Digital resources in the Social Sciences and Humanities OpenEdition Our platforms OpenEdition Books OpenEdition Journals Hypotheses Calenda Libraries OpenEdition Freemium Follow us

Holy Men, Unholy Fun: Why Late Antique Priests Couldn’t Go to the Circus

In the late fourth century, the church father Jerome – patron saint of righteous irritation – wrote to a Roman aristocrat named Oceanus. ‘Yesterday a catechumen, today a priest; yesterday in the arena, today in the church; in the evening in the circus, in the morning at the altar; formerly a supporter of actresses, now a consecrator of virgins’, he lamented about the clergy of his time.[1] In one glorious rant, he divides the world neatly in two: Good Christians praying politely at the altar vs. sinners going crazy in the Circus Maximus like it’s the last three minutes at the Champion’s league finals. For Jerome, the idea of a freshly minted priest wandering back into the arena was the spiritual equivalent of seeing your doctor at the strip club: inconceivable, inappropriate, and therefore excellent gossip. But was he describing reality — or was Jerome simply auditioning for the role of Late Antiquity’s Most Alarmed Commentator?

Source: Jean-Leon Gerome Pollice Verso.jpg – Wikimedia Commons
[Pollice Verso *oil on canvas *97,4 x 146,6 cm *1872]

The Circus as Moral Vacuum – or Moral Vacuum Cleaner

To understand the stakes, we can turn to Michel Foucault (yes, the bald French theorist who gets cited anytime someone wants to sound clever) and his notion of heterotopias – spaces governed by different rules than the outside world. The ancient theatre and circus were quintessential examples. This classical form of entertainment was still going strong in the decades after the Romans mostly became Christians, the 4th and 5th centuries – think Gladiator, Ben Hur and a healthy dose of exotic dancing at the theatres. Within the walls of the venues, the ordinary architecture of behaviour warped: insults became sanctioned, chaos became choreographed, and the boundaries between spectator and spectacle thinned. What happened in the circus, stayed in the circus. Shouting insults? Fine. Mocking politicians? Encouraged. Betting away your savings? Just part of the charm. The Ostrogothic king Theoderic, a man not otherwise known for philosophical quips, offered perhaps the clearest summary in 509 CE: ‘The circus is no place for Catos’ – a humorous allusion to the most humourless of all ancient Romans, the stern and joyless old grumbler Cato the Elder.[2] In other words: leave your moral rigidity at the door. For many ordinary Christians, this was precisely the attraction. The circus offered a kind of suspension of restraint – a socially sanctioned little fall from grace.

Source: Pexels.

Meanwhile, in the Basilica, a Crisis of Attendance

The Christian bishops, however, saw things differently. It wasn’t simply that the games had ‘pagan’ lineage, that gladiators were murdering each other instead of turning the other cheek, or that the theatre featured the sort of acrobatics – physical and ethical – that unnerved the devout. The deeper problem was competitive: the circus was winning. The patriarch John Chrysostom sometimes preached to only a handful of faithful in the vastness of the Great Church – the predecessor to the Hagia Sophia – in Constantinople while, just next door in the hippodrome, charioteers received the sort of jubilation no sermon could match. Pope Leo I. complained – with the tone of a man who has lost an argument to a barnyard animal – that Romans spent more time honouring the horses than the apostles. For many bishops, the Sunday chariot race wasn’t a sports event – it was the pompa diaboli, Satan’s halftime show. One imagines the noise drifting into the church during a homily: a sonorous reflection on humility, suddenly punctured by a roar of ‘GO BLUE TEAM!’ The bishops’ frustration was not entirely theological. It was also, unmistakably, a matter of market share.

