Spatial and Religious Transformations in the Late Antique Polis: A multi-disciplinary analysis with a case-study of the city of Gerasa 9781407305134, 9781407335001

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BAR S1981 2009 MARCH

Spatial and Religious Transformations in the Late Antique Polis A multi-disciplinary analysis with a case-study of the city of Gerasa

SPATIAL AND RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE LATE ANTIQUE POLIS

Charles March

BAR International Series 1981 2009 B A R

Spatial and Religious Transformations in the Late Antique Polis A multi-disciplinary analysis with a case-study of the city of Gerasa

Charles March

BAR International Series 1981 2009

ISBN 9781407305134 paperback ISBN 9781407335001 e-format DOI https://doi.org/10.30861/9781407305134 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

BAR

PUBLISHING

TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface .............................................................................................................................................................................................. iii Introduction ....................................................................................................................................................................................iv SECTION I: Greco-Roman Theories of Architectural Space ........................................................................................ 1 Chapter 1 Introducing the Problem of Architectural Symbolism .................................................................................. 3 Chapter 2 A Question of Landscapes ............................................................................................................................. 6 Chapter 3 The Human Image and Architecture of Spatial Order .............................................................................. 10 Chapter 4 Vitruvian Concepts of Spatial Order ......................................................................................................... 16 Chapter 5 Roman Surveying: The Earth Receives the Cosmos .................................................................................. 22 Chapter 6 Neurological Evidence for Human Spatial Conception ............................................................................ 27 SECTION II: Humanity’s Pursuit of the Divine in Architectural Space ..................................................................31 Chapter 7 Pagan Landscapes ..................................................................................................................................... 33 Chapter 8 Judaism: Biblical Spatial Imagery and the Synagogue ............................................................................. 40 Chapter 9 Christianity: The Spirituality of Interior Space ...................................................................................... 45 Chapter 10 Synthesis ................................................................................................................................................... 51 SECTION III: Gerasa and Dura Europos ............................................................................................................... 53 Map of Gerasa ............................................................................................................................................................ 54 Chapter 11: Gerasa: Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 55 Chapter 12: Classical Structures I: Walls and Gates ................................................................................................ 60 Triumphal Arch ................................................................................................................................................... 60 South Gate .......................................................................................................................................................... 62 North Gate and Others ........................................................................................................................................ 65 City Walls ..............................................................................................................................................................65 Chapter 13: Classical Structures II: Places of Congregation and Passage ................................................................... 67 The Oval Plaza ......................................................................................................................................................67 The Colonnaded Streets ......................................................................................................................................... 69 The Macellum ........................................................................................................................................................74 Architectural Echoes...............................................................................................................................................76 The Sacred Cut ......................................................................................................................................................79 South Tetrakionion ................................................................................................................................................82 North Quadrifrons .................................................................................................................................................83

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Chapter 14: Classical Structures III: Worship Spaces ................................................................................................. 85 The Temples of Zeu................................................................................................................................................85 The Temple of Artemis...........................................................................................................................................88 The Temple/Cathedra ...........................................................................................................................................92 Temple ‘C’ ..............................................................................................................................................................94 Chapter 15: Classical Structures IV: Places of Entertainment and Relaxation .......................................................... 96 The Hippodrome ....................................................................................................................................................96 The West Baths ......................................................................................................................................................98 The East Baths .................................................................................................................................................... 100 The Baths of Placcus............................................................................................................................................ 102 The Nymphaeum ................................................................................................................................................ 103 The South Theatre .............................................................................................................................................. 105 The North Odeon................................................................................................................................................ 107 The Festival Theatre at Birketein ........................................................................................................................111 Chapter 16: Christian Churches: Architecture and Topography ..............................................................................113 Chronology .......................................................................................................................................................... 118 Locations ..............................................................................................................................................................119 Design ..................................................................................................................................................................121 Centralised Churches .......................................................................................................................................... 122 Ss. Cosmas/Damianos, S. John, S. George Church Complex .............................................................................. 123 The Prophets, Apostles, and Martyrs Church ..................................................................................................... 123 The Cathedral and Environs ...............................................................................................................................124 S. Theodore’s Church .......................................................................................................................................... 128 The Propylaea Church ........................................................................................................................................ 130 The Synagogue Church ....................................................................................................................................... 130 Summary of Gerasa’s Christian Archaeology ...................................................................................................... 132 Church footprints and drawings ......................................................................................................................... 132 Chapter 17: Dura Europos .......................................................................................................................................148 Interiority and the Peristyle Court...................................................................................................................... 148 The Domus as Cult Centre ..................................................................................................................................150 The Christian Domus ......................................................................................................................................... 151 Baptistery ............................................................................................................................................................ 157 Summary............................................................................................................................................................. 160 Chapter 18: Christian Spatiality: Historical Context ............................................................................................. 162 The Retaking of Urban Space by Pre-existing Ethnic Forms ..............................................................................163 Urban Change in Gerasa and the East ............................................................................................................... 166 Pagan Continuities in Christian Sacred Space ................................................................................................... 169 Architecture and Liturgy .................................................................................................................................... 171 Libanius’ Revenge: Conversion and Desacralisation ...........................................................................................176 The Desacralisation of Judaism: The Synagogue Church ....................................................................................179 Chapter 19: Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................182 Introduction ........................................................................................................................................................ 182 Gerasa and Dura Europos ...................................................................................................................................182 Endings ............................................................................................................................................................... 185 Bibliography ................................................................................................................................................................................. 188

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PREFACE Spatial and Religious Transformations in the Late Antique Polis is the work of a twenty year professional carpenter who was irresistibly compelled to enter graduate school before his middle age years became, ‘too late years’. This is the fulfillment of a life-dream, the picking up of what I had left behind in late August, 1977 on the archaeological site of Tel Lachish near Bet Guvrin, Israel. Thirty years ago I remember, as a site worker, standing on its broad walled foundations near the main gate looking down upon the nearby Mushav orchard of fruit trees and tilled soil. I could imagine the scenes from the inscribed panels from Ninevah (displayed in the British Museum) depicting the Assyrian king, Sennacherib sitting on his throne observing his successful siege of the city in 729 BCE. I understood, from viewing the panels and being steeped in their historical context that thousands died on the ground under which I stood and for many, the horrors of surviving an ancient siege would have been too terrible to comprehend. The archaeological remains of: few scattered sling stones; a bronze arrowhead; superheated mud brick burnt to the melting point, uncovered frozen in its collapsed state; and the charcoal of burnt support beams bore mute testimony to the conflict captured on the Lachish panels. This poignant lesson illustrates that the archeology of place is not only that of revealing and categorizing artifacts, but of an integration of person and place. We see a society striving to create centers or central zones in which to establish and develop self-expressions of its systems and subsystems of its symbols, values, beliefs, and government. Lachish obviously possessed more than ephemeral characteristics, it was a place of action, ritual activities, and role playing in the network of its institutions, and its architectural structures once encapsulated its self expression. Persons became, to various degrees, invested in the place and as the panels indicate, many were willing to pay the ultimate price for its defense and continuity. The provenance of this work occurs within 100 miles and 1,200 years after the Assyrian fall of Lachish, in the polis of Gerasa, present-day Jerash in the north-west hill country of Jordan. My perception of Lachish was the latent foundation upon which I was to build this work thirty years later. The following manuscript is an extended version of my Ph.D. thesis composed between the years 2003 and 2007 while attending the Classics Department of Royal Holloway, University of London, under the guidance of Professor Richard Alston. The concepts behind Spatial and Religious Transformations in the Late Antique Syrian Polis emerged from the struggle to span materialist archaeology with its meaning; to discern the builder’s intent to create a vehicle to perform cult ritual and apply belief. Understanding ‘meaning’ and ‘intent’ would help to explain the impulse behind the massive transition from the Classical to early Christian architectural type that became rooted throughout the eastern cities in the late fourth and succeeding centuries. Running concurrent to searching for meaningful connections with the civic artifact, I was finding a number of esoteric statements by modern scholars regarding classical and early Christian architecture and in particular, I became aware of academia’s ubiquitous and diverse applications of ‘landscape’, ‘space’, and its adherence to sacrality (I will address these in Section I, Chs 1 and 2). It was apparent that archaeology was ‘speaking ‘ to some in a language I could neither interpret nor find academic support, thus it became necessary to define key words such as ‘space’ and ‘landscape’, and understand the profound interrelationships between the significance of the standing human form in relation with: the act of standing a stone, erecting a building and their connections with the mythic world. Therefore, in order to legitimize and carefully define the boundaries upon which meaning can be ascertained in ancient forms, I was compelled to validate a lexis of ‘space-speak’ to academically express the physical and abstract spatial dimensions (the ‘real’ and metaphysical) of civic and sacred landscapes that defined the Classical and Early Christian city ‘type’. The archaeological sites of Gerasa of Jordan and Dura Europos of Syria were selected as interpretive models due to their strong archaeological records and architectural representations. As will be discussed later their models bear strong similarities yet are very dissimilar. In particular Dura Europos historically dies in the mid third century while Gerasa continues into the eighth. And while the final aim of the text is to explain the end of the classical city in the East, Dura becomes frozen for us depicting the pre-Christian, pagan city sitting on the historical razor edge just prior to the events initiating monumental civic change. It is this characteristic that Gerasa’s model can be cast against and the significant concluding statements will be made.

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INTRODUCTION The following manuscript is an extended version of my Ph.D. thesis composed between the years 2003 and 2007 while attending the Classics Department at Royal Holloway, University of London under the guidance of Professor Richard Alston. The concepts behind Spatial and Religious Transformations in the Late Antique Syrian Polis emerged from the struggle to span materialist archaeology with its meaning; to discern the builder’s intent to create a vehicle to perform cult ritual and apply belief. Understanding ‘meaning’ and ‘intent’ would help to explain the impulse behind the massive transition from the Classical to early Christian architectural type that began to set its roots throughout the eastern cities in the late fourth century. Running concurrent to searching for meaningful connections with the civic artefact, I was finding a number of esoteric statements by scholars regarding classical and early Christian architecture, and in particular, I became aware of academia’s ubiquitous and diverse applications of ‘landscape’, ‘space’, and its adherence to sacrality (I will address these in Section I, Chs. 1 and 2). It was apparent that archaeology was ‘speaking’ to some in a language I could neither interpret nor find academic support, much less impose modern perceptions of ancient architecture in the mind of the ‘person’ somehow straddling the innumerable social strata in the eastern, Greco-Roman world. Thus it became necessary to define key words such as ‘space’, ‘landscape’, and understand the profound interrelationships between the standing human form, the act of standing a stone or erecting a building and the mythic world. Therefore, in order to legitimize and carefully define the boundaries upon which meaning can be ascertained in ancient forms, I was compelled to validate a lexis of ‘space-speak’ to justify interpretations of late Roman civic space in the East. The following text is an attempt to answer basic questions pertaining to sacred space and apply them to several well documented archaeological sites with strong material remains and to interpret the meanings and causes of the changes in spatial patterns that occurred within the late Antique polis in the East. It will be based on both physical and abstract spatial dimensions (the ‘real’ and metaphysical) of civic and sacred landscapes that defined the Classical and Early Christian city ‘types’. The following work will present the view that space, place, and person are fully interrelated. The following mid-third century CE, funerary inscription found at Gerasa introduces the most fundamental spatial concept in humanity’s distinctive ability to establish ‘place’: humanity’s signature, a self-portrait on a blank spatial canvas. ᾿Ιουλιανὴν οὖτος κεύθει τάφος, ἢν κτερέιξεν Ἔσχατα σωφροσύνης ἆθλα τίνων γαμέτης, Οὖ μέτα δεῦρο μολοῦσ᾿ ἀπὸ πατρίδος Ἀντιοχείης Οὐκέτι πρὸς πάτρην τῷδ᾿ ἀπελεύσεθ᾿ ἄμα, Ἀλλ᾿ ἔλαχεν ταύτης ἑτέπας μέρος Ἀντιοχείς Τοῦτ(ο) τὸ μὴν Ψυχ(ῆς σῶ)μα κενὸν κατέχει. Μὴ στατὴ μίμνοις, Ἠχοῖ δ᾿ (ἐπ᾿) ἴσης λαλέοις μοι Σῷ ἀμέτῃ. Πανὸς τοὕόμα γὰρ κατέχω.1 Iuliane this grave conceals, whom (her) spouse interred, praying the utmost prizes of chastity. With him having come here from her native Antiochia, she will no more depart toward (her) homeland along with him. But (she) has become possessed of a portion of this ‘other’ Antiochia – this thing, indeed, which confines the empty body of the soul. You (fem.) do not remain placed. (Your voice) equally echoes through as you speak to me, your spouse. For Panos is the name I bear (trans. mine). Panos’ words speak of the grief of personal loss but also of concepts of rational and abstract place. The two Antiochia, one on the Orontes, the other on the Chrysorhoas Rivers2 are designated as ‘homelands’, yet only one carries his wife’s body, now empty of its essence. Yet possession of place defined by Panos does not entirely mean place of physical interment; memories of her echoing voice continues to resonate in his heart and has taken a permanent residence there. In his memory she is possessed by the two Antiochs and the journeys through the landscapes of time that linked the two places. In an image familiar to us Iuliane remains with Panos even in death, escaping the spatial and physical limits of her tomb and existing within another space. Thus the act of Panos in erecting a monument to his wife expresses that place cannot come into being without human intervention in nature’s relentless cycle of life and death. The institution of

1 C.B. Wells, Gerasa City of the Decapolis, Carl H. Kraeling (ed.), New Haven: ASOR, 1938. Inscr. #232; p. 456. A mid-third century funerary stele found outside the North Gate; last seen in 1900 CE by Schumacher in an irrigation ditch. 2 Ibid. Gerasa was named by Greek and Latin inscriptions as ‘Antioch on the Chrysorhoas’ : Inscrips: 30, Antiochia ad Chrysorhoan quae et Gerasa hiera et asylos et autonomos; 56/7, 58, 69, 143-5, 147, 153, 192: ἡ πόλις Ἀντιοχέων τῶν πρὸς τῳ Χρυσορόᾳ τῶν πρότερον Γερασηνῶν; 251,

…Ἀντιοξέων τῶν Χρυσ(ορόᾳ)…

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place is inextricably linked with burial and remembrance. Panos is saying in spatial terms, ‘here lies’ (hic jacet);3 fusing landscape to human life. The grave domesticates time and eternity and no matter what age this monument is viewed, one is faced with the reality that human life is a temporary sojourn between the boundaries of birth and death. Whenever something is built in nature, whether it a complex structure or the standing of a single stone, it is a sign of human presence, the perception of intent, and finitude. Panos refers to Iuliane’s final resting place by means of, according to Hillier and Hansen, a morphic-abstract language of space. It transcends space, or is ‘transpatial’, in that it extends beyond the empirical and conveys a metaphysical message.4 Panos is expressing his wife’s dichotomy of being caught in a real-time spatial and existential-transpatial5 existence. She had been born in and travelled to ‘home-places’ in real time, creating memories, interacting socially among various peoples around and within buildings upon natural landscapes. In death, her tomb is also in rational space, yet there is something more where his inscribed words pull at complicated metaphors of ‘remaining placed’, and ‘equally-echoing’ realities of interactive memories. Iuliane’s life had stopped in rational time confining forever her physical body, yet her life, as Panos seems to indicate, was not permanently ‘placed’. She exists in a space in which her voice is still heard. The images used by Panos move towards the idea of place as an interpreted space, formed by its interaction with the individual, their memories and ideologies. Places are always read or understood in their relation to others (people and other spaces) as they acquire a meaning based on an accrual of remembered historical events or a type of spatial mnemonics. Personal biographies and the topographies of place are intimately connected. All places are encompassed by memories of spatial encounters while space becomes place out of human encounters. Time and place are the frames in which we live. Living in the world involves a loss of one place in order to gain another, through movement in space or movement in time, or both. Memories, private or collective, are invested in place, but as place exists in time, there is always a sense of nostalgia in place. Place has a past and is understood through that past. Memories of places institute nostalgia which can become a dichotomy of sensations of capturing fond-recollection and mourning for persons, times and places lost. We can never truly be in the same place twice since one is always aware of the passing of time between two experiences of a place. Particular places, through the passing of time, becomes personal historical mile-stones or, in a more restricting sense, boundary markers or walls. Yet, this perpetually ebbing sea of place and memory can be disconcerting as well as reassuring. As meanings of place perpetually shift, then the memories and locations by which the individual creates his or her identity and secures that identity in relation to a social world become malleable. Individuals and social groups respond to this essential changeability by attempting to fix significant meanings and perceptions to, not only places, but natural and ‘man-made’ topographies, structures, and things. They achieve this by using their social power to inscribe dominant meanings onto places. This, if successful, establishes perceptions of continuity for certain places. Such dominant meanings and representations seek to create certain places as ‘changeless’, having within them an essential meaning (perhaps granted by the divine presence or by activating a sympathetic response integrated within the natural order) that puts the place beyond the affects of time. In so doing, the place becomes monumentalised, a place in which meaning is powerfully and heavily inscribed to escape the inconsistencies inherent in human interpretation, and this, to an extent, explains the frequently massive nature of monuments. They can perhaps be construed as an overemphasis on the human need for permanence and control of one’s psychological and natural landscapes. The double ‘entendre’ of space and myth may also lie within this inscription. There seems to be a pun on Panos’ name and the ‘echoes (᾿Ηχοῖ)’ of Iuliane’s voice, establishing a link between himself and the myth of the goddess Echo.6 In keeping with the mythical narrative, Panos becomes the god Pan, wandering the hills in search of his love, guided by her almost discernible voice. As Echo searched but could not find her love, so Pan can no longer embrace his love, and the image of a love that exists beyond death becomes embedded in the landscape for ages to come. Panos’ transposition to mythic theatre lays claim to romance and an escape from time. The funerary stele now becomes an echo of a Greek myth, presenting a tragedy of ‘loving one in vain’. Playing the role of Echo, Iuliane’s voice still sings from Earth’s hiding place to Panos, now like a solitary Pan, in grief, roaming alone among the hills over Gerasa. What ‘echoes equally’ for Panos may not solely be of his lost wife and the duality of space. By becoming Pan and Echo, Panos and Iuliane inscribe themselves into the landscape of the hills around Gerasa (escaping the confines of the tomb) locating themselves in a mythic time 3

Robert Pogue Harrison, ‘Hic Jacet’, Landscape and Power, 2nd ed. W.J.T. Mitchell (ed.), Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002, 352. Bill Hillier and Julienne Hanson, The Social Logic of Space, Cambridge: Cambridge, 1984, 48. 5 Ibid, 42. 6 C.B. Wells may have anticipated this link as he included their names (Παν, Ἠχώ) in his inscriptions index under ‘Gods, Saints and Martyrs, etc’, op. cit, 589. 4

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(escaping the temporal limits of life), but also through the association with myth, intimately integrating them with the sacral world. This sacrality exists at the same time within the specific space and time of the myth, but beyond that space and time in their divine resonances.7 Thus, space, place, myth, and sacrality become unified and a sacred landscape is born. The core theoretical content of my book is the essence of what Panos, probably unwittingly, had inscribed on stone out of deep personal grief for the loss of his wife, Iuliane. It is a research study based on what I think is a universal tendency toward the dualism of place.8 I meld empirical archaeological evidence with existing spatial/architectural theories to establish a metaphysical-mythical sense of ‘being placed’. This metaphysics of place help explain what certain urban types and architectural structures may have meant for contemporaries. Such metaphysics create ‘echoes’ of the forms of buildings which extend beyond the empirical data of measurement and architectural descriptions of form and décor into the very meaning of society and the essence of individuals. 9 Though the language involved in architectural-spatial perceptions is primarily philosophical, this is a thesis founded on the historiography of place: the solid matter of built form covering a particular extent of the late-Antique Eastern landscape and historical time-line. The application of spatial theory related to architecture and religion will address three standard historiographic problems unique to the advent of Christianity as a political force within the Eastern polis: 1. What was the meaning and cause of changes in spatial patterns in the late Antique polis? 2. Did the use of space continue between the pagan and Christian periods? 3. Does continuity of place represent religious continuity? When Christianity assumed control of the late Antique city, its civic and religious dynamics changed dramatically. What will be made clear is that a completely new religious orientation severely affected the understanding of Classical space and built forms and led to their decline and ultimate demise. The above questions are designed to probe the root cause(s) of this transformation of the Classical city. I argue that rather than being a result of administrative change (the decline of the councils) or of economic change (a putative late antique economic crisis), these are primarily spatial and trans-spatial (existential perceptions of space) issues generated by a cognitive change in religious/spatial perceptions. I am not diminishing the importance of these issues long discussed in modern scholarship, but I am focusing on how perceptions involved behind architectural design decision making determined the end of the application of Classical ideals in built form. To make this argument, I investigate the complex and intimate relationship between the particular ideology of place that a society develops and the built forms by which that ideology is expressed. In order to answer the key questions above, they must be temporarily left aside, to develop the spatial theory explored in Section I. These issues will be tested primarily on the physical remains of two cities: Gerasa in Jordan and Dura-Europos in Syria as well as support from specific sites in the regions of the Levant and Syria. Gerasa and Dura-Europos as cities ‘on the edge of empire’ are very different in their urban profiles and historical time-lines, yet it is through their dissimilarities that certain ideas will be made clear. Gerasa’s remains show a clear architectural distinction between pagan and Christian appreciations for civic and cultic built form. Dura’s civic nature is strongly homogeneous. With exception of the palace of the Dux Rupe, most cultic structures were enhanced through the extension of the home. Though the city ‘died’ in the mid-third century CE, the lessons of its civic-religious landscape will be applied to the development of the Church as 7 The mid-third century CE stele of Panos was discovered in a drainage ditch just outside the North Gate at the ancient city of Gerasa in 1900. It was recorded and last seen by an archaeologist named Gottlieb Schumacher: see Carl H. Kraeling, Gerasa City of the Decapolis, New Haven: Yale, 1938, 2, n. 2. Schumacher was working for the Deutscher Palastinaverein and the Palestine Exploration Fund; his publications on Gerasa are listed by Kraeling, n. 2. In a way Panos’ and Juliane’s story lives on in the same manner as the stele itself. The inscription was copied and categorized among the hundreds of other inscriptions of Gerasa, the essence of Panos’ words living on in notational form, yet the physical body, the stele itself, is lost to us. We know where it was ‘birthed’, and where it was last interred (the homelands of its timeline), yet it is not here, physically. 8 I realize that universalism is theoretically controversial, but the discussion that follows seems to suggest that similar values appear in different societies and my argument is that although there are particular and culturally specific ways in which societies monumentalize and read space, the tendency so to do is part of the human condition. 9 Echo is also an architectural term. It is the repetition of procedures, angles, and shapes and shape-characters generated from ‘centres’ (concentration) of an architectural style. The purpose is to create a widespread family resemblance in built forms thus unifying the centre with outlying areas. Further explanation and photographic examples are in: Christopher Alexander, The Nature of Order, An Essay on the Art of Building and the Nature of the Universe, Book Two, Berkeley: The Center For Environmental Structure, 2002, 79.

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transforming agent of the Classical city. Cities that paralleled Gerasa as a type, particularly those in the Decapolis region and Syria, will reinforce the concept of Gerasa as microcosm of the Eastern polis that persisted into and beyond the eighth century CE. There is no attempt to produce an encyclopaedic analysis of the built forms of the Eastern Roman provinces as this would both demand a considerable extension in the length of this book and would be otiose. The argument can be established on the basis of detailed examination of a single site and the purpose of the book is not to create archaeological or architectural typologies but to understand mentalities. My analysis of significant buildings, combined with artistic remains in their civic context reveals particular symbolic uses of space, assertions of power and religious attitudes. I will be focusing on the 4th through the pre-Islamic 7th centuries, CE. The approach toward answering the above questions will be to view the late antique townscape as a multi-layered spatial narrative. Rather than being a ‘lifeless ruin’ categorised only by excavation data made up of topographical maps, architectural remains and reconstructions and inscribed material, I attempt to reconstruct how cities might have been perceived by the builders and inhabitants. This is a new methodology which breaks from traditional positivistic attempts to understand city space. Such new methodologies have recently been championed by Luke Lavan in his chapter, ‘Late Antique Urban Topography: From Architecture to Human Space’.10 Lavan proposes an additional consideration of human spatiality to the descriptors of physical remains; of ‘activity spaces’ in addition to that of architecture. He proposes a ‘special prominence’ given to the use of first-source texts to reconstruct the mindset and movements in place and time. Human action interacting with late antique built forms should drive the focus of the work.11 My approach develops this line of analysis, as the above commentary on the Panos and Iuliane stele demonstrates. My strategy is to connect Greco-Roman, Jewish and Early Christian discussions of the significance and meaning of space in built and natural environments to modern spatial theories. Although there is little evidence of any direct intellectual connection between modern and ancient analysts, there are clear similarities in perceptions. Further, attitudes pertaining to the analyses of space consistently relate the spatial to an ontological sense. This means that the spatial becomes part of a sense of being and is thus related to other aspects of that sense of being, such as connection to the divine. The thinkers I mention, as a consensus, appear to relate space to particular cosmologies, whether or not these cosmologies are theological or atheistic. At a fairly high level of generality, the need for humans to find a home, to create shelters, and form a relationship with their spatial environment, means that architectural-spatial theory is a universal. Anthropologists agree that not every society carries an architectural mandate, however they are extremely rare and usually situated in natural environments were the environment itself (the jungle, desert or forest) carries certain architectural-religious meanings. As such, spatial theory can be seen as similar in type to ritual and be treated, with due caution, as a foundational element of human society.12 The specific theoretical model in which the spatial and transpatial is defined is based on two cultural universals in human behaviour. The first is of humanity’s tendency to impart a sense of order to their world through architectural design by establishing form in space. My argument is that the architecture in the eastern late-Roman city emerged through unique perceptions of the natural order inspiring the mind of the designer/architects. It as through an engineering-design grammar that, in a broad-general sense is semantically common to all but a few societies was uniquely composed into a very distinctive Greco-Roman architectural treatise. The transition from the Classical into the Early Christian polis becomes a metaphorical change in architectural sentence structure. The goal is not to prove direct parallels between a theoretical point and specific executions in building design but to understand that, whether every architect or builder know it or not, their work was informed by, what are commonly considered to be, spatial principles of architectural design. The validation of this approach lies within the changeless, abiding nature of these very principles. 10 Luke Lavan, ‘Late Antique Urban Topography: From Architecture to Human Space’, Theory and Practice in Late Antique Archaeology, Luke Lavan and William Bowden (eds), Leiden: Brill, 2003, 171-191. Lavan is not the first to propose such a methodological innovation. For an earlier and extensive attempt to reconcile modern spatial theory and a surviving city-scape, see R. Laurence, Roman Pompeii, Space and Society, London: Routledge, 2007, which has similarities in approach to R. Alston, The City in Roman and Byzantine Egypt, London: Routledge, 2002. A landmark publication was made by Michael Shanks and Christopher Tilley in Re-Constructing Archaeology, Theory and Practice, 2nd edn., London: Routledge, 1992. Their discussion of the dilemma between the Positivist-empiricist and interpretive-hermeneutic philosophies is presented between pp. 9-105. For a less theorised, emphathetic approach, see Diane Favro, The Urban Image of Augustan Rome, Cambridge: Cambridge, 1998. These approaches tend to rely on modern spatial theory or empathy rather than a reading of ancient texts on the built environment. 11 Lavan, op. cit, 184. 12 Donald E. Brown, ‘Human Universals’, The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences, Wilson & Keil, 1999 and D.E. Brown, Human Universals, New York: McGraw-Hill, 1991. Brown lists universals in behaviour and language by ethnographers. Included are: classification of space, shelter, semantic category of dimension, symbolism and belief in the supernatural/religion and divination.

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Along the same line of thought, it is necessary to make the following, somewhat obvious qualifications concerning the universality of built environments. First, similar spatial principles do not produce identical architectural forms across societies. Every culture and class furnishes its own interpretations, attitudes, associations, and explanations for why their architecture presents itself and functions as it does.13 The problems involved in the generation of their types reach deeper than the local availability of materials, natural resources, and climate, and also further than the availability of craftsmen schooled in particular techniques, though all these factors are important. Complexities of cultural, social, economic, ritual and mythic structures affect the way in which architecture is developed. Yet, one should be wary of overinterpretation. Architectural form can be highly sensitive and reactive to political and cultural pressures, compared to more change-resistant cultural forms, such as of language, and political organisation.14 This is particularly clear in cases of monumental or public architecture. In these cases, architecture is a form of public and political display, and dominant political powers can use architecture to make particular impressions. For our purposes, this affects our understanding of cultural assimilation: the political authorities of a city may wish to display to their people and to those above them a Hellenised or Romanised face, whereas what happens behind the facades of the buildings and the attitudes of the users of the buildings may be resilient or resistant to change. This suggests a dualism of ‘material’ and ‘true’ cultures operating within a single society; the separation of which permits architectural change to occur without threatening the integrity of the cultural base or, indeed, springing from that cultural base. Thus, the architectural façade of a city may not be a literal translation of an entire culture’s identity but that of the group (which may or may not be culturally distinct) in control of building. Thus, Hellenistic, Roman, and Christian styles may emerge as architectural veneers whose forms may transition through contact with local traditions, decline or be reinvested with different meanings by local cultures. Radical changes in the transformations of cultural spaces are not necessarily cataclysmic events. There is always, thus, a doubt as to the significance of a particular architectural development and this in itself explains why scholars often opt for the safer path of a positivistic treatment of architectural remains. Nevertheless, the arrangement of space is not passive: it mutually influences and is influenced by cultures to which it comes into contact. To disregard the link between culture and architecture is to impoverish our understanding of the material and cultural world of antiquity, and further to ignore the abundant literary evidence that shows that ancients as well as moderns invested considerable meaning in the built environment. Understanding the civic and religious spatial changes that occurred in the late Roman East requires a multi-disciplinary analysis and it is through this that I have attempted to bridge the chasm between meaning and artefact. I have included insights from the schools of: anthropology, archaeology, architecture, geography, philosophy, religious studies, and neurology to examine the spatial culture of Classical and Early Christian architecture. It is impossible to say whether neurologically we see, remember and conceive of space and built form today just as citizens of Gerasa, Dura, Jerusalem, Apamea, Constantinople, or the Dead Cities of Syria did during the first millennium CE. It is safe to say emperors did not command physicians, priests and philosophers to conduct testing on such things. However, it is possible to explore textual impressions of built form compared with what has survived archaeologically to reflect on current trends in the cross-disciplines listed above. The following Sections will develop these comparisons. Support from ancient textual sources will be narrowed to contemporary authors oriented geographically and culturally to the East. Philosophers, emperors, bishops, historians with an ‘Eastern’ perspective will be geographically bracketed between the cities of Constantinople and Alexandria. Thus, I do not wish to ‘turn’ my textual sources to fit my parameters, but to simply place them next to the physical material in its historical context as a social commentary informing place. Specific architectural sites will accordingly require specific Eastern sources; broad statements referring to deeper meanings will be supported by expanding the parameters for ‘universal’ evidence (i.e. quoting Cicero’s De Natura Deorum for Roman insights into landscape and religion).15 For the archaeology of Gerasa and Dura-Europos, I will rely on their original site reports from the early 20th century and research articles over the last twenty-five years. Equal weight will be placed on the archaeological findings: buildings, coins, inscriptions, sculptural artefacts as on the textual materials. Dura is a very different city than Gerasa in many ways, however it does possess the earliest excavated Christian domus within a city whose cult sites did not differ much from the urban home. The lack of architectural hierarchy within the city coincided with apparent inter-religious ‘peace’ and expansion. Though Dura’s history effectively ‘died’ in the mid-third century CE, it stands frozen as a pre-Constantinian trade city on the edge of Empire. Its contrasting nature to Gerasa is marked and will be used to illuminate their architectural differences. For the sake of focus and relevancy the Dura chapter will focus primarily on the Christian 13

Enrico Guidoni, Primitive Architecture, New York: Harry N. Abrams Publishing, Inc., 1978, 8-9. The following discussion comes from here. Enrico Guidoni, op. cit, 8-9. 15 By this division, I am not making a case for a difference between Western and Eastern spatial cultures. 14

viii

domus. Further insight into Gerasa and Dura Europos, particularly in the senses of geography and topography, was gained through extensive travel through Jordan and Syria during the Spring and Autumn months of 2005.

BOOK ORGANISATION: The book consists of four sections. Section I (SI) uncovers a Greco-Roman theory of architectural space with support from modern sources. Section II (SII) discusses the individual approaches and perceptions of different religious groups (Jewish, Christian, pagan) to sacred space. For these purposes, ‘pagan’ is treated as a religion, though I recognise that it is a portmanteau term, convenient for Christians and modern scholars. Section III (SIII) presents Gerasa and Dura Europos as two test cases for analysing change in spatial patterns in the late Antique city. Section IV (SIV) provides a historiographic background pertaining to Christian and Jewish architecture, liturgy, and societal behaviour to build the summary comments for Gerasa and Dura in Chapter 10. The topics for Section I are divided into the following chapters: I.1 introduces the problem of establishing the symbolic meanings of Classical and Early Christian architecture. I.2 discusses and defines ‘landscape’, natural, civic, and sacred. Later, I apply this in particular to the critical transition (or fracture) between pagan and Christian sense of place. I.3 looks at the human image as the touch-stone of our turning of abstract space into comprehensible place. I.4 discusses Vitruvian theoretical discussions of space in relation to the image of ‘Man’ inscribed within a square and circle. The concept of human form integrated with ‘ideal geometry’ is associated with theories of the divine order of space. I.5 will apply the above discussion to Roman surveying which is a means of plotting the geometry of the cosmos upon the landscape. Geometric symbols are considered as a language by which to reconnect with the divine who originally created and informs the natural world. I.6 will entail a concise discussion of the visuospatial operations of the brain in comprehending spatial form and social remembering. Section II presents the role sacred space played in the late Antique city. II.7 discusses the spatial perspectives of paganism concentrating on temple sacrifice and the characteristics of pagan syncretism. II.8 presents Judaism’s spatial values as they developed after the post Temple period. II.9 illustrates how Christianity’s ascetics and the veneration of relics generated an abstract Early Christian spatiality. Detailed descriptions of church structures and liturgy are delayed until Section IV. II.10 is a short summary section which combines the conclusions of Sections I and II as a theoretical back drop to the analysis of Gerasa and Dura. Section III considers and summarises the archaeological and architectural evidence from the ancient cities of Gerasa (III.11-16) and Dura Europos (III.17). This analysis develops an evidentiary base for the historical discussions in section IV. Section IV is an overview of urban changes in the late Roman East and the affects of Christian ‘desacralisation’ of pagan and Jewish sacred spaces. The focus will narrow to a study of Christian liturgy and architecture and the influences its spatial/ritual nature had on the convert. These findings will reflect on the material remains of Gerasa and Dura Europos and answer the above questions pertaining to polis space, religion and continuity. The progression of this outline can be summarised by the following:

Section I Development of spatial SECTION theory forI Greco-Roman architecture

Section II

Section III

Spatial types and contexts of polis religions

Section IV Archaeological reports of Gerasa and Dura Europos

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Application of historiography and spatial theories of sacred and civic place to Gerasa and Dura: perceptions of change and continuity

In conclusion, the book will determine that the ‘Church Victorious’ had neither morphed out of, nor was the product of, a linear evolutionary process from the domus ecclesia structural setting, but had been uprooted, then replanted into an alien basilica motif: a governmental structural form that was to hold severe connotations for Christian-secular and interChurch relational and ritual behaviours. Within the basilica format, continuity in the use and perceptions of space between the Classical and Early Christian periods was relative to the meanings Christian authorities placed on pagan/Jewish spatial forms. This ‘relative’ Christian ontology, or as Heidegger might say: ‘Christian Being-in-the-world’, was a shift into a new spatial/perceptual configuration. As ‘Being’ in spatial landscapes was directly related to Christian ‘behaviour’ within polis society, the principles behind their architectural use of interior walls, screens, and enclosures, that regulated relationships between Church hierarchy and the lay-person, extended beyond church walls defining the sacred, secular, and profane, Christian and pagan. The polis was directly affected by Christian treatment of their interior ritual spaces. The defining of opposites within the church nave and outside in the polis resulted in a schizophrenic Church capable of great works of theology and social aid to the widow and orphan as well as equally destructive behaviours to anyone or, in particular, any architectural edifice (pagan, Jew, or especially Christian) standing outside the tenants of its orthodoxy. The disruption of Christian evolution from the domus into the basilica (from family to government) meant access to power and wealth guaranteeing continuity, but resulted in Christianity as a confusion of a type. The aim of the study is to determine how spatial perceptions and treatments of forms can influence this nature of behaviour and specifically how the late-Roman city was changed by it.

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SECTION I GRECO-ROMAN AND MODERN THEORIES OF ARCHITECTURAL SPACE

1

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCING THE PROBLEM OF ARCHITECTURAL SYMBOLISM

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCING THE PROBLEM OF ARCHITECTURAL SYMBOLISM

Place is to architecture as meaning is to language. Meaning is the essential burden of architecture.1

expressed itself through the intervention of a semiotic language that we must endeavour to understand. The buildings possessed an emblematic meaning, referring to a series of symbols, religious as well as political. It is these signs that can be analyzed by historians and by which the intention of the builders, although unspoken, can be grasped.7

Chapter 1 introduces several methodological and theoretical problems as scholars ascribe meaning to particular Classical and Early Christian places and structures without establishing the principles by which that space has been interpreted. In the following chapter I examine the ‘interpretative distance’ between modern and ancient perceptions of space.

On a Greek or Christian building everything originally had a meaning, gesturing toward a higher order of things: this mood of an inexhaustible significance surrounded the building like a magical veil.8 For the Roman, the spatiality of the terrestrial earth beneath the sky is the habitat for a community of gods and men, a brotherhood of beings acting virtuously…Throughout this journey anchors are cast which immanentize the passage, and these are the symbolic representations in all their forms. They aim to bring the transcendent within a manageable range, to bring it into human dimension…in an edifice, whether built of words…or as an architectural discourse involving walls, colonnades, peristyles, atria, doorways, gates, occulae, etc. They are all compatible and mutually interactive, they are all contributing to the creative interpretation of the spatiality of ‘being’ through representation.9

The following quotations, from modern writers on Classical architecture and civic space, are a sample of the genre that links deep symbolic meaning to urban forms. Religious symbols permeated the Roman world…Images of the divine world permeated ancient society…These elites often drew on cosmic connections to help negotiate their relation to local, regional, and empire-wide power networks.2 Many people simply took for granted that the divine world and the everyday world were intertwined. Social behaviour had divine implications.3

It is frequently claimed (as the above examples illustrate) that the architecture of the ancient Roman city was ‘imbued’ with spiritual symbolism. It is intimated that somehow and in some way the Romans used structures and spaces to carry metaphysical meanings. From this insight, it would follow that the development of a distinctive Christian architecture during the 4th through 6th centuries CE in the late Roman East was not just an emergence of a religion from its domus ecclesia roots into the basilica/martyria (a move from a private association to being a part of public culture) and a seemingly frantic pace to claim ecclesiastical space in a condensed cityscape, but was a struggle for the meaning, perhaps even the soul of the polis. Yet, modern-day archaeologists, philosophers and historians who use this terminology go little further in elaborating how inanimate matter can reflect more than function, power, confidence or artistic ornamentation. The process of describing buildings, their materials, forms, styles, locations, even their stylistic associations, which are

Religion and holy cities were a major part of the entire urban fabric.4 All public and much private life was channelled through a system of sacred spaces in the Roman town. Walls, temples, circuses, palaces defined the Late Antique town as a network of holy places.5 The social reciprocity between buildings and pedestrians is a complex phenomenon to which each individual brings a unique personal conditioning, whether within the culture of origin or not. Design, construction, and decoration are thus in one sense a latent creation—the ovum, if you will, englobing the swimming seed of a million different approaches, impressions, reactions. The Roman building is a body that we inseminate and forever transform by our presence.6 But the interest of this architecture resides even more in the fact that it was charged with meaning; it transmitted a message and 1

Simon Unwin, Analyzing Architecture, 2nd ed., London: Routledge, 2003, 23. 2 Douglas R. Edwards, Religion and Power, Pagans, Jews, and Christians in the Greek East, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996, 7, 49. 3 Ibid, 54. 4 Warwick Ball, Rome In The East, London: Routledge, 2001, 318. 5 Robert Markus, The End of Ancient Christianity, Cambridge: Cambridge, 1990, 141. 6 Rabun Taylor, Roman Builders, Cambridge: Cambridge, 2003, 254

7

Henri Sterlin, The Roman Empire, Koln: TASCHEN, 2002, 228. Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, quoted in Karsten Harries, The Ethical Function of Architecture, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 347. 9 Clive Knights, ‘The Spatiality of the Roman Domestic Setting: An Interpretation of Symbolic Content’, Architecture and Order, Approaches to Social Space, Michael Parker Pearson and Colin Richards (eds), London: Routledge, 133. 8

3

SPATIAL AND RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE LATE ANTIQUE POLIS then connected to certain political values linking the concrete to the metaphysical, is, by its nature, problematic. Almost by definition, the metaphysical reaches beyond an empirical understanding of the world, and is thus beyond the reach of that most materialistic of disciplines, archaeology. This presents a dichotomy between metaphysical expression and scholastic profession as whether an archaeologist speaking from a Cartesian perspective can evaluate something from a non-material realm.

From the religious-historical perspective, the spatialarchitectural aspects do not seem to be fully explored. Henri Sterlin (above) describes the process of joining the two branches as endeavouring to understand the ‘unspoken’, ‘semiotic language’ of ‘intent’ through the interpretation of symbols. This is more confession than explanation as there is, unfortunately, no written text illuminating the impulse behind the ancient architect’s purpose in design, no guide, set in its proper historical and geographic context, to the symbols from which we can work. This is a central problem with explorations of this nature. The intention of the architects can only be established to a very limited extent, and the readings of space in antiquity are largely beyond our evidence. Sympathetic readings from textual and inscriptional sources pertaining to those spaces run the risk of infusing those spaces with modern, or at the very least, foreign interpretations. Academic discourse typically requires a level of proof beyond their possible reach. Certain insights may be extracted from the Roman architect Vitruvius, particular classical philosophers, Christian theologians, and historians, but, in fact, we are left with semi-restored ruins and little analytical scaffolding by which to support the bold claims of empathetic readings into the human psyche during the late Roman period. We can look at what has survived the ravages of time, and ask, ‘what did the builders intend?’ but so often, this means, ‘how does what I see make me feel?’ Yet, given that ancient readings should inevitably be embedded deep within a culture (they tells us about the relation of the individual to the cosmos), then it is inevitable that any such readings will be layered with specific cultural referents which must be foreign to the contemporary interpreter. Accepting that buildings had a metaphysical content almost immediately means that readings taken purely from first sources become unsupported impositions from a different culture.

Authors appear to bypass the essential attributes determining the sacrality of built form. Typically, Greco-Roman architecture is presented from a point of view, where form, utility and artistic technique provide the primary Scholars, interpretation of a building’s purpose.10 concentrating on the political-religious, and philosophic trends of the period make strong references to civic aesthetics (as Edwards above) yet do not explore the impulse to connect how built form may be ‘permeated’ with human symbolisms.11 Certainly, some of the more ‘materialistic’ studies recognise that there is an absence in their descriptions of the fabric of buildings and a potential for filling that void with an aesthetic, emotional reaction not applicable towards a constructive-scholarly discourse. Thus we have radical departures from the ‘materialist’ point of view, in popular references on Roman architecture. Taylor’s resonant metaphor (above), in which he imagines human discourse in Roman space, is the essential activating element, inseminating it and thus, transforming seemingly ‘dead’ architectural space into an intimate human experience. Annabel Jane Wharton, in her book, Refiguring the PostClassical City,12 uses phrases such as the ‘agonistic reordering of space’ in depicting aggressive Christian destruction of pagan temples; ‘visible absence’ when looking at the post-70 CE Temple of Jerusalem, ruined to its foundations; ‘absent presence’ when considering the Holy Sepulchre’s empty space lacking a monumental idol of its Saviour; and ‘space of frustrated desire’ pertaining to the churches of Gerasa, which lacked the (pagan) tactile capability for its worshippers to touch the divine. Language of this type inserts deep human emotion into sacred space, an example of Taylor’s vivifying place with human intimacy.

To make progress, we need a fresh approach and one that builds from the culture towards the reading of space. We need to start at a very basic level, and attempt to develop more sophisticated and plausible approaches. In the first instance, we need to establish whether people during the lateRoman period indeed read deep meaning in their architecture that went beyond the purely functional. Then, if the metaphysical can be shown to be orienting and driving the functional, how was the architecture imbued spiritually, what was the language, the grammar, the lexis by which meaning was integrated into cities, and how did that meaning play in the city-scapes of the Late Antique East?

10

Luke Lavan, ‘Late Antique Urban Topography’, Recent Research on the Late Antique Countryside, Bowden, Lavan and Marchado (eds), Leiden: Brill, 2004, 185, f.n. 30. He lists authors interested in describing cities from topographical standpoint. 11 See Guy MacLean Rogers in The Sacred Identity of Ephesos, Foundation Myths of a Roman City London: Routledge, 1991, mentioned later in SIII: Gerasa: Artemis Temple f.n. where processional worship is described at length. 12 Wharton, A. J., Refiguring the Post-Classical City: Dura Europos, Jerash, Jerusalem and Ravena,, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

A further problem lies in this issue of intent. Intentionality has been a significant issue in literary criticism, and architectural studies can mirror that debate. The intention of the architect is one issue, but how were the buildings ‘read’ is another. The ‘people’ involved in this reading are normally treated as a unitary category, as if all in a city had a single interpretative framework, which, up through this postmodern era, is at the very least, questionable. We can divide

4

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCING THE PROBLEM OF ARCHITECTURAL SYMBOLISM the population into many different categories, most plausible by ethnic group, educational status, or economic role, but even if we limit our divisions to the wealthy and the poor, then it immediately becomes obvious that we face a number of interpretative difficulties. The wealthy, educated elite designed, financed and maintained civic life. Historians and philosophers of the time may give insights into the minds of a highly educated minority (which perhaps in itself may be different from the ‘normal’ elites of towns like Gerasa), but how did the majority of the population, the farmers coming in from the lands, the business owners, traders, soldiers, freedmen, labourers and slaves, read the symbolism of the city? When a shopkeeper or Roman legionary viewed the columned Cardo, the Oval Plaza, or the Gerasene Artemis Temple complex, did they perceive spatial ideologies, connections to a divine plane, notions of Empire, in other words the metaphysics of a building, or did merely see immense and elaborate forms? And there is, of course, no guarantee that any two members of this amorphous group of poor (or perhaps better, non-rich) would see the city in the same way.

inscription (above) provides a glimpse of an individual’s deeper perception of ‘being placed’ in life and death; though his impressions must be interpreted and it cannot be said how many others shared his insight. However, Gregory of Nyssa gives us a sense that ancient ‘working-class culture’ was not void of intellectual contemplation: Because like those Athenians, there are those today who spend their time doing nothing else except discussing and listening to new things coming forth yesterday or a little earlier from craftsmen, off-hand pontificating on theology, perhaps servants and slaves and fugitives from domestic service, grandly philosophising to us about matters difficult to understand. You know whom this sermon is addressed to. Everywhere throughout the city is full of such things—the alleys, the squares, the thoroughfares, the residential quarters; among cloak salesmen, those in charge of the money changing tables, those who sells us our food. For if you ask about change, they philosophise to you about the Begotten and the Unbegotten. And if you ask about the price of bread, the reply is, ‘The Father is greater, and the Son is subject to him.’ If you say, ‘Is the bath ready?;’ they declare the Son has his being from the nonexistent. I am not sure what this evil should be called— inflammation of the brain or madness, or some sort of epidemic disease which contrives the derangement of reasoning.15

What people knew and indeed understood in this remote past is more challenging an obstacle than attempting to summarize what entire classes of people know about any topic in our post-modern era. In what follows, I will be compelled to make suppositions that, for instance, architects (according to Vitruvius) and the majority of elite upper-class individuals would be trained in Greek paideia and would thus be acquainted with philosophies including, Stoicism, and Platonism, and also conventional cosmology, geometry and mathematics, as well as having an active role in their civic religions.13 It would follow that those who planned cities, financed building projects, and authorised and solved specific design issues would be cognizant of theories of structure, aesthetics and perceptions of sympathy of form relative with cosmology in terms of logos and ratio: the governing principle and rational thought behind (or integrated with) the creation, direction, and operation of the natural world and heavens. Yet, although this may seem a risky strategy, we have some security here since we have their physical artefacts. And it is possible to show that even if individual architects were not aware of these broader principles, they inescapably applied them to civic landscapes.

Gregory, an Eastern Christian bishop in Constantinople gives a glimpse of the scholastic aptitude of the trade-class during the fourth century CE, illustrating possibility for the prevalence of philosophical-theological topics happening in the conversation within open market places of the City. Returning to the original argument in this chapter, if one could theoretically substantiate, or even fully explain the implications of the claim that ‘all public and much private life was channelled through a system of sacred spaces in the Roman town’ or that Annabel Wharton’s ‘absent presence’ can somehow hang in sacred space; the principles contained within them would go far to establish the pagan and Christian spatial ideologies necessary to answer the core questions bulleted in the Introduction. To achieve this, we must pose certain basic questions • •

What the majority of the underclass(es) believed is more of a mystery for they left few written records.14 The Panos

•

What is sacred space and how is it generated, placed, and maintained? How can meanings and/or sacrality be tied to certain places and buildings? How does the humanity relate built form with the cosmos and the divine?

13

Deborah F. Sawyer, Women and Religion in the First Christian Centuries, London: Routledge, 1996, 51. ‘…Philosophy was an essential ingredient of the curriculum in the education of aristocrats and emperors, and it could, literally, lay the foundations of cities, through architectural realization of notions of order and organization within society.’ David T. Runia. .’A Philosophical Image in Philo of Alexandria’, Ancient Approaches to Plato’s Timaeus, Sharples and Sheppard, (eds), BICS Supplement 78, 2003, 97. 14 Alan K. Bowman, Life and Letters on the Roman Frontier, Vindolanda and its People, London Museum Press, 1994, and the remains of inscriptions

particularly those pertaining to spells and divination: John Gager, Curse Tablets and Binding Spells from the Ancient World , Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992. 15 Gregory of Nyssa, ‘On the Divinity of the Son and of the Holy Spirit’, Pagans and Christians in Late Antiquity, A Sourcebook, London: Routledge, 2000, 110.

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CHAPTER 2 A QUESTION OF LANDSCAPES

and seas associating the study of landscapes to that of a scientific discipline of classification, mapping and analysis. Yet, a more accurate definition lies within the word itself. Landscape associates people together with place.3 Danish lanskab, German landschaft, Dutch landschap, and Old English landscipe combine two roots. ‘Land’ means both a place and the people living there. Skabe and schaffen mean ‘to shape’; suffixes –skab and –schaft, as in the English suffix ‘ship,’ also means a: collective group, association, or partnership. Though no longer used in ordinary speech, the Dutch schappen conveys a magisterial sense of shaping, as in the biblical Creation. To dwell means to make and care for a place. To shape a place according to German philosopher Martin Heidegger is to, in essence, define one’s self. To arrive at this, Heidegger traced the verb in High German and Old English; in both, the root for ‘to dwell’ means ‘to build’.4 In German, the roots for building and dwelling and ‘I am’ are the same. I am because I dwell; I dwell because I build. Bauen—building, dwelling, and being—means ‘to build’, ‘to construct,’ but also to ‘cherish and protect, to preserve and care for, specifically to till the soil, to cultivate the mind.’ Thus, early in the twentieth century, Heidegger initiated the concept of applying Being to the landscapes of place and built form.

The etymology of the word, ‘landscape’, links the definition of personhood with the geography of the natural world. Thus the full spectrum of a person’s identity: psyche, cognition, emotion, social, spiritual and physical natures are dynamically integrated to place and built form. It follows that the rhetoric of landscape attaches many terms to itself: civic, sacred, social, (et. al), and as humanity builds upon landscapes, metaphysical meaning is injected into its forms. This chapter provides a foundation for understanding late Antique polis spatial and religious thinking. The application of the word, ‘landscape’ in the fields of archaeology, architecture, geography, theology, (et al.), has become semantically ubiquitous. Understandings of landscapes, however, can be arbitrary. Civic, natural, sacred, social, and architectural landscapes may cover a spectrum of ‘places’, from beautiful ‘Lake Country’ settings to built environments, to ‘sacred’, meta-physical locations, or even purely intellectual, metaphorical places. It is accepted that modern concept of ‘landscape’ originated in Italy, quickly spread to Flanders and across Europe between the early fifteenth through the late nineteenth centuries. Initially, it referred to the literary and artistic representations of the physical world by authors, poets and landscape artists.1 Landscape was a process of interpreting natural scenery by sight where emotional feelings gathered from this experience established intimate-emotional bonds between humanity and nature. The accumulated impressions of this genre of experience were refined to support a range of political, moral and social assumptions, which became a significant hallmark of the elite throughout the European nations, signifying the possession of artistic, educated taste. Landscape became an ideological notion by which certain classes of people claimed to understand themselves and imagine their relationship with the natural world.2

Notions of landscapes are, by definition, human creations and the cognitive and physical act of building a landscape is essential to the act of being, according to modern philosophers. Anne Whiston Spirn argues that ‘Humans touched, saw, heard, smelled, tasted, lived in, and shaped landscapes before the species had words to describe what it did.’5 Thus, it could be said that landscapes were the first human texts, read before the invention of other signs and symbols. Landscape came to be formed as humanity formed impressions of it.6

An exact scientific definition of landscape is elusive. Its geographical nature is obvious as it refers to the regions of the earth: plains, hills, valleys, desserts, mountains, rivers, lakes

3

Anne Whiston Spirn, The Language of Landscape, New Haven: Yale, 1998, 16. 4 Martin Heidegger, ‘Building Dwelling Thinking,’Basic Writings, David Farrell Krell (ed.), London: Routledge, 1993, 349. ‘That is, bauen, buan, bhu, beo are our word bin in the versions: ich bin, I am, du bist, you are, the imperative form bis, be. What does ich bin mean? The old word bauen, to which bin belongs, answers: ich bin, du bist mean I dwell, you dwell. The way in which you are and I am, the manner in which we humans are on the earth, is buan, dwelling. To be a human being means to be on the earth as a mortal. It means to dwell.’

1

See in its entirety: Simon Schama, Landscape and Memory, New York: Vintage Books, 1995. Schama makes the connection that: ‘at the very least, it seems right to acknowledge that it is our shaping perception that makes the difference between raw matter and landscape (10)’ and humanity is ‘(craving) to find, in nature, a consolation for our mortality (15)’. ‘…as we have seen, our entire landscape tradition is the product of shared culture, it is by the same token a tradition built from a rich deposit of myths, memories, and obsessions (14)’. Denis E. Cosgrove, Social Formation and Symbolic Landscape, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998, 1, 13. 2 Denis E. Cosgrove, op. cit, 9.

5 6

6

Ann Whiston Spirn, op. cit, 15. See also discussion in Alston, op. cit, 33-4, with further references.

CHAPTER 2: A QUESTION OF LANDSCAPES When, however, by daily work men had rendered their hands more hardened for building, and by practising their clever talents they had by habit acquired craftsmanship, then also the industry, which rooted itself in their minds, caused those who were more eager herein to profess themselves craftsmen. When, therefore, these matters were so first ordained and Nature (natura) had not only equipped the human races with perceptions (sensibus) like other animals, but also had armed their minds (cognitationibus) with ideas and purposes, and had put the other animals under their power, then from the construction of buildings they progressed by degrees to other crafts and disciplines, and they led the way from a savage and rustic life to a peaceful civilisation.10

Hodder notes that the ‘practice of the house’ in its design, construction, and maintenance, generated Neolithic society by necessitating ‘bonds’, ‘dependencies’, and ‘boundaries’ between people to carry out the process.7 The importance of place and time becomes apparent as levels of houses were often built directly over earlier ones. Ultimate group continuity was demonstrated by building tombs in structural similarity to houses as memorials for the dead, in affect, stressing the desire for a promise of cultural continuity in the after-life. Thus, from the beginning of their appearance on the landscape, buildings became culturally symbolic and transcendent.

There is thus a general perception of a link between the ancient development of building, the modern formation of landscape as a descriptive term, and the establishment and advancement of human society.

Norman Crowe writes: We reveal our presence in the world by creating places…they serve us as a kind of artificial nature, or a ‘second’ nature…By the extension of our imaginations, we created our cosmologies from what we observed firsthand in nature: life and death, the passing of days and the seasons, the geometry of the compass rose, and the dome of the sky, and the spatial richness of the earth and the endless variety of living things throughout land and sea. …the fundamental notion that the artefacts we produce comprise our world as something distinct from nature and that our sense of what is natural is therefore excusive to the province of nature. As concepts they interact in a dialectical fashion to condition the way we approach nature and what we build…a quest into the human compulsion to create architecture rather than simply functional shelter.8

A further stage in the evolution of human building and society comes with the move from ‘natural’ shapes to regular geometric forms which stand against nature. Jacques Cauvin believes a cognitive revolution (similar to Vitruvian understanding) in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic B period (10,000-8,000 BCE) inspired humanity, firstly in Anatolia/Syria, to build the first open-air rectangular structures. These evolved from earlier buildings which tended to be oval, semi-subterranean housing.11 These square houses embarked humanity on a radically new course of planting geometry upon topography and more clearly marked the breach between the natural landscape and the constructed landscape.

This is not just a modern idea. Vitruvius (II.1 1-2) placed the genesis of building at the very origins and heart of human society, just after the creation of fire, learning to walk upright, and to talk. Vitruvius states that the inspiration for the first freestanding homes came from imitating animal architecture in the way swallows constructed their nests by shaping clay, mixed with twigs and branches.9 Vitruvius does not seem to speak of landscapes specifically (natura instead of forma et situs agri or topia), in an aesthetic sense, however, he goes at length to describe proper natural environments upon which to establish cities (1.4-6) and certain buildings within city walls as if speaking of a separate ‘human’ environment within a natural one (1.7). He explains, later in Book 2, how the processes involved in constructing simple structures, in socialinteractive contexts, activated a cognitive catalyst, within the human mind, advancing society to higher social and aesthetic planes.

Constructing, observing and living in the first quadrangular houses must have inspired a completely new human geometry, a new system of possibilities in self-regulating one’s world. The emergence of geometry in human behaviour dates its ability to count and translate number into spatial pattern. Abstract forms not clearly found in nature, but emanating from human initiative could connect standing walls at ninety degrees, or fashion the perfect cube or rectangle, forms not naturally manifest in stone or wood. Geometric figures: the triangle, square, pyramid, and circle, possess specific ratios and proportions which mediate diverse elements and quantities into symmetries with the human condition. Symmetry, meaning ‘suitable relation’ and ‘due proportion’, can be synonymous with proportion meaning the harmony of parts to each other. Symmetry that is proportional is relational in the way differences are preserved through integration. It is the act of melding diverse elements into a coherent whole. The inspiration came from what the Greeks called analogia or mathematical proportion from the word logos (‘principle’, ‘calculation’; see Ch. 4), which allowed

7

Ian Hodder, ‘Architecture and Meaning: The Example of Neolithic Houses and Tombs’, Architecture and Order, Approaches to Social Space, Michael Parker Pearson and Colin Richards (eds.), London: Routledge Press, 1994, 80-1; Richard Alston, op. cit, 33-4. 8 Norman Crowe, Nature and Idea of a Man-Made World, An Investigation into the Evolutionary Roots of Form and Order in the Built Environment, Cambridge, MIT Press, 1995, 4. 9 Vitruvius, 2.1.2. ‘…item minibus et articulis quam vellent rem faciliter tractarent, coeperunt in eo coetu alii de fronde facere tecta, alii speluncas fodere sub montibus, nonnulli hirundinum nidos et aedificationes earum imitantes de luto et virgules facere loca quae subirent.’

10

Vitruvius, On Architecture, Book 2.1.6-7 frag.. Jacques Cauvin, The Birth of the Gods and the Origins of Agriculture, trans. Trevor Watkins, Cambridge: Cambridge, 2000, 98, 128; Richard Alston, op. cit, 33. 11

7

SPATIAL AND RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE LATE ANTIQUE POLIS humans to change the face of their environments and create built landscapes.

physical space as late pagans, and there would thus be different spatial ideologies at work at the same time. Further, the development of a new spatial ideology inevitably precedes the architectural monumentalization of such an ideology. Thus, a landscape is both a material ‘mindscape’ but also a historic document: it communicates to its audience the choices and mentalities that formed it and which have survived in the landscape potentially longer than those mentalities. Historic preservation of ancient structures may also preserve intact the intent behind the original designers.

Humanity had become an inspired fabricator; a reshaped cognition reflected in producing built forms. Concurrent with the development of rectangular architecture, religious art developed a ‘transcendental logic’ or consciousness. The first public buildings dated to the eighth millennium were not for utilitarian uses for processing or fabrication but instead were for social purposes related to symbolic activities. The first social spaces were types of sanctuaries.12

Nevertheless, although pagan and Christian perceptions of space were dissimilar, they worked under the same physical principles that affected them in the same ways. Roofs would not be necessary if not for the elements; attention to the principles of support and load would be ignored if not for gravity. The muscle groups in the arms, legs and backs of soldiers, stone masons, market sellers, carpenters, linen weavers, farmers and camel drivers vary according to the stresses required of their professions. The equipment of the world works recursively upon the bodies of those who use it, in that it moulds the feet, hands, and mind as bone, muscle and psyche conditions and shapes itself to the habitual tasks of everyday life. It is through this reciprocal relationship that certain intimacy is formed between place and person as one simultaneously affects the other. The person becomes personally invested within the precepts of the particular landscape they are shaping. There is a physicality about space to which the human responds in a tactile-sensual sense rather than necessarily as purely a cultural being. This can mean that space has cross-cultural characteristics which certainly transcend paganism and Christianity. For instance, spatial patterns, pertaining to sacred places and the home, often consist of ‘nested’ patterns creating a sense of refuge. Higher layers of intimacy grow by moving further inward, penetrating deeper interior zones. Likewise, the naos and pronaos of temples, inner courts and Torah niches of synagogues and chancels of churches held heightened religious significance and/or status for entry. Hillier and Hansen found that a visitor’s status increased by being allowed further inward into a structure by the controlling inhabitant.16 As such, the concepts of and placement of walls, doorways, and lines of sight become integral in interpreting the social characteristics of a particular population by the way it reorders spaces into particular patterns.

Libanius, an ancient theorist thinking in much the same way as modern archaeologists, writing in the late fourth century, argues that: The first men, who appeared on earth, Sire, occupied the high places and protected themselves in caves and huts, and soon gained a notion (ἔννοιαν) of gods and realized how much their good will means to mankind. They raised the kind of temples to be expected of primitive man and made idols for themselves. As their culture advanced toward urbanization and building techniques became adequate for it, many cities made their appearance at the mountain’s foot or on the plains, and in each and every one of them the first buildings to be erected after the wall were shrines and temples, for they believed that from such governance they would have the utmost protection also.13

Anne Whiston Spirn defines landscape as the signification of essential humanness.14 Landscapes, under human control, have a certain amount of forethought of purpose, fashioned in particular sensual and aesthetic overtones, and deeply embedded in culture. Thus, the personality of landscape changes with a particular society’s dynamics. Every community’s self perception of the world plays a fundamental part in how they shape their built environment.15 If we are to accept Heidegger and Spirn’s conception of landscape as being ontologically ‘human-shaped’, socially unique, and sacral to the perceived force(s) that operate within its physical systems, then it would follow that a society’s self-identity would uniquely found their architectural presentation upon the landscape. Since pagan and Christian ritual practices and theologies (or lack there of) were quite different, we should not expect their built environments to be similar or require them to hold the same associations with certain buildings or be consistent in behaviours within and around them. Yet, to a large extent early Christians were operating within the same

The arrangement of doors and walls, the constructing of spaces, are means of ordering and controlling human interactions: people can only move through doors, look through windows, etc. Walls limit human interaction. Thus, ‘the ordering of space in buildings is essentially about the ordering of relations between people’17 in the midst of

12

Cauvin, op. cit, 120. Libanius, Oration XXX.4, trans. A.F. Norman (LCL), 103-4. Though the first buildings were likely primitive huts, Mike Parker Pearson and Colin Richards, ‘Architecture and Order: Spatial Representation and Archaeology’, Architecture and Order, Approaches to Social Space, Michael Parker Pearson and Colin Richards (eds), London: Routledge Press, 1994, 55. 14 Anne Whiston Spirn, op. cit, 17. 15 Richard Bradley, The Significance of Monuments, On the shaping of human experience in Neolithic and Bronze Age Europe, London: Routledge, 1998, 109. 13

16

Bill Hillier and Julienne Hansen, The Social Logic of Space, Cambridge: Cambridge, 1984, 163-75. 17 Hillier and Hansen, op. cit, 2. Also, Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith, Oxford: Blackwell, 1974, 83. ‘…space

8

CHAPTER 2: A QUESTION OF LANDSCAPES design. The first line on paper is already a measure of what cannot be expressed fully. The first line on paper is less.23

openings in walls, enclosures, cells and courts. The way a society builds explains, as well as determines, who they are, and what they are saying to each other.18 Building is thus constituted by and constitutive of human society (very much in the Vitruvian mode). To be human is to be place-bound by design, thus we may read a space and both anticipate a lifestyle and be initiated into its cultural parameters.19 Even when starting from the most base level, the interaction of the physical body with a built environment, the sensual interpretation very quickly becomes social and metaphysical. The link between building and society appears integral to virtually every theorist from antiquity to the present day.

In an attempt to reflect this morphic language, buildings and their precincts convey transpatial meanings by the addition of certain symbols: altars, statues, crosses, baptisteries, etc. These symbols are ritually fixed (or ritually or profanely detached and disposed of) to any place as an identifying mark; a rational volume imbued by a divine principle. Sacrality meets landscape when yearnings beyond functional needs create kinetic movements: along paths, or ways, climbing steps, crossing over thresholds, through portals into special zones designated by ritual consecration to perform certain acts in a social setting. The concept of pilgrimage is rooted in the concept that acts of worship carry more impact in one place over another. Sacred locations are typically on elevated nodal points, mountain tops, springs and secluded natural clearings. Some retain their sacrality over a succession of, sometimes antagonistic, religious ideologies. Sacred landscapes are designated as such, for their associations with the divine linked to the hidden forces operating within nature extending upward into the cosmic spheres. The sacrifice of something would not have been conceived of and altars not lit and processed to if the body, conditioned by nature, operated in a state of meta-physical disconnection from the mind. When viewing sacred ways or temenoi (temple zones), we need to be conscious of them as physical environments which are endowed with symbolic social meanings and then acted upon by the social group.24

Space is cultural both in being a manifestation of culture and a structuring force within culture. Space shapes individuals physically, but also culturally. Thus, as one imposes a selfperceived identity into the fabric of the world, representing that in space, so the world imposes an identity on the individual (it locates the individual). There is thus a dialectic between the person, the material and the society(s) it affects. The relationship between person and place is deepened as a system of reciprocity develops between people making places and places ‘shaping’ people.20 Yet, the weaving of human dialogues with landscape and its physical and social influence on the person goes further. Individuals read meanings into landscapes which connect them to a world beyond the individual and corporeal, even beyond what is immediately social. This reading ‘in’ meanings to landscapes by the imagination of the mind has led some to call this different topography of perception ‘inscape’ or ‘mindscape’.21 Christopher Tilley writes, that ‘kinetic activities of human beings orientate apprehension of the landscape and create it as human. Space is existential, and existence is spatial in that it opens onto an "outside" a series of reference points.’22 The language of sacred space has been described as ‘transpatial’ or ‘morphic’. What began as an abstract thought now exists in certain shapes in the real world. Out of the abstract, lines of patterns develop. Louis Kahn expresses the ramifications of abstract self-expression and the apprehension of the mere drawing of a line:

In this chapter I have shown that the etymology of the word, ‘landscape’, links personhood with the topography of place and the natural world. As humanity shapes place, a reciprocal relationship develops between buildings, space and Being. Human metaphysics finds concrete form in shaping place. And as humanity lives within them, places recursively affect their physical/psychological/spiritual identities. Thus elements of human-Being become infused in the building process. Metaphysics becomes solid geometry. Similarly, the internal and external spaces that are intimately related to buildings become permeated with significance. The shapes of air that forms contain and exclude are as meaningful as material aesthetics. Space combined with building becomes ‘place’ as they are infused with the spectrum of human nature. Personhood becomes emplaced in the world. This will provide a foundation for understanding the pagan-Christian dynamics of spatial changes that occurred in the late Antique polis. Understanding their different treatments of polis and religious spaces will help to illumine the ‘personhood’ behind pagan/Christian landscapes.

Everything that is made however obeys the laws of nature. The man is always greater than his works because he can never fully express his aspirations. For to express oneself in music or architecture is by the measurable means of composition or is not a thing but a set of relations between things.’ Pearson and Richards, op. cit, 3. 18 Robert Pogue Harrison, ‘Hic Jacet’, Landscape and Power, 2nd ed, W.J.T. Mitchell (ed) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 361. 19 Hillier and Hansen, op. cit, 27. 20 Pearson and Richards, op. cit, 3; They quote Winston Churchill: ‘first we shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us.’ 21 Cosgrove, op. cit, 14; ‘inscape’. Marianne Sawiki, Crossing Galilee, Architectures of Contact in the Occupied Land of Jesus, Harrisburg: Trinity Press International, 2000, 13; ‘mindscape’. 22 Christopher Tilley, A Phenomenology of Landscape, Providence: Berg, 1994, 13.

23

Louis Kahn, Essential Texts, Robert Twombly (ed.), New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2003, 63. 24 Pearson and Richards, op. cit, 5.

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CHAPTER 3 THE HUMAN IMAGE AND ARCHITECTURE OF SPATIAL ORDER

travel through familiar places and discern the way through unfamiliar places. The habit of bodily orientation enhances its intuitive abilities.

Chapter 3 considers further how humans infuse landscapes with meaning and how abstract perceptions of divinity can be associated with built forms. A listing of spatial types in architecture establishes the way in which built environments develop as part of cognition. All spatial orientation originates as a geometric image on a planar landscape. As individuals create built forms, they become, not creators in an original sense, but ‘re-creators’, operating in simulation of an original act of creation. Creative inspiration is not a primary act but a secondary reordering of existing orders, shapes, and materials into ‘new’ applications. A hierarchy of order is set where someone or thing must precede humanity as a ‘first source’ creator. People’s perception of a connection to the divine in the creation of space induces them to invest sacrality in certain places, objects, and symbols. I argue that pagans, Christians, and Jews invested sacrality in spaces for similar reasons, but operated within different spatial cultures A space is something that has been made room for, something that has been freed, namely, within a boundary, Greek peras. A boundary is not that at which something stops but, as the Greeks recognized, the boundary is that from which something begins its essential unfolding. That is why the concept is that of horismos, that is, horizon, the boundary. Space is in essence that for which room has been made, that which is let into its bounds. Accordingly, spaces receive their essential being from locales and not from space.1 Space is not the setting (real or logical) in which things are arranged, but the means whereby the positing of things becomes possible. This means that instead of imagining (space) as a sort of ether in which all things float, or conceiving it abstractly as a characteristic that they all have in common, we must think of it as the universal power enabling them to be connected.2

Perceptual Space is grounded in ‘self’ in that individual perception of distances, directions, objects and buildings is subjective and qualitative. Space is relational in the sense of encounter, emotion and personality. It is space that can be ‘felt’ as much as verbalised. Thus the use of metaphor is necessary to express what direct terminology cannot.

•

Architectural Space is the identification of place by bounding space with walls. Its application of geometries into structural forms creates an inside and outside, a way around and a channel of movement.

•

Existential Space is perceptual space in transcendence. It contains the personal experiences of the individual socialised within a group. It is in a constant state of flux in sacred, symbolic and mythic contexts. Deep social meanings are applied to buildings and objects providing reference points for human attachment.

•

Boundaries establish and map out distinctions, oppositions, and social and cultural differences. Applied to existential space, it defines the sacred and profane, what is material, and Otherness.

•

Cognitive Space provides a basis for reflection and theory on the above spatial natures.

Christopher Tilley observes that space is continuously relational between the society that created it and the objects it contains.4 Categories of space commonly overlap and complete autonomy between them is non-existent. Architectural space cannot exist without the distinction of boundaries, the cognition of its forms, and the perceptions of space which are gathered by moving through and interacting with space. Transcendent space is achieved by attaching these interrelationships to sacred-mythical contexts. Similarly, the structure of architectural form is considered from multiple perspectives: it is defined from both the interior and exterior. Architectural space is born from the relationship between objects and boundaries. The planes which define a space’s limits and the edges and intersections of two or more limiting surfaces, constituting angles or corners, become the compass

The progression from the human body to existential/mystical considerations of sacred space can be traced using a variety of (briefly defined) spatial categories listed below.3 •

•

Somatic Space is the space of sensory experience and bodily movement. A person becomes self-orientated through habitual ‘time-space routines’ enabling them to

1

Martin Heidegger, ‘Building Dwelling Thinking’, Basic Writings, David Farrell Krell (ed.), London: Routledge, 1993, 356. 2 Merleau-Ponty, The Phenomenology of Perception, New York: Humanities Press, 1962, 243; in Kimberly Dovey, ‘Putting Geometry in its Place: Toward a Phenomenology of the Design Process’, Dwelling, Seeing, and Designing, Toward a Phenomenological Ecology, David Seamon (ed.), New York: State University of New York Press, 1993, 248. 3 Christopher Tilley, A Penomenology of Landscape, Oxford: Berg, 1994, 1617.

4

10

Christopher Tilley, op.cit, 17.

CHAPTER 3: THE HUMAN IMAGE AND ARCHITECTURE OF SPATIAL ORDER settings for orientation and comprehension. Space is not, however, an abstract set of relations with which the natural world is structured.5 The lived experience of the body in space is the primary measure from which all conceptions of space are constructed and converted into meaningful place. Landscapes are spaces of human encounter where perspective brings a subjective dimension which cannot be divorced from its symbolic elements. It is contextual by definition in that it is a woven pattern of events, material, forms and spaces; a place where processes and dynamic relationships happen.6 It is not static. The kinetic activities of human beings orientate perceptions of the landscape and create it in human terms. ‘The meaning of place is grounded in existential or lived consciousness of it.’7 The Panos funerary stele (see Introduction) is a composite of these orders: through not a formal temple, its three-dimensional verticality and connection to a metaphysical world establishes a sacred zone. It contains a message between two persons who once lived together now operating within a mythic context; a perceptual space of emotional longing for a lost love that can not be fully severed. The dynamics of relationship stands as prominent as the architecture of the stone as Panos was likely physically (somatically) involved in its placement, movement around it and had wept before it.

interiority and exteriority of inclusion and exclusion, split the world in two. Vitruvius expressed something of the same perspective, but additionally he introduces an element of spatiality and perspective in seeing the initial act of architectural design as a response to verticality and the experience of seeing the stars. And so, as they kept coming together in greater numbers into one place, finding themselves naturally gifted beyond the other animals in not being obliged to walk with faces to the ground, but upright, and gazing upon the splendour of the starry firmament…they began in that first assembly to construct shelters (Vitruvius 2.1-2).

The dialectic of horizontal and vertical is constructed from the upright stance of the human body. The life-world is structured as a horizontal plane between earth and sky. The vertical dimension, reflecting the body, is divided between the human scale and that which seems to stretch infinitely above. The distance between person and heavens has generated a metaphorical linguistics to express the void between the temporal and eternal; the weak and supreme. Vertical symbolism permeates the language of power and domination: the ‘highness’ of kings, the ‘upper’ classes, social ‘climbing,’ etc.11 Spatial metaphors are commonly linked to the upright stance of the body as one strives to ‘ground’ their lives upon a stable ‘base’. The word ‘stand’ shares a root with ‘stasis’, ‘stable’, ‘state’, ‘statute’ and ‘establish’. The vertical ‘stands’ against the horizontal as a silent form of aspiration to do, become, succeed, and progress.

Louis Kahn famously stated that ‘the sunlight did not know what it was before it hit a wall’ and ‘A wall is built in hope that a light once observed may strike it even for but a rare moment in time’.8 It could equally be said that humanity did not know what the full implications of light could be before it built a wall. From the first Neolithic builders of free-standing structures, the act of manipulating the principles of planar geometry in sculpting the boundaries of open space by erecting walls with curvatures and corners is highly significant. The entrapment of a specifically desired space orients human intent in both interior and exterior contexts. Space becoming place is a social event and is intimately related to the human sense of being.9 Walls protected and made private, windows opened exterior views and cast interior light, doors and their thresholds welcomed the inhabitant and negotiated the rights of entrance for the visitor. The roof could be said to have been the first pattern of architecture as the first structures were roofs on the ground capturing a ‘bubble of space’ centring its occupants within an interior world.10 Practically and symbolically, by creating an inside and an outside was to simultaneously, through the

Rising to his or her feet to stand vertically on a horizontal plane, the first individual became the point of reference from which all existence was determined.12 Up, down, right, left, front and behind emanated from this standing position. ‘The simplest model of a person’s existential space is, therefore, a horizontal plane pierced by a vertical axis.’13 The body has always been, whether in stasis or constant movement, fixed permanently between front and back, left and right creating a sense of continual orientation by encirclement. The symmetry of place generated by a person simply rising to stand, grounds the body simultaneously to the landscape and the heavens. What lies ahead or behind transcends place to relate to the movement of time. The movement of ‘turning one’s back to something’ is an indirect commentary on the body’s face, feet, hands and limbs naturally pointing forward to engage and grasp the world as one ‘faces’ it. Up and down constitute a separation along the earth/heavens cosmic axis. The horizon line represents the limits of our horizontal

5

Kim Dovey, op. cit, 39. Anne Whiston Spirn, The Language of Landscape, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998, 133. 7 Christopher Tilley, op cit, 13. 8 Louis Kahn, Essential Texts, Robert Twombly (ed.), New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2003, 231. 9 Martin Heidegger, ‘Building, Dwelling, Thinking’, Basic Writings, David Farrell Krell (ed.), London: Routledge Press, 1978, 348-363. 10 Murray Silverstein, ‘The First Roof: Interpreting a Spatial Pattern’, Dwelling, Seeing, and Designing, Toward a Phenomenological Ecology, David Seamon (ed.), New York: State University of New York Press, 1993, 77. 6

11

Kim Dovey, Framing Places, Mediating Power in Built Form, London: Routledge, 1999, 41. 12 R.D. Dripps. The First House, Myth, Paradigm and the Task of Architecture, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997, 16-17. Dripps is writing here on the Vitruvian genesis of human urbanism. 13 Rudolf Arnheim, The Dynamics of Architectural Form ,Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977, 35.

11

SPATIAL AND RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE LATE ANTIQUE POLIS vision, separating above from below, the visible and the invisible, the present and the future and that which lies beyond. The horizon correspondingly becomes a time-line as it registers the progression of the sun across the sky between the genesis and termination of a day. Movement through place with our bodies while in constant self-orientation allows for a relationship between place and form. Internalised representations (cognitive maps) are keys to building ideas of perceptual-existential forms of architecture. It is through an ‘interactive’ body in motion travelling through various landscapes that one may experience the perspectives of near and far, up and down, back and front, left and right. Human directionality plays an important role in sacral space. Turning, facing, and standing in particular directions and places are often ritually significant. Determination, order and significance in space are due at least in part to the anatomical frame of the body.

Accordingly, they found meaning in a human account of the world through built form. Elie Wiesel, giving a modern commentary on the new beginning made by Adam and Eve after their exile from paradise, writes, ‘It is not given to man to begin. Beginning is God’s privilege. But it is given to man to begin again—and he does so every time he chooses to defy death and side with the living.’15 Wiesel argues that (in Judaism and hence Christian doctrine) we cannot start to build, ‘ex nihilo’ out of nothing (or from a pre-existing matter) as the original Creator, but there is true freedom in ‘beginning again’ as we form the physical out of mental constructs. We can thus reconstruct our built ‘narrative’ of the world, even though we can never build the world which we narrate. That is, however, an exercise of freedom, and also of power over the world. To make their home in the world, that is, to build, human beings must gain more than physical control: they must establish spiritual control. To do so they must wrest order from what at first seems contingent, fleeting, and confusing, transforming chaos into cosmos. That is to say, to really build is to accomplish something very much like what God is thought to have done when creating the world. Small wonder that the architect has been so often thought in the image of the Creator, the Creator in the image of the architect.16

Vitruvius suggests that an individual human, standing in spatial self-determination, could not affirm a connection with the heavens. Thus, when individuals began to gather in open spaces, moving out of the forest depths, and creating, for the first time, architecture in their social unity (2.1.1-7), they were able to erect, just as the first human had stood, vertical timber, rock and stone that pointed towards the starry firmament. Separate and alone, they could only ponder space, but as an interactive group they could question, converse and plan, and build. Language was the catalyst that made structures rise. The Tower of Babel (Gen. 7: 1-8), the first major social construction project in the Bible, ended in failure when language broke down. Even the Lord feared humans’ industrial capabilities when allied to a common tongue. This could have stood as a Vitruvian case study in which human self-determination expressed in a monumental vertical structure failed, not from weaknesses in engineering or construction, but from social cohesion.

