Paper short abstract:

The aim of this paper is to analyse a hermeneutic category proposed by Peter Brown in 1970 to bring attention to the relationship between magic, demons and ritual agents in late antique society.

Paper long abstract:

In a book edited by Mary Douglas in 1970, appeared a seminal paper by Peter Brown intitled 'Sorcery, Demons, and the Rise of Christianity from Late Antiquity into the Middle Ages'. The Irish scholar analysed in deep the social contexts behind the rise of Christianity looking at the connections between sorcery and demons in the Late Empire. At page 34 he said: «the contrast between the saint and the sorcerer is not that the saint commands the demons while the sorcerer is their agent: both can command; but the saint has an effective ‘vested’ power, whereas the sorcerer works with a technique that is unreliable and, above all, cumbersome». The aim of this paper is analysing the cultural representations of this dichotomy between ‘vested’ or ‘unvested’ sorcerer, trying to measure its hermeneutic strength and the possibility to obtain new insight to better grasp the late antique social-religious context. In particular, I will focus on the symbology of clothing implicit in the adjective ‘vested’, trying to understand the communitarian dimension that could be built through these practices.