The Omnibus Homo Sacer

by Giorgio Agamben

  sertation broke with this tradition insofar as it is concerned entirely with the

  relations between political ceremonies and ecclesiastical liturgy, via the examina-

  tion of the exhortation Heis theos. In the same way that Carl Schmitt was able

  to confirm many years later, “an enormous amount of material from literary

  sources and epigraphic evidence is laid out with perfect objectivity, and no judg-

  ment for or against any theological standpoint or any specific dogmatic creed

  can be found” (Schmitt 2008a, p. 61). In other words, it was the case of a first

  step en route to a science that is still lacking today; one that is dedicated to the

  history of the ceremonial aspects of power and right; a sort of political archaeol-

  ogy of liturgy and protocol, which we can inscribe here—albeit provisionally—

  under the heading of “archaeology of glory.” It would therefore be valuable for us

  to follow carefully the development of Peterson’s dissertation in order to uncover

  its results and strategies.

  7.2. The inquiry opens with the patient cataloguing of an imposing mass of

  findings, particularly epigraphic ones, in which the expression heis theos appears (sometimes it is expanded in a Binitarian and Trinitarian sense in the expressions

  Heis theos kai Christos or Heis theos kai Christos autou kai to hagion pneuma). Peterson deploys a twofold strategy in the face of the dominant interpretations that

  linked this material to liturgical formulae and that, in the final analysis, were to

  be understood as professions of faith. On the one hand, he decisively denies that

  the formulae in question contain anything like a profession of faith; on the other

  hand, he ascribes them in an equally resolute fashion to the sphere of acclama-

  tions: “The formula Heis theos is an acclamation, but not a profession of faith”

  (Peterson 1926, p. 302). This, however, means pushing back the origin of these es-

  sentially Christian expressions to a more obscure foundation in which they overlap

  with the acclamations of the pagan emperors and with the cries that greeted the

  epiphany of Dionysius in the Orphic rituals, with the exorcisms of the magical

  papyruses and the formulae of the Mithraic, Gnostic, and Manichean mysteric

  cults. It also means posing the problem of the origin and significance of the accla-

  mations and their relation with Christian liturgy.

  What is an acclamation? It is an exclamation of praise, of triumph (“Io tri-

  umphe!”), of laudation or of disapproval ( acclamatio adversa) yelled by a crowd

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  in determinate circumstances. The acclamation was accompanied by a gesture of

  raising the right hand (testified in both pagan and Christian art) or, in theaters

  and circuses, by applause and the waving of handkerchiefs. Here the acclamation

  could be directed, as testified by Cicero ( Letters to Atticus, vol. 1, 1.16, pp. 149–

  163), not only to athletes and actors, but also to the magistrates of the republic

  and, later, to the emperor. The arrival of the sovereign in a city would give way to

  a ceremonial parade (the adventus), generally accompanied by solemn acclama-

  tions. The acclamation could assume a variety of forms that Peterson examines in

  detail: the desire for victory ( nika, vincas), of life and fertility ( vivas, floreas, zēs, felicissime), of long life ( polla ta etē, eis aiōnas, de nostris annis augeat tibi Iuppiter annos), of strength and salvation ( valeas, dii te nobis praestent, te salvo salvi et securi sumus), of invocation and prayer ( kyrie, kyrie sōzōn, kyrie eleēson), and of approval and praise ( axios, dignum et iustum esti, fiat, amen). The acclamations were often ritually repeated and, at times, modulated. A Christian testimony provides us

  with the details of an acclamatio adversa in the Circo Massimo:

  Pars maior populi clamabant, dicentes: Christiani tollantur! Dictum est duo-

  decim. Per caput Augusti, christiani non sint! Spectantes vero Hermogenianum,

  praefectum urbis, item clamaverunt decies: Sic, Auguste, vincas! [ . . . ] Et statim

  discesserunt omnes una voce dicentes: Auguste, tu vincas et cum diis floreas!