Aristoxenus of Tarentum (c. late 4th century B.C.E.), music theorist and student of Aristotle, relates the natural order with divine and human reciprocity embodied in the polis. He asserts that humanity’s ‘narrative’ is to conform to the ordering principles of nature rather than dominating them or wrestling pieces away to create something new. The polis becomes the human reflection of divine order, the highest imitation of the elements imbued within nature. For the whole reason of the thing (the nature of man) is as follows: Divinity introduced man into the world as a most exquisite being, to be honoured reciprocally with himself, and as the eye of the orderly systematization of everything. Hence also man gave things names, himself becoming the character of them. He also invented letters, through these procuring a treasury of memory. He imitated the established order of the universe, by laws and judicial proceedings, organizing the communion of cities. For no human work is more honourable in the eyes of the world, nor more worthy of notice by the Gods, than proper constitution of a city governed by good laws, distributed in an orderly fashion throughout the state…17

High columnar walls, triangular pediments, horizontal architraves, circular, and semi-circular floors, and hemispherical ceilings are a unique human stamp on a natural world they did not design. The application of the solid geometries of built form is like a ‘second nature’, a symbiotic overlay of one world over another. Cicero considers this duality when writing on Roman affects upon landscapes. We enjoy the fruits of the plains and of the mountains, the rivers and the lakes are ours, we sow corn, we plant trees, we fertilize the soil by irrigation, we confine the rivers and straighten or divert their courses. In fine, by means of our hands we essay to create as it were a second world within the world of nature.14

When humanity constructs in finiteness, they are, in essence, a beginner who begins again, anew, a ‘re-creator’ inventing through imitation. What is seen as human inspiration is, actually, an act of recycling the divine order in divine

Vitruvius’ early humanity desired to form spaces which connected design to the spaces perceived in nature.

15

Van Pelt and Westfall, Architectural Principles in the Age of Historicism, New Haven: Yale, 1991, 23. 16 Karsten Harries, The Ethical Function of Architecture, Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 2000, 110. 17 Aristoxenus of Tarentum, ‘Euryphamus, Concerning Human Life’, The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library, Grand Rapids: Phanes Press, 1987, 245.

14

Cicero, De Natura Deorum, II.lx.152, trans. H. Rackham (LCL, 1933), 271.

12

CHAPTER 3: THE HUMAN IMAGE AND ARCHITECTURE OF SPATIAL ORDER simulation interpreted through human perception and creativity. Aristotle claimed that ‘the minimum number, strictly speaking, is two’.18 Though he was speaking in the context of the subdivision of numeric time, where, ‘in a sense, there is not a smallest number’; he also relates the act of establishing place is to create at least two places: that what was made and that by repetitive ‘emplacement’ through inherent changes in movement.19 Aristotle states that it was commonly believed among the Greeks that, ‘everything is somewhere—that is, in some place’ and later approaches Zeno’s puzzle where, ‘if every existing thing is in (a certain) place, an infinite regression occurs, because there will clearly have to be a place for place’.20 Though creative acts establish a place ‘somewhere’, it should be considered neither singular nor autonomous, but echoes and reverberates within the natural order. The Genesis chronicle presents the Spirit of God moving above pre-existing waters (…και πνεῦμα Θεοῦ έπεφέρετο ἐπάνω τοῦ ὔδατος. Gen. 1.2) before God began to create the heavens and the earth, presenting the possibility of pre-Biblical place before establishing a landscape for its textual story-line. The account seems to indicate ‘the deep’ had a ‘face’, an ‘elemental mass’ which was determinate enough to be ‘moved over’.21 Similarly, human acts of creation or re-creation participate in a process of ‘progressive emplacement’.22

Yet, this creates a dual identity. The human is at one and the same time earthbound, connected to a particular physical framework, but is also part of this larger spiritual framework which extends far beyond the bodily. One solution to the human dualism of physical and transcendent is the concept of ‘microcosm’. On this, we can compare the modern geographer, Yi-Fu Tuan, and the philosopher Paracelsus (c. 1493-1541 C.E.) and see them continuing the threads of Pythagorean and Platonic teaching: How is the human being related to the earth and the cosmos?... In one schema the human body is perceived to be an image of the cosmos. In the other man is the centre of a cosmic frame oriented to the cardinal points and the vertical axis. …The human body is a hierarchically organized schema; it is infused with values that are the result of emotion-laden physiological functions and of intimate social experiences… Man is the crucial and central term in the astral cosmos. He contains within him the distillation of the whole astral system… What is man’s place in nature?... (The first general characteristic) is anthropocentrism. It puts man clearly at the centre of the universe… (The other is to) organize the forces of nature and society by associating them with significant locations or places within the spatial system. It attempts to make sense of the universe by classifying its components and suggesting that mutual influences exist among them. It imputes personality to space, thus transforming space in effect into place. It is almost infinitely divisible—that is to say, not only the known world but its smallest part, such as a single shelter, is an image of the cosmos.24

Mircea Eliade argues that as humanity recycles divine order into its creative processes, the phenomenon of sacrality is bestowed, in divine simulation, upon particular objects and places.

…man is a child of the cosmos, and is himself the microcosm. For the creator created the world once and then he rested. Thus he also made heaven and earth and formed them into a matrix, in which man is conceived, born, and nourished as though in an outer mother…Thus life in the world is like life in the matrix…for the matrix is the Little World (surrounding world) and has in it all the kinds of heaven and earth… .(the human being) carries the stars within himself…He is the microcosm, and thus carries in him the whole firmament with all its influences.25

By manifesting the sacred, any object becomes something else, yet it continues to remain itself, for it continues to participate in its surrounding cosmic milieu. A sacred stone remains a stone; apparently nothing distinguishes it from all other stones… [yet] its immediate reality is transmuted into a supernatural reality….23

Humanity’s desire to choose what is sacred among the physical things of the earth establishes certain objects as carrying meaning and power far beyond the ordinary. A stone may be like others, but in certain, ordained circumstances, it contains deeper meaning and value. In this manner, humanity invests meaning in created matter; it also invests in itself. Together, humans stand, build, and observe the horizon and the sun, alike, yet, at the same time, carry a transcendent association with the heavens.

Yi-Fu Tan’s and Parcelsus’ common understanding in man as microcosmos is in the way that humanity defines itself and gives meaning to the space that surrounds it, the one ‘distilled from the other’. This process of the derivation of meaning creates a ‘matrix’ of relationships. ‘Matrix’ is, in a literal sense, a ‘womb’, ‘a generator of created things’, ‘a place in which something is bred, produced, or developed’, ‘a place or point of origin or growth’.26 The matrix described by Paracelcus describes how humanity was bred together in the ‘womb’ along with the cosmos, thus becoming an inherent micro-sum of its parts. The genetic relationship between the astronomical-cosmos and anthropological-microcosmos

18

Aristotle, Physics IV.12.220.27. Likewise: ‘Now, if every one of those things which are capable of change came into existence, then the given change must be preceded by some other change…’ Physics, VIII.1.251.17. 19 Aristotle, Physics IV210.2-8. ‘Consequently place will have a place (210.8).’ 20 Aristotle, Physics IV. 1.208.33-34; 209.23-25. 21 Edward S. Casey, The Fate of Place, A Philosophical History ,Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997, 12. 22 Edward S. Casey, op. cit, 16. 23 Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, The Nature of Religion, trans. Willard R. Trask, New York: Harvest, 1957, 12-13.

24

Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and Place, The Perspective of Experience, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 1977, 88-91. 25 Paracelcus, Paracelcus: Selected Writings, trans. Jolande Jacobi, Princeton: Princeton, 1973, 25, 154. 26 Edward S. Casey, op. cit, 24.

13

SPATIAL AND RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE LATE ANTIQUE POLIS ἐνεφύσησεν εις τό πρὸσωπον αὐτοῦ πνοήν Ζωῆς…Gen.

results in a natural drive towards the reunification of the two. These disparate systems are bridged by the human intellect.

2:7)). Biblical humanity is intimately dualistic consisting of earth materials and incompletely imbued with divine DNA. Proclus states that humanity is an earth-bound microcosm of the entire cosmos; what we do upon earthly landscapes is significant. Therefore, nothing we do is ‘unplaced’, meaning that humanity lives in a ‘place-world’.

From Paracelcus’ perspective, humanity is a walking, breathing microcosmos and, as such, is imbued with all the characteristics of the greater cosmos, including its four elements (earth, fire, air and water) and the intellectual, spiritual force behind the matrix, which keeps everything continually spinning, balanced, and coherent. Humans carry the stars and the influences of the firmament within themselves.

We see a long theoretical development establishing a view that humanity consists, not merely lives standing along an earthly-cosmic horizon line, but are fully integrated with it, lacking in none of its parts. If this is so, we can communicate its language, and creatively transform its ideas. James Goetsch argues that:

Proclus, commentating on Plato’s Timaeus (I 5.11-17), notes that:

Human dignity gives to humans the task of reforming and recreating the world. Individual and cosmos are so joined that to affirm the one is to affirm the other; it follows that the physical universe finds its best expression in the autonomous movements of the human mind in free creation.30

…man is a microcosm and everything that is in the cosmos, in a divine and complete way, is in him too, in a partial manner...27 The universe is mapped in physics and projected in theology: it is the transcendent geography of infinite space. The cosmos is sensed in concrete landscapes as lived, remembered, or painted: it is the immanent scene of finite place as felt by an equally finite body. Where the universe calls for objective knowledge in the manner of a unified physics or theology, the cosmos calls for the experience of the individuated subject in its midst…28

Goetsch points out the joint affirmation of earth and man, as humans use the earth’s attributes to create in the world. Both are elevated to a higher level of dignity when creativity is produced in harmony with the rhythm of the cosmos. Also, humans do not make the principles from which they create, but have to discover them from inspirations observed and communicated from nature.

Photius (c. 820-891 C.E.), a Byzantine patriarch and professor of philosophy at the Imperial Academy in Constantinople, mentions Pythagoras (c. 6th B.C.E.) as an early source for the concept of man as microcosm:

We cannot know the nature we are in the midst of … for we do not contain its causes within ourselves. But this reality of not knowing the created world, this primal indigence drives us to remake it—to make human or civil things out of ourselves, through transforming ourselves into them. We can come to know these things…out of a profound ignorance; we can gain science, the maker’s knowledge, of a very human whole.31

Pythagoras said that man was microcosm, which means a compendium of the universe; not because, like other animals, even the least, he is constituted by the four elements, but because he contains all the powers of the cosmos. For the universe contains Gods, the four elements, animals and plants. All of these powers are contained in man. He has reason, which is a divine power; he has the nature of the elements, and the powers of moving, growing, and reproduction…29

Despite the metaphor of humanity as microcosmos and the ability of humans to gather cosmological principles through special insight, humans do not have the same capabilities or complete knowledge as the original ‘Creator’, but have instead, what Vico would call, the ignorance of ‘simplicity’. The cause of creation is not understood, but humanity knows, in part, how to transform itself through it. The created human who creates ‘again’ in microcosm, while lacking full insight into its reason, is confronted with the implications of the possibility of there being a ‘Creator’ who generated the original. Humanity stands and considers what is new and never before encountered but is somehow inherently recognizable, though no one knows for sure why. Buildings, even new buildings, if they are to be successful, become familiar in that their spaces makes sense in the landscape and appears natural to its users. This generates points of reference to an idea of building, a primary set of concepts of space, and such accumulated points of social

Edward Casey narrows the definition of ‘cosmos’ to the particularity of ‘place’ as a collective term of ‘place-worlds’. The words cosmos and cosmetic are linguistically related by means of their order and adornment being the essential reference point for human interaction with place. Pythagoras and Proclus define their ability to do so by calling humanity a ‘microcosm’. The matrix of creation is similar to JudeoChristian thought. The first human is seen to be formed from the available elements of the earth and life force enlivened through pulmonary resuscitation by the Creator God (dust of the ground and the breath of life (…χοῦν ἀπὸ τῆς γῆς και 27

Robert van den Berg, ‘Becoming like God’ according to Proclus’ interpretations of the Timaeus, the Eleusinian Mysteries, and the Chaldaean Oracles’, Ancient Approaches to Plato’s Timaeus, Sharples and Sheppard, (eds.), 191. 28 Edward S. Casey, op. cit, 87. 29 Anonymous, ‘The Life of Pythagoras, Preserved by Photius’, The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library, trans. Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie, David Fideler, (ed.), Grand Rapids: Phanes Press, 1987, 139.

30 31

14

Goetsch, Vico’s Axioms, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995, 10. Geotsch, op. cit, 35.

CHAPTER 3: THE HUMAN IMAGE AND ARCHITECTURE OF SPATIAL ORDER remembrance become an inherent nostalgia for place.32 The human relates, in part and whole, through metaphor, simile and anthropomorphism to the world and cosmos.

employed. The human becomes a microcosmos imbued with attributes of the cosmos. Thus, we build in it by raising skeletal structures upward by spanning horizontal distances by connecting to vertical pillars. We also build as we perceive ourselves to be: standing as we stand, decorated as one is adorned: doors for mouths, windows for eyes, walls for practical and emotional barriers, and roofs that transform place into a primitive vessel: a dualism of the inner and outer self, of an interior womb-space and exterior thrust into the world for protection from the elements.36 Our built space reflects and recursively makes us, constructing a human interpretation of the world based and shaped on the human image that perceptionally extends outward in identification with the natur al order.

Thus, now defined as a partially informed microcosm; humanity makes things out of ‘simplicity’ of reasoning and by doing so, continuously redefine themselves. The great French architect and theorist, Le Corbusier, extends the discussion into the twentieth century: Profile and contour are the touchstone of the Architect. Here he reveals himself as artist or more engineer… Profile and contour are a pure creation of the mind; they call for the plastic artist. …the disposition of the features reveal proportions which we feel to be harmonious because they arouse, deep within us and beyond our senses, a resonance, a sort of sounding board which begins to vibrate. An indefinable trace of the Absolute which lies in the depths of our being.33

For Le Corbusier, Stierlin’s semiotic language (quoted in Chapter 1) arises out of a harmonious sound that emanates deep within the person. Anthro-microcosm becomes musical instrument. This sound comes in response to the perfect accord observed between shapes and profiles projecting from the mind of the architect into built form, and the shapes and profiles existing in the natural universe wrought from an ‘absolute’ will imbued within them. A modern archaeological application of musical theory to architectural form is of H. Kalayan’s study, ‘The Symmetry and Harmonic Proportions of The Temples of Artemis and Zeus at Jerash’.34 Kalayan uses Theon of Smyrna’s introduction to Music and Nicomachus of Gerasa to establish musical harmonies derived from mathematical sequences out of intercolumnal spacing in the Vitruvian style of temples. …odd and even, and they are reciprocally woven into harmony with each other, inseparably and uniformly, by a wonderful and divine Nature…35

The harmonic sounds, blending form with nature, relate to the human body as the primary reference point for establishing theories of architecture. We gain deep meaning from creating standing structures, not simply because we stand, but because of how we stand. To translate space from the physical to the metaphysical, allegory and metaphor are

32

Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, Lewis A. Coser (ed.), Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992, 49. Interestingly, the collective points of remembrance and the understanding of a building’s space may be culturally specific even if the way that space is read (the formation of such remembrances) is universal. 33 Le Corbusier, Towards A New Architecture, London Architectural Press, 1927, 186-7. 34 H. Kalayan, ‘The Symmetry and Harmonic Proportions of the Temples of Artemis and Zeus at Jerash’; And the ‘Origin of Numerals as Used in the Enlargement of the South Theatre in Jerash’, SHAJ I, Hadidi (ed.), Jordan, 1982, 243-254. 35 Nichomachus of Gerasa, Book I, ch. VI, as quoted by Kalayan, op. cit, 244.

36

Murray Silverstein, ‘The First Roof’, Dwelling, Seeing, and Designing, Toward a Phenomenological Ecology, David Seamon (ed.), New York: State University of New York, 1993, 88-89.

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CHAPTER 4 VITRUVIAN CONCEPTS OF SPATIAL ORDER

words that, in this application, define and integrate the organising and operating force behind the cosmos into built form. The meaning of the word logos is perplexing having come from the core words ‘word’ or ‘number’ to include: ‘theory’, ‘calculation’, ‘principle’, ‘reason’, ‘ratio’, ‘definition’, etc. To Plato, the cosmos was permeated by a logos, a rational account of the cosmos, its ‘rationale’ or ‘intelligible’-’reason’ originally formed in pre-existing regions. The quotation from Plato’s Timeaus 32 B (below), translated by R.G. Bury,3 uses the two terms interchangeably. For the sake of simplicity, ratio and logos can be defined as the principle or rationale that governs the operation of the cosmos, while the logos could stress the means, as it was used for inward thought, by how it is expressed or embodied.4 In the opening verses of the Gospel of John, Christianity personified the word in Jesus Christ (Ἐν ἀρχῆ ἦν ὁ λόγος, καὶ ὁ λὸγος ἦν πρὸς τὸν θεόν, καὶ θεὸς ἦν ὁ λόγος· (Jn. 1:1)).

Chapter 4 discusses the concepts of the logos, hexis, and ratio imbued within the cosmos and the natural world. A person fully connected to the system as microcosmos could operate in sympathy with these elements. A pictorial representation of this relationship is in the geometric matrix of the Vitruvian man image. He constitutes a fixed centre-point and continuous periphery of endless movement, hierarchy and autonomy. Textual confirmation of these abstract concepts is presented by ancient thinkers in how the divine creator is represented in occupational metaphor, as architect and carpenter. Vitruvius, early in his treatise on architecture, teaches of the existence of intimate interrelationships between art forms and other disciplines. Designing and building architecture does not stand in autonomy, but is in a common, harmonic discourse with all other subjects. Inexperienced men might find it astonishing that a person, as a matter of course, should be able to master so many subjects and contain them in his memory. But they will easily believe it possible once they realize that all disciplines are joined to each other by the things they have in common. For the whole of learning is put together just like a single body, from its members…Every art is made up of two things: the work (fabrica) and its ratiocinatio. The first of these belongs to those who are trained in particular things: that is, the execution of a work. The second is common to all learned men: that is, ratio. For instance, the ratio concerning the rhythm of the pulse and movement of the feet is common to both musicians and doctors…Similarly, between astrologers and musicians there is common discourse concerning the sympathy of the stars and musical harmonies…and in all the other subjects, many, even all things are held in common for the purposes of discussion.1

Heraclitus,5 a contemporary of Aristotle, supposedly the first to have a theory of psyche or soul in the living person, wrote, ‘You would not find out the boundaries of the soul, even by marching over every road, so deep a logos does it have (fragment, 71).’6 This illustrates that perhaps the earliest, if not original conceptions of a logos extend much deeper than cognitive reasoning but to express the human polarity between ultimate distance and abiding relationship with the source and ‘operator’ of life. Its manifestations arise, in Vitruvian contexts, by how the skilled work of the hands (fabrica or τέκνη) construct built form in sympathy with underlying natural principles. The second-century CE Pyrrhonist Sceptic philosopher, Sextus Empiricus advances sympatheia as a unifying principle, very much in the same way that Vitruvian ratio worked:

Though scholars have failed to agree on the precise interpretation of this important introductory passage, it is clear that Vitruvius is distinguishing between the practical (fabrica) and theoretical (ratiocinatio) sides of architecture; the ‘know-how’ of site analysis, surveying, design, et al. and ‘know-that’ of science and theory.

http://www.nexusjournal.com/Pont-v7n1.html; Indra Kagis McEwen, Vitruvius, Writing the Body of Architecture, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press:, 2003, 60. She believes ratio to be ‘the not entirely adequate Latin equivalent of the Greek logos’ 3 Plato, Timaeus,32B, trans. R.G. Bury, LCL 234, Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1942, 60-1. 4 McEwen, op. cit, 61; expression by A.A. Long after the central insight of the Stoics that the human soul has a capacity for living as a language animal, f.n. 237; pp. 331-2. 5 Hornblower, and Spawforth, Heraclitus, The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd ed., 687. 6 Heraclitus, Fragments, The Collected Wisdom of Heraclitus, trans. Brooks Haxton, New York: Viking Press, 2001, 45. Ψυχῆς πείρατα οὐκ ἄ ἐξεύροιο πᾶσαν ἐπιπορευόμενος ὀδον. οὕτω βαθὺν λόγον ἔχει.

The common coefficient Vitruvius believed to be between all knowledge is condensed into one word, ratio; the derivatives of which go back to the pioneering work of Platonic theory and the Greek word, logos.2 Ratio and logos are important 1

Vitruvius 1.1.12, 15-16. Graham Pont, ‘The Education of the Classical Architect from Plato to Vitruvius’, Nexus Network Journal, vol. 7 no. 1 (Spring 2005),

2

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CHAPTER 4: VITRUVIAN CONCEPTS OF SPATIAL ORDER Of bodies, some are unified; some made up of things joined together, some of separate things. Unified bodies are ruled by a single ‘attraction’ bond (μιᾶς ἕξεως), such as plants and animals; those made of things that are joined are put together of adjacent elements which tend to combine in a single principal entity such as chains and buildings and ships; those formed of separate things, like armies, flocks and choruses, are the sum of parts which are disjoined, and isolated and which exist by themselves…Seeing, then, that the universe is a unified body…it is neither of conjoined nor of separate parts, as we can prove from the sympathies (συμπαθειῶν) it exhibits.7

does not express further detail, his words convey the coming together of separate parts to form a well ordered synchronistic-world logos. This discourse is transmitted into building through the language of geometry. Geometry is the arbiter between human expression in forms and the cosmological order. Vitruvius tells a story of the recognition of this connection to the logos in the shipwreck of Aristippus. When the Socratic philosopher Aristippus was cast upon the shore of Rhodes by a shipwreck, he noticed drawings of geometrical shapes and, they say, shouted to his companions. ‘Be of good cheer! I see the footprints of men…”13

Sextus continues to suggest that the entire cosmos is a unified whole comprised of the entirety of all bodies combined into a ‘single bond’, effectively operating in ‘sympathy’ with each other (i.e. the effect of the moon on ocean tides).

Aristippus’ exclamation demonstrates humanity’s selfrecognition in the line, square, angle, and circle. Such geometric symbols represent ‘the footprints of men’, and the architectural language by which design communes with the governing principle of the universe. Ichnographia, the drawing of plans for a building, comes from the drawing (graphia) of its footprint (ichnos). The geometrical footprint is the anthropomorphic stamp of human habitation. As the person finds one’s place in the world by planting their feet firmly on the ground, so a building locates its place by sinking its foundational footprint into the earth by use of geometrical positioning.

The Greek sympatheia means separate entities ‘experiencing (something) together’. Late antique theorists would also relate the concept to philia (friendship, in the sense of a cooperative, relational bond between otherwise separate entities).8 This bond was applied to the relationship between certain physical materials and their essences (ousia). Ousia could be understood as the core ‘essence’ of someone or something. This essence could, on its own, be an abiding reality. The idea behind the sympathetic essence between person and thing, person and the divine, or the person and Idea was to achieve a connection, relationship or manipulation of something inherently unobtainable through something existentially connected to it. Sympathy pervaded the cosmos connecting the more perfect divine world with the lower material world where humans lived. Ways of using ousia included curse tablets, Neoplatonist theurgy, the wearing of amulets, and divination.9 Christianity employed the concept in a number of new and more complex manners.10 Ousia defined the fourth through sixth century battleground over the Trinity (homoiousios in similarity; homoousios as same nature) which ran concurrently with the debate over the efficacy of relics and the nature of the Mysteries.

Proclus also alludes to the role of geometry in cognition: Since, then, there is such variation in the levels of knowledge, it is plain that the different types of knowledge are concerned with different subjects, and some of them with subjects which contribute to stimulating our recollection of Being, as for instance geometry deals with the description of the concept of shape inherent in us, while arithmetic by its proofs develops the single Form of numbers, and various others of the individual subject matters of knowledge do the same…(emphasis, mine).14

The use of geometry extends further into the symbolic realm. The geometric weavings of banding in mosaic floors in churches in the late-Roman period are an exuberant expression of this. Functionally, the bands were used as connecting devices to frame images of cities, people and natural settings as well as to fill ‘empty’ floor space.15 Seen as geometric metaphor, these patterns could be considered as more than a frame. Geometric symbols can be seen to express humanity’s connection to the natural order. They become a metaphor for human autonomy in nature and their inherent impulse to express sympathy with the operating principle behind the matrix of life. The geometries at work (discussed below) in the Vitruvian Man, the plotting of shadows by

For Vitruvius, the discipline of architecture involved a ‘common discourse’ of language ‘that humans, uniquely among all living creatures, are able to mirror the worldordering activity of the cosmic logos’.11 To express this connection, terms such as, ‘sympathy’, musical ‘harmony’, ‘rhythm’, and ‘pulse’,12 were employed. Though Vitruvius 7

Sextus Empiricus. Against the Physicists 1.78-80. Sara Iles Johnston, ‘Magic’, Religions of the Ancient World, a Guide, Sarah Iles Johnston, (ed.), Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2004, 148-9. 9 John G. Gager, Curse Tablets and Binding Spells from the Ancient World,, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992, 221-2. 10 John G. Gager, op. cit, 11. 11 Indra Kagas McEwen, op. cit, 61. 12 Rowland and Howe, Vitruvius, The Ten Books of Architecture, Cambridge: Cambridge, 1999, 143, state that ‘in the absence of timepieces, musical theory was the most precise way of measuring or characterizing rhythm’. The music of the spheres expressed by harmony of the stars was originally a 8

Pythagorean concept which said that the orbits of planets were spaced according to musical intervals. 13 Vitruvius, 6. pref. 1. 14 Proclus’ Commentary on Plato’s Parmenides, 947 trans. Genn R. Morrow and John M. Dillon, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987, 298. 15

Michele Piccirillo, The Mosaics of Jordan, Amman: ACOR, 1992, examples: 20-23; 201-3; 338-41.

17

SPATIAL AND RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE LATE ANTIQUE POLIS Roman surveyor, and building architecture in the quadrilateral and triangle are also manifested in the placement of small ceramic and glass tiles in floors, walls and ceilings. They are not disconnected impulses or ideas, but are, according to Proclus and Sextus, inherent within us and progress from a single source.

With the compass point set on the navel, and laying flat on the ground, the man becomes a template for all that is geometrically coherent in the world.17 He is the circumscribed footprint. The circle touches exactly the extremities of fingertips and toes, identifying these breadths as being exactly the same. It is not surprising that these extremities, by name, became the standard unit of measurement: the foot (pede), stride (passus or 5 pedes), cubit (cubito), the forearm (1.5 pedes), span (spithame, spread palm), palm (palmo), inch (digito).18 The concept of space, as increment of distance, was seen as a reflection of the human body.19

THE VITRUVIAN MAN: Vitruvius fabricated a geometric footprint based on an anthropomorphic image to reflect the relationship between the symmetry of the human body and the ideals of geometry.

Plato wrote of the sphere: Thus it was that in the midst between fire and earth God set water and air, and having bestowed upon them so far as possible a like ratio (text has ‘λόγον’ interpreted as ‘ratio’) one towards another…Now for that Living Creature which is designed to embrace within itself all living creatures the fitting shape will be that which comprises within itself all the shapes there are; wherefore He wrought it into a round, in the shape of a sphere…wherefore He spun it round uniformly in the same spot and within itself and made it revolve in a circle…And in the midst thereof He set Soul, which He stretched throughout the whole of it, and therewith He enveloped also the exterior of its body…20

The body of Plato’s universe, as the Vitruvian Man, consisted of four equal parts contained within a perfect sphere gifted with reason and intelligence operating within every movement. The universe, that was ‘prepared by the divine intelligence’ ‘is the all encompassing vessel (system) of the whole natural order,’ revolves on its axis, thanks to the power of nature that, according to Vitruvius, operates architecturally.21 The perfection of God’s creation is displayed by its perfect spinning motion; evidence of a uniformly weighted and balanced system which can rotate indefinitely, a reflection of the circle, a single line without end, its radius remaining always equidistant from the centre. Though the circle represents a central order of continual rotation; it is also stasis, a changeless-timeless shape. The paradox doubles as the circle’s linear outline has no hierarchy but its internal structure is the epitome of it. Associations of

The Vitruvian Man; Leonardo Da Vinci; (1492)

Vitruvius writes: Likewise in sacred buildings, the symmetry of the members ought to correspond completely, in every detail and with perfect fitness, to the entire magnitude of the whole. By the same token, the natural centre of the body is the navel, for if a man were placed on his back with his hands and feet outspread and the point of a compass put on his navel, both his fingers and his toes would be touched by the line of the circle going around him. You could also find a squared layout in the body in the same way as you made it produce the circular shape. For if you measured from the bottom of his feet to the top of his head and compared that measurement to his outspread hands, you would find the breadth the same as the height, just as in areas that have squared with a set square.16

16

17

Rowland and Howe, op. cit, 189. In the commentary, fig. 38, the authors understand that Vitruvius is presenting an ‘approximation to a geometric ideal’. William Lethaby, Architecture, Mysticism, and Myth, Bath: Solos Press, 1981, 51, uses this or similar ideal to write: ‘The perfect temple should stand at the centre of the world, a microcosm of the universe fabric, its walls built four-square with the walls of heaven…When the world has become circular and spherical, the squareness is retained almost universally as a characteristic of the celestial earth’. 18 Vitruvius, I.2.4.; Ingrid Roland and Thomas Howe, op. cit, 149. 19 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith, London: Blackwell, 110. 20 Plato, Timaeus, 32.B, C; 33.B; 34.A.B. 21 Vitruvius 9.1.1-2.

Vitruvius, 3.1.3.

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CHAPTER 4: VITRUVIAN CONCEPTS OF SPATIAL ORDER produce the corporeal cosmos, a younger likeness of an older model…it may happen that a trained architect comes forward. Having observed both the favourable climate and location of the site, he first designs within himself a plan of virtually all the parts of the city that is to be completed – temples, gymnasia, public offices, market-places, harbours…Then taking up the imprints of each object in his own soul like wax, he carries around the intelligible city as an image in his head. Summoning up the representations by means of his innate power of memory and engraving their features even more distinctly (on his mind), he begins, as a good builder, to construct the city out of stones and timber, looking at the model and ensuring that the corporeal objects correspond to each of the incorporeal ideas…Just as the city that was marked out beforehand in the architect had no location outside, but had been engraved in the soul of the craftsman, in the same way the cosmos composed of the ideas would have no other place than the divine Logos who gives the (ideas) their ordered disposition. If you would wish to use a formulation that has been stripped down to essentials, you might say that the intelligible cosmos is nothing else than the Logos of God as he is actually engaged in making the cosmos. For the intelligible city too is nothing else than the reasoning of the architect as he is actually engaged in the planning of the foundation of the city.26

the circle reflect this by its use of metaphor for the cycles of: life, seasons, change and becoming.22 …The revelation of a sacred space possesses existential value for religious man; for nothing can begin, nothing can be done, without a previous orientation—and any orientation implies acquiring a fixed point. It is for this reason that religious man has always sought to fix his abode at the ‘centre of the world.’ If the world is to be lived in, it must be founded…The discovery or projection of a fixed point—the centre—is equivalent to the creation of the world.23

The Vitruvian Man not only represents geometry’s source, a microcosm of a perfectly symmetrical, λόγος-informed universe, but the founding of the compass point situated on the navel, defining the umbilicus (omphalos), the birth of a newly created space. It was the point where the Roman surveyor stood his bronze rod, called a sciotherum to determine street direction based on cast shadows. The umbilicus was known as umbilicus soli, meaning ‘the navel of the ground, or base’. As with the footprint metaphor, the navel of the man is translated into the earth to establish a centre from which humans can orient themselves according to the unspoken, hexis/ratio of the universe. Every type of technical work (fabrica) may be seen as being initiated or informed by the same source that brought the cosmos into existence, what Eliade called, ‘reactualizing the cosmogony’.24 The three main components of a structure take on cosmological meaning where the roof is equivalent to the dome of the sky, the floor, the earth, and the four walls, the four directions of cosmic space.

Philo, writing in the first century CE, drew upon Platonic concepts of non-physical architectural forms inside the mind, and the metaphor of the architect as designer and builder to help provide an explanation for the creation of the cosmos. Philo differs from Plato in that Philo’s intelligible cosmos represents the whole world in its entirety, created by God; while Plato’s model is that of an intelligible, living being not representing the world in entirety, and the model’s creation is not mentioned, but is simply there.27 What is important is the apparently common understanding of the architect as creator, designing a complete city in his divinely inspired mind. The architect might be seen as an anthropomorphism of a ‘type’ of Logos, giving order, reason, and physical form to mental images, ‘incorporeal ideas’, marked out in the soul as a surveyor would align his gnomon to the spinning universe. The concept of logos develops into the transcendent thing/person acting as an instrument of God, where the ‘model’ is kept.

Plato understood the Demiurge to be ‘…good, and …being free from jealousy, desired that all things should be as like himself as they could be.’25 This intimates a creative continuance between Deity, humanity and creation, from a time when the prototype was the only ‘type’. Humanity’s role as architect/builder (beginner) is played in accordance with the Divine principles, reduplicating the original in creating in ‘replica’ forms. The maker of a likeness brings the pattern and material together. Philo of Alexandria adds:

There is almost a divine act described in short phrases of a: ‘summoning up (ἀνακινήσας)’, ‘innate power of memory (μνήμῃ τῇ συμφύτῳ)’, ‘engraving distinct images (τοὺς χαρακτῆρας)’, a ‘good builder (δημιουργὸς ἀγαθός)’ who ‘in each case, ensures correspondence (ἐκάστῃ…ἐξομοιῶν οὐσιας)’ between what is in the soul to what is being built in real space. After much double-checking, and attention to detail, what was drawn in the mind and impressed on the soul as ‘wax’ (ἐν κηρῷ τῇν ἐυτοῦ ψυχῇ), has its exact

God, understood in advance that a beautiful copy would not come into existence apart from a beautiful model, and that none of the objects of sense-perception would be without fault, unless it was modelled on the archetypal and intelligible idea. Therefore, when he had decided to construct this visible cosmos, he first marked out the intelligible cosmos, so that he could use it as a incorporeal and most god-like paradigm and so 22

Anne Whiston Spirn, The Language of Landscape, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998, 109, argues that special attention should be paid to circular forms in architecture, for there are more squares than circles in built landscapes and more circles than squares in ‘natural’ landscapes. 23 Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, The Nature of Religion, trans. Willard R. Trask, New York: Harvest, 1957, 22. 24 Ibid, 81. 25 Plato, Timaeus, 29E., trans R.B. Bury (LCL, 1929), 55.

26

Philo, On the Creation of the Cosmos According to Moses, trans. David T. Runia, Leiden: Brill, 2001, 4.16-19, 24. 27 Ibid, 138.

19

SPATIAL AND RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE LATE ANTIQUE POLIS representation transmitted to earth.28 The architectural creative process along with the attributes that constituted ‘a good builder’ was known well enough in the Eastern Mediterranean to be used as a philosophical metaphor.

The divine creative and beneficent activity enables the unformed material to participate in divine excellence and be converted from disorder and disharmony into an ordered and harmonious whole, in conformity with the model. Creation is thus a matter of pure grace.31

Proclus uses the image of the carpenter to describe the indwelling of the logos in nature:

David Runia, commenting on Philo’s, On the Creation of the Cosmos According to Moses, states (above) that creation is a matter of pure grace; the unmerited favour bestowed upon those undeserving of its benefit. Grace is merely the pure goodness of God extending itself into the world in such super-abundance that the flow must be regulated by the divine logos. ‘He has given good things in abundance to the whole and its parts, not because He judged anything worthy of grace, but because He looked to His eternal goodness and considered it incumbent on His blessed and felicitous nature to be beneficient.’32

But if nature has the reason-principles, there must be some other cause prior to it that contains the Ideas. For Nature, when she enters into bodies, acts as you might imagine a carpenter descending into his pieces of wood, hollowing them out inside, straightening, drilling, and shaping them. Such is the way of Nature, infusing herself into bodies, dwelling in their solid masses, and breathing her movement and her reason-principles into them from inside.29

It is interesting to think that two prominent Alexandrian philosophers of the first and fifth century CE (Proclus trained there before going to Athens) would use analogies from the building profession to express the concept behind ‘how’ nature is imbued with the logos. Proclus’ language expresses an appreciation for, and perhaps had taken part in the art of woodcraft. He sees the essential act of a carpenter as descending into wood. The methods of hollowing, straightening, drilling and shaping are determined by the characteristics of the material. This is not merely cutting into a piece by exerting brute force to bring about conformity but a careful sensitivity in shaping the craftsman’s reason within an object in sympathy with its natural attributes. The carpenter and the worked material find coherency by ‘running with the grain’. Proclus goes on to say: ‘every creative agent works upon what is by nature susceptible to its action, that is, upon what is capable of receiving its action…by its very aptitude presents itself as a collaborator with the agent that can create…so the thing that comes to be is a likeness of its creator…hence as he thinks he makes, and as he makes he thinks, and he is always doing both.’30 The creator and created are seemingly working in concert together for a desired end, for the one bears the essence of the other. The imprint of the creator’s thought and personality has been infused within the object.

A Jewish text from a Rabbinic exegetical compilation, Genesis Rabbah, attributed to Rabbi Hoshai, a contemporary of Origen, concerning the biblical creation account stands in contrast to Philo’s Platonic perspective: The Torah declares: ‘I was the working tool of the Holy One, blessed be He.’ In human practice, when a mortal king builds a palace, he builds it not with his own skill but with the skill of an architect. The architect moreover does not build it out of his head, but employs plans and diagrams to know how to arrange the chambers and the wicket doors. Thus God consulted the Torah and created the world, while the Torah declares, ‘in the beginning God created (1:1)’, ‘beginning’ referring to the Torah…33

The key difference between Jewish creation concepts and the ones previous is that the world is the dwelling-place of God, the Master Architect, but what accents the difference is the concept of the pre-existence of the Torah as cosmological blue print established before creation, ‘In the beginning, Torah…’ God was not working at all from the inspiration of his mind, but from the pre-existing model that was in diagram or written form. The architect, in at least some Jewish minds, was always one in consultation with plans and diagrams laid out on a table, drawing upon the same type of inspiration and mental processes that God used when he created and just as the Jew refers back to the Torah as the blueprint for living.

28 Proclus’ Commentary on Plato’s ‘Parmenides,’ trans. Glenn R. Morrow and John Dillon, III, 839-40, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987, 21112. Proclus’ use of the wax seal imprint analogy stresses the impression is not identical with the seal thus, the ‘enmattered species is not identical with the divine and immaterial idea.’ Matter is changed in the process. Aristotle, similarly, uses imprint imagery to describe the creative act as that of an artist: ‘There is an ideal form which is present in each individual phenomenon but imperfectly manifested. This form impresses itself as a sensuous appearance on the mind of the artist; he seeks to give it a more complete expression, to bring to light the ideal which is only half revealed in the world of reality. His distinctive work as an artist consists in stamping the given material with the impress of the form which is universal…imitation…is a creative act. It is the expression of the concrete thing under an image which answers to its true idea. S.H. Butcher, Aristotle’s Theory of Poetry and Fine Art, with a Critical Text and Translation of the "Poetics", 4th edn., New York: Dover, 1951, 153.’ 29 Glenn R. Morrow and John Dillon, III, op. cit, 164. 30 Morrow and Dillon, op. cit, IV.843-4 (frags.), 214-15.

Yet, this Platonic cosmological approach is not the only one available to us. Jonathan Smith in, To Take Place, Toward Theory in Ritual,34 takes a different approach to Eliade’s (et 31

David T. Runia, op. cit, 134. Chap 4: 22. David T. Runia, op. cit, 146. From Philo, Deus 108 (exeg. Gen 6:8). 33 Freedman and Simon, Midrash Rabbah, 10 vols. 1.1. in David Runia, ‘The king, the architect, and the craftsman: a philosophical image in Philo of Alexandria’, Ancient Approaches To Plato’s Timaeus, Sharples and Sheppard, (eds.), BICS Supplement 78, London: ICS, 2003 106. 34 Johathan Z. Smith, To Take Place, Toward Theory in Ritual, Chicago: Chicago, 1987. 32

20

CHAPTER 4: VITRUVIAN CONCEPTS OF SPATIAL ORDER al.) metaphysical view of sacred space. Smith, assuming an anthropological perspective, lays emphasis on continuance and transformation made possible by the workings and movement of humanity across the earth.35 He stresses that there has been an over-emphasis on prioritizing the ‘centre’, attempting to connect to a perceived divine element through fabricated rituals of the mind, rather than the periphery where humanity has converted space into meaningful place.36 The concept of centre takes on, not only metaphysical symbols, but more practical-accessible ones pertaining to economic and political power while ‘building on or reshaping a previous order’.37 Space becomes place as it becomes known and is endowed with value. Movement is slowed to pause for a moment to collect life-experiences which, when held in retrospect, becomes nostalgia, a derivative from the Greek, νόστος (νέομαι), meaning, ‘to return home’.38 Smith’s interpretation of the peripheral circle completely and exactly circumscribed around the Vitruvian Man, may symbolize place as home, a place of belonging. ‘Home’ is the sphere where memories are housed, generated from occurrences of belonging through relationships with nature and others.

chapter: Plato, Philo of Alexandria, Neoplatonist philosopher Proclus, and Rabbi Hoshai, all work with the idea of the architect as divine creator. Such metaphorical imagery had an impressive hold, particularly on first- through sixth-century Eastern philosophers. There is strong evidence to submit that, in their eyes, the workings of the human architect and the Divine creator, by intimate relations, were essentially the same. And most importantly, the human act of translating ‘idea’ and ‘image’ from the mind, to built form, was in direct correlation to and in communion with Yahweh, the Demiurge, and Prime Mover, who first established the primal urge, inherent in humanity, to re-create responding to the pre-existing prototype, replica or Torah plan. The consistent referent, in the one thousand year spread of the various texts, is the divine creator as architect, craftsman, builder and carpenter. The sum of these professions define the humannatural world as fabricated with forethought, crafted with a high degree of technical skill and inspired by the logos within the ‘hollowed-out’ recesses of its spaces.

Moore, Bloomer and Yudell also believe that it is through the bodily experience of three-dimensional space that we can most effectively interpret its meaning, rather than through abstract design theory. …we have been observing that the human body, which is our most fundamental three-dimensional possession, has not itself been a central concern in the understanding of architectural form…We believe that the most essential and memorable sense of three-dimensionality originates in the body experience and that this sense may constitute a basis for understanding spatial feeling in our experience of buildings.39 …The interplay between the world of our bodies and the world of our dwelling places is always in flux. We make places that are an expression of our haptic experiences (those relating to touch) even as these experiences are generated by the places we have already created. Whether we are conscious or innocent of this process, our bodies and our movement are in constant dialogue with our buildings.40

The Vitruvian Man, as man, may suggest that the ultimate power in converting space into place resides only with humanity’s relationship with the earth, and experience of movement through their buildings and spaces, and not through objective rationalism.41 This anthropocentric view stands in contrast to those that we have explicated in this 35

Ibid, 10-11. Jonathan Z. Smith. Map Is Not Territory, Chicago: Chicago, 1973, 99. 37 Ibid, 17. 38 Liddell and Scott, An Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon, νόστος, p.535. 39 Kent C. Boomer and Charles W. Moore, Body, Memory, and Architecture, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977, ix-x. 40 Robert Yudell, ‘Body Movement’, Body, Memory, and Architecture, Kent C. Boomer and Charles W. Moore (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), 57. 41 Bloomer and Moore, op. cit, 23. 36

21

CHAPTER 5 ROMAN SURVEYING: THE EARTH RECEIVES THE COSMOS Roman surveying provides the means for applying the abstract concepts discussed in the previous chapters to the Roman methods of creating civic landscapes. Surveying enables geometries of thought to be turned into physical spaces on the ground. A standing vertical element is used to cast a shadow-line from the cosmos to the earth, linking and orienting humanity to these two places. Humanity becomes founded, centred, and placed through by interpreting the findings through the language of geometry; the symbolic reduction of the process is a cross circumscribed within a circle. Rykwert argues that this symbol is deeply rooted in time and is a cross-culture universal; an abbreviation for a ‘world of ideas’ for defining a ‘town’.1 The Vitruvian Man is verified by scientific methodologies of plotting the heavens. Using such associations, we can give a deeper reading to Classical street orthography, and pagan, Christian, and Jewish worship centres which were oriented to the progression of the sun.

the future city’s topography. The essence of civic orientation seems to come from wind, light, and shadow. The urban geometry that flowed from this was based on the path of the sun. Axes were plotted, not primarily by physical features taken from landscape topography, but by shadow markings, typically taken throughout the morning to after midday (sometimes only two were taken). The general procedure was the shadows were cast off a bronze rod called a sciotherum that was driven, vertically plumb, into the earth through the centre of a circle of marble with inscribed mapping coordinates. A cord was run from the first and last shadow plotting points that touched the circumference of the circle. This east-west line was to be the Decumanus. This cord was then bisected and another cord ran square from this point to the sciotherum establishing the, north-south, Cardo Maximus. This procedure for finding true north, determined by the shadow of the sciotherum (literally ‘shadow catcher’),4 was explained by Vitruvius (1.6.6-7). Hyginus (2) tells us the only geographical location where the shadow marking was not possible was in Egypt, where at midday, there was no shadow, thus, in his opinion, it was accepted by his peers that the mid-section of the earth was determined to be there.5 For more general surveying procedures, the sciotherum was one of several pieces comprised of a surveying tool called a groma. More specifically, the groma (used interchangeably with gnomon, a sundial pointer)6 was a composite instrument of a metal cross with four arms, called corniculi, with plumb lines attached to each arm of the cross that was set upon a pivot bracket that swung away from the sciotherum. The sciotherum rod was attached to a pointed ferramentum (iron) that was fixed into the earth.7

…we must calculate as follows to find the quarters and risings of the winds. Let there be placed to a level a marble dial, somewhere in the middle of the city; or let a space be so polished to rule and level so that the marble dial is not wanted. Above the middle point of that place, let there be put a bronze indicator to track the shadow which in Greek is called sciotheres (Vitruvius attributes its invention to Anaximander). Before midday, at about the fifth hour, the end of the shadow of the indicator is to be taken and marked with a point. Then a radius being taken from the indicator to the point which marks the length of the shadow, with that, from the indicator as centre, a circumference is to be drawn. After midday the growing shadow of the indicator, when it touches the line of the circle and marks a post-meridian shadow equal to the antemeridian, is to be marked with a point. From these two points, two intersecting circles are to be described. Through the intersection and the centre of the circle first described, a line is to be carried through to the end so that the southern and northern quarters may be indicated…2

The centre of the intersection of the cross was known as the umbilicus soli, meaning ‘the navel of the ground, or base. If the word ‘soli’ was to become ‘solii’, the meaning would change to ‘the navel of the throne’.8 The word ‘umbilicus’ is literally “pregnant” with meaning with connotations of an earthly womb environment of a magna mater, and the earthly seat of a heavenly king. The ‘centeredness’ of the Roman city is given a metaphysical interpretation that is echoed in several modern theorists. Eliade, for instance, sees the concept of spatial centre as being fundamental to religious activity: ‘For it is the break effected in space that allows the world to be constituted, because it reveals the fixed point, the central axis

As philosophical spatial theories established relationalcreative ties with the divine, Roman city surveyors3 connected into the cosmos by establishing fixed points for civic landscapes by crossing two axes at right angles. Vitruvius pays special attention to determining the layout of a city according to where the winds are generated and how they will play upon

1

Joseph Rykwert, The Idea of a Town, London: Faber and Faber, 1976, 1923. 2 Vitruvius 1.6.6 frag. 3 M.J.T. Lewis, Surveying Instruments of Greece and Rome, Cambridge: Cambridge, 2001, 124-133. And ‘Hyginus (2)’ trans. Brian Campbell, The Writings of the Roman Land Surveyors, JRS Monograph No. 9, 2000.137, 147.

4

Lewis, op. cit, 502. Campbell, op. cit, 149. 6 M.J.T. Lewis, op. cit, 125. 7 Ibid, 126. 8 Ibid. 5

22

CHAPTER 5: ROMAN SURVEYING for all future orientation…Nothing can begin, nothing can be done, without a previous orientation—and any orientation implies acquiring a fixed point. It is for this reason that religious man has always sought to fix his abode in the center of the world’.9

nature of the world and cosmos, and the places we make through architecture.13 Eliade believed that humanity could only live in sacred space, in the ‘Centre’. Something within the human condition, he called the ‘nostalgia for Paradise’, makes Man strive to be at the ‘centre of reality’, and use ‘a short cut (by which one is able) in a natural manner to transcend the human condition, and to recover the divine condition…’ as some Christian groups might say, ‘the condition before the Fall.’14

Yi-Fu Tuan, writes: “Center” is not a particular point on the earth’s surface; it is a concept in mythic thought rather than a deeply felt value bound to unique events and locality. In mythic thought several world centers may coexist in the same general area without contradiction. It is possible to believe that the axis of the world passes through the settlement as a whole as well as through separate dwellings within it. Space that is stretched over a grid of cardinal points makes the idea of place vivid, but it does not make any particular geographical locality the place. A spatial frame determined by the stars is anthropocentric rather than place-centric, and it can be moved as human beings themselves move.10

Yet this urge for a pre-lapsarian home is always frustrated: To be genuinely at home in this world, we have to affirm our essential homelessness, a homelessness illuminated by shifting ideals of genuine dwelling, figures of home and precarious conjectures about what it might mean to dwell near the centre. Temples have functioned as such figures, But every attempt to step into the true centre, to come home in this sense, more especially to make the house into such a home, denies the essential ec-centricity of human dwelling—an ‘ec-centricity’ that needs to be thought in relation to a centre, but a centre that withdraws whenever we seek to seize it.15

Architectural theorist Christopher Alexander closely reflects Yi-Fu Tuan’s co-existing centres when he writes that centeredness is the defining mark, an organized zone of space, made up of entities possessing a special coherence.11 In the case of architectural design, a building possessing a strong centre is not defined by whether it stands independent of all others, but by the way in which it ‘echoes’ the angle and shape of the cultural community in which it is embedded. Thus centres encompass and overlap each other as ‘organised fields’ as the form of a city is reflected in neighbourhood orientation, and even building stylizations down to doorways and windows.

As Harries points out, the urge to recover the divine condition is futile since the ‘home’ we yearn for, and think we fabricate out of our manufactured centres, recedes with every attempt to reach for it. Every attempt to transcend the human condition by earthly means is frustrated by the elusiveness of ‘paradise’, because of an ‘essential homelessness’ reflected in our ‘shifting ideals’ and uncertain beliefs of what it means to live. For the Roman surveyors, the umbilicus soli of the cross, attached to the sciotherum was then oriented by plumb line over the centre point on the ground, which was also determined by augury through priestly divination, created a sacred space, called a templum or temenos (cut-off space). The term ‘cardo’ was rooted in the term ‘hinge’, both from the turning of the groma and, more metaphysically, as one of the pivotal (hinge) points on which the spherical universe turned and the city unfolded.16

Simon Unwin similarly argues that the concept of a building as a centre is made significant as it seems to gather the six directions of the earth (up, down, right, left, front, behind) into its form and provides an independent centre that the earth does not. …A sacred space constitutes a break in the homogeneity of space; this break is symbolized by an opening by which passage from one cosmic region to another is made possible. Communication with heaven is expressed by one or another of certain images, all of which refer to the axis mundi: pillar, ladder, mountain, tree, vine, etc. Around this cosmic axis lies the world, hence the axis is located “in the middle, “at the “navel of the earth”; it is the Center of the World.12

The following diagram represents the surveying process in linear form:

Thus, the geometry of six-directions-plus-centre can be extended to three levels of being: ourselves as humans, the

9

Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, The Nature of Religion, trans. Willard R. Trask, New York: Harvest, 1957, 20-22. 10 Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and Place, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1977, 150. 11 Christopher Alexander, The Nature of Order, Book One, The Phenomenon of Life, Berkeley: The Centre For Environmental Structure, 2002, 84. 12 Eliade, op. cit, 37.

13

Simon Unwin, Analysing Architecture, 2nd edn., London: Routledge, 2003, 135-6. 14 Eliade, Images and Symbols, Studies in Religious Symbolism, Princeton: Princeton, 1991, 55. 15 Karsten Harries, The Ethical Function of Architecture, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 200. 16 Brian Campbell, op. cit, 501.

23

SPATIAL AND RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE LATE ANTIQUE POLIS

Mark of cast morning shadow

Mark of cast afternoon shadow

Centrepoint of sciotherm and umbilicus soli

Line drawn between two marks establishing the eastwest Decumanus

North-south line bisecting the cord stretched between the two marks establishing the Cardo Maximus him the feeling that he was creating. For all these things—axes, circles, right angles—are geometric truths, and give results that our eye can measure and recognize; whereas otherwise there would be only chance, irregularity and capriciousness. Geometry is the language of man.17

With the addition of the universal sphere within which the earth was known to rotate, we have the entire list of elements that constitute Roman architectural geometry. These geometric tools, in a sense, descended from the heavens, were plotted upon the earth, and then used to build vertically upward, to reach back to the vault of the sky from whence they came. The movement of the sun against a fixed vertical object became a continual reaffirmation of consistent spatial orientation. “The sun rises in the east, sets in the west and has its noontime meridian (in the Northern Hemisphere) in the south. Thus, three of the four cardinal directions coincide with significant points in the sun’s circuit. The earth now has its own spatial divisions making an otherwise formless expanse into a differentiated system of places.”18 The sun’s circuit, as caught by the shadow taken from the sciotherum, established the north-south points of the axis around which the earth rotated and from which all places were related to the centre.

Diagram of a groma

Surveying is a type of geometry, or “earth measuring”, using the square, right angle, and circle which are in communion with the movements of the cosmos. Aristippus, in Vitruvius 6.pref.1, identified these geometric symbols as the ‘footprints of men’ and Le Corbusier calls them the ‘the language of man’. Le Corbusier stresses the central role for geometry in building.

In this the Roman surveyor, plotted and transferred the heavens by plumb line and shadows onto the earth, an act which can be reduced to a simple pictogram, a hieroglyphic of a cross circumscribed by a circle.19 The order of the cosmos

17

Le Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture, trans. Frederick Etchells, London: Architectural Press, 1946, 68. 18 R.D. Dripps, The First House, Myth, Paradigm, and the Task of Architecture, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997, 61. 19 Julias Frontinus, in Campbell, op. cit, 282-3; Rykwert, op. cit, 122, described as ‘the templum of the earth.’

But in deciding the form of the enclosure, the form of the hut, the situation of the altar and its accessories, he has had by instinct recourse to right angles—axes, the square, the circle. For he could not create anything otherwise which would give

24

CHAPTER 5: ROMAN SURVEYING was translated onto the foundations of the city, derived from the determination of the earth’s axis around which the known universe rotated. The umbilicus soli, defining the point of street axes and all civic orientation, presents the birth of a city in human natal terminology. The act of plotting a civic landscape was cosmological as well as anthropological.

typically used to cover a fire. With his simple instruments Meton applies his flexible (καμπύλον) rule to the convex sky and begins to draw a plan.22 The textual criticism concerning the procedure of inscribing a square within a circle is to this day highly debated, and is often related to the geometrical problem of ‘squaring the circle’ (or seeking its quadrature) where the area of a square is equal to the area of a circle.23 The futility of finding a solution to this problem with only a square and compass may have been understood by the audience and added another perspective to the comedy. It is also as likely that Meton is drawing a vertical line, scribing a circle with his compass on one of its points, and then bisecting the line at the circle’s centre-point at 90 degrees. The resulting geometric image is that of a circle subdivided at four right angles (κύκλος…τετράγωνος); the symbol described above as the defining geometrical sign linking the cosmos to the polis and the centre from which polis-life springs:

The act of plotting a civic landscape likely had cosmological as well as anthropological connotations and in popular Greek thought extends, at least back to 414 BCE, to the theatrical enactment of Aristophanes, The Birds.20 One of the characters lampooned for his town planning schemes was the well known geometer, Meton. With the exception of Hippodamus of Miletus, Meton is the only known urbanist known from Greek sources, thus his methodology for laying out the aerial city for the birds, called Cloudcuckooland (Νεφελο-κοκκῦγία (819), a utopian counter-Athens) is to be considered alongside the principles of Roman surveying. Meton: I have come to you. Peisetaerus: Here is another nuisance. And what have you come here to do? What form does your plan take? Meton: I want to survey the plains of the air for you and to parcel them into lots. Peisetaerus: In the name of the gods, who are you? Meton: Who am I? (I am) Meton, known throughout Greece and at Colonus. Peisetaerus: What are these things? Meton: Tools for measuring the air. In truth, the spaces in the air have precisely the form of an extinguisher. With this bent ruler I draw a line from top to bottom; from one of its points I describe a circle with the compass. Do you understand? Peisetaerus: Not the very least. Meton: With the straight ruler I set to work to inscribe a square within this circle; in its centre will be the marketplace, into which all straight streets will lead, converging to this centre like a star, which, although only orbicular, sends forth its rays in a straight line from all sides. Peisetaerus: Meton, you new Thales...21

As star beams radiate from its centre, streets will do so from the circular agora. It is not necessary for Meton to scribe an outer circle, the city walls would be, by this time already rising around a city not yet fully defined. Before he could continue his demonstration, Meton is asked to quickly leave the scene before his impatient listener (Peisetaerus) becomes physically exasperated with his pompous lecturing.

Long before Meton arrives on the scene, it was understood that all of the air forming Cloudcuckooland was to be surrounded by a circular wall (550) the interior of which, according to Meton’s plan, would be subdivided by streets. The amusing paradox of surveying (γεωμετρῆσαι, landmeasure) the air (ἀήρ) using geometrical instruments (or applying geometrical procedures to the air) are in reverse to the principles of applying the cosmological movements of the sky to the ground, as describe above. Meton describes the spaces of the air, often interpreted as an ‘extinguisher’ (πνιγεύς), shaped as a rounded bowl with a flattened top

Though his reasons are obscure, on the stage at the Dionysia, Aristophanes’ obvious motive is to mock Meton as he attempts to wield geometer’s tools to the template of the heavens. Meton’s methodology is not Hippodamian, based on sets of parallel straight lines but he seems to follow the actual form of the older unplanned Greek cities conceived around a central agora. Earlier, Plato thought in terms of radiating peripheries (instead of streets) from a core consisting of an agora and shrines from which the outer polis emanated.24 In the mid-second century CE, Pausanius writing about cities that had remained unchanged, similarly describes

“Just as the universe unfolds from a center and stretches out toward the four cardinal points, the village comes into existence around and intersection.” Eliade, op. cit, (1957), 45. 20 Rykwert, op. cit, 87. 21 Aristophanes, The Birds, 992-1020, LCL, 179, trans. Jeffrey Henderson, 2000, pp. 153-7. Henderson connects the unmanly presentation of Meton with the rumour that he evaded military service by committing arson to avoid participating in the ill-fated Sicilian expedition (p. 153).

22

He does not to survey the sky for he is not using (or perhaps cannot use) surveying equipment. 23 R.E. Wycherley, ‘Aristophanes, Birds, 995-1009’, The Classical Quarterly, Vol. 31, No. 1, Jan. 1937, 22-31. 24 Plato, Laws, 778C.

25

SPATIAL AND RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE LATE ANTIQUE POLIS his movement through cities on streets originating from the agora.25 The concept of urban circularity radiating from a central core was not restricted to Greek and Roman thought and later adopted by modern theorists. For Jews, the Foundation Stone was the centre-most point of a series of larger circumferences from which the geographic compass turned. This point was the womb of creation, the midpoint between the upper and lower world. No ‘place’ could not contain greater meaning. Just as the navel is found at the center of a human being, so the land of Israel is found at the center of the world…and it is the foundation of the world. Jerusalem is at the center of the land of Israel, the Temple is at the center of Jerusalem, the Holy of Holies is at the centre of the Temple, the Ark is at the centre of the Holy of Holies and the Foundation Stone, is in front of the Ark, which spot is the foundation of the world.26

As will be discussed further below, the geometry of Jerusalem was duplicated in the concentric circles of the world, or, perhaps more significantly, the geometry of the world was concentrated on Jerusalem.

25

Pausanias, I.2.4; 18.4; II2.6; 3.2, 6; 4.6; III. 2.9; 12. 1, 10; 14.1. Midrash Tanhuma, Kedoshim 10, Jonathan Z. Smith, Map Is Not Territory, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993, 112. 26

26

CHAPTER 6 NEUROLOGICAL EVIDENCE FOR HUMAN SPATIAL CONCEPTION The neurological evidence for the human ability to conceive space puts into human biological terms what we have been discussing primarily through philosophical texts and Roman surveying techniques. The brain is spatially organised; the surveyor (so to speak) of visual images and mental/perceptual associations. Very basic insights into how people process visual images into conceptual categories will, in the following chapters, be applied to Plato, Aristotle, Vitruvius, Philo of Alexandria, Pseudo-Dionysius, Sallustius, John Chrysostom and St. John of Damascus. Despite their wide spectrum of philosophical/theological backgrounds, spanning twelve hundred years, they make very similar observations concerning visual symbolism and built forms. This prompts me to make certain associations between modern understandings of neurological processes and pagan and Christian perceptions. This will be applied to explain why social/cultic groups take differing perspectives on civic landscapes while possessing the same neurological equipment. This chapter adds a cognitive dimension to understanding the meaning and cause of changes in spatial patterns in the late Antique city.

perceptions that may accompany them within the brain’s stored visual memory system. It is a place where certain forms and shapes are invariably selected as privileged over other forms. In a rather similar way, Plato sought to explain visual perception in Timaeus, 45.C-E, though he understood that this orientation was placed in the Soul, by the Demiurge, rather than being programmed into the brain’s structure: So whenever the stream of vision is surrounded by mid-day light; it flows out like unto like, and coalescing therewith it forms one kindred substance along the path of the eye’s vision, wheresoever the fire which streams from within collides with an obstructing object without. And this substance, having all become similar in its properties because of its similar nature, distributes the motions of every object it touches, or whereby it is touched, throughout all the body even to the Soul, and brings about that sensation which we now term ‘seeing’...but when some greater motions are still left behind, according to their nature and the positions they occupy such and so great are the images they produce, which images are copied within and are remembered by the sleepers when they awake out of the dream.2

Pagan and Christian perspectives of space begin with using the same visual and perceptual apparatus. Neurologists commonly understand that:

Plato is discussing the way in which visual perceptions appear to be understood and organised (distributed) throughout the body and the soul through the taking in of light and images through the process of vision. What is ‘remembered’ and ‘left behind’ gives a sense of how we may perceive things as ‘familiar’, as if we have a prior knowledge of it (even if it has not been seen before), rather than being forever new.

…Many cells in the visual brain are selectively responsive to lines of specific orientation and are less responsive to lines of other orientation and not at all responsive to a line that is orthogonal to their preferred orientation. Such cells, which are often encountered and easily studied in the normally reared brain, are commonly supposed by neurobiologists to constitute the ‘building blocks’ of form perception… But what is this preexisting idea, save the same stored visual record of a brain that has been exposed to many forms…Gleizes and Metzinger state that under certain conditions, ‘it incorporates quality, the incommensurable sum of the affinities perceived between that which we discern and that which pre-exists within us’…the many cells in the visual cortex are selective for lines of particular orientation, and that they ‘pre-exist’ within us, in the sense that they are genetically determined and need only to be visually nourished to become permanent fixtures of the visual brain.1

Neurologists understand the experience of having a mental image as an indication that the brain is processing information in a particular way. When we use imagery to recall information, we generate images of previously seen patterns (‘…remembered by the sleepers…’). Neurologists debate whether our minds only generate images from what we experience or whether some images are ‘pre-set’ genetically.3 This process hinges on activating previously stored representations of spatial relations. According to Kosslyn, imagery is received through the eyes producing a pattern of activity in a set of areas in the occipital lobe he calls the ‘visual buffer’.4 The areas in the visual buffer are organized such that when images from the eyes are scanned

The neurological evidence suggests that there is a matrix ‘prewired’ into the brain that applies prepared images of form to visual stimuli involving our models of spatial perception. The specific structure of the brain allows individuals to orient themselves in relation to physical forms and ephemeral

2

Plato, Timaeus, 45.C-E Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate, The Modern Denial of Human Nature, New York: Viking, 2002. 4 Kosslyn, Stephen M. and Koenig, Oliver, Wet Mind, The New Cognitive Neuroscience, New York: The Free Press, 1995, 54-55. 3

1

Semir Zeki, ‘The Pathology of the Platonic Ideal and the Hegelian Concept’, Inner Vision, Oxford: Oxford, 1999, 93, 95-6.

27

SPATIAL AND RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE LATE ANTIQUE POLIS by the brain they are arrayed in such a way that their geometric properties may be recognized. Moreover, the visual buffer physically preserves the spatial structure of the same images that strike the backs of our eyes. The visual buffer stores the properties of images that indicate edges and regions of homogeneous colour and texture allowing us to recognize the same objects or like objects in different locations and contexts.5

move across the landscape. Kosslyn infers that a ‘separate coordinate spatial relations subsystem probably exists to encode spatial relations into memory.’10 Theories of cognitive mapping suggest we acquire information gradually, in an inside-out manner, by learning first the landmarks, then the routes to them, and finally the area surrounding them.11 Studying cartographic maps and keying on centrally located landmarks has proven the most efficient way to speed up this process of orthogonal orientation in city landscapes.12 The Classical architectural packages of Eastern cities which often focus on specific monumental sites (or clusters of such sites) structure civic navigation and provide orientation. Whether they were set in a clustered group (as the Temples, Nymphaeum, West Baths, North Quadrifrons and Propylaea along Gerasa’s Cardo), or set peripherally (Gerasa’s Hippodrome, Birketein Theatre and pools), they became foci, or brackets enclosing comprehensible blocks of space, to allow both visitor and citizen self-orientation within and without the city.

Plato has the images distributed to the Soul and other parts of the body on the understanding that ‘seeing’ affects not only the totality of our senses, but also our somatic place in the world. For Plato, the mind is activated by the ‘greater motions’ that contain the images to be remembered and movement is the catalyst that prompts memory.6 Reisberg and Heuer7 might call this movement the internal stimulus from which a perceptual representation is constructed. The perception (‘percept’) of an image is remembered in the associative memory differently from the processing of the shapes of images. The percept is more of a ‘depiction’ or the ‘idea’ of shape than the simple remembrance of its lines and form. The neurological ‘mechanics’ in the perception of certain shapes and forms is critical to understanding the Christian dilemma with paganism and Judaism and its subdivision of Classical space into the sacred, secular, and the profane.

St. John of Damascus, in his eighth-century defence of the Churches’ use of images, used processes of sight and perception for his argument. If therefore, the Word of God, in providing for our every need, always presents to us what is intangible by clothing it with form, does it not accomplish this by making an image using what is common to nature and so brings within our reach that for which we long but are unable to see? A certain perception takes place in the brain, prompted by the bodily senses, which is then transmitted to the faculties of discernment, and adds to the treasury of knowledge something that was not there before. The eloquent Gregory says that the mind which is determined to ignore corporeal things will find itself weakened and frustrated. Since the creation of the world the invisible things of God are clearly seen by means of images. We see images in the creation which, although they are only dim lights, still remind us of God. For instance, when we speak of the holy and eternal Trinity, we use the images of the sun, light, and burning rays; or a running fountain; or an overflowing river; or the mind, speech, and spirit within us; or a rose tree, a flower, and a sweet fragrance.13

The spatial structure of the buffer organizes the shapes into separate contexts preserving the spatial relations of objects without mixing or confusing them. We not only remember individual objects, but we also ‘abstract’ properties of objects and remember their prototypes (base forms). The natural tendency is to associate things in categories, not as much with individual objects. These objects are organized into parts, called by some, ‘geons’8 for geometrical icons, which are stored in visual memory. Because of our ability to separate images into parts we have a system that can ignore irrelevant shapes when they are processed in the ventral system, and because of this deep processing into categories, an object can still be thought of long after it has been seen.9

In a word, it may be said that we may make images of every form we see, and our apprehension of these forms (percepts) is a kind of sight. If we sometimes understand forms by using our minds, but other times from what we see, then it is through these two ways that we are brought to understanding. It is the same with the other senses: after we have smelled or tasted, or touched, we

Yet, given the evidence for neurological commonalities, one has to wonder how two people might see the same thing ‘differently’. We store information concerning topographical experiences of landscapes through coordinates of objects relative to the body. We can alter these coordinates so that this information is re-evaluated and kept ‘up-to-date’ as we 10

Ibid, 94. Blake Leyerle, ‘Landscape as Cartography in Early Christian Pilgrimage Narratives,’ Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 64, No. 1 (1996), 120. 12 Robert Lloyd, ‘Cognitive Maps: Encoding and Decoding Information,’ Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 79, No. 1 (Mar., 1989), 101-124. 13 St. John of Damascus, ‘First Apology of Saint John of Damascus Against Those Who Attack the Divine Images’, On the Divine Images, trans. David Anderson, New York: St. Vladimir’ Seminary Press, 1980, 20: 4.

5

Plato’s understanding of the eyes as receptors fusing visual information into a similar substance by the process of ‘inner fire’ is remarkably similar to Kosslyn’s and Zeki’s descriptions. 6 We could perhaps connect this with our need for repetitive kinetic movement in ritual habits 7 Daniel Reisberg and Friderike Heuer, ‘Visuospatial Images,’ The Cambridge Handbook of Visuospatial Thinking, Priti Shaw and Akira Miyake (eds), Cambridge: Cambridge, 2005, 43. 8 Kosslyn and Koenig , op. cit, 89. He credits this to Biederman. 9 Ibid, 366.

11

28

CHAPTER 6: NEUROLOGICAL EVIDENCE FOR HUMAN SPATIAL CONCEPTION combine our experience with reason, and thus come to knowledge.14

symbols were to be kept out of reach, but because, as I have already stated, our own hierarchy is itself symbolical and adapted to what we are. In a divine fashion it needs perceptible things to lift us up into the domain of conceptions.17

St. John of Damascus describes our mental processing and understanding of forms as: mind + sight = understanding : senses + reason = knowledge.

Hermeias, a pagan Neoplatonist philosopher and an early sixth century Christian writing under the pseudonym, Pseudo-Dionysius, comment similarly to the understanding that consecrated images as transcendent objects could act as intercessors with the divine. To Hermeias objects could be given a soul, by rite, which entailed marking the piece with meaningful symbols giving it a new identity. PseudoDionysius says that we as humans need perceptible-physical things to allow our minds to understand metaphysical beliefs; it is fully integrated within our human condition.

The synthesis of this ratio may be understood as the process of perceiving a thing through a holistic process initiated through sight. Twelve hundred years after Plato’s Timaeus, St. John uses a very similar comprehension of the brain processing images and ‘transmitting’ them to the other ‘faculties of discernment’ throughout the body. Though his intentions were very different than Plato’s, St. John also resorts to metaphor (a method justified by modern investigation into visuospatial research) to explain how sight apprehends the perceptible and imperceptible.15

The ability to organise, arrange and pattern symbols is found in the intellect. Twentieth century anthropologist Roy A. Rappaport agrees with P- Dionysius in that ‘symbols are the building blocks of mental images, and just as man cannot build a house without materials, so he cannot construct mental images of the universe without symbolic elements.’18

Symbolic sacrality is also applied to spatial coordinates of landscapes, buildings and people. As St. John demonstrated (above), this symbolism often takes the form of metaphor. A metaphor, by definition, entails the transfer of meaning from one dissimilar thing to another resulting in enhanced meanings. Through the application of metaphor the process of converting abstract conceptions of human thought and feeling are made substantial, thus comprehensible in physical forms. This universal tendency will frustrate Christian apologists by pagan attacks pointing to similarities in applications of images and relics (see further discussion, Section II, Christianity). Their rhetoric of belief was different, yet monotheistic and polytheistic religions applied similar symbolic perceptions to matter, thus creating a dichotomy between verbal meanings to what was in plain sight.

Anyone would say that our inability immediately to direct our thoughts to contemplation of higher things makes it necessary that familiar every-day media be utilized to give suitable form to what is formless, and make visible what cannot be depicted, so that we are able to construct understandable analogies… God wills that we should not be totally ignorant of bodiless creatures, and so He clothed them with forms and shapes, and used images comprehensible to our nature, material forms which could be seen by the spiritual vision of the mind. From these we make images and representations…19

A century after P-Dionysius, St. John of Damascus, in defence of the Churches’ use of images in worship, uses the term ‘analogy’ to represent religious ‘mental images’, the same term as Rappaport applied to depict forms pictured in the mind.

We have explained how the soul is inspired. But how is an image inspired? The thing itself cannot respond to the divine, since it is lifeless; but the art of consecration purifies its matter and, by attracting certain marks and symbols to the image, first gives it a soul by these means and makes it capable of receiving a kind of life from the universe, thereby preparing it to receive illumination from the divine.16

Neurologically, our mind is able to remember and associate images in a procession of narrowing categories which activates visual files to associate with that particular image. That may relate to what St. John describes above in how the Christian can use natural and cosmological (certainly geometrical) metaphors to describe Christ. The metaphors for Christ are a combination of associative shapes and sensory relations combined with their perceptual ideas. For St. John, the reception of images is not purely a mental experience but sensory, involving touch, smell and taste. This relates to Annabel Jane Wharton’s ‘space of frustrated desire’ (above,

And so, using images derived from the senses they spoke of the transcendent. They passed on something united in a variegation and plurality. Of necessity they made human what was divine. They put on material on what was immaterial. In their written and unwritten initiations, they brought the transcendent down to our level. As they had been commanded to do they did this for us, not simply because of the profane from whom the 14

St. John of Damascus, op. cit, 79: 24. Barbara Tversky, ‘Functional Significance of Visuospatial Representations,’ The Cambridge Book of Visuospatial Thinking, Priti Shaw and Akira Miyake (eds), Cambridge: Cambridge, 2005, 1, 13, 26 (supports the viability of space as metaphor). 16 Hermeias, 6th CE, Neoplatonist philosopher, quoted in Gager, Curse Tablets and Binding Spells, from the Ancient World, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992, 219. 15

17

Pseudo Dionysius, The Complete Works, trans. Colm Luibheid, fwd. Paul Rorem. The Classics of Western Spirituality, London: SPCK, 1987, 376D377A, 198-9. 18 Roy A. Rappaport, Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity, Cambridge: Cambridge, 1999, 160. 19 St. John of Damascus, op. cit, 76: 21, 79: 25.

29

SPATIAL AND RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE LATE ANTIQUE POLIS chp.1) pertaining to the Christian sensual deprivation of not being able to touch a physical Christ image. The Christian had to ‘make do’ with metaphorical substitutes consisting of ‘living’ water of Baptism, and the transubstantiated wine and bread of the Mysteries. St. John’s stance was a provocative one as the contemporary Church was divided on the issue of icons. Yet, for him, to fully perceive Christ in his metaphorical representation was as much a sensual-bodily experience as it was a mental-spiritual one. 20

past and attain a new social identity. For them, authorised memory was at the heart of religious belief. Collective memory needs continual feeding by being sustained by ‘social and moral props’27 such as by readings from the Torah, Eucharistic ceremonies and days of celebration and commemoration designated by the calendar. St. John proclaims the value of repetitive mental imaging: For this reason I depict Christ and His suffering in churches, in homes, marketplaces, and storehouses, in images on cloths and vestments, and in every place so that the remembrance of them is always before my eyes and never is neglected…28

Such visuospatial processes connect to understandings of Social Remembering. Collective memory is a shared representation of the past and collective commemoration gives substance to a group’s present identity and vision for the future.21 Memory is social because the act of remembering is interactive with symbolic frameworks that influence and organize human actions and self-conceptions. The past is moulded to justify present dominant (political) interests in order to construct a ‘useable past’.22 Historical events that do not fit these interests could then be discarded or considered dead or be revived as foci of opposition to dominant cultures. Memories are often organised around the world of the sensuality of things. Without much exception, a group’s identity is linked to places, ruins, landscapes, monuments and urban architecture,23 indicating that ‘a society first of all needs to find and determine its significant landmarks in which to found and orient itself.’24 The City might be considered the topography of collective memory in which buildings are mnemonic symbols containing hidden and forgotten pasts while rooted in concrete images.

The placing of Christian images in Classical cities is an example of continuity and change. Beginning in the fourth century CE, the classical city moved from being ‘full of gods’ to being ‘full of Christian Saints’, and thus presented a confusing dualism of perceptual similarity amidst perceptual change. Yet, although both Classical and Christian perceptions of physical and metaphorical space may have been generally similar and have triggered the same activities within the brain, their associated transformation of perception to knowledge revealed their different theories and understanding of the reasonable order (logos). The ‘thinking’ of the space long after the perception of the space means that there can be different associations, different narratives that inform that thinking. Thus, we have spatial continuity (as societies who move together with the same historical-cultural contexts), but radically different narratives of the city and understandings of its space (from different religious-political contexts). Thus, very much as Hobsbawm and Ranger describe the invention of tradition, the politics of memory can be applied to the procedure of image exchange and moulds new traditions from the rhythms of earlier visual habits.

The history of views of the Holy Land led Maurice Halbwachs to argue that memory imprints its effect on topography and that collective memory adapts its recollections of the details of past events to contemporary needs and demands.25 Christianity and Judaism are categorised as ‘mnemonic communities’26 who required new members to go through a conversion-initiation process, thereby enabling them to more fully identify with the group’s 20

Philo offers a mid-point in a transition between Plato and St. John of Damascus, especially in On the Creation of the Cosmos According to Moses (see David T. Runia, On the Creation of the Cosmos According to Moses, Leiden: Brill, 2001, 137-43). The ‘beautiful copy,’ ‘objects of sense perception’ and ‘imprinting’ and ‘carrying’ are metaphors that relate to the transposing of images onto the brain/body. Memories of the objects are enhanced through repetitive ‘engraving’, a parallel to the continual cataloguing of images after the visual event is over. Images ‘remembered by sleepers (Plato)’ and ‘certain perceptions taking place in the brain (St. John)’ are related to the: ‘beautiful copy,’ imprints/engravings/representations and images in mind of Philo’s God. See also, for comparison, Kosslyn, op. cit, 147. 21 Barbara Mitsztal, Theories of Social Remembering, Maidenhead: Open University Press, 2003, 25. 22 Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, The Invention of Tradition, Cambridge: Cambridge, 1983. 23 Barbara Mitsztal, op. cit, 16. 24 Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, Lewis A. Coser, (ed.), Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992, 222. 25 Ibid, 232-35. 26 Ibid, 15.

27 28

30

Ibid, 34. St. John of Damascus, op. cit, 98.

SECTION II HUMANITY’S PURSUIT OF THE DIVINE IN ARCHITECTURAL SPACE

31

This section concentrates on the spatial concepts prevalent in pagan, Jewish and Christian circles while continuing the philosophical theme of spatial connection between the human and the divine. Though the spatial and cultic are separated by Section, they are interrelated. The ritual-behavioural patterns and belief systems of paganism, Judaism, and Christianity are wrapped up in their spatial constructs and movement within space. I contend that their religion’s inclusiveness or exclusivity related to their deities and personhood, apprehension of polis life, their use of ornamentation and their participation in ritual, directly related to specific applications of and treatment towards sacred space. The design of religious buildings (temples, synagogues and churches) make play on horizontal and vertical orientations based on their relational perceptions of the divine: sacred space is a physical interpretation of human-divine relationships and the functional means of its continuance. Place and form is enlivened through the spatial practices of ritual and liturgy.

32

CHAPTER 7 PAGAN LANDSCAPES Architectural holiness is not seen as separating and isolating individuals but acting as a bonding agent within families, communities and cities.

My discussion of pagan landscapes concentrates on three themes: sacrifice, movement, and multiplicity. The sacrificial gift is the mediating link between altar and temple: the places of human activity and divine residence. As re-creators, pagans construct likenesses of deities and temples as representations of the divine and of heavenly realms. Classical polytheists defined themselves, not by a doctrine of theology, but in ritual movement. The movement upward into sacred architectural contexts becomes a religious activity and social actions have precedence over doctrine in pagan thought. This locale-centric religious landscape allowed movement between different religious foci so that Classical polytheists could respond positively to a multiplicity of ethnic gods by inclusive consolidation and association.

Transporting human beings into the presence of a god, the temple lets them experience a particular place as holy, thus providing their life with a focus. So understood, architecture, as opposed to mere building, has an essentially public function: its task is to help gather scattered individuals into a genuine community by presenting the powers that preside over its life. Architecture is a presentation of the divinities.3

Harries sees architecture serving as the connection between God and architect which enables form to contain a spiritual charge felt and understood through human interaction with solid geometric surfaces, but especially with the verticals which push attention skyward, towards a home of the gods.

