EmbPatristics began with an analysis of textual and material sources on the studied experience. This produced a database of references that allowed us to better understand the experience. It also shed light on the stable, recurrent aspects of the panegyris and on the flexible ones, thus drawing attention to the important role played by local practices. Next, we assessed how the experience was advertised through oral, written, and visual strategies that created expectations that influenced how it would be experienced. Then, we considered the symbolism the various features of the experience had in the culture of the time, in order to reconstruct what the experience meant to those who attended. Recurrent features of the experience were then discussed in order, considering how each engaged body, mind, and affect by addressing biological (e.g. walking, sleep deprivation), cultural (e.g. analogies), and individual (e.g. healing) aspects. At this stage, how the culture of the designers thought the specific and combined actions impacted participants and what current research in the cognitive sciences revealed about these actions was considered. After considering the panegyris in general, the approach was used to analyse two case studies, namely the annual celebration of the Apostles Philip (Hierapolis, Asia Minor) and Paul (Philippi, Macedonia). Virtual reconstructions were produced of the two sites and of how participants interacted with them during the celebration. Finally, we considered how the various categories of audience (e.g. men, women, children, ill persons) interacted with the sites in the context of the celebration, thus shifting the focus from reconstructing a unique, idealised perspective, to keeping with the experiences' attested diversity.
Partial results were disseminated through the project website—which contains in open-access the database of references to panegyria and the virtual reconstructions produced of the two sites—as well as through congress panels, conference papers, and invited lectures. Non-specialists were informed through posts on social media, in press, and open-access presentations.
The analysis produced a number of consequential results. First of all, it produced a model analysis that enables us to identify the emotional profile of complex individual and collective experiences, and that keeps with our current understanding of the mechanics of human cognition. This model will be made available through the main outcome of the initiative, namely a monographic study, as well as in summarised form through an open-access article. In addition, EmbPatristics shed light on the existence and defining features of a thus-far ignored category of Christian shrine, namely relicless martyria that enclosed the spot where one was martyred but did not contain corporeal remains. It also showed that the late antique bishops who redesigned most Christian collective experiences carefully staged them and shaped their perception by controlling their ante and post factum image. The analysis showed that the figure, shrine, and celebration of martyrs were adapted to match those of local polytheistic cults bishops hoped the martyr’s cult would uproot. Finally, EmbPatristics documented the bishops’ repurposing of theoretical and empirical knowledge on human cognition that had been gathered by the Greek and Roman philosophical schools and polytheistic sanctuaries, thus shedding light on the transmission of ancient knowledge and drawing attention to the role it played in the spread of Christianity.
