The Omnibus Homo Sacer

by Giorgio Agamben

  God. According to Bonaventure and the Franciscans, blessedness is instead de-

  fined as an operation of the will, that is, love.

  In 1951, a young Oxford theologian, Eric L. Mascall, published, in a French

  journal that brought together the writings of theologians such as Jean Daniélou

  and intellectuals of various backgrounds (among whom were Maurice de Gan-

  dillac and Graham Greene), an article that took up the question of blessedness

  from a perspective that cannot but interest us closely here. According to Mascall,

  neither knowledge nor love can define in a satisfactory fashion the supreme

  purpose of man. Not only is knowledge essentially egotistic because it concerns,

  above all, our enjoyment of God, but it is not ultimately useful either to men or

  to God—at least not in the postjudicial condition. As far as love is concerned,

  it cannot be truly disinterested either, because, as Saint Bernard reminded us, to

  love God without thinking of our happiness at the same time, is a psychological

  impossibility (Mascall, p. 108).

  The only thing that can define the first and essential element of our blessed

  state is neither the love nor the knowledge of God but only his praise. The only

  reason to love God is that he is worthy of praise. We do not praise him because

  it is good for us, although we find our good in it. We do not praise him because

  it is good for him, because in fact our praise cannot benefit him. (Ibid., p. 112)

  The praise that is in question here is, of course, first and foremost doxology and

  glorification:

  Praise is superior both to love and to knowledge, although it can include both

  and transform them, because praise does not concern itself with interest but only

  with glory [ . . . ] In the worship that on earth we bestow on God, the first place

  is due to praise as well [ . . . ] And what scripture allows us to glimpse of celestial

  worship always shows us praise. The vision of Isaiah in the temple, the song of

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  the angels in Bethlehem, the celestial liturgy of the fourth chapter of Revelation

  repeat the same thing: Gloria in excelsis deo [ . . . ] “Our Lord and God, you are worthy of receiving glory, honor, and power.” (Ibid., p. 114)

  Here we discover all the elements of the theory of glory with which we have

  become familiar. The specific value of glory as the ultimate purpose of man lies,

  curiously, in the fact that ultimately neither God nor men need it or draw any

  utility from it. And yet, in contrast to Lassius, praise is not extrinsic to God. “The

  archetype of all praise can be found within the Trinity itself, within the eternal

  filial response of the word to God his Father” (ibid., p. 115). God is, in other

  words, literally composed of praise, and, by glorifying him, men are admitted to

  participate in his most intimate existence. But if things stand thus, if the praise

  that men give God is intimate and consubstantial with him, then doxology is,

  perhaps, in some way a necessary part of the life of the divinity. Basil used the

  term homotimos (“of the same glory”) as a synonym for homousios, the technical term that in the Nicene symbolism denoted consubstantiality, suggesting thereby

  a proximity between the glory and the being of God. Perhaps the distinction be-

  tween internal glory and external glory serves precisely to cover over this intimate

  link between glorification and the substance of the divinity. What appears in God

  when the distinction breaks down is something that theology absolutely does not

  want to see, a nudity that must be covered by a garment of light at any cost.

  8.14. Catholic liturgy contains a doxology that bears the curious name of improperia, that is, reproaches. It appears for the first time in liturgical texts of the ninth century, but is probably older still. The peculiarity of this doxology is that

  it is introduced by an antiphon in which God turns to his people and reproaches

  them: “Popule meus, quid feci tibi aut in quo contristavi te? Responde mihi”

  (My people, what have I done to you, in what way have I displeased you? Answer

  me). In other versions, the complaint comes from Christ himself: “Quid ultra

  debui facere tibi, et non feci?” (What more should I have done that I have not

  done already?). Only at this point do the deacons respond from the altar, singing

  the great hymn of praise, trisagion: Agios ho Theos, agios ischyros, agios athanatos,

  eleēson hēmas.

  It is decisive in this case that it is God himself who is demanding praise. In the

  legend contained in the Greek menology, he does not limit himself to uttering

  reproaches but provokes an earthquake that does not stop until the people and

  the emperor sing together the doxology “Sanctus Deus, sanctus fortis, sanctus et

  immortalis, miserere nobis.” Lassius’s theory, which suggested that the purpose of

  the divinity’s actions could only be that of glorification, is confirmed here. More-

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  over, according to the anaphora of Basil’s liturgy “it is deserving and just, and

  fitting the greatness of your sanctity, to praise you, sing to you, bless you, adore

  you, offer up thanks to you, glorify you”; but God appears to need this praise

  and adoration, to the point of requesting from men the acclamation “three times

  holy” ( trisagios phonē) that he already receives from the seraphims in heaven. If, as is recited in John Chrysostom’s liturgy, the power of the Lord is incomparable and unrepresentable ( aneikastos) and his glory surpasses all comprehension

  ( akatalēptos), why utter it and represent it incessantly in the doxologies? Why

  call him “sovereign” ( despotēs); why invoke the “ranks and armies” ( tagmata kai stratias) of angels and archangels in “the service of his glory” ( leitourgian tēs doxēs)?