CONCEPTS OF PAGAN SPATIALITY …[H]uman beings not only look up to the sky, but such looking up has long provided natural metaphors for the way human beings are never imprisoned in the here and now but are always ‘beyond’ themselves, ahead of themselves in expectation, behind themselves in memory, beyond time altogether when contemplating eternity. Such power of self transcendence is part of the meaning of ‘spirit.’4 Verticals figure our relationship to the spiritual, horizontals our temporal death-shadowed dwelling on earth: the cross figures the intersection of the two. Sacred architecture has thus been traditionally distinguished by its greater verticality…5

The religious-spiritual dimension of architecture (as presented in Section I) is founded in the belief that humans regard themselves as moving in and creatively fabricating a spatial world from an ‘inspiration’ beyond themselves. Proclus saw humanity as operating in conjunction with the elements of the universe in what was of itself an act of selfconfession of human insignificance in the face of the immensity of the natural cosmos.1 In the same manner, humans build to create centres, epitomised by the pivot point in the Vitruvian Man, and the omphalmos soli on the Roman surveyor’s gromon; we apply architectural abilities to reach out, or more accurately, upward to establish relationship with the ‘macro-cosmos’.

Places of religious and spiritual significance were often situated on high places. When confronted with these monumental structures, one’s eyes are compelled to look upwards. In antiquity, access to religious places often meant climbing steps to open temenos plazas, which were ubiquitous throughout the Decapolis.6 Sacred enclosures often contained steps, to altars and bema platforms. Movement upward, sometimes performed in procession, ‘imbued’ the architecture of the late-Roman city with the divine spirit. By contrast, movement downward into crypts and tombs typically meant the place of death.7

Karsten Harries, in The Ethical Function of Architecture, argues that in order for architecture to be spiritually ‘imbued’, there must be a connection between the architect and the divine. The task of architecture is to build a bridge between humanity and divinity, to provide both individual and community with an integrating center. Works of architecture are primarily symbolic markers pointing to the divine power dimly felt to preside over both nature and humanity.2

3

Ibid, 279. Ibid, 160. 5 Ibid, 187. 6 John D. Wineland, ‘Archaeological and Numismatic Evidence for the Political Structure and Greco-Roman Religions of the Decapolis, with Particular Emphasis on Gerasa & Abila’, ARAM 4, Vol. 4:1&2, Oxford, 1992, 333. 7 Oddly, the ‘tower tombs’ of Dura Europos and Palmyra (like the rather more famous pyramids), oriented the dead with extreme verticality. See N.P. Toll, ‘The Necropolis, Preliminary Report of the Ninth Season of Work, 4

1

Proclus, Proclus’ Commentary on Plato’s Parmenides, 3.4, trans. Glenn R. Morrow and John M. Dillon, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987, 164. ‘A knowledge, then, greater than our own will reside in the cause of the cosmos, inasmuch as it not only knows but gives reality to all things, whereas we only know them.’ See entirety of 3.6, also quoted, in part, above. 2 Karsten Harries, The Ethical Function of Architecture, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000, 140.

33

SPATIAL AND RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE LATE ANTIQUE POLIS Internal temple cella staircases appear throughout the Greek East.8 Their specific ritual purposes are debated. Architecturally, the staircase would seem suited to a movement of ritual, perhaps a priest, small sacrifice, and portable equipment to the cella rooftop. Ted Kaiser considers it likely that the rooftop of the main cella at the Temple of Bel at Palmyra was used for some smaller sacrifices attended by a restricted number of priests.9 Sacrifices in the monumental eastern temples were made upon raised altars within immense flat temenoi. We must imagine that flat areas were occupied by a great gathering of worshippers while the smoke of the fires rose vertically to the sky to accent the single vertical finger of the polis’ sacrifice, from an immense horizontal plane. Movement and ritual combine to emphasise the intersecting opposition of vertical and horizontal planes, thus the temple becomes the axis point of the vertical and the horizontal, the point at which the divine meets the earthly. Heidegger stresses architectural form:

the

human-social

expression

Menander argued that the pagan method to gain the approval of the gods (thus making the spritual-spatial connection) was through sacrifice.11 Classical paganism (I generalise here) was largely a performance-based religion of ‘orthopraxis’,12 which necessitated the correct outward performance of prescribed rituals. There was no universal doctrine, dogma, or revelatory literature.13 It was thus a ritualistic system, with high regard for tradition. We take these impressions from his following statements: …Piety to the gods consists of two elements: being god-loved and god-loving. The former means being loved by the gods and receiving many blessings from them, the latter consists of loving the gods and having a relationship of friendship with them… Love of the gods, as I said, is to be assessed (in the behaviour of a given city) in private terms, by inquiring whether each citizen devotes himself to the service of the gods; in public terms, in many ways: by inquiring whether they have instituted rites of initiation or established many festivals or sacrifices which are either very numerous or most punctiliously performed, or have built very many temples to all the gods or many to each god, or perform duties of the priesthoods very scrupulously. These are points under which love of the gods shown by cities is assessed. Nowadays, it is difficult to find piety in individuals, though many cities lay claim to common piety and zeal for the gods…Therefore, we also, who have always experienced the god’s providence and kindness, are not laggard in his worship. He continues to give us abundant harvests and to rescue us from dangers, and we propitiate him with hymns. We therefore institute this great sacred contest, and arrange festivals and sacrifices, returning thanks for the benefits we receive.14

of

A building, a Greek temple, portrays nothing. It simply stands there in the middle of the rock-cleft valley. The building encloses the figure of the god, and in this concealment lets it stand out into the holy precinct through the open portico. By means of the temple, the god is present in the temple. This presence of the god is itself an extension and delimitation of the precinct as a holy precinct. The temple and its precinct, however, do not fade away into the indefinite. It is the templework that first fits together and at the same time gathers around itself the unity of those paths and relations in which birth and death, disaster and blessing, victory and disgrace, endurance and decline acquire the shape of destiny for human being. The allgoverning expanse of this open relational context is the world of this historical people.10

It is in orthopraxis that the gods were honoured and their anger propitiated. To neglect them, or to sacrifice inappropriately, was to make one vulnerable to destructive retaliation. The power of the gods had the potential for harming and helping. It is in the ‘helping’ that the transactional do ut des (I give so that you will give) system was made most clear: the gift was given in the hope of return. This notion of reciprocity requires acting for the one who acts for you.15 Under the do ut des system, gift-giving induces

To Heidegger, it is the human element alone, devoid of transcendent contexts, which vivifies the temple. The landscape was activated and made holy through its physical connection to the memory of human experience; without such memories space is empty of meaning and power. Standing stones vertically emphasized divine direction, but communal experience was its life-force. Since the human moves primarily along the horizontal plane, the connections that make space sacred begin horizontally. Spirituality has its architectural genesis where people meet, recalling the Vitruvian story of architecture’s beginning (see Chap. 3, above).

11

Throughout my discussion, I use ‘pagan’ as a general term for a cluster of polytheistic religious practices from Classical antiquity. There are, of course, many variations in religious practice in antiquity which diverge from the norms here discussed. It would, however, be both pointless and unhelpful to detail all such eccentricities. In spite of what I regard as broad similarities in Classical pagan worship, I should not be taken as suggesting the pagan religion was uniform in practice or thought. 12 John Scheid, An Introduction to Roman Religion, Edinburgh: Edinburgh, 2003, 18. 13 Pagan religious belief and practice discussed in: Robin Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, New York: Knoph, 1987, 11-101; Paul Veyne, ‘ Tranquilizers’, A History of Private Life, From Pagan Rome to Byzantium, Paul Veyne (ed.), Cambridge: Harvard, 1987, 207-234. 14 Menander Rhetor, trans. D.A. Russell and N.G. Wilson, Ramsey McMullen and Eugene N. Lane (eds.) Paganism and Christianity, 100—425 C.E., Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992, 60-1. Late third century, CE. 15 Eckart Otto, ‘Law and Ethics’, Religions of the Ancient World, A Guide, Sara Iles Johnston (ed.), Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2004, 92; Catherine Bell, Ritual, Perspectives and Dimensions, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997, 178. Edward Taylor developed the ‘gift theory’ in

1935-36’, TEAD, Part II, Rostovtzeff, Bellinger, Brown, Welles (eds), New Haven: Yale University Press, 1946. 8 Warwick Ball, Rome in the East, The Transformation of an Empire, London: Routledge, 2000, 351. 9 Ted Kaiser, The Religious Life of Palmyra, Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2002, 193. 10 Martin Heidegger, ‘The Origin of the Work of Art,’, Poetry, Language, Thought, quoted in Harries, op. cit, 277, 279.

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CHAPTER 7: PAGAN LANDSCAPES counter-giving and, in repetition, creates a ‘circle of giving’; the seasonal pace of it kept by commemorative days on the calendar. Offerings are an experiment in trusting the unseen, to control fears of the unknown, thereby making the world, in a sense, ‘divine’ through this continual interaction within the polis. Votive gifts were, to some extent, the evidence of an individual’s personal understanding (if not belief) that a specific god will provide some form of earthly salvation given in return.16 Each offering left at the altar became a visible symbol; a social expression contained within a material object, of a person’s coping with life, their fears, anxieties, hopes and dreams for the present and future. This is not to be taken as a close relation to Christianity’s version of conversion through faith in the Son of God, but more of an ‘adhesion’,17 a continuous renewal of confidence in the polis’ cognitive memory system by repetitive ritual. What had proved effective in the past could happen again, yet its efficacious memory was short-term, specific. It only extended as far as the last blessing.18

By the fourth century, views of the temples were changing and Sallustius provides an explanation of sacrifice and worship that is imbued with ideas similar to those in contemporary Christianity, especially in emphasising intent: …It must be replied that a god does not take pleasure… or feel anger…nor is he appeased by gifts…, nor is it right that the divine nature should be affected for good or evil by human affairs. Rather, the gods are always good and do nothing but benefit us, nor do they ever harm us: they are always in the same state. We, when we are good, have union with the gods because we are like them; if we become bad, we are separated from them because we are unlike them. If we live in the exercise of virtue, we cling to them; if we become bad, we make them our enemies, not because they are angry but because our sins do not allow the gods to shed their light upon us and instead subject us to spirits of punishment. If by prayers and sacrifices we obtain release from our sins, we do not serve the gods nor change them, but by the acts we perform and by our turning to the divine we heal our vice and again enjoy the goodness of the gods…20

For Sallustius, the gods are immutable in their response to human piety. The gods are not as impressed by sacrifices as they are by virtuous human behaviour.21 Temples and sacrifice are not for the gods, but for humans. Sallustius continues the metaphorical connections between temples and heaven, and between altars and ritual images and the heavens. Prayers of the pagan worshipper act as a communicative technology between the heavenly temple and earthly altar, the gods accepting the offering of life as a communicative medium between human and divine life-forces.

Menander (above) stressed that acts of worship were to be done ‘scrupulously’ and ‘punctiliously’ in accordance with certain laws. Ritual and the relationship to the divine was public and law-bound, communal rather than being subject to individual inspiration. Cities sacrificed together, and their piety was of a group religiousness proving its worth by public displays of magnificent temples, festivals, financed by the resources of the civic elite. The Didascalia asserts that many pagans within the polis and from far, outlying areas habitually attended worship and festivals, to the chagrin of this Christian author:

These considerations settle the question concerning sacrifices and the other honours which are paid to the gods. The divine nature itself is free from needs; the honours done to it are for our good. The providence of the gods stretches everywhere and needs only congruity for its enjoyment. Now all congruity is produced by imitation and likeness. That is why temples are a copy of heaven, altars of earth, images of life (and that is why they are made in the likeness of living creatures), prayers of the intellectual element, letters of the unspeakable powers on high, plants and stones of matter and the animals that are sacrificed of the unreasoning life in us. From all these things the gods gain nothing…, but we gain union with them.

The heathen, when they rise from their sleep, go in the morning to worship and minister to their idols; and before all their works and undertakings they go first and worship their idols. Neither at their festivals and their fairs are they wanting, but are constant in assembling—not only they who are of the district but even those who come from afar, and all likewise assemble and come to the spectacle of their theatre.19

ritual as one gives to receive in return (do ut des). Direct transactions to praise, please, and placate divine power may involve an exchange by which human beings provide sustenance to divine powers in return for divine contributions to human well-being. Edward Taylor, Religion in Primitive Culture,Vol. 2, New York: Harper Brothers, 1958, pp. 461-2, 483. 16 Walter Burkert, Ancient Mystery Cults, Cambridge: Harvard, 1987, 14-15. 17 A.D. Nock. Conversion, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1933, 37. 18 Not only were Gerasa’s dedicatory inscriptions visible and sometimes impressive, they often provided visible and legible affirmations of faith. See, for example, the following from Gerasa: Wells, (1938), inscr: #138 from the base of northernmost pilaster in front of Propylaea, Wells, (1938), inscr: #139, from the court in south-west angle of N. Baths, Wells, (1938), inscr: #141, from near the South Baths, Wells, (1938), inscr: #142 from an altar, and Wells, (1938), inscr: #205, from an altar found in the debris of room B.65. 19 Didascalia Apostolorum 13, The Syriac Version Translated and Accompanied by the Verona Latin Fragments, intro. and notes by Hugh Connolly, Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1929.mid third century.

…In the first place, since everything we have comes from the gods, and it is just to offer to the givers the first fruits of what is given, we offer the first fruits of our possessions in the form of votive offerings, of our bodies in the form of hair, of our life in the form of sacrifices. Secondly, prayers with sacrifices are animated words, the word giving power to the life and the life animation to the word. Furthermore, the happiness of anything lies in its appropriate perfection, and the appropriate perfection

20

Sallustius, On the Gods and the Universe, trans. Darby Nock, Hildesheim: George Olms Verlag, 1988, Sect. 14, p. 27 ff. 21 This teaching has a resemblance to the Davidic Psalm (51:16-17), “You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.” Sallustius understood ‘the turning to the divine’ as an individual, spiritual act, requiring no physical movement.

35

SPATIAL AND RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE LATE ANTIQUE POLIS of each object is union with its cause. For this reason, also we pray that we may have union with the gods. So, since though the highest life is that of the gods, yet man’s life also is life of some sort, and this life wishes to have union with that, it needs an intermediary (for objects most widely separated are never united without a middle term), and the intermediary ought to be like the objects being united. Accordingly, the intermediary between life and life should be life, and for this reason living animals are sacrificed by the blessed among men, and were sacrificed of old, not in a uniform manner, but to every god the fitting victims with much other reverence.22

the human and divine that only a third intermediary can fill and he claims that “objects most widely separated are never united without a middle term” and the sacrifice must be a living animal.26 Architecturally, Sallustius speaks of heavenly temples and earthly altars (ναοὶ τὸν οὐρανὸν οἱ δὲ βωμοὶ μιμοῦνται) creating two points separated by the full expanse of the cosmos. In order to unify altar and temple, a thirdliving member was sacrificed to establish harmony between the person, polis and the divine. As ‘first fruits’, the gift was the lintel spanning the two cosmic structures. The need for congruity between humanity and the divine must have been seen as a synthetic force operating within the lives of many pagans, Jews, and Christians during late Antiquity.

Sallustius believes that what establishes a connection with the gods is ‘continuity’ through ‘imitation’ and ‘likeness’ in natural creation, so that perfection of spirit and of things brings the individual closer to god. The temple and the sacrifice are a way of closing the gap: the temple being close to heaven and sacrifice taking the human towards god. Congruity is extended to space and form as Sallustius states that ‘temples are a copy of heaven (ναοὶ τὸν οὐρανὸν οἱ δὲ βωμοὶ μιμοῦνται)’. What he meant precisely is a mystery, yet its implications are fascinating. Was Sallustius’ understanding of heaven a place of vaulted cosmic ceilings, massive peripteral pillars holding up the four corners of the world, and of celestial processional ways leading to the cella of the god and the altar before it? Brilliant marble slabs that typically adorned temple walls with gold leaf were associated, by Christians, with the image of the New Jerusalem of the book of Revelation.23 John’s eschatological description of heaven may bear some faint resemblance to Sallustius’ view that a temple should be a fitting representation of heaven on earth. Yet, Roman baths, theatres, hippodromes and columnedlined streets were designed and adorned in the same manner, so this copy of heaven might spread through out the entire city.24

PAGAN RELIGIOUS SYNTHESIS The synthesis of divinities in pagan culture was as much a part of the spatiality of temple worship as were its physical elements. Though the most prominent temples at Gerasa and Dura Europos are labelled according to votive inscriptions, their cultural development links them into more complex ethnic contexts. Just as architecture of a dominant power can prevail over local forms, divine names may be Greco-Roman, yet have stronger regional identities. The pagan elements of Sallustius’ divine temple, earthly altar, vivifying prayer, and the sacrifice of a third element did not require a devotion to a single god or theology. The identity of the Demiurge or logos could be behind any one or a number of the many gods associated with the religious world. Various pagan authors made play on this many-named divine spirit: The sons of Ogynes call me Bacchus The Egyptians think me Osiris, Mysians name me Phanaces, Indians regard me as Dionysus, Roman rites make me Liber, The Arab race thinks me Adoneus, Lucaniacus the Universal God.27 The Phygians, earliest of all humans, call me the Pessinuntain Mother of the Gods; the Athenians, sprung from their own soil, call me Cecropian Minerva; the sea-tossed Cyprians call me

In Section 16, Sallustius discusses sacrifices as votive offerings from the people’s ‘first fruits’ and where his Neoplatonist thinking may be heavily influenced by Christian doctrine. He presses a point in mentioning the importance of ‘animating’ ones words (prayers) (ἔμψυχοι λόγον) with a living sacrifice. Words in prayers are not enough by themselves; they required the death of a meaningful life in order to make them efficacious. Thus, efficacy comes at a personal cost of the life of an animal.25 The problem is that there is a void between

philosopher ‘the god who is above all wants nothing material, and pure unvoiced thoughts are the appropriate sacrifice.’ He, taking a Platonist account of life, believes the soul to be rational, immortal and incorporeal. It is already connected to the divine intellect but for the fleshly body which ties it to the earth. Release from the body is made through the mind to ascend back to God. Moreover, he believes the only way for a philosopher to gain sustenance is through vegetarianism. He believes, through much selective borrowing from Aristotle and Plutarch, that animals have a practical wisdom whose external behaviour express an internal logos, and therefore are rational or human enough to be considered contaminating if eaten. 26 There was considerable debate on this issue. Ammianus Marcellinus, 22.12.6; 25.4.17, attacks Julian’s fondness for sacrifice but Julian was defended by Iamblichus who believed there was ‘a natural symbolism in all the apparatus of worship and magic, and that the mediation between life and life must be by life. See Nock, op. cit, on Sallustius, lxxxiv-v 27 Ausonius, Epigrammata # 48, in Jan Assmann, ‘Monotheism and Polytheism’, Religions of the Ancient World, Cambridge MA: Belknap Press, 2004, 27.

22

Sallustius, op. cit, 29-31. Rev. 21: 15-21. 24 The presentation of temples as copies of heaven parallels the Jewish idea of the Tabernacle and Jerusalem Temple as suitable places for God to reside with his people Also, New Testament teaching on the human body presents it as ‘a temple of the Holy Spirit’, a place for God to dwell within the person. The temples, tabernacles, and the body are communion or connection points with God. The body described as a temple filled by the ‘Spirit’ of God became, for the Christian, the most personal of connections, and intimate of congruities. See ‘Tanakh, Ex. 25.8. ‘And let them make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them’, and I Cor. 6.19: ἤ οὐκ οἵδατε ὄτι τὸ σῶμα ὐμῶν ναὸς τοῦ ἐν ὑμῖν ἁγίου πνεύματός ἐστιν οὗ ἔχετε ἀπὸ θεοῦ ...) 25 Porphyry disagrees. In On Abstinence from Killing Animals trans. Gillian Clark, NY: Cornell U. Press, 2000, 9, 12, 15. He argues that, to be a 23

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CHAPTER 7: PAGAN LANDSCAPES Venus of Phaphus, the arrow-bearing Cretans Dictynna, the trilingual Sicilians Ortygian Proserpina; to the Eleusinians I am the ancient goddess Ceres, to others Juno, to yet others Bellona, Hecate, or the Rhamnusian Goddess; and the Ethiopians who are illuminated by the first rays of the sun, the Africans, and the Egyptians full of ancient lore and wisdom honour me with the true rites and call me with the true name: Isis.28

Astart and Aserah) as well as Athena, Aphrodite, Selene, Rhea, Artemis, Nemesis and the Fates.37 However he states that Zeus is not called so by the natives38 for every Greek divinity a Syrian name can be found. It is clear from Lucian, though the names of divinities inscribed on Eastern altars may be Greek, they are also Near Eastern, which is especially important for the religious culture of a city such as Gerasa, sitting close enough to the Mediterranean to have Hellenistic roots and western trade contacts while retaining strong Near Eastern cultural influences. One must consider the deities of Gerasa, as elsewhere in the Near East, not as dividing East from West, but as a long and diverse topographicalsyntactical progression, connecting to other deities over time and place.

But for my part, Protarchus, I feel more than human awe, indeed a fear beyond expression, of the names of the gods. Now therefore I will address Aphrodite by whatever name pleases her best; though as for pleasure, I know that it has many forms.29

The gods were primarily defined by their personal characteristics and behavioural traits. This rather primitive anthropological method generated classificatory similarities that spanned vast cultural divides. This, however, did not mean a complete fusion or exact equations between deities. Local gods often kept their individuality. The cross-cultural commonality of divine beings led to their being mutually translatable and textually adaptable by sometimes connecting god-names by juxtaposition. An example of this blending of gods is illustrated in Palmyra.30 Yarhibol, the Sun god and Aglibol the Moon god were acolytes of Bel or Baal-Shamin (Lord of Heaven), the equivalent of the Greek Zeus Olympios and Roman Jupiter, the ruler of the cosmos.31 The names of this trinity are derived from ‘Bel’, whose cult likely came from the Canaanite coast in earlier times. Bol the official god of pre-Hellenistic Palmyra likely changed to Bel under the Mesopotamian cult of Bel Marduk, the chief god of the Babylonian pantheon. Baal, from the CanaanitePhoenician West, and Bol and Bel from the Mesopotamian East, combining later with Yarhibol and Aglibol originating from the spring of Efca and North Syria, respectively, were configured into a Palmyrene trinity. In the same way, the people of Berytus worshipped Poseidon together with Astarte and Eshmun. Philo of Biblos equated Kronos with El, the supreme god of the Canaanites who was also head of the Ugaritic pantheon.32 At Gerasa, an inscription dedicated to the Arabian God33 is thought to be related to another Nabatean inscription to Pakidas or his son Dusares-Dionysus. The supreme god of the Nabataeans was Dushara, meaning ‘the one of Shara’ being the likely name of a tribe. Dushara was equated with Zeus.34 Lucian35 mentions that Haddad became Zeus and Atargatis, while Hera’s name36 encompassed possibly three Canaanite goddesses (Anat,

We also see syncretism in a religious role, such as the tyche (fortune/protective deity) of a city. Tyche is common on coins and inscriptions. The protective deity and the personification of the city is common to Roman and Greek religion. Texidor connects her to the Semitic goddess Gad, the fortune and divine patron of the tribe.39 All the cities of the Decapolis have tyche represented on their coins.40 The tyche of Gerasa is Artemis,41 Philadelphia: Hercules; Scythopolis: Nysa/Dionysus; Petra: Allat.42 From the thirtyfive numismatic representations from Gerasa, the Artemis tyche is portrayed as the Huntress twenty-one times and as Agriculture ten times. On twelve of these types, a swimming river god is depicted below her image. The same combination of tyche (Nysa) and a river god appear on the Scythopolis coinage which Rachel Barkay understands to be the personification of the local Harod River and it is similarly plausible to see the Gerasa River god as the Chrysorhoas River, tying the goddess with the life-force of Gerasa and perhaps the Maioumas water rites celebrated in the Berketein Pools above the city.43 We thus have a complete interlacing of local and extra-local divine representations. Scholars have used the term interpretatio (a borrowing from Tacitus) to describe the process of translation of a divinity from one culture to another. Arguably, such a translation was no more than a ‘linguistic marker’.44 ‘Syncretism’, a more common term, was originally used in Christian missionary theology to censure the assimilation of native religious traditions to Christianity. In place of syncretism, the term,

28

Apuleius, The Golden Ass, II.1-5. Julian, Orations, 7.237A. 30 Javier Teixidor, The Pagan God, Popular Religion in the Greco-Roman Near East (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), 113-115. 31 Ibid, 26-7. 32 Ibid, 46. 33 Wells (1938), inscr:. #19; #17, respectively; pg. 383-5. 34 Javier Teixidor, op. cit, 83. 35 Lucian, De Dea Syria, trans. Harold W. Attridge and Robert A. Oden, Missoula: University of Montana Press, 1976, 13. 36 Wells (1938), inscr: #17. Instead of being identified as Atargatis, Hera is shown here as the consort of Pakidas (parents of Dusares-Dionysus) possessing her own temple at Gerasa.

37

29

Lucian, op. cit, 43: 32. Ibid, 43. 39 Javier Teixidor, op. cit, 111, 126,159 ff.. 40 Augustus Spijkerman, The Coins of the Decapolis and Provincia Arabia (ed.) Michele Piccirillo, Jerusalem: Franciscan Press, 1978. 41 Augustus Spijkerman, op. cit, 159, nos. 4-7 ff. 42 Rachel Barkay, The Coinage of Nysa-Scythopolis (Beth-Shean), Jerusalem: The Israel Numismatic Society, 2003, 134. 43 Ibid, 134-5. 44 Fritz Graf, ‘What is Ancient Mediterranean Religion?’, Religions of the Ancient World, A Guide, Sara Iles Johnston (ed.), Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2004, 9. 38

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SPATIAL AND RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE LATE ANTIQUE POLIS ‘hybridity’45 has been adopted by some to express the transfer and assimilation of ancient Mediterranean religions. Ironically, ‘hybrid’ was also used in colonial cultures to describe the process of the weaker immigrant or native culture adopting the attributes of the dominant culture. Another popular term is ‘synthesis’, a less mechanical-more chemical reactive term than ‘syncretism’, lending a sense of a creative renewal through a blending of parts. In speaking of religious interaction of the many Eastern-Hellenistic cults at Dura Europos, Lucinda Dirven writes that the use of syncretism would be incorrect in several aspects, the first of which denotes the concept of tearing down and building back up something new.46 Second, people typically assimilate foreign elements into their own traditions and thereby imbue them with new meanings. Furthermore, the process is not necessarily linear, logical or irreversible. Dirven concludes that we should not speak of ‘syncretistic phenomena’, rather of ‘syncretistic processess’ or more appropriately, ‘assimilation’ over extended periods of time.47

The geographical spread of the Roman Empire and the movement of individuals across the empire led to an expanded religious synthesis. This was demonstrated by the Roman emperors’ interest in transporting African and Eastern gods to Rome.49 Claudius and Nero had interests in the Syrian goddess, Cybele. Caligula gave Isis her first public temple in Rome, and the Flavian period saw further rise in Egyptian gods, where Sarapis, became Zeus-Sarapis. Hadrian emphasized Hellenized Egyptian cults, even having an Egyptian prophet in his circle of confidants. Commodus became a committed follower of Mithras and Isis. During the Severan dynasty, Septimius Severus built temples to his gods from his native Africa, African Liber and Hercules; Caracalla worshipped Sarapis and Elagabalus (Antoninus Heliogabalus used in ancient times)50 transported the black stone of Emesa, representing the god Elagabal, to eventually, the temple of Vesta in Rome where it temporarily presided over the Roman pantheon. Valerian, in 274, introduced another cult from Hellenised Syria, Sol Invictus, the Unconquered Sun, to Rome. This Romanized version had a college of pontifices, organizationally, a syncretism of many pagan belief systems, closely modelling Mithraic organization.

As early as the fifth century BCE, at least some Greeks conceived of cult as a cultural bridge, but difference was retained.

The spread of cult is potentially a transference of culture (at the very least it would have been a confluence of multinational/tribal cultures on a temenos plaza during sacrifice and festival), but we have very little information as to what any individual felt when they worshipped a particular deity. Would they, for instance, have regarded the tyche of Gerasa as Gad or Artemis? To an extent, this is a false dichotomy and a person may possess several independent frames of reference which coexist amicably even though they may be in contradiction with each other.51 More importantly, the movement of cult represents, on an imperial level, how people react spatially to their religion. Individuals could move from one temple to another, from one part of the empire to another, and worship according to ‘local’ rites the deity, whom they knew under a different name. Syncretism was caused by the horizontal movement of individuals, who then connected into the local verticals. It is vital that the syncretic nature of paganism itself, along with its spatial representations are comprehended, for they would become the battlefield casualties over-which the sacred-civic landscapes of the post-Constantinian era would be founded.

Pentheus: Have you introduced your rites in other cities too? Or is Thebes the first? Dionysos: Foreigners everywhere now dance for Dionysos. Pentheus: They are more ignorant than Greeks. Dionysos: In this matter they are not. Customs differ.48

The limit of and confusion in the vocabulary describing the blending of Greco-Roman religions provides a sense of our struggle to understand and translate the processes at work, which seems not have bothered the Greeks too much judging from Dionysos’ rather laconic remarks. For us, one word will not suffice. Synthesis, syncretism, hybridity, assimilation, fusion, amalgamation, translation, transfer, integration, blending, mixture, composition, could be used to express the same general understanding of the common ground found in pagan religions: the names may be different, but their personal characteristics are the same. Yet, our struggle stems from a conception of the divine that is philosophical and particular. For us, the god has to have a particular name and form defined by an autonomous theological system. But local pagan religions were able to integrate new gods and cults since devotion to all gods was an issue of historical continuity and the only non-negotiable religious requirement, was to observe the prescribed rituals. People were then free to philosophically conceive of the world and the gods however they pleased. 45 46

In the midst of this mid-fourth century ‘battlefield’, Julian, in Against the Galilaeans, summarizes the above discussions of the universal within human nature toward divine worship, pagan syncretism and its strong orientation towards heavenly verticality. In contrast to the artificiality of Christianity (a taught system of belief), he perceived poly-theistic cult to be a

Ibid, 10. Lucinda Dirven, The Palmyrenes of Dura-Eurpos, Leiden: Brill, 1999, 190-

5. 47

49

48

50

Ibid, XIX, XX. Euripides, The Bacchae, 480, trans. William Arrowsmith in The Ancient Mysteries, A Sourcebook of Sacred Texts, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987, 74.

A.D. Nock, op. cit, 123-130. Aelius Lampridius, ‘Antoninus Heliogabalus’, Lives of the Later Caesars, London: Penguin, 1976, 290-316. 51 Dirven, op. cit, XXI

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CHAPTER 7: PAGAN LANDSCAPES natural, perhaps organic, phenomenon, an impulse operating within all persons: Now that the human race possesses its knowledge of God by nature and not from teaching is proved to us first of all by the universal yearning for the divine that is in all men whether private persons or communities, whether considered as individuals or as races. For all of us, without being taught, have attained to a belief in some sort of divinity, though it is not easy for all men to now the precise truth about it, nor is it possible for those who know it to tell it to all men… What need have I to summon Hellenes and Hebrews as witnesses of this? There exists no man who does not stretch out his hands towards the heavens when he prays; and whether he swears by one god or several, if he has any notion at all of the divine, he turns heavenward. And it was very natural that men should feel thus.52

Julian is speaking as anthropologist, only in relation to two religious groups, the polytheistic (henotheistic) Hellenes and the monotheistic Hebrews. The abnormality he saw in Christianity excluded them from his discussions of human nature, vertical worship, the gods and the heavens. Julian had vested interest in Jewish sacred space as he had dedicated himself toward the effort in re-building the Temple as well as the ‘sacred’ city of Jerusalem.53 It is to Judaism that we turn.

52

Julian, The Works of the Emperor Julian, Vol. III, ‘Against the Galileans’, trans. Wilmer Cave Wright, (LCL, 1923), 52B-69B; 321-3. 53 Julian, ‘To the Community of Jews’, The Works of Emperor Julian, Vol. III, trans. by Wilmer Cave Wright, (LCL, 1923), Introduction xxi; 181.

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CHAPTER 8 JUDAISM: BIBLICAL SPATIAL IMAGERY AND THE ARCHITECURE AND HISTORIOGRAPHY OF THE SYNAGOGUE that my Name may be there forever. My eyes and my heart will always be there (Yahweh to Solomon, 2 Chron. 7: 15-16).

Judaism is rich in spatial texts and Rabbinic law concerning built form. One can read Jewish history as a history of sacred landscapes, national geography, and a progression of sacredarchitectural centre points from a single Tabernacle, then the Temple, to a plurality of Synagogues. Judaism accomplished the transformation by redefining the key symbolic acts of the religion. They transitioned from sacrifice to study, charity, and prayer, and maintained the symbolic unity of the Jewish people through preserving of the memory of the absent Temple through synagogue décor, design, and geographic orientation.

The formative texts of the Jewish Biblical tradition are saturated with spatial imagery. They describe a sacred landscape imbued with a special relationship to the Divine. They graphically portray connections, both real and visionary, of a chosen people to their God. The first words of the Torah are of Yahweh converting the formless chaos of the deep into malleable and ordered space, creating earth and sky (the horizontal and the vertical) and dividing the land from the water. In this new place, defined against the heavens, earth, and seas, God established His creation. God could be said to have been the generator of space, place, topography, and the full concept of sacred landscape.

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters…Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water…Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place and let dry ground appear (Gen. 1: 1-2, 6, 9).

One of the first great monumental works of architecture was a fundamentally social creation, being created in Vitruvian fashion by the coming together of peoples, and being destroyed when the social bond that drew them together dissipated. The Tower of Babel, by which the people aspired to divinity, came about as peoples congregated on a broad horizontal plain and erected a vertical form towards the heavens. Judaism thus establishes a connection between the striving for autonomous verticality and human pride.1

So make yourself an ark of cypress wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out. This is how you are to build it… (Yahweh to Noah, Gen. 6: 14, 15 frag.). …Come let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not be scattered over the face of the whole earth (the People at the Plain in Shinar, Gen. 11: 4).

This humanly-inspired building contrasts with the divinelyinspired building, as seen in God instructing Noah not only to construct an ark, but in the specifics of how to build. God as architect and building consultant verbally drew dimensional plans with specified materials to be applied according to their appropriate use. God was demonstrating to Noah, in a micro-sense, how to build in the precepts of his image. An ideal was communicated verbally, a connection, perhaps, of Philo’s Platonic desire for ‘a beautiful copy’ of ‘a beautiful model’. God had given Noah the most difficult of woodworking projects. Not only must the ship be formed of processed materials that resist water intrusion, the craft must also be in balance and cognisant of the load and placement of its contents. It was, in a sense, a house: a divinely-inspired physical form but humanly constructed; a wooden bubble enclosing and protecting divine creation. Instruction and planning came from God, imitation and work was from human endeavour. As the Spirit of God had floated over the water at the first creation, so the ark was to contain the essence of that creation in a newly fabricated world, while

When he reached a certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep. He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it…When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, ‘Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it.’ He was afraid and said, ‘How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven.’…and this stone that I have set up as a pillar will be God’s house… (Jacob, Gen: 28: 11, 12, 16, 17, 22; frag.). ‘Do not come any closer,’ God said. ‘Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground’ (Yahweh to Moses, Ex.3: 5). Then have them make a sanctuary for me, and I will dwell among them. Make this tabernacle and all its furnishings exactly like the pattern I will show you (Yahweh to Moses on Sinai, Ex. 25: 8-9). Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayers offered in this place. I have chosen and consecrated this temple so

1 Karsten Harries, The Ethical Function of Architecture, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2000, 184.

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CHAPTER 8: JUDAISM: BIBLICAL SPATIAL IMAGERY AND THE SYNAGOGE Now place is considered in three ways: firstly, as a situation filled by a body; secondly, as a divine word (λογός) which God himself has filled wholly and entirely with incorporeal powers; for says the scripture, ‘I have seen the place in which the God of Israel stood.’ in which alone he permitted his prophet to perform sacrifice to him, forbidding him to do so in other places…According to the third signification, God himself is called a place, from the fact of his surrounding the universe, and being surrounded himself by nothing whatever, and from the fact of his being the refuge of all persons, and since he himself is his own district, containing himself and resembling himself alone.4

God once more separated the land from the water, and ordered the primeval chaos. In contrast, the first Goddirected construction project was not a land based structure, but of water, for the purpose of protecting a familial group horizontally ‘passing over’ the chaos of the deep. A floating domus was re-enacting the ‘hovering’ of the ‘Spirit’ over the waters, at the dawn of time. God had not only applied his attributes of architect, builder2 to a man and his family, but extended his ability to move through the void. Passage through the ‘terror of expanse’ was to be made through faithful imitation and divine application of divinely ordained principles of nature. God is the ratio-logos and man the fabricator, τέκτων. The Tower of Babel becomes a countertype, a human building that breaks God’s law and threatens to provoke Divine discipline, rather than operate in sympathy with the Divine/natural order. This paradigm is a common thread throughout scripture.

To Philo, God is self-contained while containing everything. He cannot be within the boundaries of place for he is the infinite universal boundary: an antinomy of self-bounded and boundless, ultimately personifying the blank canvas of space and the diverse structural elements of place. The second nature of place, posited between the human and Divine, is the ‘divine word’, the intelligible reason that governs the operation of the cosmos and natural world. Though it is ethereal, the logos is emplaced, being imbued within the triaxial relationship between humanity, nature and God.

Yahweh’s presence on Earth created sacred landscapes, a ‘holy ground’ which Moses had to take care not to desecrate, on Sinai. The ‘Holy of Holies’, in the Tabernacle, became an extension of Sinai by creating a mobile sacred space entered, only by an exclusive High Priesthood. However many centuries later, inscriptions in and preceding the 4th century CE describe the synagogue as hagios/hagiotatos topos (holy/most holy place, as at Gerasa and Gaza); a place fully accessible to any Jew.3

The Haftarot (haftarah) are the prophetic selections of the Torah recited publicly on Sabbaths, festivals, and certain fast days. It is understood that the Haftarot originated sometime during the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes in the second century, BCE, and was more fully developed in the late Antique East.5 Though the selections of the Haftarot varied from community to community, they possessed an understanding of two phases of Israelite worship. The first pertains to the portable Tabernacle in the desert, where the Lord would dwell within its most inner space, over the varied geographic locations of his choosing. The second is of a permanent place in Solomon’s Temple in Jerusalem, fixing Yahweh to a footprint of an earthly dwelling.

Places of memorial in natural settings were instituted for the Israelites when commanded to set up standing stones representing each of the twelve tribes as they passed over the Jordan to take possession of the land promised to their patriarch, Abraham (Jos. 4: 4-9). Jacob performed the same act after his vision of a ‘ladder’ connecting the earth to the heavens. God was seen to be the one who bridged the divide between the two places. The name given to the place was Beth-el, the House of God, as it served as a symbolic gateway at the head of a concourse of ascent and descent. As Jacob stood, what was once his pillow, from the horizontal to the vertical position, he was in a sense, creating sacred space by performing the architectural principle of raising a column to the standing position. Once

Haftarah for Terumah (1 Kings 6) describes the Temple building aligned on an axis that consisted of a portico (v.3), inner sanctuary (Great Hall), and an area of supreme holiness, the place known as the ‘Holy of Holies’ (v. 16). The three-tiered format of increasing spatial sanctity was characteristic of the Tabernacle and pagan temple floor-plans throughout the Levant and Syria.

a stone becomes a vertical linear element; it establishes a point on the ground plane and transforms space into a place

Ancient Rabbis were aware of linguistic parallels in the Torah between the Creation, the construction of the Tabernacle, Solomon’s Temple, and a future, eschatological temple:

of recorded memory. The intimation this story held of bounding sacred zones with the containment of God prompted Philo of Alexandria to assess the nature of God and place.

See what Bezalel did, whom the Holy One granted wisdom; as (Scripture) says: ‘And I shall endow [‘amallei’] him with divine spirit of skill [hokhmah], ability [tevunah], and knowledge [da’at]’ (Ex. 32:3). With these three things, the Holy One

2

David Runia, ‘The king, the architect, and the craftsman: a philosophical image in Philo of Alexandria’, Ancient Approaches to Plato’s Timaeus, Sharples and Sheppard (eds), Ancient Approaches To Plato’s Timaeus, BICS Supplement 78, London: Institute of Classical Studies, 2003, 97-100. 3 Lee I. Levine, The Ancient Synagogue, New Haven: Yale, 2000, 220; Bloedhorn and Huttenmeister, ‘The Synagogue’, The Cambridge History of Judaism, Vol. III, (1999), 268.

4

Philo, On Dreams, I.62-64. Haftarot, JPS Bible Commentary, Michael Fishbane, Philadelphia: Jerusalem Publication Society, 2002, xix-xxiv.

5

41

SPATIAL AND RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE LATE ANTIQUE POLIS created His world; as [Scripture] says: ‘The Lord founded the earth by wisdom [hokhmah]; He established the heavens by understanding [tevunah]; and by His knowledge [da’at] the depths burst apart’ (Prov. 3:19-20). And by these three Bezalel made the Tabernacle. In a similar way, the Temple was built by these three [things]; as [Scripture] says: ‘[Hiram]…was endowed with skill [hokhmah]; ability [tevunah], and knowledge [da’at]’ (I Kings 7:14). And so too will the future Temple be built with these three; as [Scripture] says: [The] House will be built by wisdom [hokhmah], and established by understanding [tevunah]; and by knowledge [da’at] will its rooms be filled with all precious and beautiful things’ (Prov. 24:3-4). (Tanhuman Vahakhel 5).6

Once, as Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai was coming forth from Jerusalem, Rabbi Joshua followed after him and beheld the temple in ruins. ‘Woe unto us!’ Rabbi Joshua cried. ‘that this, the place where the iniquities of Israel were atoned for was laid waste.’ ‘My son’, Rabban Yohanan said to him, ‘be not grieved. We have another atonement as effective as this. And what is it? It is acts of loving kindness, as it is said, ‘For I desire mercy and not sacrifice’ (Hosea 6:6).8

The events of the first and especially the second temple destruction of 586 BCE and 70 CE, forced the synagogue to develop from a lay institution devoted to Torah study and prayer, to become a place suited to receive the Temple’s symbolic holiness. Synagogues were in a spatial sense, places on the periphery of the original centre, not self-oriented facing East as the Temple had, but directionally positioned to face the Temple Mount, as compasses finding their true magnetic north. In geographic-architectural terms, the synagogues of various dimensions were oriented to a central, non-structural image, as a ‘clustered organization’, bound by common texts, and worship. As Temple sacrality had once flowed outward to the towns and villages, the synagogues reversed the current back to the Temple’s ruined foundations. Their ability to ‘cluster’ lay in their similarity of worship, in decorative symbolism (with local variances), and the Torah Chest housing the sacred writings. Symbols such as the menorah, which in itself was a recollection of the Temple menorah of Hanukkah, though not omnipresent in Jewish art, bound the synagogue communities together and to the memory of the Temple. Their structural dissimilarities9 found commonality in their (approximate) directing towards the Temple Mount.10 This symmetry in orientation, helped reinforce the importance of space in Judaism, yet the synagogue itself could be flexible in its specific arrangement of interior space.11

The transportable and permanent characteristics of Jewish sacred space appear to relate to a progressive religious experience as a transient journey to an earthly centeredness. Each worship centre was born from divinely endowed skill (hokhmah), ability (tevunah), and knowledge (da’at); the same characteristics that went into (the first) Creation and eventually into the (last) eschatological Temple. The intimate (and complicated) relationship, over the millennia, between Yahweh and his people can be plotted by their joint building projects involving an evolutionary process of sacred space. Jacob Neusner, writing concerning the implications of the Mishnah, extends this concept of the Temple to the landscape of Israel. The concept of sacrality and Being in space and place, for the Jew was not isolated to a single point but infused its sanctifying force throughout the Land: …The human will is determinative in the process of sanctification…what happens at certain times, at ‘appointed times,’ marks off spaces of the Land as holy in yet another way. The center of the Land and the focus of its sanctification is the Temple. There the produce of the Land is received and given back to God, the one who created and sanctified the Land. At these unusual moments of sanctification, the inhabitants of the Land in their social being in villages enter a state of spatial sanctification. That is to say, the village boundaries mark off holy space…the villages of the Land are brought into alignment with the Temple, forming a complement and completion to the Temple’s sacred being. The advent of the appointed times precipitates a spatial reordering of the Land, so that the boundaries of the sacred are matched and mirrored in village and in Temple.7

8

Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan, ‘The Temple and the Synagogue’, Shays J.D. Cohen, CHJ, Vol. III (1998), 316. 9 L.I. Levine, ‘Contextualizing Jewish Art’, Jewish Culture and Society Under the Christian Roman Empire, Richard Kalmin and Seth Schwartz (eds.), Leuven: Peeters, 2003, 95. ‘…No two synagogue buildings looked alike; their plans, architecture, art, and inscriptions exhibit a diversity that can be accounted for only by presuming that these institutions were directed by local officials, reflected local tastes and means, and served local needs.’ Bloedhorn and Huttenmeister, ‘The Synagogue’, CHJ, Vol. III (1998), 2738. Early studies conclude there being three main types: basilica, broadhouse, and apsidal, Eric M. Myers, ‘Torah Shrine in the Ancient Synagogue’, Jews, Christians, and Polytheists in the Ancient Synagogue, London: Routledge, 1999, 215. But recently it is accepted that any element of the three types (broadhouse, apsidal (or external niche), and basilica) could possibly exist within a single synagogue while varying in size and furnishings dependent on community wealth. Diversity in design could also be geographic as the remains of apsidal synagogue are dominant in the Beit Shean Valley while no examples are known to exist in the nearby Galilee and Golan areas. 10 John Wilkinson, ‘Orientation, Jewish and Christian,’ PEQ, No. 116, (1984), 16-29. 11 Francis D.K. Ching, Architecture, Form, Space and Order, Toronto: John Wiley & Sons, 1996, 214.

TEMPLE DESTRUCTION AND THE SYNAGOGUE

The synagogue as hagios/hagiotatos topos signalled that Jewish ‘holy ground’ had entered a third transition.

6

Michael Fishbane, op. cit, 138. Quote taken from Fishbane’s commentary on Haftarah for Va-yak’hel-Pekudei. 7 Jacob Neusner, Judaism, The Evidence of the Mishnah, Brown Judaic Studies 129, Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988, 230-1

42

CHAPTER 8: JUDAISM: BIBLICAL SPATIAL IMAGERY AND THE SYNAGOGE The geographic and architectural origins of the first synagogues are unknown, but it is assumed that they were not purpose-built and utilized pre-existing buildings, such as houses (as at Dura). They became more architecturally distinct and probably proliferated in number following the fall of the Temple in 586 BCE and especially after 70 CE, as the institution stepped into the literal and metaphysical void.12 The response to exile appears to have been to emphasise the space of spirituality itself. Ezekiel 11: 16 seems to be talking about a diffused communal space in exile: ‘I will remove them far off among the nations and scatter them among the countries, and I will be a little sanctuary to them in the countries where they are scattered’. The 3rd century CE Rabban Zakkai, quoted above, is echoed by Simon the Righteous when he said, ‘the world is based upon three things: the Torah, the temple service, and deeds of lovingkindness’.13 Moving away from the Temple, Judaism shifted their religious focus to the person in the community who could create a righteous place through kindness. Notable, this is still a social religious action and not an internal and fully personal spirituality: the Divine is not reduced and carried in the individual. In the post-Temple era, the study of Torah and the practice of charity became an equal route to redemption that achieved by sacrifice and Hosea 14: 3 can be interpreted to mean that sacrifice could be substituted by prayer: ‘Forgive all our sins and receive us graciously, that we will offer our lips as sacrifices of bulls…’. Similarly, Philo, in On the Creation of the Cosmos According to Moses (quoted below) suggests that the grace of forgiveness could be transferred from the sacrifice of animals to prayer and acts of love and that this was inherent within creation itself. It was the beneficence of God that compelled him to create in the manner he did. Thus, the Divine intent behind creation became fused within its nature. A religion which concentrated on charity, love, prayer and Torah echoed the spirit of the Divine and the synagogue, as the location of that activity, became a microcosm of the ideal city first engraved by the Divine spirit. In this way, the synagogue could become the Tabernacle, but also, not only contains but, embodies the Torah:

Philo, commenting on synagogue piety, reveals that the synagogue was known as a holy place. Its holiness appears to stem from the location of study and prayer: The Jews every seventh day occupy themselves with their ancestral philosophy, dedicating that time to acquiring knowledge and the study of the truths of nature. For what are our prayer places throughout the cities but schools of prudence and bravery and control and justice, as well as of piety and holiness and virtue as a whole, by which one comes to recognize and perform what is due to men and God.15 For that day has been set apart to be kept holy and on it they abstain from all other work and proceed to sacred places which the call synagogues. There, arranged in rows according to their ages, the younger below the elder, they sit decorously as befits the occasion with attentive ears. Then one takes the books and reads aloud and another of especial proficiency comes forward and expounds what is not understood…16

Philo, in addition to calling synagogues holy, calls them “prayer places”, and in communal prayer, God was present: ‘Whenever ten people congregate in the synagogue the divine presence is with them,’ for it is written, ‘God (Elohim) stands in the congregation of God (Ps. 82:1)…’”. In addition to the reading of Torah, prayer, a means of direct communion with God, sanctified the synagogue.17 Thus, the synagogues became places in which the blessings and unity of Israel was made manifest. The Midrash read this new spatial form back into Jewish traditions, as exemplified in a 6th-7th century piyot (religious commentary). “My beloved is like a gazelle or a young hart” (Song of Songs 2:9). Said Rabbi Isaac: As a gazelle leaps and skips from tree to tree, from thicket to thicket, and from grove to grove, so the Holy One leaps from synagogue to synagogue, from study house to study house. Why? In order to bless Israel…18

God was omnipresent in hundreds of synagogues at one time, dispersed across a horizontal plane that radiated from the absent centre in Jerusalem. The synagogues became subcentres of the divine presence in a world in which the real centre had vanished, but in which the divine presence could ‘skip’ across and invest a multitude of religious foci spread across the vast horizon.

The doors of the synagogue are built on the eastern side, for thus we find in the Tabernacle, for it is said: “Before the Tabernacle toward the east, before the tent of meeting eastward (Num.3:38). It is only built at the highest point of the town, for it is written: ‘Above the bustling (streets) she (wisdom, i.e., Torah) calls out (Prov. 1:21)’.14

The best testimony to the effectiveness of the synagogue as a new spatial centre comes in the form of criticism by their religious opponents. John Chrysostom in his Homilies, 1 and 6, attacks the spatial sacredness of the synagogue:

12

Levine, (2000), op. cit,19ff. The earliest inscriptional evidence is from Ptolemaic Egypt, 3rd c., BCE. though some scholars take the date of origin back to the 8th-9thc though most believe it is in the 6thc, the time of the Babylonian exile. 13 Shays J.D. Cohen, op. cit, 317. 14 Megilla 3:21-23, This Holy Place, Steven Fine (ed.), Oxford: Oxford, 1996, 46.

15

Philo, ‘Life of Moses’ 2.216, Ibid, 22 Philo, ‘Every Good Man Is Free’ 81-2, Ibid, 23. 17 Ibid, 27. 18 Steven Fine (ed.), Sacred Realm, Jerusalem: Yeshiva University Museum, 1996, 29. 16

43

SPATIAL AND RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE LATE ANTIQUE POLIS In short, you believe the place is holy because the Torah and Prophets are there…What sort of ark is it that the Jews now have, where we find no propitiatory, no tablets of the law, no Holy of Holies, no veil, no high priests, no incense, no holocaust, no sacrifice, none of the things that made the ark of old holy and august? Where are the things you held solemn? Where is your high priest, where is his robe, his breastplate, and stones of declaration?19

irritated at Jewish success in re-establishing a spatial and thus religious coherence in the synagogues, a coherent form which the Mysteries so central to his own religion’s spatial organisation, as will be discussed below, seemed to have a lessening affect on his congregations. Perhaps, also, the communal coherence of Judaism in spite of the diffused spatial organization could be contrasted with Christianity’s schisms and seemingly endless theological wrangling. Like Christianity, Judaism was a faith worshipping, in effect, an “absent presence”25 of the invisible God still operating and communing through the Torah, and seemingly overcoming that absence with considerable success.

Whereas the Church had the mysteries performed by the priest, the synagogues were, according to John, religiously empty. It is plain that Chrysostom was irritated by the survival of Jewish sacred space in a diffused form after the ending of the Temple and its operating structure. They had somehow established a further, powerful spatial representation of their unity, and had successfully transferred Temple holiness into the local synagogue, despite the loss of a functioning Levitical priesthood. Traces of Temple sacrality could exist in any designated place in any city.

As long as the Temple existed, perpetual sacrifices and offerings would atone for the sins of Israel. Now synagogues are to Israel in the place of the Temple. As long as Israel prays in them, their prayers are in place of the perpetual sacrifices and offerings. By reciting prayers at their proper time and directing their hearts, they merit and will see the rebuilding of the Temple and the reestablishment of the perpetual sacrifices and offerings, as it its said: ‘And I will bring them to my holy mountain and I will rejoice in my house of Prayer (Isa. 56:7)’ their sacrifices and offerings will be received well on my altar, ‘for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all of the nations’.26

This holiness was made manifest by the Torah and holy books that were housed within an ‘ark’ symbolic of the craft whose Biblical function was to carry humanity through the waters of chaos. For the Jewish thinker, chaos would mean the waters of the deep (tehom) before Creation. The rock of the Temple in Jerusalem, believed to be the ‘mouth of the tehom’,20 also reached deep into the chaos, known to be the place that precedes and follows life.21 Here too, was a point of intersection, and communication between the two cosmic planes of death and life, the Temple represented a protection and deliverance from the primordial chaos as the Holy Place represented earth and the Holy of Holies, heaven.22

Communal prayer and personal holiness through the study of the Pentateuch, the Writings and Prophets, and obedience to the commandments, were the foundational pillars upon which the synagogues rested. As this quote from the Babylonian Talmud suggests, it was through prayer that Temple holiness (not the Temple sacrificial functions) was transferred as well as the hope for future restoration of Israel and the true Temple with its Biblical spatiality. In the meantime, Judaism had generated a different and functional spatial pattern that united the people and provided the connection to the divine the people required.

Though the synagogue could only represent a faint remembrance of Temple sacrality, it bore the same context of holy ground. The imagery of the chest physically standing in a space seemed as a direct conduit to the sacred Temple Mount in Jerusalem. ‘Their holiness was derived from an early date when the Tannaim viewed the Temple and its service through the refracting lens of scripture’23and thus seemed to transcend Temple destruction as a means of continuing communion with the Divine. As Chrysostom was aware, with the priestly Urim and Tummim oracles gone and direct prophecy practically silent, ‘the scroll came to be treated as an oracular document from which God’s intention could be discerned’.24 Yet, the religion survived, and broke away from the Biblical traditions of spatial organisation. It was this new non-Biblical space against which Chrysostom railed, perhaps 19

Steven Fine, This Holy Place, Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997, 138. 20 R. Patai, Man and Temple in Ancient Jewish Myth and Ritual, London, 1947; Jonathan Z. Smith, To Take Place, Chicago: University of Chicago, 1987, 84; f.n. 47-8; 164-5. 21 Ibid, 43; Sanhedrin 29a; Genesis Rab. 3.4. 22 Flavius Josephus, Ant. Of the Jews 3.7.7. 23 Fine, (1997), op cit, 13. 24 Ibid.13.

25

Annabel Jane Wharton, Refiguring the Post-Classical City, Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1995, 93. A tern coined to describe the celebration of the church by which salvation is ensured by the fact that their Saviour is not physically present, but has risen to the Father. 26 Babylonian Talmud, Megillah 29a, Fine, op. cit. pg. 31

44

CHAPTER 9 CHRISTIANITY: THE SPIRITUALITY OF INTERIOR SPACE AND TRANSPORTATIONAL HOLY PLACES Designing from the outside in, as well as the inside out, creates necessary tensions, which help make architecture. Since the inside is different from the outside, the wall—the point of change—becomes an architectural event. Architecture occurs at the meeting of interior and exterior forces of use and space…Architecture as the wall between the inside and outside becomes the spatial record of this resolution and its drama.2

Christianity possessed radically different sacred-spatial perceptions from Judaism and paganism. Christians emphasised ‘interiority’, ascetic virtue, and the veneration of the dead. Although there were superficial similarities between pagan and Christian religious forms, the fundamental religious ideologies that lay behind the rituals were very different. Thus the spatial manifestations of these religious views were not compatible with Judaism and paganism and thus set the stage for a transformation in the religious and spatial patterns of the late Antique city.

Apart from theological considerations, the architectural symbolism of the Church taking religion indoors, as also with the case of Judaism, meant a significant reorientation in social communion and divine connections that had existed previously in pagan, Greco-Roman culture. The point of religious change in worship began with the ‘tension’ of passing through a void in a wall into enclosed space. Early basilicas and martyria and Gerasa’s Cathedral, in particular, were described by Annabel Jane Wharton,3 as possessing a ‘frustrated axis’, ‘no direct axial path leading directly to the divine’, ‘multiple obstructions’, with ‘multiple routes and destinations’. One would typically approach the doorway of a church by processing through a series of short transitions. They would enter under an arbour and/or into an atrium, then again, through doors into the narthex (an apparent late sixth-century development), then proceeding into the nave of the sanctuary. Side chapels, small ceremonial-teaching rooms and baptisteries would magnify the experience of passing through walls, multiplying the experience as the worshippers moved into more recessed interiors. The journey into a Church was thus a ritual journey, representing the Christian journey towards a sacramental union with the divine, and one which was regularly repeated. Thus, a Christian, if taken in a purely kinetic sense, could be defined by their movement into and through a church. Thus Victorinus’ question, ‘Do walls make Christians?’ may contain valid points of contention.

Simplicianus replied: ‘I shall not believe that or count you among the Christians unless I see you in the Church of Christ.’ Victorinus laughed and said: ‘Then do walls make Christians? (Augustine, Confessions. 8.4.)’.

This short discussion between Simplicianus and Victorinus reflects an issue and possibly a change in Christians’ relations with space during the late 4th century. To Simplicianus, Christians were required to make an appearance within a church building, and in so doing were being made personally accountable before ecclesiastical authorities. Victorinus’ response has both theological and architectural connotations. Christian salvation is based on the internal assimilation of Christ in being born again; Victorinus asks whether there is further work necessary: Does personal salvation demand continual, periodic visible appearances within specified interior spaces? Perhaps Simplicianus could answer in Nietzschean fashion: ‘Walls are now more walls than they used to be’, suggesting things of pure function have absorbed ideological meaning.1 Emperor Julian understood where Christian sacred space lay and its critical nature to their faith. ‘See what kind of church the Christians have. If I return there from the Persian war, I shall store hay in the centre and turn the aisles into stables for horses. Then I shall see on what their faith rests (Julian, Cedrenus, 121.577-80.)’.

Wharton describes the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem as the ‘ultimate space of absent presence’. The ‘space was celebrated because it was empty.’4 The significance of hollow space is explored in Tao Te Ching’s poem on the value of ‘nothing’:

As the community grew into the post-Constantinian era, Christianity’s role in the community became more central and visually transparent, so the requirement for Christians to do more than accept Christ became more pressing. Christians needed to find new ways of defining their community and walls, previously a convenience for the Christian community, now became part of their self-definition.

We put thirty spokes together and call it a wheel; But it is on the space where there is nothing that the usefulness of the wheel depends. We turn clay to make a vessel; But it is on the space where there is nothing that the usefulness 2

Robert Venturi in Rudolf Arnheim, The Dynamics of Architectural Form, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977, 108. 3 Annabel Jane Wharton, Refiguring the Post-Classical City, Cambridge: Cambridge, 1995, 72-93. 4 Ibid, 92-3.

1

Referring to quote in Sect. II, Summary Comments; ‘Stone is more stone than it used to be’.

45

SPATIAL AND RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE LATE ANTIQUE POLIS of the vessel depends. We pierce doors and windows to make a house; And it is on these spaces where there is nothing that the usefulness of the house depends. Therefore just as we take advantage of what is, we should recognize the usefulness of what is not.5

a social-political and spiritual sense. St. Anthony and Symeon Stylites, along with other holy men living on top of pillars, in caves or small self-sustaining communities, became fixed points of pilgrimage for another new addition to the lateRoman world, the religious tourist.7 The God of the desert made manifest in the body of the saint came to the spaces of humans. Pilgrims took advantage of the Roman roads and Mediterranean trade to travel the length of the empire to question, request a miracle, observe and to some degree, emulate them, and thus the reputation and stories of the saints moved fully into the cities. As a Christian version of the Vitruvian Man, he held spiritual order within his disciplined physical body, a microcosm of the two worlds, symbolically balanced between the spheres of heaven and earth, desert and community. They operated socially as axis points, acting wherever the need dictated but privately their footprints grounded them peripherally, away from polis life.

Wharton and Tao Te Ching help explain the tension between Victorinus and Simplicianus. The Christian context of the ‘value of nothing’ rests on the resurrection; the empty space of the tomb essentially defines Christianity. Thus, to apply a dichotomy: the physicality of ‘nothing’ (and not its edifices) is the ‘usefulness’ upon which that faith depends. In this lies the difficulty for the faith’s tactile believers. The hope lying in the empty tomb did not fully sate the late Antique Christian spiritual appetite. As Christianity developed, there arose a tension between the holiness of the person, the sacredness of the space, the relics and ritual paraphernalia that became increasingly more prominent. However, in the empty space of the Church, there was space for the presence of Christ and his followers. The absence of other things left room only for God and I understand this to be the basis of Victorinus argument. If God is present in person and place, what further human work is necessary? Was the Christian to be defined in relation with the walls that bounded the spaces of the basilica?

Although the holy man had rejected (natural) family ties (as Anthony left his sister in a convent, never to see her again),8 became celibate, and ignored the norms of table fellowship9 to achieve separation from society, yet their extreme spirituality propelled them back into society as patrons and community leaders. He would eventually act as intercessor and arbiter in Byzantine politics.10 By his pious, self-sacrificial lifestyle, he was perceived as standing closer to God than any other human. He allayed the fears and anxieties of guilt and salvation possessed by the populace by commanding those to reject the world by, in some manner, emulating his lifestyle. He also handed out practical advice in dealing with normal, day-to-day living: the sayings of the Early Christian Monks in The Desert Fathers are a litany of austere teaching and spiritual confrontations with demonic forces.11

Further, more complicated questions following this logic arise. Did God dwell in the gaps between people and things or was he entirely suffused within the entire structure consisting of the people and the things it contained? Importantly, was the Christian God a specialist in interiority or was he just as efficacious on the open-exterior Cardo-Decumanus avenues, agoras and plazas? As the rush of post-Constantinian church construction created space for the absent presence, Christian communities rushed to fill that space with ritual ornamentation and memorials of the bodies and body parts of Christians. Christianity’s empty spaces were rapidly filled with things.

Spatially and symbolically, the ascetic’s desert came to be encapsulated in ecclesiastical architecture. We can see this most obviously in Simon Stylite’s cathedral in which a centralised octagon presented the saint’s column and formed the transept, a type of open, sacred cross-roads encased within walls.12 As the necessity for stylite witnesses declined, the religious centre of the complex moved further within the basilica, into the chancel (templum) where the clergy

ARCHITECTURE ALIVE AND DEAD: THE ASCETIC AND THE RELIC

7

Hunt, E.D., Holy Land Pilgrimage in the Later Roman Empire, AD 312460, Oxford: Oxford, 1982. The Franciscan Fathers claim that within a radius of 30 km from Shekh Barakat Mountain (a short distance south of St. Simeon’s cathedral) they identified the remains of twelve stylites, forty recluse’s towers and eighty convents; mentioned in Abdallah Hadjar, The Church of St. Simeon the Stylite and other Archaeological Sites in the Mountains of Simeon and Halaqa, trans. Paul J. Amash, Allepo, 13. 8 Athanasius, The Life of Anthony and the Letter to Marcellinus, 3, trans. Robert C. Gregg, New Jersey: Paulist Press, 1980, 32. 9 Malina and Rohrbaugh, The Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels, Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992, 367-8; Brown, op. cit, 92. 10 Brown, op. cit, 97-99; also in Brown, Society and the Holy in Late Antiquity, Berkeley: California, 1982, 133-4. 11 The Desert Fathers, Sayings of the Early Christian Monks, trans. Benedicta Ward, Penguin Classics, 2003. 12 Abdallah Hadjar, op. cit, 26-32.

The ascetics came in a variety of forms: some were solitary ‘athletes’6 who ‘stalked their God’ as gladiators in a desert arena in the desolate places of Egypt, Palestine and Syria. They thus found God in the wastes, and God manifested Himself through them. The ascetic became transformed into a ‘living relic’, which embodied and represented the Divine. Separate from society, he became an odd-new patron in both

5

Tao Te Ching, Lao-tzu, in Francis D.K. Ching, Architecture: Form, Space, and Order, 2nd edn., New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1996, 91; Arnheim, op. cit, 94. 6 Peter Brown, The Rise and Function of the Holy Man, JRS LXI, 1971, 80101.

46

CHAPTER 9: CHRISTIANITY: THE SPIRITUALITY OF INTERIOR SPACE operated at the altar, the liturgical font from whence power was dispensed. The basilicas of the martyrs, the growth of the monastery organizations, the icon, and incubation church rendered the Holy Man functionless.

than Jesus who enabled their sainthood through his sacrifice on the cross. The martyr, ‘the friend of God’ in heaven, was believed to be also ‘present’ at his tomb on earth. They had become a source of supernatural patronage and protection. John Chrysostom, writing concerning the Egyptian martyrs, comments that a city’s defences against earthly and supernatural forces are fortified ‘by throwing up saint’s bodies’ creating impenetrable walls.16 Contact with these bodies created privileged places ‘where the contrasted poles of Heaven and Earth met’.17 The same power and faith that enabled the martyrs to enter victorious into heaven was seen as being available to those gathered around their tombs.18

One might presume that space designed to accommodate a religion based on the purely metaphysical constructs of faith, grace, and redemption via the one-time self-sacrifice of the Son of God, would consist only of walls and supporting roof columns. The necessary furniture would be to facilitate the outward-ritual acts of remembrance and testimony as commanded and demonstrated by Christ with his disciples: tableware for the Eucharist, an ambo for preaching, and perhaps a baptismal font. However, as Christianity struggled to define the human and divine natures of Christ in its creeds, the Church itself tangled with its own human and divine natures. The acts of the martyrs made an indelible impression upon the believer and there was a tendency to gravitate to their tombs and possess relics of bone. The physical remains came to be embodiments of the divine which were filled with power affecting certain spaces with sacrality. This was recognised in Gregory and Constantina’s correspondence on the head of the Apostle Paul:

…So all the martyrs should be most devoutly honoured, yet specially those whose relics we possess here. For the former assist us with their prayer, but the latter also with their suffering. With these we have a sort of familiarity: they are always with us, they live among us.19

The omnipresence of the martyrs involved, at least one personal appearance to instruct a priest as to the disposal of their bodily remains. This may lend an insight to how a resurrected martyr, now as an ethereal being, and the Church can be jointly concerned with fragments of bone to sanctify a Christian building.

Gregory to Constantina: The Serenity of your Piety, conspicuous for religious zeal and love of holiness, has charge me with your commands to send to you the head of Saint Paul, or some other part of his body…I am all the more distressed that I neither can nor dare do what you enjoin…I will make haste to transmit to you some portion of the chains which Saint Peter the Apostle himself bore on his neck and his hands, from which many miracles are displayed among the people…13

The blessed man greatly longed to find some relics of the glorious and victorious martyr George, and prayed to the latter to satisfy this longing. Now Aemilianus, the very holy bishop of Germia had a piece of the martyr’s head, and one finger of a hand, and one of his teeth, and another small piece. So the martyr appeared to the bishop and exhorted him to give these relics to his servant Theodore for the church that the latter had built in his honour.20

Constantina’s request for the head of Saint Paul (faintly familiar to the sinister request from Herodias’ daughter, Salome for the head of John the Baptist (Mt. 14:8)) was rejected because of a fear of the power of the relic. It was not for the human to intervene in the spatial location of such powerful relics. When Symeon Stylites died on top of his column in 459, the people of Antioch requested possession of his body as a charm against earthquakes. The comes Orientis Ardabur agreed to send the body, but under armed guard to ensure that the saint was not dismembered by relic hunters on the road between Symeon’s pillar at Qalat Seman and Antioch.14 This behaviour was present in earlier centuries as in the 2nd century the Jews of Smyrna were believed to have kept the martyr Polycarp’s body from the Christians so that they could not start a cult from it.15 The bones were entirely human and visibly present; the two things a risen Christ lacked. Ironically the Saints had attained a holiness that made them more practically accessible and personally relational

The risen Christ had left a relational void that had to be somehow filled. A metaphysical connection had to be supplemented with something tactile. The human need was to have a mediator whom one could most easily relate and most of all touch. It can not be expressed without a sense of the macabre, that the tangible needs of the Christian were met by forming bonds with fragments of the dead. The strongest attack on the veneration of relics is raised by Vigilantius, in Jerome’s Against Vigilantius:21

16

John Chrysostom, ‘An Encomium on Egyptian Martyrs’ PG 50.694, The Cult of the Saints, trans. Wendy Mayer, New York: St. Vladimir’s Press, 2006, 211-12. 17 Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints, Chicago: Chicago, 1981, 3. 18 Sallustius’ altar, temple and sacrifice mediated the gap between heaven and earth, the martyr relic crossed the cosmic divide between the ‘church persecuted’ and the ‘church victorious’. See Robert Markus, The End of Ancient Christianity, Cambridge: Cambridge, 1990, 94. 19 Maximus of Turin, Sermon 12.1-2, 5th century. 20 ‘St. Theodore of Sykeon’, Three Byzantine Saints, New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1996, 154.

13

Pope Gregory the Great, Letter 30, Michael Maas, The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Justinian, Cambridge, 2005, pgs. 139-40, late 6th century. 14 John Malalas, 369.10-16. 15 Fox, Pagans and Christians, New York: Knoph, 1987, 446.

21

47

Stefan Rebenich, Jerome, London: Routledge, 2002, 108-9.

SPATIAL AND RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE LATE ANTIQUE POLIS It is a pagan ritual we see brought into our churches when a mass of candles is lit in full daylight, and some bits of dust gathered into a cloth and placed in a little container is kissed and adored by the faithful. Such people think they give great honour to the most holy martyrs by illuminating with vile candles those upon whom shines the full brightness of the Lamb’s majesty, enthroned in their midst.22

intrusion of the dead into the urban landscape and wondered how Christianity could have strayed so far from its leader’s teachings. There was no phenomenon like it in any pagan cult.27 Jews had memorial sepulchres and venerated the tombs of the Patriarchs, and heroes, but nothing involving them as heavenly intercessors.28 Mosaic Law declared the grave to be polluted,29 and the unburied body was a national and personal mark of disgrace.30 The cult of the relic was thus innovatory and its spatial ramifications were similarly unusual. Christians believed that sanctification occurred where the relic was, relating it to similar supernatural events which occurred at the Eucharist. Jerome believed in the intercession of the martyrs in heaven based on the rational of what was done here on earth, in the flesh, would be performed to perfection, by the raised saint, in heaven. However, their presence on earth was localised to a place. Thus, the remains of the dead became a primary focus of hope and their stasis created a magnetic attraction on the Christian.

But Jerome continues: And because we formerly worshipped idols, does it follow that we ought not now to worship God lest we seem to pay like honour to him and to idols? In the one case respect was paid to idols, and therefore the ceremony is to be abhorred; in the other the martyrs are venerated, and the same ceremony is therefore to be allowed…And not only is the bishop of one city in error, but the bishops of the whole world…? If Apostles and martyrs while still in the body can pray for others, when they ought still to be anxious for themselves, how much more must they do so when once they have won their crowns, overcome, and triumphed?23

Augustine, also in defence of relics, says:

As pieces of the cross of Christ and pieces of the bones of the Apostles and martyrs were moved across the Roman world, they were, in a sense, transportational portals to heaven. Theodoret describes them as places to request healing:

…Therefore, whatever honours the religious may pay in the places of the martyrs, they are but honours rendered to their memory, not sacred rites or sacrifices offered to dead men as to gods. And even such as bring thither food…do so in order that it may be sanctified to them through the merits of the martyrs, in the name of the Lord of the martyrs, first presenting the food and offering prayer, and thereafter taking it away to be eaten, or to be in part bestowed upon the needy… 24

…Those who are well ask (the martyrs) to protect their good health, while those who are worn down by illness request release from their sufferings…They do not approach them like gods— rather they entreat them as men of God and call on them to act as ambassadors on their behalf. Those who ask with confidence gain what they request—their votive offerings clearly testify to their healing. For some offer representations of eyes, some of feet, others of hands; some are made of gold, others of wood. Their Master accepts these little items of little worth, valuing the gift according to the merit of the one offering it. The display of these objects advertises deliverance from suffering—they have been left as commemorations by those who have regained their health. They proclaim the power of the martyrs laid to rest there—whose power proves that their God is the true God.31

However, to the pagan emperor, Julian, relics were a blasphemy against his Neoplatonism and the religion he hated: …but who could detest as they deserve all those doctrines that you have invented as a sequel, while you keep adding many corpses newly dead to the corpse of long ago (Christ)? You have filled the whole world with tombs and sepulchres, and yet in your scriptures it is nowhere said that you must grovel among tombs and path them honour. But you have gone so far in iniquity that you think you need not listen even to the words of Jesus of Nazareth on this matter…If, then, Jesus said that sepulchres are full of uncleanness, how can you invoke God at them?25

Christians were fully aware that relics and icons had a superficial similarity in form to pagan religious images. Even informed Christians, such as the Bishop Vigilantius, saw the veneration and adoration of relics as dangerously pagan.32 And it seems that enemies of the Church mocked the use of relics. St. John of Damascus in defence of the Church’s treatment of images argues:

Augustine’s defence of the honour paid to martyrs confronted criticism of parallelism between Christian and pagan practices. Gibbon, in his anti-clericism, saw the cult of the relics as a natural result of the admission of pagan converts into the Church.26 Yet, Julian shows disgust for the

Just because the pagans used them in a foul way, that is no reason to object to our pious practice. Sorcerers and magicians use incantations and the Church prays over catechumens; the

22

Also quoted in A.D. Lee, Pagans & Christians in Late Antiquity, A Sourcebook, London: Routledge, 2000, 293-6. 23 Jerome, Against Vigilatius, 7 24 Augustine, City of God, 8.27, trans. Marcus Dodds, New York: The Modern Library, 1993, 278. 25 Julian, Against the Galilaeans, 335B-335D. trans. Wright, LCL III, 1923, 415-17. 26 Brown, (1981), op cit, 20.

27

Fox, op. cit, 447. Luke 11:48. 29 Lev. 21:11; Nu. 6:6; 9:6; 19:11 30 Deut. 28:26; Ecc. 6:3; Isa. 14:19. 31 Theordoret, The Healing of Pagan Diseases 8.63-4, 5th century. 32 Sabine MacCormack, ‘Loca Sancta: The Organization of Sacred Topography in Late Antiquity’, The Blessings of Pilgrimage, Robert Ousterhoot (ed.), Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990, 15, 18. 28

48

CHAPTER 9: CHRISTIANITY: THE SPIRITUALITY OF INTERIOR SPACE former conjure up demons while the Church calls upon God to exorcise the demons. Pagans make images of demons which they address as gods, but we make images of God incarnate and of his servants and friends, and with them we drive away the demonic hosts.33

themselves (as we have argued) are defiled. We are defiled by the defiled. It is on that account that we remind you who they are to whom places of this sort are dedicated, that we may prove that they to whom the places are dedicated, are lords of what is done in the places…36

He continues:

Tertullian (150-222 CE) indicates that by the 3rd century Christianity viewed the polis as a dangerous environment for the believer. It was a Satanic atmosphere, inhabited by invisible beings (represented by sculpted images) that a Christian must traverse without risk of becoming defiled and loosing one’s salvation. Defilement was not an infection from the buildings themselves, but by their divine representations and the human activity that enlivened their spaces. He states that Christianity was, at that time, void of a theology of civic place and an exacting moral code based on that theology. Protection from defilement was the spiritual intent within the mind of the Christian as they inevitably must interact with the structures of Greco-Roman society. In a complicated argument he moves toward a perception reached by modern theorists who consider buildings a constant stimuli and stage for the human body.37 Places are designed and built to express human experience and reciprocally, human experience is generated by buildings long after their dedication. This feeling was overwhelming for Augustine when reminiscing over his adolescence and his visits to the games and theatre in Thagaste and Carthage.38 For the emotions and ideologies that drive the social aspect of this relationship, this world is always in flux. Nostalgia, fond memory, and resentment toward certain places confirm this theory. Thus for the devout Christian, the polis was as much a ‘mindscape’, a potential psychological minefield, as it was a place to conduct civic life.

Concerning idols and images dedicated to them however, away with them! They are all absurd and evil, both the idols and those who make them; for an image of a holy prophet is one thing; a statue or carving of Cronus or Aphrodite, the sun or the moon, is another…Again, the unbelievers mock us because we honour the cross, and they infer that because we venerate the holy images, we are idolaters and worshippers of wooden gods…Every day you see me tearing down the temples of idols all through the land, and building churches to honour the martyrs.34

Jerome, Augustine, Theordoret, and St. John maintained that there was a difference between form and meaning. Similar ritual behaviour did not indicate same belief. Votive offerings left to the healing powers of Sarapis, for instance, were considered abhorrent by those who dealt in almost identical manner with a martyr: places and objects of deep significance are designated and valued with specific intent. Holy places are original acts of self-assertion and thus can be individually judged one over the other.35 A memorial stone raised vertically by one person, does not carry the same values of a second stone, stood by another person on the same hillside. Despite both being public testimonies to religious feeling, there were differences between perception and intention. A thousand years later, at the Council of Trent, the Catholic Church finally legislated against the worship and superstition of relics, yet they were allowed to be ‘adored’ and ‘venerated’.

Minucius Felix links this perception into the 6th century.

CHRISTIAN VIEW OF THE POLIS

But in the meantime, in your anxious state of expectation, you refrain from honest pleasures: you do not go to our shows, you take no part in our processions, you are not present at our public banquets, you shrink in horror from our sacred games, from food ritually dedicated by our priests, from drink hallowed by libation poured upon our altars. Such is you dread of the very gods you deny… You do not bind your head with flowers, you do not honour your body with perfumes; ointments you reserve for funerals, but even to your tombs you deny garlands…39 And therefore, we who are ranked by our morals and modesty, we have good cause for abstaining from your wicked pleasures, from your processions and your spectacles; we are well aware that they originated in religious rites and we condemn their

Thus if sacrificer or worshipper, I enter the Capitol or the temple of Serapis, I shall fall from God – just as I should if a spectator in circus or theatre. Places do not of themselves defile us, but the things done in the places, by which even the places themselves (as they have argued) are defiled. We are defiled by the defiled. …There is no law laid down for us as to places. For not merely those places where men gather for the shows, but even temples, the servant of God may approach without risk to his Christian loyalty, if there be cause sufficient and simple, to be sure, unconnected with the business or character of the place. But the streets, the market, the baths, the taverns, even out houses, are none of them altogether clear of idols. The whole world is filled with Satan and his angels…Places do not of themselves defile us, but the things done in the places, by which even the places

36 Tertullian, De Spectaculis, trans. Jeffrey Henderson, LCL, Cambridge, 1931. VII, VIII. 37 Robert Yudell, ‘Body Movement, Body, Memory, and Architecture, Kent C. Boomer and Charles W. Moore, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977, 57-59. 38 Augustine, Confessions, trans. Henry Chadwick, Oxford: Oxford, 1991, II, III, 1-2; 35-6. 39 The Octavius of Marcus Minucius Felix, trans. G.W. Clarke, New York: Newman Press, 1974, 70.

33

St. John of Damascus, On the Divine Images, trans. David Anderson, New York: St. Vladimir’s Theological Seminary,1980, 32. 34 St. John of Damascus, op. cit, 96-7, 99. After four centuries of the attack on icons, the Christian defense rested on self-perception. For the Christian, pagan error lies, not as much with the verbal methodology, but in the spatialvisual perception of objects of worship: ‘We make, they make;’ ‘We call, they conjure;’ ‘We pray, they chant.’ 35 Karsten Harries, op. cit, 230-1.

49

SPATIAL AND RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE LATE ANTIQUE POLIS pernicious attractions. Who would fail to be horrified to see at the chariot races the frenzied brawling of the mob, to see at the gladiatorial contests a school in murder? At the theatre too, this raving madness is undiminished, and the display of indecencies is greater…40

you wish to praise the city, do not tell me about its suburb, Daphne, nor about the number and height of its cypress trees, nor its springs of water, nor the numerous people who live in the city, nor that its market-place is frequented with great freedom right until very late in the evening, nor of the abundance of market goods. All these things belong to the senses, and last for the duration of this present life. But if you can call on virtue, gentleness, almsgiving, vigils, prayers, common sense and wisdom of spirit – adorn the city with these qualities.43

The debate between the Christian Octavius and pagan Caecilius illustrates the perceptual chasm between honest and wicked pleasures that could never be crossed. The solution to the Christian dilemma of spatial conflict was to establish three zones of sacred space while living in their respective civic landscapes. They delineated a Kingdom of God on earth within church buildings (Ch. 18) and certain places marked by Holy Men, the Kingdom of Heaven where the Christian will eventually fulfil their true citizenship and third, a neutral zone: neither particularly good nor evil that the Christian could operate without defilement.

