders.