The Art of Empire: Christian Art in Its Imperial Context 9781451487664, 1451487665

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The Art of Empire contends that the art and imagery of Late Antiquity requires a deeper understanding of the context of the imperial period before and after Constantine. The chapters in this collection each treat an aspect of the relationship between early Christian art and the rituals, practices, or imagery of the empire. The long-held belief that the beginnings of Christian art can be understood simply by Constantine’s acceptance of the religion and the imperial cult must be discarded. These chapters offer a new and fresh perspective on the development of Christian art in its imperial background.

Jefferson and Jensen

Subverting the empire’s image

Praise for The Art of Empire “This is an exciting and up-to-date collection of cutting-edge essays on early Christian art. Its editors and contributors include many of the most interesting current scholars in the field, crossing the disciplinary boundaries between art history, theology, and religious studies.” Jas’ Elsner Corpus Christi College, Oxford

“This wonderful collection of essays offers a refreshing shift in the paradigms for interpreting early Christian art in the first five centuries. In innovative ways the nine essays challenge many prevailing theses in the field of early Christian art. More specifically, the book contests the two most dominant models: that Christian artistic enterprises made little or no reference to the visual language of the imperial cult, and that early Christian art is so decontextualized from the wider Roman culture that it is nearly sui generis. Thanks to Jefferson and Jensen, scholars and students alike will welcome both the scholarship and the new approaches of the authors.” Vasiliki Limberis Temple University

Lee M. Jefferson is assistant professor of religion at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky. He is author of Christ the Miracle Worker in Early Christian Art (Fortress Press, 2014), and various journal articles on Christian art. Robin M. Jensen is the Patrick O’Brien Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. She is the author of Baptismal Imagery in Early Christianity: Ritual, Visual, and Theological Dimensions (2012); Living Water: Images, Symbols, and Settings of Early Christian Baptism (2011); Face to Face: Portraits of the Divine in Early Christianity (Fortress Press, 2004); and many others. Religion / Christian History

The Art of Empire

“The Art of the Empire includes nine studies, each of which deal in their own way with the relationship between imperial iconography and early Christian art. The contributions are the result of dialogue rather than a common view, and they include discussions of ritual, practice, and theology that provide a valuable context for early Christian art. Highly recommended!” Annewies van den Hoek Harvard Divinity School

The Art of Empire

The Art of Empire Christian Art in Its Imperial Context

Lee M. Jefferson and Robin M. Jensen, editors

Fortress Press Minneapolis

THE ART OF EMPIRE Christian Art in Its Imperial Context

Copyright © 2015 Fortress Press. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Visit http://www.augsburgfortress.org/copyrights/ or write to Permissions, Augsburg Fortress, Box 1209, Minneapolis, MN 55440.

Cover image: Apsis mosaic of Santa Pudenziana, Rome; Detail/wikimedia.org Cover design: Laurie Ingram

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Contents

1.

Acknowledgments

vii

List of Contributors

ix

Introduction

1

Allusions to Imperial Rituals in Fourth-Century Christian Art

13

Robin M. Jensen

2.

Revisiting the Emperor Mystique: The Traditio Legis as an Anti-Imperial Image

49

Lee M. Jefferson

3.

The Memory of “Peter” in Fourth-Century Rome: Church, Mausoleum, and Jupiter on the Via Praenestina

87

Douglas Boin

4.

From Victim to Victor: Developing an Iconography of Suffering in Early Christian Art

115

Felicity Harley-McGowan

5.

The Good Shepherd and the Enthroned Ruler: A Reconsideration of Imperial Iconography in the Early Church Jennifer Awes Freeman

159

6.

Representing Ritual, Christianizing the pompa circensis: Imperial Spectacle at Rome in a Christianizing Empire

197

Jacob A. Latham

7.

Was the Presence of Christ in Statues? The Challenge of Divine Media for a Jewish Roman God

225

Michael Peppard

8.

The Visualization of the Imperial Cult in Late Antique Constantinople

271

Katherine Marsengill

9.

Does the Hinton St. Mary Mosaic Depict Christ?

307

Adam Levine Index

351

Acknowledgments

This project arose from multiple conversations about the topic of the imperial influence on early Christian art with many of the contributors of this volume. Several of the conversations took place at the Society of Biblical Literature annual meeting and the North American Patristics Society annual meeting. We would like to thank in particular the program unit chairs, steering committee members, and participants, past and present, of the Society of Biblical Literature’s program unit “Art and Religions of Antiquity.” This group fostered the interdisciplinary dialogue and methodology that helped shape the essays in this volume. The spirit of these exchanges with our colleagues helped inspire this book, and exhibited the importance of such conversations across disciplinary lines. This book is tangible proof of what these dialogues can yield. We would also like to thank Michael Gibson, Lisa Gruenisen, Marissa Wold, and Esther Diley of Fortress Press. Their hard work made this book possible. We also thank our respective institutions, Vanderbilt University and Centre College. The faculty and administration of each were supportive of this work. Lee Jefferson wishes to thank his colleagues, in particular Tom McCollough, Beth Glazier-McDonald, David Hall, Rick Axtell, Matthew Pierce, Chris Haskett, and Jay Bloom. The Stodghill award at Centre College

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provided a research leave to help make this work come to fruition. Lee Jefferson also thanks Patout Burns and Robin Jensen for their advice and guidance. And above all he thanks his family, Leigh, Grey, and Ethan, for their patience and unwavering support. Robin Jensen would like to acknowledge Thomas Mathews’s generosity, constructive criticism, and kindness many years ago, while she was fresh out of graduate school and working on her first book project. Mathews had just completed the first edition of The Clash of Gods. His work has inspired us all since then, as we gladly offer this book.

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List of Contributors

Jennifer Awes-Freeman is a doctoral candidate in the Religion Department at Vanderbilt University. Her dissertation, “Erasing God: Carolingians, Controversy, and the Ashburnham Pentateuch,” examines the changes in teachings on and images of the Trinity during the transition from Late Antiquity to the Early Middle Ages. Her interests focus on iconoclasm, Christological controversies, gender studies, early medieval manuscripts, and material culture. She has presented her research in England, Scotland, and the United States. Douglas Boin is Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Saint Louis University. His books include Ostia in Late Antiquity (Cambridge University Press, 2013), and Coming Out Christian in the Roman World (Bloomsbury, 2015). His research interests include the city, people, and history of Rome in Late Antiquity to issues related to the transformation of Roman imperial cult throughout the empire. Felicity Harley-McGowan is Lecturer at Yale Divinity School and an Associate Fellow at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music. Her main research interest lies in the development of Christian iconography within the visual culture of Roman late antiquity. Her broader passions encompass the art of early medieval Rome; and the “survival” ix

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of the Classical tradition from late antiquity through to the Italian Renaissance. Lee M. Jefferson is Assistant Professor of Religion at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky. He is the author of Christ the Miracle Worker in Early Christian Art (Fortress Press, 2014) and numerous essays on art in the Christian tradition including entries in Studia Patristica and Religion and the Arts. His area of interest is the development of the Christian tradition and art and imagery of Late Antiquity. He is a recipient of the Shohet Scholar Award from the International Catacomb Society. Robin M. Jensen is the Patrick O’Brien Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. She is the author of Baptismal Imagery in Early Christianity (Baker, 2012), Living Water: The Art and Architecture of Ancient Christian Baptism (Brill, 2011); Face to Face: Portraits of the Divine in Early Christianity (Fortress Press, 2005); The Substance of Things Seen: Art, Faith, and the Christian Community (Eerdmans, 2004); Understanding Early Christian Art (Routledge, 2000); and co-author (with J. Patout Burns) of the volume Christianity in Roman Africa (Eerdmans, 2014). Jacob A. Latham is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Tennessee. A historian of the religions of Rome, his research explores the intersections of religious practice, civic life, and identity in the ancient Mediterranean world, has appeared in Church History, Journal of Religion, History of Religions, and Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome. He is currently completing a monograph on the pompa circensis (circus procession) to be published by Cambridge University Press.

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LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Adam Levine is the Assistant Director and Associate Curator of Ancient Art at the Toledo Museum of Art. He previously worked in the Greek and Roman Department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. His background includes doctorate and master’s degrees in art history from the University of Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He has published on topics ranging from the museum business model to the aesthetics of Byzantine icons. He is currently completing a monograph version of his dissertation, The Image of Christ in Late Antiquity: A Case Study in Religious Interaction. Katherine Marsengill is the author of Portraits and Icons: Between Reality and Spirituality in Byzantine Art (Brepols, 2013). She has taught at Princeton University and been a research and educational advisor for the exhibition Transitions to Christianity: Art of Late Antiquity, 3rd–7th Century AD at the Onassis Cultural Center in New York (December 2011–May 2012). Her main fields of interest are the processes of artistic change during Late Antiquity, especially concerning portraiture, the rise of icons in Eastern Christianity, and issues related to the representation of holy persons as well as the perception of sacred spaces in Byzantium. Michael Peppard is Assistant Professor of Theology at Fordham University. He is the author of The Son of God in the Roman World (Oxford, 2011), which won the Manfred Lautenschläger Award for Theological Promise, sponsored by the University of Heidelberg. He is also the author of The World’s Oldest Church (Yale, 2016). His scholarly articles have appeared in: Journal of Biblical Literature; New Testament Studies; Journal of Early Christian Studies; Catholic Biblical Quarterly; Journal for the Study of the New Testament; Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations; Studia Liturgica; and Judaism.

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Introduction

In the fifth century, Pope Leo the Great chastised Juvenal, the bishop of Jerusalem, claiming that the bishop was “blind to the Lord’s incarnation.” Juvenal, of course, believed in the incarnation, but considering his participation in the Robber Council of Ephesus and the danger of association with monophysite heresy, Leo believed he needed some Christological correction. Leo found Juvenal’s recalcitrance confusing, especially since he was in close proximity to the holy places in Jerusalem. For Leo, Juvenal could not disbelieve since he was in the presence of the holy by virtue of being surrounded by places such as the Holy Sepulcher, Gethsemane, and Bethlehem. Leo praises Juvenal’s subsequent return to orthodoxy, but still calls his break inexcusable due to his physical location, writing to the bishop, “Why is the understanding in difficulty, where the eyes are its instructors? And why are things read or heard doubtful, where all the mysteries of man’s salvation obtrude themselves upon the sight and touch?”1 Leo’s diatribe emphasizes the important place material culture and the visual tradition held in early Christianity: to see is really to believe. Leo even preaches that words may be useful but “the activity of sight was teaching them.”2 The early 1. Leo, Ep. 139 (NPNF 212.98). 2. Leo, Serm. 37. See Sermons, Fathers of the Church Series (Washington, DC: Catholic University Press, 1995).

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Christian visual language was critical in the development of the religion, particularly after Constantine when it was recognized as an official religio. Whether gazing upon an image of Jesus or visiting a church in Jerusalem, sight was the master for the early Christian. Christian art, however, did not arrive or develop ex nihilo. It borrowed and adapted elements of the existing visual examples of its Roman context. Early Christian narrative and non-narrative art utilizes prototypes from Roman cultic art and from Jewish art as well. This phenomenon has been well documented in recent years by scholars such Jas Elsner, Thomas Mathews, and Robin M. Jensen. This book focuses on one such influence, the imperial influence, upon early Christian art. Images of the emperor and the practice of the imperial cult had an obvious impact upon early Christianity. But how much of an impact is a subject that has caused some rancor among art historians and religion scholars. Constantine’s conversion in 312 ce and the subsequent Edict of Milan were seen by art historians of the twentieth century as climactic events for early Christian art. The art historian André Grabar was not the only voice that emphasized the imperial influence upon Christian art, but his was arguably the most influential. Grabar believed that ante-pacem Christian art was relegated to the private sphere and rarely went beyond the symbolic. The art was incohesive and uncomplicated. This perspective, though deeply ingrained, is not without flaws. By exploring third-century catacomb evidence this viewpoint can be challenged. For example, it seems clear that from the beginning Christian art was narrative art. Images served as visual “pages,” with the medium of wall painting serving as the manuscript.3 At the catacomb of Vigna Massimo, one painting features scenes of Daniel, Jonah, and Lazarus that are congruent with a funerary

3. Robin M. Jensen, Understanding Early Christian Art (New York: Routledge, 2000), 90–91.

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INTRODUCTION

atmosphere. The images are integrated and intentionally placed within the surrounding examples, creating a cohesive whole rather than isolated images.4 Grabar argued that in the second half of the fourth century, beginning with the Junius Bassus sarcophagus, the central theme on Christian sarcophagi is Christ enthroned (what he calls “Christ in Majesty”).5 Following Constantine, Christians adopted the entire imperial style for portraying Jesus. What was once imperial art was appropriated by Christians and placed upon the person of Jesus. Grabar memorably argued that “the mark of imperial iconography in Christian art is recognizable everywhere and in different ways: appropriation of themes and subjects, borrowings of iconographic details, utilization of more remote models for the creation of analogous images. It is to the theme of the supreme power of God that imperial art contributed the most, and most naturally so, since it was the key theme of all the imagery of the Christian image-makers with a series of tested models, and they profited from them largely.” 6 The art historian Hans Belting argues that Christians clearly adapted the imperial cult and the cult of images associated with the imperial cult for Christian purposes. Belting states that showing the emperor in a clipeus in a monument such as the Arch of Galerius, was borrowed by Christians who placed figures such as Jesus and John the Baptist in a clipeus in iconography. Moreover, Belting’s work repeats a popular assertion that ritual action involving imperial images was appropriated by the church. Such ritual actions would include paying homage to certain images of Jesus or even parading images on festival 4. Mathews disputes the long-held view that early Christian images held no connection from one image to another to create a programmatic whole. See Mathews, The Clash of Gods (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 13. 5. André Grabar, The Beginnings of Christian Art, 200-395 (London: Thames & Hudson, 1966), 249. 6. Grabar, Christian Iconography: A Study of Its Origins (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), 42.

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days. Belting asserts that in the sixth century and beyond, “icons of Christ and of the emperor were even worshipped side by side, with more or less the same rituals.”7 This position neatly explains post-pacem images of the enthroned Jesus. Scholars following Grabar’s and Belting’s arguments would interpret an ecclesial image of Christ enthroned as having imperial antecedents and connections. Thomas Mathews famously rebuts the imperial argument in his book The Clash of Gods, now in its second printing. In the first chapter, titled “The Emperor Mystique,” Mathews includes this term to describe the continual reaction to art of this period as imperial. In Mathews’s estimation, Christian art had a variety of influences, many of them nonimperial, that must be taken into account. In his introduction, Mathews delves into a social-historical critique of scholars such as Grabar, claiming that their arguments for an imperial influence are evidence of their own historical context. According to Mathews, those who advanced the imperial argument—Ernst Kantorowicz, Andreas Alfoldi, and André Grabar—were blinded by their social upbringing in failed empires such as Russia, AustriaHungary, and Prussia.8 Mathews suggests that Grabar saw Jesus as an emperor out of nostalgia for a Russia of the tsars, for example. Grabar’s arguments in Mathews’s estimation thus reveal more about Grabar than about early Christian art.9 Such claims make Mathews an easy target to refute. Critics such as Liz James pointed out his characterization of the “Emperor Mystique” as flawed due to his unfortunate personal critique of Grabar’s social background.10 While Mathews’s book was pivotal, forcing a conversation and reevaluation of art of this period, his thesis was 7. Hans Belting, Likeness and Presence (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 106. 8. Mathews, Clash of Gods, 15–16. 9. Mathews, Clash of Gods, 16. 10. Liz James, “Review: The Clash of Gods. A Reinterpretation of Early Christian Art by Thomas F. Mathews,” The Burlington Magazine 136, no. 1096 (July 1994), 458–59.

4

INTRODUCTION

never entirely accepted by art historians.11 In his review of Mathews’s book for the Art Bulletin, Peter Brown critiques Mathews but also points out that this was a “book that needed to be written. . . . Classical scholars tended to assume that the art and culture of the Christians were virtually non-existent; that they needed a ‘head start’ from imperial and upper-class patrons to flourish at all.”12 Mathews’s work still tends to be divisive for art historians rather than a unifying voice in the field. This book follows in the wake of Mathews, and desires to continue the conversation regarding the imperial influence on early Christian art. As the reader will see, the authors of the essays in this volume are not unified in their assessment of the imperial influence. However, despite our different viewpoints, the authors agree that this is a conversation worth having without retreating behind disciplinary lines or staid theories. Art historians and religion scholars have much to share to illuminate our conception of the art of Late Antiquity. We contend that the art and imagery of Late Antiquity require a deeper understanding of the context of the imperial period before and after Constantine. And a variety of voices, rather than one, can help gain perspective on art in this era. Thus a volume of different essays is perhaps the best approach to begin reevaluating Christian art of Late Antiquity. These chapters each treat an aspect of the relationship between early Christian art and the rituals, practices, or imagery of the empire. The persistent assumption that fourth-century Christian art was influenced primarily by Constantine’s acceptance of the religion and incorporated elements of the imperial cult must be challenged. These chapters offer a new and fresh perspective on the development of Christian art in its imperial background. 11. Reviews of Mathews’s book such as James’s and Annabel Wharton’s in American Historical Review (December 1995). 12. Peter Brown, “Review of The Clash of Gods by Thomas F. Mathews,” Art Bulletin 77, no. 3 (September 1995), 499.

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In the initial chapter, Robin M. Jensen examines the topic of how imperial procession rituals heavily influenced Christian liturgical rituals and early Christian art. Art historians and liturgical scholars simply presumed that after Constantine, Christianity merely transplanted imperial rituals and imbued them with a Christian understanding. Imperial rituals such as divinizing the emperor, worshiping his genius in official proceedings, witnessing triumphal processions in the city of Rome, and ritual practices involving temple sacrifice and the eating of sacrificial food were practices observed and understood by an early Christian audience. Among the most commonly cited examples of imperial ceremonies that influenced early Christian material culture are the presentation of tribute, the imperial adventus, and the apotheosis or consecration of an emperor after his death. Art historians have linked these three particular ceremonies with three parallel events in the life of Christ, all of them depicted in fourth- and fifth-century Christian art: the adoration of the magi, the entrance into Jerusalem, and the ascension. What Jensen shows is that the “imperializing” of Christianity through these artistic examples is overstated and much more complex than initially realized. Jensen goes even further, suggesting that these artistic examples could even be understood as counter-imperial rather than pro-imperial, an argument that has received little attention in prior scholarship. An early Christian artistic motif that is utilized to support the wellentrenched theory that Christian images prior to Constantine were relatively humble while post-Constantinian images exude glory is the traditio legis. Thomas Mathews challenged this theory in his book The Clash of Gods, calling such a theory the “Emperor Mystique.” Despite some misgivings of art historians, examining Mathews’s theory through the lens of the traditio legis illuminates the logic behind his argument. In his chapter, Lee Jefferson explains how the image of an 6

INTRODUCTION

enthroned Jesus giving the law seemingly represents a triumphal Jesus and recalls the imperial cult. But Jefferson argues that the focus of the traditio legis is not the enthroned Jesus at all, but rather the action that Jesus is performing. In giving the law, the image represents and reflects ecclesial authority, an interpretation that can be illuminated by the historical context of fourth- and fifth-century Rome. By focusing on several examples of the traditio legis, Jefferson believes that the interpretation of the traditio legis as an image suggesting church hierarchy and authority can be realized. As the author of the pseudepigraphic letter 1 Peter saw it, writing in 80–90 ce, many early Christians lived as “sojourners” in an empire that was not really their own. Speaking in the guise of the apostle Peter, the author advised them not to draw attention to themselves, to show respect to everyone in their daily interactions, and above all, to “honor the emperor” (1 Pet. 2:17). Despite the apoplectic protestations of their peers, many Christians did just that by taking part in Rome’s imperial cult. In his chapter, Douglas Boin points out that from the text of Revelation to the writings of Tertullian, Christians can be seen participating in festivals and sacrifices for the emperor. Seen in light of other Christians who are known to have taken part in imperial festivals, this appeal to Peter as a voice of cultural resistance can now emerge as a highly “selective” social memory of certain writers within the Christian movement. According to Boin, the stereotype of Christians as a self-isolated minority that did not participate in festivals and celebrations of Roman civic life should be discarded. His study illuminates what it meant to be “Christian” in the time of Constantine and beyond. The execution of Jesus of Nazareth lies at the heart of the Christian faith. An image of Jesus crucified is exceedingly rare in visual art and material culture prior to the sixth century. However, images of the instrument of his death, the cross, rather than a crucifix, 7

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appear in post-Constantinian art as references to salvation and victory instead of suffering. Felicity Harley-McGowan explains the Roman practice of depicting the conqueror over the vanquished as a trophy and symbol of victory. In early Christian literature, Jesus’ triumph over death is occasionally described as a military conquest, but it is curious how this imperial influence corresponds to early Christian art. Harley-McGowan points out that the symbol of the captive in Roman imperial examples, the trophy that was so critical, is absent in representations of Christian triumph. By utilizing the work and theory of André Grabar, Harley-McGowan explains how Christian art reversed the imperial prototype, and the victim was transformed into the victor. The effect was important for the development of Christian iconography, for it created a new genre of imagery: Christian suffering. However, Harley-McGowan examines how imperial themes were incorporated and understood in the development of Christian iconography. Jennifer Awes Freeman takes up the recognizable and important symbol of the Good Shepherd in early Christian art. Often the Good Shepherd is seen only through an imperial lens. She identifies the false dichotomy created by prior scholars, which pits the humble, grassroots Christ depicted in catacombs and sarcophagi against that of the triumphant enthroned Christ of apse mosaics. Freeman suggests that this understanding must be reexamined, and instead the two iconographic motifs are not so very different. Freeman argues that the image of Christ as the Good Shepherd, with connections to kings like David, can in fact be interpreted as another possible dimension of imperial iconography rather than one of pastoral, peaceful humility. Jacob Latham treats similar issues of negotiation and adoption, focusing on the pompa circensis. Latham describes the shift in imperial representations of the procession during the games in numismatic art. Rather than depict the gods, third-century coins depict the living 8

INTRODUCTION

emperor as sponsor of the games. This shift was useful for postpacem Christian emperors. As Latham points out, Christian critics such as Tertullian were merciless in their rhetoric against the games. Turning attention to the sponsor of the games occluded the presence of the gods, which allowed the procession (and so also the games) to appear neutral. Thus, the games and the procession that preceded them were sanitized of any patina of idolatry, and their practice could continue as a secular practice. Latham goes on to describe how the survival of the pompa circensis may have allowed it to be Christianized, with symbols of the Christian God appearing in representations in certain images, granting the practice a sense of legitimacy. Roman statuary, even entering into the Constantinian period, included prominent images of the gods and of the emperor. The Colossal Constantine statue, the remains now housed in the Capitoline Museum, exhibit such a tendency in fourth-century art. Michael Peppard asks the question: Why did early Christians in the fourth century not populate their nascent visual language with statues of Jesus? There are some images of Jesus as the Good Shepherd, but few if any of Jesus as “Colossal” as Constantine. Peppard’s chapter is not as much about what Christians did but what they, for the most part, did not do—and will treat the decision ultimately not to reinstall the commissioned silver statues for the Lateran Basilica after the sack of Rome. Peppard examines how early Christians mediated the divine presence in the absence of statues through art, ritual, and symbols. The decisions made by early Christians regarding statues allow us to more fully analyze theories of how art functioned in early Christianity during the imperial period. As Peppard argues, the avoidance of statues allowed early Christians to negotiate visually between Jewish and Roman identities. Late Antique Constantinople was far from Rome, and as Katherine Marsengill points out, the emperor Constantine mimicked elements 9

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of Rome and also abandoned some of the visual aspects of Roman cultic influence. There certainly continued to be statues and images of the emperor in public spaces, but following Constantine, there were churches and also spaces for images of Christ. Marsengill argues that the development of Late Antique Constantinople is an apt example of the imperial influence on Christian iconography. It seems that there was space in which the emperor and his veneration could exist alongside a nascent Christian influence in the city. Marsengill claims that until around the turn of the fifth century the public spaces in Constantinople were dedicated to the adoration of the emperor. As time progressed, iconography expressed less of a severe dichotomy between Christ and the emperor and more of an intertwined relationship. In the final chapter, Adam Levine analyzes a little-discussed image of Jesus from the fourth century. The Hinton St. Mary mosaic was discovered in Dorset in England. The central image features the only surviving image of Jesus from Late Antique Britain. The figure appears in a clipeus with a chi rho above his head. The central image has been generally interpreted to represent Jesus; however, it shares features with representations of the emperor. Levine argues that the Hinton St. Mary mosaic is more complicated than previously reported, and that imperial iconography is an important factor in discerning how a Christian in Late Antique Britain would interpret the central image. Although varied in topic and stance, these chapters are united in the perception that Christian art in its imperial context deserves further attention. However influential, the work of previous scholars should be revisited and challenged. Providing more voices to the conversation rather than limiting them respects the complexity of Christian art in Late Antiquity and advances our understanding of the topic. This book, with its interdisciplinary methodology, hopes to 10

INTRODUCTION

increase the awareness that early Christians were as visually oriented as Leo insisted. And early Christians were dedicated to portraying their relationship with their God with a variety of influences, including the most obvious one: the empire in which Christianity blossomed. Lee M. Jefferson Robin M. Jensen

11

1

Allusions to Imperial Rituals in Fourth-Century Christian Art

Robin M. Jensen

Historians of early Christianity often assert that imperial court ceremonies were heavily influential on the development of Christian liturgy during the fourth and fifth centuries. For example, in his expansive history of Christian worship, Frank Senn asserts that one should seek the origins of the entrance rite, with its solemn procession of richly vested clergy, candle bearers, and acolytes wafting incense and singing psalms in the rituals of an imperial adventus.1 The bishop’s chair at the back of the apse has been

1. See, for example, Frank Senn, Introduction to Christian Liturgy (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2012), 31–32; Justo González, The Story of Christianity, 2nd edition vol. 1 (New York:

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compared to the sella curulis of a presiding magistrate or governor, the church building named for what it was perceived to be: the replication of a king’s audience hall (basilica). Historians of liturgy and art alike often simply presume that once Christianity became the dominant religion of the imperial house, Christian worship and ecclesiastical organization became little more than a wholesale transplantation of the trappings and symbols of secular kingship.2 In such constructions, images and activities alike served to equate God (or Christ) with the enthroned ruler and to view the local bishop as his earthly vicar. While the fourth-century church undoubtedly adapted practices and artistic motifs that had imperial associations, this chapter argues that it simultaneously infused those actions and images with a new significance and, in doing so, might even have undermined their previous meanings and purposes. Among the most commonly cited examples of these ceremonies are the presentation of tribute, the imperial adventus, and the apotheosis or consecration of an emperor after his death. Art historians have linked these three particular ceremonies with three parallel events in the life of Christ, all of them depicted in fourth- and fifth-century Christian art: the adoration of the magi, the entrance into Jerusalem, and the ascension. Moreover, these parallels are often cited as prime examples of the imperializing of Christianity.3 The following discussion will consider each of these exemplary scenes and argue not only that the influence and HarperOne, 2010), 143–44; and Per Beskow, Rex Gloriae: The Kingship of Christ in the Early Church (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1962), 15–16; 4. 2. Including Theodor Klauser, A Short History of the Western Liturgy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), 34; and Allan Doig, Liturgy and Architecture from the Early Church to the Middle Ages (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2008), 38. 3. Most notably, Johannes Deckers, in his essay “Göttlicher Kaiser und kaiserlicher Gott: Die Imperialisierung des Christentums im Spiegel der Kunst,” in Epochenwandel? Kunst und Kultur zwischen Antike und Mittelalter, ed. F. A. Bauer and N. Zimmerman (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 2001), 3–16.

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adaptation of imperial ceremonies is more complex than it appears, but that the message may even be counter-imperial in certain instances. 1. The Adoration of the Magi and the Aurum Coronarium The earliest surviving visual representations of Jesus’ nativity do not show a baby lying in a straw-filled manger surrounded by adoring parents, shepherds, angels, and regally attired kings; instead they depict a somewhat older child sitting on his mother’s lap and eagerly accepting gifts from a queue of three nearly identical young men dressed in trousers, short tunics, flying capes, and little peaked caps (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1. Adoration of the Magi, lower left register, early Christian sarcophagus, Arles (Trinity sarcophagus), ca. 320–35. Now in the Musée de l’Arles et de la Provence antiques. Photo: Author.

Although these gift-bearers—the adventurous magi of Matthew’s Gospel (2:1-12)—approach the mother and child on foot, their camels often accompany them. Their leader points to a star that hovers just above Mary’s head, and each presents his offering, usually 15

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distinguished by shape or type of container (e.g., a wreath, box, or bowl). Versions of this basic composition, dated from the late third to the middle of the fifth century, decorated the walls of Christian burial chambers or sarcophagi. They also appear on engraved gems, silver caskets, and ivory panels. The only significant variant appears on the triumphal arch mosaic of Rome’s Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore (c. 435). Here, they are no longer in a single file, other characters join them, their gifts are identical and presented as small objects in shallow oval vessels, and the baby sits on an elaborate, wide, jeweled throne rather than on his mother’s lap (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2. Adoration of the magi, from the triumphal arch (center left), Sta. Maria Maggiore, Rome, ca. 435. Photo: Author.

Scholars have contended that a consistent compositional detail in these scenes seems to reflect aspects of a Roman imperial court ritual, the aurum coronarium, in which representatives of provincial cities, members of the Senate, or foreign ambassadors presented golden crowns to an enthroned ruler or conquering general. This ritualized giving of tribute, sometimes part of a triumphal procession or in honor of an imperial anniversary, symbolized the donors’ fealty to an acknowledged sovereign.4 Because the adoration of the magi 4. On the aurum coronarium ceremony, see Fergus Millar, The Emperor in the Roman World (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977); and Theodor Klauser, “Aurum Coronarium,” in

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iconography emerged and soon became particularly popular in the early years of the Emperor Constantine’s reign, such scholars have argued that the appropriation of this imperial motif is intentional and calculated to imply more than a parallel between the adoration of the magi and ambassadors presenting gifts to a regnant emperor. Beyond merely illustrating the Gospel narrative, it visually proclaims the sovereignty of the child and, to some, even affirms the divinely granted authority of a God-favored earthly ruler.5 For example, in the catalog of the 2008 exhibition, Picturing the Bible: The Earliest Christian Art, Johannes Deckers considers a particular fourth-century Christian sarcophagus that displays one of these adoration images and poses the question, “What would have prompted an early Christian to have his or her tomb adorned with this particular theme?” He answers that such an individual could not have been a mere, private citizen. Commenting that it is “remarkable” that one of the depicted gifts is a gold wreath rather than some other form of gold, such as a bag of coins, he concludes that its imperial associations are unambiguous: “The unusual appearance of an emperor’s gold wreath in the depiction of the Adoration of the Magi becomes more comprehensible if one hypothesizes that it was suggested by someone from Constantine’s own circle. . . . The depiction of the gift of gold as a wreath thus draws an explicit parallel between the divine power of Christ and the emperor.”6 Deckers further claims that contemporary viewers would Gesammelte Arbeiten zur Liturgiegeschichte Kirchengeschichte und christlichen Archaeologie, Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum Ergänzungsband 3 (1974): 292–309. 5. Here see Richard C. Trexler, The Journey of the Magi: Meanings in History of a Christian Story (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1997), 17–18; Otto Simpson, Sacred Fortress: Byzantine Art and Statecraft in Ravenna (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), 90, 94; and Gertrud Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, vol. 1, trans. J. Seligman (London: Lund Humphries, 1971), 100. 6. Johannes Deckers, “Constantine the Great and Early Christian Art,” in Picturing the Bible: The Earliest Christian Art, ed. Jeffrey Spier (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 105. See also Deckers, “Die Huldigung der Magier in der Kunst der Spätantike,” in Die Heiligen Drei

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have immediately recognized the connection between an imperial wreath and this gift. Another art historian, Beat Brenk, makes a similar assertion, maintaining that the artisans of the Constantinian era “did not hesitate to equip the Magi with laurel wreaths” instead of the gifts specified in Matthew’s Gospel. He continues, “These were motives stemming from imperial iconography (i.e., the aurum coronarium), which were chosen because they called special attention to the divine character of Jesus Christ and with the resulting adoration.”7 Brenk goes on to say that it was easier for Christians to adopt these imperial motifs because the imperial cult had “lost its negative connotation” and yet stresses that it still would be a “simplification to speak of the ‘imperialization’ of Christian art.”8 A few ancient literary sources mention this ritual of giving golden crowns to an emperor. The Roman historian Livy reports that the deputations of cities and nations west of the Taurus presented Gnaeus Manlius with golden crowns on account of his conquest of the Gauls in Asia circa 189 bce (Hist. 38.37), and that crowns were carried in Manlius’s triumph procession (Hist. 39.7). References also appear in some Christian documents; Gregory of Nazianzus’ First Oration against Julian reports that reigning Roman emperors were showered with various kinds of gifts, including crowns, diadems, and purple robes (Or. con. Jul. 4.80). Synesius, bishop of Cyrene, also mentions offering a crown to Arcadius on behalf of his city (Reg. 2). Könige—Darstellung und Verehrung, ed. F. Günter Zehnder (Köln: Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, 1982), 20–32; A. Grabar, Christian Iconography: A Study of Its Origins (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), 44–45; Franz Cumont, L’adoration de mages et l’art triomphal de Rome (Vatican City: Tipografia Poliglotta Vaticana, 1932), 81–105; and Klauser, “Aurum Coronarium,” 293–13. 7. Beat Brenk, The Apse, the Image, and the Icon (Wiesbaden: Richert, 2010), 62. 8. Ibid., 63, and see fn. 205, where he says that he disagrees with the works of Johannes Deckers, in “Göttlicher Kaiser und kaiserlicher Gott. Die Imperialisierung der christlichen Kunst,” and Thomas Mathews, in The Clash of Gods (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992).

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Visual depictions of this ceremony of presenting golden crowns are scarcer than the documentary evidence. The most frequently cited example appears on the east face of the base of the column honoring the emperor Arcadius in Constantinople (dated to around 400). Although the column was destroyed around 1700, the image is known from sixteenth-century drawings, which show the upper register of the column’s east side depicting two groups of senators, each headed by a representative carrying a golden crown; an adjacent side apparently showed representatives of provinces bringing gifts. The late fourth-century base of the column (obelisk) of Theodosius I displays a similar scene on its northwest face (Fig. 3). Here, however, the gifts are not crowns but rather other objects of tribute, presented in large vessels. This Theodosian relief appears similar to an image on the older Arch of Galerius in Thessalonica (c. 300), which shows a group of Persians bearing gifts (including elephants) to a victorious emperor. Furthermore, literary evidence suggests that the usual tribute was not an offering of crowns, but something more practical: a gift of coins. According to Cicero, the aurum coronarium was a way of speaking about a gift of gold, not necessarily an actual crown (Cicero, Aul. Gel. 5.6). Romans also referred to the mandatory yearly tribute paid by the Jews of Rome for the maintenance of the patriarchate as aurum coronarium. Thus, even it had once been a contribution to a golden crown offered to a victorious general, by the early imperial period, the aurum coronarium had become a straightforward tax, paid in cash.9 The Theodosian code records a law, promulgated in 416 by Honorius and Theodosius II, that payments of “crown gold” should be made by a municipal council and collected by authorized (and honest) agents (Cod. theod. 12.12.15). 9. “Aurum Coronarium,” in Encyclopedia Judaica, vol. 3, 854.

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Fig. 3. Northwest face of the base of the Theodosian obelisk (column), ca. Constantinople. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

Thus, the evidence of an ongoing practice of a procession of foreign dignitaries presenting golden crowns to a reigning Roman emperor is so slim that it seems unlikely that fourth-century viewers would perceive a direct allusion in images of the adoration of the magi with a specific Roman imperial ritual. Even if that ritual were implied, they would not have seen the magi as imposing dignitaries bringing tribute to an enthroned ruler. Rather, they would have seen three exotically dressed and relatively small young men offering gifts to an infant on his mother’s lap, not to a king on a throne.10 Only the

10. The magi became visiting kings only in later Christian art, based on an interpretation of Ps. 72:10.

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first of the three ever carries a crown (and even he does not always do so). In fact, one finds the closest iconographic parallel to the aurum coronarium elsewhere in early Christian iconography, in the depictions of processing saints bearing crowns, as in Ravenna’s Basilica of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo. Even here it is unclear whether the saints are offering their crowns to Christ or simply displaying them as emblems of their martyrdom. In fact, it is more likely that they are the recipients, rather than the givers, of these trophies.11 Representations of saints with their crowns are based on Rev. 4:4, which describes twenty-four elders clad in white and wearing golden crowns. In addition to saints, ordinary people received crowns for a variety of reasons. Secular and Christian iconography alike show crowns awarded as prizes to poets, athletes, married couples, and the newly baptized. Perhaps significantly, crowns and garlands also adorned animals being led to sacrifice. However, even if we allow that a procession of gift-bearing magi might allude to some ritual of giving tribute to a ruler, one must remember that only the first of the three magi is ever depicted offering an actual crown (and, again, not always). Moreover, this gift specifically illustrates the offering of gold. Vessels (boxes or dishes) contain the gifts of frankincense and myrrh. The substance of all three gifts was highly symbolic to early Christian exegetes, who interpreted each as signifying an aspect of the child’s identity and destiny. As gold indicated the sovereignty of the divine child, its representation as a crown makes perfect sense. Irenaeus (c. 175) was among the earliest Christian writers to contend that each offering foretold something about the divine child’s nature or future. He explained that the myrrh indicated that he

11. On saints’ crowns, see Paulinus of Nola, Carm. 18.138, and Prudentius, Peristeph. 1.80, 4.21–22.

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would die as a mortal, but also for the sake of the whole human race. The frankincense signified that he was also God. The gold was given to indicate that he was a king whose realm was eternal (Haer. 3.9.2). Similarly, Clement of Alexandria claimed that the magi brought the Christ child a gift of gold as symbol of his royalty (Paed. 2.8). These interpretive motifs became standard in later centuries, often appearing in sermons preached on the Feast of Epiphany. Peter Chrysologus, Bishop of Ravenna in the early fifth century, explained that the magi’s choice of gifts showed divinely granted awareness that this child was a human who was also God, a king who was to die. Thus they chose the three suitable gifts: incense, gold, and myrrh (Serm. 157.4, 159.10, 160.2). Leo the Great’s sermons on Epiphany, preached sometime in the 440s, simply declared that the gifts reflected Christ’s threefold function: gold showed him as king, myrrh as human, and frankincense as God (Serm. 31.1, 33.2).12 In one of these sermons, he elaborates: But if we give attentive consideration to how that same threefold gift is offered by all who come to Christ in faith, will we not recognize the same offering repeated in the hearts of true believers? For the one who acknowledges Christ as ruler of the universe brings gold from the treasure of her heart: the one who believes the Only-begotten of God to have united humanity’s true nature to himself, offers myrrh; and the one who confesses his majesty to be in no way inferior to the Father’s, venerates him with incense.13

Given that early Christians understood that the gift of gold was intended to reveal Christ’s kingship, one may ask how an artist, working in Rome at this time, would have depicted such a gift in some way that would clearly convey that sense other than as 12. See also Prudentius, Carm. 12.28; Maximus of Turin, Serm. 44.2; and Fulgentius, Ep. 14.20. 13. Leo, Serm. 36.1, trans. author (CCL 138:196).

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a crown. A bag of coins—Deckers’s proposed alternative—would not have conveyed this idea. Of course, this gift of gold actually forges an explicit parallel between Jesus and a human ruler. Yet the contrast between the child on his mother’s lap and an emperor on a royal throne is striking, and one could interpret it as an intentional, visual repudiation of the trappings of earthly dominion. Tertullian expressed this eloquently in a treatise against the heretic Marcion, saying that his antagonist misunderstood the prophecies of the Hebrew Scriptures (e.g., Isa. 8:4) to say that the Messiah would come as a victorious warrior. Rather, he says, his call to arms is made with a rattle, not with a trumpet, and not from a parapet, but from his nursemaid’s arms. Then, he adds, “Let those eastern magi attend the infant Christ, presenting to the new-born their gold and frankincense; and surely an infant will have received the spoils of Damascus without either a battle or weapons.”14 More than a century later, Leo the Great articulated the same idea in one of his epiphany sermons. He accounted for Herod’s actions against Jesus on the basis of the Jewish expectation that their messiah would come as a rival earthly monarch: You are being overly fearful, Herod, and you futilely try to take revenge on the infant you suspect. Your rule cannot contain Christ; the Lord of the world is not content with the constrictions of your power. The one, whom you do not wish to rule Judea, reigns everywhere: and you would rule more contentedly yourself, if you were to submit to his authority. Why not do with sincerity what you promise in treacherous deception? Come with the wise men, and in prayerful adoration worship the true king.15

Thus, the image of at least one of the magi presenting a gold crown to the baby Jesus may well have been meant to suggest his rulership, 14. Tertullian, Marc. 3.13.6, trans. author (CCL 1:525). 15. Leo I, Serm. 34.2, trans. author (CCL 138:180–81).

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and to do so in such a way as to have intentional resonance with imperial iconography while also confounding and contradicting those imperial allusions. 2. Jesus’ Entry to Jerusalem and the Adventus Regis Early depictions of Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem occur primarily in sculpted reliefs on fourth-century Christian sarcophagi. Based on the biblical narrative (Matt. 21:1-11 and parallels), the composition typically presents Jesus in profile, mounted on a colt or donkey, wearing a tunic and pallium, and holding the reins of the animal in his left hand while raising his right in a gesture of blessing. One or more apostles follow him, often including an individual with Paul’s distinctive facial features. In some instances the foal of the donkey also appears beneath the legs of its mother. Often a single youth is shown placing a garment under the feet of the prancing animal, although other figures may be included, some waving palm branches in fairly close parallel to the textual narrative. Some of the scenes include representations of city gates. Most of the compositions also include the figure of a man in a tree, presumably Zacchaeus, who climbed up to get a better view of Jesus as he passed by (Fig. 4). 16 This image appears with slight variations on dozens of early Christian sarcophagi and on some fifth- and sixth-century ivories: a Gospel cover from Milan, a diptych known as the Etchmiadzin Gospel, and one of the panels from the sixth-century ivory cathedra of Maximian in Ravenna. Additional early examples occur on a Coptic relief now in Berlin and a relief from the Monastery of St. John Studios in Constantinople. It also appears on one of the leaves of the Rossano Gospels, dated also to the sixth century. This last example is perhaps the most elaborate, as it depicts Jesus riding side-saddle, the 16. Not actually part of the Entry to Jerusalem narrative—but rather from Jesus’ passing through Jericho in Luke 19:1-6.

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crowd holding palm branches and throwing down cloaks, spectators climbing a tree or leaning out of windows, and a small group of children in short tunics running out of the city gate. Behind the city walls, one can glimpse some of Jerusalem’s buildings.

Fig. 4. Jesus’ entry to Jerusalem, early Christian sarcophagus, Pio Cristiano Museum, Vatican (inv. no. 31549), mid fourth century. Photo: Author.

Many art historians identify the prototype for this iconography in depictions of the imperial adventus, the ceremonial entrance of an emperor to a city. For example, Ernst Kantorowicz asserts, “The influence of the imperial Adventus imagery [on the scene of Christ’s entry] cannot be mistaken. . . . The borrowing from imperial images here is quite manifest.”17 Some even judge that the image was designed to echo the triumphant entry of Constantine into the city 25

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of Rome following his defeat of his rival Maximian at the Milvian Bridge in 312.18 As Eusebius of Caesarea described that event, it undeniably had religious overtones. According to him, when Constantine formally entered Rome, all the senators and other important dignitaries, along with women and children, greeted him with hymns and shouts of praise. They expressed their insatiable joy, receiving him as their deliverer, savior, and benefactor with shining eyes and beaming faces (Hist. eccl. 9.9.9–10). In his critical analysis of this longstanding perception, Thomas Mathews identifies an impressive list of art historians who took for granted that the Entry motif was derived from iconography of the emperor’s adventus. Mathews even argues that this analysis caused the very word “adventus” to become the common way of labeling the iconography of Jesus’ entry.19 Mathews, conversely, concludes that the image is modeled on that of a Roman nobleman returning home from the hunt, found on pagan sarcophagi.20 The adventus regis ceremony was the traditional Roman way to welcome an arriving emperor and has its origins in the ancient Hellenistic ruler-cult.21 Typically, the welcoming committee consisting of important dignitaries of the city, priests, and other 17. Ernst Kantorowicz, “The ‘King’s Advent’: And the Enigmatic Panels in the Doors of Santa Sabina,” Art Bulletin 4 (1944): 207–31, here 216. 18. See for example Erich Dinker, Der Einzug in Jerusalem: Ikonographische Untersuchungen im Anschluss an ein bisher unkekanntes Sarkophragment (Oplanden: Westdeutscher, 1970). André Grabar, L’empereur dans l’art byzantin (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1936), 234–36; and Schiller, Iconography of Christian Art, vol. 2, 18–23. Most of these are noted in Mathews, Clash, 24, fn. 4. 19. Mathews, Clash, 24. 20. Mathews, Clash, 33–37, an argument that makes some sense on the basis of iconographic parallels, but overlooks the nature of Jesus’ entry as described in the New Testament Gospels or the possibility that the hunt imagery might, itself, be based on scenes of imperial adventus. 21. On the ceremony of adventus, see Sabine G. MacCormack, Art and Ceremony in Late Antiquity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), 17–61; Michael McCormick, Eternal Victory: Triumphal Rulership in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 84–100; and an old, but much-cited study of the “reception of royalty” by Erik Peterson, “Die Einholung des Kyrios,” Zeitschrift für systematische Theologie 7 (1930): 682–702. The ritual departure was known as profectio.

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principal citizens would line the road for a certain distance in order to meet and accompany their arriving ruler through the gates and into the center of the town, where they would officially receive him with specially crafted speeches of praise (panegyrics) and sacrifices offered at the city’s sanctuaries. As he passed, the spectators would chant acclamations that hailed the guest as savior or liberator. They would offer gifts or garlands, scatter flowers, wave banners and palm branches, waft incense, and hold up torches or tapers. This was the imperial epiphany (or parousia) of a semi-sacred ruler. Depictions

of

these

ceremonies

appear

on

coins

and

commemorative medals. The earliest known were those struck in Corinth to commemorate Nero’s arrival and bore the legend “ADVEN(tus) AUG(usti).”22 However, Nero’s coins did not display an image of the emperor himself but rather a Roman galley. Trajan also issued adventus coins, as did his successor Hadrian, whose design included a female figure pouring a libation upon an altar to personify the welcoming city or nation. Other mints of Trajan, along with some of Marcus Aurelius, Septimius Severus, Commodus, and Gordianus,

show

the

emperor

mounted,

often

with

the

accompanying legend Adventus Augusti. Perhaps the closest parallel to the iconography of Jesus’ entry appears on the so-called Arras medallion, minted in Trier to commemorate Constantius I’s arrival in Britain in 296 (Fig. 5). The obverse shows Constantius mounted on a horse and carrying a spear. The personification of London kneels before her city gate to receive him. Below the emperor is a ship, perhaps meant to be the one in which he arrived across the Channel. The legend “Redditor lucis aeternae” (“the restorer of eternal light”) may indicate his liberation of Britain from the usurper Carausius.

22. See Larry J. Kreitzer, Striking New Images: Roman Imperial Coinage and the New Testament World (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996), 213–14.