  The answer that, in the form of an acclamation of the type, axios, monotonously

  accents the anaphora— hoti prepei soi pasa doxa, “because all glory is suited to

  you”—suggests that the prepei (“fits, is suited”) hides a more intimate necessity: the acclamation has a sense and value that escape us and that we should pursue.

  8.15. In the Western Church, the hymn of praise par excellence, the doxologia

  maxima, is the Te Deum, the tradition of which has, without any real evidence, been traced back to Ambrose and Augustine. The historians of liturgy who have

  long debated its authorship, time of composition, and place of origin are more

  or less in agreement in considering it to contain three parts, which at a certain

  point were firmly bound together to form its twenty-nine verses: the first (verses

  1–13) and oldest is a hymn to the Trinity, probably composed in the Ante-Nicene

  era; the second (verses 14–21), which is entirely Christological, is probably more

  recent since it seems to bear witness to the anti-Arian polemics; and the last

  (verses 22–29) concludes the hymn with a series of quotations from the Psalms.

  Scholars, who are as usual entirely concerned with questions of chronology

  and attribution, omit to say what is nevertheless obvious beyond any possible

  doubt: whatever its origin might be, the Te Deum is formed from start to finish by a series of acclamations in which the Trinitarian and Christological elements are

  inserted into a substantially uniform doxological and epenetic context. Verses 1–10

 
appear to have no other purpose than to assure the divinity of the praise and glory

  that surrounds him on all sides, on earth as in heaven, in the past as in the present:

  Te Deum laudamus te Dominum confitemur

  Te aeternum patrem omnis terra veneratur

  Tibi omnes angeli Tibi caeli et universae potestates

  Tibi Cherubim et Seraphim incessabili voce proclamant

  Sanctus sanctus sanctus Dominus Deus Sabaoth

  Pleni sunt caeli et terra maiestatis gloriae tuae

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  Te gloriosus apostolorum chorus

  Te prophetarum laudabilis numerus

  Te martyrum candidatus laudat exercitus

  Te per orbem terrarum sancta confitetur Ecclesia.

  The mention given to the persons of the Trinity, which follows this meticulous

  enumeration of the names and functions of the glorifiers, seems to be aimed

  above all at specifying the one to whom the praise is directed, reiterating it in the

  form of doxological attributes:

  Patrem immensae maiestatis

  Venerandum tuum verum et unicum Filium

  Sanctum quoque paraclytum Spiritum.

  However, even in the following Christological verses, which certainly contain

  doctrinal elements, as in the formula hominem suscipere, Christ is first invoked in eschatological terms as the “king of glory,” and it is as such that the faithful who

  glorify him ask in exchange to be allowed to participate in his eternal glory:

  Tu rex gloriae Christe

  Tu patris sempiternus es filius

  Tu ad liberandum suscepisti hominem non horruisti virginis uterum

  Tu devicto mortis aculeo aperuisti credentibus regna caelorum

  Tu ad dexteram Dei sedes in gloria patris

  Iudex crederis esse venturus

  Te ergo quaesumus tuis famulis subveni quos pretioso

  sanguine redimisti

  Aeterna fac cum sanctis tuis in gloria munerari.

  In the final antiphon, one is struck by the biblical citations that assure us that the

  service of glory will be eternal and ceaseless, day after day, age after age:

  Per singulos dies benedicimus te

  Et laudamus nomen tuum in saeculum et in saeculi saeculum.

  Even more evident is the acclamative structure of the other great doxology, the

  Gloria that the most ancient documents—such as the Constitution of the Apostles (ad 380)—attribute to the Matins. In this case the text is nothing more than

  an uninterrupted collage of acclamations of every type: of praise, benediction,

  thanks, supplication:

  Gloria in excelsis Deo

  et in terra pax

  hominibus bonae voluntatis

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  Laudamus te

  benedicimus te

  adoramus te

  glorificamus te

  gratias agimus tibi

  propter magnam gloriam tuam

  Domine Deus rex caelestis

  Deus pater omnipotens

  Domine Fili unigenite Jesu Christe

  Cum Sancto Spiritu

  Domine Deus agnus Dei

  Filius patris, qui tollis peccata mundi

  Miserere nobis [ . . . ]

  As we have seen, Peterson, Alföldi, and Kantorowicz have shown that liturgical

  acclamations often have a profane origin, that the formulae of the liturgy of glory

  are derived from the acclamations of the imperial ceremonials. It is, however,

  probable that the exchange took place in both directions. We know, for example,

  that both the Te Deum and the Gloria have had an extraliturgical use, the former on the battlefields (at Las Novas de Tolosa and in Liège in 1213) and the latter at

  the time of the discovery of the body of the martyr Mallosus and of the arrival

  of Pope Leo III at the court of Charlemagne. In all these instances, it was a

  case of a sudden explosion of triumph and jubilation, as is often the case with

  acclamations. But how can one explain, beyond the relation between profane

  and religious ceremonials, the massive presence of acclamations in the Christian

  liturgy? Why must God be continually praised, even if the theologians (at least

  up to a certain point in history) never tire of assuring us that he has no need of

  it? Does the distinction between internal and external glory, which reciprocally

  respond to one another, really constitute a sufficient explanation? Does it not

  rather betray the attempt to explain the unexplainable, to hide something that

  it would be too embarrassing to leave unexplained?