  Augustine himself informs us of the Christian use of acclamatory formulae of

  the type axios, dignum est when describing in a letter the ceremony for the des-

  ignation of his successor Heraclius as bishop of Hippo:

  A populo acclamatum est: Deo gratias, Christo laudes; dictum est vicies terties.

  Exaudi Christe, Augustino vita; dictum est sexies decies [ . . . ] Bene meritus,

  bene dignus; dictum est quinquies. Dignus et iustus est; dictum est sexies [ . . . ]

  Fiat, fiat; dictum est duodecies. (Augustine, Letters, 213, 5–8)

  It is essential to an understanding of the importance of acclamations that, as

  Peter son notes, “they were in no way irrelevant, but they could acquire a juridical

  meaning in certain circumstances” (Peterson 1926, p. 141). Peterson refers us to

  the article “Acclamatio,” in the Realencyclopädie der Classischen Altertumswissenschaft, commonly called the Pauly-Wissowa; but Mommsen, in his Staatsrecht, pointedly recognized the decisive juridical value of acclamations in Roman public

  law. In the first place, he noted the acclamation with which, in the republican era,

  the troops accorded the victorious commander the title of imperator (Mommsen,

  vol. 1, p. 124) and, in the imperial epoch, invested him with the title of Caesar

  (ibid., vol. 2, p. 841). The acclamation of the senators, in the imperial era in par-

  ticular, could also be used to give the status of decision to a message from the

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  emperor (ibid., vol. 3, pp. 949–950), and, in the electoral meetings, it could act as

  a substitute for the votes of individual voters (ibid., p. 350).

  It is this juridical value of the acclamation that, at a crucial point, Peter-

  son emphasizes while stating, alongside the thesis of the pagan origin of many

  Christian acclamations, the essential link that unites law and liturgy. In relation

  to the formulae dignum et iustum est (which appears, in addition to the rituals

  of elections and ecclesiastic depositions, at the beginning of the anaphora of the

  Mass as well), Peterson—after criticizing modern juridical science for failing to

  grasp correctly the meaning of acclamations—suggests that the formula is not

  to be considered (as had been suggested) to be a shorter type of electoral pro-

  cedure. Instead, in accordance with a habit that the Church takes up from the

  profane ecclesia, it “expresses, in the form of acclamation, the people’s consensus”

  (Peterson 1926, p. 177). This consensus has, however, a juridical significance that

  throws a new light on the connection between law and liturgy. Referring to the

  works of P. Cagin on the tradition of doxological acclamations that registered the

  analogy with the acclamations for the election of the emperor Gordian ( Aequum

  est, iustum est! Gordiane Auguste, dii te servent feliciter! ), Peterson writes:

  Cagin is certainly correct when, in an incisive chapter, he concludes his analysis

  with the observation that the first word of the anaphora vere dignum is nothing

  other than a reply to the acclamation of the people: Dignum et iustum est. But

  neither Cagin nor others have sufficiently clarified the fact that, through the

  acclamation axion kai dikaion, both the liturgy and the hymn ( Te deum, Glo
ria, etc.) are given a juridical foundation. In other words, the adoption of the public

  ceremonial (“leitourgia”) of the “Eucharistia” in the anaphora or the hymn can only

  occur in the juridical form of an acclamation by the people (“laos”) and the priest.

  (Ibid., p. 178)

  7.3. In 1927, in an article entitled “Referendum and Petition for a Referen-

  dum” (but in German the two corresponding technical terms— Volksentscheid

  and Volksbegehren—literally mean “popular decision” and “request from the

  people”), Schmitt referred to Peterson’s book, which had been published just a

  year earlier, specifically in relation to the political meaning of acclamations. In

  this text Schmitt opposes the individual vote by secret ballot that characterizes

  contemporary democracies to the immediate expression of the united people

  that characterizes “pure” or direct democracy and, at the same time, links in

  constitutive fashion people and acclamation.