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Fig. 5. Copy of the Arras Medal of ca. 296, showing the adventus of Constantius I into London. Part of the Beaurains Treasure, now in the British Museum. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

Adventus scenes also appear on monumental arches, where the size of the relief allows far more detail. For example, one of the sculpted friezes on Thessalonica’s Arch of Galerius (c. 300) shows the emperor surrounded by mounted troops but enthroned in a carriage rather than on horseback himself. He appears to be departing from one city (represented by the gate on the left) and entering another, presumably Thessalonica, his home base. He is celebrating his victory over the Persians and their king Narses in 298. A group of citizens 28

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waving banners bid him welcome (including the statue of a local god enshrined in a small temple). The Galerius adventus frieze has a striking parallel on two separate reliefs of the Arch of Constantine, commissioned by the Senate and erected to celebrate Constantine I’s victory over Maxentius (312) and to frame his ceremonial entry into the city of Rome. The arch’s western and eastern faces each include a frieze that shows the emperor in transit. The shorter western frieze shows the emperor departing from Milan, riding in a chariot behind his advancing army. Around the corner, the wider, southern side shows the events that followed: the siege of Verona and the battle of the Milvian Bridge. The eastern frieze depicts Constantine’s official entry to Rome. Here the emperor sits, enthroned, in a chariot drawn by four horses (Fig. 6). The goddess Victory, carrying the ceremonial wreath, guides the team as they pass through an arch (or perhaps a city gate). His troops, carrying standards, spears, and shields, head up the parade. Above this scene is a tondo showing Helios, the sun god, riding upwards.

Fig. 6. East face of the Arch of Constantine, Rome, ca. 312-14. Photo: Author.

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Because the goddess leads the emperor’s chariot rather than riding in it, the scene seems to depict an adventus rather than the more traditional (or expected) triumph procession granted to Rome’s preceding conquerors.23 Documents describing this particular event imply that Constantine may have eschewed that customary ritual and that he may specifically have avoided its climactic sacrifice at the temple to Jupiter Optimus Maximus.24 If so, it seems likely that Constantine broke with ancient practice and began a transformation of that ancient ritual, possibly in order to avoid making sacrifices to the traditional gods. From this point on, the emperor no longer celebrated the ancient triumph but rather incorporated aspects of that ritual into the ceremonial adventus. A survey of the evidence for subsequent imperial ceremonies supports this possibility. Undoubtedly, Constantine and his heirs continued the standard entry ritual of the adventus. Oddly, like Constantius I, they were shown on commemorative medals as being mounted even when documents describe them riding in a carriage.25 For example, according to Ammianus Marcellinus (Hist. 16.10), when Constantine’s son, Constantius II, arrived in Rome in 357 to celebrate his twenty-year anniversary as well as his victories over the usurpers Magnentius and Decentius, he did not stage it as a triumph, as he arrived in a carriage rather than a chariot.26 Yet, contemporary

23. Compare to the arch of Titus (c. 81), which clearly shows a triumph procession with the triumphator in a quadriga with Victory standing behind him. 24. Constantine’s possible avoidance of this sacrifice is based on its omission in a panegyric written in 313 (Anon. pan. Lat. 9.1, 16–20). On this see Johannes Straub, Regeneratio Imperii (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1972), 100–118; Timothy Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981), 44–45; MacCormack, Art and Ceremony, 34–35, esp. fn. 97 for more bibliography. 25. See the medal from his adventus in Milan (313), which shows him with the god Sol on the obverse and mounted on a horse on the reverse with the goddess Victory (with wreath) leading him and a soldier with imperial labarum in the rear. 26. Here Ammianus insists that no triumph took place (nor does he think it was merited). See also Themistius, Orat. 3.

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depictions of his entry show him as mounted, as on the famous Missorium (silver dish) of Kerch, now in the Hermitage Museum. Here Constantius rides a prancing horse. He has a large nimbus, brandishes a spear (like his grandfather, Constantius I) and wears a jeweled diadem and an elaborately embroidered tunic. As on the arch of Constantine, the goddess Victoria leads rather than follows him. She carries a crown in one hand and a palm branch in the other. Behind, a soldier carries a shield emblazoned with a christogram.27 Thus, from the time of Constantine I onward, the ancient triumph celebration appears to have become transformed into an imperial adventus, a ceremony that implied triumph but did not incorporate the traditional sacrifices to the Roman gods, thus rendering it a more religiously neutral, if not Christian, kind of imperial ritual. Determining whether images of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem replicate this ceremony requires consideration of the divergent ways the imperial adventus was portrayed in both textual and material evidence. If Ammianus Marcellinus is to be trusted, Constantius II entered Rome in a carriage and not mounted on a horse (or colt or donkey), and so the parallels are minimal. Yet, the visual evidence gives a more complicated picture. Representations of the imperial adventus on monumental friezes show the emperor in a carriage or chariot, while those on medals or commemorative plates show him as mounted. It seems most likely that the latter were less literal than figurative—a kind of abbreviated or shorthand image—as they were best suited to their medium and as actual adventus ceremonies of the fourth century featured the ruler riding in a carriage. No doubt, the images that resonate most closely with the iconography of Jesus’ entry to Jerusalem are those that appear on the medallions of Constantius I and Constantine I and the missorium 27. On this object see the work of Ruth Leader-Newby, Silver and Society in Late Antiquity (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2004), 36–38.

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(presentation plate) of Constantius II, which depict the emperor as mounted. However, this iconography is also significantly different. For example, the sarcophagus reliefs do not show the goddess of victory accompanying Jesus, nor does Jesus carry a spear, wear a diadem (or fancy tunic), or even have a halo. Instead, they show him in relatively ordinary civilian garb and riding a donkey or colt, rather than a prancing steed. In other words, Jesus does not look much like an emperor. Setting aside the question of whether or to what degree the Christian images resemble the depictions of a mounted emperor on coins and medallions (as opposed to public monuments), one must ask how else Jesus’ entry could have been depicted except in the way that the gospel narratives indicate—that he was mounted on either a donkey or a colt. The iconography appears to be based as much on the biblical narrative as on any ancient artistic prototype. Moreover, the first-century texts describe the response to his procession in almost exactly the same terms as a city greeting an arriving ruler: the people spread their cloaks along the road, wave palm branches, and shout words of praise and acclaim for his “deeds of power” (Luke 19:38).28 The biblical narratives might describe Jesus’ entry in this way for a reason. It seems possible that the Gospel writers intentionally modeled Jesus’ entry after those abbreviated images of a royal adventus and that the fourth-century pictorial representations of the story followed suit by borrowing those convenient and familiar imperial coin types (i.e., those showing the emperor as mounted). Nevertheless, even as they borrowed, they also changed some details. Depictions of Jesus’ entry clearly rejected certain elements of the imperial iconography, changed certain details, and added otherwise 28. Mathews asserts that palm branches and spread garments are not traditionally associated with Roman adventus rituals but may reflect Jewish or ancient Greek customs. Clash, 30.

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unknown features (e.g., Zacchaeus in his tree, noted only in Luke’s Gospel). This adaptation does not, however, signify that Christ thereby was turned into an earthly emperor (much less the emperor turned into God). He is not shown with any imperial regalia and is mounted on a humble beast. Nevertheless, the iconography does suggest that his “entry” is in a true sense the entry of a monarch and so may be aligned with the adventus regis to that extent. Yet, his reign is different from that of any secular ruler. Jesus is the eternal, messianic ruler of the whole cosmos, the King of Kings. The transcendent as well as spiritual significance of his adventus was evident to Athanasius of Alexandria, writing at about the same period that those sarcophagi were carved. In his treatise On the Incarnation he compares the Word of God to a great king who, having entered some large city, made his dwelling in one of its houses. Such a city, he says, is worthy of high honor, because of the king’s residence within it (Inc. 9). A later bishop, John Chrysostom, takes a different approach. Citing the prophecy of Zechariah, “Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant is he, humble and riding on an ass” (Zech. 9:9), he juxtaposes the arrival of an earthly king, driving a chariot, demanding tribute, preceded and followed by guards, and pushing spectators away, with Jesus, meek and mounted on a donkey (Hom. Matt. 66:2). 3. Jesus’ Ascension and the Emperor’s Apotheosis In what may be the earliest surviving visual depiction of Jesus’ ascension

(an

ivory

now

in

the

Munich

Bayerrisches

Nationalmuseum and dated c. 400), Jesus climbs up to heaven over a bank of clouds. God reaches down to grasp Jesus’ right hand, as if to assist him up the slope (Fig. 7). Because the scene also includes the three women arriving at a tomb and being greeted by an angel

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sitting on a pile of stones, the composition appears to blend the narratives of the empty tomb from the Gospels of Matthew and Mark (Matt. 28:1-3; Mark 16:1-5). Two men, apparently the guards from Matthew’s narrative, lean up against the tomb (one of them asleep). Yet, the olive tree in the background suggests the Mount of Olives, rather than Golgotha. The tomb, a small square structure topped by a drum, may allude either to the aedicule within the Holy Sepulcher or to the chapel built in the 380s at the supposed site of Jesus’ ascension.29 The image to the right is also unusual. Two figures—perhaps John’s two disciples who Mary Magdalene summoned (Simon Peter and the one whom Jesus loved)—crouch in awe or fear before a formation of clouds upon which Jesus climbs up to God. The disciples could be Peter and James, whom Christ specially chose to witness his ascension according to the Apocryphon of James. Yet, the men’s postures also are noticeably like later depictions of the three apostles, Peter, James, and John, at the Transfiguration (Matt. 17:1-8 and parallels). Arguably, a combination of the three narratives (Transfiguration, Resurrection, Ascension) into one signifies that early exegetes and artists alike saw those stories as connected—each one foreshadowing the next.

29. See Palladius, frag. Life of John of Lycopolis, who credits the foundation to the Roman noblewoman, Poemenia. As this fourth-century shrine was destroyed by the Persians in 614, rebuilt by the Patriarch Modestus sometime in the 620s, and then rebuilt again by crusaders in the 1150s, we do not know the original design. However, it seems possible that the Munich ivory depicts it in some fashion.

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Fig. 7. Ivory plaque with scene of the Empty Tomb and Christ’s ascension, ca. 400. Now in the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum (inv. no. MA 157), Munich. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

A similar, but much simplified, composition appears on a small marble relief or part of a marble casket from Ravenna dated to the early fifth century.30 Here, two (not three) women kneel before Christ as he mounts a small step, presumably into heaven. Christ 35

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holds a cross staff in his right hand and, with his left, grasps the hand of God, which reaches down to him, as in the Munich ivory. A rectangular structure with an arched door and crenellated rampart represents the empty tomb. Once again, the iconography shows a conjunction of Jesus’ resurrection and ascension, but here, instead of the three women coming to the tomb, Jesus greets Mary Magdalene and the other Mary (“Hail!” = chairete), and they take hold of his feet to worship him as in Matthew’s Gospel (28:9). Although chronologically and geographically parallel to the Munich ivory, a third early ascension scene on a small wood panel from the door of Rome’s Basilica of Santa Sabina, dated to the early 430s, is completely different compositionally (Fig. 8). Rather than climbing into heaven, two angels appear to be pulling Jesus upwards. A third angel witnesses the event with a gesture of acclamation. No divine hand reaches down to help. This may be a way of literally depicting the text from Acts 1, which says that Jesus was “lifted up” (Acts 1:9). Below are four figures. One sits, head in hands, while two gaze up in astonishment; the fourth seems somewhat remote. 31

30. Commonly known as the reliquary of Julitta and Quiricus and sometimes identified as a child’s sarcophagus. See Galit Noga-Banai, The Trophies of the Martyrs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008) for excellent photographs of all four sides of this casket (Figs. 16–19) and discussion of art historical scholarship, 15, fn. 31. 31. Depictions of the ascension from later periods are different again from these. Eastern iconography shows Christ ascending within a mandorla carried by angels while western iconography tends to show him disappearing into the clouds without any additional aids, although the hand of God may appear to reach down to him.

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Fig. 8. Jesus’ ascension, wooden panel from main door, Basilica of Santa Sabina, Rome, ca. 432. Photo: Author.

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These early depictions of Jesus’ ascension are all distinct and, while none of them is clearly based on portrayals of an emperor’s posthumous elevation to the status of a divine being (consecratio), they are often perceived to be analogous with them. Beginning with the Emperor Augustus, the Senate regularly (but not always) decreed a deceased ruler to be among the gods. Often, his successor would spearhead this effort, partly in order to legitimize his own position.32 Objects of art, from small cameos to monumental reliefs, celebrate this promotion to the rank of a divinity (divus). For example, the socalled Belvedere Altar, reportedly set up by Augustus around 12–7 bce, partly to celebrate Julius Caesar’s elevation to the posthumous status of a divinity, appears to depict Julius being carried up to heaven in a chariot drawn by four horses (quadriga). The sky god, Caelus (with billowing mantle), receives him into the upper firmament, while the sun god Sol is seen on the upper left, riding in his own, similar, chariot. Four figures on the ground wave farewell and are usually identified as Augustus on the left and his wife Livia (or daughter Julia) with Augustus’ two grandsons, Gaius and Lucius, on the right.33 Scholars believe Augustus’ own apotheosis is depicted on the famous Cameo of Tiberius, now in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris. Here a floating, horizontal figure holding an orb—perhaps Aeneas—carries Augustus aloft on his back. Augustus is both crowned and veiled and holds a scepter. Other deceased members of his immediate family, Drusus II and Germanicus, appear on the right and left. Below, the imperial family looks on, including 32. See MacCormack, Art and Ceremony, 104–6; and Simon R. Price, “From Noble Funerals to Divine Cult: The Consecration of Roman Emperors,” in D. Cannadine and S. Price, Rituals of Royalty: Power and Ceremony in Traditional Societies (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1987), 56–105. The notable exceptions were Caligula, Nero, Domitian, and Commodus. 33. Now in the Belvedere gallery of the Vatican Museum. The head of the charioteer is missing but nonetheless usually identified as Julius Caesar. See Paul Zanker, The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus, trans. Alan Shapiro (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1988), 130–34.

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Tiberius (Augustus’ heir and stepson), with his mother, Livia. A different Julio-Claudian era cameo shows the apotheosis of Claudius on the back of a gigantic eagle. Another famous imperial apotheosis is displayed on the base of the column of Antoninus Pius, which was dedicated in 161 ce by their adopted sons and successors, Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus. One of the main faces shows the emperor, with his wife Faustina, being borne on the back of an enormous winged angel, possibly meant to be Aion or the personification of eternity (Fig. 9). This is a rare instance in which an imperial couple is depicted as ascending together (even though Faustina died twenty years before her husband). The goddess Roma and a male personification of the Campus Martius (where the column originally was set up) salute the ascending, imperial couple.34

Fig. 9. Ascension of Antoninus Pius and Faustina, from the base of the Column of Antoninus Pius, originally dedicated in 161 on the Campus Martius and now in courtyard of the Vatican Museum. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

34. Now moved to the Vatican Museum. Originally, the pedestal would have supported a column surmounted by a statue of the emperor.

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As Sabine MacCormack has argued, things began to change around the beginning of the fourth century, with the advent of the Tetrarchy. Diocletian, for example, apparently perceived it unnecessary to seek external acknowledgment of his assumed divinely granted authority, nor did he sense any need to grant it to his predecessors in order to gain legitimacy for himself.35 Therefore, he made no effort to grant these honors nor saw any political benefit in seeking official action to that end. Maximian’s son Maxentius, however, minted a series of coins between 306 and 312 that commemorated the divine elevations of his father Maximian, along with his co-rulers Constantius I and Galerius. Not to be outdone, Constantine I did the same for his father, Constantius I, between the years 310 and 318.36 These coins bear obverse portraits of the deceased, typically with the legend DIVUS CONSTANTIUS. The reverse figures either represent him riding a chariot up to heaven above a flaming funeral pyre or, more simply, altars (or shrines) surmounted by eagles. These reverse types are usually accompanied by

the

legends

CONSECRATIO,

MEM[ORIA]

DIVI

CONSTANTINI, or MEMORIA FELIX. Thus in imperial Roman iconography, an emperor’s apotheosis could be depicted as by chariot or by some other means of transport (e.g., an eagle or other winged figure), or even just by depicting an eagle-topped altar or shrine. Nevertheless, André Grabar, in his now-classic survey of Christian iconography, asserts that images of the ascension of both Elijah and Christ

have

much

in

common

with

these

longstanding

representations of the ascension of an emperor, god, or hero. Certain details, he says, like the personified sun and moon, were familiar to artists long before Christians took them over, and “with certain inevitable adaptations, such as were also made for the ascensions in 35. MacCormack, Art and Ceremony, 106–7. 36. MacCormack, Art and Ceremony, 110–11.

40

ALLUSIONS TO IMPERIAL RITUALS

mythology and in Imperial imagery, Christian iconography adopted this formula for its own, once again making use of the common forms of its environment.”37 Grabar then goes on to argue that Christian images of ascension use a particular type of imperial ascension iconography in which the ascending ruler is depicted as in a chariot rising to heaven, as in the Belvedere altar’s illustration of Julius Caesar’s ascent. Perhaps the most chronologically relevant and iconographically related example was a unique apotheosis coin minted in both gold and bronze and widely circulated throughout the empire to commemorate the consecration of Constantine I (Fig. 10). Constantine was the last emperor for whom such apotheosiscommemorative coins were struck. One of these, issued by his sons Constantius II and Constantine II a few months after his death, shows the emperor in profile and veiled on the obverse, with the legend DIV CONSTANTINUS PT AUGG (Divus Constantinus, Pater Augustorum).38 The most notable aspect of this coin is the image on the reverse, which shows the emperor, veiled, and ascending in a quadriga, while the hand of God reaches down to him. Eusebius explained the occasion for the minting of this coin in his Life of Constantine. After describing the emperor’s death, he notes that at the time coins were minted, portraying the emperor with his head veiled on the obverse and as a charioteer in a quadriga being taken up to

37. André Grabar, Christian Iconography: A Study of Its Origins (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), 35. 38. See Patrick Bruun, “The Consecration Coins of Constantine the Great,” Arctos n.s. 1 (1954): 19–31. A variant from Lugdunum reads DIVO CONSTANTINO. This is only one of four apotheosis types of Constantine. The others, however, show only the emperor’s bust on the obverse with the legend DIVO CONSTANTINO; the reverse shows the emperor holding a spear and a globe or a personification of either pietas or aequitas with variations of the legends aeterna pietas, veneranda memoria, iusta veneranda memoria. Bruun describes these others as religiously noncommittal and thus inoffensive to both Christians and pagans.

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heaven and greeted by a right hand reaching down from heaven on the reverse (Vit. Const. 4.73).

Fig. 10. Constantine consecration coin with quadriga and hand of God. Nummus, minted in Trier, 337-40 (RIC 68). Obv. Legend: DIV CONSTANTINUS P T AUGG, rev. anepigraphic. Photo courtesy of Via-Agrippa.com.

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Despite the fact that an ascending quadriga appeared in earlier depictions

of

Constantine’s

imperial ascent

apotheoses,

was

modeled

some after

scholars early

representations of Elijah’s ascension (2 Kgs. 2:11).

39

believe Christian

Patrick Bruun

adds that this image additionally referenced aspects of Hellenistic ruler cults, the Greek conception of the postmortem immortality of the soul, and the ascent of the sun god, whose name, Helios, resembles the Greek for Elijah (Elias), thus making it comprehensible (or acceptable) to non-Christians and in keeping with Constantine’s tolerant religious policies and somewhat ambiguous personal commitments. He further suggests that the link to the ascent of Elijah demonstrates an effort to Christianize an image that otherwise would have been “alien to the essence of Christian [belief in] resurrection of the flesh.”40 Examples of this Elijah iconography are found on fourth-century Christian sarcophagi in the Louvre, the Vatican Museum, and the Ambrosian Basilica in Milan (Fig. 11). However, most of these monuments were fabricated after the mid-fourth century, which suggests the iconographic influence might have worked the other way around. Jonathan Bardill also disagrees with this theory, though for other reasons, noting that in Christian iconography, Elijah always drops his cloak to Elisha. Yet, Bardill argues, the depiction of Elijah’s ascent is “itself indebted to the long-standing imperial imagery of apotheosis, although it was combined with specific details from the Biblical narrative of the event.” He adds, “It is in this wider pagan context that the coins minted for Constantine should be interpreted.”41 Thus, Bardill sees images of Elijah’s ascension and

39. On this see Bruun, “Consecration Coins,” 27, who suggests that the comparison accounts for Eusebius’ special interest in the type to the exclusion of other Constantinian apotheosis issues; and MacCormack, Art and Ceremony, 124–28. 40. Bruun, “Consecration Coins,” 29–30.

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Constantine’s apotheosis as mutually influenced by earlier imperial prototypes rather than one upon the other.

Fig. 11. Ascension of Elijah, early Christian sarcophagus (right end), now in the Pio Cristiano Museum, Vatican (inv. no. 31556). Photo: Author.

Although Bardill acknowledges the insertion of biblical narrative details in the Elijah scenes, he underemphasizes the fact that the text of 2 Kings plainly states that Elijah’s ascent was in a fiery chariot drawn by fiery horses, a fact that makes it nearly impossible to suppose that it could have been depicted otherwise. Even so, it seems 41. Jonathan Bardill, Constantine: Divine Emperor of the Christian Golden Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 378.

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logical that artists composing the scene would have adapted a familiar motif, even one used for an emperor who might have been flattered to be depicted in the guise of a biblical prophet. Yet there may also be reason to think that Constantine’s chariotascent alludes to that of the sun god who, significantly, appears on that emperor’s arch, riding up to heaven just above the scene of his adventus (Fig. 6). Constantine’s early association with Apollo and his attachment to Sol have been well established by scholars.42 The image of the ascending sun god also has a unique parallel in the fourth-century ceiling mosaic in the tomb of the Julii, underneath St. Peter’s basilica. Here Christ, clearly in the guise of that god as he wears a radiate halo and rides in a quadriga, is shown as the one who overcomes darkness (cf. John 1:4-5; Eph. 5:14).43 This mosaic is thus not a depiction of Christ’s departure from the world, but rather a reference to his coming into it. Constantine’s posthumous coin was the last of its kind. No other imperial coins were issued that showed a deified emperor ascending to God,44 and, apart from the mosaic in the tomb of the Julii there are no surviving depictions of Christ riding in a chariot, or even as, on the Munich ivory, climbing upwards on a bank of clouds. The depiction of his ascension looks entirely different in later Christian art. He either ascends within a mandorla borne by cherubim or floats upwards on his own (Fig. 12). Sometimes all we see are the soles of his feet as he disappears into the sky.

42. See, for example, Elizabeth Marlow, “Framing the Sun: The Arch of Constantine and the Roman Cityscape,” Art Bulletin 88 (2006): 223–42. 43. See Clement of Alexandria on the parallels between Christ and Sol, Prot. 9, probably in reference to the text of John 1:4-5 and Eph. 5:14. 44. One fascinating and exceptional late fourth- or early fifth-century apotheosis scene occurs on an ivory diptych panel often identified as the ascension of the pagan senator Q. Aurelius Symmachus or, alternatively, the emperor Julian. In any case, the figure ascends both in a quadriga and with the assistance of angelic figures.

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Fig. 12. Leaf with the ascension of Christ, Rabbula Gospels, ca. 586, now in the Bibliotech Medicea Laurenziana, Florence. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

Conclusion Naturally, modern viewers cannot be sure how any ancient viewer

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would have perceived these examples of early Christian iconography. As today, every viewer is conditioned by his or her social and cultural context, experiences, memories, affiliations, and expectations. No image conveys a single clear and unambiguous message, as each beholder may see something that others do not. Yet, visual images only make sense insofar as they have resonance with signs or motifs that belong to a common pictorial vocabulary. To that extent, Christians clearly adapted the visual language of their cultural context, which would have included imperial iconography. At the same time, images also evolve and take on new significance or meaning as they are deployed in different settings. They are familiar yet transformed to suit a new message. The magi bring gifts to a king who is also a child on his mother’s lap. Jesus makes a ceremonial entrance into a city but rides on a donkey instead of a prancing horse or in a chariot. Christ ascends to heaven on foot or with the aid of angels rather than on the back of an eagle or in a quadriga. The medium may be similar; the message is intrinsically related but also distinctly different. They are not unconnected, but equating them is to mistake one for the other.

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2

Revisiting the Emperor Mystique: The Traditio Legis as an Anti-Imperial Image

Lee M. Jefferson

In the middle of the fourth century, almost twenty years following the death of Constantine, Julian, known as the “apostate” emperor by Christian historians, reflected on the notion of the emperor’s image. Therefore, when we look at the images of the gods, let us not indeed think that they are stones or wood, but neither let us think they are the gods themselves; and indeed we do not say that the statues of the emperors are mere wood and stone and bronze, but still less do we say they are the emperors themselves. He therefore who loves the emperor delights to see the emperor’s statue. . . . It follows that he who loves the gods delights to gaze on the images of the gods, and their likenesses, and he feels reverence and shudders with awe of the gods who look at him from the unseen world.1

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In a way, Julian anticipates John of Damascus’ writings on the role and purpose of icons several centuries later. But in its time and place, Julian was commenting on the relationship between images of the emperor and the images of the gods, perhaps seeking a middle ground between the two. Julian notes that they are related genres but they also depict separate subjects. The enthroned emperor or any image of his genius was similar to an image of Jupiter or Sarapis, but they operated differently. When observing an image of a god, the viewer seemingly realized the subject and thus endowed the image with divine power. Julian’s words cause one to wonder about the mind of the fourthcentury viewer. Would a person “shudder with awe” at a certain representation of divinity? Would the divine subject need to be “larger than life,” radiating power, and enthroned in glory to produce such a dramatic effect? If the institution of the imperial cult was in the back of the mind of the fourth-century viewer, would the god need to appear like an emperor? Ever since Pliny and Trajan’s correspondence in Bithynia-Pontus in 111–113 ce, the issue of imperial art as it relates to Christianity has had a difficult and complicated history.2 Arguing from the perspective of imperial worship, scholars such as Hans Belting, André Grabar, and Ernst Kitzinger suggest that Christian images involving Jesus radically shifted following Constantine. These art historians argue that images of Jesus as the Good Shepherd (as in the catacomb

1. Julian, “Letter to a Priest,” in The Works of Emperor Julian, vol. 2, trans. Wilmer Cave Wright, LCL edition (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996–98), 308–10. It also should be noted that Julian was initially a Christian, hence the title “Apostate,” although it is difficult to determine Julian’s commitment to Christianity in his youth. He claims in a letter to have left the faith at age twenty, and the attraction to pagan religion was combined with his renewed interest in neo-Platonism. Cf. Stephen Wilson, Leaving the Fold: Apostates and Defectors in Late Antiquity (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress Press, 2004), 96. 2. Paul Corby Finney, The Invisible God: The Earliest Christians on Art (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 81.

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of Callistus) or as a benevolent philosopher or miracle man evolved into an image of an enthroned king, mimicking and mirroring the dominance and authority of the emperor.3 The supremacy of church and state are thus conveniently married in such a potent image. This position assumes that ante-pacem images of Jesus were uniformly humble while post-Constantinian images exuded the grandeur of power and glory. Thomas Mathews challenges this position in his work The Clash of Gods, calling the imperial argument the “Emperor Mystique.” While Mathews is certainly unfair by claiming that scholars like Grabar are motivated by their social context and nostalgia for lost empire in developing this thesis, his contribution to the discussion regarding Christian art is important. His work claims that fourth- and fifth-century images of Jesus must be reevaluated without focusing so narrowly on imperial precedents. The persistence of the imperial argument set forth by Grabar and others is noticeable. The notion that a fourth-century image of Jesus enthroned or giving the law was a result of an imperial takeover of images is unquestioned to the point where post-Constantinian art is entirely viewed through an imperial lens. Thus, the emperor is everywhere in images of Jesus, yet I argue that the emperor may not be as omnipresent as once believed. In this chapter, I will discuss a theme in early Christian art, the traditio legis, Jesus giving the law to Peter and Paul. In this image, Jesus is usually portrayed as seated or standing and handing a scroll to either Peter or Paul. In the fourth and fifth centuries the image appears in funerary atmospheres such as catacomb paintings or sarcophagi carvings, and it also appears in emerging church art, particularly apse mosaics. In images where Jesus is standing, descending from the heavens, and commanding divine authority, it

3. See Jennifer Awes Freeman’s essay on the Shepherd motif in this volume.

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could be argued that this is an image evocative of the emperor. And a seated Jesus, bestowing the law to the disciples, could also recall the enthroned emperor. Grabar claims that Christian iconography, particularly the traditio legis, inherited from imperial iconography “not only formulas but subjects.”4 Instead of witnessing the traditio legis as evocative of the emperor and the imperial cult, I contend that it is a more complicated image that does not necessarily recall the emperor. Challenging Grabar’s claim, I believe early Christians did not solely inherit an imperial subject with the giving of the law; rather they inherited earlier representations of the bestowal of the law, namely Moses receiving the law. Jesus giving the law to Peter is meant to show Peter as a New Moses, and thus to endow the nascent church with power and authority. This chapter will treat the early Christian understanding of the apostles Peter and Paul, and their initial representations in receiving the law in early Christian art. By examining images at the Mausoleum of Costanza and the Hypogeum on the Via Dino Compagni among others, I will argue that the traditio legis cannot be utilized to support the imperial argument. The traditio legis is not necessarily imperial at all. Instead, the traditio legis can be interpreted as anti-imperial and pro-ecclesial. The motif evokes pertinent contextual themes of Christology, a strong sense of “Roman-ness,” as well as recalling a continued theme of miracle working that is evident in Christian art of the third and fourth centuries. This message is perhaps more emphatic with the inclusion of Peter and Paul whose legacy explicitly represents Rome itself, and thus the beginnings of a universal (catholic) church. The

position

that

Jesus

iconography

in

Late

Antiquity

intentionally recalls the emperor has remained consistent since the 4. André Grabar, Christian Iconography: A Study of Its Origins (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), 42.

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THE TRADITIO LEGIS AS AN ANTI-IMPERIAL IMAGE

mid-twentieth century. In 2007, the art historian Johannes Deckers published an essay in the Yale volume of collected essays, Picturing the Bible, titled “Constantine the Great and Early Christian Art.” Deckers argues along familiar lines that the image of Christ was radically transformed after Constantine to appear more like the Christian emperor, as befits an imperial religion. Deckers notes that “[t]he typical third-century image of Christ, in which he appeared as an unassuming teacher of brotherly love and nonviolence, was hardly appropriate as a representation of the omnipotent deity to whom a Roman emperor owed his triumphs.”5 Deckers argues that art of the third century was mainly in the private realm (funerary), and featured Jesus as Son of God, Good Shepherd, teacher, miracle worker, physician, and unassuming philosopher. Jesus is not clad regally, or wearing a nimbus, or seated on a throne, and he is depicted simply. Deckers contends that following Constantine, Jesus gains the purple cloak, the halo, and the gem-encrusted throne evocative of the emperor, albeit these representations are likely not historically accurate as to what Constantine actually wore or sat on. Constantine adopted Christ and thus “imperialized” him in imagery. A position such as this creates a clean dividing line between antepacem and post-pacem art, a line that should not be drawn. Images that include an enthroned Jesus, images such as the traditio legis, are not the most dominant motif in art of the fourth century, as scholars like Deckers lead their audience to believe. In Christian sarcophagi in Rome and Ostia, of which there are more than a thousand examples, miracles and healings outnumber images of Christ enthroned in majesty, including the traditio legis, by a considerable margin. For example, in G. Bovini and Hugo Brandenburg’s Repertorium der

5. Johannes Deckers, “Constantine the Great and Early Christian Art,” in Picturing the Bible: The Earliest Christian Art, ed. Jeffrey Spier (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 107.

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Christlich-Antiken Sarkophage, a catalog of Christian sarcophagi in Rome and Ostia, the enthroned images of Christ make up a little more than half of the number of occurrences of Christ healing the blind. Specifically, in the Roman catalog there are over forty examples of an enthroned Jesus and seventy-one occurrences of the healing of the blind.6 Moreover, at least on the Roman sarcophagi, there are only about thirteen specific examples of the traditio legis in sarcophagi. This number is worth comparing to the sarcophagi representations of Peter not receiving the law but performing miracles, such as Peter releasing water from a rock—which occurs in fifty-six examples.7 One specific example that Deckers cites to support the imperial argument is the Sarcophagus of Marcus Claudianus, which dates from 330 ce and depicts Christ performing miracles (as well as Peter performing miracles) on full display (Fig. 1).8

Fig. 1. Peter striking the rock; Jesus performing miracles Sarcophagus of Marcus Claudianus, 330-340 CE, Rome, Museo Nazionale Romano. Photo: Author. 6. See Friedrich Deichmann, Ikonographisches Register für das Repertorium der christlich-antiken Sarkophage, Band I, Rom und Ostia (Wiesbaden: F. Steiner, 1967), 122–24. 7. Ibid. 8. Deckers, “Constantine the Great and Early Christian Art,” 103.

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Christ is portrayed performing the Cana miracle, dividing loaves, healing the blind, and raising Lazarus. On this particular sarcophagus, Christ is consistently portrayed as youthful, clean-shaven with short curly hair and dressed in a robe. In these portrayals, Jesus uses the staff as in the catacomb scenes to perform his miracles, and is featured at least seven times, along with Peter who also wields a staff. The sarcophagus serves as a nice example of the continuing visual emphasis on the miracles of Jesus in the late fourth century. Thus, rather than declining, miracle-working images continue to be featured following Constantine. Many of these images date from the mid to late fourth century. The images and themes involved do not represent a strict dichotomy with earlier Christian art but they seem rather seamless, as the attention to the miracle-working Jesus is consistent.9 Before and after Constantine, an image of a miracleworking Jesus especially in a funerary context held greater currency for the faithful than any other.10 Before Constantine, representing Christ as a superior healer and miracle worker, greater than rival gods, is understandable. The material evidence, specifically the fourth- and fifth-century funerary sculpture, reveals a large number of portrayals of Christ performing miracles during a time when a decrease would seem more likely if one holds to the foundational arguments of Grabar and Deckers. Given the evidence, the image of Christ performing miracles in any medium was deemed more edifying and valued than any image of the enthroned Jesus. To gain a greater understanding of the significance of the traditio legis, 9. For a more detailed treatment of the subject, see Lee M. Jefferson, Christ the Miracle Worker in Early Christian Art (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014). 10. G. Bovini and Hugo Brandenburg, Repertorium der Christlich-Antiken Sarkophage, Band 1, Rom und Ostia, ed. F. W. Deichmann (Wiesbaden: F. Steiner, 1967), pts. 1, 123; Brigitte ChristernBriesenick, Repertorium der Christlich-Antiken Sarkophage, Band 3, Frankreich, Algerien, Tunesien, ed. T. Ulbert (Wiesbaden: F. Steiner, 2003), 302. The widow’s son and Jairus’s daughter occur in sixteen examples in the Roman material, and in eight examples from Gaul and North Africa. See Band 1:123; and Band 3:301–2.

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perhaps attention should be rendered to the receivers of the law rather than the giver of the law. Recalling the Sarcophagus of Marcus Claudianus, the other miracle worker featured on the frontal is Peter. The traditio legis is analogous to the robust scenes of miracles in this era in early Christian art, as both attempt to project a sense of Christian authority. By focusing on the apostles included in the traditio legis, Peter in particular, one can realize that it is ecclesial authority that is projected, not imperial authority. Peter and Paul in Rome The legacy of Peter and Paul is a fascinating study in early Christian texts and art, particularly since it does not correspond to the depiction of their relationship in the New Testament. Peter and Paul appear as regal princes of the church in the traditio legis, but the New Testament text presents a different picture. By examining the evolving depiction of the apostles in early Christian texts, the appearance of Peter and Paul in the motif of the traditio legis in art begins to make sense. The apostles’ harmonization and their textual and visual connection to the city of Rome, the nascent “heart” of the Christian ekklesia, evokes an image of power and authority that highlights the institution of the church rather than the emperor or the imperial cult. Paul mentions a confrontation with Peter at Antioch in his letter to the Galatians (2:7-9). In the text he refers to “Cephas” and “Peter” in the opening verses, raising the issue whether “Cephas” and “Peter” are the same person or two individuals. “Cephas,” the Aramaic expression for “rock,” aligns nicely with “Petros,” the Greek expression for “rock.” Traditionally, these two designations used by Paul have been interpreted to refer to the apostle Peter since the names are congruent and recall Peter’s investiture by Jesus (Matt. 16:18). Paul simply may

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be more familiar with “Cephas” as a designation for Peter, since he uses it more often.11 In his letter to Galatians, Paul writes of “opposing” Peter (Cephas) to “his face” at Antioch for acting like a hypocrite regarding dining issues with Gentiles. The text suggests a level of acrimony that was apparent to later New Testament authors as well as early Christian writers. The author of Luke/Acts describes the Jerusalem “council” as comprised of Peter and all the apostles including Paul and Barnabas (Acts 15). And the author suggests that Paul was in accordance with all that was spoken and decided by Peter and the apostles in Jerusalem. The author of Luke/Acts inaugurates the tendency in early Christian literature to harmonize the relationship between Peter and Paul, the concordia apostolorum. In the late first century, the letter 1 Clement, purportedly from Rome addressed to Corinth, mentions Peter and Paul as apostles and emphasizes their martyrdom, and in the Petrine epistles (1 and 2 Peter), Peter and Paul are designated as the authorities of the church.12 Such efforts to exhibit Peter and Paul as martyrs of the church, authoritative and unified, also illuminate the patristic effort to explain the discord that appears in Paul’s letter to the Galatians. The notion that Peter and Paul were not friendly with each other vexed fourthcentury church authors such as Jerome and Augustine, and allowed the critic Porphyry to advance his anti-Christian polemic by showing the apostles as disjoined.13 Jerome attempted to explain the pair’s dispute in Galatians with the suggestion that the conflict in Galatians was pure theater. He claimed that Paul was acting like a courtroom 11. However, this understanding of Cephas/Peter is not conclusive, and scholars such as Bart Ehrman have investigated this further, and suggested that “Cephas” is not the same individual as Simon Peter, but a different person. See Ehrman, “Cephas and Peter,” Journal of Biblical Literature 109, no. 3 (1990): 463–74. 12. See 1 Clem. 5.3–6.1. 13. Porphyry, Christ. frag. 26. See R. Joseph Hoffmann, Porphyry’s Against the Christians: The Literary Remains (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 1994).

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attorney, and merely playing a role by upbraiding Peter: “(Paul) opposed Peter and the others publicly so that their pretense of observing the law, which was harming believers of gentile background, might be remedied by his pretense of rebuking, and that each of the two apostles might be saved.”14 Augustine, writing in response to Jerome, corrected his interpretation, suggesting that the acrimony was real as Paul suggested. Channeling his North African forebear Cyprian, Augustine was interested in preserving unity at all cost, but not at the cost of scriptural integrity. For Augustine, there could be no role-playing or theatrics involved, for that would predicate on the assumption that the apostles were lying or being dishonest in their portrayal. The authority of the scriptures as well as the authority of the apostles would be undermined by Jerome’s interpretation that Paul and Peter were pantomiming their conflict. Moreover, Augustine commented that Peter accepted Paul’s rebuke, and by doing so exhibited humility; Peter understood the importance of ecclesial unity beyond his own ego.15 Augustine viewed the incident as highlighting the chief attribute of humility that even set Peter apart from Paul. Paul was performing his apostolic duty to correct his brother; however, Peter represents the church by accepting his correction in order to preserve unity. From the letter to Galatians, Paul was directed to the “Gentiles” and Peter to the “Jews” (“uncircumcised” and “circumcised”; Gal. 2:7). Paul was the missionary responsible for Christian expansion, and Peter was the leader vested by Jesus, the “rock” of the church. To suggest that their relationship was less than cordial would destabilize 14. Jerome, Comm. Gal. (PL 26:336) and see Augustine’s Commentary on Galatians, trans. E. Plumer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 46. 15. Augustine, Ep. 82 to Jerome (CSEL 34, 2:351–87). Also see Annewies van den Hoek and John Herrmann’s discussion in the chapter “The Saga of Peter and Paul,” in their Pottery, Pavements and Paradise: Iconographic and Textual Studies in Late Antiquity (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 301.

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one of the twin pillars of the foundation of the Christian ekklesia. Other patristic authors in early Christianity thus attempted to color their relationship as one of friendship rather than controversy, especially since they were two of the most reflected-upon apostles in the early Christian tradition. But early church authors continued to associate Peter and Paul with the city of Rome, even North African authors like Tertullian and Augustine.16 Rome became their designated locus, and Peter and Paul and their harmonization were profitable symbols to suggest the unity of the church, stemming from their representative mission to the Gentiles and to the Jews. Peter and Paul’s harmonization appeared in early Christian noncanonical texts as well, also emphasizing their connection to Rome. Irenaeus of Lyons commented that Peter and Paul were not only responsible for founding the church, they did so by “preaching in Rome.”17 While neither Paul’s death nor Peter’s is recorded in the New Testament, it was suggested that Rome was the site of their martyrdom. Eusebius wrote in his Ecclesiastical History that Paul was beheaded in Rome, and Peter was crucified, and their relics reside in the city as “trophies” of those that “founded the church.”18 From the second century onward, the story of Peter and Paul’s martyrdom in Rome cemented their status as founders of the church, and also instigated the institution of sacred space associated with their martyrdom in Rome. The Basilica of St. Peter’s and St. Paul’s Outside the Walls were constructed above the supposed remains of the apostles in the fourth century.19 In the cemetery below the church of S. Sebastiano in Rome, nearby other early Christian catacombs, graffiti and inscriptions indicate a belief that the apostles were 16. Tertullian, Praescr., 36 (CPL 5). 17. Irenaeus, Haer., 3.1.1. See Sources chrétiennes 210 (Paris: Cerf, 1974). 18. Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 2.25.5–7. See Sources chrétiennes, 31, 41, 55 (Paris: Cerf, 1952–58). 19. See Robert Markus’s essay, “How on Earth Could Places Be Holy?: Origins of the Christian Idea of Holy Places,” in Journal of Early Christian Studies 2, no. 3 (1994): 257–71.

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interred perhaps for a time in this place. Numerous inscriptions address the apostles as intercessors, and some claim Peter and Paul were indeed “here” at S. Sebastiano. In the fourth century, Pope Damasus helped construct the idea of Rome as the city of Peter and Paul by establishing feast days for each. The Damasus inscription that now resides above S. Sebastiano on the Via Appia states, “Whoever seeks the name of Peter together with Paul should know that the saints once were here.” And further, “Rome most merits to claim them as her citizens. Let Damasus tell these your praises, you new stars.”20 Prudentius also writes poems about the importance of the Roman catacombs as worship spaces in his Peristephanon, and of the importance of venerating the two founders of the church.21 Prudentius writes: . . . or already there reign here the two chiefs of the apostles, the one who called the Gentiles while the other occupies the foremost chair and opens the gates of eternity which were committed to his keeping. Away, thou lecherous Jupiter, defiled with the violation of thy sister! Leave Rome at liberty, flee from her people who are now Christ’s. Paul banishes thee hence, the blood of Peter drives thee out. That deed of Nero’s for which thou didst put the sword in his hand hurts thee.22

Prudentius clearly notes Rome as the city of Christ, but moreover as the city of Paul and Peter marked by their blood as martyrs. As Roman authors in the fourth century indicate, the identities of Peter 20. A. Ferrua, Epigrammata Damasiana 20 (Vatican City: Pontificio Istituto di Archeologia Cristiana, 1942), 139. Also see Reider Hvalvik’s chapter “Christ Proclaiming His Law to the Apostles: The Traditio Legis-Motif in Early Christian Art and Literature,” in The New Testament and Early Christian Literature in Greco-Roman Context: Studies in Honor of David E. Aune (Leiden: Brill, 2006). Hvalvik pays closer attention to the motif in literature, but also highlights the emphasis on Rome and the ecclesial nature of the motif. Also see Henry Chadwick’s “St. Peter and St. Paul in Rome: The Problem of the Memoria Apostolorum ad Catacumbas,” Journal of Theological Studies (1957): 31–52. Chadwick proposes that in the third century in Rome, the catacombs were sites of private celebrations of the apostles. 21. Prudentius, Peristephanon 11.175–90 (CCSL 126). 22. Prudentius, Peristephanon 2.460–70.

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and Paul are now fully ingrained into the identity of the city, and thus the identity of the “Roman” church. Stories of the martyrdoms appear in noncanonical texts such as the Acts of Paul that date from the late second to early third century. The text suggests that Paul was martyred in Rome under Nero, and at the moment of his execution, he prayed in Hebrew, and stretched his neck onto the block. (This was similar to the moment of Perpetua’s death in the Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicity where Perpetua guides the gladiator’s blade to her neck. The martyred saints are thus depicted as having control over their fate.) As the executioner struck the killing blow, blood and milk spurted out of the trunk of Paul, likely representing nourishment and possibly baptism, for the Christian community.23 In the noncanonical Acts of Peter, the martyrdom of Peter is depicted at the end of the text, also purportedly taking place under Nero. Peter expresses the desire to be crucified upside down, and after the executioners oblige his request, he speaks his final words and dies, whereupon Marcellus takes the body down. Interestingly, Marcellus washes Peter’s body in wine and milk, sharing a common element with the death scene in the Acts of Paul.24 Peter and Paul not only found the church together, they die together, as expressed in these documents. In the fourth-century text, the Acts of Peter and Paul, the apostles are even more tightly connected, stating that the apostles are the “two great lights” that should not be parted from each other, “neither Peter from Paul, nor Paul from Peter.”25 As the early church

23. Acts of Paul 3.5. For a critical edition of all of the apocryphal acts of the apostles, see Acta apostolorum apocrypha, ed. R. A. Lipsius, M. Bonnet, and H. Kraft (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1891). See Wilhelm Schneemelcher, New Testament Apocrypha, 6th edition, 2 vols. (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1989). Also see Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicity 6.4. 24. Acts of Peter 40. 25. Acts of Peter and Paul, ANF 8.477.

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progressed, so did the notion of concordance between Peter and Paul in life and death.26 Peter, Moses, and the Law The Acts of Peter can also yield a greater understanding of the role of Peter in the early Christian visual tradition. The apostle was portrayed as a formidable miracle worker in the apocryphal Acts of Peter.27 In one instance, Peter releases water from the wall of his jail cell, and then baptizes the Roman converts, Processus and Martinianus.28 The episode bears a strong resemblance to the miracle of Moses releasing water from a rock in Exodus and Numbers (Exod. 17:6; Num. 20:11). The text of Peter’s miracle, his version of striking the rock, was preserved in a Latin version narrated by Pseudo-Linus and inserted into the narrative prior to the episode of Peter’s martyrdom.29 The date of the text was likely late fourth century; however, the story and legend of Peter striking the rock was probably much older as it was transmitted through oral tradition. The stories of Peter’s miracles and abilities, compiled in the Acts of Peter, were possibly well-told tales. In some memorable instances, Peter out26. Also see David Eastman, Paul the Martyr: The Cult of the Apostle in the Latin West (Atlanta: SBL, 2011). 27. Acts of Peter 5 (Linus text). For further reading see Robin M. Jensen, “Moses Imagery in Jewish and Christian Art,” SBLSP (1992): 395–98. For the Latin text see Lipsius, Acta Apostolorum Apocrypha (Hildesheim: G. Olms, 1959), vol. 1, 1–22; for the text and transmission see W. Schneemelcher, New Testament Apocrypha (London: SCM), II, 285. 28. Acts of Peter 5 (Linus text). The text certainly depicts Peter as a wonder worker. Processus and Martinianus are so grateful that they help Peter escape from jail. Upon his escape, Peter meets Christ on the road outside Rome and becomes aware of his destiny. 29. See Andrew Gregory, The Reception of Luke and Acts in the Period before Irenaeus (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), 347. The dating of the text is a problematic and complicated issue that can only be briefly noted here. The Linus text possibly dates as late as the sixth century; however, Thomas argues for a late fourth-century dating, and also notes (as Jensen does) that the stories in the Acts of Peter were passed down through oral tradition, and very well could be as early as the second century. See Christine Thomas, The Acts of Peter, Gospel Literature, and the Ancient Novel: Rewriting the Past (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 43 and 14. Also see C. Pietri, “Pierre-Moïse et sa communauté,” Roma Christiana 1 (1976): 336–40.

