Funded through a Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellowship, EmbPatristics seeks to develop an interdisciplinary model for the study of emotion manipulation in ritual contexts. To this end, it applies analytical instruments developed across the Historical, Social, and Cognitive Sciences to a particularly well-documented case study, namely the annual celebration of a martyr’s death or ‘martyr panegyris’, as celebrated in Asia Minor (Anatolia) in the fourth and fifth centuries CE. The experience gained from the analysis is used to develop an adaptable model, with implications for the history of emotion, the history of religion, ritual studies, and the Cognitive Sciences.