  Individual secret voting, which is not preceded by any sort of public debate pro-

  cedurally regulated, annihilates precisely the specific possibilities of the united

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  people. In fact, the real activity, capacity, and function of the people, the center

  of all popular expression, the original democratic phenomenon, what even Rous-

  seau indicated as being a real democracy, is acclamation, the cry of approval or

  rejection from the united masses. The people acclaim a leader, the army (identi-

  cal here with the people) a general or emperor, citizens or rural communities a

  proposal (where the question remains open as to whether what is acclaimed is

  a leader or the content of a proposal); the people cries “up with” or “down with,” it

  exults or complains, takes up arms and calls another leader; it consents to a delib-

  eration with any word or withholds its acclamation with silence. A fundamental

  piece of research by Erik Peterson that, with regard to its scientific significance,

  far surpasses the particular area of its subject matter, has described the acclamatio

  and its forms in the early Christian period. (Schmitt 1927, pp. 33–34)

  Just as for Peterson the acclamations and liturgical doxologies express the ju-

  ridical and public character of the Christian people ( laos), so for Schmitt the

  acclamation is the pure and immediate expression of the people as constituent

  democratic power. “This people,” he had written some lines earlier, “possesses

  constituent power, is the subject of pouvoir constituant, and hence is something

  essentially different from the people that [ . . . ] exerts certain authorities in the

  form prescribed by the constitution, that is, elects the Reichstag or the president of the Reich, or becomes active in the case of a referendum” (ibid., p. 32). For

  this reason, by shifting Peterson’s thesis into the profane sphere, Schmitt is able

  to push it to the extreme by affirming that the “acclamation is an eternal phe-

  nomenon of all political communities. There is no state without a people, and

  no people without acclamations” (ibid., p. 34).

  Schmitt’s strategy is clear: drawing from Peterson the notion of a constitu-

  tive function of the liturgical acclamation, he assumes the habits of a theorist of

  pure or direct democracy in order to pitch it against Weimar liberal democracy.

  In the same way that the faithful who utter the doxological formulae exist along-

  side the angels in the liturgy, so the acclamation of the people in its immediate

  presence is the opposite of the liberal practice of the secret ballot, which denudes

  the sovereign subject of his constituent power.

  This scientific discovery of the acclamation is the starting point for an explanation

  of the procedure of direct or pure democracy. One must not ignore the fact that,

  wherever there is public opinion as social reality and not merely as a political

  pretext, in all the decisive moments in which the political meaning of a people

  can be affirmed, there first appear acclamations of approval or refusal that are

  independent of the voting procedure, because through such a procedure their

  genuineness could be threatened, insofar as the immediacy of the people united,

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  which defines this acclamation, is annulled by the isolation of the single voter

  and by the secrecy of the ballot. (Ibid., p. 34)

  7.4. The historians of liturgy know that the primitive Christian liturgy issues

  from the union of psalmodic and doxological elements with the Eucharistic cel-

  ebration. In this way, textbooks of liturgy distinguish to this day between liturgia

  epaenetica, or of laudation, and Eucharistic liturgy. A careful examination of the Eucharistic liturgy demonstrates, however, that, in it, acclamations, doxologies,

  and Eucharistic sacrifice are so closely interwoven that they are actually indis-

  cernible. In Nicolas Cabasilas’s fourteenth-century treatise on the divine liturgy,

  in which the author summarizes the thought of the Eastern Church on the order

  of divine mysteries, Eucharistic consecration is distinguished from the hymns

  of praise, from prayers, from the readings of the sacred texts, and from “all that

  which is said and done before and after the consecration” (Cabasilas, p. 57).