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dueled Simon Magus, made a dog speak, and even brought smoked herring back to life.30 All recorded instances of Peter striking the rock on relief sculpture begin appearing in the second quarter of the fourth century.31 The dating of the visual art suggests that Christians knew the story of Peter striking the rock well enough to portray it frequently. In early Christian art, the way Peter is depicted in the striking of the rock scene is analogous to Moses striking the rock (Figs. 2, 3).

Fig. 2. Moses striking the rock; Jesus raising Lazarus Fourth century CE, Rome, Museo Pio Cristiano, Vatican Museums. Photo: Author.

30. Acts of Peter 12–14. 31. This is confirmed in Bovini and Brandenburg, Repertorium, Band I, pt. 3, 86–87.

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Fig. 3. Peter striking the rock; arrest of Peter Fourth century CE, Rome, Museo Pio Cristiano, Vatican Museums. Photo: Author.

Both figures are portrayed standing next to a rock-like wall, striking it with the staff as a stream of water rushes down the side. In the catacomb images, Moses is portrayed striking the rock for the Israelites, as Moses uses his staff to produce the water while one or more followers anxiously await its release. In Christian relief sculpture Moses is still represented as a major character; however, in the striking of the rock he is often replaced with the figure of Peter.32 The conflation of Moses and Peter makes it difficult to interpret the identity of the main character whenever the striking of the rock 32. For example, the Crossing of the Red Sea occurs eleven times in the Roman corpus, and fifteen times in the Gallic and North African corpus. Bovini and Brandenburg, Repertorium, Band I, 121; Christern-Briesenick, Repertorium, Band III, 300; also see plates in Band III, 340, 356.

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appears on Christian relief sculpture: Is the staff-wielder Moses or is it Peter? Some clues help determine whether the agent striking the rock is Moses or Peter. When the striking of the rock occurs among other scenes, it is common for the image to appear at one end of the relief, as on the Sarcophagus of Marcus Claudianus (Fig. 1). This is perhaps due to carving techniques, as the “water” featured in the scene serves as a border encapsulating the carved scenes. Next to the scene of the striking of the rock is a depiction of the arrest of Peter, a biblically canonical episode related in Acts 12. Peter, bearded, is grasped on either side by soldiers, denoted by their short tunics and head coverings, as he clutches his staff. The cock standing at his feet, visible in the Marcus Claudianus example, occasionally identifies Peter, reminding viewers of his betrayal of Christ (Fig. 1). When one or more of these Petrine scenes occur in conjunction with the striking of the rock, it is conclusive that the agent in the striking of the rock is Peter. Once the staff is associated with Peter in the striking of the rock, the instrument does not go away. In surrounding scenes of the arrest of Peter and Peter’s betrayal, the apostle is shown clutching the staff in his hand. Although the staff is not an integral part of the action as in the striking of the rock, the art exhibits the Christian desire to associate Peter with Moses by including this visual attribute with Peter.33 It is curious why Christians would be interested in replacing a frequently depicted scene of Moses from the catacombs with a scene of Peter. Even if the story of Peter baptizing his jailers was popular, there were several examples of Peter baptizing in the Acts of the 33. In nonfunerary art as in the apse mosaic of S. Costanza, Peter is handed the law from Christ bearing a strong resemblance to Moses and clutching a thin rod that is further meant to associate Peter with Moses. For further reading, see Hugo Brandenburg, Ancient Churches of Rome from the Fourth to the Seventh Century (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), 82–6. Also see Dale Allison, The New Moses (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1994), 106–9. Allison suggests that the artistic representations of the striking of the rock may have elicited the apocryphal story involving Peter baptizing his jailers.

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Apostles that would seem more likely candidates for early Christians to portray.34 The apocryphal selection was chosen since it firmly places Peter in the guise of Moses. The staff is the key visual element that connects Peter to Moses, and by inserting Peter into the narrative he assumes the place of Moses in Christian art. Not only is Peter the New Moses, the shepherd of the church just as Moses was shepherd of the Israelites, but Peter is inserted into a scene connoting baptism. Peter is portrayed as the first bishop of the church, endowed to perform Christ’s holy sacrament. The apocryphal text from the Acts of Peter was chosen due to its portrayal of Peter as Moses within the context of baptism. No baptismal scene in Acts has the apostle wielding an instrument releasing water from the rock as in Exodus and appearing as the Jewish patriarch. On the sarcophagi frontals Christ wields the staff as well; however, Peter is also associated with Moses due to his inclusion in the striking of the rock. The Jewish patriarch becomes the Christian patriarch, as the inclusion of the apocryphal scene makes clear: Peter is a miracle worker and leader on par with Moses. The baptismal stories involving Peter were not the only influential texts that exhibited the wonder-working ability of Peter. There were also stories of Peter’s remarkable ability as a healer. The first half of Acts includes several notable accounts of Peter’s ability as a healer. He healed the lame with his touch, and with his voice in the name of Jesus; and he even raised Tabitha/Dorcas back to life.35 Peter healed not only directly but indirectly. As Jesus healed the woman with the issue of blood indirectly, Peter’s shadow healed in Acts 5:15: “so that they even carried out the sick into the streets, and laid them on cots and mats, in order that Peter’s shadow might fall on some of them as 34. As in Acts 2:40 and 10:48, and his report on baptism to the church at 11:15. 35. In Acts 3, Peter heals a crippled beggar; Peter heals Aeneas in the name of Jesus in Acts 9:32, and Peter resurrects Tabitha/Dorcas in Acts 9:41.

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he came by.” The accounts involving Peter in Acts demonstrate the many options early Christians could consider when depicting Peter in art. Granted, carving an image of Peter’s shadow healing men and women would be difficult. Instead of selecting from Acts, the early Christians relied upon a rather obscure instance of Peter baptizing his jailers from the Acts of Peter to decorate their funerary monuments and deliberately show Peter as Moses. While Christ is continually portrayed as a miracle worker, Peter’s most frequent miracle depiction is the striking of the rock. Other miracles involving Peter are rare in early Christian art. Christ still performs miracles with the staff, often on the same frontals as Peter striking the rock with the staff (Figs. 1, 4).

Fig. 4. Moses receiving the Law to the left of the clipeus; Peter striking the rock and his arrest, below left 330-350 CE, Rome, Museo Pio Cristiano, Vatican Museums. Photo: Author.

The art indicates that the staff is in the act of being appropriated by

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Peter. In these examples that include both Jesus and Peter brandishing staffs, it seems that Christ is cast as the supreme miracle worker greater than Moses, while Peter is inaugurated as the New Moses, the Christian patriarch of the church. Following the third century there was certainly a Christian insistence on comparing Peter to Moses. In the wake of the Decian persecution, Cyprian advocated the church as the sole gateway to salvation.36 To underline this image of the church and its episcopate as the only dispensers of grace, Cyprian utilized Peter: “A primacy is given to Peter, and it is made clear that there is but one Church and one Chair.”37 Subsequent authors not only endorsed Cyprian’s notion of the unity of the church as established by one man, Peter, they also profitably compared Peter to Moses. Augustine in his treatise Against Faustus compares Peter’s volatile swordplay in Gethsemane to Moses killing the Egyptian.38 Similarly, Maximus of Turin preached specifically that Jesus “sailed in the Red Sea” with Moses but eventually “He chooses Peter’s boat and forsakes Moses’; that is to say, He spurns the faithless synagogue and takes the faithful Church.”39 Peter as representative of the church naturally becomes identified as the “rock”: the representative of the church and the leader and gate to salvation. Naturally, Christian art followed suit, discarding the Jewish Moses for the Christian one found in Peter. The image of the traditio legis suggests Peter as a new Moses as well. This can be witnessed in early Christian art and early Christian texts. Early Christian authors began to illustrate Jesus as the giver of the new law and thus a new Moses in the third and fourth centuries 36. See Cyprian, Unit. eccl. 4–5 (CCL 3.249–68) and see J. P. Burns, Cyprian the Bishop (New York: Routledge, 2002), 82 for an excellent commentary on Cyprian’s Carthage. 37. Cyp. Unit. eccl. 4. See Cyprian: De Lapsis and De Ecclesiae Catholicae Unitate, trans. M. Bévenot (Oxford: Clarendon, 1971), 63. 38. Augustine, Faust. 22.70 (CSEL 25.666–67), citing John 18:10 and Exod. 2:12. 39. Maximus of Turin, Sermon 49. See The Sermons of Maximus of Turin, trans. Boniface Ramsey; ACW (New York: Newman, 1989, 115).

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onward. Tertullian refers to Isaiah as foreshadowing the coming of Jesus. In his tract against Marcion, he talks of the gospel as the new law and the “new words in Christ, no longer in Moses.”40 For Tertullian, Jesus is the replacement for Moses. Eusebius of Caesarea in his Proof of the Gospel addresses the new law in Jesus that has come for the Gentiles. Eusebius cites the miracles of Christ as the “proof” of the gospel in the third book of his tract.41 The healings and miracles of Christ “were the proofs of his divinity,” legitimating his identity as son of God. In order to rebut critics that challenged the veracity of Christ’s miracles, Eusebius argued that the disciples of Christ were eyewitnesses and spoke truly of Jesus’ miracle-working ability. Eusebius not only touted the infallibility of Peter in his defense of Christ’s miracles, “the apostle and disciple who was chief of them all,” but also described Jesus’ commission of the disciples as an order to “aim higher than the Jews under Moses’ commandments.” 42 It does not seem accidental, after surveying the textual evidence touting Peter and Paul as Roman martyrs, that multiple early Christian sarcophagi from Rome feature an image of Moses receiving the law and Peter striking the rock, connecting the two figures. In several double-register sarcophagi in the Museo Pio Cristiano at the Vatican, Moses receives the law in a typical motif symbolizing the event from Exodus. Moses reaches out to take a rolled-up scroll, representing the law, from a hand suggesting the hand of God. Moses is directly to one side of the clipeus in the upper register (Fig. 4). On the lower register to the left, Peter is performing his miracle and is depicted arrested by soldiers. On the Two Brothers Sarcophagus, 40. Tertullian, Marc. 3.21. CPL 14; Latin and English in E. Evans, Adversus Marcionem, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1972). 41. Eusebius, Praep. ev. 3.4.109b. See the translation by W. J. Ferrar, The Proof of the Gospel, Being the Demonstratio Evangelica of Eusebius of Caesarea, vols. I and II (London, 1920). Critical edition, see Sources chrétiennes, La préparation évangelique, ed. J. Sirinelli (Paris: Cerf, 1974). 42. Eusebius, Praep. ev. 3.5.123; 3.5.109 (Ferrar). Eusebius found that the aforementioned “critics” of Christ’s miracles included Porphyry.

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Moses receives the law above, while directly below, Peter strikes the rock to baptize his jailers (Fig. 5).

Fig. 5. Upper register: Jesus predicting Peter’s denial, Moses receiving the Law; below left, Peter striking the rock; Two Brothers Sarcophagus, mid-fourth century CE, Rome, Museo Pio Cristiano, Vatican Museums. Photo: Author.

While visually this connection between Moses and Peter seems apparent, there is a further visual connection concerning the law. On some sarcophagus examples, including the Two Brothers Sarcophagus that feature Moses and Peter, Jesus is shown holding the law represented as a rolled-up scroll, usually in a prediction of Peter’s betrayal. Directly next to Moses receiving the law adjacent to the clipeus is a scene of Jesus bearing a scroll next to Peter, represented by his symbol of betrayal, the cock. On another example at the Museo Pio Cristiano, Moses stands on a rock next to the clipeus, receiving the law (Fig. 6).

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Fig. 6. Upper register: Jesus dividing loaves, handing Law to Peter, Moses receiving the Law, fourth-century CE, Rome, Museo Pio Cristiano, Vatican Museums. Photo: Author.

And next to Moses is a depiction of Jesus, appearing to hand the law represented as a rolled-up scroll to Peter. The cock appears at the feet of Peter, visually identifying the figure as Peter to its audience. On these examples, Moses and Peter are not only visually connected through the water miracle, but they are connected through the law. The law visually moves from Moses to Jesus, and eventually to Peter. The impact on the viewing audience is emphatic: Peter performs miracles like Moses utilizing the staff, and he receives the law akin to Moses. The scroll and the staff are symbols of his authority. As mentioned above, the scene of Peter baptizing his Roman jailers from the Acts of Peter becomes a popular motif in early Christian funerary art to exhibit Peter utilizing Moses’ staff to perform the

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miracle. Peter is thus a new Moses through the act of performing a miracle like Moses in Exodus, visually appropriating Moses’ miracleworking talisman given to him by God. In the traditio legis, Peter also appropriates a visual symbol of Moses, only this time it is not the miracle-working staff but a scroll. Peter assumes the role of Moses in the giving of the law, only now in the traditio legis the giver is not God but Jesus. Visually, the scene of Peter striking the rock and the traditio legis appear congruent, and both suggest Peter as the New Moses for an important effect: to strongly suggest the authority of Peter, the symbol of the church so well established by early church authors such as Cyprian. “Reading” these images alongside patristic references also makes their suggestion of ecclesiology rather than eschatology or imperial authority even more apparent. Deckers, Grabar, and Belting fail to read the traditio legis within the miracleworking context in which it so often appears. The traditio legis is certainly about authority, just not the emperor’s. The authority belongs to the church represented by Peter. Some examples of mosaics and paintings in worship spaces can also suggest this conclusion as well. Mausoleum of Costanza In Deckers’s essay, he focuses on church art, not funerary art—on mosaics and frescos, apses and cupolas that depict Christ as “larger than life.” The traditio legis is an example that Deckers uses, and one specific image he includes is of Jesus giving the law in the Mausoleum of Costanza. However, this image too can be seen as ecclesial rather than imperial (Fig. 7).

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Fig. 7. Traditio clavium mosaic 350 CE, Rome, Mausoleum of Costanza. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

In the Mausoleum of Costanza, built for Constantine’s sister in 350 ce, two opposing apses are decorated in mosaics featuring Peter. In one, Jesus is depicted as Pantocrator, seated on a celestial orb, clad in purple, bearded, and handing what may be keys to Peter while holding a scroll (Fig. 8). In the other, a very different-looking Jesus descends above the four rivers of creation, bearing the law to a very different-looking Peter, and flanked by Paul. Deckers focuses more on the traditio clavium image, as it fulfills all the components of an imperial influence. Christ is regally dressed in purple, towers above the cosmos, and endows the keys to a suppliant Peter in a pose that suggests, arguably, the etiquette and reverence due to the emperor. However, in this mausoleum, the traditio legis reveals more of an ecclesiastical message and less of an imperial one (Fig. 7). Christ is clad in brilliant gold gowns, bearing the law. While this image seems to bear a typically

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Johannine Christology in its depiction of Jesus (Christ as the divine Logos, pre-creation above the four rivers of Creation from Genesis), the very different image of Peter deserves comment. Peter looks aged, and not necessarily bearing a suppliant pose as in the other apse image. Peter bears the resemblance of Moses, and Moses/Peter comparisons within the traditio legis motif are apt. Jesus brings down the law from heaven, handing it to Peter, just as Moses received the law from the hand of God. Peter thus is the New Moses, the new patriarch of the New Israel, bearing the new law. Yet there is still an important symbol within the Costanza image that recalls the continued flurry of miracle-working images in this post-pacem era. Peter in Costanza is further identified as the New Moses by bearing a thin reed-like staff. Peter inherits the miracle-working staff of Moses in this mausoleum image. Seemingly, in this particular image in Costanza, the interpretation is not necessarily imperial. Instead it reveals the valence of scriptural miracles and miracle workers, connecting the first Bishop of Rome to the figures referred to by Origen: “There have been two men who have come to visit the human race of whom supernatural miracles have been recorded; I mean Moses, your lawgiver . . . and Jesus.”43 Jesus is endowing the church as the holder, giver, and sustainer of miracles.

43. Origen, Cels. 1.45, trans. Henry Chadwick (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965).

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Fig. 8. Traditio legis mosaic 350 CE, Rome, Mausoleum of Costanza. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

Hypogeum of Via Dino Compagni In a subterranean structure uncovered in 1956 on the Via Latina, adjacent to the Via Dino Compagni on the outskirts of Rome, a bevy of rooms were discovered that featured both non-Christian and Christian images. In a niche in Room I is the depiction of Christ seated in glory giving the law to Peter and Paul, dating from the late fourth century.44 In this work of art, Christ is particularly depicted in similar garb as his disciples, holding an open scroll. Paul is readily recognizable with his balding pate while Peter is completely hidden by a pile of reinforced concrete; however, both figures are dressed alike and hold scrolls. With such overlap with other fourth-century depictions of the traditio legis, it seems likely the label accurately

44. For the image, see A. Ferrua, The Unknown Catacomb: A Unique Discovery of Early Christian Art (New Lanark, Scotland: Geddes & Grosset, 1990), fig. 105.

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fits the painting in Room I. Catacomb paintings occasionally complement one another, and across the hall in an opposing niche is a particularly vexing image known as the “anatomy lesson” painting (Fig. 9).45

Fig. 9. “Anatomy lesson” painting, mid-fourth century CE, New York, Rome, Via Latina Catacomb, Room I. Photo: Scala Archives.

The “anatomy lesson” painting may reveal the ecclesial nature of its companion image, the traditio legis. In the “anatomy lesson” painting, the central figure along with the first and third disciples on the left are gesturing toward the body. The two disciples immediately to the right of Christ are in conversation as one holds his hand in the gesture of speech or blessing, and the other bears the staff. At first glance, it is curious that Peter, the rock of the church, would not sit immediately next to Christ. A possible 45. A. Ferrua, La pittura della nuova catacomba di via Latina (Rome, 1960), pl. 108.

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answer to this positioning is that the disciple closest to Jesus is the Beloved Disciple from the Gospel of John. While the authors of John obviously were commenting upon Peter’s proximity to Jesus, the epilogue of John depicts Jesus reiterating that Peter is the disciple on whom the establishment of the church relies (“Feed my sheep”).46 Notably, a Johannine interpretation supports the argument that the disciple wielding the staff and not sitting directly beside Jesus is Peter. The disciple bearing the staff pointing toward the supine body is consistent with cognate representations of Peter. The figure has the same facial type and beard as other depictions of Peter. The artistic portrayal of the figure does not look dissimilar to less-questioned images of Peter in catacomb art and on funerary sculpture. Images portraying Peter raising the dead are rare in early Christian art; however, an interpretation of Peter performing the ultimate miracle of divine authority is plausible.47 With the portrayal of the disciple holding such a talisman as the staff that is identifiable in related scenes of raising the dead, the image signifies that the miracle-working power of Jesus is transferred to the chief representative of his church. By focusing on the facial expression of each figure, such an interpretation can delve beyond assertion. Every disciple in the 46. John 21:17. A Johannine interpretation is compelling as it is congruent with other fourthcentury representations (such as the Sarcophagus of Marcus Claudianus) that feature Johannine miracles such as Lazarus and Cana among others. 47. Peter raising Tabitha appears in later instances in Christian art on ivories in the British Museum, visually emphasizing Peter as Christ’s heir. See Herbert Kessler, “Scenes from the Acts of the Apostles on Some Early Christian Ivories,” in Gesta 18, no. 1 (November 1977–February 1978): 112. Kessler cites a possible Late Antique example of Peter raising Tabitha at Arles (however, it is unclear what image he is referencing), but it is not conclusively Peter, and more likely it is Christ raising Jairus’s daughter along with the woman with the issue of blood. F. Benoit suggests that it is “le Christ ressuscite la fille de Jaïre . . . et tandis qu’au pied du Christ est prosternée la mère de la défunte, mentionée par les évangelistes Marc et Luc” (Sarcophages paleochrétiens d’Arles et de Marseille [Paris, 1954], 50, pl. 19). Benoit does indeed label a fragment at the collection of Arles “The Raising of Tabitha” (Sarcophages paleochrétiens, 39, pl. 7), although this is also debatable. Also see Jefferson, “Is This Man a Physician, a Philosopher, or a God?: Revisiting the ‘Anatomy Lesson’ Catacomb Painting,” Sewanee Theological Review (Easter 2013): 169–95.

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painting is staring at the staff-wielder, Peter, not the central figure or the body at their feet. The figures on either side of Peter look directly at him, making this trait even more recognizable. Instead of regarding Jesus, the disciples attentively look at Jesus’ representative who proves his significance and authority by performing miracles like his Master, symbolized by the implement of the staff. As Peter is the only disciple depicted in the canon of Christian art as wielding a staff, an identification of Peter becomes more dependable.48 Early Christian art accentuates that Christ has the divine mandate to perform great miracles such as raising the dead, and as the painting in the Hypogeum on Via Dino Compagni reveals, so do representatives of his church. An image implying resurrection and the healing power of Christ would coincide nicely with the theme of Christ giving the law. That these images are in the same environment as Room I is not accidental. The “anatomy lesson” painting does not merely suggest that Christ himself is greater than any rival miracle worker, but so is his church. By showing his disciple with the miracle-working staff, the image stresses the power and efficacy of Christ and the church as well as highlighting the future resurrection in a funerary setting. The instrument wielded by the disciple instead of the physician supports such an interpretation. Fittingly, the painting would accentuate the healing power of Christ’s church through Peter opposite an image that explicitly depicts the bestowal of authority upon the church.49 Thus, the Master bequeaths the staff to his disciple—a theme that is prevalent in other mediums of fourth-century Christian art, even at

48. Mathews also has a relevant discussion of Peter and the staff; see The Clash of Gods, 87: “The energy of Christ had passed on to his successor.” 49. See Erwin Goodenough, “Catacomb Art,” Journal of Biblical Literature 81, no. 2 (June 1962): 129. Goodenough believes it recalls Acts 9:36, Peter’s power to raise the dead: “The healing and saving power of Christ through his church, especially Peter, seems to me, then, to be perhaps the idea depicted.”

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Costanza. In fourth-century art, Peter is emphatically depicted as a miracle worker like Christ, and the rock of the church. Early Christian art accentuates that Christ has the divine mandate to perform great miracles such as raising the dead, and as the painting in the Hypogeum on Via Dino Compagni reveals, so do representatives of his church, a church that is visually established in the traditio legis image at Costanza by the very similar miracleworking implement. In the Hypogeum hall, the traditio legis image adjacent to the “anatomy lesson” is not bearing imperial overtones either, given its context. Jesus is endowing the rock of his church with apostolic authority, making ecclesial unity and power the theme of Room I, just as it seems to be the theme in the Costanza apse. Santa Pudenziana In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus issues his disciples a mandate to work healings and wonders in his name.50 In Acts, Peter is emphasized as a uniquely effective agent of Christ’s power, not only healing physically through touch but even healing those that encounter his shadow.51 This understanding of Peter, the newly found rock of Christ’s church and preeminent representative of Christ’s miracle-working power, can be found in scriptures like Acts, where even Peter’s shadow heals, and in the apocryphal Acts of Peter, where the disciple is portrayed as a formidable miracle worker who even has a wizard’s duel with Simon Magus. This understanding of Peter is also apparent in early church writings. To push the image of the church and its episcopate as the only dispensers of grace, the third-century author Cyprian utilized Peter: “A primacy is given to Peter, and it is made clear that there is but one Church and one Chair.”52 50. Mark 16:17. 51. Acts 5:15; also see Acts 4:7, where Peter states that his power comes from Christ. 52. Cyp. Unit. eccl. 4.

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But there is also an issue with actual “chairs” in the traditio legis images. One notable example that Deckers uses to advance such an imperial influence is the apse mosaic of Santa Pudenziana, which dates from the late fourth century (see cover image).53 The image depicts Jesus, clad in a gold tunic, bearded, holding an open book, and seated above the apostles. This mosaic readily fulfills the “Emperor Mystique” prophecy: the image of Jesus seated in a bejeweled throne is an image of Christ as the emperor. This interpretation is so readily accepted that often this image is classified as “imperial.” However, Mathews attempts to poke holes in such an interpretation of Santa Pudenziana and in the “Emperor Mystique” as well. He points out that Jesus does not bear the typical dress of the emperor, nor does he bear a scepter, and the large-backed enormous throne that Jesus sits in is not the typical sella curulis that an emperor would be seen sitting in at court.54 Since Jesus is clad in gold, in a throne heavily ornamented in jewels, the tendency is to interpret Jesus as an emperor, but Mathews persuasively argues that Jesus instead is depicted in the vein of other gods of the pantheon, focusing more on the facial prototype of Jesus and his similarities to Jupiter, Sarapis, and Asclepius.55 With Deckers’s recent essay in mind, some members of the scholarly audience are far from convinced that Mathews’s rebuttal is correct. While Mathews focuses on the facial prototype of Jesus, it is beneficial to follow up on his discussion of the actual “chair” and its presence and absence in images featuring the traditio legis. On sarcophagi carvings, such as the frontal of the Junius Bassus sarcophagus, Jesus is seated above a depiction of the heavens, Caelus the sky god, handing the law to his disciples. In another Vatican 53. Deckers, “Constantine the Great and Early Christian Art,” 96–97. 54. Mathews, Clash of Gods, 101–3. 55. Ibid., 104.

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example dating from the fourth century, Jesus is depicted similarly, bearing the open scroll to Peter while seated above a depiction of Caelus, separating Jesus from the earthly realm (Fig. 10).

Fig. 10. Fourth century CE, Rome, Sarcophagus of the Traditio Legis, Museo Pio Cristiano, Vatican Museums. Photo: Robin M. Jensen, used with permission.

The depiction of a seated or standing Christ conferring the law possibly exhibits the joining of heavenly and earthly power, and has been interpreted to exhibit imperial self-representation. The seated Christ above the heavens, however, has a commonality with the descending Jesus as in Costanza. Both are depicted as above creation, outside of creation, outside of time. Both images connote an eternal Jesus, or as Justin Martyr declared, “[T]he Father of the Universe has a Son; who being the Logos and first-begotten is also God. And formerly he appeared in the form of fire and in the image of a bodiless being to Moses and to the other prophets.” 56 The seated Jesus, outside of time, endows his church to Peter. It certainly is an authoritative image, but claiming it as imperial authority is not entirely definitive. A seated Jesus in the conferral of the law is also not uniform in fourth-century art. Other sarcophagi feature a standing Jesus, flanked 56. Justin, 1 Apol. 63. See Iustini Martyris Apologiae Pro Christianis (Patristische Texte und Studien), ed. Miroslav Marcovich (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1995), 121–23. And see Leslie William Barnard, trans., ACW (New York: Paulist, 1997), 69.

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by Peter and Paul, bearing an open scroll (Fig. 11). In another example from the Vatican, Jesus appears to be preaching or teaching. He stands atop a rock; occasionally the rock appears to have streams bursting forth, akin to the rivers of creation depicted in mosaic art.

Fig. 11. Jesus standing, delivering the law, Fourth century CE, Rome, Museo Pio Cristiano, Vatican Museums. Photo: Author.

The lambs, representing the apostles, are at the feet of Jesus, and while this seems congruent with a Cosmic Christ at Costanza or at the Basilica of Cosmas and Damien in the forum—Jesus as the Logos appearing at the Creation event bearing the law—it does not suggest an imperial precedent.57 This Jesus could be a philosopher-type Jesus, teaching the new law to his pupils/disciples. Portraying Jesus as a philosopher, as the supreme philosopher, is apparent in art and text 57. Worthy of note is Hvalvik’s argument that Jesus in this scene including lambs is recalling Isa. 2:2-3; thus Jesus is standing on Mt. Zion, and the lambs are approaching the Lamb of God. The “nations” are thus approaching Zion, and the scene is one of victory. See Hvalvik, “Christ Proclaiming His Law,” 436–37.

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of the early Christian period. For example, Justin endeavored greatly to exhibit Christianity as the “true philosophy” and superior to any Greek authors; as he states in his Apology, “For Moses is more ancient than all the Greek writers.”58 There are also examples of a seated Jesus in the canon of fourth-century evidence at Arles as well as Rome. Jesus is seated with a scroll, and in the Arles example, surrounded by his disciples (Fig. 12).

Fig. 12. Jesus seated with his disciples, Fourth century, Musée de l’Arles et de la Provence Antiques, Arles, France. Photo: Robin M. Jensen, used with permission.

Jesus is not seemingly evoking the emperor or the imperial cult, but appears to his listeners as the teacher of the true Christian philosophy. Conclusion My reading of the evidence conflicts with Deckers, Grabar, and the “orthodox” viewpoint. Namely, such a position does not fully take into the account the cognate scenes of miracles that were omnipresent in this era. And on sarcophagi that feature multiple scenes, Christ’s healings and miracles, though not always the central scene, flank many scenes of the enthroned Jesus, as in the Vatican example of a descending Jesus bestowing the law.59 Secondly, the 58. Justin, 1 Apol. 44.

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traditio legis is not uniformly depicted, and in the examples of church mosaic art as in Costanza, it seems that the miraculous aspect of the endowment of Peter through the symbol of the staff is still in play, especially considering the catacomb example of the “anatomy lesson” painting of the Hypogeum on the Via Dino Compagni. Finally, I find that a standing or seated Jesus as portrayed in fourthcentury sarcophagi is not conclusively evocative of the emperor or imperial authority. Mathews takes care of the chair/throne issue in his treatment, but the chair is not always there. And when it is there, it does not necessarily recall the emperor but Christ and his church, handing the law to Peter as the New Moses. The traditio legis is not imperial but ecclesial, and the authority invoked is the church’s authority represented by Peter, not the emperor. The theme of the traditio legis arguably loses its imperial flavor as time moves forward into the medieval era. For example, on an ivory from the late twelfth century, Jesus bestows the law and the keys to Peter and Paul (Fig. 13).

59. For a relevant example, see David Knipp, Christus Medicus in der Fruhchristlichen Sarkophagskulptur: Ikonographische Studien der Sepulkralkunst des Spaten Vierten Jahrhunderts (Leiden: Brill, 1998), pl. 1 of a sarcophagus in Saint-Victor, Marseille depicting Christ in Majesty in the center, and Christ healing the blind man directly adjacent to this scene, dating from the first half of the fifth century. See Bovini and Brandenburg, Repertorium, Band I, Rom und Ostia. Also see J. Wilpert, I Sarcophagi cristiani antichi (Rome, 1929).

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Fig. 13. Christ Giving the Keys to Peter and Paul Late 12th century CE, Westphalia, Metropolitan Museum. Photo: Metropolitan Museum of Art, www.metmuseum.org.

Obviously no chair is detectable due to spatial limitation, but directly below Jesus and between the apostles is the dome of the church. Rather than the traditional pose, the dome is intended to clearly evoke a church dome. Thus, Jesus is seated above the church, his

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feet resting on the dome, not above the heavens or above a rock with rivers spilling out. The traditio legis has now fully embodied the sometimes subtle and not-so-subtle ecclesiastical messages embedded in the early Christian examples. Jesus bestows the law, but also invests his authority to Peter and therefore to the church. The traditio legis is an image of power, of unity, and of authority; it just is not the emperor’s authority, it is the authority of the One True Church. Hopefully, at this point in the study of early Christian art, we can now entertain some alternative theories, be they farfetched or more conclusive, to the long-held view of the power of the emperor on post-Constantinian art. Christian art is not cleanly divided upon the axis of Constantine, and perhaps we are too trained to see the emperor in a throne, a scroll, or a gold cloak. But perhaps we can begin to see what a fourth-century viewer saw, the eternal nature of Jesus endowing his church with power. The emperor is absent, but the church is indeed clearly present. From Moses to Jesus to Peter, the law visually reveals ecclesial power that a Late Antique audience would notice in a church or funerary environment.

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3

The Memory of “Peter” in Fourth-Century Rome: Church, Mausoleum, and Jupiter on the Via Praenestina

Douglas Boin

This study begins and ends at one archeological site in early fourthcentury Rome, but its subject goes well beyond this timeframe and incorporates much more than a geographically isolated example of Late Antique material culture. In many ways, it explores a twopronged theme: the centrality of the imperial cult from the time of Augustus to the moment when Christianity gained its status as a legal religio in Rome and the diversity of responses to it.1 I will not dwell 1. This study is part of my ongoing inquiry into Late Antique imperial cult, and so I have been selective with my bibliography. The volume edited by J. Brodd and J. Reed, Rome and Religion:

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here on why the divine emperor became such a fundamental aspect of Roman society.2 My concern here is to explore how individuals and communities responded to the divine emperor throughout the imperial and later Roman times; for the evidence suggests that people did so in diverse, multifarious, and oftentimes wildly inconsistent ways—especially Christians.3 Indeed, as I will show, although they are frequently stereotyped as unable or unwilling on principle to engage in shared moments of Roman civic life, not all Christians can be said to have resisted or rejected the workings of Rome’s imperial cult.4 This broader socialhistorical framework complicates the idea of what it meant to be Christian in the age of Constantine and opens up new avenues of exploration in material culture studies of early Christianity.

A Cross-Disciplinary Dialogue on the Imperial Cult (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2011), is foundational for its discussion of methodology. Other studies are cited below. 2. For Late Antiquity, see J. Arce, “Imperatori divinizzati,” in Aurea Roma: Dalla città pagana alla città cristiana, ed. S. Ensoli and E. La Rocca (Roma: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 2001), 244–48; see also G. Bonamente, “Dall’imperatore divinizzato all’imperatore santo,” in Pagans and Christians in the Roman Empire: The Breaking of a Dialogue (4th–6th Century A.D.), ed. P. Brown and R. Lizzi Testa (Zürich, 2011), 339–70; and idem., “Apoteosis e imperatori cristiani,” in I cristiani e l’impero nel IV secolo, ed. G. Bonamente and A. Nestori (Macerata, 1988), 107–42; F. Trombley, “The Imperial Cult in Late Roman Religion (ca. a.d. 244–395): Observations on the Epigraphy,” in Spätantiker Staat und religiöser Konflikt: Imperiale und lokale Verwaltung und die Gewalt gegen Heiligtümer (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2011), 19–54; and P. van Nuffelen, “Zur Rezeption des Kaiserkultes in der Spätantike,” Ancient Society 32 (2002): 263–82. 3. For the idea of an imperial cult system, as opposed to “the imperial cult,” see S. Friesen, “Normal Religion, or, Words Fail Us: A Response to Karl Galinsky’s ‘The Cult of the Roman Emperor: Uniter or Divider?’” in Brodd and Reed, eds., 23–26. Generally, see also M. Clauss, Kaiser und Gott: Herrscherkult im römischen Reich (Stuttgart: Teubner, 1999); D. Fishwick, The Imperial Cult in the Latin West: Studies in the Ruler Cult of the Western Provinces of the Roman Empire (Leiden: Brill, 1987–2005); and I. Gradel, Emperor Worship and Roman Religion (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). 4. For one competing analysis of early Christianity and imperial cult, see A. Brent, The Imperial Cult and the Development of Church Order: Concepts and Images of Authority in Paganism and Early Christianity before the Age of Cyprian (Leiden: Brill, 1999). Thus, Brent characterizes Christianity as “a state within a state,” p. 1; discusses “Christian Cult and the Imperial Cult . . . and the mutual exclusivity of each,” p. 4; and begins from the premise that the “Early Church and the Imperial Cult . . . historically appeared about the same time and in conflict with one another,” p. 7 (emphasis added); he also approaches Christianity as a Roman “contra-culture,” pp. 11–16.

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The Via Praenestina, Rome, in the Early Fourth Century CE and Methodological Considerations In order to explore these ideas, I will begin and end in Rome on the Via Praenestina, a road that heads southeast of the capital. As early as the first century ce, the neighborhood in this eastern region of the city was a monumental presence in the cityscape. Claudian and Neronian aqueducts entered the capital here, and tombs like those of the baker Eurysaces and his wife wrestled for prestige among other tombs located nearby.5 By the time of the construction of the Aurelian Walls, at the end of the third century ce, the zone had become monumentalized as a city gate.6 Rome itself had begun to spill into the surrounding territory, frustrating our attempts to make neat divisions between city and suburb.7 Already by the late second century ce, at the third milestone on the Via Praenestina, a large villa had been constructed with a monumental nymphaeum, now known as the Villa dei Gordiani.8 By the turn of the fourth century ce, a large domed mausoleum had been added to the land adjacent to, or owned by, the villa’s residents. Today, the mausoleum, the site, and the neighborhood are

5. L. H. Petersen, The Freedman in Roman Art and Art History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 84–122. 6. H. Dey, The Aurelian Wall and the Refashioning of Imperial Rome, AD 271–855 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), with discussion of the question of the pomerium and its relation to the Porta Maggiore at p. 211 n. 4. 7. For the theoretical issues involved in trying to distinguish city and suburb, see, for example, P. Goodman, The Roman City and Its Periphery: From Rome to Gaul (London: Routledge, 2007), 1–38. 8. The University of Durham and the University of Rome have recently collaborated on a new project to study the site; see now A. Leone and D. Palombi, “The ‘Villa dei Gordiani’ Project: The so-called ‘Villa dei Gordiani’ at the 3rd mile of the Via Prenestina (Reassessment of a Roman and Medieval Site in the Suburbs of Rome),” BullCom 109 (2008): 117–43. See also M. Maiuro, “Gordianorum villa,” in Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae: Suburbium, ed. A. La Regina, V. Fiocchi Nicolai, M. Grazia Gramino Cerere, and Z. Mari, vol. 3 (Rome: Quasar, 2001–2008), 31–39.

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commonly called by a Renaissance moniker, the Tor de’Schiavi, based on the nearby presence of a medieval tower. Within decades of the mausoleum’s construction or perhaps contemporary with it—sometime between 305 and 309 ce, based on the analysis of brick stamps used in the construction—a large circusform building was built less than three meters from its front porch. 9

Fig. 1. The remains of the mausoleum on the Via Praenestina, Rome. View from the south. Photo from the German Archaeological Institute, Rome (D-DAI-ROM-54.621).

9. For the architectural history of the site, see J. Rasch, Das Mausoleum dei Tor de’Schiavi in Rom (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 1993), 1–6, 78–79 (building phases dated 305/306 ce and 307–309 ce); see also M. Johnson, The Roman Imperial Mausoleum in Late Antiquity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 93–103. The plan of the site with the basilica is modified from Rasch, Mausoleum, Table 72B.

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Fig. 2. The remains of the mausoleum on the Via Praenestina, Rome. View from the north. Photo from the German Archaeological Institute, Rome (D-DAI-ROM-54.624).

Fig. 3. Plan of the mausoleum and the circus-form basilica on the Via Praenestina, Rome. Adapted with permission from J. Rasch, Das Mausoleum, 1993.

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With an apse at its western end, the building fits the shape of five other circus-form buildings from the territory of Rome, all of which are known to have been churches: S. Agnese on the Via Nomentana, S. Lorenzo on the Via Tiburtina, S. Pietro e Marcellino on the Via Labicana, S. Sebastiano (the Basilica Apostolorum) on the Via Appia, and the basilica on the Via Ardeatina.10 For typological reasons, the structure on the Via Praenestina has long been placed among this group, categorized as a church.11 Unfortunately, no textual or epigraphic evidence exists that would help us identify the name of the site, as we have for many of the other circus-form churches. Thus, S. Pietro e Marcellino, S. Agnese, S. Lorenzo, and a memorial for the apostles Peter and Paul on the Via Appia, “in catacumbas,” are all identified in the Liber Pontificalis.12 Two basilicas on the Via Ardeatina are also mentioned in the text, one built by Constantine and one made by Damasus.13 There is no reference to the construction of an early fourth-century church on the Via Praenestina. The lack of an attribution is not the site’s most intriguing characteristic, however. A far more evocative detail was painted on 10. For a discussion and bibliography on the circus-form churches and the motives that may have led to their construction, see the discussions and theories in E. La Rocca, “Le basiliche cristiane ‘a deambulatorio’ e la sopravvivenza del culto,” in Ecclesiae Urbis: Atti del congresso internazionale di studi sulle chiese di Roma (IV–X secolo), ed. F. Guidobaldi and A. G. Guidobaldi (Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 2002), 1109–41; F. Tolotti, “Le basiliche cimiteriali con deambulatorio del suburbio romano: questione ancora aperta,” RM 89 (1982): 153–211; M. Torelli, “Le basiliche circiformi di Roma: iconografia, funzione, simbolo,” in Felix Temporis Reparatio, ed. G. Sena Chiesa and A. Arslan (Milan: Editioni ET, 1992), 203–24; and now also R. MacMullen, The Second Church: Popular Christianity, A.D. 200–400 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009), 69–89. The classic study is R. Krautheimer, Corpus Basilicarum Christianarum Romae, 5 vols. (Vatican City: Pontificio Istituto di archeologia cristiana, 1937–1980). 11. In addition to the works cited in the previous note, see also, briefly, M. Ceccelli, Le chiese paleocristiane di Roma: I luoghi di culto nell’Urbe dal I al VII secolo dell’era cristiana (Rome: Elo de Rosa, 1999), 117. 12. For S. Pietro e Marcellino, see Liber Pontificalis 34.26–27; S. Agnese, LP 34.23; S. Lorenzo, LP 34.24; and Peter and Paul “in catacumbas,” LP 38.1. 13. For the church on the Via Ardeatina built by Constantine, see LP 35.3–4; for the one built by Damasus, LP 39.2.

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the vault of the mausoleum’s dome. Although no longer extant, this painting was visible throughout the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries and was documented by, among others, Antonio da Sangallo the Younger (c. 1546), Giovanni Peruzzi (c. 1567), and Charles Cameron (c. 1775).14 The documentation of one artist in particular, Pietro Santi Bartoli (c. 1635–1700), has proven particularly helpful for reconstructing the interior.15 According to Bartoli’s drawings and watercolors, which are currently in the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle, England, the interior of the dome depicted mythological scenes and Jupiter enthroned in the heavens. For those scholars who believe that Christians did not or would not participate in aspects of mainstream Roman culture, let alone value mainstream Roman ideas and practices, Jupiter’s presence will naturally be surprising.16 For centuries, many Romans invoked 14. Rasch, Das Mausoleum, 4–8, 66–70. At the time these antiquarian studies were executed, many were falsely labeled, attributing them to the Baths of Titus on the Esquiline. H. Mielsch, “Zur stadtrömischen Malerei des 4. Jahrhunderts n. Christi,” RM 85 (1978): 151–207, reidentified the building as the mausoleum on the Via Praenestina, based on the presence of the round windows in the cupola. 15. Royal Collection, inv. 909575 and inv. 909583. I am thankful to the staff at the Windsor library for helping me procure these images for publication. 16. Here, I’m thinking of the often-repeated stereotypes of Christians one finds in classical scholarship ever since Edward Gibbon wrote about “the Christians” as a monolithic social group. Consider the following recent works, reprising his views: “Christians spent their lives in preparation for life after death, effectively withdrawing from everyday life. Moreover, they refused to compromise their beliefs by . . . paying homage to the emperor,” S. Keay, Roman Spain (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 169–70. See also the final summary in M. Boatwright: “Christian identity could not be adjusted to that of the Romans,” in Peoples of the Roman World (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 197. For other examples of presumed opposition and incompatibility of Christian and Roman identity, see Brent, Imperial Cult, discussed above. F. Millar, “The Imperial Cult and the Persecutions,” in Le culte des souverains dans l’empire romain: Entretiens sur l’antiquité classique (Geneva: Hardt, 1973), 143–65, believed the imperial cult and emperor worship played little role in Christian “persecution.” That view has also been reprised, in a slightly different form, by Z. Magyar, who believes that “the refusal of sacrificing to the emperor was not the main issue in the persecution of the Christians” because the imperial cult did not play a prominent role in Roman society by the third century; see “Imperial Cult and Christianity: How and to What Extent Were the Imperial Cult and Emperor Worship Thought to Preserve the Stability of the Roman World?” Acta Archaeologica Academiae Scientarum Hungaricae 60 (2002): 385–95, with quotation at p. 393. I will discuss issues of longevity below.

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Fig. 4. Drawing of the inner face of the mausoleum’s dome from the Via Praenestina, Rome, depicting mythological scenes, by Pietro Santi Bartoli (c. 1635-1700). Royal Collection Trust © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2014. Inventory number 909583.

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Jupiter’s name and image to honor the ruling emperor and his family. From cameos to statues, inscriptions to coins, Jupiter had, by the turn of the fourth century, long been associated with the emperor and the imperial house.17 The eagle, too, an attribute of Jupiter, had long been transporting emperors into the divine realm in the ceremonies of apotheosis, or consecratio, as famously seen in the vault of the Arch of the deified Titus.18 The proximity of Jupiter to a fourth-century church, however—a worship space most likely built on property owned by the very person or family interred in the mausoleum—has caused at least one scholar of Christian architecture, Hugo Brandenburg, a moment of skeptical consternation. If the vault really did show Jupiter, Brandenburg conjectured, the image “could refute the suggestion that the owner of the tomb was . . . a Christian.”19 That such a distinguished scholar would choose to read the material evidence in dualistic terms is not surprising. There has been an entrenched tradition in the study of early Christian architecture that presumes that “Christianity was clearly incompatible with the old faith,” and by extension, that Christians were fundamentally unable to dwell within Roman society without radically altering it.20

17. An up-to-date survey and synthesis of this wide-ranging material is C. Noreña, Imperial Ideals in the Roman West: Representation, Circulation, Power (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), with p. 152 (Jupiter assimilated to emperor on cameo), p. 204 (statues), pp. 250–63 (inscriptions), and p. 336 (appendix with coins). 18. On consecratio, including the role of Jupiter’s eagle, see Arce, “Imperatori divinizzati,” 244–48. 19. H. Brandenburg, Ancient Churches of Rome from the Fourth to the Seventh Century: The Dawn of Christian Architecture in the West, trans. A. Kropp (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), 62. 20. The quotation is from R. Krautheimer, Three Christian Capitals: Topography and Politics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), 32.

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Fig. 5. Jupiter enthroned in the heavens. Drawing of the dome of the mausoleum on the Via Praenestina, Rome, by Pietro Santi Bartoli (c.1635-1700). Royal Collection Trust © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2014. Inventory number 909575.

Perhaps for that reason, many scholars of the past quarter-century began writing about the “gray areas” in between these two supposedly

monolithic

blocs,

Christians

and

non-Christians,

traditionally called, in modern parlance, “pagans and Christians.”21 Unfortunately, as nuanced as these models are, I have now argued that they create a false equivalency that obscures the pronounced social divisions that separated many Christians from each other during this same time and lay at the heart of the empire’s political transformation.22 A greater appreciation for the nature and tenor 21. See now, for example, C. Jones, Between Pagan and Christian (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014), 1–8, with bibliography. The study by M. Kahlos, Debate and Dialogue: Christian and Pagan Cultures, c. 360–430 (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2007), is essential. A more complete bibliography is in D. Boin, directly below.