S. Augustine speaks in softer tones towards the earthly city than Chrysostom and its understanding to its purpose and organisation based on human will. Christians are pilgrimcaptives within its confines, concurrently striving to live in cooperative peace as they work to convert citizens from earthly to heavenly loyalties and priorities of place. …. The earthly city, which does not live by faith, seeks an earthly peace and the end it proposes, in the well-ordered concord of civic obedience and rule, is the combination of men’s wills to attain the things which are helpful to this life. The heavenly city, or rather the part of it which sojourns on earth and lives by faith, makes use of this peace only because it must, until this mortal condition which necessitates it shall pass away.

St. Theodore of Sykeon illustrates the marking off a geometric boundary within which, through the power of his prayers, God would protect a small village. In doing so he would create a temenos, a sacred zone that would ultimately produce an annual ‘votive offering’ given to the monastery for their earthly salvation. Accordingly they came to the monastery and entreated the blessed man and brought him back with them to their village. He formed a procession of supplication and they went round the vineyard and the fields and, after offering prayer, he placed four wooden crosses at the four angles of the boundary-line and after doing this he returned to the monastery and through his holy prayer that threatening cloud never overshadowed that village again. In return for this benefit the men of the village from that time to the present day yearly bring to the monastery a fixed measure of wine and grapes of various kinds.41

Pseudo Dionysius symbolically extends the dichotomy of Christian place as a man, in Vitruvian Man imagery, standing naked with arms wide open on a flat plane. Rather than being symmetrically surrounded with geometric signs representing the essence of the Greco-Roman landscape, the Christian man is oriented, as a gnomon rod, casting shadows toward the west then east representing the decision to renounce evil and enter into purity. One cannot participate in contradictory realities at one and the same time, and whoever enters into communion with the One cannot proceed to live a divided life, especially if he hopes for a real participation in the One. He must be firmly opposed to whatever may sunder this communion. All this is sacredly suggested by the symbolic tradition which strips the postulant of his former life, deprives him of the very last attractions of this world, stands him naked and barefoot to face westward and renounce with outstretched hands all dealings with the darkness of evil, and everything in his past which signifies difference, and makes him exhale, as it were, and renounce utterly whatever is opposed to conformity to God.44

Origin and John Chrysostom, quoted below, represent Christianity’s theoretical view of true citizenship. It is transcendental, a vacant earthly landscape that exists outside of time and place and beyond the senses. Celsus exhorts us also to accept public office in our country if it is necessary to do this for the sake of the preservation of the laws and of piety. But we know of the existence in each city of another sort of country, created by the Logos of God. …If Christians do avoid these responsibilities, it is not with the motive of shirking the public services of life. But they keep themselves for a more divine and necessary service in the church of God for the sake of the salvation of men.42

The act of turning from and facing towards encapsulates the Christian posture toward pagan culture and built form. It is much a physical act of spatial determination as it contains spiritual connotations. To not ‘turn’ is to be a living contradiction.

If you’re a Christian, you do not have a city on earth. It is God who is the builder and maker (Heb. 11:10) of our city…When 40

Ibid. 122. ‘St. Theodore of Sykeon,’ Three Byzantine Saints, trans. Elizabeth Dawes and Norman H. Baynes, New York: St. Vladirmir’s Seminary Press, 1996, 126. 42 Origin, Contra Celsum, trans. Henry Chadwick, Cambridge: Cambridge, 1953, 75.

43

John Chrysostom, On the Statues Homily 17, The Early Church Fathers, Meyers and Allen (eds.), London: Routledge, 2000; 177.10-178.5; 176.2930; 179. 9-18. 44 Pseudo Dionysius, The Complete Works, trans. Colm Luibheid, fwd. Paul Rorem. The Classics of Western Spirituality, London: SPCK, 1987, 401A-B, 206-7.

41

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CHAPTER 10 SYNTHESIS Vitruvian Man, plotting morning and afternoon shadow sightings on the hemisphere encircling him, scribing a line through the two shadow marks, then squaring from this line through his omphalos, and begin to, orthographically, grid a place of habitation over human image. As microcosmos, humanity must be founder, footprint, and axis point, harmoniously inspired from a source behind its orchestration, and social seed that, using Rabun Taylor’s terminology quoted in Chapter 1, inseminates place.

In Section I, I have studied the manner in which humanity establishes its identity in its cosmologies. I have argued that there is strong evidence to assert a universal feature of the human condition which drives us to invest meaning in space: to transform space into place. Through this transformation, we give meaning to ourselves and organise the world around us. Each place is given significance and the organization of place reflects the way we organize our understanding of the cosmos. The investment of meaning in architecture means that the stones and the spaces in between the stones are invested with meaning. As Nietzsche said, ‘Stone is more stone than it used to be’;1 particular inanimate objects may contain qualities beyond pure utility. Or as Lucan has Julius Caesar comment upon visiting Troy, ‘A legend clings to every stone (nullum est sine nomine saxum),’ as if to indicate the presence of the cognitive memory of a past society lies within its ruins.2

Neurological evidence pertaining to our ability to process visual information into categories defining shape, space, idea and perception fully supports and lends additional insight to humanity as inspired microcosm and re-creator of place. Vitruvius’ ‘Man’ was a never-seen-before perception emanating out of numerous mental categories of shape and abstract ideas culled from his visual memory system. The novel concept of placing a compass on a human navel and rotating a circular line around a symmetrically perfect man, then squaring the circle, was an inspiration generating a living geometrical metaphor of the centrality of man within space and place. Plato, Philo of Alexandria, Proclus, St. John of Damscus, Paracelcus, Yi Fu-Taun, Heidegger, Eliade, et al., used similar processes to arrive at coherent theories of space while conceptualizing the human person as microcosm and inspired architect of place. Space, and for our purposes the late-Roman city, was ‘imbued’ with the spiritual and spoke with a ‘semiotic language of intent’. To describe this, one might simply take a copy of the drawing of the Vitruvian Man, set it down on a flat expanse of ground, walk away and let it, simply, speak for itself. As Aristippus might say upon viewing it, ‘take heart, for I see the footprint and it is of a man’.

Examples taken from Greek, Roman and Early Christian sources indicates that in these particular spatial cultures humanity not only creates place out of space, but ‘founds’ it, gives it a centre-axis point, applies geometric tools and methods to sink footprints into the earth out of which rises edifices comprised of, and unified by, the same principles. They did not rise independently, but were involved somehow in invisible choreographies not of their own design. Somehow, rhythm, sympathy, symmetry, harmony and cohesion can be detected through mathematical analysis and spatial observation giving some to believe that a divine or natural logos, ratio or hexis, might be at work, as reasoning bonding agents influencing the quality of fabrication fabrica by the technical τέχνη skills of the builders. Trying to understand how this could be confronted humanity with what Heraclitus called, ‘deep logos (βαθὺν λόγον)’. Despite beliefs that they contained attributes of the cosmos within themselves, and could thus be creators by imitating its image(s), they realized they were incomparable to the ‘One’ who designs ‘originally’, the Principle behind Place.

The second track I have followed is humanity’s effort to found a relationship with the Thing, or the One behind the natural order of creation. The religious manifestation of this urge applies a character, an essential personality, to the forces perceived elsewhere as logos, hexis, and ratio. Man as microcosm, the footprint grounded in landscape, associating and orienting space according to himself as axis point, now reached figuratively, and literally, upward away from himself to obtain the same harmony, meaning and cohesion that was expressed by the physical and intuitive characteristics of the natural world. Temples, churches and synagogues symbolically established bridges between earthly altars and heavenly temples spanning the chaos of the ‘deep’, where there exists no spatial form. There is also a social-spatial priority in religion as well. Pagan rites were social acts of ‘orthopraxis’ in festival and procession, culminating in

Anthropocentric theorists see that humanity takes its ordering cues from the laws of nature observed. Vitruvius, saw the earliest forms of construction in huts of branches of trees modelled from the over-arching limbs of the forest and of nests fabricated by birds. The Roman surveyor, appropriating the order of the cosmos, could be seen as planting his sciotherum vertically on the navel of the 1

Nietzsche in Karsten Harries, The Ethical Function of Architecture, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2000, 347. 2 Lucan, The Civil War, 9.973, trans. J.D. Duff, LCL, 1928, 577.

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SPATIAL AND RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE LATE ANTIQUE POLIS sacrifice of animal, vegetable matter, incense or other expressions in votive offerings. Sallustius spoke of temples being a copy of heaven, the god’s preference for ethical behaviour over sacrifice, sacrifices animating prayer, and the need for a ‘middle term’ to facilitate the uniting of two objects separated by great distance. The uniting middle term for the pagan was the public offering of appropriate sacrifice through votive offering. For the Jew it was observance of the Law through the Torah, and the Christian, believing in Christ as sacrifice and participating in the Mysteries. All three ways were performed within the setting of community; the same active force that drove the varied forms of ritual behaviours was understood by Vitruvius to be behind the formation of architecture.

desert and walled-in caves that could not be otherwise described as anti-places. However Vitruvian architectural theory and the archaeological record indicate that mindsets oriented toward transcendence often leave behind artefacts attesting to their physical emplacement on civic landscapes. The late Antique remains of Christianity, the religion which should stand as the epitome of Smith’s religion of transcendent ‘nowhere’ is, throughout the East, virtually everywhere. The Christian artefact, represented by the church basilica, was fully founded on place and intensifies its physicality as the liturgy that enlivened its spaces became, with increasing sophistication, mystical theatre. The Christian dichotomy with their focus on eternal home, the New Jerusalem of heaven, must be observed in light of their massive ecclesiastical construction effort during the 6th century and the bishop gradually emerging as civic leader and Christian pilgrims migrating to and venerating the many Biblical points of sacrality in the Holy Land. If Christianity was to fully follow Smith’s paradigm, they would not have bothered with: building projects, pagan temple destruction, or ecclesiastical government, but would rather have turned completely ascetic, existing in desert caves or upon a forest of pillars. Smith seems to soften his approach by postulating that elements of both locative and utopian visions may run concurrent in a society.5 For the Christian theologian, this dichotomy would be encapsulated in the 5th and 6th century Chalcedonian/Monophysist battles over the intricacies of the human and divine natures operating in an incarnate Christ.6 The locative and transcendent natures of the Christian messiah may be manifest in microcosm within the Christian follower as they were fully vested in the physicality of liturgical space while ingesting the mystical elements of the divinity. The Christian worshipped in fixed space and transcendent analogy. They were compelled to act out in spatial-ritual movement the concepts their theologians could not semantically agree and had divided Christendom for centuries. What will be developed up to and proposed in the final chapters of this text is Christianity indeed moved toward a rejection of the secular polis in the East, but developed a perception of earthly Christian space within basilica walls that replaced and transcended the polis.

In apparent contrast to my emphasis on ‘centres’ and physical ‘emplacement’ on architectural and sacred landscapes, Jonathan Z. Smith in, Map Is Not Territory, presents the theory that an evolution of place occurred during the Hellenistic Period and bore fruit, particularly during Late Antiquity. What Smith terms a ‘locative’ religion is to accept the following understanding: that cosmic order permeates every level of reality which is under the ultimate authority of the gods.3 This was evidenced by the movements of the heavenly bodies and society’s self-realisation that the polis and person stand as microcosm to the heavenly and natural worlds. The chief responsibility of kings and priests were to bring the human and divine into an acceptable relationship through sacrificial offerings of appeasement. Smith sees the change from a locative to a transcendentalutopian mindset beginning after the Alexandrian conquests, where social reality expanded from local to universal concepts of sacrality as impressions of the polis changed to cosmopolis. Instead of a god who dwelt in a temple, a phenomenon of diaspora evolved where modes of access to the deity (visions, epiphanies, heavenly journeys) were developed transcending the notion of a centralized sacred place. ‘Diasporic religion, in contrast to native, locative religion, was utopian in the strictest sense of the word, a religion of "nowhere", or of transcendence’; the deity could be accessed anywhere by anyone.4 Though citizens continued to visit temples out of sentiment, the old votive ties were weakened in favour of the personal spiritual experience and may help to explain the apparent dearth of 3rd century votive evidence and lack of overall resistance to the abandonment and destruction of temples in late Antiquity. The rise of the Mystery Cults (e.g. the Eleusinian and Egyptian mysteries, and Mithras) emphasizing various forms of salvation and ecstatic worship experiences may be linked to Smith’s view. This is especially accurate for Christianity whose bishops and priests often reminded their congregants as to their citizenship in heaven and holy ascetics who fought against spiritual forces in the

In spite of the basic similarities in the way in which space was conceived, different cultural and religious groups operated with different spatial philosophies. We have seen the similarities and differences in pagan, Jewish and Christian uses of space. In the following sections we will see how these ideas of space came into contact and transformed the late antique city.

5

3

Ibid. 101. W.H.C. Frend, The Rise of Christianity, Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984, 837-843.

Johnathan Z. Smith, Map Is Not Territory, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978, 159-163. 4 Ibid. xiv.

6

52

SECTION III GERASA and DURA EUROPOS

53

SPATIAL AND RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE LATE ANTIQUE POLIS

54

CHAPTER 11: GERASA: INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 11 GERASA: INTRODUCTION

Introduction

summers are warm and dry with mild-wet winters creating an attractive 350-500 mm. dry farming zone.4 The hills are still lightly forested with pine and oak. In antiquity, the environment could have sustained production of olives, cereals for human use and for grazing, and vegetables and fruits.5

The urbanisation process of the landscape of Gerasa is primarily centred on the Chrysorhoas River, its life-source. It is not known whether Roman surveyors ever set foot within Gerasa; however their principles of linear-orthography were applied there, albeit styled in local-Syrian terms.

GEOGRAPHIC AND TOPOGRAPHIC LANDSCAPES The ancient city of Gerasa provides an example of a GrecoRoman city on the edge of empire. It lies 20 km from the eastern desert steppe, sitting approximately 25 km. west of the Roman north-south trade route, Via Nova Traiana and 100km in straight-line distance (SLD) from Caesarea on the Mediterranean coast. The city lies between the Yarmuk River to the north and the Wadi Mujib River to the south, in what are known as the highlands of Ajlun. 1 It was founded on a perennial tributary of the Wadi Zerqa, the Biblical Jabbok River, called the Wadi Jerash, which the Greek colonists called the Chrysorhoas, ‘the Golden River’. In addition to the Chrysorhoas, there were and are abundant springs at Gerasa and on the surrounding hillsides. ‘The Golden River’ runs through the middle of a zone of what is known as Red Mediterranean Soils, which descends out onto the Yellow Mediterranean Soils of the desert steppe (this and the following colour descriptors found in Al-Eisawi2). Red soils support the cultivation of a variety of cereals, and especially fruit and vegetable crops. The yellow soil, that rises approximately 6.5 miles to the east, is for cereals and feed for stock grazing. The transition from red to yellow soils occurs ten kilometres east of Gerasa, allowing for a great variety of farm and ranch products to be placed virtually at the door of the city. Thus, Gerasa was self-sufficient in its food production, not having to rely on outside sources of supply.3 The soils and water availability are further enhanced by the altitude and climate of the area. Gerasa stands at 500 meters in elevation and receives an annual rainfall of 300 to 400 mm with hills rising to over 1,000 meters, less than 5 kilometers to the northwest supplying further water shed topography. The

Arial view of Jerash, (1938), Gerasa Archives, Yale University Art Gallery.

During Trajan’s reign, Gerasa, though resting on the ancient King’s Highway, came to be (indirectly) connected to the Via Traiana, the main north-south artery from the Red Sea. It ran through the provinces of Arabia and Syria, then east to Persia. Direct routes ran north-south to Bostra, Dium and on to the Arabian capital of Bosra, and south to Philadelphia. An important east-west road was repaired, initially by Trajan, then under Hadrian (129 CE) which ran to Pella, Scythopolis

1

David Kennedy, Gerasa and the Decapolis, A ‘Virtual Island’ in Northwest Jordan, London: Duckworth, 2007, 68-70, 76. ‘The Identity of Roman Gerasa: An Archaeological Approach’, Mediterranean Archaeology 11, (1998), 39-69. 2 Dawud M. Al-Eisawi. ‘Vegetation in Jordan’, SHAJ I, Amman: Department of Antiquities, 1985, 45-57. 3 David Kennedy, op. cit, (2007), 67-70. Segal, ‘Roman Cities in the Province of Arabia’, JSAH, XL: 2, (May, 1981), 120.

4 5

55

Dawud M. Al-Eisawi, op. cit, 45-57. David Kennedy, op. cit, (1998), 47.

SPATIAL AND RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE LATE ANTIQUE POLIS and on to Caesarea on the Mediterranean coast.6 These roads accessed all the important trade routes in the Levant enabling Gerasa to become a trade-hub. They were also the ties that continued its western-Hellenistic connections amidst local, eastern influences. Gerasa’s numismatics shows a diverse representation of mints signifying its connection to the trade markets at Bostra, Palmyra, Alexandria, Thessalonica, Arles, Lugdunum, Antioch and Constantinople.7

Antioch, Laodicea, Apamea, Borea, and Philadelphia. Of the cities of the Decapolis, only the street system of nearby Scythopolis holds closest to the ‘armature system’, though without possessing a formal cardo and decumanus10 but, like Gerasa, Scythopolis’ morphology was focused on a limited number of places within the civic centre. In this Syrian pattern, the major axis (Cardo) is often broken by angular directional changes and is adorned by monumental columnar-architrave forms and intersectional tetrapylae, all relating to magnificent religious centres set in equally awe inspiring natural or man-made settings.

MORPHOLOGY Gerasa’s urban form8 deserves thorough analysis, for it cannot be described simply. It is neither just ‘orthogonal’, ‘Roman Axial’, or filled with ‘partitioning armatures’.9 Its morphological origins, as described by Asem Barghouti, developed from a simple Ptolemaic type, which consisted of, in part, a long thoroughfare forming a major axis with one or more major arteries and streets, creating long rectangular blocks without major intersections. Later, but still under the Seleucids, the city became more complex, developing local characteristics, which allowed street axis or axes to create rectangular subdivisions that bracketed and emphasised significant civic and cult centres. By the beginning of the Roman period, Hellenistic-Oriental styles were accentuated by the use of stoai to form vertical spaces framing centres of civic life. Further examples of this pattern can be found at

Excavation has concentrated on the public buildings and the streets marked with formal stoae. Little domestic architecture has been uncovered with the exception of some Umayyad housing, housing west of St Theodore’s, and ecclesiastical housing known as the monastery/clergy house. The majority of the population is believed to have lived on the east bank and lower hill-sides above the Chrysorhoas, now under modern Jerash. This area is not thought to have had the monumental streets and buildings of the West city, but the evidence is hardly strong. By the late-Roman period, three stone bridges connected the eastern and western sides of the city: the northern and southern crossings meeting with the North and South decumani and the centre bridge established a main arterial-processional to the Artemis Temple. As with the case at Scythopolis, there are no definite remains of a formal agora or fora with the possible exception of the Oval Plaza, or the Macellum.11

6

Benjamin Isaac, The Limits of Empire, Oxford: Clarendon, 1990, 121-2. Gerasa is approximately 47.85 miles (77 km) from the coast. See Isaac and Roll, ‘Roman Roads in Judea I, the Legio-Scythopolis Road’, BAR 141: Oxford, 1982. 7 A.R. Bellinger, ‘Coins’, Gerasa, City of the Decapolis, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1938, 497-503; Alfred R. Bellinger, Numismatic Notes and Monographs, No. 81, Coins from Jerash, 1928-1934, New York: American Numismatic Society, 1938, 6-9. 8 Asem N. Barghouti. ‘Urbanization of Palestine and Jordan in Hellenistic and Roman Times’, SHAJ I, Amman: Department of Antiquities, 1982, 209229, is the source of much of the information used here. See also, David F. Graf, ‘Hellenisation and the Decapolis’, ARAM 4, (1992), 18. 9 The strict orthogonal grid layout of civic plans was originally attributed to the invention of the Greek architect Hippodamus of Miletus by Aristotle (Pol. VII, 1330b, 21) and urban patterns of this type have since been termed ‘Hippodamian’ (despite evidence of Greek urban patterns preceding him in the 7th and 6th centuries BCE). See Ferdinando Castagnoli, Orthogonal Town Planning in Antiquity, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1971, 66-72. The character of Hippodamian urban layout also consists of monumental squares set in geometric and natural harmonies with the natural topography. This has led some to define Gerasa’s urban plan as Hippodamian (orthogonal grid-iron set on the ground), see Peter Richardson, City and Sanctuary, London, SCM Press, 2002, 5-31,79. MacDonald presents the urban concept of ‘Armature’ as being synonymous with the architectural terms: ‘linkage’ and ‘connection space’. They provide a language to explain how spaces consisting of diverse civic entities are unified by: gateways, streets, plazas, junctions, and prominent buildings possessing symbolic/aesthetic similar elements (again, echoes of a type). By means of architectural frameworks, diverse social/commercial entities may be unified under Roman imperialism. Armatures are a Roman enhancement to the Hippodamian plan of which Gerasa bears strong resemblances. Barghouti goes further to separate Gerasa from the Roman into an eastern-Syrian pattern by certain characteristics mentioned above. Barghouti references Ptolemaic (Egyptian) civic influences in Decapolis civic design to further emphasize the Eastern base upon which local design concepts grew.

Roman influence was felt in the architecture of Gerasa from the beginning of the first century CE. An inscription records the dedication of the South Theatre in 90/91 CE, ‘in accordance with a decree of Lappius Maximus, legatus Augusti pro praetore’,12 making this the earliest known epigraphic evidence of a governor’s sponsorship of building in the Decapolis region of Syria.13 Evidence of governmental assistance in civic construction at Gerasa is rare; the overwhelming majority of euergetistic projects were generated by private citizen.14 In the Christian era, notables (wealthy families) and municipal officials inscribed their names primarily on ecclesiastical structures.15 This mix in 10

Yoram Tsafrir and Gideon Foerster, ‘Urbanism at Scythopolis-Bet Shean,’ DOP 51 (1992), 91. 11 Ibid, 96, 122-3, discussed the absence of an agora at Scythopolis before the Byzantine period. 12 J. Pouilloux, ‘Deux inscriptions au theatre sud Gerasa’, SBFLA 27 (1977), 246. 13 Fergus Miller, The Roman Near East, 31 BC-AD 337, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993, 92. 14 One can compare this with Palmyra where the building activities of the local elite related almost exclusively to cultic sanctuaries. See J.-B. Yon, ‘Evergetism and urbanism in Palmyra’, Recent Research in Late-Antique Urbanism, JRA Supplementary Series 42, Luke Lavan (ed.), Portsmouth, 2001, 173-81. 15 The pattern is not consistent in the region. For example, provincial governors were more active in running Bostra. At the Kyra Maria monastery in Scythopolis and the church at St. Thecla in Lower Galilee provincial

56

CHAPTER 11: GERASA: INTRODUCTION

GERASA’S HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT

sources of funding was mirrored in a mix of architectural styles. Arthur Segal described Gerasa’s architecture as an ‘eclectic’ mixture from traditional Eastern and Classical architectural schools. The result of blending local artisan talent of Jordan with the Hellenistic polis tradition resulted in a dynamic ‘freedom of movement’ and ‘soft anti-Classical The consistency in architectural buildings and lines’.16 decorative elements within the cities of Arabia led him to ponder whether they were designed by a single, architectural school or whether a system of copying translated civic pieces and concepts from city to city.17 The main cities (Petra, Gerasa, Philadelphia, Gadara, Pella, Bostra, Philippopolis, Antioch, Damascus, Apamea, etc.) contained a similar package of columned streets, nymphaea, theatres, hippodromes, baths, tetrapyla at major street intersections, free-standing arches, and city gates bearing related ornamental-design motifs. Monumental temples were, if topography allowed, situated on high elevations and were always civic focal points.

Gerasa was mentioned twice by Josephus,19 self-proclaimed Trajan as ‘saviour and founder’ of the city,20 visited by the Roman Emperor Hadrian,21 and was the seat of no fewer than six procurators making it, for a substantial time, a major financial centre of Arabia.22 Gerasa’s23 earliest archaeological remains show Chacolithic and Early Bronze Age (EB I-II) settlements.24 The city was given a more formal Hellenistic urban structure possibly by Alexander’s general Perdiccas in the fourth century BCE.25 This founding connected Gerasa with the West, and especially the Greek world. Under Seleucid control, the city was probably renamed ‘Antioch on the Chrysorhoas’ (Ἀντιοχέν τῶν πρὸς Χρυς(ορόᾳ)26 possibly under Antiochus IV Epiphanes (175-164 BCE) when its Greek constitution was instituted.27 Gerasa may have semitic origins as the earliest semantic evidence of its name was found on a commemorative burial inscription from the Siq at Petra.28 Gerasa was captured by Alexander Jannaeus in the early 70’s BCE and according to Josephus remained under Hasmonaean control until Pompey the Great arrived in the Levant in 64/63 BCE. Yet numismatic evidence does not

The additional element in Gerasa’s Syrian style is its ‘flow’ over the natural landscape, using topographical features for the enhancement of majesty in its terraced heights, and places of congregation in its lower avenues and level plazas. The highest rises in the area were used for the temples of Zeus and Artemis which were focally emphasized and bracketed, in the laying out two cross streets, the North and South Decumani. The north street ran, from the North Quadrifrons, at an oblique to catch the colonnaded plaza in front of the North Theatre and exit the city by the north-west gate, while its eastern route ran over the Chrysorhoas River, past the, later 6th century, Church of the Apostles and Martyrs, to the north-east gate. The South Decumanus, intersecting the Cardo at the South Tetrakionion, ran west past a later 8th century Umayyad house complex and continued further to split Sts. Peter and Paul and Bishop Genesius church properties and exit the south-west gate. Its eastern axis ran over the South Bridge behind the East Baths, and probably passed in front of the Procopius Church and out a southeastern city gate.18

19

Josephus, Bellum I, 80, 86-7; 104; Antiquities XIII, 393. Wells, ‘The Inscriptions’, Gerasa, City of the Decapolis, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1938, inscrs: 56-7; ‘σωτῆρι καί κτίστῃ’. The meaning of this reference may pertain to a new constitution or financial favours, otherwise the specifics remain unknown. An inscription mentions Asclepiodorus son of Malchus as a priest of the cult of Trajan at Gerasa; Wells, op. cit, inscr: 10. 21 Wells, op. cit, inscrs: 144, 30, and 58 attest to the fact, date, and extent of Hadrian’s visit. Anthony R. Birley, Hadrian the Restless Emperor, London: Routledge, 1977, 231, n. 46; 347. 22 B. Isaac, op. cit, 345-6. 23 Carl H. Kraeling, (ed.) Gerasa City of the Decapolis, New Haven: ASOR, 1938. All subsequent references to Gerasa archaeologically and historically are based on Kraeling’s work: Ian Browning, Jerash and the Decapolis, London: Chatto & Windus, 1982, R. Khouri, Jerash, A Frontier City of the Roman East, 1986, Peter Richardson, op. cit, Warwick Ball, Rome in the East, London: Routledge, 2000, Kevin Butcher, Roman Syria and the Near East, London: The British Museum Press, 2003, etc. 24 Adnan Hadidi, ‘The Archaeology of Jordan: Achievements and Objectives’ SHAJ I, Amman, 1982, 15 and R. Thomas Schaub, ‘The Origins of the Early Bronze Age Walled Town Culture of Jordan,’ SHAJ I, Amman, 1982, 73-4. The first article published on this period for Jerash is: Nelson Glueck, ‘The Earliest History of Jerash,’ BASOR, No. 75 (Oct., 1939), 22-30. 25 Asem N. Barghouti, ‘Urbanization of Palestine and Jordan in Hellenistic and Roman Times,’ SHAJ I, Amman, 1982, 219-20. The earliest evidence of occupation of Gerasa from domestic pottery evidence is from the second century BCE. A.H.M Jones, The Cities of the Eastern Roman Provinces, Oxford: Clarendon, 1937, 239, 447, suggests a connection to Perdiccas because of a statue to Perdiccas erected in Gerasa in the 3rd century CE. Wells, op. cit, inscr: 137, p. 423: Statue base dedicating a statue to Perdiccas was found in modern Jerash by Schumacher. 26 C.B. Wells, op. cit, inscr: #251, earliest date for Antioch/Chrysorhoas combination found on a lead weight: 56/57 CE. 27 Carl H. Kraeling, op. cit, 27, 30-32. See also Wells, op. cit, index, 600, E. 28 ‘GRSW’, J. Starky, ‘Nouvelle epitaphe nabateene donnant le nom semitique de Petra’, RB, LXXII (1965), 95-97; also F. Zayadine, JAP I 198183, Amman, 1986, 8 and Fergus Millar, The Roman Near East, 31 BC – AD 337, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993, 398. 20

authorities responsible for their construction used their names only as benefactors in private capacities, not using their governmental ranks or titles See Leah Di Segni, ‘The involvement of local, municipal and provincial authorities in urban building in late antique Palestine and Arabia’, The Roman and Byzantine Near East: Some Recent Archaeological Research, JRA Supplementary Series 14, Ann Harbor, 1995, 312-332. 16 Arthur Segal, ‘Roman Cities in the Province of Arabia’ Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, JSAH XL: May 1981, 108-121. 17 Ibid, 112. 18 Roberto Parapetti, ‘The Architectural Significance of the Sanctuary of Artemis at Gerasa’, SHAJ I: Amman, 1982, 255.

57

SPATIAL AND RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE LATE ANTIQUE POLIS corroborate Josephus’ account.29 Only a single coin of Jannaeus from the Spanish excavations at the Macellum30 and two others from the ACOR/British Gerasa project are the only mass produced issues found at Gerasa.31 Four coins are from John Hyrcanus I, and single coins of Archelaus (4BCE6CE), the Procurators (6CE-15), and Agrippa (37-44CE) and the town may have been under Nabataean control.32 The trade route between Damascus and Petra was held by the Nabateans until 106 CE when Philadelphia and Gerasa, with Adraa, were incorporated into the province of Arabia and the remainder of the trans-Jordan Decapolis cities (Pella, Gadara and Capitolinas) joined Judaea. Even after the incorporation of the city into the province of Syria in 63 BCE, there were strong ties to Nabataea. Twenty-one Nabataean coins issued under Aretas IV were found during excavations of 1928-3433 and another sixteen were discovered under J. Seigne’s excavations of the Zeus Temple, seven of which were of Aretas IV. Gerasa became part of the Roman world with the creation of the province of Syria in 63 BCE. In 106 CE it became part of the new Province of Arabia. Gerasa formally became a Roman colony, probably during the reign of Caracalla based on two early 2nd century inscriptions.34 There it remained under Roman jurisdiction for another five centuries until the Muslim conquest.

connected with the two Jewish revolts. On this assumption,37 Gerasa’s orthogonal street system could not have been developed until the mid-second century CE. The first Decumanus crossing the Chrysorhoas River was the Sacred Way leading to the Artemis Temple complex and the remainder of Gerasa’s orthogonal design worked off this key axis. Seigne considers the final version of the city wall (after the Hellenistic one around the tel at Camp Hill) to be a late development (late-3rd, early 4th century) probably initiated after a third century sacking of the city. Although the chronology may be capable of being refined considerably, it seems clear that Gerasa formally began as a small, walled Hellenistic city with a modest size temple to Zeus.38 The first stage of Roman period development came in the mid to late first century CE and focused primarily in the south-western zone of the city. The layout of city grid, walls and gates (in their various stages of infancy), the Temple of Zeus’s lower Temenos, the Oval Plaza, South Theatre, were established. The decumani and a complete circuit of city walls were gradually developed. The second phase, from the time of Trajan to the first quarter of the third century, saw the building or remodelling of most of the monumental Classical structures: the North and South Gates, Hadrian’s Arch, the Temples of Artemis, Zeus and Dionysus, The North Theatre (Odeon: first phase, 165/166 CE; second phase, first half 3rd century CE),39 Hippodrome, Nymphaeum, the North Quadrifrons, Oval Plaza, South Tetrakionion, the Macellum, and the East and West Baths. In the early third century the Birketein theatre and reservoir were completed. The third phase, from the fourth through sixth centuries, saw the addition of Christianity to the landscape of Gerasa. Also, the Baths of Placcus, and shops encircling the South Tetrakionion were built. There is virtually no epigraphic record for between 307 and 440 CE,40 and it is possible that there was limited building during this period, but this does not seem to reflect an urban decline.

Roman Gerasa’s architectural development was in three phases, though there are considerable debates as to the dating of these phases. Carl H. Kraeling produced the first narrative history of Gerasa.35 More recently Jacques Seigne has argued for a later chronology for Gerasa’s growth, though his chronology is almost equally speculative.36 For Seigne, late Hellenistic/early Roman Gerasa was essentially based on the core grouping of Zeus Temple, South Theatre, the early urban tell on ‘Museum Hill’ and an oval plaza, a hub from which certain avenues ran. Upon Hadrian’s visit in 130 CE the civic master-plan intended to grow in a southerly direction, on the west bank of the Chrysorhoas River, to connect with the arch named in his honour. However, this was not realized, for the construction of the Artemis Temple complex shifted Gerasa’s orientation north and east. Seigne attributes this change to a long-standing bi-polar division in the city between the Zeus and Artemis cults and events

The numismatic evidence from Gerasa (as with Pella)41 shows a gradual increase in coin deposits through the first three centuries CE, sloping upward through the Tetrarchy and early Constantinian years to a very strong showing in the later fourth-early fifth century, then falling off dramatically. The record of buildings is slightly different, with a fourth century ‘pause’ and a spate of church building activity in the sixth century, after which, one additional sacred space was built. Gerasa’s epigraphic remains are preserved on recycled podia, stelae, and pedestal bases. Late antique Gerasa, like so many other cities, cannibalised its Classical heritage, turning the

29

Josephus, Bellum I, 4. 8. (104). Kraeling, op. cit, 33. Kevin Sheedy, ‘Jewish Coins’, The Coins: Pella in Jordan, 1979-1990, Kate da Kosta (ed.), Sydney: Adapa, 2001, 28. 31 Alfred R. Bellinger, Numismatic Notes and Monographs: Coins from Jerash, 1928-1934 (New York: The American Numismatic Society, 1938), 8-9. 32 This meagre Hasmonean numismatic presence contrasts with the large number of coins found at Pella. It is possible that Josephus added Gerasa to his account of the cities captured by Jannaeus in error for Esbus (Heshbon), See, J.A. Goldstein, ‘The Hasmonean Revolt and the Hasmonean Dynasty’, CHJ Vol. 2, (1989), 292-351. 33 A. Bellinger Numismatic Notes, 8. 34 C.B. Wells, op. cit, 179, 191. 35 Carl H. Kraeling, op. cit, 27-69. 36 Jacques Seigne, ‘Jerash romaine et byzantine: development urbain d’une ville provinciale orientale’, SHAJ IV, Amman: 1992, 331-341. 30

37

Ibid, 340-1. Josephus, Bellum I. 4. 8. (104). 39 John D. Stewart, ‘Part I, The Architecture of the Roman Theatre’, JAP I, Amman: Department of Antiquities of Jordan, 1996, 229. 40 Kraeling, op. cit. 62. 41 Robert Carson, ‘Roman Coins’, The Coins: Pella in Jordan, 1979-1990, Kate da Costa (ed.), Sydney: Adapa, 2001, 35. 38

58

CHAPTER 11: GERASA: INTRODUCTION and more commonly, epimelitae50 (construction superintendents throughout the 1st through 3rd centuries).51 A boule (a governing city council) is first attested in Gerasa in the first century and frequently in the second century and the term bouletes (councillor) was also in use.52 A collective or triad of councillors, known as the archontes, appears to have taken civic responsibilities.53 A proedros (chief executive) is attested and also appears in several other local cities.54 Further magistrates attested include strategoi,55 the grammateus (secretary of the council, 1st through 3rd CE),56 gymnasiarch (responsible for civic baths, 1st and 2nd CE),57 and agoranomos (responsible for commercial regulations, 2nd and 3rd CE).58 The political organisation of the city appears like many other cities with Hellenistic roots in the Greek East under Roman rule.

buildings of earlier centuries into spolia. The major architectural victims were the Hippodrome and Artemis Temple courtyard both used for industrial facilities;42 the South Theatre, and the major secular bath complexes. Private and commercial buildings invaded the architectural elements of the cardo and decumani and cut-off the Stepped Street and avenues around the west end of St. Theodore’s.43 The North Bridge leading to the Propylaea Plaza, possibly destroyed by earthquake in 551-4 CE, was never rebuilt. Natural forces, probably a series of earthquakes, notably in 749 CE, toppled the majority of what remained standing of Gerasa’s monumental structures. Their debris fields provided the 7th-8th century Moslem and Christian population materials from which to build small structures in the Oval Plaza, North Theatre, tetrapylaea intersections, and Hippodrome ruins. It is not known when these were eventually abandoned.

POLITICAL ORGANISATION AND EPIGRAPHY Of the three hundred and thirty-one inscriptions recorded at Gerasa and its surrounding area, three hundred and twenty are in Greek and Latin, nine are in Arabic, one is in Nabataean, two in Hebrew, and one in Aramaic. The personal names are mostly, mixed Greco-Roman, some fully Roman, and very few Semitic.44 Six inscriptions are for the procurator of Arabia set up by his cornicularius,45 suggesting that the financial administration for the province was, for a time, based there. A substantial number of citizens served in the army and some combining procuratorial and municipal careers.46 The local elite maintained the imperial cult.47 There is no evidence of a public assembly (ekklesia).48 The attested political organisation comprised of special boards of magistrates, such as decaprotoi49 (fiscal officials in 66/7 CE)

42

Kennedy, ‘The Identity of Roman Gerasa’, op. cit, 11, 65.; Ostrasz, ‘The Hippodrome of Gerasa: A Report on Excavations and Research 1982-1987’, Syria LXII, 51-77. And Kraeling, op. cit, 138, describing the Artemis temple courtyard as a pottery factory, whose kilns and potter’s work rooms covered the great altar. Pottery fragments depicting Biblical symbolisms date to the 5th century. 43 Jaggi, Meier, and Brenk. ‘Temple, Kiln and Church-Fourth Interim Report on The Jerash Cathedral Project’, ADAJ, Vo. 42, (1998), 425-432. The construction of a bronze smelting mill, a sign that the temple was already out of use and a sign of civic decline before church construction. 44 Wells, op. cit, inscrs: #15-16; 29. 45 Ibid, inscrs: #173; 175-9; 207 (cornicularius inscribed), and ff. 46 Ibid, inscrs: #54; 62; 189. 47 Ibid, inscrs: #2; 10; 53; 57. 48 The following information summarized by Julian M.C. Bowsher, ‘Civic Organisation within the Decapolis,’ ARAM 4 (1992), 272-75. 49 C.B. Wells, op. cit, inscrs: #45 -6; also #26, bouletes ton proton (3rd CE) though to be a ‘leading group in the council’.

50

C.B. Wells, op. cit, inscrs: #46 (66/7 CE); 146 (161-9 CE); 168 (166-7 CE), etc. 51 G. Foerster & Y. Tsafrir, ‘Nysa-Scythopolis; a new inscription and the titles of the city on its coins,’ Israel Numismatic Journal 9, 53-58. 52 Wells, op. cit,inscrs: #62 (mid-3rd CE); 170 (second decade of the 3rd). 53 Ibid, inscrs: #45-6. 54 Ibid, inscrs: #45-6; 190 (mid 3rd CE); 73 (late 3rd); A poedros who held office for a second time was found in the North Theatre and recorded by Wells (#68) who’s dating has been adjusted to Severus Alexander: 222-235 CE, John D. Stewart, ‘Part 1: The Architecture of the Roman Theatre, JAP I, Amman, 1986), 229. 55 C.B. Wells, op. cit, inscrs: #62, 191. 56 Ibid, inscrs: #45-6; 181. 57 Ibid, inscrs: #3-4; 192. 58 Ibid, inscrs: #53; 188; 134.

59

CHAPTER 12 CLASSICAL BUILDINGS I: WALL AND GATES

12.1 Drawing of Hadrian's Arch, by A.H. Detweiler, Kraeling (1938), Plate IV.

Gerasa can be seen as a city defined by its portals. Current reconstructions tend to see them as free-standing structures, bounding open space. Linear avenues connect and plazas are gathering places in preparation for them. They communicate in spatial terms. As places of transition, they were of social and symbolic significance and thus were emphasized through monumental forms.

left blank, which has prompted some to argue that the side facing Gerasa was of more significance than the southern.4 The precise dating of the Arch, its relationship to Hadrian, its excellent preservation, monumental height (21.5m.) and southern-most civic boundary marker establishes it as an important edifice in the history of the city. The inscription describes the arch as a πύλην σὺν θριάμβῳ, or a “gate with a triumph”.5 Rostovtzeff believes this indicates that this was to be a functional gate with a triumphal statue possibly standing over the attic.6 To this date, no remains of a statue have been recovered, but there is evidence of preparation for wall connections on both sides of the gate.

THE TRIUMPHAL ARCH H. Detweiler1 reports the excavation of The Triumphal Arch, erected in honour of Emperor Hadrian was “the first monument of Jerash which the traveller sees coming northward from (present day) Amman (Philadelphia)”.2 It stands 460m from the entrance of the Southern Gate. The southern approach to the city passed through the arch, ran closely parallel along the east wall of the Hippodrome, making a straight-line to the South Gate. The date of the arch is known from an inscription on a tabula ansata affixed to the attic of the inner-northern face of the arch, which notes that it was dedicated in honour of Emperor Hadrian in 129-130 CE. 3 The tubula ansata on the southern face of the attic was

The Triumphal Arch was constructed of the finest local limestone and its exterior finished surfaces were well carved; the structural core was made of a softer, lesser grade material.7 Built on four massive piers, its footprint is 25.25 m. by 9.25 m. With a reconstructed height of 21.5 meters, it matches the Arch of Constantine in Rome, the tallest known arch.8 Architecturally, the structure is typical of triumphal arches, with a wide passageway centred between two narrower ones. This triple entry motif appears in various architectural 4

Carl H. Kraeling, op. cit, 51. Wells, ‘The Inscriptiosns’, Gerasa, City of the Decapolis, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1938, inscr: #58, p. 402 6 Ibid. inscr: #58, p. 402. 7 A.H. Detweiler, op. cit, 80, and journal notes from Detweiler, 1934, Yale University Art Gallery, Gerasa Archives. 8 Before modern reconstruction, the arch stood vertically 12.15m. 5

1

A.H. Detweiler, ‘The Arch’, Gerasa, City of the Decapolis, Carl H. Kraeling, (ed.), New Haven: Yale University Press, 1938, 73-83. 2 Carl H. Kraeling, op. cit, 73 3 Discovered, April 25, 1934. Diary of A.H. Detweiler, Yale University Art Gallery, Gerasa Archives.

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CHAPTER 12: CLASSICAL BUILDINGS: WALL AND GATES

12.2 Hadrian’s Arch, 1938. Gerasa Archives, Yale University Art Gallery.

features in classical Gerasa to the end of the Christian era. The middle opening stands 5.71 m. wide, 10.8 m tall, and the outer openings are identical at 2.66 m. wide and 5.2 meters high. The arches over the doorways are roofed with stone barrel vaults. The door heights are estimated from the supposed level of the street, while the widths come from measuring from pilaster to pilaster. Two small additions, called pavilions, were later attached to the east and west ends, providing it with a more elongated facade. Stairways within the side pavilions lead upwards to access an east-west passageway on the attic.

The term ‘triumphal arch’ is actually a misnomer in the case of Gerasa’s arch. It could more accurately be called ‘commemorative’ or ‘honorific’, since the ‘triumph’ is the celebration upon Hadrian’s entrance into the city. Its construction was probably a municipal initiative based, an honour as much to the city as for Hadrian. It was typical of the time to erect an arch on an approach to a city or on a plaza within city walls. There are over 600 known triumphal arches from the Roman period. In Provincial Arabia, the triumphal arch appeared at the beginning of the 2nd century CE, of which seven have been found, two in honour of emperors.10 Freestanding commemorative arches similar to the one at Gerasa are the ‘Nabataean Arch’ at Palmyra, the Arch of the Lantern at Bosra, the Ecce Homo Arch at Jerusalem, the Temenos Arch at Petra, and arches at Gadara and Scythopolis. The arches at Gerasa and Jerusalem are dedicated to Hadrian, and the arch at Bostra (or Bosra) honours the Third Cyrenaican Legion. An arch at Dura Europos honouring Trajan was built by the Third Cyrenaican Legion in 115 CE. It stood 1800 metres northwest of the main gate of Dura, called the ‘Palmyra Gate’, and built to the same design as Gerasa’s. 11 Freestanding triumphal and commemorative arches are also found incorporated in a

All three entrances indicate the use of operating doors as evidenced by hinge sockets in vault springers, and holes near the niches as provision for door jams necessary to carry the weight of the massive middle doors. The evidence of it three doors being operational may show its intention as a functioning element or simply be a symbolic embellishment. On the east and presumably the west ends of the pavilions, stones extend from their courses in the method typically used by masons to tie into another architectural element. It is assumed that these were left in anticipation of receiving an extension of the city walls at a later date.9

10 Arthur Segal, From Function to Monument, Oxbow Monograph, 66, Oxford: Oxbow, 1997, 129. 11 Warwick Ball. Rome in the East, London: Routledge, 2000, 285-6. Arthur Segal, op. cit, 131.

9

Jacques Seigne, ‘Jerash romaine et Byzantine: development urban d’une ville provinciale orientale’, SHAJ IV, Amman: 1992.

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SPATIAL AND RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE LATE ANTIQUE POLIS city’s entrance, such as the Arch of Trajan at Timgad at its southern access.12

It is plausible that much trade in Gerasa was conducted outside the walls of the city: animal caravans may have been kept outside the gates for loading and unloading of goods and materials, though the actual business was probably conducted within the walls under the eyes and supervision of the magistrates. As yet, no suburban structures have been uncovered in this area other than the later-sixth century Bishop Marianos Church and some tombs. Space for grazing and temporary housing for travellers would be necessary during peaks in the trading season. The plazas and markets were probably not sufficiently large to accommodate both animals and traders, and so perhaps caravans remained outside Gerasa’s walls. If much of the business took place between the gate and the arch, we have an explanation for the absence of an agora. This may have provided a market place with smaller, functionally specific agora(s) positioned within the walls (i.e. Macellum, Oval Plaza, etc.).

Gerasa’s arch honoured the visit of Hadrian in 129-130 on his journey through Syria towards Palestine as Hadrian and his large retinue apparently spent the winter at Gerasa. It was also a station for the emperor’s horse guards. A Greek inscription honouring, and thus securing the likelihood of Hadrian’s visit states, ‘the city of the Antiochenes, by the Chrysorhoas, the former Gerasenes’ (ἠ πόλις Ἀντιοχέων τῶν πρὸς τᾦ Χρψσιόᾳ τῶν πρότερον Γερασηνῶν)’, in the year of 130, and that Hadrian held jurisdiction while in residence there.13 A Latin inscription found on an altar 67 yards northeast of the Propylaea of the Artemis Temple, (now lost), translates: ‘To Augustan Diana for the Welfare of Our Emperor Caesar Trajan Hadrian Augustus Father of His Country. His Mounted Bodyguards who have been wintering at Antioch on the Chrysorhoas known as Gerasa Sacred, Inviolate and Autonomous, Marcus Calventius Viator, Centurion of the Legion V Macedonia, in Command of the Eight Squadrons—of Flavius Titus, Statilius Romanus, Valerius Bassus, Canus Augustinus… freely and willingly fulfilled his vow, out of honour and dutifulness.’14

The architectural and spatial meaning of the arch was perhaps less of a statement of Roman power and more one of spatial enclosure without walls. Passing through the arch perhaps signified a transition into an ‘outer sphere’ of Gerasa, the first of a succession of ‘spheres’ to be transversed as one passes through sequences of gates into the city.16

THE SOUTH GATE The names listed here were probably only a small part of a substantial military retinue accompanying Hadrian. Specific buildings/stables identifying their quarters have not been uncovered or located by inscription, however, Kennedy mentions an ‘unexplained fortification wall on the hill south of the city walls which may relate to an encampment’ related to the visit.15

Approximately 460 meters from the triumphal arch lay the southern entrance to Gerasa, a tri-gate complex much in the same order architecturally as the Arch, though on a smaller scale.17 The width of the middle gate opening is 4.20 m. and the openings to the right and left measure, 2.32 m each. Pavilions of similar type and dimension are positioned on either side of the gate structure. The exact date of the Gate is unknown. An inscription found on the lintel of the Northwest Gate dated 75/76 C.E.,18 has been traced to the original, single-gate opening of the South Gate, and due to its strong connections with the Arch, its monumental tri-gate form is commonly assumed to be built in 129-30. As Barghouti showed, ‘the approach to the Plaza from the South Gate was through ‘a wide platformed staircase’ for pedestrians and ‘by a sloped paved road through the minor western entrance’ for vehicles, as was evidenced by wheel grooves in the stone paving.19

In addition to being a place of passage, the arch was a platform for displaying decorative statuary on its attic, podia at the foot of piers, and in the rectangular and semi-circular niches. The architectural elements of full free-standing, half and quarter columns integrated with pilasters and pier walls, gave the arch a scaenae frons effect identical to that of the facades of the Nymphaeum, the street architecture of the Quadrifrons and Tetrapylaea, and the South and North Theatres. The monumental rectangular mass of highly decorative stonework, presenting three passages on a flat plane isolates the arch as an axis of passing through, an anticipatory element, containing architectural messages defining and expressing city life.

16

J. Seigne, ‘Recherches sur le Sanctuaire de Zeus a Jerash, Rapport Preliminaire’ JAP 1981-83, Amman, 1986, 47-59. It is Jacques Seigne’s theory that Gerasa was not enclosed by a defensive wall until the late second/early third century CE. Instead there consisted a series of arches: two by Hadrian (Hadrian’s Arch and the South Gate) and one by Trajan, to be remodelled later into the North Gate. He points out that the finished masonry on the sides of the North Gate indicates that it had stood for a long period before the walls that were attached to it. 17 Detweiler op. cit, 149-152. 18 C.B. Wells, op. cit, inscr. #50; p. 397-8. 19 Asem Barghouti, ‘Urbanization of Palestine and Jordan in Hellenistic and Roman Times’, SHAJ I, (Amman, 1982), 226-7, Area E.

12

Henri Stierlin, The Roman Empire, London: TASCHEN, 2002, 188. Wells, op. cit, inscr. #144, p. 425. mentioned in Fergas Millar, The Roman Near East, Cambridge: Harvard, 1993, 106. 14 Wells, op. cit, inscr. #30, p. 390. translated in David Kennedy, The Roman Army in Jordan, London: Council for British Research in the Levant, 2000, 114-15. 15 David Kennedy, The Roman Army in Jordan, 114. 13

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12.3 Restored exterior of South Gate of Gerasa from the South.

from the approaching road. The North and South Gates are set at very similar angles suggesting a similar architectural planning. J. Seigne20 described the development of the South Gate from a simple opening, c. 50 CE, to a single gate c. 70 CE, then the three-passage Gate of 130 CE. Progressively, various commercial, mason-carpenter shops were built between the entrance and the south retaining wall of the Zeus temenos. This area is in two levels, with the upper used for trades and shops (identified by the recovery of many iron tools, a wheel and anvil) and the lower ‘basement’, partly excavated into the rock, was most likely for olive oil production as an olive press (the screw type) was discovered in excavation.21 Fronting these shops, a columned pedestrian passage led to the Oval Plaza. Coin deposits determine the dating of this passage to the late 3rd century. A conflagration22 destroyed this whole area and led to a 4th-century rebuilding (somewhat weakly dated by a single Diocletianic coin (286-306)) in which the pedestrian passage was blocked. A 5th-century military barracks replaced the market centre and continued in use up to early 6th century. 12.4 Seigne, (1985). South Gate entry and shops, 350 CE 20

J. Seigne, ‘Recherches sur le Sanctuaire de Zeus a Jerash, Rapport Preliminaire’, 42-59. 21 Ibid, 90-1. 22 Jacques Seigne, ‘Jerash romaine et byzantine: developpement urbain d’une ville provinciale orientale’, 341. Seigne understands the remains of an oil based conflagration found a short distance west from the South Gate as a sign of destruction by invaders who pillaged and left. This event initiated the effort to construct the massive walls noted by Ammianus Marcellinus IV, 8: 10-13.

The enclosure to the South Gate is inset within the wall itself, allowing the door(s) to swing inward 180 degrees. Detweiler believed that this was done to make better use of the defensive nature of the towers and bastions to each side. He estimated the Northern Gate angle of entry was at 18 degrees 63

SPATIAL AND RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE LATE ANTIQUE POLIS

12.5 North Gate Drawing

12.6 North Gate, South Elevation (12.4), Restored and North Gate Ground Plan (12.5) by A.H. Detweiler, Kraeling (1938), Plates XIX and XVII, respectively.

The blocking of the pedestrian passage in the early 4th century would seem to portend a shift away from Classical forms from the fourth century onwards. No monumental civic architecture is known to have been built after this period. The closure of the pedestrian opening at the South Gate redirected all traffic through the three South Gate openings

to the Oval Plaza. Threats from the Persians who Galerius fought in major campaigns from 296 to his death in 311,23

23

Fergas Millar, The Roman Near East, 31 BC--337 AD, Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1993, 177-9.

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CHAPTER 12: CLASSICAL BUILDINGS: WALL AND GATES and the raiding Saracens, against whom Diocletian armed Damascus, may have motivated the closure.24

embellishment of Gerasa’s patron goddess, and the North Decumanus area.29

THE NORTH GATE AND OTHER GATES

Lesser-known gates existed where the North and South Decumanus streets passed through the walls heading for roads taking one north-west to Pella, Scythopolis, and the Mediterranean coast, and south to Philadelphia. Parapetti30 believes there to have been a fifth gate to the southeast where the South Decumanus would exit if had extended that far. An eastern exit would be highly likely as the major city of Bostra lay less than twenty kilometres in that direction.

The North Gate was constructed in 115 C.E. under the Legate C. Claudius Severus who also built the road from Pella to Gerasa. 25 Like the South Gate, the North Gate was rebuilt near or over an earlier one of a single opening. The newer gate retained the single entrance design with an opening of 5.4 meters and a restored height of 9.15 meters. As mentioned above, the north face of the gate swung out at an 18 degree angle from the south face creating an obtuse angle of entry, yet allowing a consistent width of passageway. The architectural discrepancy of possessing unequal surface areas on opposite sides of the entry was compensated for in stone decorations. This was neither the first, nor the last time where trim and decoration were to veil dimensional offsets, and/or construction errors. The bays on the north face were widened, as were the niches to create optical uniformity. Niches decorated the interior sides and appear to act as imitation side entrances, on the north and south exterior faces. Other examples of this are to be found at Palmyra and Ephesus26 where, in all cases, streets came together at obtuse angles. Detweiler calls where the highway meets the entrance, ‘a fitting terminus both for the city’s Cardo and for the new highway from Pella which the legate had built’.27 Perhaps a more fitting solution to building an offset gate of this nature would have been simply to turn the road so that it would meet the line of the Cardo without having to compensate for a change in angles at the gate. A brief study of the North Gate drawing by Detweiler (Plan XVII in Kraeling) shows the angled transition occurring within the gate enclosure, telling of a finesse and sensitivity to the place of transition from exterior to interior space.

THE CITY WALLS

Despite the fact that the North Gate opened toward the Birketein Theatre/Pool complex, as well as the direct exit for the highway to Pella, Scythopolis, and Gadara, it is much smaller than the South Gate and likely reflects the heavy civic activity at the southern end of the city. The construction of the Arch, the monumentalising of the South Gate and remodelling of the Zeus Temple in the first half of the 2nd century focused civic attention on that area.28 The expansion of the North Gate came during the mid second century, as civic focus shifted to the central sector of the city for the

12.7 City wall by South Gate, Gerasa Archives, Yale University Art Gallery.

The only historical reference to Gerasa’s Roman walls is from by Ammianus Marcellinus: This region (Arabia) also has, in addition to some towns, great cities, Bostra, Gerasa, and Philadelphia, all strongly defended by mighty walls (XIV, 8. 13). The ‘mighty walls’ is perhaps an exaggeration. The remains of city wall foundations provide a complete outline of the city in the shape of a polygon, roughly as long as it is wide, with long

24

Ibid, 184. See Detweiler, op. cit, 117-123, on the gate and C.B. Wells, op. cit, inscrs: #56-7, p. 401. 26 Detweiler, op. cit, 117. 27 Ibid, 118. 28 David Kennedy, ‘The Identity of Roman Gerasa’, 57; J. Seign, ‘A L’Ombre de Zeus et D’Artemis: Gerasa de la Decapole’, Aram 4, (1992), 338. 25

29

J. Seigne, ‘A L’Ombre de Zeus et D’Artemis: Gerasa de la Decapole’, 338, The long feud between worshippers of Artemis and Zeus is an imaginative, but perhaps somewhat unlikely explanation of the urban form. 30 Roberto Parapetti, ‘The Architectural Significance of the Sanctuary of Artemis at Gerasa’, SHAJ I, Ammon, 1982, 255-260.

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12.8 Painting of Gerasa by Berry looking east over the Oval Plaza at fragment of city wall. Bankes Collection, Dorchester History Centre.

Such a chronology would be similar to those of the walls of cities such as Jerusalem, Scythopolis, Neopolis, and Caesarea.

straight sections pierced by at least five gates and 101 square towers spaced approximately 20 metres apart. An early 19th century painting by Berry, from the Bankes Collection, portrays elements of wall structure no longer in existence.

The final version of Gerasa’s walls indicates that they were approximately 3 metres thick with the towers being 6 metres square, not dimensions that would withstand a protracted siege. The area encompassed by the walls seems extensive compared to the surviving remains, especially to the eastern side of the Chrysorhoas. Kennedy points to the great number of Christian churches on the west bank, suggesting that they were taking advantage of open space within the walls.

The circuit was originally dated to the Flavian period from an inscription to the Syrian governor L. Ceionius Commodus (78-81 CE) found at the North-West gate. 31 The dating has been recently questioned since the inscription may relate only to an isolated element of wall rather than a complete circuit. Recent excavations have suggested a second century or later for their completion.32 A clay water pipe found during excavation of a portion of the west wall close to the South Decumanus, along with late Roman domestic debris and pottery suggest a date no earlier than the second century for that part of the wall. Seigne, from a study of the South Gate area, argues for a refortification of Gerasa’s defences at the end of the third or start of the fourth century CE.33 This is attested by an inscription dated to this period:

An early analysis of Gerasa, to this point, indicates a strong emphasis on a linear transition, through arched forms, into increasingly more intimate civic space. Each transition was monumentalised and inscribed, indicating the common practice of local patronage leading the development of civic pride. Initial impressions of Hadrian’s Arch standing in space presents the concept that citizens were more interested in presenting spaces than walls. The arch was not so much a gate than it was a sculpture standing on a vertical plane. The skewed angle of entry through the main South and North Gates will be seen to be a microcosm of civic movement throughout the city. Their lack of efficient, straight-linearity emphasizes the break between town and countryside; nature and society, or in spatial terms: outside and inside. Directional change involved spatial change in social orientation. Evidences that the city walls were a later development for Gerasa presents a growing concern for defence during the Late Empire. If Jacques Seigne’s theory is correct, Gerasa had survived several centuries without them, their gates unconnected to walls, miniature versions of (in both concept and reality with) the Arch. For much of Gerasa’s lifespan, defence was not a priority. The remains of their foundations indicate that they were not massive but more aesthetic architecturally, keeping in line with the ornamental nature of the gates and the overall master-plan of Greco-Roman Gerasa.

Ἐπὶ τοῦ Κυρίου μου Φλ(αουίου) Ἀνατολίου τοῦ μεγαλοπ(ρεπεστάτου) στρατηλάτου και ὐπάτου καὶ ἐπὶ Φλ(αουίου) Σιμπλικίου τοῦ λαμπρ(οτάτου κόμητος ἀνοικοδομήθη ἠ πύλη καὶ τὸ τεἴχος· Under my lord Flavius Anatolius, the most magnificent commander and consul, and under Flavius Simplicius the clarissimus (local magistrate) count, the gate (?) and the wall were built.34

31

C.B. Wells, op. cit, inscr. #50; pp. 397-8. Ina Kehrberg and John Manley, ‘Jerash City Walls Project (JCWP), AJA 107 (2003), 458-9. 33 Jacques Seigne, ‘Recherches sur le sanctuaire de Zeus a Jerash, Rapport preliminarie’, 47-59. 34 C.B. Wells, op. cit, inscr: #273, p. 467. The wall fortification work of Bostra and Gerasa was likely that of Anatolius’ effort to strengthen the entire East against an impending major Persian offensive as there were already clashes at that time. Again, I think it is over-reaching to assume the Persians came as far south as Gerasa until 611-614 by King Khosrow II. 32

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13.1 The Oval Plaza at Gerasa looking south toward the South Gate.

THE OVAL PLAZA

incline.1 The descriptor “oval” is deceptive; a more accurate term would be “elliptical” for the west bend is more to a true oval curve while the eastern bend is more elongated, which leads to a north-south narrowing of the oval. The northeast temenos wall of the Zeus Temple interrupts the oval pattern by slashing it off at an angle that is directed towards the Southern Gate. Its dimensions are over 80 meters at its widest point and 90 meters long making Gerasa the possessor of the largest existing and best known of oval fora. Other plazas of this type were situated at the southwest entrance to Palmyra, the western entrance to Bosra, Bostra, and the Damascus Gate to Jerusalem and at Ashkelon, both known from

The Oval Forum or Plaza (Piazza) sits approximately 50 meters inside the South Gate to the northwest, up a slight

1

Gerasa’s architecture is virtually a presentation of symmetrical vertical forms. The nature of their rhythmic order is dominated more by open spaces than solid screens. The pillar and architrave repetitively frame the natural and civic worlds. Their continuous visual arrangement enables a coherent spatial language that unites plazas, temples, theatres, and baths together into a single civic element. The plazas set humanity in the midst, if not the centre, of this architectural element. The inhabitants become relational to these forms by standing as vertical elements on a horizontal plane.

C.S. Fisher , ‘Description of the Site’, Gerasa, City of the Decapolis, Carl H. Kraeling, (ed.), New Haven: Yale University Press, 1938, 17. I. Browning, Jerash and the Decapolis, London: Chatto & Windus, 1982, 153-158.

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SPATIAL AND RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE LATE ANTIQUE POLIS

13.2 C.S. Fisher in Kraeling, (1938), Plan XXIV shows the detail of Plaza to Cardo transition through a double arched gateway. Notice post-sixth century commercial/urban structures encroaching upon columned openings on east side of Cardo and the Oval Plaza.

depictions on the Madaba Map. All of these are also located near city gates and at the terminus of colonnaded streets.2

foundations created a level base upon which much of Gerasa’s civic life was oriented.4

The Plaza is lined with evenly spaced Ionic columns set on low blocks behind a continuous two-meter wide sidewalk with kerbs. The tightly set stone pavers that sweep along with the elliptical pattern set by the porticoes and sidewalk presents a highly innovative design executed in superior craftsmanship.3 A ten-meter square limestone podium was situated just off the centre of the Plaza, probably for a statue. The plaza is believed to have been built during the first great expansion of the city during the mid first century CE. It was set over a natural ravine depression that existed between Camp Hill and the Zeus Temple. The plaza’s artificial

Four pillar bases at the north end of the west colonnade were supports for a gateway that once spanned the Cardo where it entered the forum. It has been deduced that the pier sizes were not capable of supporting the loads necessary for a single eleven-meter opening and it has been reconstructed as threegate entry, a Hadrian’s Arch and South Gate in miniature.

4

Diary of Clarence S. Fisher, Jerash, 1931, Yale University Art Gallery, Gerasa Archives. He was the first to come to this conclusion on April 7, when after excavating 5 metres on the south and north ends, they had not reached the natural soil level. On April 9th, after almost 10 meters, natural rock was reached, measurements were taken and the holes filled in. See also A.-M. Rasson, J. Seign. ‘Une Citerne Byzantino-Omeyyade sur le Sanctuaire de Zeus’, Syria 66, 1989, 118. which shows the topographical development of the area before construction to the Oval Plaza and Zeus Temple after 170 CE.

2

Warrick Ball, Rome and the East, London: Routledge, 2000, 297. Warrick Ball, op. cit, 297, describes the Oval Plaza as ‘one of the great masterpieces of ancient urban architecture’.

3

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CHAPTER 13: CLASSICAL STRUCTURES II: PLACES OF CONGREGATION AND PASSAGE

THE COLONNADED STREETS:

established later in the third century CE. Yon, in his study of Palmyra’s urban centre,7 argues that Palmyra’s elite used the street first as a type of religious architecture, linking commercial buildings to temple temenai. Later, this relationship morphed into a shopping facility that blended commerce with cult. Monumental arcades were, thus, not restricted to sanctuaries. The aristocracy used the basic monumental form of the continuous colonnade to control (symbolically) the wider civic space; the staple of the sanctuary and agora, now adapted to the street.

The freestanding ionic portico of the Plaza connects morphologically and architecturally to the colonnaded streets. It is commonly accepted that the colonnades facilitated commercial activities and thus they can be seen as functioning as a linear agora. There is archaeological evidence of permanent shops operating within column bays on the western and south-western sides of the Cardo, between the Macellum and Cathedral entrance. From the Cathedral to just beyond the Artemis Propylaea, the shops were set back from the porticoes and integrated into building entrances reminiscent of the facades standing today at the ruins of Apamaea. It is yet to be determined whether the Ionic porticoes north of the Propylea Plaza on either side of the Cardo, possessed shops. Today they appear to have run clear of any support buildings past the North Quadrifrons and the West Baths to the North Gate. The absence of remains, however, does not necessarily mean there was nothing there in antiquity, but the absence supports Kennedy’s theory (above) that there were large areas of undeveloped space within city walls. If this were the case, long stretches of columned architraves stood alone on Gerasa’s landscape.

Kevin Butcher in Roman Syria sees their meaning as lying not in aesthetics, but as vertical stone-soldiers in the manoeuvring for civic-political power.8 The Oval Plaza and street colonnades become settings (a type of passive-aesthetic battlefield) for the struggle for control of civic space between public and private interests. The continuous portico kept the city-space open and provided access, while the privatecommercial strategy was to appropriate and crowd them for financial profit. The business adage, ‘location is everything,’ was seemingly applied then as it does today. They were functional ‘screen(s)’, vertical planes that kept private use set back and somewhat hidden from the street while establishing the priority of civic space. If shops and vendors’ wares spilled out onto the streets, it would be seen as an invasion of public space. The streets were, in Butcher’s words, a ‘medium for ceremonial assertions of power by a highly co-ordinated social hierarchy’. The uniformity of continuous vertical column and architrave forming a plane of transparent screens are seen as beautiful fences for a more stern social management, an innocent-looking foreground in the battle over the most highly valued space in Gerasa.

Despite evidences of the columned street being ubiquitous throughout much of the East, their function and symbolism has been the subject of some debate. Segal argues that not until the Roman period do ‘we find that the column begins to serve as a decorative component by itself’.5 Earlier Classical and Hellenistic architectural practices demanded that a column act purely as a vertical support. However, by the 2ndcentury, the library of Hadrian at Athens and the street parallel to the northern wall of the Severan basilica at Lepcis Magna show the use of columns for purely aesthetic purposes. Warwick Ball believes that the design had a practical function in that it allowed the covering of the streets during the summer months with either temporary awnings during summer months or with a more substantial wood truss system spanning the entire street.6 He demonstrates the impractical nature of roofed sidewalks at Gerasa and Petra, a suggestion made popular by the depiction of roofed sidewalks in Jerusalem illustrated on the Madaba Mosaic.

Butcher argues that built form frames both action and representation. In this case, it is accomplished through the ability of the ‘group’ to act in constructing the streets, but also in representing the city through the streets. The collective action of the civic authorities of Gerasa can be seen, through the theoretical lenses of Arendt, Dovey, and Kennedy, as a means of controlling behaviour. Instead of enforcing rigid laws backed by martial compliance, they opted for a ‘softer’ approach of applying the beauty of an architectural feature.

Unique to the civic streets of Palmyra was its Transverse Colonnade which can be seen in connection to the religious buildings of the city: all epigraphy involving it pertains to religious matters as it ran through an area rich in temples. The Great Colonnade, which extended from the Sanctuary of Bel across the entire city, intersected the Transverse Colonnade at a corner possessing a number of funerary temples. It is certain that shops were rented out along the entire way including the construction of workshops

The concept of architectures of control brings to the fore French philosopher Michel Foucault’s argument in Discipline relating to ‘defensive’ or ‘disciplinary and Punish9 architecture’ against ‘undesirable’ behaviour within prison systems, based on British social philosopher, Jeremy 7

J.-B. Yon, ‘Evergetism and urbanism in Palmyra’, Recent Research In LateAntique Urbanism, Luke Lavan (ed.), Journal of Roman Archaeology, Supplementary Series 42, Portsmouth, 2001, 176-8. 8 Kevin Butcher, Roman Syria and the Near East, London: British Museum Press, 2003, 247-8. 9 Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Penal System, London: Penguin, 1991.

5 Arthur Segal, From Function to Monument, Urban Landscapes of Roman Palestine, Syria and Provincia Arabia, Oxbow Monograph 66, Oxford, 1997, 10. 6 Warwick Ball, op. cit, 271-2.

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13.3 The South Decumanus facing east toward modern Jarash.

13.4 Street architecture along the Cardo showing fountain niches and inset steps to pedestrian sidewalks.

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13.5 North (Ionic) section of Cardo viewed through the North Quadrifrons.

Bentham’s design of the Panopticon or the Inspection House (1791). The Panopticon was a spatial concept where all prisoners could be watched without their knowledge, creating in Bentham’s words a "sentiment of an invisible omniscience". The open spaces, curvatures and octagonal geometries represented throughout Gerasa’s Greco-Roman architectural landscape (with exception: the residence and synagogue) may find relational points to Bentham and Foucault’s concepts of public control. The streets and monuments contain elements of the theatre’s scanea frons back drop, as citizens simultaneously become actors and audience on a civic stage. Everywhere there are clear peripheral lines of vision; there does not seem to be any corners with edges or alleyways for small groups to meet in secret. Curvatures represented in theatres, hippodrome, baths, plazas and intersections create an unintentional opportunity for self-reconnaissance: the unconscious act of seeing and being seen. Similarly, Hillier and Hansen observed human behaviours in the dual nature of axial and curvature forms in modern civic environments: Convex and axial organisation of space: access strangers to the system. Strangers police the space while inhabitants police the strangers. Groupings of inhabitant dwellings alone expect a self-policing environment.10

13.6 Bentham’s Panopticon, Image from Wikimedia Commons

10

Hillier and Hansen, The Social Logic of Space, Cambridge: Cambridge, 1984, 18.

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SPATIAL AND RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE LATE ANTIQUE POLIS

13.7 Stair-stepped architrave along Cardo, just south of the Macellum entrance.

with stone, seemingly a gesture against an architectural social system, literally and forever closing a door upon a pre-existing order.

To Arendt this ‘soft’, co-operative control of social space has nothing to do with the autonomous individual but belongs to the ‘group’. The hidden power of the street becomes more of a collective effort in conjunction with government.

The colonnaded streets formed rectangular planes made from repetitive parallel vertical- horizontals pierced by a multiplicity of viewing-spaces.

Power is actualized only where word and deed have not parted company, where words are not empty and deeds not brutal, where words are not used to veil intentions but to disclose realities, and deeds are not used to violate and destroy but to establish relations and create new realities.11

Two columns establish a transparent spatial membrane by the visual tension between their shafts. Three or more columns can be arranged to define the corners of a volume of space. This space does not require a larger spatial context for its definition, but relates freely to it. The edges of the volume of space can be visually reinforced by articulating its base plane and establishing its upper limits with beams spanning between the columns or with an overhead plane. A repetitive series of column elements along its perimeter would further strengthen the definition of the volume.12

The grandeur and beauty of this imposition of architectural order on the community (ironically, an order which arose from the community) gave the symbols (the colonnaded streets) a peculiar power, and simultaneously, a representative quality. The Classicism of the city could be symbolised by the streets, which have certainly be seen as the markers of Classical order by modern explorers and modern social theorists who relate its images to modern contexts. One of the defining signals of the end of the Classical city was the collapse of the spatial compliance with the colonnade bay: as civic controls vanished, gaps between colonnades were filled

The columns, architrave, and sidewalk offer a ‘spatial transparency’ that creates a spatial ‘volume’ sufficiently translucent to frame scenes of city life. Screens are solid forms that enclose to create separate units of meaning, but porticoes

11 H. Arendt, The Human Condition, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958, 200; also quoted in Kim Dovey, Framing Places, Mediating Power in Built Form, London: Routledge, 1999, 51.

12

Francis D. K. Ching, Architecture, Form, Space and Order, New York: Wiley & Sons, 1996, 122-3.

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13.8 East to west view (bottom to top) of linear Sacred Way over the North Bridge and steps up and through the Propylaea Plaza, across the Cardo, up the seven flights of steps to the intermediate altar/terrace and up into the Artemis Temenos Plaza to the Great Altar.

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SPATIAL AND RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE LATE ANTIQUE POLIS are not solid walls; they create picture frames connecting into a gallery of civic landscape scenes. The horizontal elements of sidewalk and architrave connect and give coherence to the frames in a continuous coherent stream that can be viewed from either side of the architrave. With this dual (inside-out and outside-in) perspective, the colonnade creates an interactive film strip of civic life, images of seemingly disassociated activities of daily life, gradually finding coherency with the next and the following until a single social image takes shape. This film strip fully integrated the monumental structures of the city. The architrave stairstepped to taller columns to mark elevation changes and merged into monumental entrance structures, before returning to the street and continuing through the city. Morning and evening sunlight would cast long portico patterns of shade across the street, while at mid-day, when the sun was at its highest, citizens would find cover under its (covered) architrave, and facades built around intersections of tetrapylae, and propylaea. Thus the patterns of light and shade would further configure the streets, emphasising civic unity even through its regular division.

youths. The parade went along in a line, then, with the sacred things and torches carried up front, and the baskets and incense; next, horses and hounds and hunting equipment, and military, but mostly for peacetime. Each of the girls was fixed up to please her young admirer. And the leader of the girls’ group was Anthia, daughter of Megamedes and Euippe, local people. Now Anthia’s beauty was much to be wondered at, and she much exceeded the other girls. People of Ephesus had often worshipped her for Artemis, seeing her in the shrine. Now, too, at the sight of her the crowds raised a shout, expressing various reactions, some astonished, proclaiming her the goddess, others, that she was another woman, made by the goddess; and everyone offered prayers and knelt to her, and considered her parents blessed…When the parade was over, they had reached the sanctuary, where the whole crowd would offer sacrifice; and the order of the procession dissolved…15 Alongside the human processants came animals, draped with garlands, destined for sacrifice creating a carnival-scene of Processions swirling sound, movement and colour.16 mobilised the social architecture of the city in the street architecture and connected street with temple and theatre and, ultimately, with the social order.

Such civic unity was reinforced by ceremonial procession. Our knowledge of Greek-Eastern processionals is slight.13 Gerasa’s ‘processional way’ had been identified solely through architectural interpretation. While it cannot be determined whether this was a route of procession or whether there were other, more or less frequently used routes, the monumental nature of its propylaea and staircases clearly defines it as an architectural channel for a significant segment of Gerasa’s population.14

THE MACELLUM17 During the 1981-83 expedition, a complex was uncovered that Dr. Barghouti claimed to be the ‘real Forum of Gerasa’.18 Its 49 metre wide front is situated on the west side of the Cardo, between the Oval Plaza and approximately 75 metres south of the South Tetrakionion. Two narrow, north and south lanes flanked the monument and entered the Cardo at 90 degrees. An exploratory excavation of ‘Area D’ had uncovered a monumental seven metre wide portico of sixteen Corinthian columns, four of which, centred in front of a ten and a half metre wide triple gate. Behind the portico and on either exterior side of the gate were four bays believed to be shops. A geometrically patterned mosaic, of white and red tiles, was found on the northern section of the portico in front of the last two shops. Entry through the front gate led into a vestibule of two columns, then into an octagonal court

It is conjectured that Gerasa’s Sacred Way originated in the eastern residential quarter, crossed the central bridge over the Chryorhoas River, passed through the Propylaea Plaza and up the Artemis Temple staircases to its several plateaus bearing sacrificial altars. Processions in antiquity were generated, and financed first and foremost, by the aristocratic elite. Xenophon of Ephesus’ Ephesian Tales (1.2.2-3) describes what is commonly believed to be a typical pagan religious procession. The local Artemis festival was in swing, from the city to the shrine—a mile’s distance. All the unmarried local girls must join the procession, dressed up richly, along with the youths (ephebes), who were of the same age as Abrokomes. He was about sixteen and was joined to the ephebes, and carried the first objects in the procession. There was a great throng of local folk and visitors to see the sight; for it was customary on that holiday to pick out fiancés for the girls, and girls for the

15 Pausanius, Ephesian Tales 1.2.2-3. Quoted in R. MacMullen and E. Lane (eds.) Paganism and Christianity, 100-425 CE, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992, 49. 16 S.R.F. Price. Rituals and Power, The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor, Cambridge: Cambridge, 1984, 110-11. Price mentions the rarity of first source eye-witness accounts that are available for us to understand what actually occurred during a procession and festival. Price also mentions the carrying of images during processions as depicted on coins, p. 189-90. 17 Manuel Martin-Bueno, ‘The Macellum in the Economy of Gerasa’, SHAJ IV, Amman, 1992, 315-19; M. Martin-Bueno, ‘Notes Preliminaires sur Le Macellum de Gerasa’, Syria LXVI , Paris, 1989; Barghouti, SHAJ I, Amman, 1982, 223-226; F. Zayadine, JAP I, Amman, 1986, 10.; Alexandra Uscatesca and Manuel Martin-Bueno, ‘The Macellum of Gerasa (Jerash, Jordan): From a Market Place to an Industrial Area’, BASOR 307, (1997), 67-88.. 18 Ansem Barghouti, ‘Urbanization of Palestine and Jordan in Hellenistic and Roman Times’, SHAJ I, Amman, 1986, 226.

13

The topic of processions will be discussed in greater detail during the Artemis Temple section and, in particular, Guy Rogers, The Sacred Identity of Ephesos. Zaidman and Pantel. Religion in the Ancient Greek City, Cambridge: Cambridge, 1989, 105. 14 Roberto Parapetti, ‘The Architectural Significance of the Sanctuary of Artemis at Gerasa’, SHAJ I, Amman, 1982, 255-60.

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13.9 Footprint of the Macellum. Main entry onto Cardo is below facing east.

Martin-Bueno states that the Macellum was typically a fish and meat market, but in the case of Gerasa, it used for a broader purpose as a general retail centre. The Macellum had a very elaborate Cardo entry and interior but externally was almost completely composed of rather non-descript stalls. North and south doorways allowed for the free flow of traffic through the building. Though it stood independent from other buildings, it was fully integrated with the Cardo, South Theatre, and two other plazas (Oval and South Tetrakionion) which were both also retail centres. The discovery of a carved stone supporting leg for a mensa, a table typically used for money changing and commercial transactions further attested the site’s commercial use.20

with semi-circular exedra, ten metres in diameter, attached to the s-e, s-w, n-e, and n-w corners. The court was surrounded by two concentric peristyle octagons consisting of approximately thirty-six Corinthian columns. A fountain in the shape of a Greek cross formed an axial focal point. Between the four-corner exedra were rectangular shop spaces. This lavish monument has since come to be known as the macellum. Its building is dated by two inscriptions, a late fountain dedication inscription to Septimus Severus’ wife, Julia Domna (193-211), and a donor inscription naming Tiberius Julius Julianus Alexandros (125-127). 19 The use of Corinthian columns, typical of the Cardo expansion, would also suggest a mid-second-century date.

20

Ibid, 316, suggests that it could be a sacellum (sacred space) due to its architectural uniqueness and location between the Zeus and Artemis Temples

19

M. Martin-Bueno, ‘Notes Preliminaires sur Le Macellum de Gerasa’, Syria LXVI, Paris, 1989, 194-7.

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13.10 Fount in the centre of the Macellum court.

The Macellum reached its final form in the fifth and sixth centuries when additional shops were added to the south side, filling all available wall space. In the sixth and seventh centuries most of the shops became enclosed and turned over to industrial sites: archaeologists have uncovered a furnace for iron manufacture was discovered along with metal objects such as knives, hooks, sickles, chains, nails, hammers, etc, a dying vat and a lime kiln. Further, graffiti refer to: Marinos the Blacksmith’, ‘the potters’, the ‘merchants’ and to a guild (?) of ‘Macedonians’. Martin-Bueno sees the site as a ‘Roman food court’.21 Barghouti called it the possible ‘real forum of Gerasa’.22 However one names the building, the physical evidence is clear that, over the Macellum’s functional lifespan, it was an open-air, monumental retail-manufacturing centre.