Christian Vigilance™: Keeping Priests Pure Since the 4th Century

Late antique Christianity operated with an intricate system of mutual vigilance – the moral equivalent of a neighbourhood watch. A truly devout Christian was expected to keep an eye not only on his own moral behaviour but on the behaviour of everyone else, especially the clergy. The result was a curious double standard. Lay attendance at the games: unfortunate, but barely tolerable. Clerical attendance: an existential affront – and a public relations disaster. Augustine recounts that regular spectators coming out of a venue would look at passing priests with a mix of pity and condescension: ‘Oh the poor ones, what they are missing!’[3] It is unclear whether this was sympathy or a subtle form of gloating. Clergy, for their part, were easy to identify – shaved heads, distinctive clothing, the general air of someone who could be asked to adjudicate a theological dispute at any moment. Attempting to enter the circus anonymously would have required a level of disguise not commonly found in late Roman wardrobes.

The Great Absence

Historians sometimes imagine that clergy must have attended the games privately, discreetly, perhaps masked by the anonymity of a crowd. But despite modern attempts to imagine hip, boundary-pushing late antique clergy, the sources stubbornly refuse to cooperate. Not a single church council condemns priests for visiting the circus. Not one polemicist accuses a rival cleric of attending – and they accused each other of nearly everything else, from simony and heresy to – the horror – priests living with an attractive young housekeeper or making amulets for the local talismaniacs. But nobody is slandering the clerics for being arenaholics. The only bishop ever spotted in a hippodrome was observed fleeing to it during an earthquake. His stint at the stadium did him no good by the way – he was buried under the obelisk that had adorned the racetrack and that came crashing down during another tremor. The simplest explanation for the absence of priests at the games in the sources is likely the correct one: priests did not go. Not because they were paragons of discipline, but because they were far too visible – and far too observed – not to become the day’s hottest scandal.

Ordained and Entertained No More

Amusingly, many future bishops had been enthusiastic fans before their ordination. Augustine himself admits it with a degree of embarrassment. But ordination acted as a kind of moral Rubicon: once crossed, there was no returning to the realm of chariots and theatrics. In this sense, becoming a priest in Late Antiquity meant not only accepting ecclesiastical responsibilities but surrendering one’s access to certain forms of pleasure, precisely because you could be seen by others to enjoy the very things they enjoyed. One day you’re shouting yourself hoarse in the stands; the next day you’re morally forbidden from having fun. Forever.

The Catos Triumphed – Over Themselves

The preachers failed spectacularly at convincing the population to abandon the games. The circus remained popular, the theatre remained crowded, and the public appetite for spectacle remained robust. But they did succeed in restricting themselves. By denouncing the circus loudly enough, they created a world in which clerical attendance became unthinkable – a moral and physical line they themselves could no longer cross. And so, in a twist Jerome might have appreciated, the bishops became the very things Theoderic warned against: The Catos of Late Antiquity, standing stiffly at the edge of a world that was still, despite everything, cheering.

Further reading:

Foucault, M., Dits et écrits 1984, Des espaces autres (conférence au Cercle d’études architecturales, 14 mars 1967), Architecture, Mouvement, Continuité 5 (1984), 46-49.

Hahn, M., Laici Religiosi. Überwachung, Soziale Kontrolle und Christliche Identität in der Spätantike, München 2024.

Puk, A., Das römische Spielewesen in der Spätantike, Berlin/Boston 2014.


[1] Aug. in Ps. 147, 8 (CCL 40, 2145): O miseros istos, quid perdunt!

[2] Cassiod. var. 1, 27, 5 (MGH Auct. Ant. 12, 29): Ad circum nesciunt convenire Catones

[3] Hier. epist. 69, 9 (CSEL 54, 698): Heri catechumenus, hodie pontifex; heri in amphitheatro, hodie in ecclesia; vespere in circo, mane in altari; dudum fautor strionum, nunc virginum consecrator


OpenEdition schlägt Ihnen vor, diesen Beitrag wie folgt zu zitieren:
Michael Hahn (7. Januar 2026). Holy Men, Unholy Fun: Why Late Antique Priests Couldn’t Go to the Circus. Vigilanzkulturen. Abgerufen am 16. März 2026 von https://doi.org/10.58079/15goj


Das könnte dich auch interessieren …

Schreibe einen Kommentar

Deine E-Mail-Adresse wird nicht veröffentlicht. Erforderliche Felder sind mit * markiert

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.