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of this longstanding intra-Christian debate, rooted in a spirited discussion of mainstream Roman issues like imperial cult practices, provides the context for my present analysis. In what follows, I would like to use the site on the Via Praenestina as a case study for exploring some of the social differences that were dividing Christians from each other during the fourth century. To put it in plainer terms: Why do some scholars today unquestionably assume that a fourth-century follower of Jesus couldn’t possibly “honor the emperor” the same way as his non-Christian Roman peers, perhaps even with a depiction of Jupiter in his or her mausoleum? How have we been taught to think that being Christian and being Roman were two entirely incompatible ideas? Unraveling these assumptions is the first step in helping us see the world of fourth-century Rome in greater nuance. Memory and the Study of 1 Peter Traditionally, stories of martyrdom and the wholesale rejection of Roman cultural norms have driven accounts of Christianity’s growing public profile. These data are important for understanding how Christian identity was fashioned, but they hardly offer a comprehensive profile of the group. A whole body of evidence attests to the highly creative ways in which many of Jesus’ followers negotiated their lives in the empire before Constantine without attracting the attention of the Roman authorities.23 As the author of the pseudepigraphic letter 1 Peter saw it, many people who openly identified with the label “Christian” lived as “aliens and exiles” (1 Pet. 2:11) in an empire that was not really their own.24 How were these 22. D. Boin, “Hellenistic ‘Judaism’ and the Social Origins of the ‘Pagan–Christian’ Debate,” JECS 22 (2014): 167–96. 23. D. Boin, Coming Out Christian in the Roman World: How the Followers of Jesus Made a Place in Caesar’s Empire (New York: Bloomsbury, 2015). 24. “παροίκους καὶ παρεπιδήμους,” 1 Pet. 2:11 (ed. Nestle-Aland [Stuttgart, 1979]). For texts of

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proud followers of Jesus supposed to navigate such a foreign land? Speaking in the guise of Peter, the author advised them not to draw attention to themselves and to show respect to everyone in their daily interactions (1 Pet. 2:18; 3:1; 3:7).25 This exhortation—that Christians downplay their Christianity, that they be less open with it—was not an innovation of the late firstcentury writer who authored his text in Peter’s name.26 It is consistent with language and messaging that can be found in Paul’s letter to the Romans in which he urged his audience to “be subject to the governing authorities” (Rom. 13:1).27 That exhortation would be elaborated upon in the deuterocanonical Pauline letters to the Ephesians and Colossians. In these texts, the writers adopt the perspective of the Roman paterfamilias and urge wives to submit to their husbands, children to obey their parents, and slaves to obey their masters.28 In 1 Peter, this suggestion is specifically given an imperial twist. The author tells his community to “honor the emperor” (1 Pet. 2:17).29 How did a movement that taught its members to “honor the emperor” in the first century become known for its fierce imperial Christian Scripture, I have given the Greek where the original is relevant but have largely used the translations in the HarperCollins Study Bible, revised edition, ed. H. Attridge (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2006). 25. The classic study is D. Balch, Let Wives Be Submissive: The Domestic Code in 1 Peter (Atlanta: Scholars, 1981). 26. For place and dating, see J. H. Elliot, 1 Peter: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, Anchor Bible Commentaries (New York: Doubleday, 2000), 131–34. For the social situation of the letter, see also now P. Holloway, Coping with Prejudice: 1 Peter in a SocialPsychological Perspective (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009), 40–136; and also D. Horrell, 1 Peter (London: T. & T. Clark, 2008), 77–98, with a summary of early scholarship. 27. “ἐξουσίαις ὑπερεχούσαις ὑποτασσέσθω,” Rom. 13:1 (ed. Nestle-Aland [Stuttgart, 1979]). 28. The “household code” can be seen in Col. 3:18–4:1 and Eph. 5:22–6:9. For discussion, see D. Balch, Families in the New Testament World: Households and House Churches (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1997), 118–21, 182–85; see also the essays in D. Balch and C. Osiek, eds., Early Christian Families in Context: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003). 29. “τὸν βασιλέα τιμᾶτε,” 1 Pet. 2:17 (ed. Nestle-Aland [Stuttgart, 1979]); see also 1 Pet. 2:18–25 (slaves and masters), 3:1–6 (wives and husbands).

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resistance and heroic martyrdom during the second and third centuries—so much so that some scholars might look at the representation of Jupiter on the Via Praenestina, next to a church, and doubt that they are looking at the burial of a Christian? A study of the individuals and communities who engaged with the 1 Peter text over time and who shaped its reception and later interpretation—all of which is to say, how Christian individuals and communities actively remembered “Peter’s” words—can shed light on these questions and provide a new framework for interpreting the material remains on the Via Praenestina in Rome.30 I would like to apply this perspective to a study of the reception of 1 Pet. 2:17, using this text as a baseline for studying how later Christian writers remembered, misremembered, selectively remembered, or outright ignored other aspects of the letter that they attributed to the apostle Peter. Which early Christian writers demonstrate knowledge of the 1 Peter text?31 What passages do they quote and why? The answer to these questions can help illuminate the colorful ways in which individuals and the groups to which they belonged “communicated” their own memories about “Peter” in the decades after 1 Peter was written because, as scholars of memory have noted, the issue of how an individual remembers his or her past cannot be separated from 30. For a discussion of memory and history targeted to the study of early Christian texts, particularly texts from Christian Scripture, see A. Kirk, “Social and Cultural Memory,” in Memory, Tradition, and Text: Uses of the Past in Early Christianity, ed. A. Kirk and T. Thatcher (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2005), 1–24. The bibliography on Gedächtnisgeschichte and ancient history is growing; for an overview, see the Memoria Romana project, directed by K. Galisnky at the University of Texas at Austin (http://www.utexas.edu/research/memoria/ bibliography.html, accessed October 10, 2014). 31. Most biblical scholarship has been driven by the search for allusions or intertexts because these methods can help establish the canonicity or authenticity of early Christian texts written prior to them. How later writers manipulate or use earlier texts, however, is an underexplored source of study; see C. Moss, “Nailing Down and Tying Up: Lessons in Intertextual Impossibility from the Martyrdom of Polycarp,” Vigiliae Christianae 67 (2013): 117–36, specifically at p. 128. For methodological issues related to the reception of classical texts, see also S. Hinds, Allusion and Intertext: Dynamics of Appropriation in Roman Poetry (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998).

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the social frameworks of the groups to which he or she belongs.32 Studying the memory of a specific text over time is thus a particularly fruitful application of these theories and methods because, as Jan Assman

has

suggested,

“communicated

memory”

gradually

contributes a shared “cultural memory” the farther one moves from the event being remembered.33 These processes themselves can be given a historical context by collecting and analyzing the textual sources diachronically. As we will see, the process was not exactly a neutral act. The repeated communication of “Peter’s” memory may have worked, politically and ideologically, “to fix the meaning and purpose” of Peter’s exhortation for subsequent generations of Christians in ways that may not have been apparent at the time the 1 Peter text was written.34 In fact, in trying “to fix” Peter’s memory, the authors and communities who engaged with the 1 Peter text would frequently diverge from, downplay, or outright ignore aspects of “Peter’s” memory that did not speak to their present circumstances or their own ideological commitments.35 Exploring this dynamic is a necessary background for interpreting the appearance of Jupiter in the mausoleum next to the church on the Via Praenestina. 32. Kirk, “Social and Cultural Memory,” 2–3. 33. For the process by which groups move from “communicated memory” to “cultural memory,” see J. Assman, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis: Schrift, Erinnerung, und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulturen (München: Beck, 1992), 35. 34. This quotation about the political dynamics of memory is from K. Savage, “The Politics of Memory: Black Emancipation and the Civil War Monument,” in Commemorations: The Politics of National Identity, ed. J. Gillis (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 127–49, specifically p. 127, where Savage is discussing legislative and commemorative responses to the U.S. Civil War during Reconstruction. Also important here, from a theoretical point of view, is H. Roediger, F. Zaromb, and A. Butler, “The Role of Repeated Retrieval in Shaping Memory,” in Memory in Mind and Culture, ed. P. Boyer and J. Wertsch (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 138–70, whose research provides an interesting perspective from cognitive psychology. I will return to it in my conclusion. 35. On the memories of the early Christian past as shaping the history of later Christianity, see the classic study of the theme by M. Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, ed. and trans. L. Cower (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).

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The Memory of “Peter” The four texts I have chosen to illustrate the reception of 1 Pet. 2:17 between the first and fourth centuries are (1) Polycarp’s Letter to the Philippians, (2) the text of the martyrs of Scilli in North Africa, (3) the text known as the Martyrdom of Polycarp, and (4) Tertullian’s Scorpiace.36 Polycarp’s Letter to the Community of Christians at Philippi There is no need to enter into the debate about whether this document was originally one or two letters; nor is it urgent that we establish any finer chronology for the text, as it has been transmitted to us in Greek and Latin manuscripts, than the early second century ce.37 The most important issue is that the writer engages with the 1 Peter text “beyond reasonable doubt.”38 One ancient witness, Eusebius, was also confident about making this claim.39 The text is a short letter to a Christian community in Philippi.40 One of their leaders, a man named Valens, had recently been removed from one of the Christian leadership positions. From Polycarp we learn that Valens used to hold the office of presbyter,

36. On the reception of the text, see Elliott, 1 Peter, 138–48. 37. P. Hartog, Polycarp and the New Testament: The Occasion, Rhetoric, Theme, and Unity of the Epistle to the Philippians and Its Allusions to New Testament Literature (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2002), 148–69 (discussing the unity of the letter). The earlier work by P. Harrison, Polycarp’s Two Epistles to the Philippians (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1936), is Hartog’s conversation partner. Earlier studies date the two letters to c. 115 ce (Phil. 13–14) and c. 135 ce (Phil. 1–12); see Hartog, Polycarp, 6–15. Hartog dates the letter to c. 115 ce. 38. P. Hartog, Polycarp, 171 with a list of citations at p. 189. 39. Eus. HE 4.14.8. Polycarp’s Philippians is not the earliest text known to have cited from 1 Peter; 1 Clement and Justin Martyr appear to hold that distinction; see Elliott, 1 Peter, 138–45. 40. The text of Phil. 10–11, 14, most of 12, and the last line of 13 are preserved in Latin manuscripts; the text of Phil. 1–9, in Greek. The authenticity of the Latin is not in doubt; see Hartog, Polycarp, 67–70. For the ancient text, I used the edition and translation by B. Ehrman, The Apostolic Fathers, Volume 1 in the Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 323–54.

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an office that came into formal existence at the end of the first century alongside deacon and bishop. Valens had been removed from his position because of his mismanagement of funds.41 Whether this money was his own, as the group’s patron, or it was part of a common treasury is not specified; but the letter that Polycarp wrote begins and ends with a call to “abstain from love of money” and urges the community to exert better self-control.42 It recommends that they submit to the presbyters and deacons currently in office and, quoting directly from 1 Pet. 2:17, to “love the brotherhood of believers.43 It also encourages them to do good deeds so that they don’t attract the attention of those around them: “Let all of you be subject to one another,” Polycarp writes, “keeping your interactions with the Gentiles above approach.”44 This exhortation demonstrates the curious workings of memory. “Peter” urged his audience to conduct themselves “honorably among the Gentiles” as part of his broader concern that they “accept the authority of every human institution” (1 Pet. 2:12-13). That external dynamic was at the center of “Peter’s” exhortation to honor the emperor. Instead of using “Peter’s” words to remind the Philippians to be subject to Rome’s rulers, however, Polycarp uses the memory of Peter to remind the Philippians to “be subject to one another”—that is, to their own nascent hierarchy.45 Peter’s call to submit to “every

41. H. Maier, “Purity and Danger in Polycarp’s Epistle to the Philippians: The Sin of Valens in Social Perspective,” JECS 1 (1993): 229–47. 42. Phil. 11.1 (trans. Ehrman). 43. Phil. 10.1, quoting 1 Pet. 2:17. 44. “omnes vobis invicem subiecti estote, conversationem vestram irreprensibilem habentes in gentibus,” Phil. 10.2 (ed. and trans. Ehrman, slightly modified). Also compare the later Latin Vulgate: “conversationem vestram inter gentes habentes bonam,” 1 Pet. 2:12. Note also that Ehrman, Apostolic Fathers, 347, does not mark this sentence in Phil. as a scriptural citation. 45. A theme also noted by M. Holmes, “Polycarp’s Letter to the Philippians and the Writings That Later Formed the New Testament,” in The Reception of the New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers, ed. C. Tuckett and A. Gregory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 187–228, specifically p. 222.

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human

authority,”

in

effect,

became

internalized

and

institutionalized. In a text that begins by commemorating the heroism of three Christians—Ignatius of Antioch, Rufus, and Zosimus, all of whom had been recently executed—the memory of Peter’s earnest exhortation to “honor the emperor” is now clouded by the details of a local organizational dispute.46 The Acts of the Scillitan Martyrs Memory also plays an important role in the hagiographic text written to commemorate the deaths of several Christians in Scilli, North Africa, at the end of the second century ce.47 This short Latin text presents us with the story of a Roman official who has interviewed several Christian men and women who have professed their Christian identity openly.48 The text tells us that they have all been executed. Saturninus is the Roman proconsul who manages this Christian drama, interrogating the Christians and serving as a foil to their imperial resistance. As Saturninus explains to the group, the practices of Roman religio are simple. Romans “swear by the Genius [genium] of our lord the emperor, and we pray for his welfare (pro salute eius), as you also ought to.” At this point, the proconsul asks the assembled group of Christians to do the same.49 Given the Jewish heritage of many of Jesus’ followers, it may be worth recalling how many Jewish communities interacted with ancient Mediterranean ruler cult. Communities in Hellenistic Egypt had built prayer halls “on behalf of the welfare” of the Ptolemies.

46. The fact that Ignatius of Antioch is referred to as both alive (Phil. 13.2) and dead (Phil. 9.1) indicates the letter as we have it is very likely a compilation of at least two documents. 47. The Latin text and translation is from Musurillo, Acts of the Christian Martyrs, 86–89. 48. For context, see now C. Moss, Ancient Christian Martyrdom: Diverse Practices, Theologies, and Traditions (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012), 122–44. 49. “iuramus per genium domni nostri imperatoris et pro salute eius supplicamus . . . ,” Acts of the Scillitan Martyrs 3, in Musurillo, Acts of the Christian Martyrs, 86–89.

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Jewish communities in Caesarea Maritima, Sebaste, and Banias lived amidst temples for the Roman imperial cult. Sacrifices were made, daily, at the Temple in Jerusalem for the welfare of Augustus and his family in the late first century bce and early first century ce. Later, even some communities outside the Jewish homeland in places like Ostia, for example, would erect synagogues “on behalf of the welfare of the emperors,” pro salute Augustorum.50 It is abundantly clear, then, that there was nothing inherently incompatible with being a member of a monotheistic “religion”—as we would categorize it—while simultaneously participating in Hellenistic ruler or Roman imperial cult.51 Creative negotiation can be found across times, regions, and communities. The band of Christians who had been brought before the proconsul in Scilli, on the other hand, believed that their Christian identity permitted no such flexibility. One man, named Speratus, objected to the proconsul’s demand. Instead of remembering Peter’s exhortation, Speratus took a defiant position. “We hold our own emperor in honor,” he says.52 Later, Speratus became even more uncompromising. He is purported to have said: “I do not recognize the empire of this world!”53 Speratus’s compatriots were also zealously inflexible. One claimed that Christians feared only God. A third evidently tried to modify that sentiment slightly, explaining that

50. For discussion, see J. McClaren, “Jews and the Imperial Cult: From Augustus to Domitian,” JSNT 27 (2005): 257–78, with discussion of sacrifice at the Temple specifically at pp. 271–73; as well as D. Boin, Ostia in Late Antiquity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 98, 120–21, with discussion of the inscription from the synagogue at Ostia. 51. Here I am following B. Nongbri’s recommendation in Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013) that researchers be more self-aware when we refer to the modern concept of “religion,” a category that did not exist in antiquity, p. 156. 52. “imperatorem nostrum observamus,” Scillitan Martyrs 2, in Musurillo, Acts of the Christian Martyrs, 86–89. 53. “ego imperium huius saeculi non cognosco,” Scillitan Martyrs 6, in Musurillo, Acts of the Christian Martyrs, 86–89.

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Christians would honor the emperor as the ruler of the empire but (autem) would render fear to God.54 The tenor of this Christian conversation is clear. The memory of Peter is invoked to justify the political resistance of Christians like Speratus. Whereas the 1 Peter text advocates honoring the emperor and fearing God as complementary ethical exhortations, the Scillitan martyrs and the author of their trial remember “Peter’s” words in a slightly different way. Instead of understanding “Peter’s” call to honor the emperor and fear God as mutually inclusive ethical ideals, the community at Scilli interpret them as mutually exclusive ones.55 Thus, one aspect of “Peter’s” exhortation (honoring the emperor) is given qualification whereas another part of the same instruction (fearing God) became a nonnegotiable sign of Christian identity. The result? Their execution became a noble act conformed to the teachings of their ancestors, even “Peter.” Interestingly, one might conclude that the Acts of the Scillitan Martyrs was an attempt to erase the memory of “Peter” entirely by replacing it with a competing one, Paul’s. Paul’s role as a “model martyr” was lauded by many in the Latin west, and the workings of that dynamic have been observed here.56 When the proconsul demanded that the Christian group give up its chest of prized possessions and reveal what’s inside of them, Speratus is purported to have told the magistrate, “These are the books and letters of a just man, Paul.”57 To the North African community of Christians 54. “nos non habemus alium quem timeamus nisi domnum Deum nostrum qui est in caelis . . . honorem Caesari quasi Caesari; timorem autem Deo,” Scillitan Martyrs 8–9, in Musurillo, Acts of the Christian Martyrs, 86–89. 55. Horrell, 1 Peter, argues that the text encourages Christians to adopt “socially respectable behavior,” p. 83, yet encourages them not to take part in emperor worship, pp. 86–87. I wholeheartedly agree with the former interpretation. To offer a slight point of nuance to the second, I would suggest that the 1 Peter text might be more ambivalent and that later Christian traditions, witnessed here, are largely responsible for shaping our interpretation of it. 56. A point made by D. Eastman, Paul the Martyr: The Cult of the Apostle in the Latin West (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2011), 156–59, with quotation (“model martyr”) at p. 156.

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constructing their identity around this story of heroic resistance, it must have sounded as if “Peter’s letter” and his memory were being removed from the group’s traditions entirely. The Martyrdom of Polycarp A similar process of remembering and forgetting unfolds in the Martyrdom of Polycarp.58 Here, in a text that purports to give us a glimpse of a third-century Christian community in Roman Asia Minor, Polycarp is depicted as resisting the authorities and refusing to honor the emperor.59 When the magistrate asks him what harm there is in saying “Lord Caesar,” offering incense on the emperor’s behalf, Polycarp responds with fierce opposition.60 “If you delude yourself into thinking,” he says, “that I’m going to swear by the emperor’s Genius, as you say, and if you pretend not to know who I am, listen and I will tell you plainly: I am a Christian.”61 Polycarp’s implication is that people who call themselves “Christians,” like him, would never act in such an objectionable way as to honor the Roman emperor. Polycarp himself, or the author scripting his lines, makes this point explicit when he offers to explain to the magistrate “what it really means to be a Christian” (Χριστιανισμοῦ . . . λόγον). This tendentious idea—that only “real 57. “libri et epistulae Pauli iusti,” Scillitan Martyrs 13, in Musurillo, Acts of the Christian Martyrs, 86–89. 58. The Greek text and translation is from Musurillo, Acts of the Christian Martyrs, 2–21. I have used my own translation of Mart. Poly. 10.2. See also Ehrman, Apostolic Fathers, 367–401. 59. Note that I have adopted the early third-century dating advanced by C. Moss, “On the Dating of Polycarp: Rethinking the Place of the Martyrdom of Polycarp in the History of Christianity,” Early Christianity 1 (2010): 539–74. Although some may object—its more traditional date is sometime in the late second century—the chronology does not affect the substance of my argument. 60. Mart. Poly. 8.2. 61. “‘Εἰ κενοδοξεῖς ἵνα ὀμόσω τὴν Καίσαρος τύχην, ὡς σὺ λέγεις, προσποιεῖ δὲ ἀγνοεῖν με τίς εἰμι, μετὰ παρρησίας ἄκουε· Χριστιανός εἰμι. εἰ δὲ θέλεις τὸν τοῦ Χριστιανισμοῦ μαθεῖν λόγον, δὸς ἡμέραν καὶ ἄκουσον,’” Mart. Poly. 10.1 (ed. and trans. Musurillo, with my translation Xριστιανισμοῦ); for discussion of this term, see also Boin, “Hellenistic ‘Judaism,’” 2014, 181–88.

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Christians” would resist Rome—has been explored by other scholars who have highlighted how this rhetorical strategy works to redefine the nature of being “Christian” by stigmatizing other followers of Jesus who held competing ideas about “Christian” identity.62 There is another component of Polycarp’s response that is worth examining here, however. When the proconsul urges Polycarp yet again to justify his actions, Polycarp explains why he will not honor the emperor: “We have been taught to honor (τιμὴν) rulers and authorities appointed by God,” Polycarp says, “insofar as it doesn’t harm us.”63 This statement opens a fascinating window on the workings of social memory. Here, Polycarp has added a significant disclaimer to “Peter’s” straightforward exhortation (“Honor the emperor”). “Peter’s” instruction has now become applicable only in select instances, that is, when Rome’s rulers are deemed to have been “appointed by God” and/or when the act of honoring them would not cause any harm to one of Jesus’ followers. The writer of the 1 Peter text, of course, had never included any such qualifying statements, but the exception helps justify—indeed, it helps valorize—Polycarp’s decision to lose his own life.64 Thus, when the proconsul threatens to bring in the beasts to punish Polycarp’s intransigence, Polycarp’s response—“Call for them”—is made to appear as if it conforms to the “Petrine” message of an earlier generation when, in fact, such an aggressive response was never articulated by “Peter” at all.65 62. S. Caulley, “The Title Christianos and Roman Imperial Cult,” Restoration Quarterly 53 (2011): 193–206. See also the earlier studies by J. Lieu, “‘I am a Christian’: Martyrdom and the Beginning of ‘Christian’ Identity,” in Neither Jew nor Greek? Constructing Early Christianity, ed. J. Lieu (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 2005), 211–32; and D. Horrell, “The Label Χριστιανός: 1 Peter 4:16 and the Creation of Christian Identity,” JBL 126 (2007): 361–81. 63. “δεδιδάγμεθα γὰρ ἀρχαῖς καὶ ἐξουσίαις ὑπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ τεταγμέναις τιμὴν κατὰ τὸ προσῆκον τὴν μὴ βλάπτουσαν ἡμᾶς ἀπονέμειν,” MP 10.2 (ed. Musurillo, with my translation). 64. For other instances in which the text valorizes martyrdom, see Mart. Poly. 2.1–4. Compare, however, with ibid., chapter 4 (“. . . we do not praise people who hand themselves over”), which Ehrman, Apostolic Fathers, 361, identifies as a later addition.

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Tertullian’s Scorpiace This urge to qualify “Peter’s” memory is evident in one last example from the period before Constantine. Addressing Christian critics who claimed that martyrdom was unnecessary for a Christian life, Tertullian, writing in Carthage in North Africa, insists upon the opposite.66 In his Scorpiace, for example, the memory of “Peter’s” accommodating stance will be used to support Tertullian’s agenda that advocates greater resistance to Rome.67 After first mentioning Paul’s instruction to the Roman community to be “subject to all powers,” Tertullian adds: “Peter, too, had said that the emperor (rex) must be honored—but only when he keeps to his own affairs, when he is far from assuming divine honors.”68 Here, as in the Martyrdom of Polycarp, a small but important asterisk has been appended to “Peter’s” teachings.69 Christians are permitted to honor the emperor, in Tertullian’s view, “only when he keeps to his own affairs, when he is far from assuming divine honors” (cum a diuinis honoribus longe est). Tertullian’s caveat, although it hints at a separation that might seem natural today, nevertheless raises a question that is at the center of every study of Roman imperial history: At which point during the 65. Mart. Poly. 11.1 (ed. Musurillo). 66. The Latin text is from Corpus Christianorum, Series Latina 2, ed. Reifferscheid and Wissowa, 1069–97, incorporating the emendations of P. Petitmengin, “Errata Tertullianea,” in Hommage à René Braun, vol. 2 (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1990), 35–41. 67. See M. Frisius, Tertullian’s Use of the Pastoral Epistles, Hebrews, James, 1 and 2 Peter, and Jude (New York: Peter Lang, 2011), 137–38 (appendix with certain citations from 1 Peter). 68. “condixerat scilicet Petrus regem quidem honorandum, ut tamen tunc rex honoretur, cum suis rebus insistit, cum a diuinis honoribus longe est,” Tert. Scorp. 14.3 (ed. Reifferscheid and Wissowa). Note that in the Latin Vulgate translations of 1 Pet. 2:17 the term rex is used for the Greek βασιλεύς (hence, “omnes honorate fraternitatem diligite, Deum timete, regem honorificate,” 1 Pet. 2:17). The significance of this linguistic and political difference between eastern and western halves of the later empire deserves study. 69. See also Eastman, Paul the Martyr, 159–60, on Tertullian’s effort to make the memory of Paul and Peter equal as martyrs, a point of disagreement among some of Tertullian’s North African community, some of whom apparently viewed Paul, not Peter, as the “model” martyr, p. 160.

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long story of Rome’s empire was the emperor not associated with divine honors? Emperors did not need to assert an aggressive selfdeifying policy, like Caligula, for example, to blur the ancient lines between human and divine. To take but one example: divine sonship was an ubiquitous yet multifaceted phenomenon of Hellenistic and Roman political life, pervading society and frustrating our attempts to divide ancient government and daily life into neat “secular” and “religious” categories.70 In fact, the inability of premodern individuals to do so, combined with our own greater methodological appreciation for the study of “religion”—a concept that didn’t exist in

antiquity—raises

important

questions

about

Tertullian’s

interpretation of “Peter”: How did Tertullian expect the Christian community of Carthage to separate the “human” aspect of imperial ruler from his “divine” qualities when the two spheres had so long been inseparably intertwined, in both the Greek-speaking and Latinspeaking realms of the empire?71 No such intellectual tools had been invented, or would be invented, in any period of ancient and Late Antique Mediterranean life, for disentangling them.72 Faced with this methodological problem, it might be more worthwhile, then, to approach Tertullian’s text in a different way. What social circumstances might have been provoking Tertullian’s ire? Why did he want his Christian community to learn how to separate the two realms, “human” and “divine”? A contemporary text provides some clues. In De corona militis, Tertullian specifically chastises Christian members of the Roman army whom he has “caught” honoring the 70. See M. Peppard, The Son of God in the Roman World: Divine Sonship in Its Social and Political Context (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 31–49. 71. “[T]he vast majority of the evidence [in first-century Asia Minor, for example] does not distinguish gods from emperors,” S. Friesen, Twice Neokoros: Ephesus, Asia, and the Cult of the Flavian Imperial Family (Leiden: Brill, 1993), 146–52 (overlap of human and divine), with quotation at p. 149; see also Peppard, Son of God, 41, on Latin terminology. 72. Nongbri, Before Religion, 46–64.

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emperor.73 The accommodating behavior of these Christians was so abhorrent, Tertullian concludes, no Christian should ever serve in the army again. This brash idea may have struck some Christians as a slight modification from earlier practice. In Luke-Acts, the Roman soldier Cornelius was called to follow Jesus by seeking out Peter (Acts 10). Peter initiated the soldier into the movement, but there is nothing in the story to suggest that Cornelius ever had to renounce his position in the Roman army because of it. Fast-forward two centuries: Tertullian was not only advocating that Christians forfeit their positions in the Roman army. Like the author of the Martyrdom of Polycarp, he was teaching them that “Peter” permitted Christians to “honor the emperor” only in select circumstances—“when [the emperor] is far from assuming divine honors”—a caveat that the author of 1 Peter had actually never mentioned. We now have sufficient data to return to the Via Praenestina in the fourth century ce and to interpret the archeological remains in a new way. Conclusion: The Via Praenestina, Rome, the Early Fourth Century CE (Reprised) What was happening to the Christian movement during the course of the first through fourth centuries ce? One conclusion would be this: pockets of Rome’s minority Christian community, scattered throughout the empire, were being taught to resist Roman authorities with the help of a text, 1 Peter, which had originally expressed a much more open-ended, flexible message of social accommodation. This phenomenon certainly accords well with the workings of social memory, by which “[c]urrent needs and preoccupations determine what elements of a community’s past are 73. For this episode, see Boin, “Hellenistic ‘Judaism,’” 168–71. On other aspects of Christian identity in Tertullian, see now É. Rebillard, Christians and Their Many Identities in Late Antiquity, North Africa, 200-450 CE (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012), 34–60.

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awarded prominence, that is, commemorated, or conversely, are ‘forgotten.’”74 What I have tried to do here, specifically, is put the production of memories about “Peter” in a greater historical context so that what was “commemorated” and what was “forgotten” in the later period of Roman history can be seen in higher relief. What emerges is a more nuanced picture of the process by which early Christian tradition was formed during the first through fourth centuries: through the process of making memories that worked “to legitimize particular sociopolitical goals and ideologies” and “to mobilize actions” that were in accord with them—whether in Philippi, Scilli, Asia Minor, or Carthage.75 The result of this centuries-long process was the creation of much different Christian self-identity in the early fourth century than had existed in the late first century—a phenomenon that has also been observed in memory studies in the field of cognitive psychology. As H. Roediger, F. Zaromb, and A. Butler have shown, “If incorrect information is repeatedly retrieved over time, it will lead to an even stronger memory for that incorrect information.”76 In short, through a process of learned behavior, not because of any doctrine inherent in their faith, some Christians were being instructed to see their identity as “Romans” as fundamentally incompatible with their identity as followers of Jesus, or “Christians.” This three-hundred-yearlong effort to fix the memory of “Peter” as a champion of resistance takes on an even greater dimension when seen through the vastly different experiences of Christians who are known to have taken part in imperial festivals.77 74. Kirk, “Social and Cultural Memory,” 11. 75. Ibid., 11–12. 76. Roediger, Zaromb, and Butler, “Repeated Retrieval,” 163. 77. On this aspect of Revelation, see L. M. White, “Capitalizing on the Imperial Cult: Some Jewish Perspectives,” in Brodd and Reed, eds., 173–214.

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For all these reasons, the church and mausoleum in Rome can be seen in a new light. Given the manifestations of Jupiter in emperor worship throughout Roman history, the church and the burial on the Via Praenestina with its painted vault representing the king of the gods may now emerge as a highly visible expression of a fourthcentury Christian desire to “honor the emperor,” just as many Christians

and

other

Romans

had

been

doing

for

centuries—preserving their own memory of “Peter” by finding ways to do two things at once, honoring their history while accommodating to present realities of life in Rome. These creative efforts at negotiation may not have earned the anonymous patron of the mausoleum any praise from his or her more opinionated peers, but from a historical perspective, we cannot afford to ignore either their quieter voices or the other memories being articulated about “Peter” during this time, such as the new memorial being erected to his memory across town at the Vatican Hill. As part of the same urban landscape, these near-contemporary architectural developments—at the Via Praenestina and at the Vatican—suggest that a historically significant conversation was taking place within the Christian community at the start of the fourth century. They tell us that the window for interpreting and “fixing” the memory of “Peter” was closing, as those Christians who were heralding the legacy of martyrdom and resistance were shaping “Peter’s” memory into something that looked much different than the message of an earlier age. All of these Christian voices call for a place in our picture of Roman history. For the fiercely contested conversation about what it meant to be a “Christian” would soon come to dominate late fourth-century politics, and the imperial cult would remain one of those cultural flashpoints.78 The fact that the name of the church on this very site at the Via Praenestina would be, at some later age, lost is itself a puzzling 112

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coda to this case study on the history of Christian remembering and forgetting in Rome.

78. See now D. Boin, “Late Antique Divi and Imperial Priests of the Late Fourth and Early Fifth Centuries,” in Pagans and Christians in Fourth Century Rome: Interpreting the Evidence, ed. M. Salzman, M. Sághy, and R. Lizzi Testa (New York: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).

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4

From Victim to Victor: Developing an Iconography of Suffering in Early Christian Art

Felicity Harley-McGowan

Christ too must be understood to be he who in spiritual armour and as a spiritual warrior is an overthrower of spiritual enemies, and so it was he who was able to contend with the legion of demons; and thus it will become evident that of this war the psalm declared, The Lord strong the Lord mighty in battle. For when he did battle with the last enemy, which is death, he triumphed by the trophy of the cross. Tertullian, Against Marcion IV.20.4–51 1. Tertullian, Adversus Marcionem, 2 vols., ed. and trans. Ernest Evans (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972), vol. 1, 364–65. I should like to thank the editors for their kind invitation to contribute to this volume, and for their comments on drafts of this chapter. Sincere thanks

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The vivid image of Jesus as a spiritual warrior triumphing over demons and death had profound resonance for Tertullian’s contemporaries in the early third century ce. Having largely expanded and maintained its power through war and the exertion of violence, the Roman Empire was awash with depictions of conquest; and within its bellicose culture, the concept of the “barbarian” as an aggressive and ever-present threat to the order of civilized Roman society was vigorously endorsed by the government through word and image.2 A strong tradition of publicly displaying depictions of battle had existed from the third century bce, where symbolic and allegorical compositions were used to enunciate Roman victory.3 As this practice evolved, the vanquished were the recipients of increasing attention pictorially: represented as captives, bound, humiliated, and brought to servitude at the feet of Roman tropaea or military trophies, they became in Keith Bradley’s terms, “abstract symbols” of Roman power (Fig. 1).4 With the rise of Septimius Severus in the late second

also to: Henry Maguire; to Douglas Boin and Andrew McGowan for invaluable conversation, helpful criticism, and for pushing me to think more clearly about the ideas I have sought to express here; and Annewies van den Hoek and John Herrmann for comments, kind permission to use their previously published images, and photography of the Column of Marcus Aurelius. 2. For aspects of literary construction of a barbarian identity, associated with violent behavior and necessitating military activity, see Ralph Mathisen, “Violent Behaviour and the Construction of Barbarian Identity in Late Antiquity,” in Violence in Late Antiquity: Perceptions and Practices, ed. Harold Drake (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2006), 27–35. For aspects of visual construction, see the essays in Sheila Dillon and Katherine Welch, eds., Representations of War in Ancient Rome (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). Also: Iain M. Ferris, “The Pity of War: Representations of Gauls and Germans in Roman Art,” in, Cultural Identity in the Ancient Mediterranean, ed. Erich Gruen (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2011), 184–201, which contains a review of key literature, e.g., note 1, 197–98. 3. On the Roman use of military victory to express political power, as distinct from the Greek traditions on which it was founded and subsequently developed more fully, see Tonio Hölscher, “Images of War in Greece and Rome: Between Military Practice, Public Memory, and Cultural Symbolism,” Journal of Roman Studies 93 (2003): 1–17. On the numerous references in Roman literature to paintings officially displayed to commemorate victory: Willem Zwikker, Studien zur Markussäule (Amsterdam: N. v. Noord-Hollandsche Uitgevers Mij., 1941), 7–13. 4. Keith Bradley, “On Captives under the Principate,” Phoenix 58, no. 3/4 (2004): 298–318, terminology at 300. In the first century, Josephus records (Jewish Wars 7, 138ff.), that the detailed representations of devastating battles, conquered peoples and places, that were carried

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century ce, representations of subjugation became increasingly explicit, and violent;5 and it was at this very time (c. 207–208 ce) that Tertullian crafted his own literary image of the imperial Christ vanquishing the enemy in his treatise countering the doctrines of Marcion, cited above.6 By the fourth century, Gregory of Nazianzus attests that Roman emperors delighted in using traditional, symbolic references to imperial power (such as Victories offering them crowns, or personifications of cities offering them gifts), together with a range of scenes that more explicitly detailed the path to victory (the vanquished trampled underfoot, or even slaughtered). The emperors, wrote Gregory, “love not only the reality of those deeds on which they pride themselves, but also the representations of them.”7 Within a visual culture redolent of basic power relations, dominant versus subordinate, active and pacified, superior and inferior, the depiction of the vanquished beside the trophy was a critical component in the visual articulation of imperial authority: the conqueror and conquered were two sides of the same coin.8

in triumphal processions were numerous, and to those who had not been at the events, seeing the images made them feel as though they were actually present. 5. On these developments see Susann Lusnia, “Battle Imagery and Politics on the Severan Arch in the Roman Forum,” in Representations of War in Ancient Rome, ed. Sheila Dillon and Katherine Welch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 272–99. With regard to representations on the Column of Marcus Aurelius, see Paul Zanker, “Die Frauen und Kinder der Barbaren auf der Markussäule,” in Autour de la colonne Aurélienne: Geste et image sur la colonne de Marc-Aurèle à Rome, ed. John Scheid and Valérie Huet (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000), 163–74. 6. Tertullian gives the date in book 1 chapter 15 of Against Marcion—although it is not clear that he wrote all of the subsequent books in the same year. See the review of Evans’s translation by William H. C. Frend, Scottish Journal of Theology 26, no. 1 (1973): 108–9. 7. Gregory of Nazianzus, Orations 4.80. See further on this passage, and the role of imperial portraits, in Clifford Ando, Imperial Ideology and Provincial Loyalty in the Roman Empire (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000), 231–32. 8. As Ferris highlights in “The Pity of War,” 198 note 4, citing Mary Beard.

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Fig. 1. Gemma Augustea. Roman, c. 9-12 CE; h. 19 x b. 23 cm, low relief cameo, double-layered Arabian onyx stone, (seventeenth century setting of gold, gold-plated silver), Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (Inv. nr. ANSA IXa79). Photo: Gryffindor, Wikimedia Commons User, with kind permission.

In addressing the arch-heretic Marcion, Tertullian would not have been left untouched by these pictorial developments. While even the winds and sea obeyed Christ (Luke 8:25), authority over nature will have seemed inadequate in visually conveying Christ’s domination of that most slippery and subversive enemy, evil. Like the barbarian, invariably represented with a chilling lack of pathos in Roman art, evil needed to be brought under control by Christ in violent combat. Like a Roman artisan in his workshop, Tertullian knew instinctively

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the narrative components essential for the construction of the image. In careful sequence, he thus builds a crescendo toward triumph: Christ dons armor, fights a legion in battle, slays the chief enemy, and sets up the tropaeum. For the representation of Christ’s triumph over death the imperial model was effective in Christian literature, and became significant in Christian art. Much has been written how the tropaeum was used in early Christian iconography;9 yet little has been said about the symbol of the captive that was so critical in the formulaic demonstration of Roman imperial glory, but turns out to be absent from representations of Christian triumph, at least in the expected form. This departure from traditional iconography presents a historical puzzle with important ramifications beyond the iconographic detail; in Christian art, the victim was transformed into the victor. This effective reversal of the original meaning had far-reaching cultural effects, gradually enabling the development of an entirely new genre of imagery: Christian suffering. To consider the process of reversal, I take up a theory of André Grabar. In doing so, the historical puzzle inevitably becomes historiographical as well as iconographical: for the case of the tropaeum and the symbol of the captive embodies an unresolved tension in modern scholarship regarding the very question of whether, how, and why imperial themes were influential in the formation of Christian iconography in late antiquity. Grabar drew attention to the change in the iconography of military triumph, arguing that just as the trophy was absorbed directly into Christian iconography, so was the symbol of the vanquished; but that unlike the trophy, the meaning of the captive 9. Robin M. Jensen has outlined the scholarship surrounding the adaptation of the military iconography for Christian purposes, and interrogated the key literature: “The Emperor Cult and Christian Iconography,” in Rome and Religion: A Cross-Disciplinary Dialogue on the Imperial Cult, ed. Jeffrey Brodd and Jonathan Reed (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2011), 153–71.

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had to be reversed.10 Much of his work on the development of a Christian iconography in late antiquity has been neglected more recently, particularly since the publication of Thomas Mathews’s study The Clash of Gods in 1993, wherein the viability of Grabar’s template for the interpretation of early Christian iconography (discussed below) was questioned.11 Yet Grabar’s ideas deserve renewed consideration. In addressing the transformation of the vanquished this chapter will begin by returning to his understanding of the emergence of Christian iconography, specifically highlighting his thoughts on the creative process involved. It will then briefly outline the place of the tropaeum as a symbol of triumph in Roman visual culture, before unfolding the “reversal” hypothesis as Grabar applied it to the iconography of beheaded martyrs in Christian art.12 While Grabar’s ideas about the creative process furnish a critical intellectual context for the “reversal” hypothesis, they will be shown to have important, broader ramifications for our understanding of the ways in which “new” iconographies were developed by Roman

10. Grabar, Christian Iconography, explained across 49–50. 11. Thomas Mathews, The Clash of Gods: A Reinterpretation of Early Christian Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993). 12. I note here that violence in late antiquity continues to expand as a field of inquiry, and this paper cannot do justice to the complex sociological, political, judicial, and theological issues in which Grabar’s thoughts might be broadly situated and more closely examined. Several references will suffice to illustrate growing work in this area: the collected essays in Albert Geljon and Riemer Roukema, eds., Violence in Ancient Christianity: Victims and Perpetrators (Boston: Brill, 2014), and in Harold Drake et al., eds., Violence in Late Antiquity: Perceptions and Practices (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2006); see also Thomas Sizgorich’s Violence and Belief in Late Antiquity: Militant Devotion in Christianity and Islam (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009). In addition is Brent Shaw’s recent call to provide a theorization of violence in Sacred Violence: African Christians and Sectarian Hatred in the Age of Augustine (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 4, which has prompted further discussion on the nature of violence—for instance, articles in Journal of Early Christian Studies 21, no. 2 (2013), and Journal of Late Antiquity 6, no. 2 (2013). A further question of importance, but which regrettably, space did not allow exploration of here is how Romans viewed images of violence, including the social and moral responsibilities of both the artist and viewer—on which see Helen Morales, “The Torturer’s Apprentice: Parrhasius and the Limits of Art,” in Art and Text in Roman Culture, ed. Jaś Elsner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 182–209.

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artisans for Christian patrons in late antiquity after the fourth century. This includes an iconography of death, and, it will be suggested, a more historic representation of the crucifixion. Grabar and the Emergence of Christian Iconography Grabar first gave a close analysis of the relationship between Roman imperial visual culture and the formation of Christian iconography in his 1936 monograph L’Empereur dans l’art byzantin.13 In systematically presenting his ideas about the influence of the emperor’s court ceremonial on early Christian iconography, he drew together and analyzed both literary sources (which were numerous) and extant examples of imperial imagery (which were widely dispersed).14 Various scholars before and alongside Grabar actively explored and subscribed to the view that imperial iconography exerted an important influence on Christian art,15 maintaining that as part of the appropriation of imperial cult imagery, images of Jesus were directly modeled on those of the Emperor.16 Grabar’s thoughts about the ways by which Christians utilized Roman iconography, and why they did so, were teased out in the 1960s when he articulated what would become a standard template for understanding the very formation of Christian art in the GrecoRoman world.17 Grabar proposed that around 200 ce, in the face 13. L’Empereur dans l’art byzantin: recherches sur l’art officiel de l’empire d’Orient (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1936). The importance of connecting representations of Christ in the early Christian period with imperial iconography was something that a reviewer (identified only as E. K.) emphasized: The Journal of Hellenic Studies 57, no. 2 (1937): 278–80. As Henry Maguire observed with me in personal communication, given the appeal to “stylistic modes,” the reviewer is surely Ernst Kitzinger. 14. So noted Kitzinger, The Journal of Hellenic Studies, 57, no. 2 (1937): 278. 15. Pivotal among them Ernst H. Kantorowicz (1895–1963) and Andreas Alföldi (1895–1981). 16. What Jensen has referred to as the “imperial style theory”: Robin M. Jensen, Understanding Early Christian Art (London: Routledge, 2000), 98, and cogently summarizing key issues across 98–100. 17. First outlined in the 1961 A. W. Mellon lectures in the Fine Arts at the National Gallery of Art, Washington (titled Christian Iconography and the Christian Religion in Antiquity); then published

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of competition from other religions, and in spite of their aniconic leanings, Christians began to demand images that were specific to their faith.18 In response, artisans did not invent a visual language from scratch, but drew from the conventional motifs current in other branches of late Hellenistic art, adapting them to the Christian context. Grabar thus pointed to an important paradox in the creation of early Christian imagery: that to create something genuinely new, artisans turned to what existed around them. In this process, the notion of Christian dependence on imperial art was pivotal for him: “The mark of imperial iconography in Christian art is recognizable everywhere and in different ways,” he wrote.19 In his view, therefore, the art of Late Antiquity was like a large family, having many branches but also a core branch—the official iconographic vocabulary of the Roman state—that was ultimately the most influential.20 The template was reinforced with the publication in 1971 of the second edition of L’Empereur dans l’art byzantin.21 In understanding how Christian images were composed and what purpose they served,22 Grabar would radically disregard traditional categories of “high” and “low” art in order to consider all aspects of

(with a revised title) as a monograph, Christian Iconography: A Study of Its Origins (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968). 18. Grabar, Christian Iconography, 27–30. Mathews forwards the same idea about religious competition and iconographic development in The Clash, 3–10—although without reference to Grabar’s similarity of position. For a critique of the position: Jaś Elsner, “Inventing Christian Rome: The Role of Early Christian Art,” in Rome the Cosmopolis, ed. Catharine Edwards and Greg Woolf (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 71–99, here 73 and passim. 19. Grabar, Christian Iconography, 42. Numerous instances of the “assimilation” of contemporary iconography to Christian use could be found, he observed, from ascension iconography, to generic pastoral scenes, as well particular figure-types (standing, seated, reclining); yet imperial art had the most important role to play in the formulation of Christian iconography, and specifically in the development from the fourth century onwards of the Christian theme of the power of God. See chapter 2, “The Assimilation of Contemporary Imagery”; and the influence of the emperor’s court ceremonial laid out in more detail in his L’Empereur dans l’art byzantin. 20. Grabar, Christian Iconography, xli, 30, and 37. 21. (London: Variorum, 1971). 22. Grabar’s self-avowed concerns, Christian Iconography, xli.

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visual culture, and the function of images in ancient Christian piety. As an archeologist might do, he sought to understand the significance of images in their original contexts. Despite

these

broader

and

significant

contributions

to

23

scholarship, the template itself came under scrutiny. It was actively nuanced by the late 1970s at a time when, as Beat Brenk observed, the “imperial heritage” of early Christian art had become a sticking point.24 Brenk himself warned against overstating this connection;25 for although Grabar noted the diversity of artistic influences in late antiquity, the other “borrowed” aspects of early Christian iconography (mythological or funerary art for instance), had tended to be downplayed in the template; at worst, they were ignored in deference to imperial ideals.26 Thus Grabar’s declaration that “[t]he mark of Imperial iconography in Christian art is recognizable everywhere and in different ways”27 was tweaked by Brenk to read, “The mark of imperial iconography in Christian art is recognisable in different ways.”28 The excision of the word “everywhere” was decisive in practice, but subtle on the page (as was the editorial shift away from capitalizing the word “imperial”). Other scholars were more forthright. In his response to what he called “the incubus of imperial interpretation,” Mathews dedicated

23. The nature and significances of which are summarized by Henry Maguire in his obituary, “André Grabar, 1896–1990,” DOP 45 (1991): xii–xv. 24. Brenk, “The Imperial Heritage of Early Christian Art,” in Age of Spirituality: A Symposium, ed. Kurt Weitzmann (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1980), 39–50, at opening paragraph; and in citing archeologists, historians, and art historians as having “studied the problem,” Brenk sketches the breadth of scholarly interest—39, note 1. 25. See his conclusion: Brenk, “The Imperial Heritage,” 50. 26. Peter Brown summarizes the state of the field following widespread acceptance of such an approach in his review of Thomas Mathews, The Clash of Gods: A Reinterpretation of Early Christian Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), in The Art Bulletin 77, no. 3 (1995): 499–502. 27. Grabar, Christian Iconography, 42. 28. Brenk, “The Imperial Heritage,” 49—although he does not cite Grabar, or thus note how close his wording is.