  And yet, both of these aspects of the liturgy in reality form a “single body” and

  contribute to the same end, which is the sanctifying of the faithful. “The entire

  mystagogy,” writes Cabasilas, “is a single narrative body [ sōma hen historias],

  which conserves from beginning to end its harmony and integrity, in such a way

  that each of its gestures and formulae makes its common contribution to the

  whole” (ibid., p. 129). Liturgy and oikonomia are, from this perspective, strictly linked, since as much in the songs and the acclamations of praise as in the acts

  of the priest, it is always only “the economy of the Savior [ oikonomia tou Sōtēros]

  that is meant” (ibid., p. 61). In the same way as the offer of bread and wine, the

  doxologies and the songs are, according to the words of the psalmist (Psalm

  50:14–15), a “sacrifice of praise”: “Offer unto God thanksgiving; and pay thy

  vows unto the most High [ . . . ] I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify me”

  (Cabasilas, p. 58).

  Consider the liturgy of the Gallic Mass as it was celebrated from the sixth to

  the eighth century (but any form of the ancient liturgy, from the Traditio apostolica to the description of the anaphora in Saint Cyril of Alexandria’s Catachesis, could serve the same purpose). The Mass began with a preamble in song, in

  which the bishop would approach the altar, accompanied by a psalmodic anti-

  phone and by the doxology Gloria Patri. From our standpoint, it is a case of a

  series of acclamations:

  Alleluja! Benedictus qui venit, alleluja,

  in nomine Domini: Alleluja! Alleluja!

  Deus Dominus, et illuxit nobis.

  In nomine Domini.

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  Gloria et honor Patri et Filio et Spiritui Sancto

  in saecula saeculorum. Amen.

  In nomine Domini.

  Immediately afterward, the Trisagion, the solemn song of praise, was performed

  in Greek and Latin, and the faithful answered with the acclamation: Amen. Thenr />
  three young boys would together sing the acclamation Kyrie eleison, followed by

  the song Benedictus in two alternating choruses.

  But the Eucharistic liturgy was at the time, as with the contemporary ritual,

  so thick with interspersed doxologies and acclamations that a separation of the

  different elements cannot be conceived. The formulation called immolatio that

  opened the consecration was a tissue of acclamations: Vere aequum et iustum

  est: nos tibi gratias agere, teque benedicere, in omni tempore, omnipotens aeterne

  Deus [ . . . ] exaudi per Christum Dominum nostrum. Per quem majestatem tuam

  laudant angeli [ . . . ] The immolatio was followed by the intonation of the triple Sanctus and the formula Vere sanctus, vere benedictus Dominus noster Jesus Christus Filius tuus.

  We shall now examine the substantial presence of acclamations in the lit-

  urgy from the standpoint of Peterson’s dissertation. If his thesis is correct, we

  should view the doxological-acclamatory element not only as that which con-

  nects the Christian liturgy with the pagan world and Roman public law, but also

  as the veritable juridical foundation of the “liturgical,” which is to say public

  and “ political,” character of the Christian celebrations. The term leitourgia (from laos, the “people”) signifies etymologically “public service,” and the Church has

  always tried to underline the public character of liturgical worship in contrast

  to private devotions. Only the Catholic Church—as the Enchiridia liturgica

  traditionally emphasize—can perform the legitimate worship of God ( cultum

  legitimum aeterno patri persolvere: Radó, p. 7). Peterson’s thesis can in this sense be said to provide the basis for the public character of the liturgy through the

  acclamations of the people united in an ekklēsia. The two terms ( laos and ochlos) that, in the Septuagint and the New Testament, designate the people are, in the

  tradition of public law, contrasted with one another and rearticulated in the

  terms of populus and multitudo:

  The laos that takes part in the eucharistia is laos only to the extent that it has juridical capacity. Think of Cicero’s Republic, 1, 25: “Populus autem non omnis ho-

  minum coetus quoquo modo congregatus, sed coetus multitudinis iuris consensu

  et utilitatis communione sociatus.” [ . . . ] If the juridical acts of the laos in later times were limited simply to the rights of acclamation, this changes nothing in