  8.16. Marcel Mauss’s unfinished doctoral thesis on prayer, which was only

  published in 1968, has rightly been called “one of the most important works”

  (Mauss 1968, p. 356) that the great French anthropologist has left us. He begins

  by noting—and his observations of 1909 interestingly remind one of Kantoro-

  wicz’s analogous considerations on the situation of liturgical studies almost forty

  years later—the singular poverty of scientific literature on such an important

  question. Philologists, who are more used to analyzing the meaning of words

  than their efficacy, were put off by the unquestionably ritualistic character of

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  prayer; the anthropologists, solely occupied with the study of primitive cultures,

  put to one side what appeared to them to be a late product in the evolution of

  religions. Therefore, once again the subject was abandoned and left in the hands

  of theologians and philosophers of religion whose theories are, for obvious rea-

  sons, “the account they give of their experiences [which] is in no way scientific”

  (Mauss 2003, p. 29).

  Mauss’s thesis comes to a sudden end after 175 pages, when presumably he

  was about to draw the final consequences from his analysis of the oral rites of an

  Australian people, the Arunta, which he had chosen as his terrain de recherche;

  but both in the previous pages and in an almost contemporaneous series of ar-

  ticles, he leaves no doubt as to the hypothesis that guided his research. Prayer—

  even when it takes the form of praise or a hosanna—is, above all, an oral rite

  and, therefore, like all rites, an “effective act” that concerns sacred things and

  acts upon them. As such, it is

  also efficacious and with a sui generis efficacy, for the words of prayer can give rise to the most extraordinary phenomena. Certain early rabbis, by saying the

  appropriate berakâ (blessing), could change water into fire and the great kings,

  by using certain formulae, could change impious Brahmins into insects which

  were then devoured by towns that had been changed into ant hills. Even when

  all efficacy seems to have disappeared from prayer which has become pure ado-

  ration, or when all power seems to be confined to a god, as in Catholic, Jewish

  or Islamic prayer, it is still efficacious because it causes the God to act in a certain

  way. (Ibid., p. 54)

  It is not always easy, from this perspective, to distinguish between magic and reli-

  gion: “There are all sorts of degrees between incantations and prayers, as there are

  generally between the rites of magic and those of religion” (ibid., p. 55). Never-

  theless, Mauss distinguishes magical rites from religious ones because, while the

  former appear to be endowed with an immanent power, the latter produce their

  effects only through the intervention of divine powers, which exist
outside the

  rite itself. “Thus the Indian performs a magic rite when, in hunting, he believes

  that he is able to stop the sun by placing a stone at a certain height in a tree,

  whereas Joshua performed a religious rite when, in order to stop the same sun, he

  invoked the omnipotence of Jahweh” (ibid., p. 53). And while the aim of spells

  and magical rituals is not to influence sacred beings, but to produce an immedi-

  ate effect upon reality, prayer “on the contrary, is above all a means of acting upon

  sacred beings; it is they who are influenced by prayer, they who are changed”

  (ibid., p. 56). Before turning to his fieldwork, he defines prayer as follows: “Prayer

  is a religious rite which is oral and bears directly on the sacred” (ibid., p. 57).

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  A work that had considerable influence on Mauss’s thought, and of which

  he wrote a review only a year after it was published, was La doctrine du sacrifice

  dans le Brâhmanas (1899). The author, Sylvain Levi, who had been his indology

  teacher in Paris, wanted to show that the oldest Brahmin religion “had no moral

  qualities” and that sacrifice is essentially defined by its material effects: “It resides

  completely in the acts and ends with them, and it consists entirely in the scrupu-

  lous observance of rites” (Mauss 1968, p. 353). The most surprising result of Levi’s

  research was, however, that Indian sacrifice is not simply an effective action, as

  are all rites; it does not limit itself to merely influencing the gods; it creates them:

  According to the theologians of the Vedic era, the gods, like the demons, are

  born from sacrifice. It is thanks to it that they have ascended to the heavens, in

  the same way as the one who carries out a sacrifice still does. They gather around

  the sacrifice; they are a product of the sacrifice that they share among themselves,

  and it is this distribution that determines the way in which they share the world.

  Moreover, sacrifice is not only the author of the gods. It is a god itself or, rather,

  the god par excellence. It is the master, the indeterminate, infinite god, the spirit

  from which everything proceeds, that ceaselessly dies and is reborn. (Ibid.)

  Thus, both sacrifice and prayer present us with a theurgical aspect in which men,

  by performing a series of rituals—more gestural in the case of sacrifice, more oral