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an entire monograph to the development of his thesis that early Christian art drew on Greco-Roman pictorial formulae for the representation of divinities, philosophers, even noblemen, and was not at all dependent on imperial models, either iconographic or ideological, for the representation of Christ.29 In rebutting what he dubbed the “Emperor Mystique” theory,30 which he saw as being exemplified in Grabar’s scholarship,31 Mathews was right to highlight the religiously syncretistic nature of visual culture in late antiquity, a characteristic now more widely acknowledged and explored.32 Yet while the anti-imperial thesis he built successfully established that imperial art was less influential than some had assumed, it failed to demonstrate that imperial art was impotent.33 Grabar’s own thoughts about the influences on, and the purposes of, early Christian art are more nuanced than his categorical 29. Mathews, The Clash, 179. Mathews’s phrase is also highlighted by Brown, The Art Bulletin 77, no. 3 (1995): 499. 30. Mathews uses the term in the title of the first chapter, and introduces it formally on page 12 of The Clash where he turns to critique Grabar specifically, across 12–14. 31. Mathews, The Clash, 12, citing Grabar in Christian Iconography, 5–54. 32. Various reviewers noted the importance of Mathews’s contribution, e.g., Brown, The Art Bulletin 77, no. 3 (1995): 499–502. Dale Kinney thus observed that while she could not agree with his reinterpretations, “I respect the validity of Mathews’s enterprise”: review in Studies in Iconography 16 (1994): 238. The multistranded nature of influence across religious art in late antiquity is articulated by Elsner, “Late Antique Art: The Problem.” I am not going to address Mathews’s suggestions that the ideas of Grabar, Kantorowicz, and Alföldi were a result of their own political experience, on which see the pithy comments of Anabel Wharton in her review of The Clash in American Historical Review 100, no. 5 (1995): 1518–19. 33. For example: Eugene Kleinbauer in his review in Speculum 70, no. 4 (1995): 937–41; Liz James, reviewing in The Burlington Magazine 136, no. 1096 (1994), 458–59 (here, 459). Recent studies have begun to demonstrate more concretely the evidence for imperial influence on the formation of earlier Christian iconography, including the trial of Christ (to which Grabar himself drew attention, in Christian Iconography, 49): e.g., Jaś Elsner, “Images and Rhetoric in Early Christian Sarcophagi: Reflections on Jesus’ Trial,” in Life, Death and Representation: Some New Work on Roman Sarcophagi, ed. Jaś Elsner and Janet Huskinson (Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 2011), 370–71, who notes that representations of the trial of Jesus on certain sarcophagi, at the center of which he is shown triumphant, “calls into question recent attempts to deny any appropriation of imperial (as well as other kinds) of authority to the image of Jesus in early Christian art.” As Liz James pointed out over a decade ago, assessing the imperial heritage of early Christian art is not a question of “either/or,”: The Burlington Magazine 136, no. 1096 (1994): 459.

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association with the “Emperor Mystique” has allowed. In striving for a more balanced analysis of Christian iconography in its GrecoRoman context, his perception of the variety of ways imperial influence was manifest, and the artisanal creativity necessary for the manifestation of a variety of responses, warrants further attention (and continues to be relevant). In order to examine this creativity, we can begin by considering the way Grabar responded to an important myth about the “origins” of Christian art, one that remains pervasive and inherently problematic for the advancement of the field. Grabar noted a confidence among scholars in the “creative faculties” of the artisans responsible for the development of Christian images in the Greco-Roman world: that is, a belief that artisans were able to invent Christian imagery from scratch, de novo.34 He identified two causes for the confidence. First was the nature of Christianity as a religion of the book: early Christian images were seen an artisan’s direct translation of text, without intermediary influences or sources. Second was the prevalence of the Romantic notion of the artist as inspired creator. The result was a widespread conviction that images represented the artisan’s individual response to a text. Scholars then struggled to understand why, for instance, an illustrated Passion narrative was slow to develop when that narrative stood at the heart of the canonical Gospels, and was prominently discussed and theologically central in Patristic thought. In developing an alternative view, Grabar began by rejecting the term “art” for the discussion of early Christian imagery. Art historians and archeologists have recognized that the relatively recent notion of “art” as an original creation, produced by an inspired individual, is unhelpful and misleading in the study of image production in ancient contexts. The Greek τέχνη (technē, Latin ars) was applied to

34. The following draws from Grabar’s discussion in Christian Iconography, across xlii–xliii.

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a range of human activities that today we might refer to as craft or sciences—activities that involved techniques and skills of production that followed a set of rules, or methods that were understood to be teachable.35 Grabar wrestled with this tension between the modern and ancient definitions of the term “art,” rejecting its use when studying the origins, style, and content of early Christian images and deliberately using “iconography” instead.36 At a time when early Christian imagery was cast firmly into the margins of art’s history, Grabar’s interest in the process of creation was crucial in drawing attention to iconographic experimentation, and it remains helpful as we continue to think about the emergence of Christian imagery as a dynamic and innovative process within Roman visual culture at large. Attempts to classify early Christian art as a definable “category” within that culture, or as a distinct “period” within the broader scheme of the history of art, had usually resulted in the opinion that Christian art existed in opposition to classical art and culture; early Christian art was viewed as either the black hole into which Roman art declined (the end of Roman civilization), or the cultural morass out of which medieval art was born (the beginning of the so-called “dark ages”).37 Here lies a bitter irony: the 35. Jerome J. Pollitt, The Ancient View of Greek Art: Criticism, History, and Terminology (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), 22, describes τέχνη (technē) as a “combination of knowledge and orderly procedure.” On the modern conception of the fine arts, and medieval and Renaissance thinking, see briefly Andreas Speer, “Aesthetics,” in The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Philosophy, ed. John Marenbon (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 670–71. 36. Grabar, Christian Iconography, xlv—for example, “[T]he simple fact that the images were painted or sculpted is not enough to make them works of art,” and passim. 37. For a brief review of the methodological divide in which the study of early Christian art has been caught, see Jaś Elsner, “Late Antique Art: The Problem of the Concept and the Cumulative Aesthetic,” in Approaching Late Antiquity: The Transformation from Early to Late Empire, ed. Simon Swain and Mark Edwards (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 271–309, especially 275–77. As Elsner notes (276 n. 17), the most recent attempt to synthesize the two positions comes in the volume edited by J. Rasmus Brandt, Imperial Art as Christian Art, Christian Art as Imperial Art: Expression and Meaning in Art and Architecture from Constantine to Justinian, Acta ad archaeologiam et artium historiam pertinentia new series, 1 (Rome: Bardi, 2001).

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symbolic and metaphorical references to light and darkness that were used in ancient Christian literature to refer to Jesus as the bringer of light (John 1:4-9), in fulfillment of Isaiah’s vision (Matt. 4:16; Isa. 9:2), were later used against early Christian art. That is, while Christians saw the heathens as having languished in the darkness of antiquity, scholars and writers from Petrarch onwards came to depict Antiquity as the age of light, an age submerged in the darkness brought by Christianity.38 Subsequent perceptions of early Christian material culture were thus tied to the idea that art died with the growth of the church, only to be reborn when Renaissance artists effected a revival. Moreover, further contrast was made: the revival was presented as miraculous, since it occurred without the benefit of teachers, and with few pictorial models;39 the death was cast as reprehensible, since it resulted from Christianity’s deliberate rejection and destruction of those models.40 Yet Grabar demurred. Although the results were not aesthetically pleasing to him, he was genuinely interested in the creative process by which a Christian iconography emerged.41 And in pursuit of this interest, he worked directly against that old model of early Christianity as artistically corruptive—even if he remained beholden to the traditional classification system of artistic “periods” in the process.42 38. The classic study remains Theodore Mommsen, “Petrarch’s Conception of the ‘Dark Ages,’” Speculum 17, no. 2 (1942): 226–42. The traditional narrative of Petrarch as being the first to note that antiquity was both distinct from the medieval, and more admirable, has been challenged: see Martin Eisner, “In the Labyrinth of the Library: Petrarch’s Cicero, Dante’s Virgil, and the Historiography of the Renaissance,” Renaissance Quarterly 67, no. 3 (2014): 755–90. 39. Phyllis Pray Bober and Ruth Rubinstein, Renaissance Artists & Antique Sculpture: A Handbook of Sources (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 32. 40. For the ascription of guilt to early Christianity in the Renaissance, by writers, artists, and commentators (from Lorenzo Ghiberti, through to Leone Battista Alberti and Giorgio Vasari), the study by Tilmann Buddensieg remains seminal: “Gregory the Great, the Destroyer of Pagan Idols: The history of a medieval legend concerning the decline of ancient art and literature,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 28 (1965): 44–65. 41. E.g., Grabar, Christian Iconography, xliv–xlv. 42. For Grabar’s unsuccessful attempt to abandon the traditional categories, see Elsner, “Archaeologies and Agendas: Reflections on Late Ancient Jewish Art and Early Christian Art,”

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Grabar emphasized that when an artisan set out to compose an image, a range of influences came into play. Since “remembered images are among the most active,” contemporary imagery must be taken into account when understanding the emergence of Christian iconography and the development of specifically Christian images.43 He saw that as Christian communities multiplied across the Mediterranean basin in the first three centuries ce, a new market for objects bearing symbols or images relating to Christian themes steadily grew. The process by which craftsmen catered to the desires of this market was more than a simple selection from a group of preexisting iconographic formulae or “ready-mades,” as it were. The enterprise was artistically challenging and intensely creative; and like any new art “movement,” it often produced aesthetically provocative results.44 Here, Grabar put his finger on something crucial, particularly for considering how artisans experimented with an iconography of suffering. While Grabar’s view of early Christian iconography and its place in the Greco-Roman world is still a long way from the “interlocking” model of religious art now being developed, wherein the religious arts of Roman culture are seen not as separate entities but as interconnected,45 he was aware of some of the same issues. Now we can recognize that in a religiously pluralistic Roman Empire, Journal of Roman Studies 93 (2003): 124. Attempts to shrug off the categories are ongoing within the field: e.g., the stated intention of the volume Late Antique and Medieval Art of the Mediterranean World, ed. Eva Hoffmann (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007), as outlined in the introduction; and for early Christian art, Elsner, “Archaeologies,” 114–28. 43. Grabar, Christian Iconography, xliii. A similar approach was advocated by Ernst Gombrich, who sought to define or delimit the iconographic choices available to artisans at particular times and in particular situations: Elizabeth McGrath, “Gombrich and ‘Warburgian’ Iconography,” in Meditations on a Heritage: Papers on the Work and Legacy of Sir Ernst Gombrich, ed. Paul Taylor (London: Paul Holberton, 2013), 38. 44. Grabar Christian Iconography, xlviii: “[C]reativity . . . consists in appropriating existing figurations by shifting the meaning of repeated formulas, by taking over known iconographic formulas, or composing similar ones by analogy.” 45. The model is Elsner’s, “Archaeologies and Agendas,” particularly 125–26.

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workshops catered to a variety of theological preferences. Religious art did not form independent, definable categories; particular iconographies or “visual strategies” were not exclusive to one or other religion, but were used by artisans for different religious commissions; and the history of the emergence of Christian art might thus be more accurately described as the complex mixture of the acceptance and rejection of particular motifs.46 Grabar’s own views about the creative process laid a few bricks on the path to this understanding; and this is apparent in his thoughts on the challenges posed for Christians by imperial iconographies of violence, whether judicial or military. Aesthetics of Violence and Aesthetics of Joy While Grabar was pinpointing the paradoxes of Christian borrowing, many scholars began troubling over another historical inconsistency: that although early Christian authors often considered Christ’s suffering and crucifixion, artisans rarely depicted it.47 There is very little, if any evidence for Christian iconography of the crucifixion for almost two hundred years after Jesus’ death.48 Yet, as more recent 46. So argues Elsner, “Archaeologies and Agendas,” as above. 47. For the death as a widespread theme in Early Christian literature: Brian Daley, “‘He Himself Is Our Peace’ (Ephesians 2:14): Early Christian Views of Redemption in Christ,” in The Redemption: An Interdisciplinary Symposium on Christ as Redeemer, ed. Stephen Davis et al. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 149–76. For a summary of the artistic treatment of the theme: Robin M. Jensen, “The Passion in Early Christian Art,” in Perspectives on the Passion: Encountering the Bible through the Arts, ed. Christine Joynes (London: T. & T. Clark International, 2007), 53–84. 48. The early evidence is very briefly summarized by Felicity Harley, “The Crucifixion,” in Picturing the Bible: The Earliest Christian Art, ed. Jeffrey Spier (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 227–32. For the dates given to the late antique gems engraved with crucifixion iconography in that catalog, see also Spier, Late Antique and Early Christian Gems (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2007), nos. 443–45, with critical discussion 73–75. Further: Harley-McGowan, “The Constanza Carnelian and the Development of Crucifixion Iconography in Late Antiquity,” in ‘Gems of Heaven’: Recent Research on Engraved Gemstones in Late Antiquity c. AD 200-600, ed. Christopher Entwistle and Noël Adams, British Museum Research Publication 177 (London: Trustees of the British Museum, 2011), 214–20; and more comprehensively discussed in a forthcoming monograph with Yale University Press.

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scholarship has highlighted, the earliest extant Christian iconography of any kind, roughly contemporary with Tertullian’s treatise against Marcion, was overwhelmingly concerned with deliverance from death, and hope in resurrection to eternal life.49 This was an aesthetic of joy focused on salvation that ran counter to that Roman aesthetic of violence gathering momentum at the same time. Where the figure of the vanquished lay at the core of how imperial art depicted its triumphing saviors, the figure of the saved was fundamental to how Christian art presented the work of its own victorious divine hero. Grabar’s own response to the rarity of crucifixion iconography was to probe not only the theme (death) but the iconographic mechanics of representing that death: in light of the literary evidence, he rejected the popular theory that the subject was absent from the iconographic repertoire because artisans dared not to tackle it. He proposed two alternative theories. First, given that scenes of execution by crucifixion do not survive from the material record of the ancient world, there were no models in Roman art from which artisans could draw.50 More significant however, was his secondary observation that images were not used to designate the reality of Jesus’ death “but to demonstrate the glory of Christ, his victory over death (that is, as a symbol of the Resurrection), the universality of salvation through the Cross, and so on.”51 So for Christians to be able to visualize situations where suffering was integral to a story, and where pathos and humanity were key

49. As I have outlined elsewhere: Harley-McGowan, “Death is swallowed up in victory: Scenes of death in early Christian art and the emergence of crucifixion iconography,” Cultural Studies Review 17, no. 1 (2011): 101–24. See also Lee Jefferson, Christ the Miracle Worker in Early Christian Art (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2014). 50. Grabar, Christian Iconography, 50. Jocelyn Toynbee is one of the few scholars to have picked up on this comment and noted its importance: J. M. C. Toynbee, “Romano-Christian Images: review of Christian Iconography: A Study of Its Origins by André Grabar,” The Classical Review 20, no. 3 (1970): 380–83—here, 382. 51. Grabar, Christian Iconography, 131–32.

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components, there had to be a fundamental shift in the viewer’s perception of the captive or vanquished. The body of the captive (dehumanized, defeated, and held in contempt beneath the victory trophy), had to be transformed into the body of the sacred (humanized, victorious, and celebrated), as Grabar himself originally observed. In this way the iconography of the victim would have a new purpose. The Trophy and the Cross Grabar argued that for the representation of tribunals, judgments, condemnations, and executions, the makers of Christian images were entirely dependent on models furnished by imperial art.52 He noted important iconographic correlations between judicial scenes in a first-century bce Roman domestic context,53 and Christian scenes illustrated in diverse pictorial contexts.54 The judgments of Solomon for example,55 Daniel (with Susannah and the Elders: Dan. 52. Grabar, Christian Iconography, 49; and see generally chapter 2, “The Assimilation of Contemporary Imagery.” 53. Namely the judicial scenes illustrated in fresco on the long frieze in the triclinium of an Augustan villa excavated beneath the present Villa Farnesina, Rome, dated to the first century bce—now in the Museo Nazionale Romano (Palazzo Massimo alle Terme), Rome. On the frieze as one of the earliest black-ground decorations known in Roman painting, see Roger Ling, Roman Painting (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 41–42, fig. 41, dating the fresco c. 20 bce (and ascribing it to the final phase of the Second Style). Nine scenes of judgment are depicted, and are now thought to relate to the reign of the eighth-century bce Egyptian Pharaoh Bocchoris, known as a wise lawgiver: Verity Platt, “Where the Wild Things Art: Locating the Marvellous in Augustan Wall Painting,” in Paradox and the Marvellous in Augustan Literature and Culture, ed. Philip Hardie (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 41–74, with citation of the literature on this interpretation at 66 note 60. 54. Grabar, Christian Iconography, 49. 55. Although a rare scene in early Christian art, an important example is the very fine representation on the San Nazaro reliquary, Northern Italy (?), late fourth century. Silver with gilding, 20.5 × 20.6 cm. Museo Diocesano, Milan, MD 2004.115.001. Jeffrey Spier, ed., Picturing the Bible, cat. no. 77, 259–64. A fresco in Pompeii discovered in 1882 by Giovanni Battista de Rossi, now in the Museo Nazionale at Naples, was titled the “Judgment of Solomon”; however, see a skeptical Joseph Gutmann, “Was There Biblical Art at Pompeii?,” Antike Kunst, 15. Jahrg., H. 2. (1972): 122–24—with the literature in which the fresco is identified as such at note 4.

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13:45-64),56 as well as the trials of Jesus or Christian martyrs,57 share important iconographic features with similar judicial scenes in Roman art. The same iconography used in imperial contexts to present the defeated adversary was used in Christian art to depict the

tested

heroes

of

the

early

church,

the

apostles

and

martyrs—specifically, execution by decollation. Beheading was normally reserved for citizens and notables, being considered to be a more civilized form of execution than crucifixion, or torture and death in the arena.58 Perhaps it is for this reason that Romans chose to feature this particular form of execution in depictions of their battles, over other punishments. Decollated heads, illustrated within the frame of imperial art, formed a visual spectacle for the viewer. On the victory column of Trajan, where they appear alongside the prominent display of victory trophies, beheadings of captives glorify the peacemaking efforts of the Roman army, and assert the glory not only of the emperor, but of the army itself, and even more broadly, of the empire.59 The process by which this iconography of decollation was adopted 56. Examples of the scene are found in funerary contexts in different media, as well as part of the original mosaic cycle of Old Testament scenes in the cupola of Santa Costanza, Rome c. 350, destroyed in 1620. For the latter see Spier, ed., Picturing the Bible, 99 and fig. 74 for the sixteenth-century watercolor by Francesco d’Ollanda that preserves the original cycle. Grabar also illustrates this watercolor, Christian Iconography fig. 331. For earlier examples of the judgment scene on sarcophagi and in the catacomb of Callixtus see Kathryn A. Smith, “Inventing Marital Chastity: The Iconography of Susanna and the Elders in Early Christian Art,” Oxford Art Journal 16, no. 1 (1993): 3–24 (the catacomb at fig. 17). 57. Jaś Elsner, “Images and Rhetoric in Early Christian Sarcophagi: Reflections on Jesus’ Trial,” in Life, Death and Representation: Some New Work on Roman Sarcophagi, ed. Jaś Elsner and Janet Huskinson (Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 2011), 370–71. Also on the trial of Christ in early Christian art, see Colum Hourihane, Pontius Pilate, Anti-Semitism, and the Passion in Medieval Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), 52–83. 58. Ramsay MacMullen, “Judicial Savagery in the Roman Empire,” in Changes in the Roman Empire: Essays in the Ordinary, ed. Ramsay MacMullen (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 205. See also a general discussion of beheading in antiquity by Regina Janes, Losing Our Heads: Beheadings in Literature and Culture (New York: New York University Press, 2005), ch. 1. 59. As emphasized by Ian Richmond in his study, Trajan’s Army on Trajan’s Column (London: The British School at Rome, 1982)—also published in Papers of the British School at Rome 13 (1935): 1–40.

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for Christian pictorial contexts tells us something about the difficult task of beginning to articulate an iconography of Christian suffering; and to understand that process we must return to the imperial victory trophy itself, and that negotiation with which this essay began: the appropriation of Roman victory iconography for the representation of Christ’s victory. The Roman trophy was a cruciform structure erected on the battlefield, a stylized human figure or manikin made by the careful arrangement of arms and armor (usually of the defeated enemy) upon it (Fig. 2).60 Roman poets give important evidence of the Greek custom, as adopted by the Romans: the trophy was formed through a lopped tree trunk, erected on a mound or elevation and then adorned with the spoils and arms. For example, Vergil’s Aeneid (book 11, lines 5–11) describes Aeneas taking a gigantic oak tree, shorn of its branches, and setting it on a hill; he clothes it with the arms and spoil from his battle with Mezentius, placing the crested helmet of his enemy, dripping with blood, onto it along with the breastplate and shield.

61

The

constituent parts come to form a body, such that Vergil notes Aeneas suspends the sword from the “neck” (collo) of the trophy—the treetrunk emphatically identified with the corpse of the dead warrior. It is thus easy to see how the tropaeum came to present for theologians a

60. This is the view stressed by Gilbert C. Picard in his seminal work, Les trophies romains: Contribution à l’histoire de la religion et de l’art triomphal de Rome (Paris: De Boccard, 1957), chapter 1—beginning the story of the Roman trophy in Greece. Another critical study published in the same year focuses specifically on the origins of the battlefield trophy: Andreas J. Janssen, Het antieke Tropaion (Brussels: Paleis der Academiën, 1957). Janssen notes that the earliest surviving depiction occurs on a painted vase dated to the first half of the fifth century bce. On the literary sources for the history of the trophy and a review of the scholarship, the analysis of W. Kendrick Pritchett is critical: The Greek State at War, Part 2 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), ch. 13, 246–75. 61. For further references by Roman poets: “Tropaeum,” in William Smith, A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1859), 1168–69; and now Pritchett, The Greek State, ch. 13, passim.

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perfect vehicle by which to evoke in the mind’s eye, the image of the triumphant, yet paradoxically crucified, Christ.62

Fig. 2. Victory trophy. The Column of Trajan, detail. Roman, cararra marble, 113 CE; Via dei Fori Imperiali, Rome. Plaster cast by Monsieur Oudry c. 1864, Victoria and Albert Museum, no. REPRO.1864-128 Photo: author.

Emperors had long taken delight in images that explored a variety 62. So for example Minucius Felix (Octavius 29.7–8) discerned in the form of the trophy not only the cross, but also the figure of one crucified.

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of ways by which the enemy was brought to subjugation.63 These chilling representations reinforced, and so were pivotal, in the statement of power made in the tropaeum itself. Two examples can attest to the diverse artistic contexts in which this reinforcement was manifest. The most celebrated is probably the Gemma Augustea (c. 10 ce), whereon two pairs of captives are carved in a lower register, beneath a detailed depiction of the Emperor enthroned and literally elevated in triumph in an upper register (Fig. 1).64 In what is a unique scene of the physical raising of a victory trophy on the battlefield, one pair of captives is shown seated beneath the trophy; a woman (with what seems, to the modern viewer at least, palpable sorrow) rests her head in her hands while her male companion, stripped to his waist, sits awkwardly with his arms tied behind his back. His face clearly furrowed, he glances over his left shoulder to a second pair of captives, shown to the right of the composition: there another woman stands, drawing her clothing across her body as her hair is wrenched violently by a soldier; her male companion, on his knees before her, gestures vainly in supplication toward a Roman soldier as he too is dragged by his hair, toward his fellow captives beneath the trophy.65 There is no pretence here on the part of the artisan 63. Gregory of Nazianzus, Orations 4.80, as noted above. 64. Gemma Augustea. Roman, after 10 ce (seventeenth-century setting). Low-relief cameo, twolayered Arabian onyx stone, H. 19cm. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, AS inv. no. IX A 79. The literature on the object is vast: a bibliography is given by J. Rufus Fears, “The Cult of Jupiter and Roman Imperial Ideology,” Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II.17.1 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1981): 57–58. See also: Paul Zanker, The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1988), 230–32; J. Pollini “The Gemma Augustea: ideology, rhetorical imagery and the creation of a dynastic narrative,” in Narrative and Event in Ancient Art, ed. Peter Holliday (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 258–98. 65. Concerning the introduction of suffering into early Christian art, Henry Maguire has reminded me of the important role played by gesture. While this role cannot be explored in depth here, it will be mentioned briefly, below; and see further, the study by Maguire “The Depiction of Sorrow in Middle Byzantine Art,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 31 (1977): 123–74.

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to conceal the humiliation, violence, and dehumanization of these captives. But what is the purpose of depicting this suffering so clearly in this visual context? We would be wrong to assume that for the ancient viewer such representations simply functioned to elicit pity or cultivate empathy for the defeated; for as Shelby Brown has stressed, Romans did not see images of death and suffering in the way that we do.66 Tonio Hölscher provides a compelling solution. He sees the segregation of the conquered from the conqueror on the gem, and their hierarchical division into two registers (defeated below, victor above) as enabling the creation of a space “for the emotions, within which sympathy and pity can develop”; but that ultimately the sufferings of the enemy are subordinate to, and enhance, the greatness of the Emperor.67 Moving from a miniature to a monumental context, bound captives also form an essential component of the forty-meter-high victory monument known as the Tropaeum Traiani or Trophy of Trajan, erected at Adamklissi (modern Romania) in the Roman province of Lower Moesia, to commemorate Trajan’s victory over the Dacians in 101–102. The circular structure had at its core a large drum, placed prominently atop a flight of steps; this drum acted as a base for a trophy, sculpted in stone.68 At the base were colossal, 66. Shelby Brown, “Death as Decoration: Scenes from the Arena on Roman Domestic Mosaics,” in Pornography and Representation in Greece and Rome, ed. Amy Richlin (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 180–211. 67. Tonio Hölscher, The Language of Images in Roman Art (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 41. See also Valerie M. Hope, “Trophies and tombstones: commemorating the Roman soldier”, World Archaeology 35.1 (2003), 79-97: in the context of her discussion of the commemoration of the deaths of Roman soldiers, Hope’s observation that Roman ‘war memorials’ (80) celebrated victory or power rather than “death, grief, and individuality” are relevant here. 68. The drum itself was elaborately decorated with a series of fifty-four sculptural metopes (49 surviving) depicting images drawn from the standard iconography of imperial military—some of the details being paralleled on Trajan’s column: Lino Rossi, “A synoptic outlook of Adamklissi metopes and Trajan’s Column Frieze: factual and fanciful topics revisited,” Athenaeum 85 (1997): 471–76. Another twenty-six reliefs adorned the parapet, each representing an individual captive: see the reconstruction by George Niemann, “Zur Basis

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bound captives—twice life size—alternately seated or standing. This monument emulated, in permanent form, the practice of erecting trophies on the battlefield.69 Justin Martyr is the first surviving writer to address the similarity between the Roman tropaeum and the cross; he delighted in demonstrating to Romans that at the core of the trophy, carried in all processions as a sign of Rome’s dominion and power, was the cross, the tropaeum: “[T]he power of this form is shown by your own symbols on what are called banners and trophies, with which all your state processions are made, using these as the insignia of your power and government, even though you do so unwittingly” (1 Apology 55).70 Justin’s allusion to the shape of the cross within the very structure of the trophy was repeated by Tertullian (Apology 16.1), who also referred to Christ triumphing per tropaeum crucis, “by the trophy of the cross” (Against Marcion 4.20). The evocation of the cross as a trophy is continued by Eusebius (e.g., Life of Constantine 28.2—tropaion)71 and Augustine (City of God 18.32—tropaeum crucis), both of whom refer to the cross in this way. Eusebius expresses the connection most influentially, transforming the Christian cross into the supreme trophy (tropaion) of the empire and the “saving sign” (semeion) through his explicit assimilation of the words “cross,” “sign,”

des Tropaeums von Adamklissi,” Jahreshefte des Österreichischen Archäologischen Institutes in Wien (Wien: Rohrer, 1898), 138–42 (142, fig. 44); also Adolf Furtwängler, Das Tropaion von Adamklissi und provinzialromische Kunst (München: Roth, 1903), 457. 69. The battlefield monument as the prototype for the trophy is discussed by Richmond, “Adamklissi,” in Trajan’s Army, 45–46. See further on monumental trophies: Brenda Longfellow, Roman Imperialism and Civic Patronage: Form, Meaning and Ideology in Monumental Fountain Complexes (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), citing Adamklissi at 200. 70. Rudolph H. Storch, “The Trophy and the Cross: Pagan and Christian Symbolism in the Fourth and Fifth Centuries,” Byzantion 40 (1970): 106. 71. On Eusebius’ particular use of the word tropaion see Averil Cameron and Stuart G. Hall, Eusebius’ Life of Constantine: Introduction, Translation, and Commentary (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 207–8.

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and “trophy.”72 As protection for the empire, Eusebius presents the cross as a talisman, a safeguard against adversaries (Life of Constantine 1.31 and 3.49)73—a notion compatible with Tertullian’s own militaristic image of Christ crushing evil in battle.74 The relationship between the forms of the trophy and the Christian cross symbol is easy enough to grasp both in the reading of the comparison made by these authors, and in the contemplation of the vast number of tropaea represented in Roman art across the monumental and minor arts, as well as on coinage.75 Yet there is one striking difference, namely that the figures of the vanquished are absent from Christian appropriations of the trophy, at least in this form. Toward a Christian Iconography of Suffering Given this early and widespread tradition of interpreting cross and trophy, it is not difficult to see how the tropaeum on its traditional 72. As argued by Storch, “The Trophy,” 111–12, and passim. On Eusebius, and the explicit assimilation as it occurs in his In Praise of Constantine as well as the Life of Constantine, see Cameron and Hall, Eusebius’ Life of Constantine, 38–39, who also argue that the vision of the cross and the description of the labarum by Eusebius at Life of Constantine I.28–31, “provide the essential explicit equation of cross/sign/trophy.” 73. So argue Cameron and Hall, Eusebius’ Life of Constantine, 299, with reference to Harold Drake, “Eusebius on the True Cross,” JEH 36 (1985): 17–19. 74. Longfellow, Roman Imperialism, notes the protective function of Roman trophies themselves: 197. 75. Gilbert Charles Picard, Les trophées romains: contribution à l’histoire de la religion et de l’art triomphal de Rome (Paris: E. de Boccard, 1957), illustrates a small but comprehensive range of examples—including cameos, painted pottery, bronzes (miniature and monumental), fresco, mosaic, sculpture (three dimensional, relief, monumental and miniature, funerary and public), including those representations that on appear on a variety of cuirassed sculptures, where the trophy forms a central part of the embellishment of the breastplate: plates I–XXXII. For the representation on cuirassed statues, see Richard Gergel, “Costume as Indicator: Barbarians and Prisoners on Cuirassed Statue Breastplates,” in The World of Roman Costume, ed. Judith Sebesta and Larissa Bonfante (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1994), 191–209. See also Storch, “The Trophy,” 110, who lists the triumphal arches on which tropaea appeared. Niels Hannestad, Roman Art and Imperial Policy, Jutland Archaeological Society Publications XIX (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 1986), helpfully tracks material from the Republican and Imperial periods.

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mound could eventually furnish an ideal model for the depiction of the victorious cross on Golgotha. However, it also provided a challenge. Grabar noted that in Roman imperial iconography, condemned or executed persons had been depicted not only to emphasize the power of the victor, but to point out their crime vis-à-vis Roman society.76 The image of one publicly executed was expected in depictions of triumph—not however as the victorious central figure, but as subjugated victim. For Christians, this stigma may have proven debilitating. As Grabar observed, “[I]t took time to make the sacred image a testimony of sympathy for those who there occupied the traditional place of the enemy.”77 With the legalization of Christianity in the fourth century, however, artisans began to use the traditional iconography of victory and to negotiate this impasse, or at least the aspect related to the conventional subjugated enemy, in two ways: either the figures of the vanquished beneath the arms of the trophy were excised from the composition, or their identity was changed. Both strategies are seen on fourth-century Passion sarcophagi. The first is witnessed on a sarcophagus previously in the Vatican (Fig. 3), where the figures were omitted and replaced with a post-Resurrection narrative scene described in Matthew (Matt. 28:1-10: leaving the tomb, Jesus greets the women, who embrace his feet and worship him).78 76. Grabar, Christian Iconography, 50. 77. Ibid. 78. A seven-arch “Acclamation” sarcophagus, fourth century ce. From the cortile of the Palazzo del Duc di Ceri in Borgo Vecchio, then in the Vatican, now lost: line drawing preserved in Antonio Bosio, Roma Sotterranea (Rome. 1632), book 2, cap. VIII, folio 79. Friedrich Wilhelm Deichmann, Giuseppe Bovini. and Hugo Brandenburg, eds., Repertorium der Christlich-Antiken Sarkophage 1: Rom und Ostia (Wiesbaden: F. Steiner, 1967), no. 933, with bibliography. For this and a second example, see A. Recio Veganzones, “La Representacion Arquitectonica de la Rotonda del Santo Sepulcro en la Escultura Paleocristiana de Occidente,” in Giovanni C. Bottini, Leah di Segni, Eudenio Alliata, eds., Christian Archaeology in the Holy Land New Discoveries: Essays in Honour of Virgilio C. Corbo, OFM, Studium Biblicum Franciscanum Collectio Maior 36 (Jerusalem: Franciscan, 1990), 571–89—figs. 11 (fragment of a sarcophagus in Aix-en-Provence), and 12–14 (Borgo Vecchio sarcophagus).

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Fig. 3. ‘Acclamation’ Sarcophagus: front frieze. Roman, 4th century CE. From the cortile of the Palazzo del Duc di Ceri in Borgo Vecchio, then in the Vatican, now lost. Drawing: Antonio Bosio, Roma Sotterranea (Rome: 1632), book 2, cap. VIII, folio 79.

This change enabled the cross-trophy to function as a twin reference to the Crucifixion and the Resurrection. The second way of negotiating the iconography of the vanquished consisted of transforming their identity: the positions originally occupied by the captives beneath the arms of the trophy were taken by Roman soldiers (Fig. 4).

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Fig. 4. Passion ‘Tree’ Sarcophagus: front frieze. Roman, c. 340irony-350 CE. Musei Vaticani: Museo Pio Cristiano, inv. 28591 (formerly Lateran 164). Photo: author.

On this model, the twin reference to Crucifixion-Resurrection could be maintained in the decisive positioning of the figures: an alert soldier, gazing up to the cross, could firmly evoke the scene at Golgotha (Matt. 27:54; Mark 15:39); while a sleeping soldier, slumped over his shield, could evoke the scene at the tomb where, according to Matt. 27:64, 28:4, 28:23, Roman guards played a particular role in the story of the Resurrection.79 In both strategies 79. Geir Hellemo, Adventus Domini: Eschatological Thought in 4th-Century Apses and Catecheses (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1989), 98–100. The transformation from captive to soldier is highlighted by Grabar, Christian Iconography, 124–25, fig. 299, using a fragment of a pagan sarcophagus in Mainz, Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum, to illustrate the iconographic connection; and further noted by Beat Brenk, “The Imperial Heritage,” 43 fig. 7. For the Passion “Tree” sarcophagus illustrated here at Fig. 4, see Deichmann, Repertorium, no. 215. In her discussion of the transformation, Jensen further suggests that the iconography of the soldier gazing up at the cross evokes the Roman centurion who in Matt. 27:54 proclaimed “Truly this was the son of God”, and that the image is therefore transformed not only into a sign of victory, but a sign of Roman conversion also: Jensen, “The Emperor Cult,” 163.

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then, the trophy retained its meaning and was still recognizable for the viewer as a symbol of victory. Now in a Christian visual context, that victory moved beyond the earthly realm to the heavenly; and it took on an added dimension, a narrative edge, at once evoking the cross (in the symbolic crux invicta), and the resurrection without having to detail Christ’s suffering at all.80 Indeed, the aniconic cross came to stand for the figure of Christ in a variety of fourth-century compositions without changing the general meaning of the scene.81 In some Christian pictorial contexts, the trophy cross even remained draped with a military banner or cloak, betraying the imperial model from which it derived more clearly (Fig. 5);82 and this iconography continued into the fifth and sixth centuries, the crucified and resurrected Jesus emphatically celebrated in one triumphant symbol.83 80. Jensen, “The Emperor Cult”, 162–63, emphasizes the transformation of the victory from one of earthly significance, to one of eschatological importance. 81. For the association and identification of Jesus with the cross: Friedrich Gerke, Die Zeitbestimmung der Passionssarkophage, Sonderdruck aus “Archaeologiai Értesitö” 52 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1940), 101f.; Hans von Campenhausen, Die Passionssarkophage: zur Geschichte eines altchristlichen Bildkreises (Marburg: Kunstgeschichtlichen Seminars der Universität, 1929), 39–85; followed by Bianca Kühnel, From the Earthly to the Heavenly Jerusalem: Representations of the Holy City in Christian Art of the First Millennium (Rome: Herder, 1987), 69. I have drawn on this point for the discussion of early crucifixion iconography on engraved gems: HarleyMcGowan, “The Constanza Carnelian,” 216–17. 82. For example, the fragment of a fourth-century Passion “tree” sarcophagus in the Musei Vaticani, Museo Pio Crisiano (inv. 166B): Deichmann, Repertorium, no. 62, with bibliography. Grabar comments on this iconography, and the practice of honoring victory standards with hangings: L’Empereur, 240–41, where (note 5) he refers to discussions by Tertullian (Apology 16.8; To the Nations I.12) and Justin (Apology I.55) of the Roman veneration of adorned military trophies. The cloth may be the paludamentum—the cape or cloak worn by military commanders and certain emperors on Roman imperial coins in order to emphasize their military role as commander-in-chief of the army. For comparison, see the draping of the paludamentum on the monumental bronze trophy (first century bce) excavated in Annaba, North Africa: Xavier Delestre, Hippone (Aix-en-Provence: INAS, 2005), 157–78, cat. no. 82. 83. In later extant compositions, the cloth clearly resembles the paludamentum—as in the hetoimasia scene in the cupola of the Arian Baptistry (c. 500), Ravenna, where it is depicted as purple: Deborah M. Deliyannis, Ravenna in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 177–87, at 183, fig. IVb. Similar iconography (the purple cloth draped over the arms of the cross) is reconstructed for the representation of the Trinity in the apsidal decoration of the new sanctuary at St. Felix’s grave in Cimitile, c. 400 (as described by Paulinus of Nola in his letter to Sulpicius Severus, Epistla 32, c. 403): Rudolph Goldschmidt, Paulinus’ Churches

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Fig. 5. Passion ‘Tree’ Sarcophagus: fragment from the centre of the front frieze. Roman, ca. 340-350. Musei Vaticani: Museo Pio Cristiano (formerly Lateran 166B). Photo: author.

An explicit enfleshing of that symbol, cladding it not with the traditional spoils of battle, but with the human figure of Christ, was rare in the fourth century, and even in the fifth.84 But how did this process begin? Grabar regarded the iconography of decollation as having been adopted directly from Roman imperial art into Christian art through a process he termed “moral reversal,” whereby the iconography of condemnation of the victim became one of glorification. An important example, somewhat distinct from appropriations of the at Nola: Texts, Translations and Commentary (Amsterdam: N.v. Noord-Hollandsche utigevers maatschappij, 1940), 98, and on the significance of purple 100–101; on interpretations of this symbolism as imperial, Hellemo, Adventus Domini, 95. 84. For a brief survey of the iconographic evidence: Harley-McGowan, “The Constanza Carnelian,” passim.

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victor’s trophy itself, is the representation of three anonymous martyrs in fresco, extant from the second half of the fourth century on the wall of the small reliquary shrine discovered in the excavations known as the Case Romane, beneath the present-day church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo (two Roman martyrs) on the Caelian Hill, Rome (Fig. 6).85 The private shrine contains a niche on its rear wall, and is covered in frescoes, arranged in two registers (Fig. 7). The walls flanking the niche preserve scenes of martyrdom. The representation of the three martyrs is found in the upper register, to the right of the niche, in what is a violent scene of beheading. Although poorly preserved, the three martyrs are clearly seen forced into a kneeling position on the ground, their eyes covered with a blindfold; the lower legs of two men are visible, standing behind them. The angled posture used for the upper body of each martyr, with the neck thereby exposed, can be compared with other depictions of beheadings in Roman art, such as the representation of barbarians in scene LXI on the column of Marcus Aurelius (Fig. 8). Perhaps struck by such parity, Joseph Wilpert reconstructed the posture of the two figures behind the martyrs as soldiers engaged

85. Traditionally identified as a confessio, recent research has suggested that the shrine was a household deposit for relics, the confined space used for private veneration. The key points in the debate, with literature cited, are summarized by Kimberley Bowes, Private Worship, Public Values, and Religious Change in Late Antiquity (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 88–89, with the date p. 88 (note 164). Joseph Wilpert, Die römischen Mosaiken und Malereien der kirchlichen Bauten vom IV. bis XIII. Jahrhundert (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1916), 631–52, vol. 4, 131 (color plates of the frescos). On whether this was a public space for the gathering of the community or a private chapel, see also Beat Brenk, “Le costruzioni sotto la chiesa dei Ss. Giovanni e Paolo,” in Aurea Roma. Dalla città pagana alla città, ed. Cristiana Serena Ensoli and Eugenio La Rocca (Roma: L’Erma di Bretschneider, 2000), 156–58; Brenk, “Microstoria sotto la chiesa dei SS. Giovanni e Paolo. La cristianizzazione di una casa private,” Rivista dell’Istituto nazionale di archeologia e storia dell’arte 18 (1995): 169–205; and Brenk, Die Christianisierung der spätrömischen Welt: Stadt, Land, Haus, Kirche und Kloster in frühchristlicher Zeit (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2003), 82–113, 329 fig. 174.

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in the very act of execution, with arms drawn back to raise swords, poised as though soon to behead the prisoners (Fig. 7).86

Fig. 6. Beheading of three martyrs: scene from the fresco cycle in the private shrine of the Case Romane, excavations under the church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo, Caelian Hill, Rome; second half of the fourth century CE, Rome. Photo: Annewies van den Hoek, with kind permission.

86. Wilpert, “Le pitture della ‘confessio’ sotto la basilica dei SS. Giovanni e Paolo,” in Scritti in onore di Bartolomeo Sogara (Città del Vaticano: Giovanni Bardi, 1937), 517–22, tav. LXXVI.

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Fig. 7. Frescoes cycle: section of wall frescoes in the private shrine, Case Romane; second half of the fourth century. Drawing: after Joseph Wilpert, “Le pitture dela ‘confessio’ sotto la basilica dei SS. Giovanni e Paolo”, in Scritti in onore di Bartolomeo Sogara (Città del Vaticano: Giovanni Bardi, 1937), tav. LXXVI.

The helical frieze of the Aurelian column was completed by 193 ce, and celebrated the Roman victories over the Marcomannic and Danubian tribes (waged by Marcus Aurelius from 166 until his death). It contains explicit scenes of violence, including instances of the emperor himself presiding over beheadings of captives.87 Scene LXI illustrates Roman soldiers forcing the Marcomanni to behead their own countrymen:88 strewn across the foreground are the 87. Martin Beckmann, “The Column of Marcus Aurelius,” in A Companion to Marcus Aurelius, ed. Marcel van Eckeren (London: Blackwell, 2012), discusses the iconography 260–61. 88. Beckmann, “The Column,” 251–63, with short review of the scholarship and bibliography 261–63. As Beckmann records, the finest visual documentation of the frieze remains the photography in Eugen Peterson et al., Die Marcus-säule auf Piazza Colonna in Rom (Munich:

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Fig. 8. Beheading of German barbarians: The Column of Marcus Aurelius (scene LXI). Roman, carrara marble, 180-196 CE; Piazza Colonna, Rome. Photo: Annewies van den Hoek, with kind permission.

headless bodies of already-decapitated prisoners, but the focus of the scene comes in the middle ground, where the Marcomanni raise swords over the poised heads of their fellow men, who are doubled over, with hands held behind their backs.89 The iconographic similarities between this and other depictions of beheading extant in Roman imperial art, and the representation in the Christian archeological context of the Case Romane, suggests that the Roman imagery was adapted for Christian viewers in visual contexts where it had an entirely different purpose. A second Christian example, F. Bruckmann, 1896). The scenes of the column as they pertain to the Marcomannic Wars are analyzed by Péter Kovács, Marcus Aurelius’ Rain Miracle and the Marcomannic Wars (Leiden: Brill, 2009); while the column and the iconography of its frieze more recently analyzed by Martin Beckman, The Column of Marcus Aurelius: The Genesis & Meaning of a Roman Imperial Monument (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011). 89. The scene is discussed by Beckman, The Column, 149, who suggests that rather than being generic, the iconography preserves historically specific details of a battle.

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also from Rome, adds weight to this suggestion: a pre-decollation episode in the life of a Christian martyr, depicted on one of two small ciborium columns extant in the fourth-century church of Ss. Nereus and Achilleus (built over the catacomb of Domitilla, on the Via Ardeatina, Rome). In the image S. Achilleus, named by inscription, is shown being led to his beheading by an executioner.90 In the same way, it is worth noting that gestures provide evidence for an important link between earlier Greco-Roman and Christian art. One example will suffice: the gesture of the clasped hands that served to convey the grief and sorrow of a captive in battle scenes. As Henry Maguire has shown, the pose continued to indicate grief when used on fourth-century sarcophagi for the depiction of Peter arrested by two soldiers (Fig. 4), and even for the representation of Jesus as a captive, crowned with thorns.91 While the meaning of the gesture remained stable, and unambiguously pointed to the internal thoughts or sufferings of the captive, the application of the gesture to new characters in new pictorial contexts enabled new narrative possibilities. In imperial art, as we have seen in the case of the Gemma Augustea, the sorrow of the captive represented languishing in subjugation beneath the Roman trophy, effectively augmented or underscored the greatness of the Emperor, represented on that object as enthroned in glory above them. In Christian pictorial contexts, the sorrowful figure of the Christian captive, now placed prominently 90. Orazio Marucchi, Guida del Cimitero di Domitilla (Roma: P. Sansaini, 1925), 12, line drawing. For a clear photograph and discussion of the iconography: Umberto Fasola, Die DomitillaKatakombe und die Basilika der Märtyrer Nereus und Achilleus (Città del Vaticano: Pontificia Commissione di Archeologia Sacra, 1989), 38–39, abb. 8. See also Fabrizio Bisconti in Vincenzo Fiocchi Nicolai, Fabrizio Bisconti, et al., The Christian Catacombs of Rome: History, Decoration, Inscriptions (Regensburg: Schnell & Steiner, 1999), 106 fig. 120. Bisconti also cites a fresco in the Catacomb of S. Tecla that might allude to a violent episode in her martyrdom (105 fig. 119), on which see further G. Santagata, “Su due discusse figurazioni conservate nel cimitero di S. Tecla,” Esercizi 3 (1980): 7–14. 91. Maguire, “Depiction,” 154–55; and for Jesus as captive, Maguire notes the columnar sarcophagus in the Vatican, Museo Pio Cristiano inv. no. 31525 (formerly Lateran 171), dated c. 350 ce—on which see Deichmann, Repertorium, no. 49.

