In Chapter 4, I offer a new theory of citizen power. Every adult male citizen would have been free, but this also made him kurios, or empowered, as opposed to ceding his power to a slave master. When substantivized, kurios indicated a male citizen’s institutionalized role as the head of a household. The lens of the household kurios generates an understanding of citizen power that encompasses both private and public domains. Not simply power as domination, kurios also indicated a shared power to act. As a conceptual metaphor, kurios was applied to the political sphere and structured thought across these different domains. Thus, qualities of the term kurios in its original domain, the household, corresponded systemically in the applied domain, the city. The laws and the corporate citizen body, too, were understood as kurioi. While there may be competing claims to power, the identification of the citizen as sharing in power with and through the laws and the dēmos is distinct from the modern conception of the individual versus the state. The negotiation of power in this way has repercussions for debates regarding sovereignty and the rule of law.

This chapter deals with the Laudian vision of the church not only as the house of God but as a house of prayer. Viewing the church as God’s presence chamber, prayer is presented as the medium through which the Christian’s audience with God was to be conducted. Prayer was also the practice which rendered the militant church closest to the church triumphant. Since the angels and souls in heaven now enjoyed the divine presence, they had no need of preaching or the sacraments, but were continually praising God through prayer. While private prayer had its place, the Laudians put particular emphasis on the collective prayers of the church, offered by the priest as a spiritual sacrifice to God. Set prayer was elevated above extempore prayer, and the set prayers of the church of England praised as the best form of public prayer currently available in the Christian world.