Triumphal Arch, Hippodrome, South Gate entry, Zeus Temple, South Theatre, the Oval Plaza, and Macellum, taken in their entirety, create an architectural anticipation in the process of reaching the central focal point of the Artemis Temple complex and its propylaea. The two great Roman baths and the Nymphaeum magnified the soothing qualities of water, an ‘unsung’ asset vital to Gerasa’s survival. Fountains also existed in the North Theatre entry, North Quadrifrons and Cardo street architecture. It was a companion to almost every known monument in the city. Water was a quiet bonding agent that threaded its way through Gerasa, working its medicinal treatment on the populace before exiting through street drains to the Chrysorhoas and then through the city walls. What are studied and described as separate architectural features may become a contemporaneous ensemble, made coherent through liquid movement and geometric echoes; a single unit for social cohesion setting the rhythm of civic pace.

ARCHITECTURAL ECHOES OF GERASA In the Macellum, we have another architectural feature, among many in Gerasa, where function is eclipsed by imaginative inspiration. Colonnades, curving lines, and the sound of water (typical of Gerasa’s character in the first three centuries CE) would have made each section of the city a pleasurable experience. Travelling from the south, the

Of the repertoire of geometric shapes present at Gerasa, the octagon received particular attention from builders and artisans over centuries. The geometric form consists of two concentric octagons (or in other applications, one substituted by a circle) was likely configured by the procedure illustrated in the star diagram.

21

A. Uscatesca, Manuel Martin-Bueno. ‘The Macellum of Gerasa: From a Market Place to an Industrial Area’, BASOR 307, 1997, pp. 67-88. 22 Asem Barghouti, op. cit, 226. Of course, scholars may have different criteria for identifying an agora. One could think that an agora should be an administrative-retail centre or believe that an agora was just a retail centre. This would clearly affect the way one names archaeologically identified structures.

The design could be produced by Roman surveying methodologies. First a cross-axis was drawn through a desired omphalos (centre-point) and a circle scribed around the desired perimeter, creating an outer ambulatory. Next, two internal squares were drawn by squaring 90 degrees off the 76

CHAPTER 13: CLASSICAL STRUCTURES II: PLACES OF CONGREGATION AND PASSAGE

13.11 Star diagram from John Wilkinson, ‘Architectural Procedures in Byzantine Palestine’, Levant XIII (1981), 156-172.

13.12 Star diagram superimposed over the Macellum.

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Centralised church at Gadara (Umm Qais).

Star diagram over S. Peter’s Church, Capernaum.

The Mt. Gerizim centralised church from Wilkinson, (1981). 13.13 Centralized churches at Gerizim, Capernaum, and Gadara.

axis and whose corners meet with the inner and outer circles. Over the next 600 years and within a sixty km. radius of the Macellum, this design was used at St. Peter’s Church in Capernaum, shown above, and the Mount Gerizim Church, and the Dome of the Rock.23 An almost exact copy of the

Macellum appears in the central church at Gadara (Umm Qais). The octagon remained a constant theme, not only in Palestine, but throughout Gerasa’s history. The octagonal concept was translated in new ways into its 6th century ecclesiastical forms. The polygonal external apses of St. Theodore’s and St. John’s churches (see diagrams at end of chap. 16) were essentially octagonal halves, and St. John’s

23

John Wilkinson, ‘Architectural Procedures in Byzantine Palestine’, Levant XIII (1981), 156-172.

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13.14 Diagram of mosaic in the Propylaea Diaconia, Kraeling, (1938), Plate LXII.

simplistic terms, was used to preserve a square’s ratio of its sides while being able to change the object’s size. Whether being increased or decreased in dimension, the original proportion of the first shape is preserved. In this environment, change does not affect proportion (the pleasing relation between the parts of the whole). Continuity is allowed to exist in shapes while under transformation.

centralised design was likely achieved by a similar diagramming (though with the square containing the circle without creating additional lines to produce an inner octagon). The mosaic floor patterns in The Prophet’s and Procopius Churches are an example of an application of the circle, square and diamond in order to form an octagon containing a circle.24 The Diaconia mosaic in the Propylaea Church (Plate LXII) and the nave of St. George (Plate LXXI) also used an octagon defined by a ring of interwoven circles and a complex weaving of lines.25 The pervasive use of a centralised focal point adds to the curious interaction of human perceptions and geometric forms.

This principle was applied by Donald and Carol Watts to the overall plan of Gerasa to answer specific questions concerning its civic ordering and placement of Classical architectural sites.28 They determined a ‘planning datum’ for Gerasa as a square consisting of three perimeter streets29and an east-west

GERASA AND THE SACRED CUT 28

Donald J. Watts and Carol Martin Watts, ‘The Role of Monuments in the Geometric Ordering of the Roman Master Plan of Gerasa’, The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 51, No. 3 (Sept., 1992), 306-314. 29 The north-south sides consist of the North Decumanus and a parallel line running through the arch north of the Oval Plaza. The east-west sides were avenues established west of the Artemis Temple temenos and along the east bank of the Chrysorhoas. With the exception of the North Decumanus, the remaining lines are somewhat manipulated, as neither the streets behind the Artemis Temple nor east bank of the Chrysorhoas have been confirmed through excavation. The square is not an exact for the North Decumanus does not break at 90 degrees off the Cardo Maximus. Thus, technically the Watt’s theoretical ‘square’ is questionable, yet their results are astoundingly accurate. If the establishment of the north-south double-squares through performing the ‘Sacred Cut’ were to correspond with J. Seigne’s theory of Gerasa’s urban development, chronologically, the southern square would be the regulating square established before Hadrian’s visit and the northern square created through this procedure to establish the Artemis cult as the (new?) Axis Mundi of the city.

A diagram of the octagon pattern in mosaic was transferred to paper by C.S. Fisher26 where he wordlessly demonstrated the uniting principle behind the design by a simple diagonal line drawn from an axis of a square through the centre of its opposite side. This procedure comes from a theoretical principle, invented by Greek mathematicians called, in modern terms, ‘The Sacred Cut’.27 The concept, in very 24

F.M. Biebel, ‘Mosaics’, Gerasa, City of the Decapolis, C.H. Kraeling, (ed.), (1938), 337. 25 J.W. Crowfoot, Early Churches in Palestine, London: The British Academy, 1941, 139. 26 Ibid, 125. 27 Sir Thomas Heath, A History of Greek Mathematics, Vol. I, New York: Dover, 1981, 220-230.

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13.15 Diagram by C.S. Fisher of example of Sacred Cut over a mosaic pattern at Gerasa.

13.16 The Watt’s geometric overlay over Gerasa’s topographical map (in Kraeling, (1938)), creating a second square of identical dimension to the south of the upper (datum) square. The typical method of executing the Sacred Cut by creating a diagonal from the northern corner of the datum square through the middle of the southern side illustrates the significance of the layout of Gerasa’s monuments.

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13.17 The Watts’ diagram shows the centre-point of the ‘cut’ line as the ‘axis mundi’ (sacred centre) of the Artemis Cult. This point also appears to generate urban street and Hippodrome dimensions.

The Watts’ have determined that this diagonal, if directionally extended northward and vertically into the cosmological realm, points precisely to the position of the Pole Star, Polaris in the constellation of Ursa Major (the Great Bear).33 Ursa Major was mythically associated with Artemis and her favourite companion, the Arcadian nymph Callisto. Various accounts have her transformed into a bear (by Zeus, Artemis, or Hera) and shot with an arrow by Artemis after Artemis discovered Callisto to be pregnant as a result of being raped by Artemis’ father Zeus.34

parallel line running through the triple arch north of the Oval Plaza. According to their findings, geometric operations based on this ‘regulating square’30 coherently and systematically places Gerasa’s monuments upon the landscape. A diagonal drawn from the north-west corner of the regulating square through the centre of the southern, eastwest line (on its way south to create a southern square of equal dimension) significantly passes through the centre of the Artemis Temple cella (Gerasa’s Axis Mundi?), the South Gate, alongside the east wall of the Hippodrome and through the centre of Hadrian’s Arch.

Despite the extensive geometric calculations and archaeological monuments standing in apparent agreement, their theory lacks the support of inscriptional evidence.35 It is also uncertain whether sacred spaces throughout the Decapolis were oriented to a specific celestial order. However, the implication of the Watt’s findings would mean that the constellation of Ursa Major and the star Polaris could be seen as the heavenly protector and celestial ‘sun’ under which the grommon rod of Gerasa stood determining its sacred centre as the cult of Artemis. Encompassed within the confines of a regulating square, the affects of geometry, cosmology, and myth are spread throughout the entire city imbuing its landscape with sacrality.

The process of further subdividing the regulating doublesquare into two smaller double squares may have had a specific function. Each of the sides of the smaller doublesquares is exactly the interior length of the Hippodrome (244.05 meters).31 If this operation is repeated creating smaller squares, their lengths correspond to the width of two city blocks (‘if measured centreline to centreline of their respective minor streets’).32

30

The Watt’s drew a diagonal from the north-west corner through the centre-point of the southern, east-west line of the regulating square (the precise method of C.S. Fisher on mosaic tile, above) establishing a second (double) square to the south whose area encompassed the South Gate and Theatre, the Hippodrome and Hadrian’s Arch. 31 E.B. Muller, ‘The Hippodrome’, Gerasa, City of the Decapolis, Carl H. Kraeling (ed.), New Haven: Yale University Press, 1938, 87. See discussion of the Hippodrome SIII, 15, below. 32 Donald J. and Carol Martin Watts, op. cit, 313.

33

Donald J. and Carol Martin Watts, op. cit, 313. Hornblower and Spawforth, The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd ed., Oxford: Oxford, 2003, 183, (Artemis); 278, (Callisto). 35 Neither the names of celestial bodies nor Callisto are mentioned in Gerasa’s inscriptions. 34

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13.18 South Tetrapylon by W.E. Merrill in Kraeling (1938).

My attempt to apply the Watt’s sacred cut technique to the church placement of Christian Gerasa was not successful. Churches were, apparently, not placed on Gerasa’s topography with geometrical forethought in-line with a master-plan. However, as stated above, and will be seen below, churches did possess certain geometries that reveal strains of architectural/spatial continuances out of the Classical period. The principle of changing dimension while preserving the essence of proportion will be considered below in the spatial changes occurred during the transition out of the Classical into the Early Christian polis.

piecing a complex church floor mosaic could stand as a microcosm running in sympathy with the overall macrogeometric principles behind Gerasa’s civic plan. It is not known whether, the great Neopythagorean mathematician, musicologist, Nicomachus of Gerasa assisted in orienting the city in this manner. However if the ‘Sacred Cut’ theory is valid, Nichomachus certainly would have been aware of Gerasa’s mathematical basis of urban design over the years spent there in his youth during the early second century.36

If the authors are accurate (or even partially accurate) in that the geometric ordering of Gerasa was based on the application of ‘the Sacred Cut’ in conjunction with the Polaris star, it would establish the overall influence behind the abundant use of geometric expression within the city. Every creative architectural act, from spanning an arc over a gate or street, vaulting a vomitoria roof in a theatre whose type defined the curve, constructing a dome in a bath to

SOUTH TETRAKIONION Approximately one hundred and fifty meters north from the Oval Forum, at the intersection of the South Decumanus, lies 36

The Manual of Harmonics of Nicomachus the Pythagorean, trans. and commentary Flora R. Levin, Grand Rapids: Phanes Press, 1994.

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CHAPTER 13: CLASSICAL STRUCTURES II: PLACES OF CONGREGATION AND PASSAGE construction of the North Theatre in 165/166 when the North Decumanus was fitted with Ionic columns and monumentalised.

the Tetrakionion (four columns), which, as a type, are four decorative podia or raised pavilions carrying four pillars each, centred on a circular plaza. Its date of construction is not known, but it is generally considered to be of the same period as the Cardo’s construction during the mid-to-late second century CE. Centred in the intersection are four podia whose top surfaces are four meters square and 3.3 meters high. Four pillars stood on each podium. The podia are six meters apart and square to the intersecting street axes. The diameter of the plaza is 43.6 meters. There were no physical remains of a crowning entablature but reconstruction drawings have imitated the better preserved structure at Palmyra. Four outer buildings surrounded the North and South Decumanus intersections. They contained three rooms each with semi-circular facades giving shade cover and forming a circular pattern. The street colonnades of the south and central Cardo run into the corners of these buildings adding structural stability to their long lines. A manhole cover accessing the junction of two large underground drains lies in the centre of the paved street between the podia. One of these is the main sewer running up the Cardo as far north as the North Quadrifrons. The other comes down from the South Decumanus evacuating at some point near the South Bridge.

The Quadrifrons and Tetrakionion, though each architecturally unique, fall under the umbrella-definition of tetrapyla.39 A tetra-kionion differs technically from a tetrapylon in that it is essentially freestanding, disconnected from the Cardo’s colonnade system. Civic tetrapyla are believed to have origins in Eastern funerary architecture dating back to the Achaemenids of Persia. The earliest known to have been built in the Roman East was at Antioch, and the Madaba Map portrays tetrapyla at Latakia, Palmyra, Caesarea, Jerusalem, Ashkelon, Gaza, and Nablus. Of this list, only Palmyra’s exist today; together with Gerasa, they are of great architectural importance.40 The architectural significance of these places of congregation and intersection is that they contain a summary of elements of the geometry of space. They were the straight line, the simple and complex curve, the ellipse, the three-point oval, dome, and barrel vault. Seen in this light, the Oval Forum was a complex curve with its southwest bulge dissected by a straight line. The colonnades communicated the spatial perception of the oval up to the level of the pedestrian’s line of sight. The linear Cardo could not be seen until the pedestrian reached the tri-arch gate at the south end of the Cardo. A short distance up the Cardo stood the South Tetrakionion, a rectangular-vertical element centred in a circle, bisected at ninety-degrees within the intersection of the South Decumanus. The axes intersecting at the centre of a square, while surrounded externally by a circular quadrant of structures, created the symmetrical effect of a square circumscribed by a circle. The North Quadrifrons was equally symmetrical to the Tetrakionion and in essence was a dome resting on four arches, a three dimensional hemisphere supported by four linear arcs.

NORTH QUADRIFRONS Approximately 400 meters north of the Tetrakionion, at the intersection of the Cardo and North Decumanus, stands the North Quadrifrons. Similar in concept to the Tetrakionia, the Quadrifrons has, and literally stands for, “four fronts”. Each front carries an arch spanning four podia, again centred in a circular intersection, square to its axes. The interior roof of the Quadrifrons may not have been flat but a rotundadome covering 12 square metres is thought by some to have rested upon its four arched fronts.37 The lower-interior base blocks of the fronts show circular chamfers on their inner corners which enhance its circularity at street level. Fisher describes the intersection as a ‘Janus Quadrifrons’ approximately 12 meters square with four archways 4 meters wide and 8.45 meters high. 38 There were additional freestanding columns on the north and south faces further defining its form as a tetrapylon. The North Quadrifrons was built probably no later than 180 CE as it was standing in alignment with the original-continuous colonnade and thus constructed before the widening of the Cardo to the south. Similarities in style may suggest that it was built during the

Ching describes the architectural necessity for a dominant geometric shape to create and emphasize a spatial centre: Centralized forms require the visual dominance of a geometrically regular, centrally located form, such as a sphere, cone, or cylinder. Because of their inherent centrality, these forms share the self-centring properties of the point and circle. They are ideal as freestanding structures isolated within their context, dominating a point in space, or occupying the centre of a defined field. They can embody sacred or honorific places, or commemorate significant persons or events.41

37

Fisher and Browning believed a dome covered the building. Eric Ball, ‘Part B: The Architecture, 2. The Tetrapylon’, JAP I, Amman, 1986, 388, argues against the idea of a dome, due to the irregularity in pier settings of the columns that would force a dome out of alignment. Arthur Segal, From Function to Monument, 1993, 143, shows it with flat roof in the same design as ones found intact at Laodicea and Tripoli. Importantly, no dome fragments were recovered at the site. 38 C.S. Fisher, op. cit, 16.

39

Warwick Ball, op. cit, 281. Arthur Segal, op. cit, 143. 41 Francis D.K. Ching, Architecture: Form, Space, and Order, 2nd edn., New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1996, 59. 40

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13.19 North Quadrifrons (restored) at the North Decumanus intersection.

In addition to being geometric centres, the building elements discussed above, provided a place for personal gathering, a social hub where two major avenues met. Pedestrians would have had to pick their way around these islands. Their dominance would discourage the chaos of traffic to pause and avoid invading these communal places. In addition to being dominating forms, within spaces of intersection, they importantly possessed the value of symmetry by their alignment with street axes and their own order by organising their separate bases into a unified structure. The four divisions of space created by the placing of the podia would then define these as ‘quad-lateral’ divisions, placed symmetrical to the intersection. Ching notes the importance these places as ‘mediating’ centres uniting path with space creating sensations that encourage social interaction:

through the North Gate would consist of passing through six transition points, each designated by a monumental, highly decorated architectural element. Though seeming strung like precious stones, these must be taken as a homogeneous group acting in concert with each other to create a unified social statement within and about the city.

In pass-by-spaces, the integrity of each space is maintained. The configuration of the path is flexible. Mediating spaces can be used to link the path with the spaces. In pass-through spaces, the path may pass through a space axially, obliquely, or along its edge. In cutting through a space, the path creates patterns of rest and movement within it.42 The effectiveness of the tetrapyla as centres within the space of intersection must be seen in the context of the entire avenue system of entries and exits, doorways and thresholds, contained within the complete Classical corpus of architecture in Gerasa. A continuous-linear 2,100m southnorth journey, beginning with Hadrian’s Arch and exiting 42

Ibid, 264.

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CHAPTER 14 CLASSICAL STRUCTURES III: SPACES OF WORSHIP AND THE TEMPLES OF ZEUS AND ARTEMIS five meters wide, divided by nine landings, set between two massive plinths. In line with these, a final set of ten or more stairs of the same width ended at the Zeus Temple cella. The elevation climb from Forum to Temple is approximately twelve meters. According to Seigne’s scaled drawing, the horizontal distance from the foot of the stairs on the Oval Plaza to the door of the Zeus cella is approximately 95 meters.

As orthogonal verticality brought spatial coherence to Gerasa, cultic symbols and rituals permeated the entire polis. Religious space was not strictly bound behind temenos walls defining particular sacral zones. The syncretism that defined pagan religion was curiously balanced by its external-inclusive treatment of space and people. It was echoed by votive activity happening in its monuments and images standing in street architecture throughout Gerasa.

The Temple is immediately west of the South Gate; its southeast temenos wall almost touches the city wall, making the Zeus Temple the first monumental structure one encounters on entering the city from the south. Dedicatory inscriptions attest work on the Temple in 22/23 C.E. linking to an earlier Hellenistic set of stairs beneath the level of the Oval Forum.6

THE TEMPLE OF ZEUS Worship of Zeus Olympius in Gerasa may have been introduced by Seleucid king Antiochos IV Epiphanes (175164 BCE). He was a devoted follower of the god who had rededicated sites to Zeus originally dedicated to Baal Shamin throughout the East.1 Remains of a Hellenistic worship site have been uncovered under the later Roman altar, in the Zeus Temenos area.2 Its architecture is, according to Ball, Eastern, with an internal plaza within temenos walls to enable ‘audience participation’ as in a type of sacrificial theatre.3 Twenty-one years after the departure of Emperor Hadrian, there was an extensive remodelling of the Temple of Zeus Olympus, 4 which established the shape of the temple as we now have it.5 The temple complex’s second century CE, form consisted of three main terraces, the first reached by a staircase centred in the east face of the Zeus temenos wall, directly across from the termination of the eastern curve of the Oval Plaza’s colonnade. The staircase ended at a columnlined landing whose main doorway opened into a barrel ceiling ambulatory that ran the perimeter of the rectangular temenos. After passing under open arched doorways from the ambulatory into the temenos, it was almost 30 metres to the staircase leading to the upper Temple Plaza. The Temple Plaza was reached by a series of steps approximately twenty-

‘To Good Fortune, to Olympian Zeus for the safety of the Sebastoi (Augusti) and the harmony of the demos, Zabdion son of Aristomachos, having been priest of Tiberius Caesar in year 85 (22/23 CE), gave from his own property for the construction of the temple 1000 drachmai out of piety.’7 Zabdion is a Semitic name, but his father’s name was Greek, hinting at the blending of Eastern and Western cultures.8 As a priest of Tiberius Caesar he represents the imperial cult and professes loyalty to Rome; however, at the same time his support of Olympian Zeus is to a god who is not thoroughly Greek. Kraeling (and more recently, Seigne) suggests that the Zeus Temple was on a site associated with Baal-Shamin.9 Typically, temples of supreme male gods were situated on high topographical places throughout Syria and the Levant.10 The connection of ‘Zeus’, in Gerasa, with Poseidon,11 Sarapis,12 Kronos13 and Helios14 is indicative to the adaptability and synthesis of a supreme being with various perceptions of the divine personality.

1

Carl H. Kraeling, Gerasa, City of the Decapolis, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1938, 31; Jacques Seigne, ‘A L’Ombre de Zeus et D’Artemis: Gerasa de la Decapole,’ ARAM 4: 1&2, (1992), 190. John D. Wineland, ‘Political Structure and Greco-Roman Religions’, ARAM 4, (1992), 336, shows that worship of the god Baal-Bosor was uninterrupted in the villages around Gerasa and Philadelphia. 2 Jaques Seigne, ‘Le sanctuaire de Zeus a Jerash. Elements de chronologie’, Syria 62 (1985), 287-95. 3 Warwick Ball, Rome in the East, London: Routledge, 2000, 325. 4 C.S. Fisher, ‘Description of the Site’, Gerasa, City of the Decapolis, 1938, 1719 5 Jaques Seigne, ‘A l’ombre de Zeus et d’Artemis, Gerasa de la Decapole, ARAM 4, 183-95.; ‘Recherches sur le sactuaire de Zeus a’ Jerash, Rapport preliminaire, JAP I (Amman, 1986), 29-106; also printed in Syria LXI (1989), 117-51; J. Seigne and A.M. Rasson, ‘Une citerne byzantinoomeyyade sur le Sancturaire de Zeus’, JAP II (1989), 117-152.

6

C.B. Wells, ‘The Inscriptions’, Gerasa, City of the Decapolis, Carl H. Kraeling (ed.), New Haven: Yale University Press, 1938, inscr: #2; p. 374. 7 Ibid, inscr: #2; p. 374. 8 Robert O. Fink, ‘Jerash in the First Century A.D.,’ JRS, Vol. 23 1933, 113. 9 Carl H. Kraeling, op. cit, 31; J. Seigne, ‘Recherches sur le Santuaire de Zeus a Jerash’, 41. 10 Avi-Yonah, ‘Carmel and the god of Baalbek’. IEJ, 2, (1952), 120 ff.; Javier Teixidor, The Pagan God, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977, 26. 11 C.B. Wells, op. cit, inscr: #39, p. 392; 12 Ibid, inscrs: #15, 16; pp. 382-3. 13 Ibid, inscr: #26; p. 388. 14 Ibid, inscrs: #15, 16; pp. 382-3; inscr: 195; p. 445.

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14.1 Zeus Temple, Oval Plaza. South Gate, and South Theatre complex.

inscription dated to 69 CE19 records a gift by Theon son of Demetrios, who is called the ‘devotee’ or ‘supplicant’ (ἰκέτης) of Zeus Olympios. A missing piece of this inscription was found by C.C. McCown and specifies the donation as 7,100 drachmas on behalf of Theon’s children (…ὐπέρ τε ἐαυτοῦ

An inscription, discovered in 1985, in the interior of the south doorway to the lower temenos, reveals that the original courtyard was built in the reign of Tiberius in 27/28 CE and claimed Diodoros son of Zebsaos (Zebeidas), Gerasene, was the architect.15 His name, a Greek and Semitic blending, is indicative of local and Hellenistic society and the Zeus temple as architectural type (discussed below). Two decades after Zabdion (quote above), gifts were made by two persons, each described as ‘gymnasiarch’ ‘for the building of the temple of Olympian Zeus’ ‘to the harmony of the people’.16

καὶ τῶν τοῦ Διὸς ἰεροδούλων, αὐτοῦ δὲ τοῦ θέωνος τέκνων, Σκύμνου καὶ ᾿Απρεμιδώρου καὶ ᾿Απτεμισίας ...). An earlier gift of 1,500 drachmas was made for the construction of a propylon (ἰεροδούλων). Fink considers ἰκέτης and ἰεροδούλων to have Eastern orientations and that the Zeus was a Semitic Baal.20 A further inscription pertaining to Theon21 brings the total of his donations to Zeus to 10,000 drachmas, and mentions Zeus Phyxios: Διὸς Φυξίου is defined as ‘a place of refuge or escape’.

Seigne believes the temple was burned in 69/70 CE and there is much evidence of reuse of Hellenistic stone discoloured by flame, in the lower terrace walls.17 The story of its reconstruction is attested by a series of inscriptions.18 An

Together the ‘Theon inscriptions’ read: 15

Jacqies Seigne, ‘Le Sanctuaire de Zeus a Jerash: Elements de Chronologie”, 289. Διόδωροσ Ζεβσαου Γεραοηνὸς ἀρχιτεκτόνησεν. The words on block list top to bottom, from left to right. Markings over the inscription indicate a possible date of 27/28 CE; 291, f.n. 11. 16 Wells, op. cit, inscrs: #3, 4, pp. 374-5. 17 J. Seigne, ‘Recherches sur le Santuaire de Zeus a Jerash,’ 33. 18 Jacques Seigne, ‘A l’ombre de Zeus et d’Artemis, Gerasa de la Decapole’, 191.

For good fortune, year 132 (69/70 CE): for the well-being of the Augusti and the concord of the people, Theon son of 19

C.B. Wells, op. cit, inscr: #5, pp. 375-6. Robert O. Fink, op. cit, 109-124. 21 C.B. Wells, op. cit, inscr: #6, pp. 376-7. 20

86

CHAPTER 14: CLASSICAL STRUCTURES III: SPACES OF WORSHIP AND THE TEMPLES OF ZEUS AND ARTEMIS Demetrius gave 7,100 drachmas of Tyrian silver toward the building of the temple of Zeus Olympius, whose suppliant he is, in behalf of himself and the temple-slaves of Zeus, and the children of the same Theon, Scymnus, and Artemidorus and Artemisia; having given toward the building the propylon another 1,500 drachmas.22 …7,186 drachmas…in accordance with the decrees from his own funds in fulfilment of a vow. Sum: 8,686 drachmas. And in addition to the 8,686 drachmas which Theon son of Demetrius the suppliant of Zeus gave piously toward the building of Zeus Olympius, which the citizens have approved and taken up for the work, he now has further donated toward the intended bronze statue of Zeus of Refuge another 1,314 drachmas, so that the total donated is 10,000 drachmas of good valid silver. Sum: 10,000 drachmas.23 Rigsby interprets the eighty-six drachma discrepancy between the first and second inscriptions as reflecting a failure to meet his commitment to the 8,686 drachmas at the prescribed time.24 Then, when he could finally pay, he gave a full 10,000, the excess to be used towards sculpting a bronze statue to the Zeus of Refuge. Seigne’s theory is that this was a ‘cost overrun’ between estimated and actual costs in temple construction.25 The initial cost overrun is exactly 1 per cent. The unusual designation of Zeus as Φυξίου may reflect the turmoil of 68/69 CE, as might the dedication, ‘for the wellbeing of the Augusti and the concord of the people’. The name, ‘Theon’, is extremely rare in Syria (only one other known) and yet, very common to Egypt.26 It seems possible that Theon was an outsider who felt it advisable in difficult times to make a very public demonstration of loyalty to the city and the emperors.

14.2 Zeus Temple Floor Plan, Kraeling, (1938).

centred on the northern third of the Temenos Plaza. It was on a plinth reached by ascending two flights of steps twentyfive meters wide.29

The eastern temenos wall must have been provided shade in the Oval Plaza during the hot summer days. Seigne believes there to have been arched windows in the outer ambulatory wall which gave worshippers a view over the city (another example of architectural surveillance).27 The temenos possessed a subterranean barrel-vaulted corridor that ran directly under the ambulatory, imitating its rectangular circumference around the perimeter. The sub-vault’s east side was completely intact when excavated in the 1930’s.28 From its outer wall, the temenos is approximately ninety meters long, north to south, by fifty meters wide, by east to west. A secondary entrance/exit was placed in the north wall. There are remains of a rectangular altar platform, eighteen metres by twenty-five metres pointing north-north-west,

The architectural elements of the lower terrace deserve notice since they differ from the peristyle system that saturates the entire city.30 The continuous colonnades of Artemis Temple plaza are of a radically different nature than those at the Zeus site. It would seem that separate architectural mindsets were used between the two worship centres. Jacqueline DentzerFeydy argues that the architecture of the lower Zeus temenos was a composite of: late Greek-Hellenistic, inland Syrian and Egyptian influences similar to that in the tomb architecture of Jerusalem’s Kidron Valley.31 The Temple would thus reflect a heterogeneous Eastern style of construction before

29

Adolf Hoffman and Susanne Kerner, Gadara—Gerasa un die Dekapolis, Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 2002, 9-11. 30 Seigne’s interior lower-temenos detail shows, that below a continuous highly figured crown moulding, a band of triglyphs alternating with metopes of animal, vegetable and temple symbols (grapes, fish, birds, palms, pomegranates, roses, amphores, altars, and crowns), over dentils. J. Seign, ‘Le Sanctuaire de Zeus a Jerash’, 34-5 31 Jacquiline Dentzer-Feydy, ‘Le décor architectural Transjordanie de la periode hellenistique a la creation de la Province d’Arabie en 106’, SHAJ IV, Amman, 1992, 228-231.

22

C.B. Wells, op. cit, inscr: #5. Ibid, inscr: 6. 24 Kent J. Rigsby, ‘A Suppliant at Gerasa,’ Phoenix, Vol. 54, No. 1 / 2 (SpringSummer, 2000), 99-106. 25 J. Seigne, ‘Le sanctuaire de Zeus a Jerash’, 287-95. 26 Kent J. Rigsby, op. cit, 105, f.n. 25. 27 J. Seigne, ‘Le sanctuaire de Zeus a Jerash,’ 33-35. 28 Carl H. Kraeling, op. cit, 18, n.27. 23

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SPATIAL AND RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE LATE ANTIQUE POLIS Roman imperial architecture homogenised design methodologies as seen throughout the rest of the city.

visitor and resident were introduced to, became involved with polis life.

The Zeus Temple’s outside measurements are approximately twenty-eight meters wide on its eastern-Temenos face, and forty meters long, from rear to top of staircase. It was a peripteros temple with full perimeter, single flank Corinthian intercolumniations, fifteen meters high, with a sacred enclosure located to the rear wall, and a five-meter wide door opening facing the temenos. The entrance wall was very thick, most likely to support the staircase to the rooftop, situated immediately to the left upon entering the cella.

THE TEMPLE OF ARTEMIS C. S. Fisher in his account of the partial excavation of The Temple of Artemis in Gerasa, City of The Decapolis,34 states that work towards the creation of the final account of the shrine of Gerasa’s patron goddess was the ‘highest single objective’ for the investigation of the site.35 It was the most difficult and extensive project undertaken, and it was not long before it was discovered to be the most architecturally rewarding. The Artemis Propylaea and Temple covers more than 34,000 square meters, and soil and debris removal went down, in places, seven meters. To further complicate matters, archaeologists had to determine the original temenos structure and distinguish it from the partial re-use of the site as a Christian church, manufacturing facilities and consider the extensive spoliation of the interior temple cella in the Christian period.

Parallels to the Zeus temples, where a sanctuary is pushed to the rear or side of a sanctuary block, are the Artemis temple at Gerasa, the temple at Baalbek, and the Dushara Temple at Petra.32 Peripteral temple sanctuaries similar to the Zeus Temple are found at Nabu, the temple of Bel at Palmyra, The Great Temple at Petra Baalbek, and the temple of Helios at Qanawat.33 The exterior walls were decorated with semi-circular niches spaced between every column allowing each to be visible from a distance. Front and rear elevations would show a stepped architrave, friezes and cornice which supported a triangular pediment. The Temple was surrounded by its own plastered low-walled temenos. A small doorway in the north wall opened to the space between the temenos and South Theatre. Internally, what now remains gives evidence of simple, low relief pilasters attached to the four interior walls, arched doorways, and small carved window openings placed high on the partially restored eastern temenos wall.

The Artemis Temple and Propylaea complex lies almost at the exact centre of the city, between the North Gate and the double archway north of the Oval Forum on the Cardo. Architecturally, it is Gerasa’s focal point. Despite the immense dimensions of the monumental temple temenos (161 meters east to west by 121 meters north to south), the eye is first drawn to the processional way architecture extending beneath it. A hypothetical procession36 would begin from the east running west over what is called the North Bridge to steps leading to the Propylaea Plaza. The roadway spanning the river to the steps was eleven meters wide allowed for a substantial number of participants to move

Today, tourists are immediately confronted with its elevated mass on approaching the South Gate. The Zeus Temple, South Gate, Oval Plaza and South Theatre are in such close proximity that they must be perceived as a ‘sum of their parts’. The temple, standing on a high point would have created a sense of awe among those approaching from Hadrian’s Arch. The long straight road would head them directly for it but then draw them to the South Gate at an oblique angle as if to heighten the suspense of revealing the Temple in its entirety. The progression of entrances from Arch through the substantial South Gate would take one into the Oval Plaza. It is a likely that sacrificial offerings and other material necessary for temple worship, as well as food, could be purchased in the Plaza before climbing up the stairs to the temenos. The South Theatre, to be discussed later in detail, as the fourth in the sequence of places, was really an appendage to the Zeus Temple. The South Gate, Oval Plaza, Zeus Temple and South Theatre performed their valuable, individual services, and were a series of civic ‘centres’ melding together to shape a single unified ‘Centre’ through which 32 33

34

C.S. Fisher, ‘The Temple of Artemis’, Gerasa, City of the Decapolis, 125138. 35 Ibid, 125. 36 As mentioned above, though their occurrence is universally accepted, there is no existing epigraphical/inscriptional record of processions of any type occurring in Gerasa. They are architecturally implied from the streets oriented by, and leading to the Artemis Temple staircases, propylaea and their architectural components. Guy MacLean Rogers in The Sacred Identity of Ephesos, Foundation Myths of a Roman City, London: Routledge, 1991, 80, notes that: ‘Processions meandered through the narrow streets of the Roman world almost daily.’ (See end note, 115-16 for bibliography and also S.R.F.Price, Rituals and Power, The Roman imperial cult in Asia Minor, Cambridge, 1985, 110-12 and Walter Burkett, Greek Religion, Cambridge, 1985, 99-102; 387-8. Rogers continues: ‘In these processions, celebrants often carried statues or ritual objects of the honoured deity along a prescribed route in the city ‘stopping at certain points for specific acts of ritual, heading toward the god’s temple or sacred precinct’. Such processions usually began and ended at the primary temple of the honoured deity, and temple or civic authorities carefully regulated participation in the processions’ (See also Rice, E., The Grand Procession of Ptolemy Philadelphus, Oxford: Oxford, 1983, 26). For ancient evidences, see: Xenophon of Ephesus I, 2, 2-5; Heliodorus, Ethiopian Story, II, 34-III 6; Dionysius of Halicarnassus VII 70-3; the complaint by Caecilius of Christian lack of participation in processions in The Octavius of Marcus Minucius Felix (12.56).

Warwick Ball, op. cit, 321. Ibid, 338.

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14.3 Western propylaea of Artemis Temple complex. Yale University Art Gallery, Gerasa Archives.

across in unison. From the surface of the river bank to the top of the steps of the plaza is approximately a twenty-meter rise in elevation, and another twenty meters to the upper Artemis temenos plaza. From the urban quarter of the city, the worshipper would begin the journey across the North Bridge looking visually upward three hundred meters in the distance, approximately forty meters above level sight, to the entrance of the temenos. The procession required substantial physical effort. After crossing the river, the worshipper had to climb the stairs into the Propylaea Plaza under an arched three-gated entrance. The propylaea from was rectangular, approximately twenty meters wide by forty meters long, lined with fifteen columns on each side. It ascended a few steps to an attached rectangular structure at the west end forming a ‘tee’. The fascinating characteristic to this section is that its north-south walls (twenty-four meters wide) turn outward at approximately 22 degrees in a flare; the effect of this shape expands one’s horizontal sight, as if looking through a wideangle lens, to the grand entrance across the Cardo. At the centre to these flaring, interior north-south walls are halfcircular full height atria, one of which, possibly containing a fountain, fronted by pillars on each side. The exit from the eastern half of the plaza is approximately thirty-five meters across, flanked by two pillars. There one faces an even more immense western propylaea area. The

14.4 Propylaea Plaza drawn with sixth century Christian church apse to the east, Kraeling, (1938).

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14.5 Drawing of western Artemis Propylaea and staircase of seven flights of steps to the intermediate terrace by Parapetti, (1989).

nineteen and a half meter wide entrance entablature to the western propylaea was supported by four pillars estimated to have been sixteen meters high, based on their pedestal dimension of one and a half meters in diameter. The inner pair of pillars stood almost eight meters apart while the outer ones served as lateral supports receiving the architraves running along the Cardo.

retaining structure, the decoration of which was crowned with a low cornice of high craftsmanship that is still visible in part today. The vertical rise from doorsill to top of cornice, and thus the overall rise of the staircase to upper terrace, is just over eleven meters. At the top of the staircase, the terrace extends approximately twenty meters west to the 120 meter wide, staircase spanning the east temenos wall of the upper Artemis Sanctuary. The final staircase up to the Artemis temenos has been determined by Parapetti to be of three flights of seven steps each, rather than the two flights Fisher originally thought.38 The lower terrace also forms a “U” shape by running back toward the Propylaea on both sides of the staircase. Almost immediately at the top of the staircase was the largest of the main altars to Artemis, set with other smaller altars and votive pedestals.

About seven meters behind the pillars stood a great retaining wall 120 meters long by fourteen meters high, paralleling the Cardo, and establishing the width of the Temple enclosure. The retaining wall is believed to have contained two story commercial shops, running the full length of the wall. These were spaced evenly between the central entrance to the temenos, the two centred exedras on the right and left sides, and what are believed to be, corner towers on the ends. The most accurate pictorial reconstruction of the Propylaea complex is in Syria, vol. 66, 1989, by Perapetti.37

Little remains of the eastern temenos wall containing the entrance to the sanctuary, although comparisons to the propylaea to the Temple of Jupiter at Baalbek have been made.39 The vast space of the Artemis Sanctuary measured 161 meters by 121 meters east to west. It was completely surrounded by deep porticoes supported by 124 columns standing approximately seven meters tall. Behind the north and south sanctuary walls a continuous series of rooms were each faced with an exedra and flanked by pillared entrances. As of 1982, the western end of the sanctuary was still buried,

The central doorway opening up to the great staircase was five meters wide by almost nine meters high. On either side were two side doors almost four meters wide of an undetermined height. The central staircase was over nineteen meters wide and twenty-seven meters long, its steps laid out in seven step intervals of seven flights, separated by six landings almost two meters deep. The staircase was formed within a retained stairwell as a continuance of the front

38

R. Parapetti, ‘The Italian Activity Within the Jerash Project, 1982-83’, JAP I, Amman, 1985, 179. 39 Iain Browning, Jerash and the Decapolis, London: Chatto & Windus, 1982, 159.

37

R. Parapetti, ‘Scavi e restarri italiani nel santurario di Artemide 19841987’, IAFPO, Paris, 1989, 1-39.

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14.6 Drawing of Artemis Temple Cella by C.S. Fisher, in Kraeling, (1938), Plan XXI.

and although Kennedy believes the complex was never finished. On my visit to the site in March of 2005, the northwest and southwest corner support columns to the portico could easily be discerned rising out of the soil. 40

staircase, probably since the majority of the terrace still being buried at the time. A series of chambers were excavated beneath the temple floor. They are reached by a staircase in the northeast interior corner of the cella and through a door opening in its southern exterior face. The longest of the passages runs around three sides of the building between the foundations of the cella, and those of the peristyle. At the southwest corner a doorway provided access to chambers under the cella and portico. It is believed the passages and chambers were used to store water, most likely for ceremonial ablution purposes.42

The Temple of Artemis sits lengthwise east-west and offset to the back of the sanctuary court yard. The temple sat on a platform over four meters high and forty meters long. A landing extending approximately fourteen meters out from the front entrance, supported the front pillars and encased the two flights of seven steps each. The temple is peripteral, hexastyle with eleven columns along the sides, four to the rear and front with two additional behind the first and fourth on the front. The columns still standing at the time of excavation rose to over thirteen meters. The walls of the temple were of mizzi limestone, one of the most durable building materials available and not found locally.41 Sitting off-centre to the north of the temple’s entrance and eighteen meters in front of its steps was what Fisher called the great altar. The exact size and shape will never be known however; its base is thought to have been as high as the temple’s podium. Fisher makes no mention of an altar above the great

The recess for the cult image of Artemis wall is believed to be on the western interior wall. The recess was almost four meters long and two meters deep, centred and raised two meters above the cella entrance. It was spanned by a segmental arch bringing the height of the recess to just under six meters. All four sides of the cella contained shallow rectangular niches set two meters off the floor. Dowel holes were drilled all through the interior leading one to believe that the entire interior was sheathed in marble, although just

40

42

Ibid, 135. In the 19th-20th c. the space was used for the manufacture of gunpowder where significant damage was made to the western interior wall by scraping for saltpeter.

David Kennedy, ‘The Identity of Roman Gerasa: An Archaeological Approach’, Med Arch.11, (1998), 39-69. 41 C.S. Fisher, op. cit, 134.

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SPATIAL AND RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE LATE ANTIQUE POLIS a few fragments and architectural pieces have been found in debris and later structures. Similar to the Zeus temple, an internal staircase accessed the cella’s rooftop.

the second half of the first century to 155-6 CE. The inscriptions suggest a tenuous and complex synthesis between the Arabian God, Zeus Kyrios and Hera49 with their children: Pakidas, Dionysius, and the Nabataean Dusares. Wells believed that the Arabian God was most likely Pakidas’ son, Dusares-Dionysius.50

THE TEMPLE/CATHEDRAL The first excavators of the Temple/Cathedral, J.W. Crowfoot and C.C. McCown, deduced that the Cathedral had been built directly over a pagan temple.43 Later work under the Swiss team of Jaggi, Meier and Brenk has confirmed Crowfoot and McCown’s findings. They revealed an original staircase running under the Cathedral apse and that the temple cella (remodelled during the 2nd century) was similar in design and orientation but smaller than the Artemis cella.44 The finding of a circular bronze-smelting kiln under the Cathedral nave floor and above late temple remains suggests an interim phase between polytheistic temple use and its Christian construction as the Cathedral.45 The steps running from the front entry on the Cardo to the first terrace is most likely of the mid-fourth century and related to the Cathedral’s construction. Excavation beneath a lower landing revealed an earlier, continuous staircase built with a lesser gradient (See Plan XXX, in Kraeling (1938).46 All of the earlier materials had been reused in the construction of the Christian Cathedral or lost, meaning that the site is a confusing mix of early and later stone work. Pre-Christian adjustments were made to the front portico and main entry doorway by shifting front pillar locations slightly, to the south, when the Nymphaeum was built in 190-1 CE. Shops behind the colonnade were interrupted to allow a new doorway and great staircase up to the temenos plaza above.47

Kraeling, writing in 1938, states: It would seem, however, that Pakidas and an unnamed consort are the supreme gods that they are identified with ZeusChronos and Hera, and represent the parents of the ‘Arabian God’. This and the fact that the dedicant of one of the ‘Arabian God inscriptions is a brother of the priest of Dionysus would indicate that the ‘Arabian God’ is Dusares…For this reason it may well be that the temple whose remains have come to light under the Cathedral was, as Mr. Crowfoot has suggested, a temple of Dionysus, and the older pagan rite a Dionysiac rite.51

Crowfoot, McCown and later Kraeling (1938) hypothesized that the site had been a temple to Dusares-Dionysus. Wells suggested that Hera may have had a separate chapel dedicated to her at Gerasa, enabling the site as whole to be identified as a Dionysius temple.52 Crowfoot also connected the font, to Dionysiac water rituals which were later to be transformed into a Christian context in the Fountain Court.53 His assertion for religious continuation between pagan and Christian cult has gained popularity over the years, despite that, three years later he retracted this view, arguing in favour of a Pakidas and Hera temple and pushing the date of the Font into the Christian era.54 Kraeling viewed the matter as inconclusive until further evidence is gained, when discussing Crowfoot’s earlier (and rejected) hypothesis.55 Very recently, Peter Richardson stated that the Font is evidence of traditional continuity with the water rituals of Dionysus and those of later Christian rites.56

There is a long-running debate over the site’s original presiding deity. A number of inscriptions mentioning the ‘holy god Pakidas, his consort Hera’ and the ‘Arabian God’ were found (with one exception) in the vicinity of the Cathedral and Fountain Court.48 The inscriptions date from

Appollas son of Lesbos set (it) up ( Ἁγίῳ Πακειδᾷ Τύχη δούλη Ἀπολλᾶ Λέσβου ἀνέθηκεν ). ‘, found in B59 of the Clergy House; Inscr. #19: ‘Arabian god (…θεᾦ Ἀραβικᾦ...)’, found in the Fountain Court; Inscr. #20: ‘holy Arabian god ( Ὑπὲρ τῆς τῶν Σεβαστῶν σοτηρίας θεῷ ἁγίῳ Ἁραβικῶι Ἁλέξανδρος ῞Ανθου ἀδελφὸς Διονυσίου ἱερέος τὰς παραστάδας σὺν τοῖς βωμοῖς ἐκ τῶν ἰδίων εὐσεβείας ἕνεκεν·), found as a pilaster base on the Mary Theotokos Shrine; Inscr. #21: ‘Arabian god (θεῷ Ἀραβικῷ...)’, an altar found in modern Jerash; Inscr. #22: ‘Arabian god (θεοῦ Ἀραβικοῦ...)’, built into the north wall of the Nymphaeum; Inscr. #23: ‘ancestral god (Λεγιὼν Τρίτη ΚυρΝΛΑΙΚΙ θεῷ πατρῲῳ )’, found on north side of Cathedral staircase. 49 Javier Teixidor, op. cit, 55. A votive altar of the same period, by a soldier of the Third Cyrenaic legion stationed in Bostra, is dedicated to the gods: Hadad-Zeus Kyrios and his consort Hera. 50 C.B. Wells, op. cit, 385. 51 Carl H. Kraeling, op. cit, 37. 52 C.B. Wells, op. cit, 384, inscr. #17. 53 J.W. Crowfoot, ‘Recent works around the fountain court at Jerash’, 14354. 54 C.C. McCown, ‘A New Deity in a Jerash Inscription’, JAOS (Journal of the American Oriental Society), Vol. 54, No. 2 (June, 1934), 184. 55 Carl H. Kraeling, op. cit, 37. 56 Peter Richardson, City and Sanctuary, Religion and Architecture in the Roman Near East, London: SCM Press, 2002, 94-5.

43

J.W. Crowfoot, ‘Recent works around the fountain court at Jerash’, PEFQSt 63, (1931), 143-54; C.C. McCown, ‘A New Deity in a Jerash Inscription’, JAOS (Journal of the American Oriental Society), Vol. 54, No. 2 (June., 1934), 178-85; J.W. Crowfoot, ‘The Buildings round the Fountain Court’, Gerasa, City of the Decapolis, 201. 44 Carola Jaggi, Hans-Rudolf Meier and Beat Brenk, Ima Kehrberg, ‘New Data For the Chronology of the Early Christian Cathedral of Gerasa: The Third Interim Report on the Jerash Cathedral Project’, ADAJ, Vol. 41 (1997), 311-320. 45 Jaggi, Meier and Brenk. ‘Temple, Kiln, and Church: The Fourth Interim Report on the Jerash Cathedral Project’, ADAJ, Vol 42 (1998), 425-32. 46 J. W. Crowfoot, ‘Buildings round the Fountain Court’, 206. 47 Iain Browning, op. cit, 143. 48 C.B. Wells, op. cit, pp. 383-86. inscr: #17: ‘To good Fortune…in the year 136 (73-4 CE). Amer son of Ragal, chief officiant of the holy god Pakidas and Hera his con(sort, on behalf of…), his own wife, for the construction of the building of the sanctuary of the goddess Hera g(ave of his own funds…) out of peity seven hundred drachma.’ ‘( ᾿Αγαθᾖ Τύχῃ. Ἔτους λρ´. Ὑπὲρ τῆς τῶν Σεβαστῶ´ σωτηρίας Ἄμερος ῾Ραγέλου(ι) ἀρχιβωμιστὴς θεοῦ ἁγίου Πακειδᾶ καὶ Ἤρας ΣΨ(- -) ὑπὲρ τῆς δεῖνος … τῆς ἰδίας γυναικῶς εἰς τῆν κτίσι´ τῆς οἰκοδομῆς ἰεροῦ θεᾶς Ἤρας Ε(- -) εὐσεβείας ἔνeκεν δραχμὰς ἑπτακοσίας (ι))’ found in the Cathedral; Inscr: 18: ‘To holy Pakidas: Tyche, slave girl of

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14.7 Cut-away elevation of Cathedral from the Cardo. Notice the steps marked 'Earlier Staircase' under the top landing.

14.8 Footprint of the above elevation drawing. The Nymphaeum, a later addition, is to the right.

93

SPATIAL AND RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE LATE ANTIQUE POLIS Several problems remain. First, there is no direct inscription to the worship of Dionysus at Gerasa. Not one of the mentioned ‘Pakidas, Arabian god’ inscriptions can be directly connected to this or any particular location. Second, the probability of a necropolis in that area being in use until the second century CE complicates the issue with the Roman aversion to human remains being close to urban centres. Third, Swiss excavators have determined that the fountain in the Fountain Court was in fact spolium: a broken tile suggests that the fountain had been transported into the court from another location.57 Further, Kalayan excavated a doublecistern on the north side of the St. Theodore’s atrium entrance which was fed by a water line coming from the south-eastern corner of the Artemis Temple.58 This cistern fed two niches inside St. Theodore’s atrium, which Kalayan believes could equally have been the (πηγή) spring or fountain ‘in the martyrion’ that Epiphanius speaks of as the place for the annual celebration of the miracle of Cana.59 Yet, the total lack of ornamentation of these niches suggests to me that they were functional rather than a holy source of water and I would suggest that the clear evidence of the movement of the fount does not necessarily mean that the fount itself is alien to the site (see further discussion of the font under Gerasa’s Church chapter).

believe to be a later effort to protect and ‘preserve the sanctity of the crypt under the naos’.61 This is believed to be a second remodelling which also involved restoring the south cella walls, and sealing the western entrance to the crypt. The authors believed the efforts to protect the crypt meant that it was still in use and housed something of value. The cella was constructed in the shape of an ‘inverted T’. The pronaos (6.3m. wide and 3.85m. deep), was entered through a single doorway (2.05 m. wide). The inner shrine (2.9 m. wide and 3 m. deep) was entered by a second doorway, 2.5 m wide. Remains show the temple to have used the Corinthian order for its capitols. The dating of Temple C is reached from a variety of sources. A burial cave (#5), located under the north-east temenos corner (Plan XLVI), and was used as a pottery dump. The chronological spread of the remains is from the 1st to late 3rd/early 4th centuries. A Corinthian capital found on the floor of the portico dates to mid-2nd century and the unique style of stone masonry is similar to the technique used at the Artemis Temple. The pottery suggests that the site fell out of use in the mid-4th century. Later intrusive walls in the temenos court come from what are believed to be private residences of the fourth century.

TEMPLE ‘C’:60

The deity worshipped in Temple C is not known. Rostovtzeff and Brown had what they thought to be a ‘perfect parallel’ in a discovery made by a Danish expedition at Calydon in Aetolia. The 2nd century BCE temple they found there is an exact likeness of Gerasa’s Temple C with the same cella form, peristyle court and, most importantly, a subterranean chamber accessed from a similar doorway under the on the side of the podia. The temple in Calydon is a Heroon. A funerary association for the temple is supported by its location in what is believed to be an early-first-century cemetery. Burial caves, similar to #5, under C’s temenos, are found to the west, and under the ‘Clergy House’, of St. Theodore’s.

Temple C is the smallest of the known shrines at Gerasa. It is located to the south west corner of St. Theodore’s atrium wall and was the southern-most of a series of rooms uncovered to the west of St. Theodore’s, just east of the Ss. Cosmas, John and George Church building. It was built directly on bedrock and was under three layers of subsequent habitation and thus has to be dated to the pre-Christian era. Its entire footprint (Plan XXII) was no larger than twentyfour by twenty-seven metres, the narrow front facing eastsouth-east, on the same axis as the chapel off St. Theodore’s atrium. The eastern temenos was a rectangular peristyle court, 15.3 m. long by 9.4 m. wide. In the court was found the remains of a 1.6 m. square altar. The portico of the temple reached into the temenos 3.5 m. and was raised almost a metre above the court, reached by a flight of steps. The slab floor of the portico covered a crypt below. The crypt measured 5 m. by 1.5 m. Its roof was covered with a barrel vault, and was accessed through a small door in the podium’s north and west sides. A series of three rooms (B22, 24, 25 on Plan XXII) were built over the entrance to the crypt, in what the authors’

It is clear from a general study of Gerasa’s temple architecture that the city consists of a plurality of architectural types and perceptions of procession that reflects the synthesis and physical movement that defines polytheistic cult and ritual (as discussed in Section II, I). The Zeus, Artemis, ‘C’, and pre-Cathedral temples took advantage of elevated planes to establish their temenai, altars, and cellas. They did not stand isolated from Gerasa’s urban system but were fully integrated into it through the linkage devices of processional way and plaza. Taken as linear paths, the columned streets of Gerasa’s avenues proceed to and enter the Artemis temenos and literally form a double-ring around the temple creating an immense agora; as architecture was designed to imitate

57

Beat Brenk, Carola Jaggi and Hans-Rudolf Meier, ‘The Fountain Court of Jarash Cathedral Reconsidered: The First Report of a New Swiss Research Project,’ ADAJ, Vol. 38, (1994), 351-57. 58 H. Kalayan, ‘Restoration and Clearance In and Around the Temple of Artemis Compound in Jerash, 1977-1979, AAJ 25, (1981), 331-34. 59 Epiphanius, Panarion, Haer. 51: 30, 1-2; Carl H. Kraeling, op. cit, 63. 60 C.S. Fisher and C.H. Kraeling, ‘Temple C’, Gerasa, City of the Decapolis, 139-148.

61

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C.S. Fisher and Carl H. Kraeling, op. cit, 142.

CHAPTER 14: CLASSICAL STRUCTURES III: SPACES OF WORSHIP AND THE TEMPLES OF ZEUS AND ARTEMIS

14.9 Temple C in Kraeling, (1938), Plan XXII.

worshipper or for worshipper to imitate their directionality by following their open rhythmic forms.

these places and give monetary funds and sacrifice, sometimes substantially, toward the continuance of their cult and own lively-hoods. The inscriptions present the view that the architectural remains we see and hypothesize their purposes were once filled with persons: men, women, soldiers, and families with children. The magnitude of the surface area of their staircases indicates that they came in great numbers over centuries to worship and to eventually be buried there.

The open questions concerning the worship of the Arabian god, Hera and Dionysus will likely remain uncertain as will the pre-Christian original location and function of the fount, now situated in the small court between the Cathedral and S. Theodore’s. What is certain is that citizens did approach

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CHAPTER 15 CLASSICAL STRUCTURES IV: PLACES OF ENTERTAINMENT AND RELAXATION The hippodrome is situated just north of Hadrian’s Arch, the eastern end of the carceres just meters from the Arches’ northwest face, and parallel to the road heading directly for the South Gate. The conglomeration of arch, circus and gate can be paralleled at Philadelphia and Gadara (Umm Qeis) and Kennedy believes this combination was a characteristically Roman adaptation of local styles.3

The hippodrome, theatres, baths and nymphaeum dominated Gerasa’s urban landscape. Their footprints and capacity estimates indicate they were as much a part of civic life as the city’s cults and commerce. Architecturally, they are extreme definitions of somatic space housed in elaborate aesthetics. They were intensely social and, as mentioned previously, involved sacral cultic rites. To understand their spatial importance to the pagan world is to know what they meant to the Church, the antithesis to Classical forms who sought to reduce or eliminate them altogether.

The Hippodrome is on par with the Artemis cella for height, with its upper walls standing at 18 meters.4 The carceres, stood 7.1 meters above ground level. The western wall foundations were discovered to be 8 meters below track level. The aerial photo shows a definite drop in elevation in this area, which caused the ancient builders to use a tremendous amount of in-fill to secure the upper walls as well as to level the arena floor. It was constructed with approximately a quarter of a million dressed stones, 15,000 of them with carved mouldings. The stone is the typical soft limestone ashlar block found throughout Gerasa. Most of the masonry fell inward into the arena to be used, not for its own restoration, but for intrusive structures, such as lime and pottery kilns, a small ecclesiastical residence tucked in a southeast wall section,5 the Bishop Marianos Church, and the internal arena wall. Its overall outside length is 263 meters, with an average outside width of 76.08 meters, making the total outside circumference, 650 meters.6 The arena’s interior dimensions are approximately 244 meters in length and 50 meters wide. The interior dimensions of the hippodrome at Caesarea are 322 meters by 80.49 meters, while the hippodrome at Antioch had interior dimensions of 492.05 meters by 62 meters.7 A few clues picked out among the tumbled stone indicate a possible pavilion on the east side that served as a starting point for the race and a tribunal for dignitaries. In addition, seventeen fragments from twelve individual altars, once standing on top of the carceres, were discovered. Though it could seat approximately 16,000

THE HIPPODROME Of all the architectural elements at Gerasa none have been so epitomised the historical narrative of the decline and fall of the Classical city than the Hippodrome. Inscriptions on altar fragments indicate that the site was operating by 200 CE.1 A series of earthquakes, possibly as early as 363 CE, resulted in a depression in the southern arena floor and collapsed a section of the carceres, the Hippodrome’s upper architectural elements including seating. The section was never fully restored and the construction of a curved, mid-arena wall at the start of the 5th century suggests there were adjustments in civic social priorities and/or budgetary concerns. In this state the hippodrome became a sports facility (in the northern half) and a manufacturing site, stone quarry, and pottery dump (in the southern half). Epigraphic evidence attested ‘the blues’ faction (likely other colour factions) was operating at Gerasa into the 6th century and there is no indication that the races went into decline before the seventh century.2 Pottery fragments and coin deposits increase in the southern half over the 5th-6th centuries. Stone quarrying, reducing the structure, built the Bishop Marianos Church during the mid to late 6th century and the earthquake of 749 forced the complete abandonment of the Hippodrome and devastated much of Gerasa.

1

Antoni A. Ostrasz. ‘The Hippodrome of Gerasa: A Report On Excavations and Research 1982-1987’, Syria LXVI, Amman, 1989; 71. E.B. Mueller , ‘The Hippodrome’ Gerasa, City of the Decapolis, 85-102, as well as fellow archaeologist G. Horsfield, argued for dates ranging from the late secondearly third century and the second half of the first century. Antoni A. Ostrasz argued for a construction date of ‘no later than 212 AD’ and most probably the second half of the second century CE. 2 Ostrasz, op. cit, 73. While excavating a building close to the Oval Plaza, a mosaic inscription was found, dated 578, which mentions a faction of the Blues. F. Zayadine interprets the inscription as “evidence that the hippodrome (as well as well as the faction organisations) was active at that period…” F. Zayadine, ‘Synopsis’, JAP I, Amman, 1986, 17-18.

3

Yoram Tsafrir and Gideon Foerster, ‘The Bet She’an Excavation Project (1989-1991)’, Excavations and Surveys in Israel (ESI), vol. 11, Jerusalem, 1997, 63. 4 Antoni A. Ostraz, op. cit, 61, believes the outer, podium and transverse walls to have been from bottom of foundation to top of cavea: 18, 11, and 916 meters high, respectively. 5 M. Gawlikowski and Ali Musa, ‘The Church of Bishop Marianos’, JAP I, (Amman, 1986), 143-5. 6 E.B. Muller, ‘The Hippodrome’, Gerasa, City of the Decapolis, 87. 7 Ibid. 87.

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15.1 Drawing of the Hippodrome by Muller and Detweilier in Kraeling, (1938), Plan VI.

15.2 Present condition of Hippodrome under modern restoration facing south. Hadrian's Arch can be seen, also under restoration in the background.

The Hippodrome of Gerasa has been described in deprecating terms as, ‘a miniature of a western circus’,9 and seen as evidence of an over-ambitious building policy of a city, which never lived up to its grand claim to be ‘Antioch on the Chrysorhoas’.10 Though more likely, its diminutive characteristics was determined by the increasing fall in

spectators, it is among the smallest known in the Roman Empire.8

8

The Herodian ‘amphitheatre’ (265m by 50.35m) and the hippodrome at Neopolis in Palestine (244m.x50m.) are very close to Gerasa’s in size, Y. Porath, ‘Herod’s "amphitheatre" at Caesarea: a multipurpose entertainment building’, The Roman and Byzantine Near East: Some Recent Archaeological Research, JRA Supplementary Series 14, Ann Harbor, 1995, 15-27; Yoram Tsafrir and Gideon Foerster, ‘Urbanism at Scythopolis-Bet Shean’, DOP Vol. 51, (1997), 99.

9

J.H. Humphrey, (ed.), The Roman and Byzantine Near East: Some Recent Archaeological Research, JRA Supplementary Series No. 14, 495-504. 10 Ball, Rome in the East, London: Routledge, 2000, 190-1.

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SPATIAL AND RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE LATE ANTIQUE POLIS topography less than a hundred metres beyond its southern end. David Kennedy relates its size to the Greek horse racing format, which ran from ten gates, while the Roman circus used twelve.11 Built in the Roman design (as at Antioch, with twin towers beside the starting gates), its use was more nonRoman with a more localized style in horse racing.

directions in which to go. The option to the centre of the complex was what is believed to be a barrel vaulted frigidarium approximately 40 m. by 18 m. wide. Three small rooms attached to the east are what are held to be apodyterium15 (changing rooms). A large doorway in the west side of the frigidarium opened up into a 15 m. square caldarium, identified by heating flues set within the walls. The west wall of the caldarium contained a large arched recessed opening, and the ceiling was spanned by a large dome. The function of the smaller rooms, off either side of the caldarium, is unknown. Other access points appear to be from the frigidarium, and the wings, whose ceilings were domed. The northern room’s dome is perfectly preserved. It has an oculus, which allowed for light and heat dispersal.16 Small rooms located in the western side of the wings contained remains of stairways giving access to the roof, but as of yet the function of this area is also a matter of speculation.

It is plausible that an earthquake in 551 might have destroyed a section of the eastern carceres, allowing for the rebuilding of the city wall and the use of the spoil for the Bishop Marianos church (dedicated in 570), situated just to the north of the Arch. An earlier earthquake of 363 was probably the reason for the collapse of the southwest part of the cavea, enabling the destructive effects of rain/wind erosion and settling to drop the level of the southern half of the arena floor, though Ostrasz believes the depression was mostly caused by manual removal of soil for agricultural use, as he personally observed in 1986.12 Accordingly, he reconstructs the history of the hippodrome as: • • •

The domed rooms at the end of the wings are approximately 8 m. square with four N-S, E-W, 3 x 7 m. recesses in the walls. The wall openings were spanned by stone arches. The four corners, where the four arch fronts meet, combine their vertical legs into strong support columns transmitting the entire weight of the dome to the ground. As the arches ‘spring’ upward from their vertical legs, they form concave V’s at their points of separation. Precisely cut stones were mitred to fill these spaces, the first acting as a wedged V locking the corner in place by compressive forces from above. Finally, the curved V’s broadened upward over the arches where a continuous circumference of block could be made around the room providing a tensile hoop that the entire dome would rest upon. The open circle of the oculus meant that the dome does not have a ‘keystone’ locking the whole into place. Instead the equilibrium provided by a dome created an environment of rings of layered stone where equal and opposite forces act together in unity.17

200-390: Construction, Full Use Chariot/Horse Racing Facility 390-600: South-end Industry, Reduced Games Facility, Intense Spoilation 600-750: Reduction in Activity and Abandonment.

THE BATHS OF GERASA THE WEST BATHS The ruins of the West Baths are located just southeast of the North Quadrifrons on a terrace below the Cardo. Its exterior atrium ties in well with the Corinthian column orders flanking the Cardo. It runs past not more than ten meters from the bath’s furthest existing atrium columns. A similar close relationship between bath atrium and Cardo can be seen at Sardis, Miletus, Djemila and Bulla Regia.13 Little attention has been paid to Gerasa’s bath complexes by archaeologists since that of Fisher, in Kraeling (1938), or Iain Browning’s brief description (1982) over forty years later.14

Kraeling suggests a third-century construction date on the basis of a pedestal base with a third century inscription.18 He also points out that the water supplying the baths would also run the fountains of the Propylaea Plaza, and the Nymphaeum, all of which were of the late second or early third century.19

The West Baths, taken from Sketch Plan XXVII by Harrison, takes the form of a large ‘T’, with the thick stem measuring approximately 36 m. wide by nearly 50 m. long, with its NE/SW cross-wings nearly 80 m. in length by 15 m. wide. The complex was apparently entered, in the manner of temple entrances, from the east, facing the Chrysorhoas, via two small ante-rooms giving the bather three possible

The floor level of the West Baths was, according to Fisher, ‘a good 12m above the bed of the Chrysorhoas’,20 which brings 15

Fikret Yegul, op. cit, 488. Ibid, 107; 43 for comparable structures. 17 Rabun Taylor, Roman Builders, A Study in Architectural Process, Cambridge: Cambridge, 2003, 56. 18 Carl H. Kraeling, op. cit, 54-55. C.B. Wells, ‘The Inscriptions’, Gerasa, City of the Decapolis, inscr: #190. 19 Kraeling, op. cit, 55, n.137. 20 Fisher, ‘Description of the Site’, Gerasa, City of the Decapolis, 23, 24. The topographical map shows close to an 18m. elevation from the river bed. 16

11

Kennedy, David, ‘The Identity of Roman Gerasa: An Archaeological Approach’, Mediterranean Archaeology, vol. 11, 1998, 62-3. 12 G. Horsfield, ‘Appended Note on the Hippodrome’, Gerasa, City of the Decapolis, 100-102; Ostrasz,, op. cit, 62. 13 Fikret Yegul, Baths and Bathing in Classical Antiquity, New York: The MIT Press, 1992, 4. 14 Iain Browning, op. cit, 165-8; 208.

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15.3 West Bath floor plan.

15.4 Oculus in preserved dome in West Baths.

to question the means for water supply. Possible options were to pipe water directly from the Chrysorhoas River on a gravity- feed system. The Chrysorhoas would have had to be tapped well beyond the Northern Gate, possibly as far as the Berketein Springs more than a kilometre to the north. Another option for water service could be a pump, and siphon with roof storage tanks as at Antioch on the Orontes,

and at Dura Europos, which in addition had waterwheels on successive terraces.21 The West Bath complex is definitively a Roman complement to Gerasa. Ball claims that the style was ‘imported from the 21

99

Fikret Yegul, op. cit, 390. Original source: Malalas 234, 11-17.

SPATIAL AND RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE LATE ANTIQUE POLIS

15.5 Drawing taken from Elise A. Friedland, (2003).

Roman west’.22 The hypocaust heating in the walls of the caldarium, barrel vaulting, central domed rooms, small rooms for changing clothes, and peristyle courts are typical elements, though in miniature, of Roman design found from Northern Britain to the Euphrates River. The ‘T’ layout is similar, in part, to the southeast section of the small baths at Qasr alHayr in Syria.23

East Baths’.25 In style, it can linked to other monumental, late thermae in Antiochia, Bosra, Alexandria, Palmyra, Philippopolis, the Byzantine Bath at Gadara and the more recently excavated baths at Scythopolis.26 However, from the analysis of sculptures found In situ in the North Hall, Friedland has dated the East Bath complex to mid-to-late second (150-200) century CE, and a dedication to the emperor Caracalla provides a secure terminus ante quem.

During late Antiquity, the baths in the East adopted several variations to the Roman design. The baths of Syria, Jordan and Palestine are smaller in scale and virtually eliminated the palaestra, primarily used for an open-air exercise area. In substitution for the palaestra, the Gerasene baths possessed an extensive portico-atrium. The atrium space is similar to the north-Syrian baths of Brad and Babiska.

The structure pictured on Plate VII in Kraeling has almost completely disappeared, but remnants of four great chambers oriented north-south, are visible. Partial remains of a great basilica hall cross to the north of the group, running east and west. The largest of the chambers as recorded by Fisher is 13 m. wide by 27 m. long with wall thicknesses of 5 meters. Computer reconstruction of the North Hall estimates that its stone vaults rose 20 m.27 To the south is a room measuring 9.5 m. by 18 m. To the west of this lie two smaller spaces joined by a great arch setting on heavy piers. The three parallel rooms were ‘wet rooms’ as shown by their down drains and water supply lines, and constituted two tepidaria, and a caldarium. All three were accessed through two open passages. The frigidarium would have been to the north of the eastern caldarium and an apodyteria, a rectangular hall joining the basilical North Hall, would have lain to the north of the frigidarium.

THE EAST BATHS It is perhaps a commentary in itself that the best description of the East Baths is C.S. Fisher’s half-page summary published in Kraeling (1938).24 The structure was much larger than the West Bath complex, but spoliation and the encroachment of a mosque and a private house over the southern section means that the archaeology in that area is either lost or inaccessible. The ruins sit on a central north-south axis along the east side of the Chrysorhoas River, four metres above the river bed, close to where the South Decumanus entered the residential quarter. It was originally thought to have been built sometime during the 3rd century CE based on an insecurely dated inscription found on a statue base ‘near the

25

C.B. Wells, op. cit, inscr: #16, 383; to a statue of Zeus Sarapis. Carl H. Kraeling, op. cit, 57. Date derived from a statue base in Elise A. Friedland, ‘The Roman Marble Sculptures from the North Hall of the East Baths at Gerasa,’ AJA 107, (2003), 420. 27 H. Dodge, ‘The Architectural Impact of Rome in the East,’ Architecture and Architectural Sculpture in the Roman Empire, (ed.) M. Henig, Oxford University Committee for Archaeology Monograph 29, Oxford: Oxford University Committee for Archaeology, 1990, 114. 26

22

Iain Browning, op. cit, 208; Warwick Ball, op. cit, 303. Fikret Yegul, op. cit, 341. 24 Clarence Fisher, op. cit, 24. 23

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15.6 Drawing of North Hall and location of statue remains in Friedland, (2003).

In 1984, Jordanian archaeologists discovered five Roman sculptures during limited rescue excavations in the North Hall. They originated in Thasos and Asia Minor as shown by the sculptural style, carving technique and chemical analysis. Friedland sees their western style as reflecting a desire to assimilate western bathing culture as early as the 2nd century.28 The sculptures were likely displayed where they were found in a style typical of a basilica hall in an imperial bath. The five are the remains of sixteen statues which are attested by the sixteen bases discovered in the same area, which honoured the bath’s patrons, and honourees. By the early third century, the sculptural display contained western mythological figures and high-ranking officials.29 They were a satyr, a youthful Apollo

or Dionysos, a figure wearing a floor length chiton in the form of another Apollo or a Muse, and two togate men (style and folds of one of their togas date to early Hadrianic or early Antonine period), portraits of local elite, a governor of Arabia, and of Emperor Caracalla.30 They were donated by both the civic government and private benefactors. This indicates Gerasa’s intention to establish connections with the local Roman administrative presence and with the Roman Emperor.31 Their donations were a further reinforcement of social hierarchy and a sign of the elite’s desire to participate in the Roman Empire’s political, social and cultural arenas.

28

Elise A. Friedland. ‘The Roman Marble Sculptures from the North Hall of the East Baths at Gerasa,’ AJA 107, (2003), 413-448. 29 Ibid, ‘The largest and best-preserved group of statuary from a bath complex in the Near East was found recently at Beth Shean/Scythopolis in the Eastern Bathhouse…Of the 13 life-size or larger pieces…all represent mythological figures, except one…’

30

Ibid, 414, 435. Ibid, 425, 427, Statue base, #15 of a portrait of Gaius Carbonius Statilius Severus Hadrianus, governor of Arabia, 2nd quarter, 2nd century CE. And a statue base of the portrait of Caracalla (211-217 CE).

31

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SPATIAL AND RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE LATE ANTIQUE POLIS WEST

EAST 15.7 Baths of Placcus with Stepped Street to the right and the Cathedral, S. Theodore's, and Fountain Court to the left.

the city, but of their being an ecclesiastical version proceeding out of the classical type and predecessor of the Arab bath.

THE BATHS OF PLACCUS The Baths of Placcus are named after an inscription naming Bishop Placcus (Ἐπὶ Πλάκκου τοῦ θεοφιλεστάτου ἐπισκόπο) as builder and dating their original construction to 454-455. 32 A second mosaic inscription33 attests a restoration in 584. The baths represent the last vestiges of Roman bathing culture in Gerasa and have been criticised as being pitifully small compared to the refinement, sophistication and monumental size of the Classical Western and Eastern bath complexes.34 Ironically, their particular interest comes out of this criticism, not from their aesthetic contribution to

The baths were to the west of the Cardo, up what is called the Stepped Street, a narrow corridor between the south temenos wall of the Artemis Temple and the Cathedral and St. Theodore church complex. They also boarder the west side of the Sarapion Passage leading down from the Fountain Court to the Stepped Street and attached to the north chapel of St. Theodore’s. Passing by the bath entrance one comes to the Clergy House, which is believed to have been a residential structure for Church staff. The residential building’s construction date is not certain and its architecture is modest.

32

C.S. Fisher, ‘The Baths of Placcus’, Gerasa, City of the Decapolis, 266-269. C.B. Wells, op. cit, inscr: #296 33 C.B. Wells, op. cit, inscr: #297 34 Iain Browning, op. cit, 186-7.

The Placcus’ baths are 22.5 m. by 41.3 m. The formal entrance was from the Stepped Street into a porticoed atrium, 3 m. by 15.5 m., supported by six Corinthian columns 102

CHAPTER 15: CLASSICAL STRUCTURES IV: PLACES OF ENTERTAINMENT AND RELAXATION salvaged from a Roman-period building of unknown origin. Over time, the outer atrium was subdivided into small rooms at either end (possibly shops), and a long ante-chamber. A latrine was relocated there from the rear wall of the baths when St. Theodore’s was built. From the anteroom, one entered a large rectangular room measuring 9.3 by 13.5 meters, probably used for an apodyterium, before entering the two caldaria to the west. Located in the southeast corner of the larger room was a sunken staircase leading to a landing and further to the Fountain Court and St. Theodore’s.35 The staircase and atrium entrance suggests that the baths were not restricted to clerical use. Two mosaic medallions were discovered on two thin sequences of floor layers in front of the sunken stairs; the earlier, based on its decorative pattern is dated sometime in the late fifth-early-sixth century, the later is inscribed with a date of 584.36 A total of eight columns were found in this room (A51-2), two of which bear resemblances to those of the South Gate and Hadrian’s Arch. The other six were salvaged from the West Baths and installed here.

purposes, but demanded the exclusion of sculptures and references to Dionysus, water nymphs and other pagan gods associated with aquatic pleasures.37 Pope Gregory the Great (540-604), who was in communication with Gerasa’s Bishop Marianos, argues that baths were ‘for the needs of the body’, not ‘for the titillation of the mind and for sensuous pleasure’.38 Barsanuphius, a hermit from Palestine, asked if it were permissible to bathe on the orders of a physician, responded: ‘Bathing is not absolutely forbidden to one who needs it—if you are ill, you need it; so, it is not a sin. If a man is healthy, it cossets and relaxes the body and conduces to lust’.39 In the fifth century, John of Ephesus, upon entering Ephesus went to a public bath and cast out the demon that haunted the site.40 A North-Syrian bath inscription found over the door lintel at the village of Il-Anderun states that, ‘I, Thomas, (acting) for the sake of all property owners, have given this bath, presenting this memory. What is the name of the bath? Health. Through entering, Christ has opened for us the bath of healing’.41 Epiphanius (Haer. 30, 7: 342) mentions the annual festival, in the fourth century, at the baths of Hammath Gader (close to Gadara), during which people ‘washed away their afflictions’. Inscriptions in the ‘Hall of Inscriptions’ expressed a wonder at witnessing miraculous healing. Visitors were drawn the entire spectrum of society, but, interestingly, the largest identifiable group were stage professionals: a dancer, a piper, an actress, a juggler.42

An entrance through a small doorway in the west wall of the apodyterium leads into a small tepedarium containing low benches with a shallow basin set in the NW corner. This room provided the only way into the two caldaria to the south, and west, both found in good preservation showing remnants of cement covered flagstones resting on pilae over a hypocaust heated floor, heated by furnace from a connecting room to the west. The second caldarium was probably domed, with alcoves let into its four walls, one of which contains the remains of a cement bath tub.

THE NYMPHAEUM Nymphaea did not originate in architectural form but as sacred spaces in caves or grottoes with a source of running water; they served as mythical homes for nymphs, fauns, muses and other water or woodland deities. Thermal waters and cool spring waters were felt to have a divine essence and votive objects found at such places are testimony to their religious and frequently medical associations.43 Architectural features resembling grottoes were built at thermal sources starting from the late Republican era at, for instance, Baiae, Bovillae, Albano and Nimes.44 The concepts of fabricating natural nymphaea in natural settings were brought into the

A small off-set doorway from the tepidarium led into a large court under the floor of which ran drainage channels off the large swimming pool in the northwest corner of the room. Its dimensions were 3.75 m. wide by 10.8 m. long by 1.32 m. deep. The maximum depth was set by an overflow drain which ran to the latrine and caldaria. Later, the pool was divided, unequally, perhaps allowing for modesty. Over time, various small rooms were added around the court, creating an odd spatial form. This room was a warm place for conversation, after experiencing the caldaria, and before a swim in the bath that was reached by three broad steps. The manner in which one attained the sanctum of the court is reminiscent of the journey one took to the Baptistery in S. Theodore’s. The same moving and turning through layers of walls and openings to heat and water in the Placcus Baths was an experience in total contrast to the immense spaces within the halls of the West and East Baths.

37

Fikret Yegul, op. cit, 317. Ibid, 317. 39 A.H.M. Jones, The Later Roman Empire, Oxford: Oxford Press, 1964, Vol. II, 977; III, 328. 40 Fikret Yegul, op. cit, 317. Related from, “The History of St. John the Son of Zebedee,” Aprocryphal Acts of the Apostles (trans. W. Wright), London, 1871, 28-42. 41 Ibid, 318. As quoted from, L. Robert, ‘Epigrammes relatives a des gouverneurs’, Helenica 4, 1948, 80, no. 918. 42 Leah Di Segni, ‘Greek Inscriptions of the Bath-House in Hammath Gader,’ ARAM 4: 1&2 (1992), 309. 43 Fikret Yegul, op. cit, 124-7, in section under Baths and Religion. 44 Ibid, 127. 38

For centuries the Church discouraged bathing, though never banned it. They allowed bathing for hygienic and medicinal 35 36

C.S. Fisher, op. cit, 267. Carl H. Kraeling op. cit, 266; 314-5; Plates LXI, b, c.

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15.8 Footprint of the Nymphaeum in Kraeling, (1938).

of 23 m. and estimated height of 13 m. It is thought to have been the most richly decorated monument in Scythopolis.48

city, where they became a common architectural element. As with the monumental baths, nymphaea were imported from the Roman west; magnificent free standing architectural fountains were constructed in various cities, including Bosra, Scythopolis, Gadara, Hippos, Amman and Petra. The nymphaea at Pella and Akka are known from coins and the Madaba mosaic map shows possibly four further nymphaea, one of which was at Gaza. Libanius mentions a nymphaeum standing over the oval plaza at Antioch, and others at Byblos, Apamaea, and Palmyra.45

The Nymphaeum of Gerasa lies along the Cardo Maximus set between the staircase to the Temple/Cathedral and the entrance to the narrow Stepped Street. The Nymphaeum was constructed in 191 CE, the last of the three major constructions along the street.49 The dimensions of the façade are approximately 24 m. long with a semi-circular centre with a diameter of 11 m. recessed into the hillside. Its rear support wall acted as a retaining structure against the sloping hillside. Each of the two stories contained nine niches for statuary. The niches artistically alternated between square and round backs. The first and second stories were defined by elaborately carved entablatures, thus, dividing the two into separate architectural elements. Above these rose several flat courses of stone capped with a semi-dome structure. The first storey was covered by marble, which Browning believes to have been light green, and the second storey was covered with plaster and tinted, and the dome being either plastered or gilded.50

Nymphaea were typically situated in a prominent location, standing alone as significant architectural features of aesthetic ambience, and providing the vital function of water supply to a thirsty civic centre. Their monumental structures typically several stories high and were partially or fully covered by a semi-dome, or full roof to resemble a cave and shrouded in with cornice, statuary, niches and pillars. Segal describes nymphaea as ‘theatrical’, comparing them with its scenae frons.46 At Philadelphia, the nymphaeum rose to three stories with a façade of 70 meters, which compared with Gerasa’s 24 meters.47 Tsafrir and Foerster describe the nymphaeum as the most magnificent of all the great monuments in Scythopolis. Its measurements are similar to that of Gerasa’s with a façade

Water was piped into the niches of the first story then into a great basin running the entire length of the façade. The richly

48

Yoram Tsafrir and Gideon Foerster, op. cit, 95-6. Carl H. Kraeling, op. cit, 54; C.B. Wells, op. cit, inscr: #69, pp. 406-7. Clarence Fisher, op. cit, 21, shows that columns had to be shifted along the Propylaea to make room for the Nymphaeum. 50 Iain Browning, op. cit, 144. Clarence Fisher, op. cit, 21. See note 43.