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alongside the cross-trophy, could be used to invite closer reflection on the path of suffering to death, a path that secured victory not for one man, or for the Empire, but for all individual believers and for the Church at large. This different narrative focus added another dimension to the reversal of the iconography of the captive and its meaning: if Roman trophy monuments and iconographies of victory had been about passing over or forgetting the death or suffering of individuals and the human cost of triumph, Christian iconographies then came to be about remembering.92 Images of the suffering and actual deaths of individual biblical figures were initially absent from early Christian art (the pictorial emphasis being on deliverance from death). Scenes of Christian martyrdom were extremely rare and may have emerged as early as the third or fourth century on daily objects, such as pottery or even engraved gems, and in funerary contexts.93 In such cases, the deaths of martyrs were evoked through suggestive posture but not explicit violence (as in these two cases from Rome before the fifth century). By the sixth century however, there was increasing detail provided for the depiction of marytrdoms, perhaps because Christians had accepted the reversal.94 A sixth-century ivory pyxis in the British 92. I draw here from Hope, “Trophies and Tombstones,” 84. 93. Henri Leclercq, “Actes des martyres et les monuments figures,” in Dictionnaire d’archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie, ed. Fernand Cabrol and Henri Leclerq (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1907–53), vol. 1, cols. 422–66, nos. II–IV. See now van den Hoek and Herrmann, “Thecla,” 90 n. 96, who note that figs. 77 and 78 may be forgeries, and fig. 84 may depict Venus not a Christian martyr. See further on the iconography of the martyr, specifically in North Africa: Jan W. Salomonson, Voluptatem Spectandi non perdat sed mutet: observations sur l’iconographie du martyre en Afrique Romaine (Amsterdam and New York: North-Holland, 1979). There are two possible examples on engraved gems (now lost), that if authentic may date to the fourth or fifth centuries: a cornelian (?) that depicted St. Lawrence; and a cornelian depicting a female martyr. Jeffrey Spier, Late Antique and Early Christian Gems, 78, nos. 458–59. Spier notes the similarity between the composition on the latter gem and the Thecla iconography discussed by van den Hoek and Herrmann. 94. This I should note, is according to extant visual evidence, on which I am focusing here; literary evidence from the fourth and fifth centuries also attests to the portrayal of martyrs in pictorial cycles—for example, Prudentius Liber Peristephanon 9, describes the experience of visiting the tomb of Cassian, with its image of the martyr “depicted in brilliant colors, bearing

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Museum beautifully illustrates the degree to which an explicit iconography could thus be enfolded into a broader narrative of a saint’s martyrdom (Fig. 9).

Fig. 9. Martyrdom of Saint Menas: ivory pyxis, sixth century, probably Alexandria, h. 78 mm x diam. 122 mm. British Museum 1879,1220.1. Detail (back view): the beheading of Menas. Photo: © Trustees of the British Museum.

A pictorial cycle detailing the fate of the Egyptian Saint Menas includes: the classic iconography of judgment, which was appropriated from Roman art for biblical figures; a scene of triumph asserting the earlier Christian theme of deliverance (Menas standing in the orant posture, flanked by two camels in iconography very similar to that used for the prophet Daniel); and a detailed scene of a thousand wounds, his whole body torn, and displaying flesh ripped with tiny puncture marks”—translation and discussion in Michael Roberts, Poetry and the Cult of the Martyrs: The Liber Peristephanon of Prudentius (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993), 134.

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the saint dressed only in a loincloth, falling to one knee, with hands bound behind his back, and his hair grasped by a sword-wielding executioner.95 The imminent beheading is an integral component of the story, and in the iconographic details (long-hair, hair-pulling, semi-nudity, arms bound, the victim forced to his knees) it remarkably evokes the much earlier representations of the vanquished in Roman art, such as those on the Gemma Augustea (Fig. 1). Here is overlooked evidence to support Grabar’s view that, in effecting a categorical reversal of the iconography’s meaning, image-makers realized the creation of not only a new image, but an entirely new genre of imagery: Christian suffering as victory. This genre would come to dominate western visual culture; and at its heart would be nailed the dead Christ as the central and defining image of the Christian faith.96 Toward a Christian Iconography of Violence Late antique workshops were stocked with diverse exemplars of violent acts, not only those perpetrated on the battlefield, but also in the arena, where many criminals were executed. Scenes of victims exposed to wild animals (their vulnerability and inferiority accentuated iconographically through their affixation to stakes, or nudity) were popular on a range of media across the second and third centuries, from mosaic to ceramics. It would take some time for those images of brutality in the arena, immensely popular in Tertullian’s 95. Ivory Pyxis with Martyrdom of Saint Menas, probably Alexandria, sixth century; h. 79 mm, l. 122 mm, w. 113 mm; British Museum, 1879, 1220.1. David Buckton, ed., Byzantium: Treasures of Byzantine Art and Culture from British Collections (London: British Museum Press, 1994), 74 cat. 65, with bibliography. 96. And serendipitously, Anthony Grafton emphasized the very importance of ancient martyrdom and its witness in both art and text, for artists and scholars in the Renaissance, in his own Mellon lectures: the 63rd Mellon Lecture Series (lecture 5: “Martyrdom and Persecution: The Uses of Early Christian Suffering”), National Gallery of Art, May 4, 2014: http://www.nga.gov/ content/ngaweb/audio-video/mellon.html#parmain_mediacollectionlist (recording accessed 9/ 25/2014).

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own Africa, to furnish models for the depiction of triumph, or even of Christian martyrs; but ultimately they would. A glimpse into this process can be seen on items made in the clay known as “African Red Slip” ware (abbreviated ARS), produced across the third and fourth centuries ce.97 Extant items of the pottery produced during this period indicate that while there was a widespread predilection for arena-based violence, a contrary theme of triumph in the face of animals in the amphitheater was also attempted. An important example of this interest is highlighted by Annewies van den Hoek and John Herrmann: the decoration applied to a bowl now in Mainz, which preserves the basic schemata of a violent arena scene, with a lion and panther approaching a human figure from either side (Fig. 10).98 Normally in such a composition, the victim would be identifiable as vulnerable and passive through such key indicators as nudity, or binding (hands tied, or the entire body affixed to a stake); the victim would thereby be flagged as inferior to the approaching animals, who might even pounce on the victim, or with open jaws, bite into them. Yet on this bowl the figure is enthroned and actively brandishing a conspicuously large wreath.99 It is not clear whether the enthroned figure is male or female, a Christian, or even a martyr; nevertheless, the changes in the composition clearly convey the victim’s freedom in the face of the animals, and victory over those animals.100 And these 97. For an introduction to ARS ware see John J. Herrmann Jr. and Annewies van den Hoek, Light from the Age of Augustine: Late Antique Ceramics from North Africa (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Divinity School, 2002). 98. Van den Hoek and Herrmann Jr., “Thecla the Beast Fighter: A Female Emblem of Deliverance in Early Christian Popular Art,” in van den Hoek and Herrmann, Pottery, Pavements, and Paradise: Iconographic and Textual Studies on Late Antiquity (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2013), 65–106; the article was first published in David T. Runia and Gregory E. Sterling, eds., In the Spirit of Faith, Studia Philonica 13 (Providence: Brown Judaic Studies, 2001), 212–49. 99. Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum, Mainz, O.39895: van den Hoek and Herrmann, “Thecla,” fig. 17, discussion 105. 100. Van den Hoek and Herrmann Jr., “Thecla,” 105 emphasize that the iconography is puzzling (noting that the clothing of the figure, with boots and short unbelted tunic, resembles that worn

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changes are critical: they indicate that the traditional function of the combat scene has been reversed, a reversal that would come to be more actively pursued in explicitly Christian visual contexts.

Fig. 10. Victorious figure (martyr?) in the amphitheatre African Red Slip Ware bowl with a victor (martyr?) holding a wreath, seated between a lion and a panther, 350-430 CE. Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum, Mainz, O.39895. Photo: Annewies van den Hoek and John Herrmann, with kind permission.

An important example of such iconographic adaptation is provided by some venatores), but that the throne and wreath clearly demarcate the victorious nature of the composition as a whole.

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by the depictions of the Christian martyr Thecla, a popular figure on ARS ware in antiquity.101 Presented en face before the viewer, wearing only a long skirt and with arms raised in prayer, the composition of Thecla, flanked by two lions, at once evokes and blurs two established genres (Fig. 11): representations of Old Testament figures delivered from death (Daniel, the Three Hebrews in the Fiery Furnace) popular in early Christian pictorial contexts across the third and fourth centuries; and damnatio ad bestias imagery otherwise prevalent across ARS ware and mosaic.

Fig. 11. Woman flanked by lions (Thecla), African Red Slip Ware bowl, 350-430 CE. Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum, Mainz, O.39679. Line drawing by J. W. Salomonson, modified by Annewies van den Hoek and John Herrmann, with kind permission.

101. As van den Hoek and Herrmann discuss in detail, “Thecla,” with examples of the composition cited across 69–71.

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The presence of the beasts and the explicit semi-nudity locate the composition within the tradition of violence; yet the posture and the passive nature of the beasts are key changes to ad bestias imagery, and indicate a manipulation of that imagery in order to present Thecla as a Christian heroine. Sealing this interpretation is an inscription, DOMINA VICTORIA, contained in a titulus, which accompanies many of the extant images of Thecla on ARS ware. As van den Hoek and Herrmann have convincingly argued, it is not only the traditional symbol of the victim that has been transformed; the titulus, a traditional sign of shame, usually bearing the nature of the crime for which the victim is being punished, has been “transformed into a banner of success.”102 The two surviving examples of martyr iconography in Rome as mentioned above, from the Case Romane and the church of Ss. Nereus and Achilleus, suggest that in that city at least, the choice to depict violence on the one hand, and the particular iconographic makeup of such scenes on the other, is connected to the contexts in which they are found: adjacent to relics in a private shrine in the first case, and above the tomb of the martyrs Nero and Achilleus in the second. Those examples have a physical, liturgical, and devotional context as part of the commemoration of lives, and the events that took place within those lives. In the North African examples by contrast, it is clear that individual episodes of martyrs facing death or victorious over it were not so much commemorative, but celebratory 102. Van den Hoek and Herrmann, “Thecla,” 81. It is worth observing there that this case of “reversal” deepens our understanding of the development of crucifixion iconography in the fifth century: the semi-naked body of Jesus is likewise represented as an active, living body victorious over the cross, and the titulus REX IVD[AEORUM], “King of the Jews,” becomes an endorsement of his divine triumph, not an advertisement of his crime—notably on the crucifixion panel in the Maskell Passion Ivory reliefs, c. 420–430 ce, in the British Museum. On the panel see Harley-McGowan, “The Maskell Passion Ivories and Graeco-Roman Art: Notes on the Iconography of Crucifixion,” in Envisioning Christ on the Cross: Ireland and the Early Medieval West, ed. Juliet Mullins, Jenifer Ní Ghrádaigh, and Richard Hawtree (Dublin: Four Courts, 2013), 13–33.

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emblems of the victim as victor seen and used on objects in daily life. Such reversal can be seen to pave the way for further developments, specifically with regard to the illustration of Christ’s death as a means of commemorating both the suffering in his earthly life and his ultimate triumph. Conclusion By retrieving and developing a model articulated by André Grabar, it is clear that stories of Christian suffering did not necessarily demand the invention of completely new images; an iconography of suffering demanded a re-viewing of the existing visual culture, and the models furnished by that culture. In the art of empire, artisans and patrons had consistently manipulated the iconography of the vanquished enemy for political purposes. In the art of the Christian faith, artisans and their patrons continued to manipulate that iconography, but for spiritual ends. Initially, in attempts to illustrate Christian understandings about the death of Christ, the currency and prevalence of the motif in Roman visual culture meant that immediate exploration of the notion of victim as victor was denied. The quickly acknowledged correlation of the trophy and the cross was arguably an easier identification to make than an adaptation of the ways victims themselves had been depicted in imperial art. Yet experimentation did

ultimately

occur

here

too:

it

meant

adapting

that

iconography—the figures of the enemy deleted from the side of the victory trophy, or their figures substituted. But then, following a period of experimentation, the role and so the meaning of the iconography was actually reversed. Victims became victors, unaffected by jaws of lions, or lacking fear in the face of the sword raised perilously over their head. And Christ himself would become

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a victor, unaffected by the piercing of nails, and devoid of fear in the face of the sword thrust into his side. Grabar’s understanding of the development of early Christian iconography was ultimately more complex than Mathews and many scholars since have allowed. Yes, he privileged imperial art; but he also perceived that there were diverse strands of influence upon Christian iconography, and that the manifestations of imperial influence were themselves diverse. Today we have a richer understanding of the ways artisans catered to a range of religious dispositions in late antiquity;103 and continue to build on a model that sees the religious art of Jewish, Roman, and Christian communities as interlocking rather than as distinct categories. In coming to reconsider the nature and extent of influence exerted by imperial visual culture over the formation of Christian iconography, the work of André Grabar remains important. Grabar contributed critical ideas about the creativity of artisans in developing Christian iconography, of the different and more nuanced ways imperial influence might be witnessed in that process, and of the artistic challenges attendant to the development of iconography. It remains to pursue more closely the ways in which the “reversal” of the victim to victor impacted on the development of crucifixion iconography itself. In the meantime, while the mark of imperial visual culture may not be discernible everywhere in early Christian art, as Grabar contended, he was right in

103. The bibliography is extensive, as is the evidence (now covering a range of media, including sarcophagi, glass, and pottery): see generally John Bryan Ward-Perkins, “The Role of Craftsmanship in the Formation of Early Christian Art,” Atti del IX Congresso Internazionale di Archeologia Christiana (Vatican City: Pontificio Istituto di Archeologia Cristiana, 1978): 637–52; and further literature cited by Rutgers, The Jews in Late Ancient Rome: Evidence of Cultural Interaction in the Roman Diaspora (Leiden and New York: E. J. Brill, 1995), 72 note 52. On working processes in antiquity and organization of “workshops,” see the essays in Troels Myrup Kristensen and Birte Poulsen, eds., Ateliers and Artisans in Roman Art and Archaeology, JRA Supplementary series, 92 (Portsmouth, RI: Journal of Roman Archeology, 2012), with discussion of terminology by Kristensen across 8–9.

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another important respect: it is discernible in different ways, and in ways that have not yet been allowed.

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The Good Shepherd and the Enthroned Ruler: A Reconsideration of Imperial Iconography in the Early Church

Jennifer Awes Freeman

Introduction In the third century, Christ was perceived exclusively as the Son of God in human form, as teacher, physician, and fount of life for the faithful. In his outward appearance, he resembles an unassuming philosopher. With his miracles, he puts into practice and demonstrates the truth and power of his doctrine of brotherly love and nonviolence. His simple garments are white, as a rule. His divinity is apparent from his deeds and does not have to be indicated with a nimbus. He does not carry a scepter-like staff in the form of a cross, and when he addresses his followers he is not seated on a golden, gem-encrusted throne.

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During the first three centuries of Christianity, it would presumably have struck the faithful as blasphemous for the emperor to base his authority on Christ after receiving his help in killing his enemies. Why did the unprecedented imperialization of the images of Christ and of Christian churches—so contrary to the faith’s doctrines of peace and modesty—continue after the reign of Constantine?1

This quote by art historian Johannes Deckers represents a sentiment that pervades scholarship on Early Christian art, pitting the allegedly grassroots, anti-imperial Christ of catacombs and sarcophagi against that of the triumphant, enthroned Christ of apse mosaics—a distinction that is often accompanied by evaluative statements about the presumably wholesome humility and charity of the early church in contrast with the wealth and power of the corrupted postConstantinian church.2 The present essay challenges this false dichotomy and instead suggests that these two types—the Good Shepherd and the enthroned Christ—are in fact not so very different. As we will see, a figure need not be gilded and gem-encrusted to carry connotations of power and rule.

1. Johannes Deckers, “Constantine the Great and Early Christian Art,” in Picturing the Bible: The Earliest Christian Art, ed. Jeffrey Spier (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007), 107, emphasis added. 2. “Grassroots” is a term used to great effect by Thomas Mathews in The Clash of Gods: A Reinterpretation of Early Christian Art, revised edition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 92. This type of narrative has been perpetuated in scholarship since at least the nineteenth century. Relatedly, several art historians of the mid-twentieth century presented the early church as proto-Protestant and interpreted the apparent lack of early Christian art as a sign of an aniconic position. E.g., Theodore Klauser, “Studien zur Enstehungsgeschichte der christlichen Kunst,” Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 1 (1958): 20–51; 2 (1959): 115–45; 3 (1960): 112–33; Henry Chadwick, The Early Church, Pelican History of the Church, vol. 1 (London: Penguin, 1967), 277; R. Grigg, “Aniconic Worship and the Apologetic Tradition,” Church History 45 (1976): 428–29; as discussed in Robin M. Jensen, Understanding Early Christian Art (New York: Routledge, 2000), especially 13–14. For an early example of the alleged corruption of the early church through its institutionalization, see, for example, Henry Hart Milman, The History of Christianity: From the Birth of Christ to the Abolition of Paganism in the Roman Empire, vol. 2 (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1881), 330–31, 389–90.

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Fig. 1. Apse mosaic, San Vitale, Ravenna. Photo: Robin M. Jensen.

A narrative that is entwined with this valorization of the humble, grassroots Good Shepherd, and has also persisted in much of art history, is that of the so-called “Emperor Mystique.”3 Also referred to, more generously, by Robin M. Jensen as “imperial style theory,”4 this theory holds that post-Constantinian images of Christ—such as the apse mosaic from San Vitale, in Ravenna (Fig. 1)—adopted imperial iconography in order to emphasize the divinity of Christ, and associated Christ with the emperor, and vice versa.5 In 1993, Thomas Mathews famously problematized this theory in his 3. So named in Mathews, The Clash of Gods, 3–23, especially 12. 4. Robin M. Jensen, Understanding Early Christian Art (London: Routledge, 2000), 98. 5. As found in: Andreas Alföldi, Die monarchisch Repräsentation im römischen Kaiserreiche (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1970); André Grabar, Christian Iconography: A Study of Its Origins (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), 5–54; Ernst Kantorowicz, Laudes Regiae: A Study in Liturgical Acclamations and Medieval Ruler Worship; The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957).

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controversial work The Clash of Gods. In it, Mathews argued that these early Christian images were in fact borrowing iconography not from the Roman government, but from the Greco-Roman pantheon, and in so doing successfully asserted the superiority of Christianity over paganism. In the twenty years since its publication, The Clash of Gods has received much attention, in the form of both high praise and criticism, and, perhaps most importantly, it has instigated a reevaluation of the prevailing assumptions about the relationship between imperial iconography and Christianity.6 Regardless of whether it was the emperor or Greco-Roman deities (or both, which seems more likely) that inspired the magisterial iconography of these images, it was the Good Shepherd motif that the enthroned Christ gradually supplanted. At first glance, the Good Shepherd motif (e.g., Fig. 2) stands in stark contrast to that of the enthroned Christ. His humble shepherd’s tunic pales in comparison to the glittering garment of the enthroned (god/emperor) Christ (e.g., Figs. 2 and 6). The shepherd is accompanied only by goats or sheep and sometimes rests on a rock, while the enthroned Christ sits on an orb or a bejeweled seat and is flanked by the exalted company of angels and saints. The shepherd’s attributes include a milk bucket, staff, and small bag; conversely, the enthroned Christ holds books, scrolls, or laurels (e.g., Fig. 1). Indeed, when taken at face value, these two sets of images do appear 6. See, for example: Liz James, “The Clash of Gods: A Reinterpretation of Early Christian Art by Thomas F. Mathews,” The Burlington Magazine 136, no. 1096 (July 1994): 458–59; Peter Brown, “The Clash of Gods: A Reinterpretation of Early Christian Art by Thomas F. Mathews,” The Art Bulletin 77, no. 3 (September 1995): 499–502; W. Eugene Kleinbauer, “The Clash of Gods: A Reinterpretation of Early Christian Art by Thomas F. Mathews,” Speculum 70, no. 4 (October 1995): 937–41; Annabel Wharton, “The Clash of Gods: A Reinterpretation of Early Christian Art by Thomas F. Mathews,” The American Historical Review 100, no. 5 (December 1995): 1518–19; Paul Corby Finney, “The Clash of Gods: A Reinterpretation of Early Christian Art by Thomas F. Mathews,” International Journal of the Classical Tradition 4, no. 2 (Fall 1997): 291–93; Christa Belting-Ihm, “The Clash of Gods: A Reinterpretation of Early Christian Art by Thomas F. Mathews,” Historische Zeitschrift 272, H. 3 (June 2001): 721–22.

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to be significantly distinct. However, I argue that these two motifs are in fact not as different as they initially appear and thus the transition between and coexistence of the two posed no significant theological or ideological problems for their viewers. That is, the Good Shepherd and the enthroned Christ do not represent a clean distinction between pre- and post-Constantinian Christianity.

Fig. 2. Good Shepherd, Catacomb of Domitilla, Rome. Photo: Josef Wilpert, La Pittura delle Catacombe Romane, Rome, 1903.

Fig. 3. Good Shepherd Lunette Mosaic, Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, Ravenna. Photo: Robin M. Jensen.

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The Good Shepherd mosaic in the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia in Ravenna (Fig. 3) has been identified as a unique representation of a turning point not only from pastoral to imperial imagery, but also from the naturalism of classical art to the stylized spiritualism of early medieval art.7 The composition of this fifth-century Good Shepherd mosaic mimics portrayals of Orpheus, while Christ’s purple and gold garments evoke regal and divine attributes. However, I suggest that we read this image not as the beginning of an imperial Christian iconography, but as consistent with—and a bit more explicit than—the pastoral images of Christian art that came before it. That is, the apparently humble Good Shepherds of the Roman catacombs were capable of denoting power just as much as later images of the bejeweled and enthroned Christ. In striving to understand the image of the Good Shepherd, it is essential to remember that it is just that—a singular theme. As such, the Good Shepherd must be considered as but one among a multiplicity of symbols in Christianity’s long tradition of analogical language. Indeed, this principle is carried forward a few centuries later, when Pseudo-Dionysius writes about the application of metaphors to God in his Mystical Theology: Since it is the Cause of all beings, we should posit and ascribe to it all the affirmations we make in regard to being, and, more appropriately, we should negate all these affirmations, since it surpasses all being. Now we should not conclude that the negations are simply the opposites of the affirmations, but rather that the cause of all is considerably prior to this, beyond privations, beyond every denial, beyond every assertion.8

The Good Shepherd in and of itself is not capable of encapsulating

7. E.g., Boniface Ramsey, “A Note on the Disappearance of the Good Shepherd from Early Christian Art,” Harvard Theological Review 76, no. 3 (July 1983): 375–78. 8. Pseudo-Dionysius, De Mystica Theologica, translation from Pseudo-Dionysius, PseudoDionysius: The Complete Works, trans. Colm Liubheid (New York: Paulist, 1987), 136.

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the nature of God. Like most images, the strength of the Good Shepherd is its flexibility. Its meaning not only fluctuates over time but also in different contexts. Furthermore, as a symbol, it is able to evoke multiple and even contradictory meanings. In his discussion of literal and figural interpretation in biblical exegesis, Augustine notes, “But since there are many ways in which things may resemble other things, we should not imagine that there is a hard and fast rule that a word will always have the meaning that it has in a particular place.”9 He continues, “The various meanings of a particular thing may be either contrary or just different. By contrary I mean cases in which a particular thing is used sometimes in a good sense and sometimes in a bad one. . . . There are other things too which signify not just single ideas but, taken individually, two or often more ideas, depending on the contexts in which they are found.”10 While Augustine is speaking here in terms of language, and not images per se, he demonstrates a consciousness, even in the fourth century, of the fluidity of meaning. As will be demonstrated below, shepherd imagery was used in both positive and negative senses. Moreover, the images of Christ as the Good Shepherd were capable of communicating more than one meaning at a time. In considering the morphology of meaning and possible imperial connotations of Good Shepherd images, it is also useful to recall Dale Kinney’s article on the imperial and Christian associations of the basilica, in which she notes, “The debate over whether the early church basilica was ‘imperial’ is bound up with many other questions, including the origins of the building type, and whether building types have fixed or only contingent associations.”11 Kinney 9. Augustine, De Doctrina Christiana 3.25.78 (CCSL 32:35, pp. 97-98). Translation from Augustine of Hippo, On Christian Teaching, trans. R. P. H. Green (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 85. 10. Ibid., 3.25.79, 82 (CCSL 32:36-37, p. 98-99). Translation from Augustine of Hippo, On Christian Teaching, 85–86 (Book. 3.25.79, 82).

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summarizes the theoretical considerations: “Recent advances in semiotic theory offer a way around this impasse, by suggesting that the ‘basilica’ is a discursive rather than a formal category, determined neither purely by form nor purely by use, but by a cultural and linguistic understanding.”12 By analogy, the meaning of the Good Shepherd motif is determined not simply by its formal iconographic details, but also by the various cultural contexts (pagan, imperial, Christian) in which it was created and viewed. Indeed, these meanings influenced one another. Because of its long history of application to rulers and deities, the Good Shepherd motif carried connotations of both gentle caretaking and protection by violence into its Early Christian spaces. Therefore, the Good Shepherd and the enthroned Christ are both images of power. The “Prehistory” of the Good Shepherd13 The motif of the Good Shepherd is ancient, predating Christianity by thousands of years. Shepherding was an essential aspect of the agrarian and pastoral societies in the Ancient Near East, as flocks were valuable sources of food and clothing. One of the shepherd’s central responsibilities was to protect his flock from theft and predators; in this regard, his tools were a crook or staff, a sling, a bag of stones, and often a sheepdog. The shepherd’s lifestyle rendered the staff as a cultural symbol of guidance and protection. Pastoral language became an effective tool in political propaganda as this motif had cultural cachet throughout the ancient Mediterranean world, surveyed below. 11. Dale Kinney, “The Church Basilica,” in Imperial Art as Christian Art—Christian Art as Imperial Art: Expression and Meaning in Art and Architecture from Constantine to Justinian, ed. J. Rasmus Brandt and Olaf Steen (Rome: Bardi Editore, 2001), 115. 12. Kinney, “The Church Basilica,” 115. 13. A phrase borrowed from an article of the same name: Valentine Muller, “The Prehistory of the ‘Good Shepherd,’” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 3, no. 2 (April 1944): 87–90.

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Mesopotamia The earliest references to a king-as-shepherd date back to at least the Old Akkadian period (2335–2193 bce) and possibly as early as 3000 bce.14 Numerous Mesopotamian rulers employed this appellation, describing themselves with phrases such as “born for shepherding,” “the shepherd of the city,” and “the shepherd of the country.”15 On his infamous law code stele, which is the oldest extant legal compendium, recording legal judgments, a list of territories, and embodying his authority, King Hammurabi (d. 1750 bce) refers to himself as “the shepherd,” “the shepherd of the people,” “a shepherd who brings peace,” “whose shepherding the god Marduk gave to me.”16 Indeed, a popular Assyrian saying quipped about the necessity of rulers: “A people without a king [is like] a sheep without a shepherd.”17 While there is ample textual evidence of a shepherd motif in early Mesopotamia and an association of that motif with kings, it does not seem to have been the iconographic predecessor of the 14. Carlo Zaccagnini, “Sacred and Human Components in Ancient Near Eastern Law,” History of Religions 33, no. 3 (February 1994): 270–71. See also M. J. Seux, Épithèthes royales akkadiennes et sumériennes (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1967), 244–50, 441–46. 15. Zaccagnini, “Sacred and Human Components,” 271. See also E. Sollberger and J. R. Kupper, Inscriptions royales sumériennes et akkadiennes (Paris: Cerf, 1971), 91, 128, 151. 16. G. R. Driver and J. C. Miles, The Babylonian Laws II (Oxford: Clarendon, 1955), Code of Hammurabi, I 51, IV 45–47, Rev. XXIV 42–43, Rev. XXIV 9–16. Quoted in Zaccagnini, “Sacred and Human Components,” 270. 17. W. G. Lambert, Babylonian Wisdom Literature (Oxford: Clarendon, 1960), 229, 232, IV 14–15; quoted in Zaccagnini, “Sacred and Human Components,” 280. See also, Nicholas Cachia, “I am the Good Shepherd. The Good Shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” (John 10, 11): The Image of the Good Shepherd as a Source for the Spirituality of the Ministerial Priesthood (Rome: Gregorian University Press, 1997), 30. A common motif in Mesopotamian love poetry describes the romance between Ishtar, the goddess of love, and Dumuzi, the shepherd-king, who was later considered a deity. Ritual reenactments of these stories may have been performed by the king and a high priestess. L. Tawny, “Ancient Near Eastern Literature: Genres and Forms,” A Companion to the Ancient Near East, ed. Daniel C. Snell (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), 264; Yitschak Sefati, Love Songs in Sumerian Literature: Critical Edition of the Dumuziinanna Songs (Ramat Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 1998); G. Rubio, “Inanna and Dumuzi: A Sumerian Love Story,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 121: 268–74.

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Christian Good Shepherd. The most visually similar depictions from Mesopotamia date to about 1000 bce, but are of men carrying gazelles, not sheep on their shoulders. Relatedly, sculptures of male figures carrying a lamb or ram in their arms date as far back as 3000 bce, but have been interpreted to be worshipers carrying their sacrifice and not shepherds—as seen, for example, in an eighthcentury relief portrait of the king Sargon II, now at the Louvre.18 Some votive statues from the period also depict worshipers holding animals clasped to their chests.19 Egypt Mesopotamia had some degree of influence on Egyptian art and culture—enabled by pre-dynastic trade routes, possibly by way of Palestine.20 Whether or not the Egyptians gleaned their concept of the shepherd-king from the Mesopotamians in particular, the earliest shepherd motif in Egypt seems to have manifested as an understanding of some gods as shepherds and protectors of the pharaoh. This protection gradually came to apply to all Egyptians, and then to all people, as shepherd imagery also influenced Egyptian conceptions of kingship.21 The shepherd motif was introduced into ruler’s propaganda in the First Intermediate Period (2175–1975 bce), at a time when it was common for the head of the army and head of the state to be the same person.22

18. G. Ernest Wright, “The Good Shepherd,” The Biblical Archaeologist 2, no. 4 (December 1939): 44–48. 19. Jane McIntosh, Ancient Mesopotamia: New Perspectives (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2005), 205. 20. E.g., Michael A. Hoffman, Egypt Before the Pharaohs: The Prehistoric Foundation of Egyptian Civilization, 2nd ed. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990), 247; B. G. Trigger, B. J. Kemp, D. O’Connor, and A. B. Lloyd, Ancient Egypt: A Social History (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 38–39. 21. J. A. Wilson, The Burden of Egypt (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967), 120. 22. Anthony J. Spalinger, “Warfare in Ancient Egypt,” in A Companion to the Ancient Near East, ed. Daniel C. Snell (Oxford: Blackwell, 2007), 230; Andrea M. Gnirs, “Die Ägyptische

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A cursory consideration of Egyptian art reveals its frequent use of the shepherd’s crook and flail in depictions of gods and pharaohs. Osiris, the god of the afterlife, was pictured in statuettes, relief carvings, and papyri as wearing a crown, holding the crook and flail, with his legs bound in mummy wrappings. His crook and flail were absorbed from Anedjti, a minor agricultural god,23 and in Lower Egypt, Osiris was also identified with the ram.24 Worshiped as both the “king of the gods” and “king of the living,”25 Osiris was believed to judge the soul after death. Due in part to an origin story that identified him as a historical king, Osiris came to be associated with the deceased pharaoh.26 This connotation is discernible, for example, in the presence of the crook and flail on the now-iconic tomb of Tutankhamun (r. 1355–1346 bce). Greece The shepherd-king was also ubiquitous in Ancient Greek culture, which some scholars suggest had direct relations with Egypt from at least the seventh century bce on.27 Again, the precise origins of the Good Shepherd motif in Greek culture are unknown, but the earliest Autobiographie,” in Ancient Egyptian Literature: History and Forms, ed. Antonio Loprieno (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 78–79. 23. Erik Hornung and John Blaines, Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt: The One and the Many (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1996), 275. 24. Douglas J. Brewer, “Sheep and Goats,” in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt, vol. 2, ed. Donald B. Redford (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 278. 25. Hornung and Blaines, Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt, 233. 26. J. Gwyn Griffiths, “Osiris,” in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Egypt, vol. 1, ed. Donald B. Redford (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); David P. Silverman, “The Nature of Egyptian Kingship,” in Ancient Egyptian Kingship, ed. David O’Connor and David P. Silverman (New York: Brill, 1995), 49–95, especially 61–62. 27. E.g., Olga Palagia and Robert Steven Bianchi, “Who Invented the Claw Chisel?” Oxford Journal of Archaeology 13, no. 2 (July 1994): 185–97; U. Höckmann, “Der archaische griechische Kouros und sein Verhältins zur ägyptischen Statue,” in Ägypten Griechenland Rom: Abwehr und Berührung, Katalog zur Ausstellung im Städelschen Kunstinstitut Frankfurt, 26.11.2005–26.02.2006, ed. H. Beck, P. C. Bol, and M. Bückling (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), 74–89. Conversely: J. B. Carter and L. J. Steinberg, “Kouroi and Statistics,” American Journal of Archaeology 114 (2010): 103–28.

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textual references are found in The Iliad and The Odyssey. Homer’s two epic poems, composed in the late eighth or early seventh century bce, contain dozens of references to shepherds and their flocks and apply the motif to designate both good and bad leadership. For example, in The Iliad’s account of the Trojan War, Homer uses the vocabulary of shepherding to describe the negligence of a leader, as when Diomedes and Odysseus take the Thracian camp at night while the king sleeps, “As a lion springs on flocks unguarded, shepherd gone, / pouncing on goats or sheep and claw-mad for the kill.”28 Similarly, Apollo and the Trojans corner the Achaeans, who are described as “Routed like herds of cattle or big flocks of sheep,” with “the shepherd off and gone.”29 This imagery is especially poignant, as it is a vivid inversion of Apollo’s previous service as a shepherd to the king of Troy’s flocks.30 However, even more frequently, leaders such as Agamemnon, Nestor, and Diomedes are also positively described as “shepherd of the people” throughout Homer’s poem.31 Indeed, this incredibly violent tale is teeming with pastoral language, but not in reference to peaceful idyllic pastures; rather, “shepherd” is applied to the key figures of The Iliad—warriors, gods, and rulers—who are also the agents of its violence.

28. Homer, The Iliad 10.561–64. Translation from Homer, The Iliad, trans. Robert Fagles (New York: Penguin, 1998), 292. 29. Homer, The Iliad 15.382–87. Translation from Homer, The Iliad, trans. Fagles, 398. Shepherd imagery is similarly used to describe the carnage of battle in 16.415–19, 17.69–78, 18.188–91. 30. Homer, The Iliad 7.523–25, 21.505–22. 31. Homer, The Iliad, LCL 170, e.g., 1.263; 2.87, 105, 254, 772; 5.514; 7.469; 10.73, 406; 11.598; 13.411; 22.278; 23.389. Cf. The Iliad, trans. Fagles, e.g., 1.307; 2.101, 123, 298, 877; 5.593;7.542; 10.84, 472; 11.705; 13.477; 22.327; 23.438. There are at least forty instances of this appellation in The Iliad. N.B., the Greek term in these cases is poimēn laōn. While most translate this as “shepherd of the people” (e.g., Peter Jones, Richmond Lattimore, Alexander Pope), Robert Fagles translates it as “marshal of armies” (and elsewhere just “marshal”), which is curious given that he mentions the phrase “shepherd of the people” in his introduction (p. 16). Robert Fitzgerald also translates the term as “marshal.” For a more detailed analysis of Homer’s use of this phrase, see Johannes Haubold, Homer’s People: Epic Poetry and Social Formation (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), especially 14–46.

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The Odyssey, which follows Odysseus’ long tumultuous journey back home to Ithaca after having fought in the Trojan War, also uses pastoral language throughout the poem; it applies “shepherd of the people” about a dozen times to leaders and rulers.32 Odysseus and his men are delivered to safety via a flock of sheep: after blinding the Cyclops Polyphemus, they are able to escape the cave by hanging from the bellies of the Cyclops’ lambs, which they then triumphantly divvy up and slaughter on the beach.33 When Odysseus returns to Ithaca, the first person he appears to is Eumeaus, the swineherd who has remained faithful during Odysseus’ years of absence and to whom the entirety of book 14 is dedicated. The extensive influence of The Iliad and The Odyssey is evident more than three centuries later in Plato’s Minos, in which Socrates specifically references Homer’s use of the phrase “shepherd of the people.”34 Additionally, while attempting to articulate a definition of “law,” Socrates likens rulers to shepherds: “Then it is the laws of the

32. Homer, The Odyssey, LCL 104, e.g., 3.156, 3.469, 4.24, 14.497, 18.70, 20.106, 24.368. Again, Robert Fagles translates the term as “marshal.” Cf. Homer, The Odyssey, trans. Fagles, e.g., 3.172, 526; 4.29; 14.563; 18.81; 20.119; 24.409. 33. Homer, The Odyssey 9.474–616. 34. Plato, Minos 321c. Plato: Complete Works, ed. John M. Cooper, trans. Malcolm Schofield (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1997), 1317. Similarly, in Xenophon’s Memorabilia, Socrates cites Homer’s description of Agamemnon as “shepherd of the people” in his discussion of the responsibility of leaders. Xenophon, Memorabilia 3.2.1; Xenophon, Conversations of Socrates, trans. Robin H. Waterfield (New York: Penguin, 1990), 138. Likewise, in Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle writes, “Each of the constitutions may be seen to involve friendship just in so far as it involves justice. The friendship between a king and his subjects depends on an excess of benefits conferred; for he confers benefits on his subjects if being a good man he cares for them with a view of their well-being, as a shepherd does for his sheep (whence Homer called Agamemnon ‘shepherd of the peoples’).” Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, Book VIII Ch. 11, 10–15. Translation from The Complete Works of Aristotle, the revised Oxford translation, vol. 2, ed. Jonathan Barnes, trans. W. D. Ross, revised by J. O. Urmson (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 1834–35. In these instances, the Greek term (poimen, n.: herdsman, shepherd, captain, pastor; poimainein, v.: to herd, tend, guide, govern) is the same as that used by Homer. Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, An Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon, 1889, Impression of 1995), 652.

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shepherd that are best for the sheep. . . . And whose laws are best for human souls? Isn’t it those of the king?”35 Furthermore, in Plato’s Republic, written around 380 bce, Socrates repeatedly uses shepherding as an allegory in the evaluation of rulers. Discussing the nature of justice, he states: Shepherding is concerned only to provide what is best for that which it is set over. . . . That’s why I thought it necessary for us to agree before that every kind of rule, insofar as it rules, doesn’t seek anything other than what is best for the thing it rules and cares for, and this is true both of public and private kinds of rule.36

The shepherd’s duty to guide and guard his flocks was consistently applied over the course of centuries to the responsibilities of both actual and theoretical rulers to govern and protect their subjects. The trope of the lazy or incompetent shepherd was used to denigrate poor rulers; conversely, a ruler’s subjects were often implicitly likened to a herd of mindless or expendable sheep, as Plato describes purging troublemakers from society as a shepherd purges sick or weak animals from a herd.37 Plato also compares gods to shepherds in terms of their rule. For example, in Critias, the speaker likens the gods to shepherds in terms of their guidance, but contrasts their amiable persuasion with the physical force employed by shepherds.38 Among the earliest visual depictions of the shepherd-type in Greece is a terracotta kriophoros (ram-bearer) statuette dating to about the seventh century bce, now housed in the Cleveland Museum. It is unique in that the figure is a warrior, complete with helmet, breastplate, and the distinctive warrior’s belt. Nearly contemporary 35. Plato, Minos 318a. Translation from Plato: Complete Works, ed. Cooper, trans. Schofield, 1314. 36. Plato, Republic 1.343c–d. Translation from Plato: Complete Works, ed. Cooper, trans. G. M. A. Grube, rev. C. D. C. Reeve, 989. 37. Plato, Laws 5.735b–c. Plato: Complete Works, ed. Cooper, trans. Trevor J. Saunders, 1417. On the superiority of kings, see also Laws 4.713d. 38. Plato, Critias 109b–c. Plato: Complete Works, ed. Cooper, trans. Diskin Clay, 1295.

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with Homer, the statuette is a visualization of the shepherd imagery applied to warriors throughout The Iliad and The Odyssey. For example, book 18 of The Iliad centers on a description of Achilles’ shield, which bears images of cities, plowed fields, weddings, conflicts, as well as farmers, cattle, shepherds, and sheep: And the famous crippled Smith forged a meadow deep in a shaded glen for shimmering flocks to graze, with shepherds’ steadings, well-roofed huts and sheepfolds.39

These pastoral images accompany Achilles into battle to avenge Patroclos’ death. Greek gods were also depicted as shepherds: Hermes, who was known as the god who guided souls to the underworld and the patron of flocks and herds, was often represented as Hermes kriophoros, carrying a lamb or a ram in his arms or on his shoulders. Images of Orpheus are found in mosaics, relief-carvings, statues, and frescoes, which present him as a musician, poet, philosopher, and guardian.40 This son of Apollo made his own trip to Hades, attempting to retrieve his lost love; his enchanting music was known to tame wild animals, and he is thus frequently depicted in a Phrygian cap, holding his lyre and surrounded by animals. More than two thousand years before the emergence of Christianity, there was already an established tradition that linked the concept of a good shepherd with that of a good ruler. The shepherd of the Ancient Near East and ancient Greece also carried

39. Homer, The Iliad 18.686–88. Translation from Homer, The Iliad, trans. Fagles, 486. The function of Achilles’ shield in the poem is addressed at length in Keith Stanley, The Shield of Homer: Narrative Structure in the Iliad (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), see especially 3–6, 9–13. 40. Ilona Julia Jesnick, The Image of Orpheus in Roman Mosaic: An exploration of the figure of Orpheus in Graeco-Roman art and culture with special reference to its expression in the medium of mosaic in late antiquity (Oxford: BAR International Series, 1997).

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connotations of death and resurrection, as in the figures of Osiris and Orpheus. Shepherds in the Hebrew Bible A product of Ancient Near Eastern culture, the Hebrew Bible contains several significant references to the idea of a shepherdleader, including anecdotes characterized by kingship and/or violence.41 These biblical accounts tend to be more positive than those found in Homer: the Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are all portrayed as ideal shepherds, as is Joseph (e.g., Gen. 13:2; 26:14; 30:29; 37:2). Notably, Moses’ first encounter with God—in the form of the burning bush—occurred while he was tending sheep (Exod. 3:1), a moment that initiated his leadership of the Israelites. Psalm 77:51 describes Moses: “And he took away his own people as sheep: and guided them in the wilderness like a flock.”42 In asking God for a leader to take over, Moses echoes the Assyrian adage mentioned above: “May the Lord the God of the spirits of all flesh provide a man, that may be over this multitude: . . . lest the people of the Lord be as sheep without a shepherd” (Num. 27:16-7). As the leader of a nation, Moses protects his “sheep” from danger, leading them out of the sea, as commemorated in Ps. 77:19-20 and Isa. 63:11. The prophet Isaiah also likens God’s provision and guidance to that of a shepherd:43 “Behold, the Lord God comes with might, and his arm rules for him; behold, his reward is with him, and his recompense before him. He will feed his flock like a shepherd, he will gather the lambs in his arms, he will carry them in his bosom, and gently lead those that are with young” (Isa. 40:10-11). As in so 41. See Cachia, The Image of the Good Shepherd, 37–41. 42. All biblical quotations are taken from the Revised Standard Version. 43. See Cachia, The Image of the Good Shepherd, 42–62.

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many other examples, the shepherd imagery of this passage combines connotations of rule and provision. Ezekiel 34 addresses the kings of Israel as “shepherds” and chastises them for failing to care properly for the weak sheep of their flock. Because of their failure God must intervene as the true caring—and judging—shepherd. That is, the shepherd-leader theme is often about governance as much as it is about grassroots guidance. The prophet writes, “And I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them: he shall feed them and be their shepherd. And I, the Lord, will be their God, and my servant David shall be prince among them; I, the Lord, have spoken” (Ezek. 34:23-24). This brings us to David, who is perhaps the ultimate example of the shepherd-ruler. When King Saul incredulously asks for his qualifications to fight Goliath, David offers his experience as a shepherd: But David said to Saul, “Your servant used to keep sheep for his father; and when there came a lion, or a bear, and took a lamb from the flock, I went after him and smote him and delivered it out of his mouth; and if he arose against me, I caught him by his beard, and smote him and killed him. Your servant has killed both lions and bears; and this uncircumcised Philistine shall be like one of them, seeing he has defied the armies of the living God.” And David said, “The Lord who delivered me from the paw of the lion and from the paw of the bear, will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine.” And Saul said to David, “Go, and the Lord be with you!” Then Saul clothed David with his armor; he put a helmet of bronze on his head, and clothed him with a coat of mail. And David girded his sword over his armor, and he tried in vain to go, for he was not used to them. Then David said to Saul, “I cannot go with these; for I am not used to them.” And David put them off. Then he took his staff in his hand, and chose five smooth stones from the brook, and put them in his shepherd’s bag or wallet; his sling was in his hand, and he drew near to the Philistine.44

44. 1 Samuel 17:34-40.

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It was the violent nature of shepherding that prepared David for battle with a giant. The self-sacrifice required of the shepherd mirrors that required of a warrior and is later transposed onto the understanding of Christ as the Good Shepherd. Even as a king, David continues to be described as a shepherd, as when God instructs Nathan to prophesy: “Now therefore thus you shall say to my servant David, ‘Thus says the Lord of hosts, I took you from the pasture, from following the sheep, that you should be prince over my people Israel’” (2 Sam. 7:8).45 The Good Shepherd in the New Testament Building on the foundation of the Hebrew Bible, the authors of the Christian New Testament adapted the shepherd-king imagery in their portrait of Jesus. This was a relatively easy task, given Christ’s self-description as such in John 10, where we read, “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep” (v. 11).46 At the start of Jesus’ ministry, Matthew describes his compassion on the people, “because they were distressed, and lying like sheep that have no shepherd” (Matt. 9:36), to which Mark adds, “and he began to teach them many things” (Mark 6:34). Christ guides the believer and seeks out the lost soul (e.g., Luke 15:3-7). Matthew’s “little apocalypse” has Christ the shepherd-king judging and sorting his subjects: “When the Son of man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate them one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will place the sheep at his right hand, but the goats at the left” (Matt.

45. Expanded upon in Ps. 77:70-72: “He chose David his servant, and took him from the sheepfolds; from tending the ewes that had young he brought him to be the shepherd of Jacob his people, of Israel his inheritance. With upright heart he tended them, and guided them with skilful hand.” 46. For an analysis of this chapter, see Cachia, The Image of the Good Shepherd, 113–79.

