Sing, O Daughter(s) of Zion

As the Christianization of civic life progressed rapidly throughout the Roman Empire, one of the most effective means by which Christianity came to inhabit the Empire’s cities was through the development of public liturgy.  Ritual practices that had once been held in private, often in the homes of individual Christians, now emerged into the public sphere, even in the streets of the city itself, with the establishment of stational and processional liturgies.  Memories of the apostles and saints were also inscribed onto the urban landscape, as shrines and pilgrimage presented another means of Christianizing this space.  Perhaps nowhere are all of these elements more on display than in Jerusalem during the lifetimes of Melania the Elder and Melania the Younger. This chapter explores the unprecedented knowledge of the songs that were sung in late ancient Christian worship, made known through the recently published Jerusalem Georgian Chantbook (iadgari/tropologion).