45

Warwick Ball, op. cit, 291. 46 Arthur Segal, From Function to Monument, Oxbow Monograph 66, Oxford: Oxbow, 1997, 166-7, and 151. 47 Ibid, 164.

49

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15.9 The Nymphaeum at Gerasa, partially restored.

freestanding, as lower portions of it appear to be anchored into the basalt bedrock by cutting into its slope in portions of the lower (ima) cavea. The summa cavea rested upon the ima cavea, but the uppermost portions were supported by compressed back fill. Inscriptions hint at the possibility of an earlier theatre at the same site55and a second inscription tells of a Titus Flavius, son of Dionysius, who donated money for a block of seats, dating construction to 90-92 CE. 56 The South Theatre was the first theatre built in the Hellenised cities of Roman Palestine since Herod’s theatre projects a century earlier.57

carved basin was pierced by seven openings through which water filled the basin via decorative lion’s head apertures. Water from the centre opening fell into a red granite laver set on the stone pavement of the sidewalk.51 Drain openings at the base of the wall captured overflow and took it under street level to the main sewer. Two pairs of two huge columns rested on the outer edge of the sidewalk spaced so as to leave a ten metre centred opening to reveal the semicircular front. Directly behind them, two pairs of shorter columns supported a great portico, the exact design of which is unknown. The pillars suggest the possibility that roof extensions ran out from the end flat sections of the façade over the sidewalk to rest on the great pillars. The dome could then have extended over the sidewalk as a barrel vault with an apse. 52

The theatre is of a classic Roman pattern,58 seventy-six meters in diameter, with an ima and a summa cavea, subdivided into sections of cunei, four in the lower half of fourteen rows each and eight cunei sections in the summa cavea of at least fifteen rows each led Fisher to estimate the seating capacity to be ‘well over 3,000 people’,59 making this, with the exception of the Hippodrome, the largest civic assembly building in Gerasa.

THE THEATRES OF GERASA THE SOUTH THEATRE53 The South Theatre was close to the South Gate, and just ten meters from the northwest corner of the Zeus Temple; its semicircular face opens to the north.54 It was not entirely

55

C.B. Wells, op. cit, inscr: #51. Ibid, inscr: #52. 57 Arthur Segal, Theatres in Roman Palestine & Provincia Arabia, Leiden: Brill, 1995, 7. 58 Warwick Ball, op. cit, 304. Roman differed from Greek by being semicircular vs. horseshoe design, and had a scenae frons stage backdrop vs. open. 59 Frank Sear, ‘The South Theatre at Jerash’, 1994 Campaign, ADAJ, Vol. 40, (1996), 217-30. Seats on outer cunei are numbered starting from the bottom row, from right to left, from A to COH (278 seats). Clarence Fisher, op. cit, 19. 56

51

Warwick Ball, op. cit, 291. Photo of nymphaeum shows a large round shallow bowl acting as a laver in its proper position. 52 C.S. Fisher, op. cit, f.n. 44, 22. Fisher comments that discussions of roof structures are highly speculative, but the reuse of Classical elements throughout the city makes arguments for silence problematic. 53 Ibid, 19-20; 43. and Arthur Segal, Theatres In Roman Palestine and Provincia Arabia, Leiden: EJ Brill, 1995, 75-77. 54 Clarence Fisher, op. cit, 19. Oriented exactly 9 degrees north.

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15.10 The South Theatre of Gerasa facing North.

Citizens and visitors entered and exited the theatre by various routes. For those with seats close to the orchestra floor, two high-arched vomitoria to the right and left of the stage allowed spectators access to separate side and central steps to their seats. Those sitting in the middle and upper sections had to make their way by the Sanctuary of Zeus where they passed inside the cavea into an ambulacrum that ran the entire circuit of the semicircular cavea. From this they found the appropriate vomitorium, out of the six, radially spreading to the middle terrace of the cavea (praecinctio), from where they reached their seats by openings in the podium wall to narrow flights of stairs (scalaria), which divided the upper cunei. The steep upper slope of the cavea was supported by an ascending series of stepped arches which can be observed in the ceilings of the vomitoria. Fisher points out that this same method of supporting raised seating systems was used a century later at the Hippodrome. Segal argues that the use of ‘a series of graded arches… instead of one continuous sloping barrel vault’ was due to the limitations of the builders at Gerasa.60 The front of the stage (podium) was divided into four sections, of centred and flanking niches, with inset pedestals between them. A close look at the semicircular stone floor of the orchestra shows the same type and quality as that of the

15.11 Stepped-vaulting inside one of the six vomitoria supporting the upper cavea of the South Theatre.

60 Arthur Segal, Theatres in Roman Palestine & Provincia Arabia, 75-6, f.n. 153.

106

CHAPTER 15: CLASSICAL STRUCTURES IV: PLACES OF ENTERTAINMENT AND RELAXATION Oval Plaza, built during the same time period. Frank Sear61 regards the scaenae frons as Trajanic (102-114), and draws parallels to the Roman theatre at Heliopolis (Baalbek). The scaenae frons is of the typical two-story rectilinear design with a second supporting back wall, divided by three major pediment crowned doorways (a central vulvae regiae and two flanking hospitalia), with two arched doorways on either end (itinera versurarum), all give access to the stage. The doorways facing the audience were given the illusion of being recessed semicircular exedra by curving the inner podium bases inward to the doorways, which Sear found to be an unusual feature. On top of the flanking podium sat a twotiered screen of columns. Centred amidst the columns, inset in the scaenae frons wall, were round-headed niches framed by smaller columns with their own pediments. Over the screens of pillars flanking the doorways sat a continuous entablature emphasizing the podium below by establishing a horizontal line over vertical support pillars and curving into doorway jams. Fisher believed the same pattern was copied on the second story, with the substitution of niches for the doorways below. It is thought that the scaenae frons carried a roof structure that covered the stage.62 The height of the scaenae frons from the orchestral floor to the estimated top of the upper order is approximately 16.54 meters. Sear believes there to have been 26 columns on each story including the ones flanking the doorways and at each end of the stage, in addition to the eight smaller columns flanking the niches, totalling 68 columns over the entire scaenae frons. The immensity of this can be seen in comparison with the four columns supporting the Artemis Propylaea west of the Cardo which stood at just over 16 meters.

15.12 Detail of the vulvae regiae doorway, decorative niches on the stage front and inset supporting pillars of the scaenae frons

The South Theatre should be considered as an appendage to the Temple of Zeus. Segal calls it ‘an urban ritual theatre’, and adds that the Zeus courts and temple are of a ‘single, clearly delineated entity’ combined with the South Theatre.63 This stands in contrast to the North Odeon which is separated completely and faces directly away from the Artemis Temple complex and its integrated street system. The Birketein Festival Theatre, like the South Theatre, probably had a religious function in spite of the fact that it may not have complete visual contact with the pool, nor be architecturally connected. As mentioned above, a side doorway from the cella, allowed direct access to the southern entrance of the orchestra floor. This could allow easy movement of cult images from temple to theatre.64 Smoke from the altar, positioned at the north end of the Zeus temenos, could be carried by an east breeze over the theatre seating, further associating actor and audience with religious rites, and sensually enhancing the experience.

A lengthy Trajanic inscription on a round pedestal almost a meter high at the west end of the stage of the South Theatre honours ‘Titus Flavius Quirina Gerrenus, son of Flavius Flacus’ as one of the first agonothetes of the annual festival of competing artists under the divine patronage of Dionysus.65 The inscription mentions Titus Gerrenus’ generosity and fairness in distributing prizes and in providing a banquet. He was declared ‘benefactor’ and a statue was dedicated to him in the theatre. THE NORTH ODEON66 The North Theatre, sometimes referred to as the Odeon, is essentially a miniature version of the South Theatre. It was not set into a hillside but was built on a relatively level area. It lies on the south side of the North Decumanus, approximately seventy meters west of the North Quadrifrons. The construction of the North Theatre occurred in two

61

Frank Sear, op. cit, 217-230. Frank Sear, op. cit, 217-30. 63 Arthur Segal, Theatres in Roman Palestine and Provincia Arabia, 18. 64 Ramsey MacMullen, Paganism in the Roman Empire, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981, 27. 62

65

C.B. Wells, op. cit, inscr: #192; pp. 442-444. C.S. Fisher, op. cit. 22-23. John D. Stewart, ‘Part I The Architecture of the Roman Theatre’, JAP I, (1986), 206-229. Iain Browning, op. cit, 173-76. Arthur Segal, Theatres in Roman Palestine & Provincia Arabia, 72-74.

66

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15.13 From the southern upper cavea of the South Theatre, the Zeus altar is below-centre with the Oval Plaza in the background. The South Gate is a short distance out of sight to the right.

15.14 North Odeon, lower cavea, looking north to the North Decumanus.

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15.15 In the North Odeon, the upper circular walkway of the praecinctio rests on the upper seats of the ima cavea. The low wall is pierced by entry doors and openings for scalaria leading to the upper cavea.

phases. The first was in 165 CE, and is attested by an inscription, which calls the building an odeion.67 It had an original seating capacity of 800, consisting of the lower cavea broken up into four cunei. A second inscription suggests a remodelling and expansion of the odeion in 235 CE where the seating capacity was doubled to 1,600 by building the summa cavea over the lower.68

columns of 12 meters in height, twice the height of those lining the street. Behind these lay another public plaza, yet to be excavated. These external architectural features strongly define and integrate the theatre into the street and plaza system of the city, but do not connect it to a temple. Spectators entered the lower section through vaulted passageways on either side of the stage. Those seated in the upper cavea turned off these passageways into internal barrelvaulted ambulacra that ran the complete circumference of the auditorium. Five evenly spaced vomitoria accessed the eight cunei sections of the summa cavea. The vomitoria emerged, not onto a semicircular walkway (praecinctio), as in the South Theatre, but onto the upper row of seats of the ima cavea, behind which was a low wall (1.8 m.) with openings for stairs (scalaria) running radially to the top of the cavea. It is believed that the praecinctio was not built due to builders using the last row of the ima cavea to support the first row of the summa cavea when remodelled in 235 CE.

Since restoration began in 1982, the theatre has been seen as an administrative space. From the North Quadrifrons, the North Decumanus’ column lined street stopped in a compound pier before it met the theatre’s 14 meter wide staircase, of two flights totalling thirteen steps. The steps led to a plaza measuring 28 m. by 19 m., which served as an extension of the theatre’s postscaenuim, or a place of assembly between performances. Small fountains within the recessed niches of the projecting podia provided water features for theatre-goers.69 Upon reaching the top of the plaza, one passed through a portico of four Corinthian columns into the decorative wall lined postscaenum. The southern most columns backed up against the scaenae frons wall, the surviving remains of which would suggest an original height of two stories. Directly across the Decumanus was an opening the width of the postscaenuim spanned by six Corinthian

The highest row of seats contained large square sockets cut into them at regular intervals. Fisher thought they were inserts for awning poles involving a support system that would have extended over to the scaenae frons, covering the entire theatre. Stewart similarly believed that the rectangular bases were for a block and tackle wench system for a

67

Carl H. Kraeling, op. cit, 54. C.B. Wells, op. cit, inscr: #65. Arthur Segal, Theatres in Roman Palestine & Provincia Arabia, 74. Taken from John D. Stewart, JAP I, (1986) 227-229. 69 John D. Stewart, op. cit, 206. 68

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15.16 North Odeon seating inscriptions.

temporary awning.70 At the time of Segal’s publication, the scaenae frons was in a poor state of preservation, however the three entrances facing the audience (vulvae regiae) and two entablatures as at the South Theatre) are somewhat visible. He estimates its original height at 16 meters.71

Along the west and southwest cunei seating, an erasure and recutting was made to inscribe, ΛΙΝΟΥΡΓΩΝ Ο ΤΟΠΟΣ (‘the place of the linen workers’). Remnants of ΦΥΛ(ΗΣ) ΗΡΑΣ (‘the tribe of Hera’) and ΦΥΛ(ΗΣ) ΑΔΡΙΑ(Ν)ΗΣ (‘of the Hadrianic tribe’) are still visible under the inscription.74 The addition of this inscription would seem to attest a transition in Gerasene political organisation. Trade groups did not play a part in civic government in the early East, but after the middle of the third century epigraphic evidence for such groups becomes more prominent, suggesting a rise in importance within the community.75 The re-ordering of seating suggests an official recognition of the linen workers as a political entity in Gerasa.

Seat inscriptions, only found in the ima cavea have names of individual tribes (φυλῆς) in abbreviated Greek (ΦΓΛ) suggesting that seating was organised by political division, and it seems likely that the theatre was also the bouleuterion.72 One-quarter of the seats were assigned to a distinct group, probably the boule, while the remaining three-quarters of the seats were allotted to the civic tribes of Gerasa.73 One tribe is named after the emperor Hadrian and the other eleven tribes are named after Greek deities: Zeus, Apollo, Leto, Aphrodite, Artemis, Herakles, Athena, Poseidon, Demeter, Asklepios, and Hera. Close to the centre of each section is an inscribed ΦΓΛ. The tribal system in Gerasa’s bouleuterion is of no surprise; several other cities in the eastern Mediterranean had civic tribes named after Greek deities as at Pisidian Antioch.

Butcher believes the function of the North Odeon to have been for more subdued functions as poetry recitals, and civic council meetings.76 The building ceased to function sometime during the sixth century as other buildings are seen to have encroached upon its space such as the Bishop Isaiah Church (540-611?). Today, the North Theatre is almost fully restored including its orchestra floor (8.5 m in diameter) with the original colour pattern in marble.

70

John D. Stewart, op. cit, 215, Stewart thought the tensional force of these operating in a semi-circular fashion on rope and fabric a more ‘plausible’ system than a permanent roof. 71 Arthur Segal, Theatres in Roman Palestine & Provincia Arabia, 74. 72 Kevin Butcher, Roman Syria and the Near East, London: The British Museum, 2003, 257. 73 Alexandra Retzleff and Abdel Majeed Mjely, ‘Seat Inscriptions in the Odeum at Gerasa (Jerash), BASOR 336, Nov., (2004), 37-47.

74

Ibid, 44-5. Roueche, Performers and Partisans at Aphrodisias, JRS Monograph 6, (1993), 128. 76 Kevin Butcher, op. cit, 256. 75

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CHAPTER 15: CLASSICAL STRUCTURES IV: PLACES OF ENTERTAINMENT AND RELAXATION THE FESTIVAL THEATRE AT BIRKETEIN77

of an architectural tie between the theatre and pool, but one would seem likely and possibly even necessary in order to access the theatre. Two barrel-vaulted entrances led into the theatre on either side of the stage. The orchestra was only 12 meters in diameter and the theatre had a maximum seating capacity of 1,000 people in fourteen rows of seats, in four cunei, rising to 6.35 meters. There was neither sub-cavea arched vaulting nor vomitoria. Behind the cavea, a twenty meter wide cut was made into the hillside to create a level platform which, Fisher believed, supported additional seating, though nothing has been discovered to support this. The stage was 25.8 meters long by 4.6 meters wide and 1.6 meters high. It was apparently wooden, attested by wood support sockets in the scaena wall. Debate on the height of the scaenae frons is over its shallow foundation footing, which was only 3.2 meters below the level of the stage, and the steep hillside, that falls away, immediately to its rear. Therefore there was no possibility of stage entries through a scaenae frons and the foundation could not have supported a heavy structure. McCown believes there to have been ‘a plain and solid scaenae wall built to the height of the cavea with very small paraskenia at each end of the stage’.82 MacMullen thinks the Festival Theatre was a viewing point for the Maioumas pool rites.83 Yet, a scaenae frons of modest height would have blocked the entire view of the pool for the audience. Presently only the upper seats at the south end provide a partial view of the small south pool.

Gerasa’s third theatre lay 1200 meters north of the North Gate. It was reached by, what was described by McCown, a Via Sacra, along which are scattered funerary temples, standing columns, and mausolea stretching beyond the Festival Theatre. The theatre is always described in combination with the Birketein pools, which is Arabic for ‘double-pool’, because of an internal cross-wall that separates the large spring fed reservoir. The most significant find to date in this theatre-pool complex was an inscription on the west pier of a gateway bordering the south end of the pool.

Ἑπὶ τοῦ μεγαλοπρ(επεστάτου) καὶ ἐνδο(ξοτάτου) (ἠ)μῶν δουκὸς καὶ ἄρχ(οντος) Παύλ(λου) (ἐ)πετελέσθη ὁ χαριέστατο(ς) (Μ)αειουμᾶς διὰ ἐίαυτῶν... 78 Written in November, 535 CE it indicates that the Maioumas festival, a notorious orgiastic event that involved water rituals and was criticised by both late antique Hellenists and Christians, was celebrated there. Only one other location for this cult can be positively identified: Daphne, near Antioch, a parallel that suggest that Gerasa’s planners were emulating their great namesake city.79 The dating of the pool and theatre, as well as other structures in the Birketein area, depends on three early-third-century inscriptions. Coin deposits commence from slightly later. Since the Birketein’s main function was as a water reservoir for the city fountains and baths, most of which can be dated to the late second century, the pools’ construction might be pushed into the second century.

Little is known about the Maioumas rites. The primary sources for them are John Malalas and Libanius.84 Malalas describes it as a Syrian festival celebrated every three years with a theatrical night event. The popularity of the festival lay, in part, in its association with the mysteries of Bacchus and Aphrodite. Originally forbidden by Constantine, it was legalised by Julian85 who had reservations concerning its lack of philosophical/intellectual content. Theodosius restored the ban but a purified festival was permitted by Arcadius and Honorius (396):86

The rectangular pool is 43.5 m. wide by 88.5 m. long with a maximum depth of 3 meters. Supply to Gerasa was regulated by a system of sluice gate(s) between the larger pool and its smaller division to the south. Schumacher, an early explorer, found outlets in the southwest corner of the reservoir which led to conduits feeding the entire western half of the city.80 A millennium ago, this area was forested with pine and hardwood trees, rich in soils, and easily irrigated by a number of springs making this a prime area for villas and farms.81

It has pleased our clemency that the joy of Maiuma be restored to the provincials, so long, that is, as decorum is maintained and modesty is preserved by morally unobjectionable practices.

The Festival Theatre lay to the west of the southern section of the pool resting about eight meters above the roadway. Whether spectators could view the pools depends on the presence and height of the scaenae frons. There are no remains 82

C.C. McCown, op. cit, 166. Ramsey MacMullen, Paganism in the Roman Empire, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981, 19. 84 Libanius L, 11. “A disgusting festival was introduced by certain persons to Daphne: it ceremonial was that of utter and absolute license.” and XLV, 23. He describes it as ‘a carnival of misrule in Daphne’. 85 Libanius L, 11. 86 Cod. Theod. 15.6.1, in Frank R. Trombley, Hellenic Religion And Christianization, c. 370-529, Vols. 1&2, Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, 2001, 73.

77

C.C. McCown, ‘The Festival Theater at the Birketein’, Gerasa, City of the Decapolis, 159-167, and Arthur Segal, Theatres in Roman Palestine and Provincia Arabia, 71. 78 C.B. Wells, op. cit, inscr: #279. Maiumas sometimes spelled, Maioumas as in Peter Richardson, City and Sanctuary, Religion and Architecture in the Roman Near East, London: SCM Press, 2002, 90. 79 Warwick Ball, op. cit, 191. 80 C.C. McCown, op. cit, 159. 81 Carl H. Kraeling, op. cit, 161.

83

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15.17 Picture taken while standing on highest existing seat row. A scanea frons would have blocked the visibility of the pools for most of the audience, while the lower seating lost visibility of the pools by the stage front.

Justinian again restored the ban, but they appear to have survived until 770 at Constantinople itself.89 The Gerasa Maioumas inscription may either indicate a pagan remnant operating in Gerasa or a ‘Christianised’ version of a celebratory water rite.

Private sacrifice also played a part in the ceremonies as shown by the remains of altars in the Birketein grounds.87 We allow the sportive arts to be celebrated, lest dejection be caused by overzealous regulation. We flatly refuse that, however, which lays legal claim to the name of impudent license, the Maiuma, a foul and obscene spectacle.88

87

Frank R. Trombley, Hellenic Religion and Christianization ii, Leiden: Brill, 2001, 55. 88 Cod. Theod. 15.6.2 in Frank R. Trombley, op. cit, 73.

89

Cod. Just XI, 46, in Segal, Theatres in Roman Palestine & Provincia Arabia, 11.

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CHAPTER 16 GERASA’S CHURCHES: ARCHITECTURE AND TOPOGRAPHY fourteen hundred years of existence. By the time of excavation, only a few courses of the walls remained standing: earthquakes and spoliation had carried much away. In fact, even at their height, the churches appear not to have used the impressive masonry and architectural techniques employed by the Classical builders of Gerasa. Seemingly, the builders of the churches preferred to reuse or convert antique materials that enabled rapid building methods. According to an inscription, St. Theodore’s took only two years to build and the three churches of SS. George, John and Cosmas and Damianos were possibly completed between the years of 529 and 533.5 Church use of spolia was a second phase in an extensive architectural recycling programme spanning Classical and Islamic cultures. In turn, the reused Classical pieces found their way into Islamic period urban/residential structures.6 Christianity’s unique architectural contribution was to carpet floors with beautiful mosaic pavements. Despite the destruction to representations of living creatures by iconoclasts, their inscriptions, decorative geometric patterns, and pictures of buildings were spared. Their survival has provided a flood of data with dedication inscriptions dating most churches’ consecration, their Bishops and names of donors and linking building styles through similarities in mosaic geometries.

The advent of Christianity in Gerasa ensured a radical shift in architectural and religious perceptions. First the first time in Gerasa’s 1,000 year history, architectural forms were dismantled and recycled into a radically different spatial format. Classical architectural pieces were not reinserted into Classical forms but into Christian types. This new Christian cultic archetype should be considered in conjunction with new spatial meanings for interiority and exteriority in relation to the sacred and the profane. The definitive archaeological work pertaining to the churches at Gerasa is contained in the section written by J.W. Crowfoot in Gerasa, City of the Decapolis.1 The discoveries of three additional churches: Bishop Marianos, Bishop Isaiah, and the Artemis Plaza2 churches are published in Jerash Archaeological Project I (1986). An octagon shaped church built over what is believed to be a Temple of Nemesis, a short distance north of the North Gate, was excavated by A.M. Mjelli in 1982-3, but I have yet to find a publication of it. The last substantial publication pertaining to Gerasa’s churches is from Michele Piccirillo’s, The Mosaics of Jordan,3 where the finest of Gerasa’s mosaics (as well as all of Jordan) are beautifully photographed. With the exception of the three recently excavated churches (above), a few investigative probes by international groups, and protective walls built around SS. Cosmas and Damianus Church, no major restorative or archaeological studies of Christian Gerasa have been conducted since the Yale University and British School of Archaeology teams worked there in 1928-30 and 1931-34. Piccirillo describes a third church on the East side of the Chrysorhoas called the Chapel of Elias, Maria and Soreg lying north of the Procopius Church which was excavated by G. Lankester Harding.4 Harding in, The Antiquities of Jordan (1959), neither mentions it nor places the church on his map of Jerash, which suggests that it was a later excavation.

Gerasa’s Christian worship buildings are called by the generic term, ‘church’ by modern archaeologists but Gerasa’s inscriptions refer to a church as a: ὀ ἄγ(ιος) ναὸς,7 or as a: 8 9 10 ἀγίου εὐκτηρὶου, μαρτύριον, ὀ ἄγιος οἴκος or ἠ 11 ἐκκληςία. The one reference to ‘church’ (ἠ ἐκκλησία) is dubious as it is an epigraphic inference from a partial inscription. Primarily churches were known in terms similar 5 Crowfoot, Gerasa, City of the Decapolis, 187; C.B. Wells, op. cit, incrs: #300; 306-11, respectively. 6 It is common-local knowledge and clearly visible, that much of the terracing stone of the modern city of Jarash is of Roman cut stone. A number of inscriptions were taken from stones installed in walls of Arab homes, mosques, and city structures in Jerash and surrounding villages: see inscriptional examples from C.B. Wells, op. cit: #1, 9, 14, 21, 26, 28, 32, 38, 39, 109 (fragments A and (B/C) and D found in 3 separate modern structures in the nearby modern village of Ain Kerawan), 118, 123, 130, 131 (in a house in Wadi ed-Deir), 133, 137, 160, 168, 170, 177, 182, 186, 199, 201, 202, 205, 215-16, 230, 233, 239, 253-55 (found in the Suf mosque), 258, 260, 274. Presently visible in a wall in the ‘Omayyad House’ on the south Decumanus is a stone inscribed with a Christian symbol of a cross and ΑΩ. 7 C.B. Wells op. cit, inscrs: #309, 331 and Michael Gawlikowski and Ali Musa, ‘The Church of Bishop Marianos,’ JAP I, Amman: 1986, 143. 8 C.B. Wells, op. cit, inscr: #306 and J.M.C. Bowsher, ‘The Church Inscriptions,’ JAP I, Amman: 1986, 319. 9 C. B. Wells, op. cit, inscrs: #300, 304. 10 Michael Gawlikowski and Ali Musa, op. cit, 143. 11 C.B. Wells, op. cit, inscr: #298.

The relative archaeological neglect of Gerasa’s churches over the last seventy-five years is symptomatic of their more than 1

J.W. Crowfoot, ‘The Christian Churches’, Gerasa, City of the Decapolis, Carl H. Kraeling (ed.), New Haven: Yale University Press, 1938, 169-294. Crowfoot reviews them again in: J.W. Crowfoot, Early Churches in Palestine, The Schweich Lectures on Biblical Archaeology, 1937, London: Oxford University Press, 1941. 2 The Artemis Temple site confirming a known inscription in C.B. Wells, ‘The Inscriptions’, Gerasa City of the Decapolis, inscr. #337. 3 Michele Piccirillo, The Mosaics of Jordan (Amman: ACOR, 1992). 4 Ibid, 296. The chapel is named for its benefactors whose captioned portraits appear in the floor mosaics. It is dated by mosaic design comparisons, to S. John’s and others, to the early to mid-sixth century. The mosaics were removed, cut into small panels and distributed to museums across Jordan.

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SPATIAL AND RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE LATE ANTIQUE POLIS to their pagan predecessors as holy places, places of prayer, temples and shrines of commemoration. For the sake of clarification, I will designate ‘church’ as a Christian worship centre.

Before we turn to Gerasa’s church architecture and liturgical use I will examine the scale of this new building and through that assessment of scale, I will be able to make some crude computations of lay-worship and chancel space from the fourth to the seventh centuries CE. The Church divided lay and clerical worship space into two clearly delineated zones. Visiting any number of church remains in Jordan and Syria, one sees ubiquitous evidence of horizontal stone strips for the chancel rail laid in front of a semi-circular apse. Each possesses the holes for the post sockets and grooves in which sat the flat vertical railing panels. I have also included important atria, baptismals and small chapels connected with several of the churches since they were also involved in patterns of lay-worship, though likely not used simultaneously on worship days. The results will help to identify changes in worship, percentage gain or loss of lay versus clerical internal basilica domain, and provide a perspective on Christian wealth. Coupled with this information, I will apply what may be known about liturgy to understand better Christian sacrality and use of sacred space.

The majority of church buildings in Gerasa, as throughout Jordan and Palestine, are of the basilica design. The Romans used such buildings as centres for conducting civil business.12 Its Greek original is not known, but Ward-Perkins plausibly suggests that it was the seat of government in the Hellenistic world.13 Citizens would enter through doors in the ‘broadside’, or long wall of the building and faced the magistrate who sat in an apse, which was also to serve as a shrine for the imperial cult. In this ‘broad’ state, the basilica could be considered a ‘centralised’ architectural form. The magistrate would face the assembled people from his elevated platform to judge cases brought forward. The place of judgment was separated by the chancel (cancelli), a latticework or full panelled fence. The two side isles created by open colonnades and low ceilings provided rooms for attendants of the magistrate to conduct business. The form was not as popular in the East as it was in the Roman West until it was adapted to Christian use. At that point, its orientation was changed to emphasize the procession to the altar. Ward-Perkins asserts that Christianity adopted the form after a ‘decision’ by the Constantinian imperial court to adapt a pre-existing structure for ecclesiastical usage. This thesis will develop (in Section IV) the ramifications of an architectural application of a spatial system pertaining to civic justice being transferred to the operation of the Christian Mysteries. The magistrate becomes priest (and priest, magistrate), judgment becomes synonymous with sanctification (and sanctification, with pious legality) and sacred space is subdivided by physical barriers.

The numbers are in square meters (sqm.) and the dating comes from various sources, particularly mosaic inscriptions, surveying (Artemis Altar Plaza), and historical references (Cathedral/Fountain Court) and therefore is approximate. The dimensions were computed by rule off the site plans in Kraeling and Hadidi (1986) and are approximates. I can not say how many people could fit in a square metre, or whether churches was filled to capacity during every worship service and whether the isles were kept open or used as a segregation device by sex, age, and status. The dimensions of the Temple to Nemesis/Octagonal Church are unpublished, only its atrium dimensions can be roughly calculated.15 Since the atrium spaces of the Fountain Court, and the Propylaea Church are close to their associated sanctuary dimensions, I am approximating the Octagonal Church sanctuary to that of its atrium.

William Bowden understands the great influx of resources to build Christian architecture in the fourth through sixth centuries as the resumption of a two hundred year ‘hiatus’ from the construction of Classical monumental architecture in the second century. He understands Christian monumentalism to be of the same motivation as the Classical in that it is a sign of increasing control over existing resources by emerging elite typical of class-based societies.14 The multiplicity of churches at Gerasa reflects this monumental phenomenon. They also represent the human element of a dominant religious system assuming control of an urban environment by covering topography with structures and raising the priest/bishop to an elite status.

The size and date of the Zeus Temenos Church(es) (a monastic community?) are unknown. The identification of the site as the home of a religious community is speculative and is on the evidence a large fresh water cistern, partitions subdividing possible living spaces in the lower temenos corridors, remnants of chapel spaces and piles of mosaic tiles that are dated to the Byzantine period and are assumed to have covered chapel floors. Rasson and Seigne argue that the Zeus Temple area was converted into a ‘vast religious complex’ by the end of the fifth century and possibly destroyed by in Chalcedonian and Monophysite factional disturbances.16 I have not included the Zeus Temple in my lists due to the complete lack of epigraphic support, the

12

A. Ovadiah and C.G. de Silva, ‘Supplementum to the Corpus of Byzantine Churches ii the Holy Land, III: Apendices’, Levant XVI (1984), 12-153. 13 J.B. Ward-Perkins, Studies in Roman and Early Christian Architecture, London: Pindar Press, 1994. 14 William Bowden, ‘Church builders and church building in late-antique Epirus’, Recent Research in Late-Antique Urbanism, JRA 42, Portsmouth: 2001, 60-1.

15

F. Zayadine, ‘Synopsis’ JAP I, Amman, 1986, 17. A.-M. Rasson and J. Seigne, ‘Une Citerne Byzantino-Omeyyade sur Le Sanctuaire de Zeus,’ JAP II, 1984-1988 (Paris: 1989), 150-1. Seigne admits on pg. 151, f.n. 26. The Chalcedonian destruction concept is from a simple hypothesis of research.

16

114

CHAPTER 16: GERASA’S CHURCHES: ARCHITECTURE AND TOPOGRAPHY Table 1: Bishops responsible for Church Construction Bishops

Date

Inscription

Related Building:

Exerecius Marianus Placcus Claudius Aeneas Paul

359 5th or 6th (?) 454/5 464 495 531

*17 289 296 298 299 *19

Anastasius20 Isaiah Marianos Anastasius Genesius

mid-6th (?) 559 570 601 (?) 611

328 *21 *22 328 335

unknown structure Cathedral repair-precinct reconstr.18 Placcus Baths Prophets, Apostles and Martyrs St. Theodore’s Cathedral repairs, Procopius, S. John complex, Prison, Synagogue/Church, lias, Maria and Soreg (?) SS. Peter and Paul B. Isaiah B. Marianos SS. Peter and Paul (?) B. Genesius

Table 2: Areas of Churches by Century

FOURTH CENTURY Construction

Area (sqm)

Construction/Dedication Date

Cathedral: • South chapel: • Fountain Ct.:

924 96 900

(+/- 375 CE)

Total 4th c. area for laity:

1,920

FIFTH CENTURY Construction Prophets, Apostles and Martyrs: S. Theodore’s: • Baptismal: • North chapel: • South chapel: Total 5th c. area for laity:

Area (sqm)

Construction/Dedication Date

731 700 36 27 87.75

(464-465 CE) (494-496 CE)

Area (sqm)

Construction/Dedication Date:

468 35 254

(526-527 CE)

1,581.75

SIXTH CENTURY Construction Procopius: • North chapel: SS. Cosmos/Damianus:

(529-533 CE)

17

Epiphanius, Panarion, Haer. 73.26. C.B. Wells, op. cit, inscr: #289. 19 C.B. Wells, op. cit: inscrs: #293, 304; 306, 309, 314; inferred from synagogue/church date; P.-L. Gatier, ‘Nouvelles inscriptions de Gerasa.’ Syria LXII (Paris: 1985), 299; respectively. 20 Question on dating B. Anastasius and SS Peter and Paul’s Church: see comments on relics below. 21 J.M.C. Bowsher, ‘The Church Inscriptions,’ JAP I, Amman: 1986, 319. The church was consecrated as a ‘place of prayer (ευκτήρ(ιον) οικοδομήθη...)’. 22 Michael Gawlikowski and Ali Musa, op. cit, 143. 18

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SPATIAL AND RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE LATE ANTIQUE POLIS

Table 2 cont.

S. John: • Baptismal: S. George: [Total for Complex: Synagogue/Church: SS. Peter and Paul: Bishop Isaiah: Propylaea Church: • Atrium: Bishop Marianos: • North chapel: Mortuary Church: Artemis Altar Plaza: Octagonal Church Atrium: Chapel of Elias, Maria & Soreg Total 6th c. area for laity:

370 30 268 922] 279 392 440 675 600 45.5 17.5 84 221 541 32

(6th CE) (6th CE) ? (6th CE)

Area (sqm)

Construction/Dedication Date:

(530-531 CE) (540 CE or post 601) (559 CE) (565 CE) (570 CE)

4152

SEVENTH CENTURY Construction Genesius: • West chapel:

425.5 34

611

Total 7th c. worship area for laity: 459.5

Table 3: Total Lay-Worship Space Constructed Between 4th and 7th Centuries CE.

CENTURY

AREA (SQM)

4th century CE: 5th century CE: 6th century CE: 7th century CE:

1,920.00 1,581.75 4,152.00 459.50

Table 4: Development in Lay-Worship Space Between 4th and 7th Centuries CE.23 Total Worship Space for laity in 4th century: Total Worship Space for laity from 4th through 5th centuries: Total Worship Space for laity from 4th through 6th centuries: Total Worship Space for laity from 4th through 7th centuries:

1,920 sqm 3,501.75 sqm. 7,653.75 sqm. 8,081.25 sqm.

Table 5: % Change in Lay-Worship Space Between 4th and 7th Centuries CE. % change in worship space from 4th through 5th CE: % change in worship space from 5th through 6th CE: % change in worship space from 7th CE:

+55% +160% -88.8%

23

The Cathedral, the Prophet’s and S. Theodore’s, at this point, constitutes the sum total of three churches for the first two centuries of Gerasene Christendom. I have included the 900 sqm of the Fountain Court in the Cathedral’s measurements due to their historical connection however, I am excluding it for accuracy in computing change in worship space between the 4th and 5th centuries.

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CHAPTER 16: GERASA’S CHURCHES: ARCHITECTURE AND TOPOGRAPHY

Table 6: Measurable Apsidal Space for Clergy. Church:

Area (sqm)

Cathedral: Prophets/Aps/Mrtrs: St. Theodore’s: Propylaea Church: Procopius Church: Synagogue Church: Bishop Marianos: Bishop Isaiah: SS. Peter & Paul: SS. Cosmos & Damianos: St. John: St. George: Mortuary Church: Bishop Genesius: Elias, Maria and Soreg

Lay worship (sqm)

154 115 153 96 148 56 21 125 162 105 110 95 35 168 40

% Clergy space

1020 731 814 675 503 279 63 440 392 254 370 268 84 460 32

15.0 13.6 15.8 17.9 22.7 16.7 25.0 22.1 35.7 29.2 22.9 26.2 29.4 26.7 25.0

Table 7: Churches in Descending Order from the Highest to Lowest Capacity (sqm.). Name

Sq.m.

Cathedral: Prophets/Aps/Mrtrs: St. Theodore’s: Propylaea Church: Octagonal Church: Procopius Church: Bishop Isaiah: Genesius Church: SS. Peter & Paul: St. John: Synagogue/Church: St. George: SS. Cos/Damianos: Artemis Altar Plaza: Mortuary Church: Bishop Marianos: Zeus Complex Church(es) Banks Church Elias, Maria and Soreg (?)

Type

Date:

924 Basilica-single, internal apse 731 Centralised-Cruciform, single, external apse 700 Basilica-single, external apse 675 Basilica-single, internal apse 540 Centralised-Octagon 468 Basilica-internal, tri-apsidal 440 Basilica-internal, tri-apsidal 425.5 Basilica-single, external apse 392 Basilica-internal, tri-apsidal 370 Centralised-Round, single external apse 279 Basilica-single, external apse 268 Basilica-single, internal apse 254 Basilica-single, internal apse 221 Basilica-single, internal apse 84 Basilica-single, external apse 63 Basilica-single, internal apse (?) Unknown (?) Basilica-tri-apsidal, internal incl.side chambers behind flanking apses. unknown

117

(+/375) (464-5) (494-6) (565) (6th c.) (526-7) (559) (611) (540) (529-33) (530-1) (529-33) (529-33) (6th c.) (6th c.) (570) (?) (mid-6th) (mid-6th)

SPATIAL AND RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE LATE ANTIQUE POLIS regions.33 For instance, Mathews lists thirty-three churches built during Justinian’s reign in Constantinople and its suburbs.34 The multiplicity of sites at Gerasa is similar to the fifteen churches uncovered in Umm al-Jimal, Kirbet es-Samra had eight, Madaba had fourteen and Umm er-Rasas had fifteen churches.35 Between Gerasa and Mafraq, the village of Rihab possessed ten churches, all constructed between 594 and 635 CE. 36 To this date, five have been excavated.37 The wealth in ecclesiastical construction is reflected in the use of expensive materials. The apse of the Cathedral was encrusted with sheets of fine dark-red and dark-green marble, but slabs of high quality, local limestone, with narrow spacers of marble were used as a substitute in other parts of the building.38 It is likely that the surrounding temples were stripped of their marble wall slabs to defray costs. Money was spent to magnify the places of highest value, and economy was used on its auxiliary spaces. Excavators found large pieces of wood joist materials, likely structural roof materials, in juniper, pine and cypress in the debris of St. Theodore’s.39 The surplus wealth required to construct thirteen lavish churches in 50 years indicates the Church was fully integrated with, and certainly a beneficiary of an energetic economy. 40

highly speculative nature of the reconstruction, the problems of dating and the absence of a secure plan.24 The Artemis Altar Plaza Church, though not possessing a dedicatory inscription, was dated by architectural style to the sixth century.25 The Chapel of Elias, Maria and Soreg cannot be securely dated though its earliest mosaic style can be compared to St. John’s (approx. 530 CE) and the floors of several in the nearby village of Rihab dated by mosaic inscriptions.26 The newly discovered Chapel of Khirbat Munyah (6 km northwest of Gerasa, possibly part of a monastery) is too far away to include in the survey.27 CHURCH CHRONOLOGY The above tables indicate that the great Cathedral Church dates sometime between 350 and 375 CE28 and pre-dates the next known construction (the Prophet’s Church) by sixty years. It was a Temple Church reusing the temenos of what is believed to have been a temple to the Arabian God.29 The Cathedral remained the city’s largest church until the end of Gerasa’s occupation. St. Theodore’s was built under Bishop Aeneas in 495/6 and thirteen additional churches were constructed between 527 and 570 CE during the episcopates of Bishops: Paul (526-34), Bishop Anastasius,30 Isaiah, and Marianus (570). The last church known to be built was the Bishop Genesius’s Church dedicated in 611. Since the publication of Iain Browning’s Jerash and the Decapolis, (1982),31 two significant churches have been discovered at Gerasa: the Bishop Marianos Church, discovered during excavation and reconstruction of the Hippodrome during the late 1980’s, and the Bishop Isaiah’s Church, built west of the Odeon on the south side of the North Decumanus.32

The sixth century also seems to have seen an increased confidence and militancy in the Christian community. A church was built over the synagogue (530-31) and a recently published and very important inscription attests the 33

Yoram Tsafrir, ‘The Fate of Pagan Cult Places in Palestine: The Archaeological Evidence with Emphasis on Bet Shean’, Religions and Ethnic Communities in Later Roman Palestine, Hayim Lapin (ed.), College Park: University of Maryland, 1998, 198. Tsafrir counted 390 churches in 335 settlements and about 118 synagogues, 10 of which were Samaritan dating to the Byzantine period in Palestine. A. Ovadiah and C.G. De Silva accounted for 260 churches and chapels, excluding extemporaneous ecclesiastical structures in their corpus by 1984. The century of the highest percentage of growth is in the sixth century (1970, 193; 1984, 153). Asher Ovadiah, Corpus of the Byzantine Churches in the Holy Land, Bonn: Peter Hanstein Verlag GMBH, 1970, 185-218; A. Ovadiah and C.G. De Silva, ‘Supplementum to the Corpus of the Byzantine Churches in the Holy Land’, Levant 13 (1981), 200-261; Levant 14 (1982), 122-170; Levant 16 (1984), 129-165. 34 Thomas F. Mathews, The Early Churches of Constantinople: Architecture and Liturgy, University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1977, 7. 35 Peter Richardson, City and Sanctuary, London: SCM Press, 2002, 94. 36 The plurality of churches in, small villages in particular requires explanation. Differences in votive functions; the veneration of a number of different saints, and possible sectarian differences are all plausible explanations. See A. Ovadiah and C.G. de Silva (1984), 152; Natalia B. Teteriatnikov, The Liturgical Planning of Byzantine Churches in Cappadocia, Rome: Orientalia Christiana Analecta, 1996, 252, 71. 37 Michele Piccirillo, The Mosaics of Jordan, Amman: ACOR, 1992, 310-13. All are single-internal apsidal with flanking pastophoria. 38 J.W. Crowfoot, Early Churches in Palestine, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1941, 109. 39 Ibid, 104. 40 A.R. Bellinger, ‘Coins’, Gerasa, City of the Decapolis, 498-99. The greatest number of coins found of the Byzantine era (as well as Roman Imperial) are from Constantinople (over Alexandria) reflecting the bronze coinage reform by Anastasius. Also there are an extraordinary number of coins of Constantius II and later of Justin II minted in Nicomedia.

The surge in 6th-century church construction noted in Table 4 is typical for Jordan and Palestine, but is also seen in other

24

J.W. Crowfoot, Gerasa, City of the Decapolis, 64. Crowfoot knows of no historical reference of violence in Arabia against Chalcedon as took place in Palestine and Syria. Arabia through out the early Byzantine period was part of the ecclesiastical province of the Patriarchate of Antioch. 25 M.V. Fontana, ‘Archaeological Research in the Sanctuary of Artemis, The Intermediate Terrace,’ JAP I, Amman, 1986, 180. 26 M. Piccirillo, op. cit, 296. 27 Ibid, 299. 28 J. W. Crowfoot, Gerasa, City of the Decapolis, 217-219. Crowfoot suggests 365 by Epiphanius’ commenting on the Fount in 375, which was connected to Cathedral architecture by calling it a martyrion. Also mosaics in the Glass Court and the rebuilt main staircase from the Cardo indicate mid-forth century work. 29 Ibid, 201; Crowfoot, ‘Recent Work round the Fountain Court at Jerash,’ PEFQS, 1931, 145, 153. C.C. McCown, ‘A New Deity in a Jerash Inscription,’ JAOS, Vol. 54, (1934), 184-185. 30 See comments on relics below. 31 Iain Browning, Jerash and the Decapolis, London: Chatto & Windus, 1982. 32 Vincent A. Clark. ‘The Church of Bishop Isaiah at Jerash’, Amman: JAP I, 1985, 303-322.

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CHAPTER 16: GERASA’S CHURCHES: ARCHITECTURE AND TOPOGRAPHY construction (ἀνήγειρεν) of a prison (φρουρᾶς) for the ‘accused’ (ὑπαιτίων) in addition to the one used to house the ‘condemned’ (κατακρίτων, κατάδικον) built by the Bishop Paul (Παῦλος ὁ μακαριώτ(ατος) ἡμὤν ἐπίσκο(πος). The date of construction and consecration was November, 539 CE.41 Respectively, the two types of condemned were those who were waiting for and who had experienced the completion of the judicial process.42 Bishop Paul, in a similar way to his near contemporary, Bishop John of Asia (545/6), appears to have taken an aggressive line with non-orthodox groups and played a major role in the administering of civic justice.43

CHURCH LOCATIONS Of the eighteen churches discovered at Gerasa,46 two are outside the city walls. On the west of the Chrysorhoas, ten are packed closely in and around the Artemis Temple, with two north of the South Theatre along the city wall. Two churches are spread apart running north and south, on the east side of the river. Crowfoot mentions a further church, not far from the Procopius Church, that is known from a drawing on an earlier plan from the Bankes collection. John William Bankes47 travelled in the Near East during 1818-20 and made notes and sketches during his journeys. Included in his collection are drawings by his travelling companion and hired artist, Charles Barry, who afterwards became the architect of the Houses of Parliament. This church is known only from a single drawing of Barry. If it is accurate to scale, it stood as one of the largest churches in Gerasa with a portico of ten columns on the west-atrium end and five doors opening into the nave. The sanctuary was tri-apsial with chambers behind the side apses, placing its construction in the mid-sixth century.48 No trace of it existed in 1929 when systematic church excavations were conducted for the first time. This church would have served the mostly archaeologically silent eastern half of the ancient city. The Chapel of Elias, Maria, and Soreg is placed north of the Procopius Church close to the eastern city wall.49

A recently published letter of Pope Gregory the Great to Bishop Marianus of Gerasa dated to February 601 CE44 suggests that Marianus sent his envoy to Rome to ask Gregory for specific holy relics to take back to Gerasa. As it was more common for relics to move from the Holy Land to the West, those moving in the opposite direction have been assumed to relate to Saints Peter and Paul. Churches dedicated to Peter and Paul were extremely rare in the East, being attested at Antioch and Constantinople. None are known in Palestine and Gerasa’s is unique to Jordan.45 Ss Peter and Paul church was tentatively dated by Crowfoot to the mid-sixth century on comparative mosaic and architectural styles within Gerasa. The inscription mentions a Bishop Anastasius who has been dated to after Bishop Paul’s episcopate. Since Gerasa likely received relics of Ss Peter and Paul from Gregory, a church would have followed, pushing the Ss Peter and Paul Church into the seventh century. Importantly, there is proof of direct, personal communication between the Pope in Rome and a relatively small Christian centre in Arabia whose bishop could likely have had Monophysite, leanings. Bishop Marianus’ notoriety and status would have extended beyond a martyrium isolated outside Gerasa’s walls and questions arise as to his intention in gathering relics particular to the Roman West and bypassing ecclesiastical authorities in Constantinople.

Rather than grouping around the Cathedral (and Fountain Court/St. Theodore complex), the largest and oldest church and a pilgrimage site, Gerasa’s west-bank churches appear to group around the Artemis Temple. The Propylaea Church and the Artemis Altar Plaza churches invest the Temple site. The Cathedral/St. Theodore’s complex is to its immediate south, St. John’s threesome off the south-west temenos corner, Bishop Genesius behind them, the Synagogue/Church directly west of the temenos, and Bishop Isaiah Church immediate to its north. SS. Peter and Paul and the Mortuary Church are in close parallel about 400 meters away to the south-west. One may speculate that these locations were selected due to the availability of space and spolia or, more spiritually, to orient Christian sites to the umbilicus, the city’s tyche and habitual spiritual centre of Gerasa’s civic and religious life. The Artemis Temple itself slowly morphed into a commercial facility; but its role as a place of religious orientation appears to remain constant. Curiously, the ecclesiastical authorities kept its features alive and chose not completely eradicate it from civic memory. This concept of continuity and change between pagan and

41

Pierre-Louis Gatier, ‘Nouvelles Inscriptions De Gerasa,’ Syria LXII, Paris, 1985, 299. 42 Pierre-Louis Gatier, ‘Nouvelles Inscriptions De Gerasa,’ Syria LXII, Paris, 1985, 297-307. For the treatment of prisoners and the persecution of pagans see Libanius, Oration XLV, ‘To the Emperor, On the Prisoners’, (LCL), 151-193 and Pseudo-Dionysius of Tel-Mahre, Chronicle, III, trans. Witold Witakowski Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1996, 71. 43 Pseudo-Dionysius of Tel-Mahre, Chronicle, Part III, trans. Witold Witakowski, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1996, 71-2. 44 Pierre-Louis Gatier, ‘Une Lettre du Pape Gregoire Le Grand a Marianus Eveque de Gerasa,’ Syria LXIV, Paris, 1987, 131-35. Gatier comments on new-later dating for SS Peter and Paul and B. Anastasius. 45 Asher Ovadiah and Carla Gomez de Silva, ‘Supplementum to the Corpus of the Byzantine Churches in the Holy Land’, Levant XVI, (1984), 129-165.

46

Peter Richardson, op. cit, 92-3; J. W. Crowfoot: ‘The Christian Churches’, ‘The Churches and Ecclesiastical Usage’, ‘Architecture Of The Churches’, Gerasa, City of the Decapolis. 47 J.W. Crowfoot, Early Churches in Palestine, London: Oxford University Press, 1941, viii. 48 Ibid,70. 49 M. Piccirillo, op. cit, 355. Piccirillo locates the ‘Unidentified Church’ west of the Procopius Church and south of the Great East Baths.

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SPATIAL AND RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE LATE ANTIQUE POLIS

16.1 Map of Gerasa marking pagan and Christian cult sites somewhere here.

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CHAPTER 16: GERASA’S CHURCHES: ARCHITECTURE AND TOPOGRAPHY Christian sacred space is a key issue to this thesis and will be treated at length in Section IV.

Marianos Church situated amidst a number of burial tombs close to the hippodrome.54

As the Artemis Temple seems to have been a cluster-point for churches, the entertainment venues may be seen as bracketing devices in Christian Gerasa’s topography. From the north, the Berketein Theatre, North and South Theatres and the Hippodrome survived, though were competitors for Christian attentions during the 4th century. Gerasa’s placement in narrow valley presently allows the sound of Arab bagpipers playing in the South Theatre, as a tourist attraction, to be clearly heard on the North Decumanus; it is also likely that those worshipping in the Cathedral may have been able to hear the crowds in the South and North Theatres and the Hippodrome. Unknown numbers may have missed services to support their faction at the races. The late inscription (539 CE)50 mentioning the renewal of the Maioumas festival indicates secular-Christian heterogeneity in Gerasa. The city was not entirely a ‘Christian ideological camp’.

Conclusions will be drawn from church placement in relation to the pre-Christian urban form of Gerasa in Section IV. However, at this point several statements can be made. First, from what is known of the street layout of Gerasa, church placement appears to either invest certain Classical spaces without concern for symmetry or seems randomly placed upon the topography without the connecting architectural elements to unite them to a monolithic urban plan. The majority were not situated along the main avenues. Second, there is the sense of encroachment upon Classical space through subdividing and blocking walls. Open columned space became dense enclosure. CHURCH DESIGN55 Despite the differences between ecclesiastical and Classical architecture and urban form, there was considerable creativity in church design and in the appropriation and conversion of existing classical geometries. The three centralised churches are unique within Gerasa: octagonal (Temple of Nemisis/Octagon church), cruciform (Prophets, Apostles and Martyrs), and tetra-conch (St. John the Baptist). Churches built in internal, tri-apsial forms (e.g. SS Peter and Paul, Procopius Church, Bishop Isaiah) bear strong similarities yet have individual characteristics such as Prothesis chapels, complex geometric mosaics, and unusual egresses. In all the conversions (e.g. the Cathedral, Propylaea Church, the Synagogue/Church, and S. Theodore’s), doorways were situated on either side of the main apse and the chancel rail was adjusted to allow for lay access. This diversity gives the impression that each architect, bishop or patron who designed them possessed a degree of autonomy. There does not appear to have been a long-established and rigid design policy. Nevertheless, all of Gerasa’s churches have similar basilical features: three door openings on the west wall, roof structures supported by two parallel linear colonnades, chancel rails, a centralised apse, synthronon seating for clergy, mosaic carpeted flooring, and in larger buildings, an extended ambo for preaching. Their apsidal forms were mixed where most kept to the standard classical design of an internal apse within a rectangular footprint. However five possessed an external apse that projects from the eastern wall as at: Bishop Genesius, Synagogue/Church, Mortuary, Saint John’s, The Prophets, and St. Theodore’s churches.56 All of the Gerasa churches had east-facing apses with their apses, orienting worshippers in the expected

It is puzzling and ironic that a monotheistic faith with central authority required a multiplicity of worship centres. The Jews did not seem to need a multitude of synagogues in one city.51 This characteristic seems peculiar to Christianity. Eighteen or more churches seems excessive for an area of little more than 210 acres. Sixth-century Gerasa was saturated with church sanctuaries and ecclesiastical support buildings. In addition to the likely increase in the Christian population, a possible explanation for the multiplicity of sites is the different functions of martyria, mortuary church, and small chapels dedicated by particular families. The Cathedral, Saint Theodore’s, the Propylaea, Prophet’s, and the Bankes Church may have acted as the central worship sites over the four hundred years of Christian occupation,52 while the smaller chapels could have been used for occasional services, burials, etc.53 The early Christian observances in remembering the dead is the likely reason for Gerasa’s two known martyria: the Mortuary Church tucked near to the southwest city wall against a sharp rise in the ground containing a tomb and the

50

C.B. Wells, op. cit, inscr: #279. Yoram Tsafrir, ‘The Fate of Pagan Cult Places in Palestine: The Archaeological Evidence with Emphasis on Bet Shean’, Religions and Ethnic Communities in Later Roman Palestine, 198. Tsafrir shows the church: synagogue ratio in Palestine during Byzantine period to be over 3:1. 52 Vincent A. Clark, ‘The Church of Bishop Isaiah at Jerash’, JAP I, Amman, 1986, 313. Clark believes the Bishop Isaiah Church to be in use throughout the Umayyad period due to the repaired floor tile, destroyed during the Iconoclastic period during the reign of Yazid II (720-724 CE). 53 Gisella Cantino Wataghin, ‘Christian Topography in the Late Antique Town’, Theory and Practice in Late Antique Archaeology, Luke Lavan and William Bowden (eds), Leiden: Brill, 2003, 230. Wataghin separates the ‘episcopal’ from the ‘extra-mural’ church; the former for formal worship, the later for: funerary, cult of the martyrs and baptismal practices. 51

54

Michael Gawlikowski and Ali Musa, op. cit, 137. The authors consider the Marianos church was likely a memorial church for the dead. 55 Church footprints and drawings are located at the end of this section. 56 J.W. Crowfoot, Gerasa, City of the Decapolis, 190. The external apse was a modification of the classical form entirely unique to Christianity.

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SPATIAL AND RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE LATE ANTIQUE POLIS direction of Christ’s return.57 The church builders stayed close to the Aegean style of highly decorated chancel design with stone-riveted, and glass mosaic walls and stone mosaic floors. According to Krautheimer, the overall construction and exterior plans are of a localised-Syrian method, built of heavy ashlar masonry, columned supported basilical ceiling supports and roofs.58 Just as Asem Barghouti explained (above) Gerasa’s classical urban form to have been a ‘distinctive Syrian type’,59 the same local influences that uniquely shaped Greco-Roman architecture in Gerasa, the Decapolis region and beyond, was, in similar fashion, influencing Christian forms. This may lend support to the statement that the most enduring and adaptable currents of architectural continuance appear to come from the local indigenous populations. The style develops gradually, moving from 4th-5th century atria to enclosed narthexes.

centuries required more clerical and sacred space and as a consequence the laity lost a significant area of floor space. Table 6 (above) indicates a 10% increase in clerical space within churches at Gerasa from an average of 14.7 per cent during the fourth and fifth centuries to an average of 24.95 per cent in the sixth to early seventh centuries. Reliquaries were not common in Gerasa, yet at least five of them did possess them.60 One was found in St. Peter and Paul’s. In St. George’s two heavy stone reliquaries were found still fixed in the floor of the apse behind or beneath the probable site of the altar. Remnants of another, in the shape of a miniature sarcophagus, were found in the southeast chamber in the Cathedral. It is likely that the Genesius church possessed one and recent excavation of the Marianos church discovered another.

CENTRALISED CHURCHES

The chancels varied in plan and area but only three (Bishops: Genesius, Isaiah and Marianos) obviously reflect later liturgical development in which the Little (procession of the Gospel book) and Great Entrances (the procession of the gifts and non-consecrated elements) played a part. They had a chancel rail that extended in a straight-line across the full width of the nave and north and south isles. It thus formed a sort of transverse aisle or transept at the east end making the apses in Bishop Isaiah and rooms in Bishop Genesius churches identifiable as the prothesis and diaconia. The Marianos church did not architecturally define these spaces behind its continuous rail, however as a martyria it had a different liturgy and thus different spatial requirements. The chancels in the Cathedral, St. John, St. George and St. Cosmas churches include chambers with narrow doors on either side of the apse, and the chancel does not intrude into the aisles. These chambers were not built for liturgical purposes but were likely also used as vestries or sacristies. The St. Theodore’s, the Prophets’ and the Synagogue/Churches possess chancels which project into the nave while their apses project externally from the building. On either side of the flanking apses, at the ends of the aisles, there are doors for egress. In the tri-apsidal Procopius’ and St. Peter and Paul’s churches the chancel rails are carried completely across the nave and aisles. Curiously, the central area crossing the nave is carried much further outward to the west and then returns inward crossing the aisles creating a ‘T’ affect.

Centralised churches are a Constantinian development and emerge first in the major spiritual and political centres of the Christian world.61 Krautheimer sees architectural inspiration coming from the Classical West. Throughout the fourth century church design became more diverse with martyria built over venerated sites, independent from basilican naves. Such forms were eventually translated throughout the Roman world. Also near imperial palaces, especially at Constantinople, churches were built in tri-, tetra- conch and foil styles. The tetra- or quatrefoil plan is more common to northern Syria and Seleucia Pieria consisting of a square or rectangular space having at its corners L-shaped piers, from which project curved columnar exedrae, shaping four apses connected at each corner. Ambulatories ring it forming a double-shelled structure outside a quatrefoil nucleus. At its centre-point was an unusual U-shaped bema. All churches of this type were built between, 460 and 560 CE and were designed specifically as Cathedrals, though their primary intent as martyria has been debated.62 A hybrid of this style was the tetra-conch Church, one of the most popular of which was at Rasafa, a pilgrimage site in the Syrian East.63 The popularity of circular structures, especially for memorial purposes may have origins in imperial tombs. Augustus, Hadrian, and Diocletian erected monumental round mausolea. Some consider the domed Roman bath chamber, as 60

The development of chancel space from: a narrow rectangular projection, to a ‘T’ shape, to then a complete linear crossing represents an incremental increase in the territory at the east end of the sanctuary devoted to clerical use. The increasing complexity of liturgy from the late fourth into the sixth

J. W. Crowfoot, Gerasa, City of the Decapolis: St. Peter and Paul, 253; St. George’s, 245, 248; Cathedral, 214; Genesius, 250; and Marianos: M. Gawlinkowski and Ali Musa, ‘The Church of Bishop Marianos’, JAP I, Amman, 1986, 141. 61 Krautheimer and Curcic, op. cit, 94-5. 62 W. Eugene Kleinbauer, ‘The Origin and Functions of the Aisled Tetraconch Churches in Syria and Northern Mesopotamia,’ DOP 27, (1973), 89-114. Examples are at Seleucia Pieria, Rusafa, Apamea, their forms becoming more popular as the Church at Antioch became more powerful; G. Tchalenko, Eglises Syriennes A Bema, Paris: IFAPO, 1990. 63 Elizabeth Kay Fowden, The Barbarian Plain, Saint Sergius between Roman and Iran, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999). G. Tchalenko, Eglises de Village de la Syrie du Nord, Planches, Paris: Librairie Orientaliste Paul Geuthner, 1979, 307.

57

Ibid, 175. Church construction methods quoted in a 5th c. Syrian text, Testamentum Domini nostri Jesu Christi. 58 Krautheimer and Curcic, R., Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture, 4th edn, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986, 160. 59 Asem N. Barghouti, ‘Urbanization of Palestine and Jordan in Hellenistic and Roman Times’, SHAJ I, Amman, 1982, 217.

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CHAPTER 16: GERASA’S CHURCHES: ARCHITECTURE AND TOPOGRAPHY concentric architecture, directly influencing the centralised Byzantine church,64 while Barbara Polci argues that one of the most significant archaeological changes in domestic architecture in late antiquity was the number of reception halls to include an apse.65 Dining furniture changed from the three rectangular couches used in the triclinia to a semicircular couch called stibadium or sigma. The shape of the furniture dictated architectural form, thus the formal dining room evolved as a combination of apse and rectangular or square hall. However, the curved stibadium could only accommodate about one half to a third of the guests on rectangular couches. Therefore this prompted the innovation of the tri-conch, a room of three apses. Likewise, this design initiated in the West moved East and can be found in a triconch reception room in the Palace in Bostra, the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, and the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.

Leontius. All three churches open onto a common atrium as well as the rooms on either side of St. John’s externalpolygonal apse. St. John’s apse is unique as it is inset into eastern wall and is identical in shape as St. Theodore’s, though smaller by one meter in width. The roof over the middle of the circle was likely a dome constructed from wood, carried on four columns. Dimensionally, its reduced size eliminated the possibility of a semicircular colonnade as at Bostra and Gadara. The construction of exedrae in the corners of a circle was a common classical way of ‘roundingthe-square’. The fact that these were executed within a circular space accentuates the curvature of the entire area. The chancel rail reached into the circle as far as the centrecolumns and the ambo extended further, approximately three meters into the circle placing the priest in the midst of the congregation. The architectural design of S. John’s speaks of intimacy of space. There are no isles to separate and the saturation of circularity promised equanimity without isolation.

Yet, the innovatory period in Church geometry appears to have ended by the fifth century. By this point distinct building types reflected liturgical and functional differences and designs started to meld: cruciform patterns morphed into transepts and the circular and octagon melded into side apses in later eastern basilicas. In the late first half of the 6th century, sacristies, martyria chapels, or baptisteries flanking the apse give way to lateral apses with forechoirs similar to those found at Qal’ at Si’man.

A ‘micro-version’ of a chapel existed in a space typically designated for a pastophoria attached to the north side of St. John’s apse. It had a chancel screen running from north to south and two flanking chambers (diaconia, and prothesis?) paved with mosaics and lit with windows in the east wall. The room’s conversion into a baptistery required the removal of the chancel rail and installing the baptistery in the apse. In the south flanking chamber a new flight of steps led up to a doorway replacing a window. Crowfoot believes the doorway exited one onto a bridge that crossed over the street along the churches’ east wall.69 Conversion of pastophoria into baptisteries in Palestine was unique to the late sixth-century and it is not known why this trend developed, other than from a great influx in Christian conversion.70

Statistically speaking, centralised churches are rare.66 Palestine possesses only seven (circular: 2; octagon: 4; cruciform: 1) and Jordan (excluding Gerasa) possibly only three (Gadara: octagon, Nebo: trifolia apse; Madaba: circular nave).67 For Gerasa to possess three, each of a different type, (if counting the octagon church over the temple to Nemesis north of the North Gate), makes it a unique centre for Christian architecture.

THE PROPHETS, CHURCH71

Ss. COSMAS/DAMIANOS, S. JOHN, S. GEORGE CHURCH COMPLEX68

APOSTLES,

AND

MARTYRS

The Prophets, Apostles and Martyrs church (Prophets) was built in 464-5 CE during the episcopate of Claudius. Chronologically, it was the second church known to have been built after the Cathedral, yet its architecture radically differs from it predecessor’s basilical plan and is set, distinctly away from the Cathedral, close to the ancient city wall, north of the North Decumanus, on the east bank of the Chrysorhoas River.72 It was financed from a gift made on

Saint John the Baptist’s nave is a circle inscribed in a square, with four exedrae in the corners and an eastern apse. It is flanked by two basilicas: Ss Cosmas and Damianos and St. George, laid out on a transverse rather than the longitudinal Cathedral/St. Theodore complex. In this manner, Ss. Cosmas and George are defined as parecclesia. St. John’s was, primarily, a reduced copy, by two-thirds, of the centralised church at Bostra dedicated to Ss. Sergius, Baccus, and

69

J.W. Crowfoot, Ibid, 244. A. Ovadiah, ‘Liturgical Modifications in the Early Byzantine Church in Eretz Israel’, Liber Annus LV, (Jerusalem, 2005), 364-72. Examples come from Kursi, Khirbet Zikrin, Lower Herodian (the northern and central churches). At Capernaum’s octagon church, the external apse, built originally for a baptismal font was modified into a baptisterium. 71 J. W. Crowfoot, Gerasa, City of the Decapolis, 256-260. 72 Ibid, 256-260. The dedication inscription dating the church to 464-5 (Inscr. 298) during the episcopate of Claudius. Building costs were paid from a gift made by the late Marina. Unfortunately, by the time of 70

64

Marlia Mundell Mango, ‘Building and Architecture’, CAH Vol. XIV, Cambridge, 2000, 934. 65 Barbara Polci, ‘Aspects of the Transformation of the Roman Domus,’ Theory and Practice in Late Antiquity, Vol. 1, (eds) Luke Levane and William Bowden, Leiden: Brill, 2003, 80-82. 66 J.W. Crowfoot, Early Churches in Palestine, 90. 67 Asher Ovadiah, op. cit, 189; A. Ovadiah and C.G. De Silva, op. cit, 150. 68 J. W. Crowfoot, Gerasa, City of the Decapolis, 241-49.

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SPATIAL AND RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE LATE ANTIQUE POLIS behalf of a deceased woman named Marina.73 The church was a variant of the inscribed cruciform floor plan identified by Krautheimer,74 reflecting the cruciform style of the Aegean and is similar to the cross churches of St. John at Ephesus, and Gaza, all of which derived from Constantine’s Apostoleion. The form is extremely rare in Palestine75 with only the Church of Jacob’s Well in Nablus-Shechem and the Church of the Tomb of the Virgin Mary in Jerusalem as parallels.76 At the time of Crowfoot’s publication, the closest parallel was a site at Salona.77 At excavation, a house covered a corner of the building and an orchard covered the remaining structure. The building plan was determined by soundings and observations by earlier travellers such as Burckhardt, Buckingham, and Schumacher and consolidated into a single report by Crowfoot.78 The church is shown on the topographical map of Gerasa in Kraeling (Plan I), but modern maps do not include the site as it is buried under asphalt where several streets merge into the highway heading north through the hill villages to Mafraq.

THE CATHEDRAL (350-375CE), FOUNTAIN COURT AND ENVIRONS The west entrance to the Cathedral possessed similar monumental characteristics of the Cardo. In parallel to the Artemis Propylaea, the worshipper climbed a monumental staircase, passing the supporting columns of the first terrace whose platform extended overhead to carry the great pediment facing the Cardo (see Plan XXX in Kraeling). The staircase is of Christian construction as described in the Temple of the Arabian god section. Upon reaching the top landing one faced a solid stone wall where the remains of a shrine to St. Mary were uncovered, constructed from spolia, its construction dating no later than second quarter of the fifth century.79 Though this position is presently considered to be taken for granted, its original position is indeterminate. The remains were not found insitu but placed against the apsidal wall by archaeologists when clearing the terrace.80 However, the Arch-angels Michael and Gabriel mentioned in the shrine’s inscription, occur frequently as guardians of towers, doorways or entrances to churches, according to Crowfoot, and their appearance in an inscription at the entrance to the cathedral would seem appropriate.81 The wall, possessing religious significance, may have left the imagination of the worshipper to believe, as Annabel Jane Wharton contends, that they were beginning the first of a number of spiritual experiences in a place designed only for the initiated.82 Functionally, the wall presented one literally with a decision in which way to turn into interior space. As opposed to the linear access of pagan temples, the wall makes a claim to exclusivity and interiority. The decision to move further inward into the basilica’s corridors followed a Christian’s decision to commit themselves inwardly to a faith which defined itself as a turning away from the ‘pathways’ of the profane world. The unbeliever could explore the nave of the sanctuary but was not allowed further into the more hidden areas where the mysteries of the Eucharist and baptism were for the believer.

Nineteenth-century witnesses point to there being a precinct wall with porticos at some distance from the church, on at least three sides. The shape was in a Latin cross, contained within a square, hence the descriptive term ‘cross-in-square’, with a semicircular apse projecting out the east end with two exterior doors on either side. It measured 37 m. from east to west and more than 31 m. from north to south. Monumental columns stood at each corner of the crossing and colonnades of lesser height ran from them to the outside walls. Thus, there was a nave and two aisles at each arm of the cross. The taller columns at the crossing meant they likely supported a dome. At each corner of the rectangle were four rooms giving the semblance of the ‘inscribed-cross’ plan of the later Byzantine period. In the exterior walls, between the corner rooms, three doors gave entry into the nave and both aisles. On the west end, two additional exterior doors opened into corner rooms. The chancel screen extended from the corners of the apse, interconnected with the colonnades on both sides with an extending ambo. The chancel was reached by two steps up from the main floor. The stones of remaining walls, columns, capitals (Corinthian), the pedestals, the moulded door frames, and the three carved niches in the apse wall, all came from an unknown classical building of the second or third century.

Either a right or left turn led the person up a short flight of stairs into an ambulatory whose purpose was to, either allow entrance into the nave or bypass it and exit to the western atrium-Fountain Court area. Entering from the ambulatory hallway into the nave, the worshipper would discover that the blocking wall encountered in the east entrance, was actually the outer wall of the internal apse. With the exception of the apse, the outer wall of the Cathedral was of earlier pagan

Crowfoot’s investigations in the 1930’s the church was covered by a house, road and an orchard. 73 C.B.Wells, op. cit, inscr: 298. (Ἐπὶ τοῦ ὁ)σιωτ(άτου) ἐπισκόπου Κλα(υ)δίου ἐ(φ)ένετο (ἡ ἑκκλησία) tῶ´ ἁγίων προφητῶν ἀποστόρων, μαρτύρω(ν ἐκ προσφορ)ᾶς τῆς μακαρίας Μαρίνα(ς) τῷ ζκφ´ ἔτει χρ(όνων) γ´ ἰνδικ(τιῶνος). 74 Krautheimer and Curcic, op. cit, 158. 75 J.W. Crowfoot, Gerasa, City of the Decapolis, 260. Crowfoot comments that the Prophet’s ground plan being unique at Gerasa and rare elsewhere. 76 A. Ovadiah and C.G. de Silva, op. cit, 150. 77 J.C. Crowfoot, Early Churches in Palestine, 88. 78 Ibid, 85-88.

79

J.W. Crowfoot, Gerasa, City of the Decapolis, 208; C.B. Wells, op. cit, inscr: #288: Μιχαῆλ. Ἡ ἁγία Μαρία. Γαβριῆλ. 80 Ibid. 208 ‘We arranged them against the wall in the hope that the shrine may one day be rebuilt.’ 81 Ibid, 209. 82 Annabel Jane Wharton, Refiguring The Post Classical City, Cambridge: Cambridge, 1995, 68-72.

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16.2 West entries into the Cathedral from St. Theodore's apse. Modern Jerash is in the background and the stone structure standing, above left, is the back of the Nymphaeum.

16.3 The Shrine to Mary is propped against the Cathedral exterior apse wall situated on the upper landing of the west entrance from the Cardo. The upper columns of St. Theodore’s are above, right.

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SPATIAL AND RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE LATE ANTIQUE POLIS to be the Clergy House.87 Its pre-Christian form was a onestory building with three living rooms and an area of 130 sqm. Along with the living rooms, a more spacious central room likely served as a triclinium and as a group they shared, but did not surround, a small open court that extended to the east. By the late sixth-century, the court was subdivided by walls and was similar in spatial density to the area west of St.Theodore’s. The Clergy House area was built over burial caves 4, 6, and 7 which were part of a continuous, preChristian cemetery on the western hillside. As discussed in the spatial aspects of Christianity, above, Christian society seemed ‘at home’ with the dead. It did not demand spatial separation between burial zones and living quarters as the Romans. Thus at Gerasa much of cemetery situated on the western hillside became an ecclesiastical/residential area. After the construction of S. Theodore’s, the subdivisions intensified to make room for ecclesiastical workers, and perhaps a monastery. This congestion resulted in the eventual closure of the Stepped Street, a short distance beyond the Placcus Baths.

origins while the inner sanctuary walls were mid-fourthcentury Christian. The sacred space of the new was housed within the partial outer shell of the old. A fifth-century instruction manual for the construction of churches required three entrances into the sanctuary in symbolic reference to the Trinity,83 though, for Gerasa, this was a continuance of an architectural model used in the Triumphal Arch, and South Gate, Cardo transition north of the Oval Plaza, and Artemis Propylaea entrances. The main triple entrance to the Cathedral was properly oriented on the west wall and approached from the Fountain Court, an open 900 square meter courtyard centred with the running fount, and a perimeter walk covered by a roof. All of the Cathedral door jams on open doors are fine quality second-century spolia as are its stone walls and Corinthian colonnades. The Cathedral was of a standard basilica design with a central nave flanked each side by twelve support columns bringing the eye to the circular apse facing east. The colonnades determined outside aisle widths which, in this case, were half the width of the nave. The small size of the apse is typical of an early-fourth-century basilica. The small chapel was later attached to the south wall of the precinct, entered only from its north side, from the rear of the Cathedral’s south wall and the covered court walkway. The layout of the Cathedral-St. Theodore complex is similar to the Holy Sepulchre and its connected buildings;84 specifically, the portico on the Cardo and the monumental stairway of Gerasa corresponds with the propylaea and eastern atrium in Jerusalem. Even the baptismal founts are located in the same place in both churches.

Just east of the Sarapion Passage exit from the Fountain Court was an entrance to a room called the Glass Court. Its floor was inlaid with many beautiful and varied geometric mosaics and was a store of large clumps of multi-coloured melted glass, used as materials for fabricating architectural and mosaic glass. Here and within the ruins of the Bishop Isaiah Church large quantities of window glass were uncovered. Blue and yellow-green coloured glass as well as many round, brown panes with thick bulls-eye centres and looped-out edges for bonding to plaster were believed to have been used for clerestory windows in the churches. It is likely that Gerasa manufactured its own window glass, a luxury item during the early Byzantine period.88 Later 8th century finds of glass lamps and a bronze ring-shaped polykandelon (lamp holder, ‘chandelier’) in the chancel of the Bishop Marianus Church suggest the continued extensive use of glass in the churches.89 The coloured tinting of light must have added another aesthetic dimension to the geometric mosaics on floors and ceilings.

Excavators in 1929 found many fragments of dark red and green veined marble and a Circassian worker living in Jerash told the archaeologists that the east end of the church had been a very rich source of marble for the residents.85 The upper parts of the walls were probably decorated with glass mosaics. A hallway centred on the north side of the Fountain Court known as the Sarapion Passage.86 It ran into a narrow street running between the Artemis Temple and north side of the Nymphaeum called the Stepped Street, named by excavators after its stepped-like landings. A dedication inscription was inscribed on the lintel blocks of the gateway at the head of the steps leading down to the Fountain Court. The inscription, along with this intact gate, appears to have come from another building as it mentions an ἀνδρῶνος (hall) και θύρας (and gate). Turning left up the Sarapion Passage and past the Baths of Placcus on the left, one runs into what was believed

Emerging from the dark worship place lit by lamps and clerestory windows, the worshipper entered into the light of the Fountain Court, and faced the fount where priests annually re-enacted the Biblical account of the miracle of turning water into wine performed by Jesus with Mary at the wedding at Cana (see discussion above on Dionysus connections at Gerasa).90 The fount was embellished by a canopy that was attached to and extended out from the 87

C.S. Fisher, Gerasa, City of the Decapolis, 271-279. Plan XLV. E. Marianne Stern, ‘Roman Glassblowing in a Cultural Context’, AJA, Vol. 103, No. 3 (Jul., 1999), 464, 466. 89 Susan B. Matheson, ‘Shedding Light in Antiquity’ a review of Anita Engle’s: Light: Lamps and Windows in Antiquity’, Readings in Glass History, Vol. 20, 1986. Gawlikowski and Musa, op. cit, 151-3. 90 Epiphanius, Panarion, Haer. 51.30, 1-2. 88

83

J.W. Crowfoot, Gerasa, City of the Decapolis, 175. Quoted in full from the Latin in Kaufmann, Handbuch der christlichen Archaeologie, 1924, p. 164. 84 Ibid, 202. And Krautheimer, op. cit, 159. 85 J.W. Crowfoot, Early Churches of Palestine,, 58. 86 Carl H. Kraeling, op. cit, 397. C.B. Wells, op. cit, inscr: #49.

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16.4 The Fountain Court seen as exiting the Cathedral's west exit, with S. Theodore's apse, staircases, and pillars in background. Overflow water ran into a stone basin shown in front of fount and a drain-line was under the stones running diagonal from the basin to the right.

16.5 From left to right: St. Theodore's atrium court, Church and Fountain Court. The Cathedral is out of picture to the right. The baptismal room is centred below (south), between the rear nave and a small chapel. The Baths of Placcus are centred, above; the Sarapion Passage is to its right (showing steps) and the Glass Court is to the right of the Passage. The Fount is seen connected to the front of Theodore's apse by what is thought to have been an overhead canopy structure.

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16.6 St. Theodore's Church facing west from the apse. The Templon (Chancel Rail) is in the foreground with an offset ambo extending into the nave for the purpose of preaching.

Though the apse is rounded internally, its exterior is polygonal; a shape that the builders of St. John’s apse was to imitate less than forty years later.94 If the external angles of the apse were to continue and connect themselves in the chancel, it would become an octagon. Interestingly the apse’s western leg is in exact orientation (length and direction) with the Fount (see plan below). The fount can not be dated by inscription, however the writing of Epiphanius places the fount operating in the late 4th century, thus before the construction of S. Theodore’s. If the fount exists in its original position, the footprint of S. Theodore’s took its orientation off the fount, which is a significant architectural statement. The church seems to have been built entirely from the spolia of a single monumental building from the later Antonine period as was determined from the mason’s marks found on the columns and on many blocks in the walls.95

“prow” of the exterior apse of St.Theodore’s Church. Since St. Theodore’s was built in 494-496 CE, more than a century after the Cathedral, the fountain canopy is understood to have been a later addition.91 The canopy and fount were constructed from sections of chancel screen. Spatially, the Fountain Court is a centre within concentric circles. Centrally situated within the great worship complex, it was a connecting space for the Cathedral and St. Theodore’s, a virtual centre of the city and the new Christian “umbilicus”.

S. THEODORE’S CHURCH The St. Theodore church92 and complex was built in line with the Cathedral on the elevated third terrace five meters above the Fountain Court, and extended 70 meters west. An inscription desribes it as a martyrion.93 From the Fountain Court the basilica was reached by two sets of stairs to the north and south visually balancing each other. Again, this entrance is not linear, and level with the Courtyard surface, but an initial climb up several turns of stairs and turning again into the outer isles of the basilica. The overall sanctuary is slightly smaller than the Cathedral. St Theodore’s had fewer support columns (seven) carrying arches and a wider apse which covered the width of the nave.