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25:31-33). The reader of the New Testament is addressed as one of these sheep, as in 1 Pet. 2:25, “For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Guardian of your souls.” Through these passages, a picture is painted of Christ the Good Shepherd, who knows, protects, seeks, provides and sacrifices for, and also judges his sheep.47 John 21 records Jesus’ third post-resurrection appearance to the disciples, in which he commissions Peter to “feed my sheep.” Such statements do not merely express sentiments of spiritual nourishment and guidance; they also build on a long biblical—and

extrabiblical—tradition

of

describing

leaders

as

shepherds and their followers as flocks of sheep. The Good Shepherd according to the Church Fathers The church fathers then took up the task of reconciling the shepherd imagery of the Hebrew Bible with that of the New Testament. Not surprisingly, they often did this by interpreting the former through the lens of the latter.48 For example, Clement of Alexandria compares Moses and Christ as shepherds and lawgivers: It is the wise man, therefore, alone whom the philosophers proclaim king, legislator, general, just, holy, God-beloved. . . . As then we say that it belongs to the shepherd’s art to care for the sheep; for so “the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep,” so also we shall say that legislation, inasmuch as it presides over and cares for the flock of men, establishes the virtue of men. . . . And if the flock figuratively spoken of as belonging to the Lord is nothing but a flock of men, then He Himself is the good Shepherd and the Lawgiver of the one flock . . . 49

47. See also Cachia, The Image of the Good Shepherd, 73–112. The Greek word in these passages is the same as that used by Homer and Plato; see footnote 32 above. Poimen/poimainein is also used in the ruling sense in Matt. 2:6 (which quotes Mic. 5:2); Rev. 2:27; 7:17; 12:5; 19:15. 48. E.g., Chromat., Serm. 23, 2; Tertullian, De fuga 11, 1; Clement of Alexandria, Paedagogus I, 9, 2–3; Cyprian, Ep. 8, 1–2; Augustine, Serm. 46 and 47; Jerome, In Ezech. XI. 49. Clement of Alexandria, Stromata I, 26, trans. ANF 2:338–39.

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Moses and Christ are both conceived of as superior to any secular legislator; while Christian authors appropriated pastoral and political language from their contemporary culture, they did so with a higher purpose. These vocabularies exist among a multitude of others that all serve in the impossible but irresistible effort of articulating the nature of God. But patristic exegesis of pastoral passages was not limited only to the explication of biblical content, but also to its application in the contemporary lives of the faithful. For example, Ephrem of Syria hymns Christ as a kingly shepherd in a baptismal context: The crowds in the desert were like unto sheep that have no shepherd. The Merciful became their shepherd and multiplied to them the pasture of bread. Yea, blessed are ye that are perfect, that are sealed as lambs of Christ, that of His Body and Blood are made worthy; the Pastor Himself is become pasture for you! . . . The sheep of Christ leaped for joy, to receive the seal of life, that ensign of kings which has ever put sin to flight. The Wicked by Thy ensign is routed, iniquities by Thy sign are scattered. Come, ye sheep, receive your seal, which puts to flight them that devour you!50

The anointing oil of baptism is thus conceived of in terms of both a royal signet ring and a shepherd’s brand. Indeed, some of the earliest descriptions of Christian art include signet rings with images of the

50. Ephrem of Syria, Fifteen Hymns for the Feast of the Epiphany 3.22, 24. Translation from NPNF 13:270–71. This hymn was more recently translated into French in Joseph Obeid, “L’onction baptismale d’après HdEpiph III de Saint Éphrem,” Parole de l’Orient 17 (1992): 7–36, and François Cassingena, OSB, Éphrem le Syrien: Hymnes sur l’Épiphanie. Hymnes baptismales de l’Orient syrien, Spiritualité Orientale 70 (Bégrolles en Mauge: Abbaye de Bellefontaine, 1997). See also Ephrem of Syria, Hymns on Virginity and on the Symbols of the Lord, 7:5–6 in Ephrem the Syrian: Hymns, trans. Kathleen E. McVey (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 1989), 294. My thanks to Mark Ellison for bringing these passages to my attention.

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Good Shepherd.51 The Good Shepherd is also depicted in several early baptismal environments, discussed below. In De Fide, Ambrose interprets the shepherd-king of the Ezekiel 34 passage (“And I will set up one shepherd over them,” quoted above) as a prefiguration of Christ: “Now David the Son of Jesse was already dead. Therefore he speaks of Christ, Who for our sakes was made the Son of a handmaiden in the form of man.”52 From the lineage of the earthly shepherd-turned-king David, Christ’s shepherding and ruling are instead spiritual and eternal.53 Patristic authors interpreted the shepherds of the Hebrew Bible as pointing to the future shepherd—Christ. Like his teacher Ambrose before him, Augustine of Hippo also describes Christ as the Shepherd, though he did so in an explanation of the heavenly and earthly cities. Trying to make sense of the recent sack of Rome, in City of God, Augustine juxtaposes Cain, the Jews, and the earthly city with Abel, Christ, and the heavenly city: For the vice of envy increased in [Cain], and he lay in wait for his brother and slew him. Such was the founder of the earthly city. He also prefigures the Jews by whom Christ was slain, the Shepherd of the flock of men, who was foreshadowed in Abel, the shepherd of the flock of sheep.54 51. Jensen, Understanding Early Christian Art, 184, n. 8, which cites Tertullian, De Pudicitia 7.1-4; Clement of Alexandria, Paedagogus 3.59.2–3.60.1. Cf. Henri Leclercq, “Pasteur (Bon),” in Dictionnaire d’archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie, 13.2, ed. Fernand Cabrol (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1938), 2384–86. 52. Ambrose, De Fide, 5.8.111, trans. NPNF 10:298. 53. In a move perhaps characteristic of the proverbial black sheep of the early church, Origen intentionally pushed the concepts of shepherd and king apart. In his commentary on John, he distinguished between believers’ perceptions of Christ as shepherd or ruler: “Now as there are some to whom Christ is a shepherd, as we said before, because of their meek and composed nature, though they are less guided by reason; so there are those to whom He is a king, those, namely, who are led in their approach to religion rather by the reasonable part of their nature. And among those who are under a king there are differences; some experience his rule in a more mystic and hidden and more divine way, others in a less perfect fashion.” Origen, Commentary on the Gospel of John, 1.30.314, trans. ANF. This follows a chapter on Christ as the Door and as the Shepherd, which similarly describes Christ’s perceived attributes in terms of the state of the faithful. 54. Augustine of Hippo, City of God, 15.7. Translation from Augustine, The City of God Against the

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His disillusionment rings loud and clear: earthly governments are riddled with violence and corruption. In contrast, only the founder of the heavenly city, Christ, can establish eternal peace—prefigured in Abel, the shepherd-victim. Some centuries later, Pope Gregory the Great employed shepherd imagery to evaluate both good and bad leadership in the church, in a passage that is reminiscent of Plato’s Republic one thousand years prior. In book two of his Pastoral Rule, Gregory reflects that this very diversity [of merit], which is entered upon through vice, is then dispensed by the divine judgment, so that some [men] are directed by others, since not all can stand equally. Therefore, those who preside over others should consider not their rank, but the equality of their condition. Moreover, they should revel not in ruling over others but in helping them. For indeed, our ancient fathers are not remembered because they were rulers of men, but because they were shepherds of flocks.55

While his treatise was novel for encouraging ordination, it nevertheless

presented

firm

opinions

about

the

necessary

qualifications for church leadership. As the title of the treatise hints, pastor (“shepherd”) was among the terms Gregory used to describe a good spiritual director.56 But even in discussing church affairs, he references the ruling legacies of ancient societies. The biblical vocabulary of shepherding carried powerful connotations of divinity, leadership, kingship, and judgment, which the church fathers employed to describe not only Christ, but also the spiritual leaders among their ranks. As will be shown below, this Pagans, ed. and trans. R. W. Dyson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 646–47, emphasis added. 55. Gregory the Great, The Book of Pastoral Rule, trans. George E. Demacopoulos (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2007), 61–62, emphasis added. PL 77:34C. 56. Other descriptions of church leaders as “Good Shepherds” include: Clement of Alexandria, Paed. I, 6, 37, 3; Origen, Hom. 12 in Lc. 2; Cyprian, Unit. Eccl. 8; Ep. 69, 5; Ambrose, In Luc. VII, 50; John Chrysostom, Hom. 60 in Joh. 1.

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vocabulary was then available to be employed by Christian rulers with great effect. Bucolic Imagery and the Roman Upper Class In addition to the above-mentioned Ancient Near Eastern, GrecoRoman, and biblical precedents, Late Antique bucolic scenes are also relevant in establishing the iconographic context of the Good Shepherd. Bucolic scenes were not only employed symbolically, as in serene depictions of the afterlife, but also to characterize typical Roman pastimes, articulated in the Latin abstract term otium.57 While it may seem natural to associate the bucolic scenes from which the Good Shepherd emerged with the lower class, the motif actually had high-culture connotations. The most obvious is the simple fact that the majority of these images were commissioned by wealthy patrons, from the emperor himself to freedmen such as Aulus Vettius Conviva and Aulus Vettius Restitutus. Bucolic scenes appear in a variety of media, such as mosaics, sculpture, frescoes, textiles, and glassware, and include iconographic motifs that would have been associated with the upper class. For example, in contrast with small apartment or tenement buildings (insula), the urban domus was constructed around a colonnaded, open-air garden (peristylium), the dramatic effect of which was often enhanced through the illusion of nearby frescoes.58 Gardens were also a staple of great country estates, and were complete with pools and fountains, terraces, and trellises. 57. A.M. Giuntella, “Shepherd, The Good, II. Iconography,” in Encyclopedia of the Early Church, vol. 2, ed. Angelo Di Berardino, trans. Adrian Walford (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 777. Lewis and Short defines “otium” as leisure, vacant time, and idle life. A Latin Dictionary, ed. Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short (Oxford: Clarendon, 1879; rpt. 1955), 1285. 58. The ideal proportions of the paristylia are specified in Vitruvius, De architectura VI.3.7; examples, such as the House of Vetti, have been excavated and reconstructed at Pompeii. For a discussion of paristylia, see, for example, Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, House and Society in Pompeii and Herculaneum (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 20–28.

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These country estates were often a place of leisure for the wealthy, where they participated in recreational activities such as hunting and fishing. Originally a necessity for survival, hunting was transformed by the upper classes into an expensive pastime that was only available to those who could afford to maintain horses, dogs, and slaves, and was a common iconographic motif in Late Antique art; dozens of examples are found on extant sarcophagi, floor mosaics, wall paintings, and silver plates. Outdoor picnics concluded such excursions and often appear at the center of hunting compositions, as depicted for example on Seuso’s Hunting Plate and the Room of the Small Hunt mosaic in the Villa de Casale, at Piazza Armerina, Sicily, both of which date to the early fourth century ce. While there is some evidence for the existence of small farms in the Roman Empire, it seems that mid-size villae rusticae and large latifundia dominated the farming industry.59 In these cases, the actual agricultural work of farming was performed by slaves and some free farmers; however, the upper- and middle-class owners of such properties were the beneficiaries of their labors, making farm images implicitly linked to the wealthy and powerful. Indeed, farming was also theorized in works such as Cato’s De Agricultura, which describes an ideal farm, and Pliny the Elder’s Naturalis Historiae—especially Book 18, which begins by tracing several Latin terms for wealth back to their origins in farming, such as pecunia (money) from pecus (cattle). In other words, the Good Shepherd motif emerged from a context of high-culture bucolic imagery, thereby linking the figure’s apparently humble guise to the wealth and power of the upper class.

59. Peter Garnsey, Richard Saller, and Jaś Elsner, The Roman Empire: Economy, Society and Culture (Oakland: University of California Press, 2014), 93–99.

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Early Christian Images of the Good Shepherd The Good Shepherd was ubiquitous in Early Christian art—probably, at least in part, on account of its ready availability in Greco-Roman culture; in the Dictionnaire d’archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie, Henri Leclercq lists more than three hundred instances and likens the popularity of the motif to that of the crucifix for modern Christians.60 Well over two hundred of these examples are found in funerary art such as catacomb frescoes, sarcophagi, and epigraphs. The Good Shepherd also appears in several floor and wall mosaics, more than twenty statuettes, and dozens of terracotta lamps, engraved gems, and painted glass. While it is difficult to know whether many of these early images were intended to be Christ or merely another personification of philanthropy, as found in Greco-Roman art, Christ was associated with visual depictions of the Good Shepherd as early as the late first century.61 For example, in The Shepherd of Hermas the author describes the guiding Christ-figure of his visions as “a man of glorious aspect, dressed like a shepherd, with a white goat’s skin, a wallet on his shoulders, and a rod in his hand.”62 A century later, Tertullian describes the common occurrence of depictions of Christ as the Good Shepherd on cups.63 On the other hand, Paul Corby Finney notes that one can only speculate as to whether Christians owned any of the more than one hundred extant terracotta oil lamps that bear the shepherd motif (c. 175–225 ce).64 60. Henri Leclercq, “Pasteur (Bon),” in Dictionnaire d’archéologie chrétienne et de liturgie, 13.2, ed. Fernand Cabrol (Paris: Letouzey et Ané, 1938): 2272. 61. As Robin M. Jensen has noted, symbolic motifs such as the Good Shepherd are not so much portraits of Christ as they are images of a particular aspect of Christ—in this case his guidance and provision. Jensen, Face to Face, 23. In this regard, the context of a particular image is essential in understanding its intended meaning—the presence of the Good Shepherd in a Christian catacomb, often paired with orant figures and Daniel in the lion’s den, is distinct from say the dazzling mosaic of the Good Shepherd in the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia. 62. Shepherd of Hermas, vision 5.1, quoted in Jensen, Understanding Early Christian Art, 38. 63. Jensen, Understanding Early Christian Art, 38. Tertullian, De Pudicitia 7.1–4.

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At least half of the extant Good Shepherd images are found in Roman catacombs dating to the third and fourth centuries. In these funerary contexts, the shepherd is naturally a figure of deliverance and guidance to the afterlife, drawing on the traditions of Hermes and Orpheus. In fact, Orpheus, identifiable by his lyre and Phrygian cap, is also found in several examples of early Christian funerary art, and was likened to Christ by patristic authors such as Clement of Alexandria.65 Christ the Good Shepherd also has a dominant position in the baptistery of the house church at Dura Europos, where he is pictured in the lunette above the baptismal font.66 As Robin M. Jensen has observed, the Good Shepherd motif was likely used in baptismal contexts on account of the recitation of the twenty-third psalm in the rite of initiation.67 The iconography and context of these initial images do indeed appear to be consistent with the humble ethos of the early church and if anything, draw upon the images of the Greco-Roman pantheon. However, the extensive royal history of the motif, outlined above, along with its use by Christian emperors, discussed below, indicates that there is another side to the iconographic story. The Christian Emperor and the Good Shepherd Constantine One of the most striking invocations of the Good Shepherd motif in an imperial context is that written by Eusebius in his biography 64. Paul Corby Finney, The Invisible God: The Earliest Christians on Art (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 116–30. 65. Clement of Alexandria, Protrepticus 1; Jensen, Understanding Early Christian Art, 41–42; Mary Charles Murray, Rebirth and Afterlife: A Study of the Transmutation of Some Pagan Imagery in Early Christian Art (Oxford: BAR International Series, 1981), 37–63. 66. On the use of the Good Shepherd in baptismal imagery, see, for example, Robin Jensen, Baptismal Imagery in Early Christianity: Ritual, Visual, and Theological Dimensions (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2012), especially 75–82. 67. Jensen, Understanding Early Christian Art, 39.

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of Constantine. Among the beautifications of the imperial building campaign, Eusebius mentions that in Constantinople, “You would see at the fountains set in the middle of squares the emblems of the Good Shepherd, evident signs to those who start from the divine.”68 But more to the point, Constantine spoke of himself as a shepherd to the people. In the third book of the Life of Constantine, Eusebius presents Constantine as an attentive and gentle leader in the context of the fourth-century religious disputes. In one of Constantine’s letters to Antioch, which Eusebius includes in its entirety, Constantine seems to make reference both to himself and to church officials when he writes, “Teeth appear in the character and strength even of sheep, when the attention and care of the shepherd disappears and they are deprived of the direction they had before.”69 Eusebius even more explicitly likens Constantine to Christ in De Laudibus Constantini: just as Christ, “as the good shepherd, drives far away from his flock, like savage beasts, those apostate spirits . . . so this friend . . . subdues and chastens the open adversaries of the truth in accordance with the usages of war.”70 Christ the Good Shepherd is Constantine’s model for philanthropy, humility, and self-sacrifice: Wholly devoted to him, he dedicates himself as a noble offering, a firstfruit of that world, the government of which is entrusted to his charge. This first and greatest sacrifice our emperor first dedicates to God; and then, as a faithful shepherd, he offers, not “famous hecatombs of firstling lambs,” but the souls of that flock which is the object of his care, those rational beings whom he leads to the knowledge and pious worship of God.71

68. Eusebius, Vit. Const., 3.49. Translation from Eusebius, Life of Constantine, trans. Averil Cameron and Stuart G. Hall (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 140. Cf. Robert Grigg, “Constantine the Great and the Cult without Images,” Viator 8 (1977): 4. 69. Eusebius, Vit. Const., 3.114.7. Translation from Eusebius, Life of Constantine, trans. Cameron and Hall, 149. 70. Eusebius, De Laudibus Constantini, 2.3. Translation from NPNF 1:583. 71. Ibid., 2.6. Translation from NPNF 1:583–84.

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Constantine is thus praised as both a political and spiritual leader. Whether his Christian subjects would have regarded Constantine as a shepherd-figure to the degree that Eusebius pushes the concept, we can only speculate, and to my knowledge, there are no visual representations of Constantine that invoke the Good Shepherd motif. Book four of the Vita presents the piety of the Christian emperor, both in his personal devotion and his public policies and actions. In one of the final chapters of the book, Eusebius describes the overwhelming reaction to Constantine’s death: “Tribunes and centurions wept aloud for their Saviour, Protector and Benefactor, and the rest of the troops suitably mourned like flocks for their Good Shepherd.”72 In the tradition of David and Christ, Constantine—he who bankrolled the early church and according to some historians contributed to its corruption—was memorialized as a shepherd to his subjects. Galla Placidia Now let us return to the fifth-century Good Shepherd mosaic from the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia in Ravenna (Fig. 3). Embodying a climactic moment in the transition from the Good Shepherd to the Enthroned Christ in early Christian iconography, the mosaic is noteworthy as the last Good Shepherd image of early Christianity, with the next example not appearing until the fourteenth century.73 About a century after Constantine, during the reign of Theodosius II, this unique, royally commissioned Good Shepherd image is found in the north lunette mosaic of the so-called Mausoleum of Galla Placidia. The placement of the scene above the building’s entrance 72. Eusebius, Vit. Const., 4.65.2. Translation from Eusebius, Life of Constantine, trans. Cameron and Hall, 179. 73. Boniface Ramsey, “A Note on the Disappearance of the Good Shepherd from Early Christian Art,” Harvard Theological Review 76, no. 3 (July 1983): 375–78.

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may have been intended to invoke Jesus’ words of John 10:7-9, “I am the door of the sheep. . . . By me, if any man enter in, he shall be saved: and he shall go in, and go out, and shall find pastures.”74 The mausoleum is “so called” because the small cruciform building was most likely constructed to be an oratory, originally attached to the nave of Santa Croce. Although she commissioned the building, Augusta Galla Placidia was never actually buried there. The lunette is a peaceful, bucolic scene, the composition of which recalls both Christian and pagan precedents. However, it differs significantly in its depiction of the person of the Good Shepherd: unlike the ambiguous identity of the shepherd figures in most iconographic antecedents, this figure clearly is meant to be Christ. His youthful, beardless face is highlighted by a gold halo, and his shepherd’s crook has been replaced with a gold cruciform staff (perhaps a processional cross), upon which he leans. In contrast to his usual humble garb, this Good Shepherd wears a gold tunic (dalmatica) with deep blue stripes (clavi) and a purple mantle (pallium) that drapes over his shoulder and lap. The purple of his mantle is an unmistakable reference to the imperial purple.75 In this dazzling garb, Christ seems to be overdressed for the occasion of sitting on a rock surrounded by six attentive sheep, variously posed in a rocky landscape.

74. In addition to the usual Good Shepherd passages of John 10:11-21 and 21:15-17. 75. Doreen Yarwood, Illustrated Encyclopedia of World Costume (London: Dover, 2011), 340. Purple clavi were an indication of senatorial status. See also Deborah Mauskopf Deliyannis, Ravenna in Late Antiquity (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 79–80. This garb has contributed to both imperial and divine interpretations of the figure. See, for example, Clementina Rizzardi, “Il Mausoleo nel mondo culturale e artistico di Galla Placidia / The Mausoleum in the cultural-artistic world of Galla Placidia,” in Il mausoleo di Galla Placidia a Ravenna, ed. Clementina Rizzardi and Patrizia Angiolina Marinelli (Modena, 1996), 121; for a divine interpretation of Christ’s gold clothing, see Mathews, The Clash of Gods, 101–3.

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Fig. 4. Orpheus Mosaic, Antioch, Turkey. Photo: Robin M. Jensen.

Fig. 5. Apse Mosaic, Santa Pudenziana, Rome. Photo: Robin M. Jensen.

The composition of the lunette and Christ’s dress and gesture in particular bear a remarkable resemblance to a Turkish mosaic of

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Orpheus dating to the third or fourth century (Fig. 4).76 Another likely influence for Christ’s wardrobe, closer to home, is found in the late fourth-century apse mosaic of Santa Pudenziana in Rome (Fig. 5). Enthroned among the disciples, Christ is dressed in a golden tunic, with the same vertical deep blue stripes. Thomas Mathews has argued that both the gold of the garment and the imposing throne are attributes of Roman divinity, not empire.77 But why must images such as these be pegged as being under the influence of either pagan or imperial imagery? Why not both?78 It is worth mentioning that the Good Shepherd mosaic of the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia is conspicuously absent from Thomas Mathews’s The Clash of Gods. In fact, his only mention of the building is limited to one sentence about a different mosaic.79 It is difficult not to interpret his silence on this Good Shepherd mosaic as an indictment and an indication of its imperial imagery. The north lunette of the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia is the ultimate visualization of the imperial connotations that were already present in the Good Shepherd motif, embodying a convergence of the iconographic elements of Good Shepherd, Empire, and Pantheon—of guidance, power, and divinity. This mosaic is a singular pinnacle—the crest of the wave of Good Shepherd images that had been building in Early Christian art and for thousands of years before. Here, the Good Shepherd peaks, gilding and all, and gives way to the Enthroned Christ of apse mosaics. 76. Deliyannis, Ravenna in Late Antiquity, 79–80. 77. Mathews, The Clash of Gods, 98–103, especially 101. 78. Mathews’ statement that “the citizens of Late Antiquity did not see their commander-in-chief in so positive a light as to clothe their new God in his likeness” is not convincing. Mathews, The Clash of Gods, 191. Could not the same be said about their attitude toward the pagan gods? And could not his argument that the Christian images supplanted pagan images be just as easily applied to imperial images? That is, through its visual art, Christianity asserted itself as superior to both the pagan pantheon and to the secular government (and to the philosophers, and so on). 79. “So, too, the splendid crosses that appear in the starry sky at the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia and in the apse of Saint Apollinaris in Classe.” Mathews, The Clash of Gods, 149.

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Fig. 6. Apse Mosaic, Saints Cosmas and Damian, Rome. Photo: Lee M. Jefferson.

Agnus Dei: Sheep and Shepherd As early as the fourth century, visual depictions of the Good Shepherd began to decline in popularity, even as the Good Shepherd continued to be referenced in theological treatises and sermons.80 Meanwhile the visual motif was gradually supplanted by others. For example, Christ came to be depicted more frequently as the agnus dei, which illustrated his paradoxical identity as both shepherd and sheep. This concept is founded upon biblical passages such as Revelation 7:17, which reads: “for the Lamb at the center of the throne will shepherd them and guide them to springs of living water.” In his tractate on John, Augustine draws together several biblical texts to substantiate this paradox:

80. As noted by Jensen, Understanding Early Christian Art, 39–40. See also Boniface Ramsey, “A Note on the Disappearance of the Good Shepherd from Early Christian Art,” Harvard Theological Review 76, no. 3 (July 1983): 375–78.

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The sheep, of course, is under the shepherd; yet he is both shepherd and sheep. Where is he a shepherd? Look you have it here. Read the Gospel: “I am the good shepherd.” Where is he a sheep? Ask the prophet: “As a sheep he was led to the slaughter.” Ask the friend of the bridegroom: “Behold! The Lamb of God. Behold! He who takes away the sin of the world!”81

Thus, another relevant iconographic theme for our present discussion is that of the agnus dei, or the Lamb of Revelation. In such images, he is often depicted standing on the rock from which issue the four rivers of paradise, flanked by saints or, as in the apsidal mosaic from the sixth-century basilica of Saints Cosmas and Damian (Fig. 6), by sheep-disciples.82 The main scene of the apse is that of Christ descending on a flurry of apocalyptic clouds; he is flanked by Peter and Paul, Cosmas and Damian, and Felix and Theodorus. Immediately below Christ is his agnus dei doppelganger, a composition that visually equates the two figures.83 As on the arch of the same apse, the Lamb often sits on a gem-studded throne. His attributes frequently include the seven-sealed scroll and the cruciform staff.84 In these types of images we see a collapsing of the two

81. Augustine, Tractate on John 46.3, quoted in Jensen, Understanding Early Christian Art, 40–41. Translation from J. W. Rettig, Fathers of the Church Series, 88 (Washington, DC: Catholic University Press, 1993). Similarly, in Ephrem of Syria: “But ye, who are the new flock, have put off the doings of wolves, and as lambs are made like to the Lamb. One by changing has changed all; the Lamb to the wolves gave Himself to be slain; the wolves rushed and devoured Him and became lambs; for the Shepherd was changed into a Lamb; likewise the wolf forgot his nature.” Fifteen Hymns for the Feast of the Epiphany 3.26. Translation from NPNF 13:271. 82. On the evolving images of Christ in church apses, see J. M. Spieser, “The Representation of Christ in the Apses of Early Christian Churches,” Gesta 37, no. 1 (1998): 63–73. 83. A very similar composition is found on the eighth-century apse mosaic of Santa Prassede and on the ninth-century apse mosaic of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere, both in Rome. 84. N.B., agnus dei images do not occur in the East and are infrequent in the West until the thirteenth century, possibly because of the ruling of the Council of Trullo in 692. Canon 82 prohibited portraying Christ as the lamb, “so that all may understand by means of it the depths of the humiliation of the Word of God, and that we may recall to our memory his conversation in the flesh, his passion and salutary death, and his redemption which was wrought for the whole world.” Translation from NPNF 14:401. Concilium Constantinopolitanum a. 691/2 in Trullo habitum (Concilium Quinisextum), ed. Heinz Ohme, Acta conciliorum oecumenicorum,

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metaphors of shepherd and sheep as Christ-as-the-lamb rules from an exalted position, be it throne or rock. Like the lunette mosaic from the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia, the apse mosaic of Santa Pudenziana in Rome (Fig. 5) may also present a conflation of the pastoral and imperial Christ. Along with that of Santa Costanza, this is the oldest Christian apse mosaic, dating to about 402 ce. It depicts Christ seated on an elaborate throne while teaching the apostles, who are all dressed in senatorial togas. Christ’s toga is distinctly golden with purple trim. The group is flanked by female personifications of the Jews and Gentiles, who crown Peter and Paul. The cityscape in the background can be identified as Jerusalem by the jewel-encrusted cross in the mound directly above Christ; this references the cross that was erected on Golgotha by Theodosius, while the presence of the tetramorph in the sky implies that the scene actually takes place in the Heavenly Jerusalem of Revelation. Unfortunately, the bottom edge of this image, which makes it relevant for the current discussion, was cut off by Baroque renovations. Originally an agnus dei, accompanied by sheep-apostles, was pictured directly below the enthroned Christ, similar to the composition in the basilica of Saints Cosmas and Damian. Furthermore, the inscription of the open book held in Christ’s left hand identifies him as the “protector of the church of Pudenziana.”85 While Thomas Mathews cited the original presence of the sheep in his argument that this is not an imperial image,86 I suggest that

Series Secunda II: Concilium Universale Constantinopolitanum Tertium, Pars 4 (Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2013). 85. “Dominus conservator ecclesiae pudentianae.” 86. “The lowest register of the composition, now missing, reinforced this meaning [i.e., that ‘the victory over Arianism was a vindication of the freedom of the Church from imperial control’] by showing the Church of Christ in symbolic form. The rows of lambs that once converged on the Lamb of God represented the faithful who fall in line like sheep behind their leader. The mosaic is propaganda not for the imperial aspirations of Christ, but for the divine origins of ecclesiastical authority.” Mathews, The Clash of Gods, 114.

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the sheep and the title “conservator” could actually be taken as participating in the long-established association between shepherd and ruler.87 The north niche mosaic in the mid-fourth-century Mausoleum of Santa Costanza in Rome (see Jefferson chapter, Fig. 7) similarly combines royal and pastoral elements.88 The scene is the traditio legis: Christ seems to hover over a mount from which sprouts the four rivers of paradise, a position typically occupied by the agnus dei.89 He is flanked by Peter and Paul, who are in turn framed by two small brick buildings, perhaps representing Bethlehem and Jerusalem (the gentile and Jewish origins of the church), as depicted, for example, in the mosaics of Santa Maria Maggiore. Two palm trees bend over the buildings with the curvature of the niche. With his left hand Christ gives a scroll (which currently reads, “dominus pacem dat”) to Peter. Christ is dressed in a gold tunic with blue clavi just as in the lunette mosaic of the Mausoleum of Galla Placidia; he is only missing his purple mantle. A pair of sheep separates Christ from each of the two apostles and so, in effect, this golden-clad Christ takes the place of the agnus dei, in yet another combination of shepherding and ruling. Conclusion With this backdrop of shepherd as ruler, guide, and deity, let us briefly consider what visual connections early viewers might have

87. For example, the term “conservator” is applied to protectors of the city, state, or homeland several times by Cicero (e.g., For Sestius 24.53, 45.98; Letters to Atticus 8.9.3, 9.10.3; On the Responses of the Haruspices 27.58) and Tacitus (Annales 15.71). 88. While it is possible that this and the mosaic of the south niche were original to the construction of the mausoleum, they were crudely restored at a later date. J. Wilpert and W. N. Schumacher, Die römischen Mosaiken der kirchlichen Bauten vom IV.-XIII. Jahrhundert (Freiburg: Herder, 1976), 46–58, 299–301, cited in W. Eugene Kleinbauer, “Antioch, Jerusalem, and Rome: The Patronage of Emperor Constantius II and Architectural Invention,” Gesta 45, no. 2 (2006): 135. 89. In the apse mosaic at San Vitale, Christ is enthroned on an orb that rests atop the mount and four rivers; however, no sheep are in the vicinity.

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made when presented with depictions of Christ as the Good Shepherd. Jewish Christians, or anyone familiar with the Hebrew Bible, would have easily made a connection between Jesus the Good Shepherd and his ancestor David, the shepherd-turned-king. This association is bolstered by the prophecies concerning the Davidic line and the salvation of Israel (e.g., 1 Kgs. 9:4-5)—that is to say, the Jewish Christian viewer would have seen an image of the Messiah. Similarly, a Greek or Roman Christian would have seen not only the humble grassroots Jesus, but would first and foremost have been confronted with the salvific and guiding power of the Savior, as signified by the presence of the Good Shepherd on so many surfaces of funerary art. Like his iconographic predecessor Hermes, Christ the Good Shepherd guides the faithful soul to the afterlife and has the power to influence one’s fate. Like the shepherd of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, he is also the judge of hirelings and sheep. Furthermore, these interpretations were iconographically intertwined with the established visual bucolic vocabulary of the Roman elite. Of the early Christians, Thomas Mathews himself writes, “To them [Christ] was still utterly mysterious, indefinable, changeable, polymorphous. In the disparate images they have left behind they record their struggle to get a grasp on him; the images were their way of thinking out loud on the problem of Christ. Indeed, the images are the thinking process itself.”90 The early Christian’s viewing experience was not a static thing; the rich religious, theological, and visual context of Late Antiquity offered a complex context in which to create and view images. In this chapter, I hope to have challenged previous reductionist interpretations of early Christian iconography that unnecessarily pit the Good Shepherd against the

90. Mathews, The Clash of Gods, 141.

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enthroned Christ. We should not continue to interpret the Good Shepherd as simply an anti-imperial image, but rather as another dimension of imperial iconography.91

91. This article is but a first step. Indeed there is much more work that can be done to further nuance the assertions set forth here; topics that might be explored include: the use of shepherd imagery by rulers into the Late Middle Ages, the relationship between the agnus dei and the Good Shepherd, a comparison of occurrences of their images with the use of shepherding and ruler vocabulary in contemporaneous sermons.

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Representing Ritual, Christianizing the pompa circensis: Imperial Spectacle at Rome in a Christianizing Empire

Jacob A. Latham

But rather more pompous is the pomp of the circus, to which the term pompa properly belongs. The pompa (procession) comes first and proves in itself to whom it belongs with a train of images, a troop of statues, chariots, tensae (sacred chariots), armamaxa (elephant carts), thrones, crowns, and exuviae (divine symbols). — Tertullian, On Spectacles 7.21 1. Tertullian, Spect. 7.2: sed circensium paulo pompatior suggestus, quibus proprie hoc nomen: pompa praecedens, quorum sit in semetipsa probans de simulacrorum serie, de imaginum agmine, de curribus, de tensis, de armamaxis, de sedibus, de coronis, de exuviis (LCL 250, ed. T. R. Glover). On the pompa circensis, see J. Latham, Performance, Memory, and Processions in Ancient Rome: The Pompa Circensis from the Late Republic to Late Antiquity (New York: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2016).

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According to Tertullian, the pompa circensis was fundamentally a procession of divine images (simulacra) carried on litters (fercula) and sacred symbols or relics (exuviae) carried in processional chariots (tensae), which conducted the gods to the arena before the chariot races. Moreover, in Roman visual culture from the late republic through the high empire (ca. 75 bce – 250 ce), imagery of traditional and especially imperial gods in procession could stand for the entire parade. During the course of the third century, however, imperial numismatic commemorations of the pompa circensis shifted focus from the gods to the imperial sponsor of the games. Instead of symbolizing the circus parade by means of representations of divi (deified emperors or empresses) on elephant carts or exuviae in tensae, imperial cointypes presented the living emperor as a consul leading the parade before the consular games. Drawing upon a preexisting visual tradition that stretched back to the Flavians (a parallel but secondary mode of signifying the procession and the games), this shift seems to have responded to the reconfiguration of imperial power during and after the so-called third-century crisis when the projection of imperial authority leaned more heavily on the figure of the living emperor than on dynastic linkages to deified predecessors. This same attention to the game-giver could also insulate fourthand fifth-century Christian emperors from the critiques of Christian authors, who coincidentally began to rail against the games in a systematic manner in the early third century. Turning attention to the sponsor of the games obscured the presence of the gods, which allowed the procession (and so also the games) to appear neutral. In other words, the games and the procession that preceded them were sanitized of their alleged idolatrous taint and so could continue as secular and traditional amusements, at least in official imagery and also legal rhetoric. In a kind of historical irony, the so-

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called secularization of the pompa circensis not only allowed for its continuation rather than its elimination, but it may also have paved the way for its Christianization. In the early fifth century, several coin-types depicted enthroned emperors holding mappae (napkins) in their right hand with which they would signal the start of the first race and a cruciform scepter in their left. These emperors would have been already seated at the arena, but if the circus procession endured, a strong likelihood given the importance of public display in Roman political culture, then the Christian God, made present by Christian symbols, might have been escorted to the circus with all due pomp. I. Representing the pompa circensis The pageantry of the circus races, especially its opening procession, betrayed the idolatrous origins of all Roman games—to Tertullian at any rate. Indeed, the pomp of the circus pompa seems to have inspired the Latin phrase pompa diaboli, the “pomps of the devil” renounced at baptism. That is, Tertullian seems to have translated pompa deorum, a procession of gods as Ovid conjured the circus procession, into a parade of the Devil, whose semantic range would widen to include all the pomps of the Devil and even worldliness more broadly (Tertullian, Spect. 4.1-3 and 12.6 and Cor. 3.2 and 13.7).2 Other Romans, unsurprisingly, felt differently about what may have been the most often-performed procession in ancient Rome. The elder Seneca dismissed it as tedious, an unwelcome and overly long delay before the actual event: the races (Seneca, Controversiae 1 praefatio 24). Fronto, one-time teacher of Marcus Aurelius, however, 2. Ovid, Am. 3.2.61: pompamque deorum (LCL 41, ed. G. Showerman/G. P. Goold). See J. H. Waszink, “Pompa Diaboli,” VC 1 (1947): 13–41, who persuasively argued that pompa diaboli first implied the circus procession and then developed wider connotations. This view is widely accepted, e.g., J. Daniélou, The Bible and the Liturgy (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1956), 28-29; and D. Van Slyke, “The Devil and His Pomps in Fifth-Century Carthage: Renouncing Spectacula with Spectacular Imagery,” DOP 59 (2005): 53–72, at 61 n. 38.

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included the pageantry of the procession among the necessary tools of imperial rule alongside the better-known bread and circuses (Fronto, Principia Historiae 20). Participants in the games seem to have had a similar opinion. The self-proclaimed “most distinguished of charioteers,” Gaius Appuleius Diocles (122–146 ce), listed the number of races that he had won after the procession (a pompa) first in a précis of his career before continuing with victories in other types of contests: “In sum: he drove a quadriga for 24 years, having been sent from the gate 4,257 times, he won 1,462 times, 110 times after the procession (a pompa).”3 Another illustrious charioteer, Publius Aelius Gutta Calpurnianus, also conspicuously commemorated the number of races that he had won after the procession (a pompa) (CIL 6.10047b = ILS 5288.3 = EDCS-19200317). And so, two of Rome’s most famous and accomplished charioteers prized the first race after the procession, which seemingly signals the prestige of the pompa circensis itself. To introduce the chariot races in the arena, a proud praeses ludorum (president of the games) conducted a pompa circensis to escort the gods from the Capitoline Temple of Jupiter, or possibly some other temple, to the Circus Maximus where the wildly popular chariot races, “the greatest show on earth,” entertained them and their fellow Romans.4 For the praeses ludorum, to lead a spectacular parade through the monumental heart of Rome to the circus and its expectant crowds was a coveted moment of public visibility—an important weapon in the battle for honor and glory for elites and 3. Corpus Inscriptionum Latinorum (= CIL) 6.10048 = Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae (= ILS) 5287 = Epigraphische Datenbank Clauss-Slaby (= EDCS) EDCS-19200318 (http://www. manfredclauss.de/gb/index.html): lines 6–7: Summa: quadriga agitavit annis XXIIII, missus ostio IIII CCLVII | [vicit MCCC]CLXII a pompa and line 15: omnium agitatorum eminentissimus. 4. Ovid, Am. 3.2.65: maxima . . . spectacula as gloss by J. Henderson, “A Doo-Dah-Doo-DahDey at the Races: Ovid Amores 3.2 and the Personal Politics of the Circus Maximus,” Classical Antiquity 21 (2002): 41–65, at 53.

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even emperors. At the same time, this very same procession was one of Rome’s most hallowed religious ceremonies, hedged with ritual rules and regulations whose violation could lead to dire consequences.5 That is, the pompa circensis was fundamentally a religious ceremony: at its core, a pompa deorum, “a teeming procession of ivory gods,” that crowded and distinguished the circus as it paraded a large number of gods along the arena floor (Ovid, Am. 3.2.61 and Fast. 4.391).6 Upon their arrival, the massive crowd would both maintain reverent silence, so that no untoward word would be heard, and applaud and cheer with vigor and verve, so that whatever words were actually spoken would not vitiate the ritual: “But here’s the procession. Everybody hush. / Give them a hand. The golden procession’s here.”7 During the empire, the pompa circensis also served as a key stage for imperial dynastic display. Divi could no longer appear in customary funerary rites, and so the circus procession offered an opportunity for the living emperor to honor deified emperors and empresses and even the ordinary dead of the imperial household with honors calqued on those of the traditional gods.8 No matter how frequently or lavishly produced, processions are

5. A. Gailliot. “Une impiété volontaire? La procession des jeux et le problème de l’instauratio,” in Rituels et transgressions de l’Antiquité à nos jours, ed. G. Hoffmann and A. Gailliot (Amiens: Encrage, 2009), 89–96. 6. Ovid, Ars 1.147: pompa frequens caelestibus . . . eburnis (LCL 232, ed. J. H. Mozley/G. P. Goold); and J. Latham, “Performing Theology: Imagining the Gods in the Pompa Circensis,” History of Religions 54 (2015): 288-317. 7. Ovid, Am. 3.2.43–44: Sed iam pompa venit. linguis animisque favere. / tempus est plausus. aurea pompa venit, trans. G. Lee (New York: Viking, 1968). On silence/applause, see Gailliot, “Une impiété volontaire?” 94–95; and J. Nelis-Clément, “Le cirque romain et son paysage sonore,” in Le cirque romaine et son image, ed. J. Nelis-Clément and J.-M. Roddaz (Bordeaux: Ausonius, 2008), 431–57, at 441–42. 8. P. Arena, “The Pompa Circensis and the Domus Augusta (1st-2nd Century a.d.),” in Ritual Dynamics and Religious Change in the Roman Empire, ed. O. Hekster, S. Schmidt-Hofner, and C. Witschel (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 77–93; and P. Arena, Feste e rituali a Roma: Il principe incontra il popolo nel Circo Massimo (Bari: Edipuglia, 2010), 53–102.

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by nature fleeting, ephemeral performances, for which reason many sponsors turned to more enduring media, stone or metal in particular, in an effort to transform a short-lived event into a permanent structure.9 Unsurprisingly, from the late republic through the first centuries of the empire visual commemorations of the circus procession often represented the traditional and imperial gods as they would have appeared in the parade as a synecdoche of the entire performance. For example, in 87 bce, an otherwise unknown L. Rubrius Dossenus minted a series of coins with a bust of a member of the Capitoline triad on the obverse (Jupiter, Juno, or Minerva) and an enigmatic, driver-less quadriga (a chariot pulled by four horses) on the reverse (Fig. 1).10

9. T. Hölscher, “The Transformation of Victory into Power: From Event to Structure,” in Representations of War in Ancient Rome, ed. S. Dillon and K. Welch (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 27–48. 10. E. Ghey and I. Leins, eds. with contribution by M. H. Crawford, Roman Republican Coins in the British Museum with descriptions and chronology based on M.H. Crawford, Roman Republican Coinage (1974) (= BMRRC): #348.1–3, https://www.britishmuseum.org/research/publications/ online_research_catalogues/rrc/roman_republican_coins.aspx. On L. Rubrius Dossenus see T. P. Wiseman, New Men in the Roman Senate, 139 B.C.–A.D. 14 (London: Oxford University Press, 1971), 257.

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Fig. 1. Tensae of the Capitoline Triad: Jupiter, Juno, and Minverva. © Trustees of the British Museum, (R.8271, R.8274, 1867,0101.1388).

Though by no means certain, these vehicles were likely tensae that carried the exuviae of the gods to the pulvinar (a kind of sacred “loge”) in the circus.11 Their distinctive shape (boxy and vertically oriented with an uncommon superstructure), scale (towering above 11. Festus, De verborum significatu quae supersunt cum Pauli epitome (Teubner, ed. W. M. Lindsay), 500.

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the horses), and lack of a driver distinguish these vehicles from typical “triumphal” ones, which tended to be swooping with low profiles, while their driver, the triumphator, stood tall over both chariot and horse train. For example, a denarius minted by C. Fundanius in 101 bce displayed a helmeted Roma on the obverse and, on the reverse, a triumphator driving a quadriga holding a laurel branch (Fig. 2).12

Fig. 2. Triumphator in triumphal quadriga. © Trustees of the British Museum, (1843,0116.601).

The L. Rubrius Dossenus “tensae” also cohere with what are usually taken as imperial representations of tensae, which clearly sported a gabled façade—the key iconographic marker of a tensa.13 In the years just before his assassination in 44 bce, Julius Caesar received “a tensa 12. BMRRC 326.1. 13. S. Szidat, Teile eines historischen Frieses in der Casa de Pilatos in Sevilla mit einem Exkurs zur Tensa (München: Hieronymus, 1997), 36-49 argues that the pediment is the key marker but against Rubrius’ images as tensae—she considers them generic processional vehicles.

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and a ferculum in the circus procession,” just like the traditional gods.14 Though such honors figured among the reasons for which Caesar was assassinated, Octavian (soon-to-be Augustus) cultivated dynastic connections to his adoptive father in both circus ritual and imagery, as deified emperors could not appear in funeral ceremonies, a more traditional mechanism to construct such lineages (Cassius Dio 47.19.2, 56.34.2, and 56.46.4). Between 32 and 29 bce, Octavian, son of the god (CAESAR DIVI F), had minted a series of coins with the tensa of Caesar on the reverse: a tall, boxy, driver-less chariot with reliefs decorating its façade and sides and a galloping quadriga atop its pediment (Fig. 3).15

Fig. 3. Tensa of the deified Caesar. © Trustees of the British Museum, (1864,1128.16).

After his own death, deified Augustus was similarly honored by his heir and adopted son, Tiberius, who, however, amplified the traditional processional honors. In addition to a traditional tensa, 14. Suetonius, Jul. 76.1: tensam et ferculum circensi pompa (LCL 31, ed. J. C. Rolfe). 15. H. Mattingly et al, eds., The Roman Imperial Coinage (= RIC), vols. 1–10 (1923–2007): vol. 12 Augustus #258–59. Many (e.g., A. Alföldi, Caesar in 44 V. Chr. [Bonn: Habelt, 1985], 1.147, and Szidat, Teile eines historischen Frieses), 31 and 61-62 consider the vehicle to be a tensa, while S. Weinstock, Divus Julius (Oxford: Clarendon, 1971), 54–59; and J. Rich, “Augustus’ Parthian Honors, the Temple of Mars Ultor and the Arch in the Forum Romanum,” Papers of the British School at Rome 66 (1998): 71–128, at 115–25, argue that these chariots represent other honors.

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Tiberius provided a statue of deified Augustus (DIVO AUGUSTO) borne on a large, decorated cart drawn by a quadriga of elephants in place of a ferculum (Fig. 4).16

Fig. 4. Currus elephantorum of deified Augustus. © Trustees of the British Museum, R.6379.

After Caesar and Augustus, the pompa circensis continued to be symbolized by imagery of the gods both traditional and above all imperial well into the third century ce. In 80–81 ce, Titus appears to have minted the last numismatic image of an imperial tensa in honor of his deified father Vespasian (DIVUS AUGUSTUS VESPASIANUS) (Fig. 5).17

16. RIC 12 Tiberius #56, 62, and 68, Anth. pal. 9.285, Suetonius, Claud. 11.2, and Cassius Dio (epitome) 61.16.4. 17. RIC 2.12 Titus #360–62.

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Fig. 5. Tensa of deified Vespasian. © Trustees of the British Museum, (1864,1128.254).