Including the two eastern entrances, St. Theodore’s had twelve entrances total with three to the west from the atrium court. The interior floor is much better preserved than the Cathedral’s with multi-coloured geometric mosaics partially remaining between column bays, sections of aisles, and only a small section of nave. The walls were constructed from pagan structures with engaged columns used as stretchers to span open space. Masons’ marks can be seen on ends of the drums

91

94

92

95

A polygonal apse is also found at the Cathedral at Bosra. J.W. Crowfoot, Gerasa, City of the Decapolis, 223, Markings shown in f.n. 20.

J.W. Crowfoot, Gerasa, City of the Decapolis, 211. Ibid, 219-225; J.W. Crowfoot, Early Churches in Palestine, 63-66. 93 C.B. Wells, op. cit, inscr: #300.

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CHAPTER 16: GERASA’S CHURCHES: ARCHITECTURE AND TOPOGRAPHY for vertical support columns. Fragments and glass-tesserae, from arch voussoirs and surviving portions of floor mosaics provide a little evidence as to what must have been a vision of magnificence in colour and décor. It does not seem possible that the interior could have been lit only by oil lamps, but churches functioned during evenings and the pre-dawn and thus must have been places of muted shadows up-lit from brilliant floor colours. Basilica design allows for clerestory lighting above lower roof attachment to upper wall and under upper roof eves. Sectional plans by C.S. Fisher (XXXIV) show clerestory windows for both the Cathedral and St. Theodore’s. Partial physical evidence and architectural type suggest that primary day-time lighting for the two great churches came not from the lower walls but from a series of windows high above in the upper walls. Judging from the remains in the Glass Court,96 the clerestory windows could have been of a naturally tinted green and brown coloured glass, heavily accenting the upper glass mosaics, then casting a myriad of colour down, illuminating the stone mosaic floors laid in all manner of geometric design. Changes in natural light shaded by various hues of tinted glass would determine that the eye would never see the geometric mosaic reflected in the same way. A tiny chapel97 was built blocking the north corridor and was entered through a doorway to the northwest at the rear of the church and by two at its west end. It had a rail marking off the chancel from the nave, and had a brilliantly designed geometrically styled tile floor whose predominant colour was yellow. On the southwest back corner of the basilica was a long hallway leading to a second larger chapel, which maintained its own small atrium to the west. Between this chapel, the basilica, and east of the long hall, were a series of three rooms, the centre of which was originally another chapel that was converted into a baptistery. The central space contained a room for worshippers and witnesses with an apsidal shaped baptistery depressed into the floor. Two north-south side rooms, connected to the font by short halls, perhaps used for baptismal preparations, gave direct access to it.

16.7 S. Theodore's apse looking over the Sarapion Passage Gate (below, right), Fountain Court, and staircases ascending to basilica level.

brought one to the open court. The west entry wall and north wall were made up of a series of rooms that are believed to have housed staff and overflow from the Clergy House. The east side were a series of covered porticos that protected the entrance to the basilica, and the south end made up the chapel and its small atrium as mentioned above. In architectural terms, the Church was a synthesis of a multiplicity of types. The Cathedral-St.Theodore complex was a concentrated composition consisting of a number of secondary spaces grouped around several dominant centralspaces.99 The two main spaces, the Cathedral and St. Theodore’s, were united by the connecting space of the Fountain Court. It simultaneously provided a destination and an area for circulation.

The two chapels and baptismal area98 form what appear to be the most intimate, secluded worship spaces of all Gerasa. With the exception of the Eucharist, the rite of baptism was the most sacred event in a Christian’s life. Available space indicates that only small groups could attend: the space dictates intimacy. The new believer stepped into the waters hidden in a room within a room within a series of rooms.

The area immediately west of St. Theodore began as a cemetery with a number of cave tombs that spread across the hillside before the city expanded during the mid-first century CE.100 Tomb building culminated in Temple C, as discussed above. During the late second and early third centuries, residential quarters began forming from Temple C and to

The final structure attached to the west was a rhomboid atrium about 30 meters north to south and little less than 10 meters east to west. The west wall bordered a narrow northsouth street. Three steps down past a three-gate opening

99

Francis D.K. Ching, Architecture, Form, Space, and Order, New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1996, 190. 100 C.S. Fisher, ‘‘The Area West of St. Theodore’, Gerasa City of the Decapolis, 281-294.

96

Ibid, 217. 97 Ibid, 224. 98 Ibid, 224.

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SPATIAL AND RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE LATE ANTIQUE POLIS the, southern Artemis Temenos wall. Plan XLVI in Kraeling denotes these as houses I-VI. These houses were subdivided a number of times until the abandonment of the Artemis Temple by the fifth century. The construction of St. Theodore’s brought new life to the area as later walls were attached to its west atrium entrance (including Cistern II) for what is perceived as additional privacy. Between 580-610 CE, the ‘choristers’ of St. Theodore acquired House VI and rebuilt it, establishing the presence of antiphonal singing echoing through Gerasene Christian space.101 The density of structures, without a seemingly coherent plan, reduced access to the area behind St. Theodore’s to a mere alley. This coincided with the development of the Clergy House on the Stepped Street, which virtually closed the area to through traffic.

the church was built. He believes that pagans before the sixth century would have resisted the desecration of their processional rite and fought the closure of the main arterial path to the city centre.

THE SYNAGOGUE CHURCH107 Approximately forty meters beyond the northwest half of the Artemis Temple’s Sanctuary wall lies what has been termed by early excavators as the Synagogue/Church. Topographically, the Synagogue was approximately twenty meters above the Artemis Sanctuary floor making it, for its lifespan, the highest elevated religious structure in the city. Crowfoot comments that the remains suggest that the synagogue was built in accordance with the dictum that a synagogue should be “on the height of the city, for a city whose roofs overtop the synagogue is given over to destruction”.108 Excavation was carried out under the supervision of a Mr. Hamilton in 1929, the report of which was written by J.W. Crowfoot in Kraeling’s, Gerasa City of the Decapolis.109

THE PROPYLAEA CHURCH102 The Propylaea Church was formed from the original structure of the Propylaea Plaza situated on the east side of the Cardo Maximus, leading to the Artemis Temple complex. The most dramatic alterations to the original structure were the addition of massive outer north-south walls along the portico plaza and the construction of an apse at the top of the staircase that led down to the Chrysorhoas River.

The Synagogue Churches’ rectangular footprint is approximately 15.5 metres by 24.5 metres facing east-west. East of the main synagogue building and what remains of the later Christian apse are elements of an atrium surrounded by a colonnade on its northern, eastern, and southern sides. Entrance to the synagogue was by ascending several steps from the East which brought the visitor into a vestibule whose floor was completely covered with mosaics. The existing portion illustrates the Noah story with animals leaving the ark and a dove carrying an olive branch in its beak. To the dove’s left are the heads of two of Noah’s sons, Shem and Yaphet, their identities established by nearby Greek inscriptions.110 Among a cluster of Jewish symbols is that of a menorah with a Greek inscription to its side: ‘Peace be to the most holy place, Amen, Selah. Peace to the assembly’.111 This was set in a highly visible position for anyone entering or exiting the synagogue.

The western section, which faced the Cardo, was, according to Crowfoot, remodelled to “botched effect” with “poor masonry”, and “make shift” materials.103 The doorways shut off the Cardo from the interior, thus forming an enclosed atrium. Upon excavation, the northern circular exedra was found to contain a mosaic on an elevated floor, similar in execution to a circular mosaic in the Procopius Church. Two inscriptions were found in the mosaic, one of which indicates the diaconia was built May, 565 AD.104 Originally deacons were officials who distributed aid to the poor and widows but were later the receivers of offerings. The exedra most likely facilitated these charitable functions. There is no existing remnant of the roof design or its support system. We cannot know whether or how a roof was carried over the fanned western section to the Cardo.105 With the Propylaea Church acting as an architectural block, the once sacred east-west approach to the Artemis Temple was shut off completely. Crowfoot106 has proposed that earthquakes in 551 and 554 may have collapsed the North Bridge crossing the Chrysorhoas River rendering the propylaea, east of the Cardo, useless ten to fifteen years before

Art in synagogues typically used Temple symbols or retold Bible stories in mosaic. They were embroidered on veils in front of the torah niche, and painted on plaster as artistic representations of God’s covenant faithfulness and future redemption of his people. At Gerasa, the Noah’s Ark scene in mosaic is of animals emerging from the ark, where the dove was portrayed signifying the end of the chaos of the flood. The animals are arranged in three rows of pairs. The upper

101

107

102

108

C.B. Wells, op. cit, incr: #303 from a floor mosaic in room A 42. J.W. Crowfoot, Gerasa, City of the Decapolis, 227-234. 103 Ibid, 233 104 Ibid, (1938), 228; C.B. Wells, op. cit, inscr: #331. 105 Parapetti, ‘Anastylosis of the Propylaeum of the Sanctuary of Artemis west of Main Street’, JAP I, Amman, 1986, 177. Parapetti believes the covering of the Cardo to the west Propylaea structurally impossible, to contra. Iain Browning, op. cit, fig. 31, p. 87. 106 Crowfoot, Gerasa, City of the Decapolis, 233.

Ibid, 234-41. BT Sbabbat 11a.; Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, Laws of Prayer 11.2; Annabel Wharton, op. cit, 204; J.W. Crowfoot, ‘The Synagogue Church’, Gerasa, City of the Decapolis, 238. 109 Crowfoot, Gerasa, City of the Decapolis, 234-241. 110 C.B. Wells op. cit, inscr: #286; (Σῆμ. Ἰαφίθ.) 111 Michelle Piccirillo, op. cit, 290; and C.B. Wells, op. cit, inscr. #285. (--NI ἁγιο- (τάτῳ) τόπῳ. Ἀμήν. Σελά. Ε(ι)ρήν- τῇ Συ- νάγ- ωγῇ.

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CHAPTER 16: GERASA’S CHURCHES: ARCHITECTURE AND TOPOGRAPHY row is of birds, the second row: mammals, and the bottom of reptiles following the order of the Genesis 8, narrative; hence the focus of the narrative topic is on the animals. Similar Noah’s Ark depictions in various stylizations can also be found at Dura-Europos, Bet Alpha, and Misis-Mopsuestia.112 The rainbow is symbolic of God’s promise to never again destroy the world, a story poignant for what is known of Gerasa’s Jewish history.113 Alongside Gerasa’s image of Noah is a cluster of common symbols, the most prominent of which are the menorah, a shofar, incense shovel, lulav, and ethrog.114 These symbols had greatest meaning during the Feast of the Tabernacles when they reminded the Jewish people of Temple rites through representations of ritual objects used during Temple services. Through these symbols, hope was kept alive in the celebration of national, communal and agricultural acts during the Feast.

It is possible the Synagogue was constructed in the third or fourth centuries, at a time when a great number of synagogues were being built across Palestine.117 Apparent remodelling and repairs to the building before its conversion sometime earlier than 530-1 CE suggests that the Synagogue could have been used for several hundred years. The Synagogue is the sole evidence of Jewish occupation at Gerasa.118 This led some to believe that the Jewish residential quarter of the town was nearby, separate from the main residential quarter east of the Chrysorhoas River.119 The church was completed by 530-1 CE without changing much of the footprint or the basilica plan. Crowfoot notes that the remains of the church were in very poor condition. Today the site’s outline is barely traceable. The church was apparently still operating into the eighth century however presently, the remnants of the entire south wall have nearly disappeared and the mosaic that gives us our exact date for the church dedication survives only in a small fragment.120

From the vestibule, a three-door entrance led into the nave separated by two rows of columns creating north and south aisles. At the far western end there are remains of what is believed to be a niche facing towards Jerusalem. In virtually every case, in synagogue design, a niche of this type housed the Torah Shrine where the sacred writings were kept.115 Marble slabs covered the floor of the nave, and the side aisles were covered completely with high quality mosaics. The western part of the pavement was destroyed and only fragments of the mosaics remained after the synagogue was converted into a church. A panel in the north isle containing an inscription in a tabula ansata written in Aramaic reads, ‘Peace be upon all Israel, Amen, Amen, Selah, Phinehas, son of Baruch, Jose, son of Samuel, and Yudan son of Hezekiah’.116 Stone fragments suggest the presence of a raised bema in the western niche area, elevating the Torah chest before the congregation. However, due to the floor of the church being elevated fifteen centimetres above the Synagogue floor by compacted in-fill, further specifics in the nature of synagogue worship and organisation can not be read from the archaeological remains.

The architectural differences between the church and synagogue were comparatively minor, but their religious significance was great. The Christians removed the distinctively Jewish elements in the west end by creating the main entrance of the church. The Torah niche was destroyed by knocking out most of the west wall and two pillars were set beyond it to support a roof over a new porch. Concurrently, an external apse shut off the Jewish entrance from the east with only two small doorways left at either side, very similar in form to the Propylaea Church and St, Theodore’s. All remnants of Jewish decoration were covered by fill and the building was redecorated in mosaics of typical Christian patterns. The scroll border in the nave resembled that of Ss. John’s and Peter’s, and the geometrical design with its border is close to that of the north aisle of St. George and nave in St. Cosmos. One of the diamond shaped panels in the floor of the nave is an exact replica to those in St. Cosmos. It seems likely that Bishop Paul was responsible for the synagogue ‘conversion’ and coordination of mosaic design between churches. Annabel Wharton and others observe a clear

112

Rachel Hachlili, Ancient Jewish Art and Archaeology in the Diaspora, Leiden: Brill, 1998, 249-51. 113 Lee I. Levine, The Ancient Synagogue, The First Thousand Years, New Haven: Yale, 2000, 517. See Rachel Hachlili, op. cit, 255 on the popularity of the Noah myth in art. 114 Rachel Hachlili, op. cit, 359. See also Erwin R. Goodenough, Jewish Symbols in the Greco-Roman Period, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953, 172. 115 Eric M. Myers, ‘The Torah Shrine in the Ancient Synagogue’, Jews, Christians, and Polytheists in the Ancient Synagogue, London: Routledge, 1999, 216-17. The internal component of the Torah Shrine was likely to have been portable and removeable, resembling the mobile Ark of the Covenant. The Torah Shrine, when oriented towards Jerusalem, is often referred to as an aedicula, and not to be confused with the bema or reader’s platform which may be attached beneath the Torah Shrine or situated elsewhere. 116 Rachel Hachlili, op. cit, 290. C.B. Wells, op. cit, inscr: #287, with translation.

117

Lee. I Levine, op. cit, 162. Levine mentions estimates in Roman Palestine may be as high as 180, 163. 118 Possible evidence against this claim: A.H. Detweiler, ‘Some Early Jewish Architectural Vestiges from Jerash’, BASOR, No. 87 (Oct., 1942), 10-17. Earliest Jewish habitation of Gerasa may come from architectural fragments found surrounding Hadrian’s Arch when being excavated. Since they were out of context with the Arch, Detweiler saw them used as ‘infill’ for the arch structure. Whether they came from a Jewish tomb or synagogue building is uncertain as whether the pieces resembled Nabatean or Jewish stylisations. Detweiler attempts to draw a connection with what he believes to be Jewish, materials in a Hadrianic structure and the possible destruction of Gerasa and decimation of its Jewish population by Lucius Annius under Vespasian in 68 CE. 119 J.W. Crowfoot, Gerasa, City of the Decapolis, 239. 120 A mutilation of mosaics sometime around 724 CE by iconoclasts resulted in a later patching of geometric patterns as found in mosaic floors in Christian churches elsewhere in Gerasa.

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SPATIAL AND RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE LATE ANTIQUE POLIS hegemonic intent behind the Jewish/Christian exchange of sacred space.121

created new buildings by recycling Classical materials. Descriptions of ecclesiastical structures gives a sense that builders of that time specialised in assessing and executing the dismantling and refitting Classical structures into various church forms, a number of which were creatively unique in their design. Post-Classical builders were more recyclers than craftsmen fabricating new structures from raw materials. It is doubtful that much mining for stone came from mountain quarries and was transported through Gerasa’s gates to be shaped as before. Rather, Gerasa became a simultaneous quarry and construction site, re-processing itself with a different theoretical perception of space and design. Also during the century of greatest church growth came a desire to increase the density of human habitation within these forms. Streets narrowed to allies and walls were added to subdivide living space into smaller rooms. Further analysis of Gerasa’s transition will be resumed in Section IV.

SUMMARY The archaeological remains of Gerasa after the fourth century indicate a steady increase in Christian worship space culminating in intense growth during the sixth century and a sudden reduction in the seventh century, though the dating of several significant churches could be pushed beyond the sixth century. Unfortunately the incomplete understanding of Gerasa’s street system makes an analysis of Christian church placement somewhat insecure, however what exists presents a completely different appreciation of Classical space. Christian forms invested Classical openness and 121

Annabel Wharton, ‘Erasure: eliminating the space of late ancient Judaism’, From Dura to Sepphoris: Studies in Jewish Art and Society in Late Antiquity, JRA Supplementary Series 40 (Portsmouth, 2000), 195-214; Lee I. Levine, op. cit, 195-6.

Church Footprints and Drawings at Gerasa Most drawings are taken from the Plans in Kraeling, (1938) and are marked and dated accordingly. The churches of Bishops Isaiah and Marianos are taken from JAP I, (1985).

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16.8 and 16.9 Prophets, Apostles, and Martyrs Church footprint and elevation.

16.10 From left to right: SS Cosmos and Damianos, S John, and S George. A converted Baptismal Font is in the position of a pastophoria, between the SS Cosmos/Damianos and S John's apses.

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16.11 The Cathedral and earlier (pre-S Theodore's) version of the Fountain Court, (Plan XXXI, Kraeling, (1938)).

16.12 Cross-section of the Cathedral entry from the Cardo to the right. A person is depicted standing in front of the shrine to Mary and confronting the wall that dictates either a right or left hand entry into the nave (Plan XXXIV, Kraeling, (1938)).

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16.13 St. Theodore's Church (Plan XXXIII, Kraeling, (1938)).

16.14 Cross-section of S Theodore's Church. The Fountain Court is below to the right.

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16.15 The Synagogue Church is noted for its eastern reconfiguration of Torah niche into a Christian entry and, to the west, a Christian apse over the synagogue entry and open atrium space.

16.16 The Propylaea Church fully incorporated the Propylaea Plaza which was an architectural element built to enhance the procession toward the Artemis Temple. The apse (right) was built partially over the steps that led up from the North Bridge and the east bank of the Chrysorhoas River. The diaconia inscription was discovered in the upper excedra of the flared section exiting worshippers (left) onto the Cardo and west toward the Artemis Temenos.

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16.7

16.18 The Procopius Church is the only church remains visible today on the east bank of the Chrysorhoas River.

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16.19 The Mortuary Church is situated against a small hillside where a burial cave was incorporated into its structure for, what is thought, to be for funeral services.

16.20 Footprint of the Bishop Marianos Church in relation to the Hippodrome, Hadrian's Arch and tombs.

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16.21

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16.22

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16.23 Clergy House area is situated between S Theodore's atrium and the Artemis Temenos. The Stepped Street (above right) is shown completely shut off.

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16.24 The Sarapion Passage is egress for the Fountain Court (below) to the Stepped Street (above). The Baths of Placcus are outside of drawing (upper left). The Glass Court (right) is so named for the discovery of over 120 pounds of melted glass thought to have been a glass factory. The early (pre-Christian style of floor mosaics there prompted Crowfoot (1938, 217) to consider the Cathedral dating to, no later than, mid-fourth century.

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16.25. The Bishop Genesius Church thought to have been the most recent church built at Gerasa.

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CHAPTER 17 THE CHRISTIAN HOUSE-CHURCH (DOMUS ECCLESIA) AT DURA-EUROPOS

17-1 The Euphrates River from the baths of the Palace of the Dux at Dura Europos

Dura-Europos, the ancient site possessing the earliest excavated Christian church was strategically located on a plateau overlooking the middle Euphrates in present day North-East Syria. Three natural barriers protected the city at its walls; to the east, the cliff over the Euphrates, and two deep wadis cut defiles along the northern and southern perimeters. To the west, open desert ran to the city’s fortifications. Impressive ramparts were erected to counteract this natural defensive weakness, perhaps giving the city its Aramaic (Babylonian according to Rostovtzeff1) name, Dura, meaning ‘fortress’. Europos is a Greek name honouring the Macedonian birthplace of the first Seleucid king, Seleucus Nicator, during whose reign the Hellenistic city was founded. These names, hyphenated by modern historians and archaeologists, were used separately in antiquity. The ancient

cities, Mari, situated six miles to the south and Palmyra to the west, were linked to Dura by caravan route.2 Dura’s greatest natural defense, the Euphrates River and the wadis running up into the city’s west end, were, in fact, the determining factors in the city’s economic, political and military importance over the course of its history. From earliest times, the Euphrates was one of the main trade arteries between the eastern and western worlds. One may see on display, at the Museum of Antiquities in Damascus, pieces of Chinese embroidered silk uncovered at Palmyra. Very little is known about Dura-Europos before the Macedonian colony was founded in 300 BCE by one of

2

Lucinda Dirven, The Palmyrenes of Dura-Eurpos, A Study of Religious Interaction in Roman Syria, Leiden: Brill, 1999, pp. 35-6. None of the archaeological materials from Dura-Europos testify to its involvement in the Palmyrene caravan trade or local commerce between the two, although the remains of a road connecting the two cities may support a trade relationship.

1

M. Rostovtzeff, Dura-Europos And Its Art, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1938, p. 10.

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17-2 Eastern fortifications at Dura Europos overlooking wadi

Alexander the Great’s generals, Seleucus Nicator.3 The colony was probably a re-foundation of an earlier settlement. A clay tablet discovered within the city dates from the reign of King Hammurabi of Hana (1900 BCE) and refers to the site as Damara, possibly, an earlier form of its present name.4 Rostovetzeff notes that there were no known Greek-style buildings before 50 BCE.5 The city was conquered by the Parthians in 113 BCE, yet Greek appears to have remained the official language as attested on inscriptions and papyrus documents. The gradual syncretism of Dura’s Hellenism and Eastern culture is illustrated when the Hellenistic Temple of Artemis was rebuilt in a typical eastern architectural form and dedicated to Artemis’ Semitic counterpart goddess Nanaia. There was a consecration to Artemis and Apollo by a Semitic citizen in 2 CE6 indicating a lingering ‘Western’ element in worship. Dura remained a Parthian outpost and RomanParthian buffer zone until 165 CE, when the Roman armies of Lucius Verus and Avidius Crassius captured the city.7 It

remained a Roman possession for less than a century; it was taken by the Sassanians during Shapur I second invasion of Syria in approximately 256 CE. The Persians evacuated the population; briefly occupied the city and then abandoned it. Late Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus mentions that Dura was ‘a deserted town’ when he and Julian’s army passed by in 363 CE.8 Modern attention on Dura-Europos has focused on the final 50 years of its Roman existence. Specifically, study has centered on the interpretation of the Christian and Jewish cult centers, the Mithraeum, the Temple of Bel and Gadde, and especially the surviving frescoes. Much of the fame of Dura rests on the discovery of the earliest known Christian house-church and the paintings of the Jewish synagogue that revolutionized modern perceptions of Jewish/Christian art, worship and thought in late antiquity. The purpose here is to discuss the Christian domus and contrast its characteristics to that of the basilicas of Christian Gerasa.

3

M. Rostovtzeff, op. cit, p. 10. Nicanor’s identity is disputed, though probably a relative of Seleucus. 4 Lucinda Dirven, op. cit, p. 3. S.B. Matheson, ‘The Tenth Season at DouraEuropos 1936-1937’, Syria 69 1992, p. 133. 5 M. Rostovetzeff, op. cit, p. 39. 6 Ibid, p. 40. 7 Ibid, p. 22. Very little evidence indicates a previous Roman taking of Dura by Trajan’s III Cyrenaean Legion in 117CE. A ruin of a triumphal arch dedicated to the safety of Trajan lies away from the city to the north-west. Roman military occupation only lasted but several years until it was restored

back to Parthian control by Rome desiring a policy of peace and autonomous operation of cities in the outer territories. 8 Ammianus Marcellinus, 23.5.7-8.

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17-3 Street Map of Dura Europos: the grey line signifies ‘Wall Street’ where the Christian domus, Jewish Synagogue, Mithraeum and three polytheistic temples were situated

stages.9 The first step involved filling the length of Wall Street with dirt to rooftop height, which led to a potentially destructive pressure on the walls of the houses.10 To rectify this, large quantities of soil were dumped against the houses’ interior western walls. In the synagogue, the interior embankments consisted of carefully packed mud rising at a sharp angle from the middle of the House of Assembly to window level. Yet this was not enough to counter-act the inward pressure; the western wall of the Assembly was severely cracked and pushed inward from the centre and top. The western wall of the Christian church fared better under the force requiring only additional mud bricks on its exterior face.11 Further dumping required the demolition of roofs and walls protruding from the defensive buttressing. This buttressing created, ironically, Dura’s most monumental architectural feature; no other civic structure could compare to its mass.12 Despite this effort, the walls were breached, probably near the end of the year 256 CE.13 The fill protected the buried buildings from looting and decay and thus preserved them for posterity.

The most significant spatial features of Dura at the time of its destruction and abandonment were its western wall and its strict Hippodamian, square grid, street plan. The great western wall possessed a monumental arched gate made of mud brick resting on (a poor quality) gypsum stone. Not having the advantage of Gerasa’s easy availability of yellow basalt reduced the capacity to refine monumental solid-stone masonry techniques. The mud brick superstructure of the towers and entire circuit of the wall was in the process of replacement and renovation with a poor quality gypsum stone veneer but the work was never fully completed. The elevations of the plateau varied by only a few meters within and around Dura and there was no attempt to raise any of its temples in a monumental manner. The wall not only protected and separated, but also played a key role in the final desperate defense of the city. An unintended consequence of this defense was the preservation of the architecture and art that have brought a great measure of fame to the city. Anticipating Sassanian under-wall sapping, the Romans strengthened the western wall by dumping massive quantities of dirt against its exterior and filling the interior street running along it (Wall Street) and the residential buildings to the east. The synagogue and house-church, one block north and south of the main gate, respectively, and the Mithraeum, far to the north on the same line, near the Temple of Bel were among the buildings inundated. This back-filling was completed in at least three

9

Carl H. Kraeling, The Synagogue, Final Report VIII, Part 1, The Excavations at Dura-Europos, KTAV Publishing, 1979, p. 5. See plan IV. 10 Clark Hopkins, The Discovery of Dura-Europos, New Haven: Yale University, 1979, p. 247. Rooftop height was 30 feet. 11 Ibid, p. 248. 12 The effort involved in this defensive construction can best be appreciated from an aerial view. See M. Rostovetzeff, op. cit, Plate II 13 Clark Hopkins, op. cit, p. 247. Hopkins dates the fall of the city from coin hoards and coins found on three soldiers trapped under the western wall, near Tower 19. See also M. Rostovetzeff, op. cit, pp. 28, 29.

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17-4 Map of Dura Europos portraying excavated sections and internal topography

The Hellenistic street plan was established at Nicator’s founding. The grid consisted of twelve transverse and nine longitudinal streets (18 feet wide as compared to Gerasa’s at 10-11 feet). The boulevard ordering the grid ran north-east, from the great arch of the main gate toward the citadel.

Another monumental arch was built at its eastern terminus. From the eastern arch, the main street becomes stepped, inappropriate for animal traffic, as it descends sharply down the principle wadi. Animal traffic had to divert to streets that had a milder incline to reach the river gate. The two streets 147

SPATIAL AND RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE LATE ANTIQUE POLIS defining the east and west boundaries of the central commercial centre were widened to 24 feet creating transverse arteries to the main boulevard.

the Christian and Jewish centers. The expansion of the church and synagogue in the last decades of Dura’s occupation may have taken advantage of entire blocks being ‘reorganized’ by civic authorities.17 The possibility that Dura’s Roman administration played a key role in Jewish and Christian expansion might seem unusual for the time but the advance of these two religions surviving, at best, existed on the margins of Roman acceptance may reflect more the opportunities provided by an upheaval in the city and the relative prosperity of their communities and perhaps the city as a whole which in itself might reflect the movement of resources into the city to prepare the city to face any potential aggression from the Sassanians under Shapur I.

The Hellenistic grid was maintained in the Roman period rebuilding of the residential blocks, including those in which the Christian and Jewish cult centers were located. Yet, this grid plan was not emphasized by the use of colonnades as at Gerasa. The building of the military camp entailed the reordering of city topography by inserting a new axis off which short colonnades gave prominence to a widened eastwest avenue, but other than in the camp, colonnades were only used in short stretches in front of shops or around an open market in what remained of the Seleucid agora.14 The Palace of the ‘Dux Rupe’ (Governor) is something of an exception, containing rooms around two considerably sized colonnaded courts.

The centre eight blocks of Dura were probably intended as an agora. What were typically open courts for the display of civic authority was never fully actualized here. Instead, it became a crowded trading district with its courts dense with shop partitions as if to defeat any potential for civic monumental structures at its commercial core as at Palmyra. Dura’s lack of monumental buildings, colonnaded streets, massive bath complexes, and a theatre capable of seating the entire city population, may be explained by Dura’s relatively late entry into the Roman world, her isolation and place of pure function.

After the defenses, the largest construction project of Dura’s history was the remodeling of the northern quarter of the city into a military camp. The northernmost transverse street appears to have served as a dividing line between residential life and Roman administration; between commerce and the military. A brick wall was constructed, starting from the west wall, at the forth tower northwest of the main gate, inward four blocks to secure the two barracks complexes. The centre of the military quarter was marked by a triumphal arch and a praetorium. The palace of the Dux Rupe established its eastern limit. Contained within this new area were two baths, a small gladiatorial amphitheatre (constructed after 216 CE), barracks, officer’s quarters and small shrines, including the remodeled Temple of Bel, a Mithraeum, and a Dolicheneum, housing gods popular with the military. Most prominent of these were Jupiter Dolichenus (Zeus Dolichaeios), and Turmasgade. Although these gods are often designated as ‘Eastern’ their cults are better represented in Europe than Asia.15 IV Scythica, XVI Flavia, IIIrd Cyrenaica, XXth Palmyrenorum, and II Ulpia were in the city at various times and probably added to its ethnic and religious diversity of the city. The army’s occupation of an entire quarter of Dura may have caused a reshuffling and resettlement of its residential population.16

INTERIORITY AND THE PERISTYLE COURT The central court was the fundamental and most consistent architectural element of the Durene house plan.18 I have included a drawing of housing blocks and a single house floor plan near the Agora during the end of Roman occupation. All of the activities of the house spun around its hub. There is little doubt that this arrangement reflects Mesopotamian influences19 and the houses do not contain the peristyle courts characteristic of Hellenistic architecture nor were they Parthian in nature. The only Hellenistic element is the cornice molding found around the doorways of 76 per cent of the houses of the final Roman period. A study was conducted on more than a hundred houses which were divided into four modules by the degree of enclosure and spatial separation from the street.20 Findings

There is reasonable evidence that Dura was a prosperous place under Rome, especially in the good-quality, domestic construction in the western neighborhoods that contained

17

In the last years of Dura’s occupation, there is some evidence that housing came under pressure. Houses expanded into the streets, but rather than the poor being pushed to form a ‘ghetto’, the well-constructed buildings contained many independent dwellings, often with open peristyle courts, within rectangular street grids. 18 Anny Allara, ‘Les Maisons de Dura-Europos, Questions de Typologie’, Syria LXIII, Paris, 1986, pp. 39-60. The following statistical material comes from this report. 19 Susan B. Downey, ‘The Citadel Palace at Dura-Europos’, Syria LXIII, Paris, 1986, pp. 34, 37. Downey compares four examples of residential architecture of Ai Khanoum and finds similarities between them and sections of Dura’s palace. She speculates that the two examples represent architectural experiments by Seleucid architects with essential Mesopotamian roots. 20 Anny Allara, op. cit, p. 57.

14

MacDonald’s ‘armatures’ of civic connection and passage do not apply here. See William L. MacDonald, The Architecture of the Roman Empire, Vol. 2. An Urban Appraisal, New Haven: Yale, 1986, p. 30. 15 M. Rostovtzeff, op. cit, p. 60. ‘The Feriale Duranum—the official religious calendar of the Roman army found at Dura—shows that the official pantheon of the Roman soldiers was the same at Dura as at Rome and all over the Roman Empire…’ 16 MacDonald, op. cit, pp. 30-1. M. Rostovetzeff in 1938 argued that the military and its ‘confiscation’ of a significant area of the city would have caused financial repercussions, however evidence of an expanding agora debates this.

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17-5 (Housing blocks magnified near the Agora at Dura Europos, from Amy Allara, Syria, LXII, Paris, 1986)

were that 25 per cent possessed structures around four sides of the court enclosing it off completely (module 4); another 25 per cent were enclosed on three sides (module 3); 14 per cent (module 2) were enclosed on two sides and very rarely was a court backed on only one side 1 per cent (module 1). Module 4 is associated with the largest houses and the palace containing secondary courts. Module 3 to Module 1 descends in size with courts becoming more directly accessible to the street. Modules 3 and 4 have intermediary vestibules that insulate their innermost spaces from the outside as well as being constructed from cut stone rather than rough field material found in Modules 2 and 1. 69 per cent of the last two ‘irregular’ modules opened up directly on the street, where 7 per cent of them directly opened onto narrow alleys.

12-6 (Example of Model 4 residence at Dura Europos from Amy Allara, Syria LXIII, Paris, 1986)

149

SPATIAL AND RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE LATE ANTIQUE POLIS The distribution of the modules within the city seems zonal in character. Module 4 houses are found in the Redoubt and the Roman camp used for government officials and the wealthiest families. The majority of the homes fall into modules 3 and 2 which were found near the city walls and the agora. Module 1 is interspersed with no apparent order among houses of various sizes. Thus it seems that Durene social status can be detected by the arrangement of rooms around the inner court and access to the street. The wealthiest were the most insulated from the street and the poorest had the least separation. Hillier and Hansen argue that spatial intimacy increases the deeper one moves within built forms.21 In Dura, wealth purchased additional boundaries for social insulation. In the poorer strata there is more continuity between interior and exterior and a progressive lessening of boundaries.22

17-7 Floor plan of Temple of Zeus Theos at Dura Europos, Yale University Art Gallery, Dura Europos Archives

Most polytheistic worship centers primarily fell into Module 3, with the exception of the more monumental temples of Artemis and Atargatis. The Synagogue and Christian domus were Module 4’s in plan but with reduced floor space. About 70 per cent of the houses had staircases accessing a second story or rooftop with only seven houses known not to possess them. Therefore, in calculating Durene domestic space, both open court and rooftop areas should be included. Eight houses had painted murals, 30 per cent were found with wall inscriptions and more than three-quarters had the following rooms for: heating, food storage and preparation, hygiene and cultic worship.

atrium at ninety degrees to the pronaos. In both cases a straight line of sight to the most sacred zone was not possible from the street. Multiple divan style rooms flanked the court and naos structure. The Temple of the Gadde, located at the city’s centre, is typical of the sacred precincts of Dura. 23 By 159 CE, three houses of the Hellenistic era had been incorporated into the complex establishing its final form. 24 Three interconnected courts bear testimony to this domestic origin. The shrine was completely contained behind solid, windowless walls with two main sanctuaries, along with rooms irregularly set on the sides of the two courts. The main entrance into the largest court was directly off the street, through a doorway that later was emphasized with a porch. A smaller, secondary entrance was used to the smaller court through a small anteroom off a narrow side street. Offset from the entrance, and thus hidden from pedestrian eyes, across the main court, lay a three-step access to a covered porch, which led one broadside into a rectangular pronaos. Directly ahead, and another three step rise, was a smaller square naos housing the image(s) of the god(s). Archaeologist Frank Brown saw this pronaos-naos, configuration as being similar to the Temple C/ Heroon at Gerasa.25

THE DOMUS AS CULT CENTER A Durene home did not have obvious internal enclaves that would allow segregation by gender or some other criterion. The ability to move freely through the house and the evidence of artistic ornamentation at the deepest interiority runs counter to the expressionless exterior facades. The house could stand as a microcosm of the city itself; alive and vibrant on the inside, exteriorly: dead and nondescript. Both have their palatial quarters and open social spaces with columnar supports. Drawings of temple enclosures leads to the possibility that Durene citizenry socialized in similar spatial contexts to the home, in divan lined rooms set peripherally within temple complexes and the market stalls in commercial district. Rather than having a culture of the street, Dura appears to have had an interior culture, the street being merely a conduit between interior zones of life.

23

F.E. Brown, op, cit, p. 218. The Temple of the Gadde located at the intersection of Main and H Streets was, to Brown, the most important street corner at Dura because of H’s main access to the souks and commercial centre and ‘the principle cross street by which to gain the heads of the thoroughfares down the ravines leading to the river gate, the only avenues of descent from the upper to the lower town for wheeled or pack-animal traffic’. 24 Ibid, p. 256. This is dated by two cult reliefs in 159 CE giving a terminus ante quem for the erection of the Period 4 (final) temple. 25 Ibid, p. 255. Also, p. 255, n. 27. ‘In both Gerasa and at Calydon in Aetolia the sanctuary is preceded by a great colonnaded court. At Calydon there are chambers about the court at least one of which is a place for ritual banqueting. In either case the entire temple is oriental in plan and owes its presence to the evident association, whatever its cause, of the plan with the cult of the dead.’

This interiority was evident in Dura’s cults. The two entries to the Temple of Zeus Theos court were through narrow doorways that were either offset from the pronaos doorway at the far-end of the court or sent one through a small peristyle

21

Bill Hillier and Julienne Hansen, The Social Logic of Space, Cambridge: Cambridge, 1984, pp. 147, 158. 22 Ibid, p. 145.

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17-8 Temple of Gadde at Dura Europos, Yale University Art Gallery, Dura Europos Archives

THE CHRISTIAN DOMUS

Similarly, Dura is unusual in that the height of worship center walls and structural footprints were similar to that of its residences. Wealth was spent in decoration, in erecting votive offerings of stone and achievements in painted frescos. In this relatively separated, enclosed, non-assertive world, it is probable that the periodically repressed cults of Judaism and Christianity would be able to flourish, their relative obscurity existing alongside the various pagan cults also housed behind enclosed walls with very high and minimal windows. In such circumstances, it is unlikely that there could be a demand for open, public, universal worship. The architecture of introversion did not demand a public show of religious unity. Groups were comfortable keeping to their own worship habits, perhaps even demanding their introversion and exclusivity. One of the rather peculiar consequences is likely to have been that Christianity, whose appeal was in some sense its standing apart from the great pagan cults, would seem less peculiar, exclusive and unique in this environment; Christians were an anonymous minority not much different, on the outside, than those meeting in the Mithraeum or in small temenai and naoi across the city. Durene temples characteristically possessed peripheral divan-styled rooms around a central courtyard(s) that lent themselves to small group socialization and dining.26 The Christian habit of meeting and eating together, no matter the spiritual connotations, would blend neatly with surrounding pagan practices.

The Christian site of Dura Europos stands immediately behind the city’s western defenses. It was a corner property, along what excavator’s named Wall Street and Street 3, on Block 8 on the City Plan. Tower 17 of the Western Wall was immediately to its west across Wall Street and only a block south of the city’s Main Gate. The house used as a Christian church is another example of architectural exclusive-anonymity in character with Dura’s urban makeup.27 The character of the structure typifies the Durene private house with box-like rooms surrounding an open center courtyard. In similarity with the Synagogue, the main entrance was accessed by a inconspicuous doorway from Street 3 on the northeast corner of the building. This admitted one into the Vestibule whose interior door was completely offset and opposite that of the entrance to the inner Courtyard. Thus the main rooms open peripherally off an internal open court not visible from the street though most of the rooms could be accessed by internal doorways without passing through the court. Accesses to the stairwell leading to the roof, the covered Portico, and contact with the street through the Vestibule were only attainable by passing through the Courtyard. Exterior windows facing the interior residential block were limited to two at the south-east end of

27

The primary source for the Christian domus is: Carl Kraeling, ‘The Christian Building’, TED, Final Report VIII, Part II, The Christian Building, New Haven: Dura Europos Publications, 1967. Also, Clark Hopkins, Christian Church at Dura-Europos, TEAD, VI, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1934.

26

F.E. Brown, Preliminary Report of the Excavations at Dura-Europos, Report of Seventh and Eighth Seasons (1933-34, 1934-35),TEAD VII, VIII, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1939, p. 257.

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17-9 Christian domus set within its excavated block on Wall Street and oriented to a secondary gate at Dura Europos, Yale University Art Gallery, Dura Europos Archives

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17-10 Christian domus floor plan: mid-3rd century CE residential block at its south-east corner. The reason for this irregularity is due to the angle of the street grid running off Wall Street, and the western city wall does not run straight and square to the street grid.

the extended Assembly Hall which were thought to have been shuttered and possibly covered with glass or gypsum crystal.28 No windows faced Street 3 or Wall Street. There were two windows: one in Room 5 (between the Assembly Hall and the Baptistery) and one in the Assembly Hall, allowing light to be cast from the Courtyard. The footprint of the house measures: 56.92 feet (17.35 meters) south wall, 57.25 feet (17.45 meters) north wall, 60.96 feet (18.58 meters) west wall, and 66.21 feet (20.18 meters) east wall.29 Its footprint was 3,619.50 square feet. Geometrically, it was a trapezoid whose only right angle was interior to the 28 29

In similarity with the Synagogue and other polytheistic worship centers, the Christian domus was originally a residential structure built over a much smaller and earlier structure that was likely destroyed or in ruins when the Block was systematically developed.30 It required several minor modifications to transformed it to a religious place. The dating of the site rests primarily on an inscription in wet

Carl Kraeling, The Christian Building, op. cit. pp. 16, 17. Ibid., p. 9.

30

153

Ibid., pp. 32-34.

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17-11 Christian domus at Dura Europos, September 2005

17-12 Isometric view of the Christian domus, Yale University Art Gallery, Dura Europos Archives) 154

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17-13 The Christian domus in respect to auxiliary city gate circling the entire room. The term used for this style is called divan, what we know today as a long couch, which was common to residences and polytheistic cult sites in Dura, Syria and Mesopotamia. The patriarch of the house resided there and it was common throughout the Middle East in governmental council chambers. During renovation the divan benches were covered, along with the remnants of the interior wall, with soil infill until the entire floor area was at a single (uneven) level.

plaster on the west wall (in the previous room 4B) of the Assembly Hall requesting that Dorotheos be remembered and giving the date of the year 544 of the Seleucid Era or 232-3 CE.31 It is the only text found on the site dated in the calendar year and its importance is enhanced by it being made on the first coat of plaster at a level above the floor that could only be reached on an elevated platform by one performing the work. Kraeling deduced that the inscribed plaster was consistent with the original construction of the pre-Christian house thus dating it to 232/3 CE. Other graffiti found on the walls of Room 4 indicate that the house was in use for some time afterward before receiving another surface coat of plaster during Christian remodeling. Though evidence is tenuous, Kraeling puts the Christian conversion of the building in the mid-240’s CE, between 232 and the city’s fall in 256 CE. No matter the efforts to place a date on the Christian domus, its lifespan was very short, possibly as little as ten to fifteen years if the calculation based on archaeological evidences is accurate. The disappointment the congregation must have felt in the realization of its end must have been shared with the Jewish, Mithraic and the many pagan devotees throughout the city.

After the divan system of benches was eliminated, a single raised platform or bema was built against and centered on the north wall (south wall of Rome 3). It projected just over 3 feet (.97m) from the wall and was almost 8 inches (.20m) above the floor and was nearly 5 feet (1.47m) long. The purpose of the bema is debated however it is highly likely that religious services were conducted from there. Early Syriac Christian documents mention the use of a chair by teachers and missionaries from which to teach and there was room here for one to be used.32 The chair or the bema is not related to the ‘chair of government’, the sella curulis of the Roman magistrate. There is no sign of a chancel screen that typifies it or a strong sense of hierarchy in elevation; the bema was modest and without ornamentation. Thus speculation might establish it as a place for the chair of the teacher taken from the symbolic image of the seated philosopher, the Seat of Moses in ancient synagogues and the Episcopal seat of James described in the Church at Jerusalem.33

The conversion from residence to Christian building meant a shift in spatial perception and this shift entailed only two minor remodeling efforts. First was the elimination of the south interior wall in the Assembly Hall that created a long rectangular room of 42.32 feet (12.9 meters) long by 16.9 feet (5.15 meters) wide enabling room for 65-75 worshippers. Originally plaster covered benches were built along its walls,

32 31

33

Ibid., p. 10, inscr. 10; Ἐτους δυφ᾿ Μν(ησθὩὺῃ) Δωρὀθεος.

155

Ibid., p. 143. Eusebius, Hist. eccl., VII, 19.

SPATIAL AND RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE LATE ANTIQUE POLIS

17-14 Sectional elevation drawings of the Christian domus at Dura Europos, Yale University Art Gallery, Dura Europos Archives The Assembly Hall was not decorated with frescos as in the Synagogue’s House of Assembly, the only artistic feature was a plaster molding of a Bacchic frieze (familiar images related to the god Bacchus) similar to others found in divan rooms in Dura portraying cymbals, Pan’s pipes, dolphins, Satyr’s masks and sea shells. It had one time encircled the room at the height of what we might relate to chair molding, however after construction only a small fragment survived on the west wall left of the entry door to the Courtyard. It is uncertain whether it was covered over with plaster during Christian use.

The plainness of the Assembly Hall interior, void of a single touch of color or symbolic imagery must be held in contrast to a particular room where every square inch of wall and ceiling surfaces was embellished. This room was set aside for the initiatory rites of Christianity and it held different spatial connotations than what occurred in the Assembly Hall. Unified within the modular domus they stand as separate spaces of function and symbolic and visionary meaning.

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17-15 Plan and elevation drawings of the Baptistery at Dura Europos, Yale University Art Gallery, Dura Europos Archives

storeroom whose walls were not plastered and it is poignant that the room possessing the lowest functional esteem was elevated to the house’s highest purpose.

THE BAPTISTERY In the north-west corner of the Christian church, and standing adjacent to the assembly hall was a room designated as the Baptistery. It is the only room within this structure that can firmly identify the house as a Christian site. From a cursory perspective, the identifying nature of this cult was prioritized in its initiatory rites. During the house’s remodeling, it received a more thorough transformation than any other room and was the most highly decorated. Originally it could not have been more than an unlit

The room was spit horizontally into upper and lower storeys which correspondingly lowered the ground floor ceiling height. The first floor was reached by an interior staircase behind the north wall of the baptistery. Several flights likely led to an entry landing to the ‘upper room’, and at least one more to the rooftop. The room had collapsed along with the ceiling when defensive preparations were being conducted in 256 CE. 157

SPATIAL AND RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE LATE ANTIQUE POLIS Kraeling makes the case that Room 5 worked in conjunction with the Baptistery as a chamber for the first introductory procedure of the baptismal ritual.34 He relates the function of Room 5 with the three ancillary rooms to the late 5th century baptistery of St. Theodore’s in Gerasa. St. Theodore’s rooms reflect the exorcisterium, baptisterium, and consignatorium, the important pre- and post-baptismal rites of unction developed two hundred years later.35 Syrian sources describing the baptismal ritual led Kraeling to assert that Room 5 served (in part) as an exorcisterium (Greek: pistikon) which entailed the unction of oil being applied to the entire body, and the convert’s confession of Christ and turning away from sin.36 What was performed physically in Room 5 was carried out symbolically in the waters of the Baptismal Font.

below the niche and above the table portraying David’s victory over Goliath. Syriac literary and liturgical sources symbolically interpret this story as the believer’s ability to defeat evil and overcome Satan in which the rite of unction played a part.38 He contends that the table and niche likely held the oil which was dispensed before entering the font. It also likely held a lamp for lighting as the door to the Courtyard was likely barred and the room did not have windows. Further speculation for the table’s purpose may be where the initiate received their first Eucharist after exiting the water, as was to be the liturgical procedure of the Eastern Church for centuries. Following the structural modifications, the entire room was decorated with paintings of which, only less than half (eight) remained intact upon modern excavation.39 On the font the decorations consisted of geometric designs and foliate motifs. The columns were faux painted to appear as marble stonework. Painted plaster ceiling fragments found during excavation and the remaining portion of the baptismal canopy indicate they were painted with white stars on a blue field. The guttering flames of oil lamps must have enhanced the sensation that the baptism was occurring at the dark of night and illumined by celestial light. The decoration and stylization of the canopy and ceiling is similar to the niche found in the Dura Mithraeum and the Torah Shrine of the later synagogue.

Though, with the economy of space and the periodic nature of the rite, it is doubtful that Room 5 had a single purpose. Kraeling reasoned Room 5 could have seated the women worshippers as a similar separate space was theorized in the Synagogue.37 Seating in later basilicas separated women on opposite sides of the center isle or to the rear of the nave. Ventilation added by the installation of a window would have suited seating a significant group for either worship or agape meal purposes, though all of this remains speculative. However the very ornate moldings around the doorway leading into the Baptistery (rather than the nondescript nature of the Courtyard entry) clearly makes this space one of initiating procession into a more intimate, sacred space.

The Biblical paintings must be understood in light of the scriptural material available to this community residing in Mesopotamia. It is not positive that this early third century domus possessed a complete collection of Paul’s letters, four separate Gospels or whether their scriptural canon of was that of the western Mediterranean Church. A critical piece of information assisting this discussion was a discovery of a fragment of the Diatessaron, a single Gospel narrative or ‘harmony’ attributed to Tatian that he formed out of the books: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Tatian was a second century Church Father and ‘Apologist’ of Assyrian ancestry who was a pupil of Justin Martyr in Rome. From its compilation in the mid-second century, it became the standard Gospel text in Syrian churches until the fifth century when it was replaced by the four separate Gospels. The fragment was found in the fill in Wall Street near Tower 18, north of the city gate and west of Block L8. The script is of Greek text and it is assumed that during siege preparations this corner piece was torn from its scroll; whether the scroll existed beyond the life and walls of Dura is unknown. The fact that it was not found within the domus is not surprising knowing the chaotic time of its provenance. The Greek text is comparable to the formal names in inscribed graffiti on the walls of the building during its Christian period, and together they tell us that the membership of local Christians, or a

The west end of the baptistery was excavated down to bedrock upon which the font was supported. The font basin and canopy was a single brick structure without evidence of a drainage system. The canopy was in the form of a barrel vault, supported by two pilasters against the wall and two free standing columns made of rubble and plaster. The front and side wall faces were arched with the front arched face being raised higher than the sides. The walls were plastered and a low bench was built on the east end of the room. This end of the room connected with the low door step from the courtyard. A rectangular niche was installed in the wall between the two doors. Surviving fragments indicate that a small table stood or a ledge projected below the niche, positioned slightly offset towards the door leading to Room 5. Holes dug in the floor close by, likely by vandals in search of buried money at the time the house was abandoned in 256 CE, are thought to be the reason for its destruction making it uncertain as to what role the table or niche played in the room. Kraeling thought its purpose coincided with the meaning of the painted scene 34

Carl H. Kraeling, The Christian Building, p. 153. Ibid., p. 151. 36 Ibid., p. 153. Kraeling used the baptismal accounts within the Syrian, The Apocryphal Acts of Judas Thomas as his primary source. 37 Ibid., 155. 35

38 39

158

Ibid, pp.150-151; 190. Ibid., p. 163.

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17-16 North and South walls of the Bapistery

this frame, the image of the Good Shepherd and His Sheep dominated the focus of the font. In the lower-left corner of the Good Shepherd image a sketch was made of Adam and Eve depicting the ‘Fall’ in Genesis 3:1-7. The font was highlighted by red banding between black lines. The painted message hovering over the waters of baptism is that of the saving nature of the Good Shepherd who gathers his flock separating them from the original sin of Adam. Their eternal hope is manifest in a comprehendible, relational Savior.

significant segment of them, were drawn from the Hellenized element of the city’s population.40 From the time of the Baptismal Room’s excavation to the present, the interpretation and meaning of its artwork (as the artwork in the Synagogue) has been the focus of much discussion without an overall consensus. All of the pictorial representations are of Biblical narrative scenes and were organized in zones by using a framework of lines. The Font was built on the west wall; its opening was framed above by the canopy, at the sides by the pilasters, and at the bottom by the upper ledge of the basin. Painted inside

40

The painted images on the north, south, and east walls of the Baptistery were organized in two ascending registers. The artist(s) had nearly ten feet of vertical wall space in which to work. The specific narratives and their locations are of the following:

Ibid, pp. 113-114

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SPATIAL AND RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE LATE ANTIQUE POLIS Upper Register, North Wall: The Healing of the Paralytic Upper Register, North Wall: The Walking on the Water Upper Register, South Wall: Garden Scene or Paradise of the Blessed Lower Register, South Wall: The Woman at the Well Lower Register, South Wall: David and Goliath Lower Register, East and North Walls: The Resurrection Sequence

baptism that this Christian community is focused rather than the Eucharist.45 There is not a single image of bread or a cup within the pictorial narrative. SUMMARY The domus ecclesia presents an anomaly within religious architecture at Dura Europos. It did not possess a naos or pronaos, places of deepening religious interiority or shrine housings as the pagan temples. The place of deepest interiority would have been the Baptismal, it was a place of periodic use and not repeatedly used by the initiate after completing the rite. The elimination of the divan benches in the domus is a clear statement of separation from the pagan influence. Meeting rooms were not for social functions but for a religious gathering of a community of believers; the courtyards and porticos served this social purpose.

The images from the East and North walls have been identified as a procession of either ‘The Wise or Foolish Virgins’ or the ‘Women at the Tomb’ (or wise virgins carrying lamps to the bridegroom’s tent).41 They portray characters in motion from right to left, towards the font at the end of the room where the Woman at the Well is located. Kraeling believed there was an axial orientation of the room towards the font and Michael White42 believes the orientation would come from a liturgical practice involving a procession in the room. In contrast with Kraeling’s view, he saw the procession beginning close to the courtyard door, moving towards the font and after the rite of baptism, the procession ends at the table before the niche and the ‘David and Goliath’ fresco with its commemorative graffiti.43

The Hall of Assembly is virtually void of artistic symbolism with only a small raised platform to indicate the room had any focus of direction. It is appropriate that there is no mention in its inscriptional record of a structure of leadership or a name of one as overseer. The open bema might indicate that services were not restricted to a select few. And along the same line, there is no indication of a hierarchy or partitioning off of sacred space for an administering priesthood in the Hall of Assembly or in the Baptismal Room.

Annabel Jane Wharton interprets the baptismal room frescoes not from a strict biblical narrative point of view, but from the context of the early Christian initiation rites. She applied the books of the Didache and the Aprocryphal Acts of Judas Thomas as appropriate, pre-Constantinian, local texts for baptism. She sees the Biblical representations as selfreflective embodiments of the initiates: ‘The defining features of the program suggest that the frescoes of the lower field reiterate initiation even as it is enacted. Processing figures match the procession of neophytes to the font and the procession of the newly enlightened to the assembly hall to participate in the mysteries.’44 The baptistery would serve then as an inner-forecourt, providing the necessary ablutions that must take place before one may approach God as his lamb.

The domus was practically identical to the homes Christians lived thus the transition from domesticity to worship was essentially fluid. Daily life was directly relational with their concept of communal worship; the tenants of their faith being broken down to the barest essentials. As mentioned above, the rite of baptism seems prioritized over the Eucharist, though it is highly likely that it was regularly celebrated. As such, no architectural features were found for dispensing its elements or represented in symbolic paintings or inscriptional wall graffiti. Ritual emphasis was on entering this familial community. As will be discussed in the following chapters, the issues of spatial hierarchy and the universe the Church created surrounding the Mysteries was an immense departure of what we have at Dura. What will also be developed is the issue of discontinuity between the domus and basilica. The transition of worship to a governmental structure represents a complete severing of an architectural type; the move would hold enduring consequences for Christianity.

As the above theories show, it is not possible to establish a firm iconographic message in the baptistery room. Clearly they are New Testament scenes pertaining to concepts of living water, the restoration of original creation to new life in the celebration of death and resurrection through the waters of baptism. In context with the concept of procession, it is as much a subject of water, oil and Shepherd as it was of processants. And it is the oil of ritual unction and water of

41

Annabel Jane Wharton, Wharton, A. J., Refiguring the Post-Classical City: Dura Europos, Jerash, Jerusalem and Ravena, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995., pp, 60, 177, n. 134. 42 L. Michael White, The Social Origins of Christian Architecture, Vol. II, Valley Forge: Trinity Press International, 1997, pp. 129-31. 43 Ibid, pp. 131-2. ‘Proclus, a patron’ 44 Annabel Jane Wharton, op. cit, p. 60.

45

160

Carl Kraeling, op.cit, p. 146.

CHAPTER 17: THE CHRISTIAN HOUSE-CHURCH (DOMUS ECCLESIA) AT DURA-EUROPOS

17-17 Artist’s view of the Synagogue’s residential block typical of Dura Europos’ urban form

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CHAPTER 18 CHRISTIAN SPATIALITY IN HISTORICAL CONTEXT The evolution of the late Antique city in the East was due to a number of factors interrelated with the long debated issues pertaining to the loss of the Classical age. Most analysis points to a number of internal administrative and economic shifts along with external pressures of invasion, population loss to plague, and religious change. In the midst of these factors, Rome and Constantinople repeatedly attempted to reconstruct damaged cities. However, the structural changes in ancient society led to the dissolution of the collective institutions that enforced Classical spatiality. Yet, the city as ‘place’ continued as a spatial entity. The transition from pagan to Christian emplacement should be seen as one of a long chain of transitions. Among its many affects, the rise of Christianity within the Eastern polis revealed that the Classical form was a temporary veneer substantial for as long as an institution was committed to carrying (and pay for) its principles. Christianity not only ignored but was opposed to Classical ideals, therefore allowing urban and industrial forces to invest its spaces.

monumental structures, the decay of the urban infrastructure (monumental facades, collapsed columns and capitals not being repaired, drains not being maintained, leisure and entertainment facilities becoming disused).1 Yet, the symptoms are much easier to describe than its cause(s). Historians emphasize a number of interacting external and internal sources affecting the transition of the Roman East into the Islamic Empire. Examples of external pressures include Peter Pentz2 attributing change coming from economic decline in settled communities resulting from a high taxing, centralised government forcing the nomads on the periphery to invade and re-establish their commercial security. They did so as a ‘silent invasion’ under the enabling of the Church who had assumed spatial control of urban life with little concern for maintaining Classical spatial principles. This is evidenced by Graf’s study in how manufacturing and merchant facilities invaded classical spaces as Arabia became a world of prosperous villages with increasing densities in population.3 Clive Foss4 stresses the Persian invasions and plague of the first half of the sixth century as locally destabilising factors.

Hesiod seems to be on the right track in putting Chasm first in his system. At any rate, the reason he says ‘First came the Chasm, and then the broad-breasted Earth’ is presumably because the first requirement is that there should be space for things. In other words, he shares the common belief that everything is somewhere – that is, in some space. And if space is like that, then it would be truly remarkable and prior to everything, since that which is a prerequisite for other things to exist, but whose existence does not depend on things, is bound to be primary. The point here is that space is not destroyed when things it contains are destroyed (Aristotle, Physics 4.1.29-39).

Internal sources responsible for the end of classicism (represented by A.H.M. Jones, J.H.W.G. Liebeschuetz, H. Saradi-Mendelovici, and Hugh Kennedy, among others),5 1

Mentioned in Yoram Tsafrir and Gideon Foerster, ‘Urbanism at Scythopolis-Bet Shean in the Fourth to Seventh Centuries’, The Dumbarton Oaks Papers, No. 51, (1997), 141. 2 Peter Pentz, The Invisible Conquest, The Ontogenesis of Sixth and Seventh Century Syria, Copenhagen: The National Museum of Denmark, 1992, 6878. ‘…as it looks at present and with a high degree of generalisation, the key periods of transformation of late antique/early medieval Syria is not that of the Islamic takeover, but rather the Byzantine 6th century, with its failing economic potential…climate, soil erosion, earthquakes, plagues – only formed an important context for the conquest. Religious disintegration among the Christians, exhaustion of the Byzantine state and ethnic diversity in Syria made it possible. But the collapse of mutuality between the sedentary and the nomad economics was the cause.’ 3 David F. Graf, ‘Town and Countryside in Roman Arabia during Late Antiquity,’ Urban Centres and Rural Contexts in Late Antiquity, (eds.), Thomas Burns and John W. Eadie, East Lansing: Michigan State Press, 2001, 219. 4 Clive Foss, ‘Syria in Transition, A.D. 550-750: An Archaeological Approach’, DOP 51 (1992), 189-269. 5 A.H.M. Jones, The Later Roman Empire, 284-602, Vols. 1 & 2, Baltimore: John’s Hopkins, 1964, 1067-8. Jones emphasized heavy taxation requiring an expanding administrative structure (resulting in corruption, extortion, low moral, and decline in agriculture and population) to field armies capable of resisting barbarian invasion; J.H.W.G. Liebeschuetz, The Decline and Fall of the Roman City, Oxford: Oxford, 2001; H. Saradi-Mendelovici, ‘The Demise of the Ancient City and the Emergence of the Mediaeval City in the Eastern Roman Empire,’ Echos du Monde Classique/Classical Views XXXII, n.s. 7 (1988), 365-401; Hugh Kennedy, ‘From Polis to Medina: Urban Change in

Aristotle’s statement concerning the continuity of place in space is applicable to the ideological, architectural and spatial changes of the polis from the fourth century BCE. Aristotle asserts that the formation of place in space is constant and holds dominant meanings. Humanity can only change the shape and orientation of things within place, but is powerless to stop its continuance. Historiographic discussions involving the Roman-Byzantineearly Islamic periods present a conflict of terms involving: fall and transition, end and evolution. ‘Decline’, ‘fall’, ‘demise’, ‘disintegration’, and ‘deterioration’ commonly used to describe the final stages of the Classical City, speak of complete termination. Transition and continuance of urban form is difficult to determine when the commonly identified symptoms of decline include streets narrowing to lanes, private buildings encroaching on public squares and 162

CHAPTER 18: CHRISTIAN SPATIALITY IN HISTORICAL CONTEXT the place where the nobility of Syria resided as late as 570.13 Similarly, in the late fourth into the early sixth centuries Scythopolis’ civic centre was revitalised while maintaining traces of its classical monumentalism14 and at Gerasa a stoa was built in 447 and a rebuilding of sections of the porticos along the Cardo, south of the South Tetrapylon between 513-30.15 Nevertheless, as can be seen overall at Scythopolis and Gerasa, efforts to restore civic centres in ‘Roman shape’16 could not mask the gradual encroachment of manufacturing facilities and housing in theatres, hippodromes, amphitheatres, streets and plazas during the sixth century. Enrico Zanini describes these changes as ‘enrichment’, establishing fortifications and churches alongside the porticos, baths and administrative buildings.17 Yet, this ‘double-nature’ was to be short-lived. Classical monumentalism could not survive the new spatial order. Thus, a dual ‘invasion’ occurred as Christian spaces began to transform the city and the political authorities refused to uphold the institutions of Classical space and form.

came from the failure of the political polis (loss of powers by the boule and the curiales) in the face of an expandingcentralising government. Population loss in plague and war coincided with the end of the Classical tradition in Christianisation, and Christian leaders replaced the polis political community with the bishop expanding his religiouspolitical influence to become the shepherd of his flock and the polis.6 Peter Brown sees the end of the classical world coinciding with the emergence of the holy man overtaking the importance of the temple.7 All agree that this was, not a sudden, but a long transitional process whereby Classical urban forms, in some places at least, continued well into the mid-sixth century.8 Cameron considers it important to view this period over the ‘broad sweep’ of history rather than the limiting the discussion to narrow issues which, by themselves, neither fundamentally nor immediately affected the status quo. The ‘fall’ of the Roman Empire was not a single event but an evolution of a cultural system moving towards northern Europe and east to Baghdad.9 St. Simeon the Fool is shown to interact with the society of late fifth century Emesa (Hims) where the markets, baths, prostitutes, taverns and theatre appear to be thriving.10 Liebeschuetz’s emphasis on the ‘end’ is remindful of the extended chronology of the ‘Fall’: there was no sudden collapse, but a gradual, silent decay.

THE RETAKING OF URBAN SPACE BY PREEXISTING ETHNIC FORMS Modern builders need a classification of architectural factors irrespective of time and country, a classification by essential variation… In architecture more than anywhere we are the slaves of names and categories, and so long as the whole field of past architectural experiment is presented to us accidentally only under historical schedules, designing architecture is likely to be conceived as scholarship rather than as the adaptation of its accumulated powers to immediate needs…(W. Lethaby, Architecture, (1912), 8,9).

Yet, the authorities appear to have wished to continue the Classical city in form at least:11 Procopius writes of Justinian’s adornment of Antioch in with classical architecture after being destroyed by earthquake and invasion.12 Apamea was also rebuilt after the Persian destruction and was known as

The ending of Classical spatiality was not, of course, the end of the city as settlement or place, but the ending of a particular form of spatial understanding. The new cities that grew in the shadow of the Classical cities were more architecturally disordered and in some ways more difficult to read. One could see the new cities as reflecting a new spatial understanding, which one might label Christian or late antique or early Byzantine. However, it is sometimes suggested that the new cities reflected a traditional ideology; they had, in a sense, reverted back to, what I have termed as their urban default type.18 An urban default type succeeds when a dominant political power (say a colonial authority) which sustains a particular urban form weakens or disappears and ‘under-groups’, once restrained by this authority ‘defaults’ or assume control of its spaces and impose their pre-

Late Antique and Early Islamic Syria,’ Past and Present, No. 106 (Feb., 1985), 3-27. 6 Hugh Kennedy, op. cit, 18-19. J.H.W.G. Liebeschuetz, ‘Administration and Politics in the Cities of the Fifth to the Mid Seventh Century: 425-640, CAH XIV, (Cambridge, 2000), 217-221. The rise of the bishop came out of necessity in times of emergency and was formally introduced to civic politics by Anastasius and increased their role through legislation: The Novels (Novela) of Justinian. Justinian’s aim was to have the bishop act as chair over the notables or fill their power vacuum as the councils weakened. Justin II involved the bishop in nominating the governor of the province and protecting the overall interests of the city including the enforcement of building regulations and maintenance (Novela 17.4; 25.4 (535CE)). 7 Peter Brown, The World of Late Antiquity, London: Thames & Hudson, 1971, 102-3. 8 Yoram Tsafrir and Gideon Foerster, op. cit, 112; and general comments by excavators and historians adequately summarised by David Kennedy, ‘The Identity of Roman Gerasa: An Archaeological Approach’, Mediterranean Archaeology, 1998, Vol. 11, 64-5. 9 Averil Cameron, The Later Roman Empire, 284-430, London: Fontana, 1993, 192-3. 10 Derek Krueger, Symeon the Holy Fool, Leontius’s Life and the Late Antique City, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1996. Though given that the text is seventh century, it may reflect a yet later urban tradition (late sixth or seventh century). 11 M.M. Mango, ‘Building and Architecture’, CAH XIV, Cambridge, 2000, 918-940. 12 Procopius, Buildings, II, 10.2-25.

13 Clive Foss, op. cit, 206-10; Piacenza pilgrim, in J. Wilkinson, Jerusalem Pilgrims, Warminster, 1977, 89. 14 Yoram Tsafrir and Gideon Foerster, op. cit, 121-2. 15 C.B. Wells, (1938), Inscriptions: 275 and 281; ἔμβολος used for portico. 16 Yoram Tsafrir and Gideon Foerster, op. cit, 112. 17 Enrico Zanini, ‘Urban Ideal and Urban Planning in Byzantine Cities,’ Theory and Practice in Late Antique Archaeology, Vol. 1, Luke Lavan and William Bowden (eds), Leiden: Brill, 2003, 200. 18 See Peter Pentz, op. cit.

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SPATIAL AND RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE LATE ANTIQUE POLIS dominated spatial ideology. As Lethaby claims above, architectural analysis tends to define and categorise elements and this can obscure the relationship between architecture and society. Thus, the survival of Classical elements in any context does not mean the survival of a Classical spatiality: Classical elements could survive as remnants within a new spatial sense as, for instance, the inclusion of Classical spolia in a Church does not mean that the architectural element is performing the same or even a similar semiotic function as in its original location and use.

City regions the polygonal-rectangular houses were generally two stories with room for animals on the ground and humans on the first floor, while many through out the Trans-Jordan region and Palestine were single story units with courtyard animal pens and storage facilities. Taken as a whole, they were unspecialized spaces with facilities for agriculture and animal husbandry, which reflected the agricultural regime. Inscriptions indicate the builders were local people who combined their construction practices with farming. Yizhar Hirschfeld, Ali Abou Assaf, Clive Foss, and G. Tate (et. al.) all argue for a continuation of the organizational principles of the rural village from the Byzantine into the Islamic Periods.23 The Umayyad House facing the South Decumanus in Gerasa reflects this continuance from the Byzantine to Early Abbassid periods (sixth- to the ninth centuries). It was comprised of five to six separate dwellings that shared the same multi-angular courtyard; the front rooms were for daily use, the back rooms for sleeping. Originally, three shop spaces, attached to its south end, faced the South Decumanus, however, by the late seventh century their walls had extended to encompass the portico columns and the court had become completely congested and cut off with interior walls.24

Classical design used geometry to create the alignments, the Vitruvian symmetries and harmonies among forms to reinforce a hierarchical concept of the centre (or various centres) by which to organise the world.19 The transition from the classical city broke from the ‘perfect’ geometries of order. The new city possessed many centres (densely clustered, nondescript forms) with an absence of geometrical ties. As presented in Section I, 6 (Neurological Evidence for Human Spatial Conception), humans are neurologically wired to simplify and systematise visual images enabling them to be re-applied in a seemly infinite number of applications. Without the repetition of practically identical forms (which essentially defines Gerasa architecturally), joining the parts together is extremely difficult.20 When spatial and architectural clarity breaks down, we are incapable of understanding it and thus define it as ‘chaotic’. In Dura Europos, there is homogeneity of urban form, strictly organised within an orthogonal street system containing hierarchical focal points, such as the agora, Palace of the Dux Rupe, and the Roman military quarter. Yet the post—Roman city developed inwardly without restraint: orthogonal order was intensified within its form for a more densely concentrated organisation.

The intrusion of dense multifunctional spaces into open classical zones can be viewed as a re-occurrence of civic forms from a millennium earlier or as a ‘ruralisation’ of urban space. The Classical form can be seen as an abnormal entity in this environment. Yizhar Hirschfeld concludes that the Hellenistic-Roman dwelling culture in Palestine never fully penetrated into the private-domestic realm as their ‘courtyard culture’ (as at Dura Europos) remained distinctly localEastern.25 Only a few peristyle-atrium houses were found throughout Palestine, however, advanced Hellenistic construction techniques were adapted to pre-existing forms that originated in the Bronze and Iron Ages.26

Pre-Hellenistic cities, from Syria to Palestine, has been described as ‘organic’ or ‘spontaneous’ possessing attributes of non-linear winding paths, and division of space through partitions, enclosures and courts. They are characterised by clustered groupings with sporadic moments of planning, but without possessing a formal street or plaza system. Villages are self-contained, and inward looking, as were the houses with non-descript blank walls facing outward (with the exception of carved symbols over door lintels)21 enclosing an angular courtyard. In most cases these had covered porches supported by pillars which could run on one to four sides (Maison12, at Baude)22 to create a polygonal atrium reminiscent of the Cathedral and St. Theodore’s courts in Gerasa. In the Dead

The narrow winding streets judged to be a sign of decline in intelligible design could, instead, be seen as a response to ecological factors. The winding lane easily flows with the changing topography instead of cutting (forcing) linear armatures and axes points into the landscape. The provision of shade is much simpler than with Classical conditions. As 23

Yizhar Hirschfield, ‘Farms and Villages in Byzantine Palestine,’ DOP 51 (1992), 33-71; Ali Abou Assaf, ‘Private Houses at ‘Ain Dara in Byzantin Period’, Les Maisons Dans La Syrie Antique Du IIIe Millenaire Aux Debuts De L’Islam, Beyrouth: IFAPO, 1997, 187-190; Clive Foss, ‘The Near Eastern Countryside in Late Antiquity,’ The Roman and Byzantine Near East: Some Recent Archaeological Research, (ed.) J. Humphrey, Ann Harbor: University of Michigan Press, 1995, 218-22; Georges Tate, ‘La Maison Rurale en Syrie Du Nord,’ Les Maisons Dans La Syrie Antique Du IIIe Millenaire Aux Debuts De L’ Islam, Beyrouth: IFAPO, 1997, 95-101 and Les Campagnes de la Syrie du nord , Paris, 1992. 24 Michael Gawlikowski, ‘A Residentail Area by the South Decumanus JAP I, Amman, 1986, 107-117. 25 Yizhar Hirschfeld, The Palestinian Dwelling in the Roman-Byzantine Period, Studium Biblicum Fransiscum Colectio Minor 34, Jerusalem: Franciscan Printing Press-Israel Exploration Society, 1995, 289-90. 26 Ibid, 22.

19

Simon Unwin, Analysing Architecture , London: Routledge, 2003, 128. Pierre von Meiss, Elements of Architecture: From form to place, Lausanne: E&F Spon, 1990, 50. 21 Georges Tate, ‘Le Datation Des Maisons’, Les Campaignes de la Syrie du Nord, Paris: Paul Geuthner, 1992, 85-166. 22 Georges Tate, ‘La Maison Rurale en Syrie Du Nord,’ Les Maisons Dans La Syrie Antique Du IIIe Millenaire Aux Debuts De L’ Islam, Beyrouth: IFAPO, 1997, 98. 20

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Note the intrusion of dwelling space extending into the continuous colonnade below. 18.1 The Umayyad House transition from the 7th to the 9th centuries on the South Decumanus at Gerasa.

18.2

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SPATIAL AND RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE LATE ANTIQUE POLIS they course over the land they diminish wind affects, permit higher population densities (which encourages pedestrian accessibility and social informality), and are more easily defensible.27 Enclosed courtyards with windowless exteriors to the street (as discussed with Dura) provide secluded open zones amidst dense populations where household tasks can be carried out.

late antique Christian cities in which Christian religious thought and architecture overlaid and continuously engaged with a Classical heritage.

URBAN CHANGE IN GERASA AND THE EAST For hundreds of years, Gerasa’s walkways and plazas were worn smooth by devout polytheistic worshippers of Zeus, Artemis and other eastern deities. Their festivals and promenades coursed up the Sacred Way over the South Bridge, up the steps to the Zeus Temple, and up the valley to the Berketein Theatre and Pools. However, by 500 CE, and probably much earlier, Christianity had virtually put an end to this way of life. Processions were moving in new directions into structures of a very different nature. This transformation was a radical re-orientation of kinetic memory. Generations of Gerasenes had been conditioned by the routines and pathways of social interaction and beliefs established over the centuries amidst the colonnades, but were now being directed in different directions while the colonnades remained, reminders of a rejected tradition.

Yet, such an approach is environmentally deterministic: it suggests that there is an underlying natural-organic form for the cities of the East. Much of the analysis in the first section of this thesis has argued that although there are cross-cultural ways of looking at space and various forms will reoccur, place and attitudes to space result from complex cultural and philosophical thinking with regard to the relationship of Humanity to the Divine and to society. It would, however, be a mistake to judge the Eastern city as ‘Oriental-primitive’ in the face of Western superiority. Earlier analysis of Eastern architecture and urban form by Western writers often wound down dangerous roads of ethnicity.28 Though it may not have been grounded in philosophical/mathematical symmetry held practically sacred to the Greeks, it closely characterises the attributes of what is defined as ‘landscape’ as their place was shaped with minimal alteration to the natural world and configured to that society’s social dynamics. As mentioned previously by Asem Barghouti (Gerasa), local influences combined with Greco-Roman architecture were what made Classical Gerasa (and the Decapolis) a unique blending of culture and built environment.

One of the great attributes Gerasa possesses as an archaeological park is the light it can shed on this transition. There is a general tendency to write of the period as one of violent replacement in which Christian ideology scoured the city of its pagan heritage. Yet, although there is some evidence from Gerasa to suggest that there may have been periods of violent extirpation of Classical and pagan influences, for instance under Bishop Paul, for all of Gerasa’s late antique history pagan remains stood alongside Christian churches. Further, where there is archaeological evidence of Classical sites being abandoned or going into decline, this may have been due to passivity rather than active hostility; a prevalent unwillingness to devout resources to the repair of Classical buildings when Christian structures could be built.29 H. Saradi-Mendelovici discussed several attestations of temples being abandoned and decaying, though not obviously as a result of Christian hostility.30 Temples in Scythopolis also show signs of long-term abandonment before reuse.31 Similarly, at Gerasa, it seems there was a period of

The default type requires there to be a default type of culture grounded to a particular area, and although one could envisage a colonial power having only the most superficial of influences on a local culture and thus a city and culture ‘defaulting’ when that colonial was removed, such an argument tends to posit an ‘Oriental’ continuity throughout time. Yet, as we have seen in the discussion of Gerasa and Dura, there is no reason to believe that the spatial values attested in their architectures were in any way superficial and there is every reason to believe that there was a complex and continuing engagement with Classical spatiality through the antique occupation of the city. As we shall see in the following sections, it seems that the Christian reshaping of Gerasa and other cities ran concurrent with an incursion of local default forms and invading peoples. It was a conscious reworking of Classical spatial ideologies in which the Classical legacy was given certain symbolic meanings in the midst of and allowing a gradual economic transition between the settled community and nomad. Through this, we can see that the fifth- and sixth-century cities of the East had completely returned to their pre-Classical forms, but were

29

Alexandra Uscatescu and Manuel Martin-Bueno, ‘The Macellum of Gerasa (Jerash, Jordan): From a Market Place to an Industrial Area, BASOR, No. 307 (Aug., 1997), 75-77. They use the Macellum’s expansion and the commercial use of Zeus Temple’s east façade as indicators of economic vitality which would suggest that the money would have been available to restore Classical buildings; See also Kraeling, Gerasa, City of the Decapolis, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1938, 66. One may note the parallel from Augustan Rome in which Augustus, Res Gestae 20, claimed to have restored 82 temples in 28 BC. This cannot be taken as evidence of religious decline or economic failure, rather that the Roman elite preferred to invest their money in prestigious new structures than in repairing the old. 30 Helen Saradi-Mendelovici, ‘Christian Attitudes toward Pagan Monuments in Late Antiquity and Their Legacy in Later Byzantine Centuries’, DOP, Vol. 44 (1990), 49. Socrates, HE. III.2. (An abandoned Mithraeum in Alexandria); Libanius, Oration XVIII.23. 31 Yoram Tsafrir and Gideon Foerster op. cit, 111.

27

Richard W. Bulliet, The Camel and the Wheel, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975, 224-6. 28 See first chapter in Annabel Jane Wharton, Refiguring the Post-Classical City: Dura Europos, Jerash, Jerusalem and Ravena, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

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CHAPTER 18: CHRISTIAN SPATIALITY IN HISTORICAL CONTEXT abandonment of the Cathedral temple before Christian conversion.32 Inscriptions, pertaining to the Temple of Zeus, end in the first century and the last known coin depicting Artemis tyche is dated 217/218.33 Though the abandonment dates the Zeus and Artemis Temples are not known, Yoram Tsafrir estimates the Artemis site to have been unused by the late fourth century based on the results from soundings taken in the temple court indicating a lapse of time before conversion to pottery manufacture.34

an alley and cut off the Stepped Street from reaching the west end of St. Theodore’s atrium court. The reality of Gerasa’s archaeology argues against thorough Christian destruction. The earliest photographs taken by expeditions in the 19th century show standing columns and partial cellas of the Zeus and Artemis Temples along with their extensive debris fields.38 The great pagan edifices continued to stand during the Christian period, looking over their Christian competitors. The brethren about whom Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis (375 CE)39 wrote, stopping to witness the miracle at the Fountain Court, were virtually under the shadow of the Artemis Temple complex. Acts of temple destruction were limited to the Zeus and Artemis Temple’s interior cellas and adytons while the outer porticos and facades were maintained, possibly in accord with the Christian view that outer ornamentation is less of a concern than interior space.

There is very little evidence that would allow us to decide whether the conversion of pagan or Classical sites was an active policy.35 There is plenty of evidence of temple destruction throughout the East, especially in the late fourth and early fifth centuries. Zeus Marnas at Gaza, the Sarapeon at Alexandria, the temples of Jupiter at Baalbek, Zeus at Apamea, and Hadrian’s temple of Aphrodite on Golgotha, Jerusalem are but the most famous examples. There was relief for pagans under Julian (360-63) and tolerance under Valens (364-78) and Valentinian (364-75), but a tide of anti-pagan hostility swept in, beginning with Gratian (367-83) and Theodosius (379-95), and it is in this latter period that the Cathedral at Gerasa was constructed.

An important study by Richard Bayliss differentiated several types of temple conversion and I will, accordingly, use his terminology.40 ‘A direct temple conversion or a temple church is a church that preserves some in situ remains of a pre-existing temple within its fabric.’41 It is a church built by utilizing the cella and its podium. Builders used the outer walls and supporting members without alteration to form their atria, sanctuaries, and chancels. Only the apses were entirely new additions that required separate foundations and attachments to the pre-existing structure. Indirect temple conversion was the building of a church which in materials, orientation, size or ground plan, was influenced by the remains of a temple. Within this group we find the Temenos-Church, constructed within the walls of an ancient precinct yet without incorporating any standing remains of the cella. 42 The Cathedral and the Propylaea Church would fall into this category as well as possibly two others determined from faint remains discovered in the Zeus temenos and Artemis altar terrace. A larger subgroup is the temple-spolia-church constructed from the remains of a specific pre-existing temple that had first been destroyed or dismantled. Statistically, there were more spolia church conversions than any other type.43 The majority, and perhaps all, of Gerasa’s churches can be categorized as spolia churches. St. Theodore’s support pillars came from the Artemis Temenos as well as its inscribed

We see further changes in Classical buildings which cannot be directly related to Christian extirpation. By the late 3rd century the Hippodrome was reduced almost in half and the southern portion turned into a pottery dump and lime burning industry. The temenoi of the Artemis, Zeus, Macellum, and North Theatre complexes were used for shops and industrial purposes in pottery, lime burning, fabric dying and leather work.36 The North Bridge was probably not functioning after the mid-6th century, though this is sometimes assumed to be a symptom of a century of pagan decline.37 There was an increased housing density around the South Tetrapyla intersection, suggesting a shift in the location of population within the city. The temenos space of Temple C was subdivided into what seems to be living quarters. The residential zone surrounding the north and west to St. Theodore’s Church reduced the western street to

32

Carola Jaggi, Meier and Brenk. ‘Temple, Kiln, and Church: The Fourth Interim Report on the Jerash Cathedral Project’, ADAJ, Vol. 42, (1998), 425-32. 33 Augustus Spijkerman, The Coins of the Decapolis and Provincia Arabia (ed.), Michele Piccirillo, Jerusalem: Franciscan Printing, 1978, 165. 34 Yoram Tsafrir, ‘The Fate of Pagan Cult Places in Palestine: The Archaeological Evidence with Emphasis on Bet Shean,’ Religious and Ethnic Communities in Later Roman Palestine, (ed.), Hayim Lapin, College Park: University of Maryland, 1998, 207; R. Pierobon, ‘Sanctuary of Artemis: Soundings in the Temple Terrace, 1978-1980,’ Mesopotamia 18-19 (198384), 85-109. 35 Richard Bayliss, Provincial Cilicia and the Archaeology of Temple Conversion, BAR International Series, no.1281, 2004, 27. 36 F. Zayadine, ‘The Jerash Project for Excavation & Restoration’, JAP I (1986), 19. There are 23 known pottery kilns at Jerash. 37 J. W. Crowfoot, ‘The Christian Churches’, Gerasa, City of the Decapolis, Carl H. Kraeling (ed.), New Haven: Yale University Press, 1938, 233.

38 Jacques Seigne, ‘Monuments Disparus Sur Photographies Oubliees’, JAP II, Amman, 1989, 99-115. 39 J.W. Crowfoot, Early Churches in Palestine, London: The British Academy, 1941, 42. Epiphanius’ date of authorship is the only means to date the Fountain Court and Cathedral sites. 40 Richard Bayliss, op. cit, 121-129. Bayliss gives precise definitions for the various possible types of temple/church remains found in late Roman cities in provincial Cilicia, though his (partial) Database of Temple Conversion includes, comprehensively, sites in the Eastern Mediterranean and Asia Minor 41 Ibid, 7. 42 Ibid, 7. 43 Ibid, 48.

167

SPATIAL AND RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE LATE ANTIQUE POLIS door lintel. St. John’s interior has similar mouldings and an inscription from the Zeus Temple.44 The Bishop Isaiah Church, just east of the North Theatre, was supported from Ionic columns taken from the North Decumanus and the columns for the Placcus baths were taken from the West Bath’s atrium. The concentric ‘nesting’ of churches around the Artemis temple complex made the remains of the temple a useful source for building materials. Pillars in various stages of renovation were found near what was believed to be stone masons’ shops between Temple C and St. Theodore’s and between the Fountain Court and the Stepped Street.45 Jacques Seigne has theorised that a sixth-century waterpowered saw mill, discovered in the temenos of Artemis, was responsible for a series of precisely parallel saw cuts made longitudinally across the remains of a pillar.46 The mechanisation of processing stone veneer would help to explain the fate of the majority of the Artemis upperTemenos’ 124 pillars, however, the questionable archaeological presence of water conduits the size to sustain such a machine and the evidence of only a single pillar with these markings creates some uncertainly about the presence of a ‘factory’.

Scythopolis was one of the last of the great classical cities in Palestine to give up paganism. Paganism lasted in Petra until the later fourth, early fifth centuries.51 There is no archaeological evidence of its survival in Palestine and Arabia after the mid-fifth century.52 It seems likely that the Propylaea Church building as well as the many churches of Gerasa that were built after 500 CE, were constructed around a fully Christianized community. Caseau describes the elimination or conversion of pagan temples as the ‘desacralization’ of space’.53 Sacred space is the designation of particular spatial fields, primarily possessing built forms as connective devices to the divine, their power and active forces made efficacious through human inspiration and physical interaction. Importantly, the civic spaces surrounding religious sites were also participants in sacrality. Niches, many likely containing statues of various gods were found in most every civic building in Gerasa. Civic architecture throughout Arabia, Palestina and Syria: from Petra to Scythopolis, to Palmyra to Apamea was permeated with religious art and architecture standing on column brackets and building niches.54 The city was crowded with divine images.

The Cathedral’s curious wall at the head of the eastern staircase, as commented on by Annabelle Jane Wharton,47 can be categorised as an extension to a direct temple conversion. To maintain satisfactory worship space without pushing the building’s walls out into the Fountain Court, the apse was constructed over the last flight of steps to the debated Dionysius/Dusares Temple. Remains of buried steps under the apse were confirmed by archaeological investigations by Jaggi, Meier and Brenk.48 The shrine for Mary and the first of many turns for those processing inwards was achieved by adding a semi-circular structure to the end of the pagan temenos.

Caseau writes of the ‘complexity’ in converting the sacred to profane or secular use. 55 This complexity would exact physical violence towards things and persons. The attachment of meaning to building meant exorcisms were sometimes required to rid temples of the metaphysical connections. Every temple destroyed, desecrated, made secular, or reinvested as a church, affected human lives. Destruction and violence were deemed heroic acts of piety by Christian authorities. Christian desacralization portrays a curiously schizophrenic mindset in which a sensitive Church, cared for the poor, provided for abandoned children, yet authorised the murder of Hypatia on a church altar in Alexandria (415),56 allowed the torture of pagan sympathisers by John of Ephesus, and forced conversions through financial

The proposed date of construction for the Propylaea Church (565 CE) was the last year of Emperor Justinian’s reign. He is accused of causing, what Chauvin calls, a “civic death”, the killing of the last Classical freedom, parrhesia, through the overt oppression of the citizenry by the Church.49 Caseau argues that paganism’s decline resulted in an emotional depression, as ‘a whole tradition of sociability and rejoicing was vanishing’.50 Yet, by 500 CE, paganism as a major religious grouping was, for all intents and purposes, dead.

51

Zbigniew T. Fiema, ‘Byzantine Petra—A Reassessment’, Urban Centers and Rural Contexts in Late Antiquity, Thomas S. Burns & John W. Eadie, East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2001, 113. 52 Yoram Tsafrir, ‘The Fate of Pagan Cult Places In Palestine: The Archaeological Evidence With Emphasis on Bet Shean’, Religious and Ethnic Communities in Later Roman Palestine, Hayim Lapin (ed.), College Park: University of Maryland, 1998, 199, 212. 53 Beatrice Caseau, ‘Sacred Landscapes’, Interpreting Late Antiquity, Essays on the Postclassical World, Bowersock, Brown, and Grabar (eds), Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1999, 22-3. 54 Yoram Tsafrir and Gideon Foerster, op. cit, 128-30. Statues of divinities were found in the great East Baths at Gerasa and many buried, sometime around 515/6 CE, in the hypocaust beneath the caldarium of the eastern bathhouse in the centre of Scythopolis. A number of head sculptures were also found in excavations on the tell above the city 55 Beatrice Caseau, op. cit, 21-44. 56 Damascius, The Philosophical History, trans. Polymnia Athanassiadi, Athens: Apamea Cultural Association, 1999, 129, 131. See also: Socrates, HE VII.15.

44

J.W. Crowfoot, op. cit, 243. Ibid, 193, 204. 46 Jacques Seigne, ‘Une scierie mechanique au VIe siecle, Archeologie 385, Paris, 2002, 36-7. Seigne understands the cutting patterns to have come from two, four-bladed saws on either side of a single wheel. 47 Annabel Jane Wharton, op. cit,, 68-72. 48 Carola Jaggi, Hans-Rudolf Meier and Bent Brenk, op. cit. 49 Pierre Chuvin, A Chronicle of the Last Pagans, Cambridge, MA: Harvard, 1990, 134. 50 Beatrice Caseau, ‘The Fate of Rural Temples in Late Antiquity’, Recent Research on the Late Antique Countryside, William Bowden, Luke Lavan and Carlos Machado (eds), Leiden: Brill, 2004, 114. 45

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CHAPTER 18: CHRISTIAN SPATIALITY IN HISTORICAL CONTEXT and physical intimidation.57 It has been widely accepted that the construction of a church on a temple site was itself a means of spiritual cleansing. Garth Fowden describes the planned construction of a church on the site of the razed Sarapeon in Alexandria (391) by the Bishop Theophilus as a ‘method of neutralising the divine powers inherent in polytheistic holy places…’58 The historical sources lead us to believe that a form of deconsecration was required before a church was constructed.

symbols were incorporated into Christian ritual practice and perception of sacred space. Continuity of place may be seen as strains of religious continuity but were within an entirely new and different perceptual framework. It is argued by some that Christianisation did not bring about the death of pagan religion but was merely a transition, a new shade of the same colour:62 those aspects of pagan practice which were nonnegotiable and easily transferable, were maintained beneath a Christian veneer and survived through what Bayliss would describe as a ‘culture filter’.63 This ‘filtering’ process extracted the most radical elements of pagan ritual by, in a sense, pouring it through a sieve woven from the fibres of Christian doctrine and practices. The extract would bear the essence of both religious systems; the intuitive truths contained within the former transcended into the new worship system.

Spontaneous’ liturgies of deconsecration developed from Mark the Deacon’s detailed account of the destruction of the Marneion at Gaza: Among these was raising the shout of ‘One God’ and brandishing the cross in the face of the idols as a device to ward off the ‘daimonic rage’ or hostile kratophany of the dispossessed gods. By taking different elements from variously reported incidents, one can almost reconstruct a composite liturgy that included: ‘One God’ acclamations, the recitation of the psalms. The erasure of the gods’ names, the smashing of their faces, the incision of crosses, Christograms, and the Alpha-Omega on temple walls and spolia, the degrading treatment of temple spolia, and of course, the Christians’ keeping a watchful eye as they prayed for the escape of the daimon which was often ‘seen’ breaking through the stone as idols were cracked open or filtering away in the smoke of numerous fires.59

Evidence of this filtering process lies in the word: liturgy, λειτουργίαις. In classical culture, its common use was to

describe a benefactor’s duty, his/her ‘service to the polis’ as used in the important agonothete inscription of Titus Flacus at Gerasa.64 Also contained within the Flacus inscription is the word ‘munificence’ (φιλοτειμότατα) which is combined with liturgy to form the concept of the duty of generous giving to the polis. In Christianity, φιλοτειμότατα was abandoned along with Classical commitment to the polis while ‘liturgy’ was maintained to describe the structured performance of worship within the church building.65 In both cases, it is a repetitive exercise of collective responsibility, and as part of ritual, it expresses collective identity. Both usages epitomised their cultures and defined the battleground for civic change between the polis and the Church. Through the processing of a continuance of forms, converted pagans would have easy religious landmarks to orient themselves in a recognizable ritual topography. Neither the abandonment, exorcism, destruction or reclamation of pagan forms nor the exorcism, and reclamation of the person through the mysteries of Baptism and Eucharist could eliminate the human need for tactile relationships with the Divine and their sacred spaces.

The destruction of particular buildings illustrated the power of built form within the religious mind. There is no question that there was definite belief that the Marneion (and all other pagan temples for that matter) was inhabited by spiritual beings that had to be exorcised. Sacred space was not a metaphor: the converted mind knew what forces lurked in the pagan past as they worked to destroy the spaces in which they had once prayed and sacrificed. Bishops moved quickly as vulnerable pagans suffered the shock of losing their most important connection to the divine.60 The mass conversion that would typically follow had serious, unforeseen consequences for Christianity. The influx of the newly intimidated crowded sanctuaries at the same time Libanius warned Theodosius of the phenomenon of ‘apparent but not real conversions’.61

PAGAN CONTINUITIES IN CHRISTIAN SACRED SPACE

62

Frank Trombley, op. cit.; Chauvin, op. cit.; Garth Fowden, ‘Bishops and Temples in the Eastern Roman Empire A.D. 320-435’,JTS Vol. XXIX, (April, 1978), 53-78; and in CAH, Vol. XIII (1998), 558-560; Ramsey MacMullen, Christianizing the Roman Empire, AD 100-400, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984; Robert Markus, The End Of Ancient Christianity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990; Bayliss, op. cit, 5. 63 Richard Bayliss, op. cit, 5. 64 C.B. Wells, op. cit, inscr: 192, line 12 (λειτουργίαις) and line 13 (φιλοτειμότατα). Inscription found on a round pedestal found at the west end of the stage in the South Theatre, 105-114 CE. 65 Robert F. Taft, The Pre-Communion Rites, A History of the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, Orientalia Christiana Analecta, 261, Vol. 5, Rome: Pontificio Instituto Oriental, 2000, 44. H. Saradi-Mendelovici, (1988), op. cit, 391.

The result of Christian desacralization of pagan temples did not result in a completely converted pagan society. Pagan 57

Pseudo-Dionysius of Tel-Mahre, Chronicle, Part III, trans. Witold Witakowski, Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1996, 71-72. 58 Garth Fowden, ‘Polytheist Religion and Philosophy’, A. Cameron and P. Garnsey (eds), CAH XIII, The Late Empire, AD 337-425., Cambridge, 1998, 551. 59 Frank R. Trombley, Hellenic Religion and Christianization, C. 370-529, Vol. I, Leiden: Brill, 2001, 244-5. 60 Libanius, Oration XXX.10. LCL, 111. 61 Libanius, Oration XXX.28, LCL, 125-6.

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SPATIAL AND RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE LATE ANTIQUE POLIS Evidence for a continued of pagan spatiality in Christian context may be seen in the importance of touch in the veneration of the divine and especially the ‘Virgin Queen’.66

The above fragments from Sophronius of Jerusalem and Adomnan are an example of a number of intensely revealing descriptions of the Christian’s concept of ‘sacred space’ and tactile relation with architectural forms and natural stone. Taking inspiration from Davidic psalmody, Sophronius redefined Jerusalem as the Christian mundus, the naval of the earth, as the contact point between the faithful on earth and the divinity in heaven. Ties are made between the historic deeds done by Christ on the Cross, the Virgin Queen (a possible Eastern pagan transfer)69 in birthing the Saviour, and the omphalmos imagery spanning centrality issues with Jewish sacrality and Roman urban design. Tactually speaking, there is the embracing of stone, veneration of walls, direct relationships with brilliant architectural design and the heavens, and the going into caves to touch significant elements and gain a blessing. This is an excellent example of Jonathan Z. Smith’s fusion of a ‘locative’ and ‘transcendental’ religion as discussed in Section I, Ch. 10.

Holy City of God, Jerusalem, now I long to stand even now at your gates, and go in, rejoicing! A divine longing for holy Solyman presses upon me insistently. Let me walk they pavements and go inside the Anastasis, where the King of All rose again, trampling down the power of death. I will venerate the sweet floor, and gaze on the holy Cube, and the great four…like the heavens. Through the divine sanctuary I will penetrate the divine Tomb, and with deep reverence will venerate that Rock. And as I venerate that worthy Tomb, surrounded by its conches and columns surmounted by golden lilies, I shall be overcome with joy... Ocean of life ever living and of the true oblivion—Tomb that gives light! And prostrate I will venerate the Navel-point of the earth, that divine Rock in which was fixed the Wood which undid the curse of the tree... Then let me leave Sion’s summit and, embracing the stone where for me my creator was smitten go down to the House and the Stone. And enter the church, church of the all-pure Mother of God, there in veneration to embrace those walls, so dear to me. Far be it from me, passing through the forum, to neglect the place where the Virgin Queen was born in noble palace!.... And soon may I come, consumed with the heat of a holy desire to the townlet of Bethlehem birthplace of the King of All. And entering in to the sacred Tetrastoon, the lovely Triconch, that holy building, I shall rejoice…And when I see all the glistening gold the well-fashioned columns and fine workmanship, let me be freed from the gloom of sorrows. I will also look up at the design above, at the coffers studded with stars, for they are a masterpiece, brilliant with heavenly beauty. Let me go down also to the cave where the Virgin Queen of All bore a Saviour for mankind, true God and true Man. The shining slab which received the infant God, I will touch, with my eyes, my mouth, my forehead to gain its blessing…67

Adomnan drew his imagery from the Roman surveyor,70 to define Jerusalem as the place of light; a cosmic location of the summer solstice. This description suggests widespread knowledge of Roman surveying technique in demarcating the ‘mundus’ which was analogous to the setting up a vertical stone, the genesis of defining centre in a city’s founding.71 What is of great interest is the direct application by a 7th century Christian abbot of the sacred ceremony used in Roman surveying to demonstrate Christian cosmic ‘ownership’ of Jerusalem. In effect, Adomnan was illustrating the accurate positioning of Christian Jerusalem by the Father’s approval of his Son’s sacrifice. Adomnan recognised the Lord as surveyor, as well as the mover of the sun over the gnomon rod.

About seventy years later Adomnan, the abbot of Iona from 679 to 704 wrote of the cosmological significance of Jersusalem’s location:

The churches (just as the synagogue) of Gerasa are likely to have looked to Jerusalem’s holy places for inspiration and orientation. The synagogues and churches standing outside Jerusalem would possess its essences in art and architectural forms. Crowfoot points to Gerasa’s Cathedral portico on the Cardo and the great stairway recalling the propylaea and the eastern atrium at Jerusalem; the Cathedral with the Martyrium of Constantine; the Fountain Court with the second atrium and the Calvary, and St. Theodore’s with the Anastasis. Their baptisteries in Jerusalem and Gerasa coincidently occupied approximately the same position on their site’s footprint, though the Cathedral was not a centralised design as the Anastasis.72 The shrine to Mary at the Cathedral’s east entrance would have received the same

At the summer solstice when it is noon an amazing thing happens. When the sun reaches mid-heaven it casts no shadow, but as soon as the solstice, i.e. 24th June, is past, and after three days the day begins to get shorter, it begins at first to cast a short shadow, and then, as the days go by, a longer one. Thus during the summer solstice at noon the light of the sun in mid heaven passes directly above this column and shines down on all sides, which demonstrates that Jerusalem is placed at the centre of the earth. This explains why the psalmist used these words to sing his prophecy of the holy places of the Passion and Resurrection which are in this Aelia, “Yet God, our King, of old worked salvation in the midst of the earth”. This means “in Jerusalem”, which is called the “Mediterranean” and “Navel of the Earth”.68

69

Stephen Benko, The Virgin Goddess, Studies in the Pagan and Christian Roots of Mariology, Leiden: Brill, 2004 and Philippe Borgeaud, Mother of the Gods, From Cybele to the Virgin Mary, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1996. 70 Frontinus, Limits, I, Brian Campbell, The Writings of the Roman Land Surveyors, JRS Monograph No.9, 2000, 9-13. Joseph Rykwert, The Idea of the Town, London: Faber and Faber, 1976, 46. 71 Joseph Rykwert, op. cit, 117. 72 J.W. Crowfoot, (1938), op. cit, 202.

66

Philippe Borgeaud, Mother of the Gods, From Cybele to the Virgin Mary, trans. Lysa Hockroth, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 2004, 120-131. 67 Sophronius of Jerusalem, Anacreonticon 20-Extract, (614 CE), Jerusalem Pilgrims before the Crusades, John Wilkinson, (ed.), Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 2002, frags. 157-162. 68 John Wilkinson, op. cit, Adomnan: The Holy Places, Book 1.11.2-4, (2002), 177. Before 683 CE.

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CHAPTER 18: CHRISTIAN SPATIALITY IN HISTORICAL CONTEXT weeks of Lent.75 The increase in services and liturgy ran concurrent with churches coming to be used for private as well as public services. Votive services offered by families, villages and private individuals developed during the fourth and fifth centuries and required liturgies for needs and concerns such as journeys, sickness, rain, birth, thanksgiving, harvest, and the dead.76 To meet these needs, the Church was required to provide additional altars and it became necessary to plan for several sanctuaries within the nave.77 Gerasa’s churches were not used for one day and left ‘fallow’ for the remainder of the week, but had an established, continual operating presence in the city.

adoration as Sophronius performed in Bethlehem and Jerusalem. The Church building and the liturgy that gave it life defined Christianity. The development of Church architecture followed an increasingly more complex liturgy that separated a select priesthood (sacred) from the layworshipper (profane) and gave meaning to the architecture of the Church, setting it within a sacred topography which stretched beyond the city to Jerusalem and the divine order.

ARCHITECTURE AND LITURGY There is no surviving definitive text describing how the Gerasene or Early Byzantine churches operated liturgically and how liturgy changed over time.73 This lack of its complete understanding of liturgy is frustrating since it was the essential vivifying force of the Christian architectural cultic-form.74 Our understanding of Church liturgy comes primarily from the Mystagogy and Didascalia Apostolorum (after the earlier Didache) texts and stray references in ecclesiastical writers from the Late Roman-Early Byzantine East. We cannot know whether the (undisciplined) behaviours of worshippers before John Chrysostom in Constantinople would have had echoes in Gerasa, Scythopolis, Gadara or Madaba, nor whether the liturgy in the Didascalia Apostolorum or Cyril of Jerusalem’s Mystagogy was performed similarly everywhere. One assumes that worship practices (following Church architecture) possessed basic similarities but perhaps with local stylistic-creedal variants and/or based on whether a church was Arian, Nicaean, or Donatist. Liturgy was also likely influenced by pilgrims passing through the Decapolis, some of whom stopped long enough to witness the Fountain Court ‘miracle’. One would assume that the changes in attitude in Christianity in the fourth to seventh centuries were communicated via the major centres, Constantinople, Antioch and Jerusalem, to the cities of Palestina, Syria and Arabia.

In most Byzantine churches built during and after the 4th century, the sanctuary was divided into three parts (atrium/narthex, nave, and sanctuary), the sanctuary terminating in a semicircular apse primarily facing east.78 The area at the head of the nave was called the bima where the altar was positioned, sometimes topped by a canopy or ciborium. Within the curve of the apse there was sometimes a simple bench, the synthronon, on which the clergy would sit. The apse was topped by a conch, or half-dome, which helped project the chant or song. And in your congregations in the holy churches hold your assemblies with all decent order, and appoint the places for the brethren with care and gravity. And for the presbyters let there be assigned a place in the eastern part of the house; and let the bishop’s throne be set in their midst, and let the presbyters sit with him. And again, let the lay men sit in another part of the house toward the east. For so it should be, that in the eastern part of the house the presbyters sit with the bishops, and next the lay men, and then the woman; that when you stand up to pray, the rulers may stand first, and after them the lay men, and then the women also. For it is required that you pray toward the east, as knowing that which is written: Give ye glory to God, who rideth upon the heaven of heavens toward the east. But of the deacons let one stand always by the oblations of the Eucharist; and let another stand without by the door and observe them that come in; and afterwards, when you offer, let them minister together in the Church. And if any one be found sitting out of his place, let the deacon who is within reprove him and make him to rise up and sit in a place that is meant for him…so likewise in the Church ought those who are young to sit apart, if there be room, and if not to stand up; and those who are advanced in years to sit apart. And let the children stand on one side, or let their fathers and mothers take them to them, and let them stand up. And let the young girls also sit apart; but if there be no room, let them stand up behind the women. And let the young women who are married and have children stand

By the sixth century Eucharistic celebrations had grown more frequent. Basil of Caesarea recommended communion on Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. In northern Syria, Asia Minor, Constantinople and monastic traditions in Egypt, services on Saturday as well as Sunday seems to have included a celebration of the Eucharist. At Antioch it was on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. In Jerusalem services were conducted on Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, outside the

73

Luke Lavan, ‘Late Antique Urban Topography’, Theory and Practice in Late Antique Archaeology, Vol. 1, Luke Lavan and William Bowden (eds), Leiden: Brill, 2003, 176-7. Lavan considers the interpretation of church plan with liturgical function is mostly ‘guesswork’ and mostly a ‘futile exercise’. It is clear that as church architecture was locally determined, not holding to a rigid plan, liturgy followed in the same manner; it consisted of the same basic elements but were likely adjusted according to clerical preferences. 74 Thomas F. Mathews, The Early Churches of Constantinople: Architecture and Liturgy, University Park: The Pennsylvania State Press, 1977, 3.

75

Paul F. Bradshaw, Eucharistic Origins, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004, 145-6. 76 Natalia B. Teriatnikov, The Liturgical Planning of Byzantine Churches in Cappadocia, (Rome: Pontificio Instituto Orientale, 1996), 72. 77 Ibid, 29. 78 Robert Ousterhout, Master Builders of Byzantium, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 13.

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SPATIAL AND RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE LATE ANTIQUE POLIS apart and the aged women and widows sit apart. And let the deacon see that each of them on entering goes to his place that no one may sit out of his place. And let the deacon also see that on one whispers, or falls asleep, or laughs or makes signs.79

Christian worship was originally a regimented affair. The conversion process involved a personal counsellor who acted as sponsor to guide the convert through the stages of admission into the Church. This appears to be the first of a number of gubernatorial relationships that characterised the relationship between Church and layperson. The clergy were hierarchically ranked downward from patriarch, bishop, priest, presbyter and deacon. The presiding bishop or priest would perform the sacred tasks while the presbyters would assist. The deacons mediated between clergy and laity during the service. The laity was structured according to ‘place’, reminiscent of the theatre and bouleuterion seating arrangements. The system was based on wealth, age and gender (widows), standing apart from each other as regulated by the deacons who commenced the process of arrangement as one stepped through the door. The congregation was disciplined but this order was to eventually disintegrate.

A post-fourth century Syriac text, ‘How to Build a Church’ in Testamentum Domini nostri Jesu Christi80 further elaborates the architectural specifics of the church building: I will tell you, then, how a sanctuary ought to be; then I will make known unto you the holy canon of the priests of the Church. Let a church then be thus: with three Entries in type of the Trinity. And let the Diakonikon be to the right of the right hand entry, to the purpose that the Eucharists, or offerings that are offered, may be seen. Let there be a Forecourt, with a portico running round, to this Diakonikon. And within from (or “in the middle of”?) the Forecourt let it have a house for a Baptistery, with its length 21 cubits for a type of the total number of the prophets, and its breadth 12 cubits for a type of those who were appointed to preach the Gospel; one entry; three exits. Let the church have a house for the catechumens, which shall also be an Exorcisterium (lit. “House of Exorcists”), but let it not be separated from the church, but so that when they enter and are in it they many hear the readings and spiritual doxologies and psalms. Then let there be the Throne towards the east; to the right and to left places of the presbyters, so that on the right those who are more exalted and more honoured may be seated, and those who toil in the word, but those of moderate stature on the left side. And let this place of the Throne be raised three steps up, for the Altar ought to be there. Now let this house have two porticoes to right and to left, for men and for women. And let all the places be lit, both for a type and for reading. Let the Altar have a veil of pure linen, because it is without spot. Let the Baptistery also in like manner be under a veil. And as for the Commemoration let a place be built so that a priest may sit, and the archdeacon with readers, and write the names of those who are offering oblations, or of those on whose behalf they offer, so that when the holy things are being offered by the bishop, a reader or the archdeacon may name them in this commemoration which priests and people offer with supplication on their behalf. For this type is also in the heavens. And let the place of the priests be within a veil near the place of commemoration. Let the House of Oblation and Treasury all be near the Baptistery. And let the place of reading be a little outside the Altar. And let the house of the bishop be near the place this is called the Forecourt. Also that of those widows who are called first in standing. That of the priests and deacons also behind the Baptistery. And let the deaconesses remain by the door of the Lord’s House. And let the church have a Hostel near by, where the archdeacon may be receiving strangers.

Thomas Mathews understands an Early Byzantine congregation in Constantinople to have been organised in procession in the atrium/narthex and to have entered with the Bishop and clergy in rank. Once the leaders had entered, the remaining entrances were used by worshippers to reach their designated places. Upon reaching his ‘throne’ the bishop would have turned to greet them with his, ‘Peace to all’.81 This event was called the ‘First’ or ‘Little Entrance’ where the Gospel was the carried by a deacon ahead of the bishop and placed on the altar. The essentials of the First Entrance were the book and cross, bishop, cantor, deacon and clergy, and finally, the laity.82 After everyone had reached their places the Liturgy of the Word began. Textual evidence indicates that scriptural readings came in three phases: the first from the Old Testament (referred to as the Prophets), second from the Acts or Epistles (referred to as the Apostle), and the last coming from the Gospel. Only the Gospel was carried into the church in the Little Procession. It is assumed that there was a storage place in the ambo (pulpit architecture) where the Prophets and Apostle texts were permanently kept. The readings were performed by the clergy or, in the case of large metropolitan sees, by lectors.83 In contrast to the first two readings, the reading of the Gospel was accorded special reverence as it was considered the image of Christ and was the object of profound veneration; Paulus Silentarius describes the crowd striving to touch the book with their lips and hands. 84 The people who were either sitting or squatting during the first two readings stood for the third. After the readings, the bishop would rise to give an interpretation and summary of the three readings. The preacher would sit and the congregation would continue to stand to hear the sermon. After the Liturgy of the Word had

81

Thomas Mathews, op. cit, 145. Ibid, 147-9 83 Ibid, 148. 84 Paulus Silentarius, Descr. ambonis, 240.in Cyril Mango, The Art of the Byzantine Empire, 312-1453, Sources and Documents, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986, 95. 82

79

R. Hugh Connolly, Didascalia Apostolorum, XII.ii.57, Oxford: Oxford, 1929, 119-20.

80

J.W. Crowfoot, (1938), op. cit, 175-6; n. 4 quoted in full in Kaufmann, Hanbuch der christlichen Archaeolgie, 1922, 164.

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CHAPTER 18: CHRISTIAN SPATIALITY IN HISTORICAL CONTEXT concluded, the catechumens and those deemed spiritually/morally ‘unworthy’ were excused; a prayer was given on their behalf and the outer doors of the church were closed to begin the Eucharist. After partaking of the elements and a final prayer, the conclusion of the Eucharist marked the end of the service. In churches without pastophoria to store clerical vestments, the bishop and clergy processed out of the church in order with the remaining congregation.85

outer atrium/narthex, it is thought to have begun at the north-east apse and processed, in a ‘U-shape’ pattern down the side aisle to the west entry, then turned down the main aisle to the altar. To make way for the termination of the procession, the ambo was moved from its position in front of the centre aisle, and offset to the south. A mixture of tri-apsidal, side and flanking pastophoria existed in Gerasa, Jordan, and Palestine, throughout the sixth century. From church footprints from the fourth through six centuries, the architectural spaces of the prothesis and diakonikon, known as pastophoria, seem to disappear as chapels move further inward to become functional extensions of the bima.92 The rooms in the four corners of the Prophet’s Church at Gerasa were most likely used for these purposes. The chapel would appear again in Middle Byzantine churches where the clergy could prepare for the liturgy and return after its completion.93 Late sixth-century basilicas typically possessed other secondary rooms housing the liturgical vestments, sacred texts and for storage of the Eucharistic vessels. A review of church types throughout Jordan shows a dominant use of a single internal apse with two side pastophoria in the later sixth century instead of the tri-apsidal plan. 94 In St. John’s and the Octagon church we see the early evolution of the centralization of worship spaces as processional ways were slowly disappearing while liturgy was growing in complexity. Indicative of which was how the Little Procession became only an appearance of the Gospel book by the entry door.95 The ambo was also to disappear as Bishop Marianos church (570 CE) bears no evidence of having one, though Bishop Genesius (611 CE) appears to have a foundation for it.

The Great Entrance or the ‘Entrance of the Mysteries’ was in essence a way of transporting the Eucharistic elements from the place of preparation to the altar. Exactly how this procession was conducted or how it evolved from the domus ecclesia into the earliest Byzantine church liturgy is unknown and debated. 86 It is understood that it originated as a procession of gifts to the altar which was more developed by the end of the fourth century. 87 Churches that did not have attached prothesis chapels likely used a nearby building called a skeuophylakion (sacristy) to organise the elements, house the vestments and ritual implements.88 Mathews stresses that there is absolutely no textual evidence of a procession originating from a prothesis chamber, though this appears to have been common practice during the Middle Byzantine Period.89 Taft indicates that before the end of the fourth century Christians would enter the church through one of the main entrances into the prothesis chapel carrying their gift(s) to the chancel rail which would then be placed by a priest on a table on the raised bima. Though no inscription identifies them, the chapels on the south sides of the Cathedral’s and Bishop Genesius’ Churches’ and on the north sides of the St. Theodore’s, St. Peter’s and Procopius Churches could have served this function. The Propylaea Church, as previously described, adapted the Propylaeum’s small circular exedra for this purpose. The offerands names were noted with their donations and those selected for consecration were moved to the main altar along with the Eucharistic elements in the Great Procession.90 The congregants would exit the church and re-enter during the Little Procession.

The templon or iconostasis (chancel) rail was an early development in church architecture. By the Middle Byzantine period, it had developed substantially to carry the Church icons.96 The Classical Templon, was a sacred ‘zone’ or ‘space’, but in the Christian period came to signify the barrier for that space. 97 This dichotomy between ‘space’ and ‘barrier’ defines a core spatial truth for Classical and Christian orientations. The vertical walls of the pagan temenos were a means of demarcating great open spaces reached by direct axial paths. In Christianity they became walls stopping movement towards sacred space, cutting off open ground

By the mid-sixth century, archaeology indicates a trend in Eastern liturgical changes to eliminate the prothesis chapel. It seems likely that its function was moved to the newly adapted two side apses flanking the centre apse to the north and south.91 Instead of the Great Procession originating in the

92

Robert Ousterhout, op. cit, 14. Thomas Matthews, op. cit, 179. A. Ovadiah, ‘Liturgical Modifications in the Early Byzantine Church in Eretz Israel’, Liber Annus LV, Jerusalem, 2005, 372-74. Ovadiah presents a more defining historical line by limiting pastophoria between the fourth to the mid-sixth century. Their developmental peak in the fifth century and completely disappear into triapsidal forms after the mid-sixth century. The liturgical reason(s) for this transition are not known in Palestine. 94 Michele Piccirillo, op. cit. 95 Thomas Matthews, op. cit, 179. 96 Michele Piccirillo, op. cit, 14. 97 Joseph Rykwert, op, cit., 46; Varro On The Latin Language, VII.13, trans. Roland Kent, LCL, 1938, 281. 93

85

Thomas Mathews, op. cit, 173. Robert F. Taft, The Great Entrance, A History of the Transfer of Gifts and other Pre-anaphral Rites, Vol. II, Rome: Orientalia Christiana Analecta, 2004, 17; 181-194. 87 Thomas Mathews, op. cit, Chap. 4. 88 Robert F. Taft, The Great Entrance,, 185-192; Thomas Mathews, op. cit, 158-9; 160-2. 89 Thomas Mathews, op. cit, 162. 90 Robert F. Taft, The Great Entrance, 34. 91 Ibid, 14-15; 183. 86

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18.3 St. Stevens Church, Um ar-Rasas, Jordan possess a raised chancel, stone blocks cut to receive templon posts and rails, two side pastophoria within an internal apse.

18.4 Templon rail and posts that once held a Eucharist table in the south apse of the tri-apsidal church at Nebo, Jordon.

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18.5 The centralised-horseshoe bima in Basilica A at Rusafa, Syria is set on two tiers, each possessing templon barriers.

18.6 View of same bima of Rusafa's Basilica 'A' facing east towards the internal apse possessing a templon rail in front of synthronon seating for clergy.

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SPATIAL AND RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE LATE ANTIQUE POLIS

18.7 Wood posts set in templon rail to demonstrate chancel enclosure at lower of three churches at Petra, Jordan.

LIBANIUS’ REVENGE: CONVERSION AND DESACRALIZATION98

before the apse. The creation of the tripartite sanctuary, introduced already by the late sixth century, corresponded to the closed centralized nature of the developed liturgy. It had receded from the nave and had become architecturally defined. The Prophets Church at Gerasa was the first churchin the city to display this as its templon rail used the column supports to wrap around the apse and bima. The furnishings also reflected changes: the stepped, theatre-like synthronon of the Early Christian period was reduced to a single row of seats, possibly due to a decrease in the number of clergy conducting a service. With the centralised church, the processional nature of the service was de-emphasized by shortening its axis to the altar. Shortening the procession reduced the active participation by the congregation. I regard the templon as recalling the pagan temple cella’s, naos and pronaos, the place for the priest and idols, and the place for the people, respectively. The barrier in worship space established an exclusivity for those who were able to gain access; the architecture elevated the designated priestly intermediaries to the divine and forced a ‘class’ distinction among Christians that went beyond wealth. Separation in the earlier domus ecclesia was by ritual function, not by status of priest and laity.

The development of more complex liturgies reflected a split between the sacred and profane worlds. With a flood of converts in the fourth and early fifth centuries, there may 98

Robert Markus in Christianity and the Secular, Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame, 2006, 4-6, 14, defines the sacred and profane from a GrecoRoman context as what lay inside and outside the temple temenos, respectively (though I understand the entire polis, in spatial terms, as sacred). The term ‘secular’ was not used in antiquity and is a modern development thought it is thought to be derived from early Christian perception of saeculum, this present and temporary age, in contrast to the age of Christ’s millennial reign. The secular is not radically opposed to sacrality but capable of being accepted or adapted to it. The concept of secular, to early Christians is the acceptable shared space with non-Christians: a neutral, ‘no-man’s land’ where life happened. Augustine in City of God (1.35) perceived the sacred and secular as two separate cities completely mixed and intertwined until the last Day of Judgment when they will be separated and the secular world destroyed. Emile Durkheim (1858-1917), the first to establish religion as a social phenomenon and classified humans and things into two groups: the sacred and the profane. Religious beliefs are representations that express the nature of sacred things, while rituals are the physical enactment of those beliefs as formal ‘rules of conduct’. Durkheim presented the individual, reminiscent of Stoic terms, as consisting of two persons in opposition, the material and spiritual selves where ritual animates these opposing forces: the sacred and profane. Marcel Mauss (a student of Durkheim) and Henri Hubert had anticipated Durkheim’s thoughts and the vocabulary of religion and ritual with the words: sacralization and desacralization; the two basic processes inherent in all forms of sacrifice. It explained the conversion of a profane offering made into a sacred object in order to act as the means of communion between the sacred and profane worlds. Beatrice Caseau employed Mauss and Hubert’s theory to relate the concept of the ‘desacralization’ of sacred space to the Christian destruction of pagan temples.

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CHAPTER 18: CHRISTIAN SPATIALITY IN HISTORICAL CONTEXT Christianity’s ‘unchanged’ converts.101 Thus began the practice of ‘non-communicating’ attendance at the Eucharist. It is not known to what extent or percentage fell into this category, however, the development of a liturgy for this purpose speaks for its pervasiveness. The ecclesiastical authorities were eventually forced to accept the phenomenon of ‘non-communicating’ their most sacred rite, where priests would offer communion to each other for those not present. This would not be unusual behaviour for pagan and pre-70 CE Jewish temple priests who retreated further behind various levels of entry into inner sancta to perform particular rites. For Christianity, however, to (re-) turn to this ritual behaviour was a significant shift for a religion founded upon the principle of familial-community.

have been doubts about ‘the late-comers’ and concerns as to the sincerity of conversion, especially when compared with the converts of the age of the martyrs. Although Christianity was triumphant, there was perhaps more fragility over what it was to be a Christian, and the violent and powerful expressions of Episcopal authority in the fourth century reflect a Church powerful in its actions, but insecure in its relations with competing agencies. In response to these problems, the Church created a theatrical environment to increase the emotional intensity of worship. By the late fourth century, the discipline displayed in the Didascalia had broken down in varying degrees as related by the comments of John Chrysostom in Constantinople. The congregation had evolved into an audience, and was allegedly behaving like the audience in the theatre or the hippodrome: a display of Chrysostom’s oratorical brilliance brought applause (Against the Jews Or. 1); people gossiped, chatted and laughed during the liturgy and sermon (In Heb. Hom. 15); others crowded around, pushing and shoving to get a better view of the performance (Soz., HE 8.5). The audience responded emotionally to threats of ecclesiastical discipline (Against the games and theatres 269.10), could be brought to tears (On Eutropius), or manipulated by speculation on their aspirations for physical beauty (On Colossians hom. 7). Chrysostom’s sermons, especially Against the Games and Theatres and Against the Jews, are a lesson in employing dramatic imagery of which Classical orators would have been proud. Yet, Chrysostom thought that the sanctification of the Eucharist was nullified by the licentiousness and idolatry of the theatre. While admonishing those who attended the theatre, clerical leaders were adapting theatrical methods to entertain and inform and draw their congregants away from the more established arenas of rhetorical display.99

In response, the Church began to make provision for a formal blessing and dismissal of non-participants to allow a more orderly departure before the Eucharist (see, for example, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Baptismal Homily, 5.22). This development may have had a significant effect upon people’s understanding of the rite: the rite could be complete and effective without the need to participate in the reception of the bread and wine. Liturgy was something that the clergy could do on their behalf, not requiring a congregational presence: ‘Do this in remembrance of me’ became, in essence, ‘Do this for me’. As the professional clergy of this period increasingly dominated public worship, the people were content to let them ingest the sacred elements, making use of the compromises the Church made available.102 The authority for the intercessory image of the Christian priest came from Israel’s Levitical priesthood who sacrificed on behalf of their people. Then were first fruits and tithes and part offerings and tithes; but today the oblations which are offered through the bishops to the Lord God. For they are your high priests; but the priests and Levites now are the presbyters and deacons, and the orphans and widows: but the Levite and high priest is the bishop. He is minister of the word and mediator; but to you a teacher, and your father after God, who begot you through the water. This is your chief and your leader, and he is your mighty king. He rules in the place of the Almighty: but let him be honoured by you as God, for the bishop sits in the place of God Almighty. But the deacon stands in the place of Christ…And the deaconess shall be honoured by you in the likeness of the Apostles…And as it was not lawful for a stranger, that is for one who was not a Levite, to draw near to the altar or to offer aught without the high priest, so you also shall do nothing without the bishop…for it is not fitting that any man should do aught apart from the high priest.103

This is why I’m telling you in advance and shouting loudly that if anyone deserts to the lawless corruption of the theatres after this exhortation and teaching, I won’t receive him within these precincts, I won’t administer the mysteries to him, I won’t permit him to touch the holy table (Chrysostom, Against the Games and Theatres, 268.34-38).

Attempts by bishops like Chrysostom to discipline immoral lay-members by depriving them the Eucharist had an unforeseen effect. The aim of this disciplinary preaching was not to discourage the reception of communion, but to motivate worshippers towards righteous living. But, the outcome was exactly the opposite of the intentions of the preachers.100 Many people preferred to give up the reception of communion rather than change their lifestyles. As they were asked to leave if not spiritually prepared, many were happy to do so before the rite. This significant group of worshippers proved what Libanius prophesied about

Ironically, for the late-Roman Jew, the Rabbis, taught without the aid of architectural barriers and were not 101

Libanius, Or. XXX, 28. LCL, 125-7. Bradshaw, Eucharistic Orgins, 143. 103 Didascalia Apostolorum, trans. Connolly, R. Hugh, Oxford: Oxford, 1929, 86,88 102

99

Aideen M. Hartney, John Chrysostom and the Transformation of the City, London: Duckworth, 2004, 140. 100 Paul F. Bradshaw, (2004), op. cit, 143.

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SPATIAL AND RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE LATE ANTIQUE POLIS years have fallen asleep among us, believing that it will be a very great advantage to the souls, for whom the supplication is put up, while that Holy and most Awful Sacrifice is presented. Then, after these things, we say that Prayer which the Saviour delivered to His own disciples…saying, Our Father, which art in Heaven… After this the Priest says, Holy things to Holy Men. Holy are the gifts presented…Then ye say, One is Holy, One is the Lord, Jesus Christ. For truly One is holy, by nature holy; we too, are holy but not by nature only by participation and discipline and prayer. After this ye hear the chanter, with a sacred melody inviting you to the communion of the Holy Mysteries, and saying, O taste and see that the Lord is good… Approaching, therefore, come not with thy wrists extended, or they fingers open; but make thy left hand as if a throne for they right… Then after having partaken of the Body of Christ, approach also to the Cup of His Blood; not stretching forth thine hands, but bending and saying in the way of worship and reverence, Amen, be thou hallowed by partaking also of the Blood of Christ.107

intercessors with the Divine. For those who now began to receive infrequent Communion or attended without communicating, the Eucharist had ceased to be a communal act but was an object of devotion, to be seen from afar. It is not surprising therefore, that ancient liturgical commentators began to interpret the rite in terms of an unfolding drama.104 The earliest known instance of which occurs in the baptismal homilies of Theodore of Mopsuestia who envisages the Eucharistic liturgy from the presentation of the bread and wine to the reception of communion, as a re-enactment of Jesus’ passion, death, burial and resurrection.105 Cyril of Jersusalem explains the Eucharist to the newly initiated: Therefore with fullest assurance let us partake as the Body and Blood of Christ: for in the figure of Bread is given to thee His Body, and in the figure of Wine His Blood; that thou by partaking of the Body and Blood of Christ, mightest be made of the same body and the same blood with Him. For thus we come to bear Christ in us, because His Body and Blood are diffused through our members; thus, it is that, according to the blessed Peter, we become partakers of the divine nature.106

To vie for the hearts and minds of the converted, Christianity entered the theatrical arena. Sanctuaries became elaborately decorated theatrical sets of marble, glass and mosaic. Enclosure with procession, smoke from lamps and incense, elaborately robed priests, chanting and singing approaching the altar with hands symbolically held, created a highly charged ritual environment. In both word and action they stressed the majesty and transcendence of God and the divinity of Christ present in the Eucharistic mystery.

This teaching was offered after the fact. The Mystery for those who entered for the first time remained so, seemingly to enhance the theatrics of the ‘awful sacrifice’. The priority was the emotional experience rather than the symbolism of the Mysteries.

Baptism, like the Eucharist, became more elaborate, and dramatic—theatrical— and cloaked in such great secrecy that candidates would have had little idea what was to happen. Often it was only after they had experienced baptism and the Eucharist that a post baptismal instruction provided, in Cyril’s words a, ‘mystagogy’,108 replacing the ‘restricted’ prebaptismal instruction. Baptismal homilies of the period used expressions such as ‘awe-inspiring’ and ‘hair-raising’ to describe the sensational style of the ceremony, which included such things as exorcisms and other purifications.109

Ye saw then the Deacon give to the Priest water to wash, and to the Presbyters who stood round God’s altar…The washing therefore of hands is a symbol of immunity from sin. Then the Deacon cries aloud, Receive ye one another, and let us kiss one another. After this the Priest cries aloud, Lift up your hearts. Then the Priest says, Let us give thanks to the Lord. After this we make mention of heaven, and earth, and sea, of the sun and moon of the stars and all the creation, rational and irrational, visible and invisible, of Angels, Archangles, Virtues, Dominions, Principalities, Powers, Thrones… Then having sanctified ourselves by these spiritual hymns, we call upon the merciful God to send forth His Holy Spirit upon the first lying before Him, and the Wine the Blood of Christ… Then, after the spiritual sacrifice is perfected, the Bloodless Service upon that Sacrifice of Propitiation, we entreat God for the common peace of the Church, for the tranquillity of the world… Then we commemorate also those who have fallen asleep before us, first, Patriarchs, Prophets, Apostles, Martyrs, that at their prayers and intervention God would receive our petition. Afterwards also on behalf of the holy Fathers and Bishops who have fallen asleep before us, and in a word of all who in past

All these newly elaborate ceremonial focused more attention on the church building. This structure became the historical setting in which the Biblical narrative was performed. Patriarch Germanus I illustrates the development of the understanding of church architecture 300 years after Chrysostom. ‘The church is a heaven on earth wherein the heavenly God dwells and walks. It typifies the Crucifixion, the Burial, and the Resurrection. It is glorified above Moses’ tabernacle of testimony…It was prefigured by the patriarchs, foretold by the

104

Bradshaw. Eucharistic Origins, 142. Ibid, 144. 106 St. Cyril of Jerusalem, ‘On the Eucharistic Food’, Mystagogical Catechesis IV.3, Lectures on the Christian Sacraments, F.L. Cross, (ed.), London: SPCK, 1951, 68.

107

St. Cyril of Jerusalem, ‘On the Eucharistic Rite’, Mystagogical Catechesis V.2-10; (1951), 19-22, frags. 71-79.

105

108

St. Cyril of Jerusalem, (1951), Mystagogical Catechesis; Paul F. Bradshaw, The Search for the Origins of Christian Worship, Oxford: Oxford, 2002, 215. 109 Paul F. Bradshaw, Search for the Origins of Christian Worship, 213-14, 16.

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CHAPTER 18: CHRISTIAN SPATIALITY IN HISTORICAL CONTEXT prophets, founded by the apostles, and adorned by the angels…The apse is after the manner of the cave of Bethlehem where Christ was born, and that of the cave where he was buried…The altar is the place where Christ was buried, and on which is set forth the true bread from heaven, the mystic and bloodless sacrifice, that is, Christ…It is also the throne upon which God, who is borne up by cherubim, has rested. At his table too he sat down at his Last Supper (Patriarch Germanus I of Constantinople (715-30).’110

Although the conversion of the synagogue would appear to parallel the campaign against pagan temples, Judaism proved more resilient during periods of persecution. Indeed, the fourth and fifth centuries could be seen as something of a period of innovation and expansion for Judiasm, certainly theologically and artistically, with the development of synagogue poetry (piyyut), Amoraic Midrashim; the Hekhalot and many targumic traditions. The Sabbath attracted both secular and Christian to Judaism due to the, in Chrysostom’s words, “venerable” and “awe inspiring”114 services as they “drag(ged) the whole theatre and the actors into the synagogue”.115 He complains about the use of drums, lyres, harps, and other musical instruments at services which included wedding ceremonies and Purim celebrations. Jerome also comments that Jewish preachers theatrically, would encourage applause and shouting.116 Ironically, the same words used to describe the synagogue experience on the Sabbath, ‘awe-inspiring’ and ‘venerable’, were used by Chrysostom to describe the Baptism and Eucharist. Perhaps the complaints were not so much that the Jews were using theatrics, but that they were putting on a better production than the Church.

As Ousterhout argues, a ‘Byzantine church must be comprehended as a three-dimensional entity, an object that both exists in space and moulds and defines the space it contains. It is thus incorrect to refer to a cross-in-square plan, because a plan is two-dimensional, and the basic components of a cross-in-square church are only fully recognizable when expressed in three dimensions.’111 Yet, the ecclesiastical performers operated in more than the dimensions of space and time. The sacrality of the church and its Mysteries were multi-dimensional events.112 What St. Cyril of Jerusalem, Ousterhout, Bradshaw and Patriarch Germanus alludes to is that in the machinations of Christianity to develop ritual space, it had transcended time, place, and person to become a microcosm of the Biblical/cosmic realms, further deepening the chasm between the Christian and secular/profane society. Heaven on earth and eternal life was to be found inside Church walls thereby lessening the value of the city surrounding it and nullifying the desire to spend valuable resources maintaining and enhancing it for future generations.

Chrysostom understood the power of sacred space, particularly that of the synagogue. 5…But since there are some who consider the synagogue to be a holy place…Why do you reverence this place when you should distain it, despise it, and avoid it? …You say, ‘Is it not the case that the books make the place holy?’ Certainly not! This is the reason I especially hate the synagogue and avoid it, that they have the prophets but do not believe in them, that they read these books but do not accept their testimonies… 6…While books do have a holiness of their own, they do not impart it to a place if those who frequent it are defiled. You should think about the synagogue in the same way. Even if there is not an idol there, demons inhabit the place…

THE DESACRALIZATION OF JUDAISM: THE SYNAGOGUE/CHURCH Using Bayliss’ terminology we could categorize Gerasa’s Synagogue/Church as a ‘Direct Synagogue Conversion’ or, in Annabel Wharton’s terminology, an edifice of ‘erasure by substitution’.113 The later church re-invested the inner-space of the synagogue building by keeping the majority of its outer walls intact. The conversion reversed its directional orientation by establishing an external apse facing east. A building which had once turned its congregants to the west, toward the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, now turned them east, the direction from which the Christian Saviour promised to return.

Chrysostom understood the power of Jewish sacred space well enough to know that its claim to sacrality was analogous to that of the Church. Each had accepted the principle of the holiness of scripture yet Judaism understood that the presence of the Torah, in itself was enough to confer holiness on space. The conversion of a synagogue and the reversal of its fundamental spatial dynamics pertaining to where the Torah was kept was a statement, in the semiotic language of architecture, correcting what was perceived as Jewish ‘error’.117 An important contrast with Christian space was the

110 Historia Mystagogica, ed. F.E. Brightman, Journal of Theological Studies 9 (1908), 248-67. C. Mango, The Art of the Byzantine Empire 312-1453, Sources and Documents, Toronto: University of Toronto, 1986, 141-43; Robert Ousterhout, op. cit, 25. 111 Robert Ousterhout, op. cit, 16. 112 Paul F. Bradshaw, Eucharistic Origins, 216. 113 Annabel Wharton, ‘Erasure: eliminating the space of late ancient Judaism’, From Dura to Sepphoris: Studies in Jewish Art and Society in Late Antiquity, JRA 40, Lee I. Levine and Ze’ev Weiss (eds), (2000), 195-214. Jerash discussed in pages: 203-5.

114

John Chrysostom, 848.50.8, John Chrysostom, Mayer and Allen, London: Routledge, 2000, 156. 115 Ibid, 153. 116 Louis H. Feldman, Jew and Gentile in the Ancient World: Attitudes and Interactions from Alexander to Justinian, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993, #24; 378. 117 Mark 1:21-29. Annabel Wharton, ‘Erasure: eliminating the space of lateantique Judaism’, 202. A much different story exists in Capernaum where a large church and synagogue stood very close to each other, most likely due to

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SPATIAL AND RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE LATE ANTIQUE POLIS synagogue’s lack of internal barriers.118 Though the templon screen was fairly common in basilica synagogues (likely due to Christian influences), the rail was for purely decorative purposes and there was no spatial division of hierarchy in synagogue worship.119 Worship involved the recitation of prayers, the priestly blessing, the introduction and returning of the Torah scroll, the Torah-reading and its translation, the reading of the haftarah; the sermon; and the recital of piyyutim. From the fourth to the seventh centuries, there were two to three centre-points of synagogue worship: the niche, aedicule, or apse housing the Torah ark and the bima or table in the centre or back of the synagogue where the Torah was read and the sermon delivered. The third focus of synagogue liturgy, according to Levine, was a person, the prayer-leader who apparently stood on the synagogue floor below the bima and faced the ark. When the liturgical poem (piyyut) was introduced in the fourth or fifth century, the recitation of the poem included the prayers as well as a choral response.

marble, wrought with the beauty of the craftsman’s art. Yet, it does not stand altogether cut off in the central space, like a sea-girt island, but it rather resembles some wave-washed land, extended through the white-capped billows by an isthmus into the middle of the sea, and being joined fast at one point it cannot be seen as a true island. Projecting into the watery deep, it is still joined to the mainland coast by the isthmus, as by a cable. Such then, is the aspect of this place; for, starting at the last step to the east, there extends a long straight (aulon) until it comes near the silver doors and strikes with its lengthy plinth the sacred precinct. On either side it is bounded by walls. They have not used lofty slabs for this fence-wall, but of such a height as to reach the girdle of a man standing by. Here the priest who brings the good tidings passes along on his return from the ambo, holding aloft the golden book; and while the crowd strives in honour of the immaculate God to touch the sacred book with their lips and hands, the countless waves of the surging people break around. Thus, like an isthmus beaten by waves on either side, does this space stretch out, and it leads the priest who descends from the lofty crags of this vantage point to the shrine of the holy table. 121

There were multiple shifts of focus within synagogue worship. There was a balance between foci: the bima in the front of the hall, where the ark was located and the priests stood for the benediction, the place where the prayer leader stood, and sometimes a podium in the centre or back of the hall where the Torah was read and sermon delivered. The synagogue was a balanced space with liturgy spread between apse and nave. The ratiocinatio bonding all its worship elements into a coherent whole was the Torah-reading.120 It was either recited from the platform at the end of the hall or in its centre, typically characterized by active participation of the congregation. The prayer leader was also a surrogate for individuals unable to recite the prayers for themselves. He stood in the nave, on par with the congregation, yet close to the holy place; an active leader in their midst. This is in direct contrast to the Christian priest standing in the ambo reading scripture symbolically described as one standing on an island connected to the chancel by and architectural isthmus, almost completely surrounded by the chaos of the deep.

The synagogue leaders stood on the podium near the Torah ark, blessing the people in the name of God, representing a separate, yet omni-present sacrality to this responsivereciprocating style of worship service. Congregants are not imaged as chaotic waters or punishing serf but as individuals participating in ritual sacrality. Each of these modes found its place in every local synagogue, the creative decision of exactly where each occurred and how they were coordinated was left to local preferences. Despite the inclusion of the Christian templon rail in some synagogues, it was not a device for separation of the sacred from the profane. It is not known why its influence entered Jewish space; however, its use was entirely for symbolic décor. No hierarchy dictated lay behaviour or determined sanctification through certain acts or performances. An ordinary Jew could participate somehow in any ritual sequence of synagogue worship, thus allowing a strong sense of inclusion and community.

With such beauties is adorned the ambo of double access. It bears this name because it is ascended (ambatos) by holy paths, and here the people direct their attentive eyes as they listen to the immaculate mysteries of the divine word. And as an island rises amidst the waves of the sea adorned with cornfields, and vineyards, and blossoming meadows, and wooded heights, while the travellers who sail by are gladdened by it and are soothed of the anxieties and exertions of the sea; so in the midst of the boundless temple rises upright the tower-like ambo of stone adorned with its meadows of

In summary, the period between the fourth through sixth centuries evidenced great spatial diversity and transformation as pagan architectural elements developed over a millennium were transferred into Christian contexts. No clearer example of this is in the change in orientation from external to internal priorities based on the architectural implications of the ‘wall’ and enclosed space. Classical components could clearly be delineated in Christian churches however their use did not follow Vitruvian methods of visual symmetry and classical architectural theory, leading to the observation that

its importance to the story of Christ having taught there, then entering Peter’s house nearby 118 Lee I. Levine, The Ancient Synagogue,, 317. 119 Ibid, 318. 120 Ibid, 356.

121

Paulus Silentarius, Descr. ambonis v. 50: 209-240, in Cyril Mango, op. cit, 95-6. The ambo of St. Sophia described in a poem recited early in 563 soon after the second consecration of the church on December 24, 562.

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CHAPTER 18: CHRISTIAN SPATIALITY IN HISTORICAL CONTEXT superficial similarities can mask fundamental theoretical differences in perception. The subtle differences in Christian structural components and ritual movement bear testimony to the flexible nature of attitudes of space in their different communities within the late antique city. This flexibility was likely due to fact that the majority of Christian built environment was a recycling program consisting of reprocessing Classical architectural pieces in the midst of religious evolution. The development of Christian liturgy in the fourth through seventh centuries transformed the spatial role of the church building and its architecture into a metaphysical theatre transcending earthly time and place. This escape from temporal-social reality into a religious universe was reflected in Church neglect of urban space where the connective devices of the pagan city (and its hierarchies) were internalised and re-represented in the church building so that there were fewer connections to external communities other than the divine presence. The Christian past, present and its future eschatology was imaged within the church by ecclesiastical leadership, thus became blind to a positive future vision of the polis. Despite being the root from which Christianity sprung, Judaism stubbornly maintained a very different spatial awareness that resisted hegemonic Christian ideologies of space. In addition, the evidence that the synagogue attracted Christian converts encouraged a strained relationship to persist between the two communities. Finally, the religious battleground of the late antique city was spatial. The Church was in conflict with architectural edifices as much or perhaps more than with the persons who visited them. It arrayed itself against synagogues, with ‘secular’ space and with temples. There is no indication of a neutral ground despite Augustine’s imagery of an intertwining of Christian and polis life.122 This was inherent in the Christian approach to space in which there was a moral judgment determining ‘good’ space and a contrasting space of the city. The abandonment of polis spatial principles allowed for and enabled a ‘silent invasion’ of its open spaces by nomadic settlers and local urban groups who had been held in check by civic administrators. There was a dualism of place within the city, the Christian ‘world’ within basilica walls, and the increasingly dense commercial/urban zones that invested Classical zones.

122

Augustine, City of God, 1.35.

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CHAPTER 19 CONCLUSION will nor is, in any time, under their control. This inherent insecurity makes the application of religious cult to sacred built form, a natural step. As certain zones are made sacred, it follows that the walls (especially roofs) erected over their footprints are equally significant as space is bounded and defined by various depths of exterior and interiority and the piercing of windows, portals and thresholds. Within this matrix, cult and ritual is installed to formally communicate with the Divine in particular spatial contexts. Despite their varied cultic natures, a number of constants underlie their base architectural forms. Sanctuaries are typically oriented to compass headings in relation to mythical narrative and the concept of ‘centre’ (omphalos). As the Roman surveyor determined avenue axes and centres, the most sacred places were oriented off ways and isles into the most intimate zones of the cult site. Secluded atria, doors, raised floors, and railings sub-divide space with hierarchical connotations limiting entry to a select few. There is a specific place where the culminating ritual act is conducted, for the polytheist it generally entailed a sacrificial altar, the Christian the Eucharistic altar, for the Jew it was the bima and Torah chest, sacral extensions from the Temple’s inner court altar and Holy of Holies.

INTRODUCTION In concluding, I will review the theoretical foundation of space and cult developed in Sections I and II. The text has been a multidisciplinary construct linking a number of spatial concepts and ancient cult to archaeology. Their separate strands become closely interwoven and may be encapsulated within the Panos and Julianne inscription that relates meanings of landscape with social memory and the nostalgic person with built form. Its lessons are a concentration of this text that leads us to the questions pertaining to spatial transformation, continuance, and sacrality. The Panos and Iulianne inscription that introduced the thesis reminds us that the founding of place in space is a social event, which happens when a group gathers to impute a certain zone with significance. The event is immortalised and, in a sense, monumentalized by erecting a vertical element on a horizontal plane, determining an axis point and mnemonic portal to the past, present, and future. Remembrance, generating the social act of erecting a monument has become a geometric event, as an angle is created from a vertical emanating from the horizontal. The communicating element in the geometry behind architectural discourse has been perceived in terms such as logos or ratiocinatio, which generates sensations of cohesion, sympathy, and rhythm as one works in agreement with the principles of the natural world. Thus, the social discourse enabling structures to rise also entails a similar discourse with nature’s physics. The Panos stele possesses a geometric footprint, an ‘earth measure’ upon which an edifice may rise. Thus, place begins to become layered with meaning and is translated into an element taken from the natural landscape and inscribed and shaped into a funerary stone designed to stand on the Geresene landscape. This stone remains a stone, but becomes unlike any other, not necessarily in how it was shaped or inscribed, but in what it represents and whose lives it encapsulates. Human cognition and social relationships determines spatial significance.

The concluding section will apply this ontology of place to pagan, Jewish and Christian space. Their ‘being’ in the world, particularly from the Christian context, will be related directly to their inspiration and social treatment of built form.

GERASA AND DURA EUROPOS Dura Europos and Gerasa possess very different urban forms and historiographies. Yet, in looking at these two cities, the intent was not to confirm theoretical points by examining cities with like natures, but to probe their spatial-urban systems and come to certain conclusions regarding their sharp contrasts. A summary of landscape descriptors spanning across the history of Gerasa presents a dichotomy of terms. Geresene spaces over the first six centuries CE can be understood by applying the concepts of ‘openness’ and ‘enclosure’, ‘connectivity’ and ‘separation’, ‘homogeneity’ and ‘differentiation’. The expressions of horizontal connectivity in assembly spaces spread beneath monumental verticality emphasised the Classical civic ideals made possible by the eurgetism of the local elite. Pagan religio was not isolated behind temenos walls but saturated civic space; nonparticipation meant threatening the integrity of the city’s

The human motivation for erecting monuments immediately becomes ontological and metaphysical and in the process certain spaces become sacred over others. Whether Panos chose to use ‘echo’ as a mythic metaphor describing his deceased wife’s voice calling from the grave is uncertain. However, the myth of Pan and Echo, as well as the entire roll of gods, was available to apply one’s fears and uncertainties in order to find a type of earthly deliverance. The reality of a need to be ‘delivered’ or ‘saved’ is to consider that the natural world is neither of human inspiration nor created by their 182

CHAPTER 19: CONCLUSION fabric by ignoring the attention of the gods. Dura was of a different nature. In spite of its strong orthogonal street orientation within fortress walls and natural barriers, there can be no imaginative reconstructions of processionals moving towards the (non-existent) high places for ritual acts. None of the many temple sites at Dura were raised up on podia or had more than a few steps to their pronaea. There was no building up of platforms to create an un-natural topography to achieve the effects of Gerasa’s elevated temples. Rather the divine was cordoned off and hidden in the divanstyle ‘urban homes’ with open central courts, as seen in the temple plans of Bel, Adonis, Gadde, Zeus Theos, and Zeus Kurios. Dura displayed homogeneity, but only limited connectivity: its temples were separated within the urban plan, though recognisably part of the city, individual entities fully contained within that homogeneity defined by ‘domestic’ architecture.

and painted images in fresco of Bible scenes and women moving in procession towards the font. The remains of, what is considered to be, a Eucharist table along a side-wall were without signs of sockets for posts holding a templon rail. The table did not frontally dominate or shut off an area of the room as altars and rails did in later basilicas. The lack of architectural barriers in the Christian domus made worship more communal and similar to that of the Synagogue. In synagogue life, there was as yet no need for theatrics of Cyril’s Mystagogy and non-communicants who preferred to let the professional clergy officiate sacred relationships in their behalf. The mid-third CE Christian liturgy would have been more in line with the earlier-fundamental teachings of the Didascalia Apostolorum. Dura was a city of layered enclosures; walls subdividing commercial and living spaces. The outermost city walls began the concentric cycling of inner-space. The residential walls formed walls partitioning off the narrow streets and lanes, then walls within those, making their final concentric conclusion to ‘breathing room’ for open-internal courts. Dura’s single form was an enclosure containing regular cells, arranged orthogonally, each of which centred on a central court, open to the sky.

Dura’s religious geometry was a matter of (re)configuring and attaching rectangular brick walls to each other. There was no complexity to the arrangement, no difficult connections with decorative cornices, acacia leafed capitols, spherical roof geometries, or re-alignment of long columnar architraves. Connection, expansion and contraction of spaces were greatly simplified when limited to the square and rectangle and mud brick and plaster for materials. The Synagogue and Christian domus-ecclesia and Mithraeum had architectural characteristics shared across the religious spectrum. One did not seem to establish ritual authority over another by means of architectural dominance or blend the different foci of religious activity into a single religious space (the city). Dura’s tyche did not dominate the civic landscape, as Artemis at Gerasa, but was one temple among many. With the exception of their monumental doorways, the external features of Durene religious places did not differ much from other urban structures. The same architectural stylization with identical materials was common throughout the city. This suggests that religion was a more ‘private’ matter in Dura and this would provide scope for the more exclusive religions of Judaism, Christianity (and Mithraism). Both synagogues and church expanded in the years before Dura’s destruction in 256 CE.

The homogeneity of exterior walls and rectangular shaping and a denial or secreting of direct access to more intimate zones might suggest relatively low levels of social integration. Yet, it was perhaps this ‘sameness’ that allowed minority groups to co-exist and even thrive. Wall Street, running from east to west along the southern outer wall, possessed the Temple of Aphlad, the Temple of Zeus Kyrios, the Christian Church, the Synagogue, the Mithraeum, and the Temple of Bel. This group provides a sample of every possible type of religion in the Eastern city of the third century CE. Their coexistence on the same street may reflect a number of factors, the strongest being the lack of a desire to dominate. The contrast with Gerasa is marked. Clearly, the Church in Gerasa developed in a very different way from the path that we see at Dura. The Constantinian Church exchanged the domestic form of the domus-ecclesia for the ‘public’ and ‘governmental’ basilica. The abandonment of the domus as an architectural type may be seen as an evolutionary severing of the first Christian spatial lineage and the beginning of a second and it is here that the comparing of Dura and Gerasa bears fruit.1 The natural development of the domus as Christian space was exchanged

Dura did not have time to experience the affects of ‘Direct Temple Conversion’, and the ‘agonistic re-ordering of space’ that changed the face of Gerasa. It was frozen in time and can be used as an instance of a multi-cultural, military-trade city with a religious pluralism and no obvious evidence of religious persecution or spatial hegemony of one over another. One can only imagine what effects, if any, the later persecutions and religious transformations of the Roman world would have had on Dura.

1

Norman Crowe, Nature and the Idea of a Man-Made World, An Investigation into the Evolutionary Roots of Form and Order, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995, 46. What the natural evolution of the domus would have taken if Constantine had not instituted the basilica for Christianity is, of course, speculation. Perhaps the evolutionary process would have led to the basilica (with or without the governmental paraphernalia) or the monumentalisation of the domus structure to accommodate the later influx of Christian worshippers.

The Durene domus-ecclesia contrasts with the postConstantinian templon churches. In Dura there are open connecting rooms with a simply decorated baptismal font 183

SPATIAL AND RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE LATE ANTIQUE POLIS

19.1 Durene deep interiority is exemplified by House 12.

was a correlation between the increasing hierarchical nature of Christian sanctuaries and a tendency to ‘desacralize’ space. There is no indication that the Church attempted to thwart the dense investment of streets, and classical edifices by the merchants and crafts industry: these spaces were secular and of no interest to the bishops. The old temples and the synagogues had to have their spatial logic broken down, converted and made powerless. Their spatial ‘voices’ were muted through tearing down walls, re-orienting entrances and covering inscribed mosaic flooring with infill and a new floor surface with new inscriptions. Stepping outside the unity of the Classical city, the Christians were able to subvert pagan space, its open-connectivity making no sense in a Christian interior spatial context; each site was to be picked off and desacralised, driving out the demonic inhabitants. The Christian triumph over the pagans was not necessarily through a direct temple conversion process, but a gradual erosion of pagan spatial understandings and a rejection and secularization of the spaces of the Classical city. By contrast, Jewish spatial understanding was not so easily upset. The spatial conversion of synagogue into Christian spaces, symbolic of what occurred at Gerasa, was a subtle rejection of orientation pertaining to thresholds and sacred zones: entries converted from aediculaea. The survival of synagogues and the Jewish community must, in part, have been due to the ability of the community to preserve their spatial sense in the face of the Christian assault, to rely on the invisible bonds

for an artificial type completely alien to the first. It is of interest to notice how this change was reflected in Christian physical and metaphorical partitioning erected within Church and secular landscapes. The domus symbolised a ‘joint ownership’ between those members who personally invested themselves in the construction and continuity of its space.2 The New Testament book of Acts and the Pauline letters do not mention the existence of a formal priestly office, but that of functional service. Leadership was linguistically defined by a participle: those who are ‘labouring’ (κοπιῶντας) in service for others while over them in the sense of a patron or protector (προισταμένους). Verbal discipline by leaders on moral issues (νουθετοῦντας) did not entail exclusion from the Mysteries.3 The spatial loss of ownership to a hierarchical priesthood meant the elimination of a particular form of social-spiritual bonding, and the development of a Church whose hierarchies assumed a new model, that of governmental administration, and concomitantly, a new ideology of relationships. There 2

Ian Hodder, ‘Architecture and Meaning: The Example of Neolithic Houses and Tombs’, Architecture and Order, Approaches to Social Space, Michael Parker Pearson and Colin Richards (eds), London: Routledge Press, 1994, 80. 3 Wayne A. Meeks, The First Urban Christians, The Social World of the Apostle Paul, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983, 134. Terminology from I Thess. 5:12.

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CHAPTER 19: CONCLUSION held within the deep spatial heritage contained in their Torah, of other communities, and to Jerusalem as spiritual omphalmos. The continuance of the synagogue standing in contrast with the all too fragile Classical monumentality is marked.

Religious reorientation did not merely vary Classical urban form but denied it. Housing and shops clogged Gerasa’s South Tetrapyla intersection, Temple ‘C’, the Macellum, and Oval Plaza; churches invested temple cellas and temenoi and in the case of Bishop Marianos’ Church, sat directly over the primary road running to the South Gate. Anyone from the late sixth-century approaching Hadrian’s Arch from the south could look through its main entry, as a focal lens, and see a church made of Hippodrome spolia, obscuring the Classical linearity of Gerasa. Inside Gerasa’s walls, the Propylaea Church blocked the Artemis Temple sacred processional way by filling its propylaea and dense housing circled around the west end of St. Theodore’s and down the Stepped Street completely cut through-access in that area.

ENDINGS In the Introduction I set down three questions that the thesis was designed to answer. The three questions are: 1. What was the meaning and cause of changes in spatial patterns in the late Antique polis in the East? 2. Did the use of space continue between the pagan and Christian periods?

Church architecture can be used to substantiate the argument that there were continuities in the use of space between the pagan and Christian periods. It was a fluid synthesis of Roman basilica, Jewish synagogue and centralised-apsidal, architectural designs developed through Roman experimentation in varied architectural geometries involving administrative buildings, monumental baths, palaces and mausoleums. Similarly with Judaism, Christianity as a text-based religion retreated in-doors under water-tight roofs to protect their sacred texts, in buildings with sufficient wall penetrations and oil lamps to allow adequate light for reading. The glory of pagan architecture and art was translated into the churches and chapels in richly coloured mosaics of complex geometric designs whose mathematic principles were founded on the calculations of Greek mathematicians. The generic stonework on most churches throughout the East might substantiate the argument that the great technical skill the Classical mason possessed to create elaborate stone ornamentation had moved from external executions of his craft to work interiorly on floors, walls and ceilings; he had seemingly transitioned into the early Byzantine mosaicist. Churches were, in a sense, internal circulatory systems with ambulatories, isles, and centralised bimas around which worship assistants and worshippers alike moved and interacted during the services.

3. Does continuity of place represent religious continuity? These three questions are interrelated. The changes in spatial patterns in the late Antique Eastern polis were fully predicated upon the ascension of the Christian religion as a political force. Its spatial type appropriated pagan and Jewish forms and symbols and inserted them into its ideological framework. Despite the Church vehemently rejecting paganism and Judaism, echoes of pagan/Jewish forms were both materially and perceptibly present in the developing Christian spatial ideology. Yet, in marked contrast to theories of decline offered by A.H.M. Jones, Liebescheutz, SaradiMendelovici, Kennedy, Pentz (et. al.), I argue that the transformation of the polis was primarily religious and that religious transformation had architectural and spatial affects that transformed the polis. The Classical architecture of connectivity and open forms was gradually discarded. The continuous porticos were subdivided and filled. Openness became invested. Many old structures continued to stand, but were remade or cognitively redefined. Gerasa was simultaneously, deconstructed, reconstructed, and reoriented. Many Classical buildings were dismantled to provide material to build ecclesiastical structures. Columns that once supported external porticos open to the elements were placed within churches to hold up interior roof structures. The continuity of the Classical column symbolises the ritualurban change from paganism to Christianity. Built form moved inwardly along with the person’s ritual behaviour and spiritual self-perceptions. Again, I hear the echo of Victorinus’ question, ‘Then do walls make Christians?’ resounding off Simplicianus’ assertion that Christian belief was predicated upon the preposition of being ‘in’ (church), expressing a state of enclosure and being surrounded by closed, vertical forms.4 The answer would seem, overwhelmingly, to be ‘yes’.

4

Unwin, writing on the significance of ‘the wall’, is critical to understanding the Early Christian spatial perspective in the Eastern polis. The built wall is an instrument of the mind… it is born of intention and infused with attitude…Walls can have many kinds of significance: moral, social, personal, political, military, philosophical, symbolic, religious, psychological aesthetic, poetic…Walls deny space. A wall is an intentional obstruction to free and uninterrupted movement. In denying space walls also ‘create space’, or at least mould space into defined forms. In ‘creating’ or defining space, they contribute to the making of places.5 5

Augustine, Confessions. 8.4.

185

Simon Unwin, An Architectural Notebook, London, Routledge, 2000, 25.

SPATIAL AND RELIGIOUS TRANSFORMATIONS IN THE LATE ANTIQUE POLIS

19.2 Templon rail base in black basalt stone at Umm al-Jimal, Jordan.

This earnest intent to create beautiful worship space came with a spatial ‘disconnect’ in the erection of barriers not only within the Church but throughout the City, to separate the holy from the profane. The templon cordoned off the priest from the lay-person. Though sanctified, the spatial separation from the Eucharist meant the believer was, in a very real sense, outside, and thus somewhat profane, or in the very least, secular in status. Christian identity stood divided as the templon divided sacred space. The rail was a potentially penetrable vertical barrier (for men at least), but for most it was a place to approach, receive and depart, but never cross. Along with the display of wealth in ornamentation, this was the most dramatic change in the transition from the domus ecclesia to the fourth century church. Separation had hierarchical connotations, not only in viewing the priest and deacon as spiritual superiors, but also in making the layperson dispensable for worship. The priest could exist without the congregation, but the congregation depended on the priest: there was an unequal economy of worship. A clerical hierarchy had wrested control of a portion of sacred space from the lay-person; there was a particular zone that could not be accessed.

assessed. According to Jerome there were some who, though barred from receiving it at church, received the sacrament at home, perhaps consciously recalling and favouring the traditions of a more primitive-domus church.6 However, personal sacrality could now be transmitted from a distance. The rail had sacralized Christian worship space by intensifying its rituals and embellishing the priest, however it had desacralized the Christian lay person; the sacralization of the person, itself, being the reason for and principle behind conversion to Christianity. The priestly agent in control of the distribution of sacrality discouraged any hope of a full layparticipation in community worship. Their relegation to the role of spectator was realized by the Churches’ liturgical adjustments. This created a paradox in which a permissive dualism encouraged participation in sacred and profane lifestyles (making Christian lay individuals par of that secular other), while antagonistic bishops operating in basilicatheatres of their own devising, criticised their congregants publicly for their disloyalty while themselves remaining firmly segregated spatially and religiously and being lauded and elevated on account of that separation. As pagan sacrality had once extended to encompass the entire polis; the Church allowed its monuments to be disassembled, invested, and neglected as either a conscious strategy of civic conquest or, and perhaps more likely, because they had very little interest in maintaining the pagan structures and

Threats of exclusion perhaps encouraged some to turn to other spaces where acceptance was unconditional. The sounds of games and theatres (themselves in various stages of decline) likely penetrated Church walls and, as Sirens calling, competed for attendance. The numbers of those who chose or were forced to become ‘non-communicants’ cannot be

6

Jerome, Ep. 49.15, Paul F. Bradshaw, The Search for the Origins of Christian Worship, 145.

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CHAPTER 19: CONCLUSION regarded them and their ‘secular’ counterparts, as irreligious. The continuity of space between pagan and Christian periods involved a tearing down, cutting up and refitting of Classical shapes into dissimilar spatial contexts. Religious continuity followed what was being done spatially; Classical affects were inserted out of context, thereby visibly altering, perhaps distorting Classical reality in the Christian edifice. Similar to the way in which a ‘legend clings to every stone’, the reused stones actively held symbolic implications as the processions that reflected and dramatised the spectrum of civic life and once wound through column-lined streets now coursed down Church aisles by a priestly class. Acts by benefactors inscribed on votive altars were now in mosaic on basilica floors; sacred water ablution rituals were transformed into baptismal Mysteries. The Seats of Justice in Roman basilicas became Eucharist altars as the Magistrate morphed into the Priest. The adoration of the Virgin Queen held suspicious intimations of pagan-Christian continuity and the segmenting off the sanctuary from the nave by templon rail transformed the area back into an interior of a temenos: pronaos/naos spatial landscape. The dual nature of an ‘altered continuity’ cannot hide the Christian revolution. This was a new religion built on the ruins of an old way of life. It demanded new temples, new people and new spaces. In the streets of Gerasa we see how the old world passed away and a City of God emerged from the ruins. I leave the last word with Tertullian writing 300 years earlier at the height of Gerasa’s civic life. His terminology is symbolic and relational to pagan and Christian bodies orientated with their spatial and sacral worlds: ‘We cannot take our place at the table with them, because they cannot with us. It is a matter of turn and turn about.’7

7

Tertullian, Apologeticus, XXVIII, trans. Jeffrey Henderson, LCL, 1931.

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