Most emperors and many empresses were, however, commemorated by representations of their statue on a cart drawn by elephants until the reign of Septimius Severus (193–211 ce). To legitimate his seizure of power, Septimius Severus ordered a golden image of his predecessor Pertinax to be borne to the circus in a chariot drawn by elephants—an ephemeral act of dynastic piety celebrated more lastingly on a medallion-type featuring a bust of the deified Pertinax, loyal (retroactive) father of Septimius (DIVUS PERTINAX PIUS PATER), on the obverse and on the reverse a statue of the deified emperor resting under an aedicule on an elephant cart (a type not found in the more common consecration coinage and, it seems, the final such commemoration of a divus on an elephant cart).18 Numismatic representations of the traditional gods in the circus procession continued into the mid-third century when the emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (218–222 ce), better known as Elagabalus priest of the god Elagabal, caused something like a tensa in honor 18. Cassius Dio 75.4.1; F. Gnecchi, I medaglioni romani, vol. 2 (Milan: V. Hoepli, 1912): Pertinace #1, pl. 91.10; and J. M. C. Toynbee, Roman Medallions (New York: American Numismatic Society, 1944), 102.

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of his deity (SANCT DEO SOLI ELAGABAL) to appear in a procession (Fig. 6)19—an image that Uranius Antoninus (253–254 ce), “emperor” of the city of Emesa, later reemployed.

Fig. 6. “Tensa” of Elagabal. © Trustees of the British Museum, (1922,0909.4).

Imagery of the gods in sub-imperial contexts would not fade entirely until the end of the fourth century ce. A sarcophagus lid from the second half of the fourth century, now in the cloister of San Lorenzo fuori le mura, depicts a pompa deorum with an enthroned Magna Mater led by lions followed by a Victory and an elephant quadriga on the far side of an un-inscribed central panel, whose imperial honoree and has unfortunately broken off (Fig. 7).20

19. RIC 4.2 Elagabalus #143–44 (Rome) and 195–97 (figure 6); and RIC 4.3 Uranius Antonius #1–2. See C. Rowan. Under Divine Auspices: Divine Ideology and the Visualisation of Imperial Power in the Severan Period (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 164-218; and M. Icks, The Crimes of Elagabalus: The Life and Legacy of Rome’s Decadent Boy Emperor (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), 70-74 and figs. 5–7. 20. J. Ronke, Magistratische Repräsentation im römischen Relief: Studien zu standes- und statusbezeichnenden Szenen (Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, 1987), cat. #183; C. Reinsberg, Die Sarkophage mit den Darstellungen aus dem Menschenleben: Vita Romana (Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 2006), cat. #115; and E. La Rocca and S. Tortorella, eds., Trionfi Romani (Milan: Electa, 2008), Cat. #I.3.5.

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Fig. 7. Pompa circensis fercula: Magna Mater and Victory on fercula followed by currus elephantorum. Rossa, Neg. D-DAI-Rom 73.2422.

There was a parallel but less conspicuous tradition of visual commemoration that centered on the president of the games, whose generosity made the games possible, even as the games transformed mere economic capital into precious symbolic capital—that is, visibility and prestige. Like representations of the gods, this secondary tradition also has its roots in the republic. Two related but noncontiguous travertine relief fragments from the late republic depict what appears to be a pompa circensis (Fig. 8).21

21. Musei Capitolini, Centrale Montemartini (S 2753-2754); I. S. Ryberg, Rites of the State Religion in Roman Art (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press for the American Academy in Rome, 1955), 36, who considered the first figure a wingless victory, while the scholarly consensus considers it a charioteer, e.g., Ronke, Magistratische Repräsentation, cat. #11; T. Schäfer, Imperii Insignia, Sella Curulis und Fasces: Zur Repräsentation römischer Magistrate (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 1989), 211–12 and cat. # B 15; P. Holliday, The Origins of Roman Historical Commemoration in the Visual Arts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 182–85; and La Rocca and Tortorella, Trionfi Romani, Cat. #I.3.1.

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Fig. 8. Republican pompa circensis: charioteer and ferculum-bearer followed by four lictors leading four togati. H. Fuhrmann, Neg. D-DAI-Rom 37.806.

On the first block a charioteer driving a chariot leads the way, followed by a lone litter-bearer whose divine burden has regrettably been lost; while on the second at least four lictors clear a path for four togate figures, one of whom appears to be a young man, perhaps a youthful game-giver with official trappings and entourage. This group of togati seems to have concluded the procession in this visual depiction at least, even though in the procession itself the game-giver more likely led the way on a two-horse chariot. If the relief pertains to a funerary monument, the dictates of commemoration may have trumped the real-life organization of the procession. Although it may not conform to the actual performance of the procession, the relief rather neatly compressed its pageantry (charioteers, gods, lictors, and magistrates) even as it positioned the sponsor and organizers of the games, perhaps, at a prominent position at the end of the register and so apparently at the end of the procession.

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Somewhat surprisingly, this sort of imagery does not appear in imperial numismatic representations until the Flavian dynasty. Sometime between 69-71 ce, Vespasian had minted a remarkable image of a quadriga in which he and his two sons Titus and Domitian stood accompanied by the legend TR POT COS (tribunician power and consul)—a bid to traditional, republican consular authority (and Augustan tribunician power) and a clear intimation of principate dynastic politics, both useful to a new and fragile regime.22 Similarly in the early 140s, Antoninus Pius and his joint heirs Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus appeared together in a quadriga for Pius’s third consulship (TR POT COS III) (Fig. 9).23

Fig. 9. Quadriga with Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius, and Lucius Verus. © Trustees of the British Museum, (R.12491).

More commonly, the imperial consul stood alone, for example on an aureus minted for Vespasian’s fourth consulship (COS IIII) (Fig. 10).24

22. RIC 2.12 Vespasian #1383 and #1370–72. 23. RIC 3 Antoninus Pius #93. 24. RIC 2.12 Vespasian #364.

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Fig. 10. Quadriga with Vespasian. © Trustees of the British Museum, (R1874,0715.15).

Though such imagery has been read as a processus consularis, a procession of the consul-elect from his home to the Capitol for his inauguration, the consul-elect seems rather to have walked or been carried on his curule chair. And so, numismatic imagery of imperial consuls in quadrigae more likely represents the pompa circensis before the consular games—imagery that insistently drew attention to the republican virtues and generosity of the reigning emperor.25 25. H. Stern, Le Calendrier de 354: Étude sur son texte et sur ses illustrations (Paris: Guenther, 1953), 152–64; and P. Bastien, “Remarques sur le processus consularis dans le monnayage romain,” in Italiam fato profugi: Hesperinaque venerunt litora: numismatic studies dedicated to Vladimir and Elvira Eliza Clain-Stefanelli, ed. R. Doty and T. Hackens (Louvain-la-Neuve: Département d’Archéologie et d’Histoire de l’Art, Séminaire de Numismatique Marcel Hoc, 1996), 21–31. See also T. Hölscher, Victoria Romana: Archäologische Untersuchungen zur Geschichte und Wesenart der römischen Siegesgöttin von den Anfängen bis zum Ende des 3. Jhs. n. Chr (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 1967), 84–86; Ronke, Magistratische Repräsentation Relief, 238–42; and J. Curran, Pagan City and Christian Capital: Rome in the Fourth Century (Oxford: Clarendon, 2000), 255, who all accept Stern’s argument. P. Mittag, “Processus consularis, Adventus und Herrschaftsjubiläum. Zur Verwendung von Triumphsymbolik in der mittleren Kaiserzeit,” Hermes 137 (2009): 447–62, esp. 448–51, also doubts the once-standard interpretation of these scenes as a processus consularis, but notes that apart from these coin images there is no evidence for a consular quadriga during the pompa circensis. Toynbee, Roman Medallions, 83–89, and H. S. Versnel, Triumphus: An Inquiry into the Origin, Development and Meaning of the Roman Triumph (Leiden: Brill, 1970), 302–3, argue for the four-horse chariot in processus consularis.

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Though representations of imperial divi were more conspicuous, numismatic imagery of imperial consuls leading the parade to the circus

remained

a

complementary

commemorative

tradition

throughout the second century ce. This secondary tradition, however, wholly eclipsed representations of the gods, traditional and imperial, by the end of the third century and boomed during the fourth century.26 Even as an emphasis on the figure of the reigning emperor displaced the gods, processional honors for the imperial consul were on occasion visually inflated with a sometime shift from a horse to an elephant quadriga—an escalation parallel to Tiberius’s grant of a currus elephantorum to Augustus in place of the then traditional ferculum. In the numismatic imagination, Maxentius (306–312 ce) presided over a joyous procession (FELIX PROCES CONS) before a set of consular games in an elephant quadriga, while a Victory holding a crown flew to meet him (Fig. 11).

Fig. 11. Elephant-quadriga with Maxentius. Image courtesy Classical Numismatic Group: cng.com.

26. Bastien, “Remarques sur le processus consularis.”

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Maxentius was also depicted more conventionally in a chariot drawn by four, or more spectacularly, six horses.27 Even though Constantinian propaganda would paint Maxentius as an archvillain, nonetheless mints under Constantine deployed similar imagery: Constantine driving a standard horse quadriga or, at times, an elephant quadriga that Constantine shared with his son Constantius under the auspices of the eternal glory of the Senate and People of Rome (AETERNA GLORIA SENAT P Q R).28 Constantine also had a new wrinkle introduced. Several medallion types from Constantinople and Nicomedia depict Constantine standing in a quadriga holding a scepter in his left hand, while scattering coins with his right, a representation of a sparsio (distribution of largesse) during a pompa circensis (Fig. 12).29

Fig. 12. Quadriga with Constantine distributing largesse (sparsio). © Dumbarton Oaks, Byzantine Collection, Washington DC, (BZC.1951.17).

27. RIC 6 Roma #215 and 217 (elephant quadrigae); 167 and 188 (processus consularis on foot) and 216 and 264 (pompa circensis in horse drawn chariots). 28. RIC 7 Constantinople #1 and RIC 7 Trier #467–68 and Nicomedia 164. See also Toynbee, Roman Medallions, 51–52 and pl. 4.3. 29. RIC 7 Constantinople #103–6 (figure #105) and Nicomedia 170.

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This circus procession-sparsio image type under the legend GLORIA ROMANORUM (glory of the Romans) was reused regularly throughout the fourth century by Constantius II, Valentinian I, Valentinian II, and even the usurper Eugenius.30 II. Christianizing the pompa circensis The Severan dynasty seems to witness not only the disappearance of numismatic images of the gods in procession to the circus but also the beginnings of the reconfiguration of imperial power.31 According to Cassius Dio, “Before Severus died, he is reported to have spoken thus to his sons (I [Cassius Dio] give his exact words without embellishment): ‘Be harmonious, enrich the soldiers, and scorn all other men.’”32 Reliance on the army and the corresponding devaluation of the Senate (the other men) was not a new phenomenon. Earlier emperors had assuredly ridden roughshod over the Senate, but “good” emperors still played the civilis princeps, the civil leader, at least in elite literary texts.33 “Good” emperors were supposed to employ senators to broker their patronage, or at least 30. Constantius II: RIC 8 Thessalonica #145 and Antioch #77–78; Valentinian I: RIC 9 Mint of Constantinopolis #1; Valentinian II: RIC 9 Treveri #89; and Eugenius: RIC 9 Treveri #100. Bastien, “Remarques sur le processus consularis,” 28–29, argues that a series of six-horse chariot scenes (e.g., RIC 8 Antioch #67–68; RIC 9 Mint of Roma #25; and RIC 10 Arcadius # 4–5) do not pertain to the pompa circensis. 31. E.g., from a very large literature, P. Brown, Power and Persuasion: Towards a Christian Empire (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992); E. Lo Cascio, “The Emperor and His Administration,” in CAH2: Volume 12: The Crisis of Empire, A.D. 193-337, ed. A. Bowman, P. Garnsey, and A. Cameron (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 137–42 and 170–72; C. Kelly, “Emperors, Government and Bureaucracy,” in CAH2: Volume 13: The Late Empire, AD 337-425, ed. A. Cameron and P. Garnsey (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 138–62; and R. Smith, “The Imperial Court of the Late Roman Empire, c. ad 300 – c. ad 450,” in The Court and Court Society in Ancient Monarchies, ed. A. J. S. Spawforth (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 157–232. 32. Dio Cassius (Xiph.) 76.15.2: πρὶν γοῦν μεταλλάξαι, τάδε λέγεται τοῖς παισὶν εἰπεῖν (ἐρῶ γὰρ αὐτὰ τὰ λεχθέντα, μηδὲν ὅ τι καλλωπίσας)· “ὁμονοεῖτε, τοὺς στρατιώτας πλουτίζετε, τῶν ἄλλων πάντων καταφρονεῖτε.” (LCL 177, ed. and trans. E. Cary). 33. A. Wallace-Hadrill, “Civilis Princeps: Between Citizen and King,” Journal of Roman Studies 72 (1982): 32–48.

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seem to do so.34 Septimius Severus and many subsequent emperors were less concerned with such niceties. In fact, Severus deified the senatorial bête-noir Commodus in 195–196 ce according to a Severan coin, though without the legend S(enatus) C(onsulto) which would have indicated senatorial approval.35 Concomitant with the demotion of the Senate and an increasing dependence on the army came the elevation of the figure of the emperor. To pick one emblematic example: Eutropius, a late-fourth century ce author, held that Diocletian was “the first to have introduced to the Roman empire a manner of practice better suited for monarchy than Roman liberty: he gave orders that he should be adored—all emperors before him were (simply) saluted.”36 Even if Diocletian was not solely responsible for such ceremonial developments, the third and fourth centuries seem to have witnessed the elevation and isolation of the figure of the emperor (though not necessarily the actual emperor). The shift from gods to game-giver in representations of the circus procession correlates rather nicely with this development of imperial selfpresentation: the traditional and deified gods gave way to the potent deus praesens. Though the reconfiguration of imperial power from the late second through the fourth century probably catalyzed the promotion of the imperial game-giver at the expense of the gods, and even deified emperors, the fourth century introduced another reason to alter the representation (and likely also the practice) of the pompa circensis: the pressure of Christian criticism of the games and spectacles on Christian emperors. In the late-second and early-third 34. H. A. Drake, Constantine and the Bishops: The Politics of Intolerance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), 35–71. 35. RIC 4.1 Septimius Severus 72A. 36. Eutropius, Breviarium ab urbe condita 9.26: imperio Romano primus regiae consuetudinis formam magis quam Romanae libertatis invexerit adorarique se iussit, cum ante eum cuncti salutarentur (Teubner, ed. C. Santini).

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centuries, as numismatic representations of the gods waned, Christian rhetoric against Roman ludic culture in general and the pompa circensis in particular waxed.37 For Tertullian, the circus procession, a wanton performance of “pagan” superstition, guaranteed the idolatrous nature of the entire festival that followed: A circus procession (pompa circi) of any kind offends God. Even if only a few images are carried, there is idolatry in one alone; even if one draws one sole tensa, nevertheless it is the plaustrum of Jupiter; any idolatry whatsoever, poorly equipped or moderately opulent and splendid, is judged guilty.38

One lone tensa of Jupiter sufficed for all the games, shows, and spectacles to be condemned as idolatry: a pompa diaboli tainted the whole affair. In a similar vein, Minucius Felix had his Christian protagonist Octavianus declare: “We [Christians] rightly keep aloof from wicked amusements, your processions [pompae] and spectacles,” proudly admitting to an accusation lodged earlier by Caecilius, the “pagan” interlocutor.39 Around 300 ce, Arnobius of Sicca ridiculed what he took to be the exaggerated ritual scruples of Roman traditional cults, scoffing at the taboos surrounding the pompa circensis. In particular, Arnobius lampooned the overly fastidious, to Arnobius at any rate, regulations 37. On Christian attitudes towards the games and shows, see esp. D. R. French, “Christian Emperors and Pagan Spectacles: The Secularization of the Ludi a.d. 382-525” (diss., University of California Berkeley, 1985), 30–41; R. DeVoe, “The Christians and the Games: The Relationship between Christianity and the Roman Games from the First through the Fifth Centuries, a.d.” (diss., Texas Tech University, 1987), 134–65; M. Kahlos, Debate and Dialogue: Christian and Pagan Cultures c. 360-430 (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007), 113–36; L. Lugaresi, Il teatro di Dio: Il problema degli spettacoli nel cristianesimo antico (II-IV Secolo) (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2008), esp. 377–462 and 535–694; and J. A. Jiménez Sánchez, Los juegos paganos en la Roma cristiana (Treviso/Rome: Fondazione Benetton Studi Ricerche/Viella, 2010), esp. 269–316. 38. Tertullian, De Spectaculis 7.4: Deum offendit qualiscumque pompa circi: etsi pauca simulacra circumferat, in uno idololatria est; etsi unam tensam trahat, Iovis tamen plaustrum est; quaevis idololatria sordide instructa vel modice locuples et splendida est censu criminis sui. 39. Minucius Felix, Octavius 37.11: merito malis voluptatibus et pompis vestris et spectaculis abstinemus and 12.5 (LCL 250, ed. G. H. Rendall).

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governing dancing, music, and the pueri patrimi et matrimi (a boy who attended a tensa), repurposing a passage from Cicero for his own polemic (Arnobius, Adversus nationes 4.31 paraphrasing Cicero, De haruspicum responsis 11.23). One of Arnobius’s students, Lactantius, also parodied the classical tradition in relation to the pompa circensis, here an anecdote transmitted by Valerius Maximus, to ridicule the silly and superstitious Romans: But, whenever dangers threaten, [the gods] declare themselves to be angry on account of some silly and trivial cause; as Juno was with Varro [aedile in 220 bce], because he had placed a beautiful boy in the tensa of Jupiter to hold the exuviae [in a pompa circensis], and for this reason the Roman name was almost erased at Cannae.40

The procession was idolatrous and, worse, hedged with irrational rules and regulations, which all too readily betrayed the delusive sham that was Roman traditional religion, for these Christian authors at least. And so, while third-century imperial politics seems to have dictated a shift in attention away from the statues and symbols of the gods to the imperial praeses ludorum at the head of the circus procession, in the fourth century an emphasis on the imperial consular game-giver and the slow attrition of the traditional gods could counter Christian accusations of idolatry—paradoxically allowing the procession and the games to continue (despite continuing criticisms of the profligate expense and “pagan” religiosity of the games) and to be Christianized, possibly. This potential Christianization appeared in a subsequent shift in numismatic representations of the opening events of the games. That is, at the end of the fourth century, imagery of an emperor (or 40. Lactantius, Inst. 2.16.16: quotiens autem pericula impendent, ob aliquam se ineptam et levem causam profitentur iratos, sicut Iuno Varroni, quod formonsum puerum in tensa Iovis ad exuvias tenendas conlocaverat: et ob hanc causam Romanum nomen aput Cannas paene deletum est (CSEL 19, ed. S. Brandt, 1890) after Valerius Maximus, Facta et dicta memorabilia 1.1.16.

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emperors) in a quadriga also ebbed, to be replaced by an image of a consular emperor holding a mappa ready to signal the start of the first race. The shift from a dynamic image of a procession through the city to a static seated emperor poised to start the races may reflect the decline of the processional habit (especially at Constantinople) or, better, another variation in the habits of commemoration. After all, a late-republican or early-imperial relief now in the Vatican reveals the sponsor of the games with his right arm up in the air, ready to start the races, which in a visual compression of time were already underway to his right when the pompa circensis would have been performed several times each year.41 The palace at Constantinople was directly connected to the hippodrome and so an emperor would no longer have had to process in the new Rome, but there were seemingly no such arrangements at the old Rome. Elites and the occasional emperor almost certainly continued to parade through the city before each set of chariot races—why give up such an important moment of public prominence? Nonetheless, a change in ceremonial practice (and its visual commemoration) at Constantinople could certainly have impacted representations at the old capitol. Whether or not the mappa imagery indicates a change in practice, it certainly emphasizes the provision of the wildly popular chariot races more directly than did images of the consular pompa circensis. Like imperial-consul-in-a-chariot imagery, there was a prior tradition of mappa imagery stretching back into the late third century some time after Caracalla gave the carceres (the starting gates) their final monumental form complete with conspicuous seating for the sponsor of the games.42 Also like imperial consul processional 41. Ronke, Magistratische Repräsentation, cat. #153 (mid-first ce); and Holliday, Origins of Roman Historical Commemoration, 185–86, fig. 103 (mid-first bce). 42. RIC 5.1 Tacitus #120 (mappa identification uncertain) or e.g. RIC 6 Ticinum #56a (Diocletian). See John Humphrey, Roman Circuses: Arenas for Chariot Racing (London: Batsford, 1986), 132-174, esp. 172–73 on the carceres under Caracalla; P. Bastien, Le buste monétaire des empereurs

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imagery, consul-mappa coin-types flourished during the Tetrarchic and the Constantinian periods and continued in the Latin west into the fifth centuries when such representations became synonymous with the games, most notably in another medium namely consular ivory diptychs.43 More importantly in the present context, an imperial consul ready to start the first race developed an intriguing new feature in the early fifth century. In 430, the western emperor Valentinian III appeared on both sides of a coin-type minted in Rome in consular robes holding a mappa in his right hand and a cruciform scepter in his left—a bust on the obverse, enthroned on the reverse (Fig. 13).44

romains, 3 vols. (Wetteren: Éditions Numismatique Romaine, 1992-1994), 1:296–99 and 2:535–40, on numismatic busts with mappa; and G. Marchet, “Mittere Mappam (Mart. 12.28.9): Du signal de départ à la théologie impériale (Ier A.C.-VIIe P.C),” in Le cirque romain et son image, ed. Jocelyne Nelis-Clément and Jean-Michel Roddaz, 291–317 (Bordeaux: Ausonius, 2008). 43. Consul-mappa coins: e.g. RIC 7 p. 768 (index sv mappa): Constantine I, Constantine II, Crispus, Licinius, and Licinius II; RIC 8 Antioch #204–6; RIC 9 p. 324 (index sv mappa); RIC 10 pp. 494–96 (index); and P. Grierson and M. Mays, eds., Catalogue of Late Roman Coins in the Dumbarton Oaks Collection and in the Whittemore Collection: From Arcadius and Honorius to the Accession of Anastasius (= DOCLRE) (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1992), in the east: Arcadius #72-74, Theodosius II 347, 370–76, 378, 391, and 428, Valentinian III 836–38 (Constantinople), Leo I 530–31 and 556–59, and in the west: Valentinian III 856. On the consular diptychs and games, C. Olovsdotter, The Consular Image: An Iconological Study of the Consular Diptychs (Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, 2005), 88–90; and A. Cameron, The Last Pagans of Rome (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 730–39. 44. Valentinian III: RIC 10 Valentinian III #2033. See also RIC 10 Valentinian III #2034–37 and 2046; and DOCLRE Valentinian III #856, on which J. A. Jiménez Sánchez, “La liturgie impériale et les jeux durant l’antiquité tardive: Entre paganisme et christianisme,” in Figures d’empire, fragments de mémoire: Pouvoirs et identités dans le monde romain impérial (IIe s. av. n. è.–VIe s. de n. è.), ed. S. Benoist, A. Daguet-Gagey, and C. Hoët-van Cauwenberghe (Villeneuve d’Ascq: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion, 2011), 181–93, esp. 187–93. See also Bastien, Le buste monétaire, 1:300 and 2:527–28 on cross imagery on busts. The conjunction of cross and mappa first appeared under Theodosius II in Constantinople (sometimes paired with the younger western emperor Valentinian III): RIC 10 Theodosius II #208 and 233–45; and DOCLRE Theodosius II #347 (416/418 ce), 370–76, 378, 391, and 428.

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Fig. 13. Valentinian III holding a mappa and a cruciform scepter. Image courtesy of Classical Numismatic Group: cng.com.

If the emperor at Rome still paraded before the circus games (a likely occurrence in the fifth century when the western emperors were often resident in Rome), these coins may represent symbols that the emperor himself carried during a pompa circensis. If circus games could be offered to Christ—much to Salvian’s horror: “O monstrous madness!”—then Christian symbols (something like exuviae) could plausibly appear in a circus procession, transforming a pompa deorum into a pompa Dei.45 III. Imperial Spectacle in a Christianizing Empire In 384 ce during his tenure as urban prefect, the famous orator Symmachus urged the emperors Theodosius and Arcadius to provide a promised set of shows and games: “civic happiness rejoices in them [the promised games], the desire for which you have incited by your promise.”46 The games had long been an essential element 45. Salvian, De gubernatione Dei 6.4.24 (repeated at 6.5.26): o amentia monstruosa! (SC, 220, ed. G. Lagarrigue, 1975), on which J. A. Jiménez Sánchez, “‘O amentia monstruosa!’ A propósito de la cristianización de la liturgia imperial y del ritual circense durante el siglo V,” CNS 24 (2003): 23–39.

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of Roman political culture. By late antiquity, however, they were urgent and obligatory—the circus or hippodrome had become the marquee political space where the emperor could encounter the people and imperial consensus could be renewed (or not).47 And so the show must go on, as they say. But the show could not go on unchanged. Christian rhetoric forced the emperors into something of double bind. On the one hand, Christian emperors would have felt some compulsion to recognize the opinions of Christian leaders. On the other hand, Christian emperors coveted, needed the stage that the games offered. To placate Christian critics and to continue to produce all manner of spectacle, the emperors seemingly employed a two-pronged strategy: the modification of the games in modest ways and their reinterpretation as harmless, ancestral amusements. As Constantius and Constans (or rather their quaestor) wrote to the urban prefect of Rome in 342 ce: Although all superstitions must be completely eradicated, nevertheless, it is Our will that the buildings of the temples situated outside the walls shall remain untouched and uninjured. For since certain plays or spectacles of the circus or contests derive their origin from some of these temples, such structures shall not be torn down, since from them is provided the regular performance of long established amusements for the Roman people.48 46. Symmachus, Relationes 6.2: his enim gaudet urbana laetitia, cuius desiderium pollicitatione movistis (Teubner, ed. W. Meyer); on which see R. Lim, “People as Power: Games, Munificence and Contested Topography,” in The Transformations of the Urbs Roma in Late Antiquity, ed. W. V. Harris, Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplemental Series (Portsmouth, RI: Journal of Roman Archaeology, 1999), 265–81, esp. 269–71. 47. See, e.g., A. Cameron, Circus Factions: Blues and Greens at Rome and Byzantium (Oxford: Clarendon, 1976), 157–92; and J. Harries, “Favor Populi: Pagans, Christians and Public Entertainment in Late Antique Italy,” in Bread and Circuses: Euergetism and Municipal Patronage in Roman Italy, ed. Kathryn and Tim Cornell Lomas (New York: Routledge, 2003), 125–41. 48. Cod. theod. 16.10.3 (342 ce): Quamquam omnis superstitio penitus eruenda sit, tamen volumus, ut aedes templorum, quae extra muros sunt positae, intactae incorruptaeque consistant. Nam cum ex nonnullis vel ludorum vel circensium vel agonum origo fuerit exorta, non convenit ea convelli, ex quibus populo Romano praebatur priscarum sollemnitas voluptatum, ed. T. Mommsen, P. Meyer, and P.

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The games, races, and contests must go on, but without superstition, left studiously ill-defined. The emperors almost certainly meant sacrifice and image worship, though others would easily have understood superstition in different ways. The games were ancient and customary pleasures, which good rulers owed to their subjects and about which no one need worry. No emperor would have discarded such a precious moment of public display or its post-facto commemoration: to lead the circus procession, to drop the mappa to start the first race after the procession (a pompa), to sit before the eyes of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of eager spectators could not be abandoned—not if it could be preserved by the legal and visual “secularization” of the games. IV. Conclusion In the end, imagery of the gods as a synecdoche of the pompa circensis seems to have been a casualty of the exigencies of imperial politics and a slow war of attrition waged by Christian authors. That is, while the shift from the gods to the game-giver in representations of the pompa circensis was likely catalyzed by the shifting demands of imperial authority, nonetheless it also insulated, to a degree at any rate, the procession and so also the games themselves from the relentless rhetoric of Christian authors from Tertullian to Bishop Caesarius of Arles (502–542). If the gods no longer figured in the official, imperial image (and eventually also the performance) of the procession and the games, then the traditional shows and spectacles could and did safely continue, albeit transformed—first “secularized” or imperialized and then perhaps Christianized. Consequently, imperial numismatic portrayals of the circus procession offer

Krueger (Berlin: Weidmann, 1905), and The Theodosian Code and Novels, and the Sirmondian Constitutions, trans. C. Pharr (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1952).

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something of an inverse image of the development of early Christian art in the Roman Empire. After Constantine, early Christian art assimilated, appropriated, adapted, resisted, and even rejected aspects of Roman visual culture—the image of Christ was not simply imperialized. Roman visual culture was also altered in the centuries following the first Christian emperor. In this particular case, a change that had already begun during the high empire was cemented and even extended by the pressures of Christian rhetoric, which also suited imperial interests perfectly: the procession and games continued, a key element of the relationship between ruler and ruled, and the figure of the emperor became even more visible and eventually even more visibly pious. Imagery of the pompa circensis was not simply Christianized (much as early Christian art was not simply imperialized). Rather it evinces a tangled web of enduring visual traditions, evolving imperial politics, and burgeoning ecclesiastical power—the same web that entangled post-Constantinian Christian art.

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7

Was the Presence of Christ in Statues? The Challenge of Divine Media for a Jewish Roman God

Michael Peppard

Saint Anthony, the founding hermit of western monasticism, wanted desperately to know what Jesus Christ looked like. At least, such a temptation features in Gustave Flaubert’s nineteenth-century work of historical fiction, The Temptation of Saint Anthony.1 The drama imagines what one intense night of Anthony’s temptations in the desert might have been like, and its longest episode places the famous

1. Gustave Flaubert, La Tentation de Saint Antoine (Paris, 1872). English translations here from Gustave Flaubert, The Temptation of Saint Anthony, trans. Kitty Mrosovsky (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981), 120–21.

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Christian in a basilica packed with other influential early Christians (mostly heretics) trying to lead him astray. When he meets “the old Ebionites,” a first-century group of Jewish Christians who claim that they knew Christ in the flesh, Anthony responds with a rare tone of affirmation: “Tell me more! Tell me! What was his face like?” Anthony imagines him “filled with superhuman beauty” and longs to see that face. Just then, the church historian Eusebius steps forward. “There is actually at Paneas,” he offers, “close to an old hovel, in a tangle of grasses, a stone statue—put up, so it’s claimed, by the haemorrhoidal woman. But time has eaten away the face, and the rains have spoilt the inscriptions.”2 Far better than a description from the Ebionites would be an actual statue, extant in Anthony’s lifetime, established by someone who knew Jesus. Yet even it can’t fulfill his longing to see the face. So another figure emerges, a certain Marcellina well known in second-century Rome.3 “I was once a deaconess at Rome in a little church,” she says, “where I would let the faithful see silver images of Saint Paul, Homer, Pythagoras, and Jesus Christ. I’ve kept only his.” Here then is Anthony’s real chance: a likeness in resilient silver, perhaps made not too long after the life of Christ. Next, Marcellina opens her cloak, to let Anthony fulfill his desire. “Would you like it?” she tantalizes. The saintly Anthony resists. But what made this a viable temptation in the first place? The real historical world of Anthony’s upbringing in the third century ce was a world full of the faces of gods: Greek, Roman, Egyptian; statues, paintings, mosaics; temples; shrines, homes. In ancient discourse about the origin and role of 2. Flaubert altered the details of Eusebius’ actual report (Hist. eccl. 7.18). Cf. discussion of further evidence for this example in Katherine Marsengill, “The Christian Reception of Sculpture in Late Antiquity and the Historical Reception of Late Antique Christian Sculpture,” Journal of the Bible and Its Reception 1 (2014): 80–81. 3. See below for discussion of Irenaeus’s second-century report (Haer. 1.25.6).

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images, they were strongly linked with longing and desire.4 And the offer of seeing the face of the Christian god—to whom Anthony was singularly devoted—was so alluring precisely because it was one of the only gods a cosmopolitan man such as Anthony had not seen. In the Roman Empire, divine presences of gods and rulers were mediated most vividly through statues and portraits. As Christians grew in numbers and influence throughout the empire, it would have been customary to spread awareness of and devotion to their god by propagating his image. Especially during the pivotal fourth century, through the transition to imperially supported Christianity, the most normal thing from a Roman cultural perspective would have been to populate the landscape with thousands of statues of Christ. Why didn’t they? This chapter is not as much about what Christians did in the wake of Constantine, but what they, for the most part, did not do. How did they resist Anthony’s temptation? It assesses what meager evidence we do have for attempts to manifest Christ’s presence in a statue and how those related to typical practices vis-à-vis other statues. Through analysis of some fourth-century examples, the chapter further suggests reasons why Christian statues did not become the norm over time. Finally, it looks at three ways—through art, ritual, and symbol—that Christians mediated the divine presence in the absence of statues. These queries allow us to see, in the end, that the general avoidance of statues of Christ enabled Christians to negotiate visually and ritually between Jewish and Roman religious identities.5 Christians 4. For exquisite treatment of this theme and Christian responses to it, see Laura Nasrallah, Christian Responses to Roman Art and Architecture: The Second-Century Church Amid the Spaces of Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 213–48. 5. I arrived at this thesis independently, but a similar overarching view has been articulated in Hans Belting, Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image before the Era of Art, trans. Edmund Jephcott (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 7–8; original ed.: Bild und Kult—Eine Geschichte des Bildes vor dem Zeitalter der Kunst (München: Beck, 1990).

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retained some aspects of the traditional Jewish disdain for divine statues, even while claiming a unique earthly presence of the Jewish God in the epiphany of Jesus Christ on earth and, subsequently, the material body of the eucharist. At the same time, Christians mimicked some motifs of Roman imperial imagery through mosaic art and processional ritual, while conspicuously not imitating what was arguably the most prominent form of imperial art for divine rulers: statues and portraits.6 A focus on divine statues thus highlights how Christian material and ritual culture both usurped and disavowed aspects of Jewish and Roman traditions. It is fitting, then, that the one Christian “statue” that did prevail in the long run was that which embodied the most pivotal interaction between a Jewish religious leader and Roman imperial power: the cross. Divine Statues between Rome and Jerusalem To express the discord between philosophical reasoning and scriptural revelation, the second-century Christian Tertullian famously quipped, “What indeed has Athens to do with Jerusalem?”7 He thought those who sought a middle ground between Greek thought and Jewish scripture searched in vain. An analogous sentiment could be offered when considering Roman and Jewish attitudes toward statues. Regarding the divine presence in statues, what indeed has Rome to do with Jerusalem? On this topic—“the matter of the gods”—the two peoples could hardly have been more different.8

6. Cf. Jensen essay in this volume. 7. Tertullian, Praescr. 7.9. 8. I here employ the sharp double entendre of Clifford Ando, The Matter of the Gods: Religion and the Roman Empire (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008). On the contrast, cf. Robin M. Jensen, Face to Face: Portraits of the Divine in Early Christianity (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2005), esp. ch. 2; and James B. Rives, Religion in the Roman Empire (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007), 32–37.

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For the Roman worldview, a statue manifested most fully the presence of a god. In fact, even that way of formulating the idea may put too much distance between the god and the god’s presence in the statue. In a brilliant essay on the matter of divine statues in Roman religion, Clifford Ando argues that our modern western epistemology and ontology (appropriated from Platonism) often prevent us from handling the Roman primary evidence about statues of the gods.9 His master example concerns the question of what Romans thought they were doing when, following a military conquest of the Hannibalic war, they transported a foreign “goddess” back to Rome (quae ratio transportandae Romam deae).10 Livy’s account describes what modern westerners would call a “statue” or an “image” or, pejoratively, an “idol,” and indeed modern translations often supply the word “statue” or “image.” But the Latin language itself narrates going out “to meet the goddess at Ostia; there he received her from the ship; and in the temple of Victory on the Palatine he installed the goddess.”11 The dichotomization offered by intellectuals in the Platonic, Jewish, and Christian traditions would have us decide: either the Romans believed the statue really was the god, in which case the god would no longer exist if the statue were lost at sea or otherwise destroyed, or the statue “merely” represented the god, in which case that particular statue is no different than other statues of the same god. But neither pole of this dichotomy adequately explains the ancient evidence of this episode—and many others besides.12 Another relevant example comes from Pliny’s letters: when requesting funding to expand and refurbish a temple of Ceres on 9. Clifford Ando, “Idols and Their Critics,” in The Matter of the Gods, 21–42. 10. Ando, Matter of the Gods, 23–27. Livy, 29.10.8. 11. Ibid., italics original; citing Livy, 29.14.10–14. 12. Jörg Rüpke, Religion of the Romans, trans. Richard Gordon (Cambridge: Polity, 2007), 69–74; original ed.: Die Religion der Römer (München: Beck, 2001), and James B. Rives, Religion in the Roman Empire (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2007), 32–37, also treat this issue.

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his rural estate, he first refers to the entity in the temple simply as “the goddess.”13 Only when describing the need for a new statue to replace the old one—ancient, wooden, and broken—does he call it a “statue of the goddess” (deae signum). One can find, then, cases of distinguishing the god from the statue, especially when the statue was seen no longer to be appropriate. But on the whole, the supposed “problem” of the ancient evidence concerning divine presence in Roman statues is often actually created by applying the binaries of reality/appearance and being/representing.14 Statues and portraits of the Roman emperor were “anywhere and everywhere,” in the words of Fronto, and they are most relevant for the topic at hand.15 Not only did they establish a visual connection between the emperor and his subjects; they brought the divine presence of the emperor to places he would never actually go (but already ruled). When a new emperor arose (or there were changes to the imperial family), Roman imperial representatives in the provinces used images such as statues and portraits to spread awareness.16 Some of these were accompanied by a kind of liturgy celebrating the event.17 When statues came to town, they were received outside

13. Pliny, Ep. 9.39.3–5; cf. 10.96.5, where he does the same. 14. The standard “idolatry critique” that leads to misunderstanding about Roman religion was solidified by Christian authors in Late Antiquity. For survey and analysis, see Clifford Ando, “Praesentia Numinis. Part 1: The Visibility of the Roman Gods,” Asdiwal 5 (2010): 45–73. A shorter treatment of the challenge of modern westerners interpreting this evidence is Jörg Rüpke, Religion: Antiquity and Its Legacy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 52–62. 15. Fronto, Ep. 4.12: usquequaque ubique imagines vestrae sint volgo propositae. 16. Helmut Kruse, Studien zur offiziellen Geltung des Kaiserbildes im römischen Reiche (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1934), 27. Coins were obviously the most widespread medium of communicating imperial succession and ideology, but statues and portraits brought the presence of the emperor in ways that coins did not. 17. Cf. Kruse, Studien, 41. For a fascinating example preserved on a papyrus, see P.Giss. 3, which contains part of the script for a call-and-response liturgical celebration of Hadrian’s accession in Egypt. It is highly probable that a statue or portrait of the new emperor would have been present. Primary publications are in Ernst Kornemann, Klio 7 (1907): 278–88; and in Griechische Papyri im Museum des oberhessischen Geschichtsvereins zu Giessen, ed. Ernst Kornemann and Otto Eger (Leipzig and Berlin: Teubner, 1910–12), 15–22.

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of town with an entourage, as the emperor himself.18 They were dressed, crowned, adorned with flowers, addressed with speeches and music, and more.19 Like other divine statues in Roman cult practice, they were invited to dine at altars and tables throughout the empire.20 Such presence was thought necessary to conduct all manner of official business, from judicial procedures to temple dedications to birthday celebrations.21 That presence was often tied to force, whether of arms or law, but it could also bear mercy. Roman history offers examples of imperial clemency or asylum being sought at great distance from Rome through an emperor’s statue or portrait.22 The Life of Apollonius of Tyana by Philostratus tells of a Roman governor of Pamphylia who was threatened by a mob and thus “clung to the statues of the Emperor [Tiberius], which were more feared at that time and more inviolate than Zeus at Olympia.”23 As governor of Bithynia, Pliny wrote to Emperor Trajan about the case of a slave who had escaped from two different households and “sought refuge before 18. Cf. Belting, Likeness and Presence, 106, and the seminal study, Kruse, Studien, esp. 31–50, 89–106. 19. Kruse, Studien, 39. On the similarities between some of these rituals and those surrounding Byzantine icons, a topic that cannot be addressed in the current essay, see Belting, Likeness and Presence, and Charles Barber, Figure and Likeness: On the Limits of Representation in Byzantine Iconoclasm (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), esp. ch. 2, “Icon and Idol.” 20. On the Roman ritual of feasting with gods (lectisternium), see Clifford Ando, “Praesentia Numinis Part 2: Objects in Roman Cult,” Asdiwal 6 (2011): 57–69. For an example related to living emperors, see CIL 11.3303 (18 ce): et ut natalibus Augusti et Ti. Caesarum, prius quam ad vescendum | decuriones irent, thure et vino genii eorum ad epulandum ara | numinis Augusti invitarentur | . “. . . and so that on the birthdays of Augustus and Tiberius, before the council members go to eat, their genii should be invited with incense and wine to dine at the altar of the Augustan numen.” See discussion in Duncan Fishwick, The Imperial Cult in the Latin West, 2 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 1987–92), 2:380, and Ittai Gradel, Emperor Worship and Roman Religion (Oxford: Clarendon, 2002), 239–45. 21. On the imperial image as necessary to understand development of Christian uses of image and icon, see Belting, Likeness and Presence, 102–14. 22. See discussion of imperial portraits and statues in Clifford Ando, Imperial Ideology and Provincial Loyalty in the Roman Empire (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 228–45. Thanks also to Carlos Noreña, with whom I discussed these and other examples some years ago. 23. Philostratus, Life of Apollonius, 1.15. Trans. my own.

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your statue.”24 After hearing the man’s story, Pliny granted his temporary asylum and sent him to Rome for a hearing with Trajan himself. The refuge of the statue was not mere theater, then, as we might suspect. The presence of the statue could transfer some viewers to the presence of the emperor in the flesh. The dissemination of images of Augustus has been especially well documented by Paul Zanker and others.25 Scholars estimate that between 25,000 and 50,000 portraits of Augustus existed in the Roman Empire—about one portrait for every 1,000–2,000 people.26 There were as many portraits of Augustus per capita then as there are Christian churches per capita now in the United States.27 With this analogy in mind, it does not seem an exaggeration to call the emperor the only empire-wide god in the Roman pantheon.28 The emperor’s image, especially when offered worship, expressed nothing less than “the epiphany of a divine power in the hands of a mortal.”29 A compelling example of the kind of space-transcending, immanent presence that might be seen, honored, or worshiped in a Roman statue is found in Tacitus’ narration of a battlefield ceremony surrounding a statue of Nero on the eastern frontier. After conditions

24. Pliny, Ep. 10.74.1–2: confugisse ad tuam statuam. Trans. my own. 25. On the overall function of the portraits and other images, see Paul Zanker, The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus, trans. Alan Shapiro (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1988). Cf. Ando, Imperial Ideology, 232–69, and Karl Galinsky, Augustan Culture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), ch. 4. 26. Based on an approximate figure of 50 million residents in the Roman Empire in the midfirst century. See M. Pfanner, “Über das Herstellen von Porträts: Ein Beitrag zu Rationalisierungsmaßnahmen und Produktionsmechanismen von Massenware im späten Hellenismus und in der römischen Kaiserzeit,” Jahrbuch des deutschen archäologischen Instituts 104 (1989): 178; cited also in Ando, Imperial Ideology, 232. 27. There are over 300,000 Christian churches in the United States and about 300 million people. For this estimate of churches, see the Hartford Institute for Religious Research: http://hirr.hartsem.edu/index.html. 28. Cf. Ando, Imperial Ideology, 392. 29. John Scheid, An Introduction to Roman Religion, trans. Janet Lloyd (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003), 165; trans. of La Religion des Romains (Paris: Armand Colin/Masson, 1998).

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of a ceasefire and client-kingship had been negotiated between two opposing generals, it was established that the Armenian Tiridates should “lay the emblem of his royalty before the statue of the emperor, to resume it only from the hand of Nero.” An “impressive pageant” was then arranged to enact ritually his obeisance to Roman imperium. [On the Parthian side,] cavalry ranged in squadrons and carrying their national decorations; [on the Roman side,] columns of legionaries standing amid a glitter of eagles and standards and effigies of gods which gave the scene some resemblance to a temple: in the center, the tribunal sustained a curule chair, and the chair a statue of Nero. To this Tiridates advanced, and, after the usual sacrifice of [animal] victims, lifted the diadem from his head and placed it at the feet of the image.30

All present were aroused by “deep emotion” at the ritual, whose setting, accouterments, sacrifices, and gestures conjured an imperial temple dedicated to Nero at the farthest edge of his empire. In this case, we are fortunate to have another historian who narrated how Tiridates eventually encountered the presence of Nero in the flesh, upon arrival in Rome. Cassius Dio’s Roman History describes how Tiridates approached Nero and knelt, calling him master

(δεσπότην)

and

performing

obeisance

or

worship

(προσκυνήσας). Later Nero orchestrated a similar action to be done in the Forum, before a large crowd, to which Tiridates added the words: “Master, I am the descendant of Arsaces, brother of the kings Vologaesus and Pacorus, and your slave. And I have come before you, my god (τὸν ἐμὸν θεόν), to worship you as I do Mithras. And that [destiny] which you spin for me will be mine. For you are my fate and my fortune.”31 In this instance of glimpsing how the same 30. Tacitus, Ann. 15.29. Trans. John Jackson, Tacitus – Annals, Books XIII-XVI, LCL (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1937), 261. 31. Cassius Dio, Roman History, 63.1–5. The word for “fortune” (τύχη) was also the normal Greek

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person under similar circumstances engages both the statue of the emperor and the emperor in the flesh—two media of encountering a Roman divine presence—what stand out are the similarities. Both the statue and the flesh exude the manifest power of divinity (numen) and receive rites of worship as a god. In Rome, divine presence was immanent via flesh or stone. In Jerusalem, on the other hand, flesh and stone were canonical opposites (cf. Ezek. 36:26). And neither of them was divine. The distinctive Jewish resistance to divine statues—whether of unseen gods or unseen rulers—was emphatic and widely known. Unlike their neighboring cultures in the Ancient Near East (Mesopotamians, Egyptians, Canaanites), the tribes of Israel denied the presence of gods in sculpted images, based on the second commandment of the Decalogue: “You shall not make for yourself a graven image or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth below or in the water under the earth. You shall not worship them or serve them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous god” (Exod. 20:4-5).32 Later texts combined the ancient command with Greek rhetoric and logic, as in the Wisdom of Solomon, which excoriates Egyptian attitudes to divine statues during its retelling of the Exodus narrative. A sample of the invective, which runs for three chapters: Wretched are they and on dead things are their hopes, who designated as gods the works of human hands, gold and silver artfully contrived, and animal representations, or useless stone. . . . Yet praying to [one of these] about his possessions, his marriage, and his children, [the craftsman] feels no shame in addressing this lifeless object. For health, he invokes that which is feeble; for life, he prays to a corpse; for succor, he beseeches one totally inexperienced; for a journey, that which is correspondent to the Latin genius, which was the divine tutelary spirit of a patrilineal family, and the emperor’s was an object of worship in the Roman Empire. 32. In the Hebrew Bible, the divine presence was mediated through the Ark of the Covenant, but according to extant sources, the figural representations on it were not understood to bear that role of mediation.

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incapable of using its legs; for means of livelihood, business, and success of his handiwork, he asks for strength from that whose hands are entirely impotent.33

Despite some evidence for worship of statues preserved by the Hebrew Bible (e.g., the golden calf) and archeological remains, the overall rejection of “graven images” remains the most distinctive feature of ancient Israelite religion and early Judaism.34 The emphasis was so strong that, until twentieth-century discoveries of twodimensional image-filled synagogues at Beth Alpha, Dura-Europos, and elsewhere, it was believed that ancient Jewish worship was completely aniconic—like most Jewish and Muslim worship today.35 The current understanding is that early Judaism was not aniconic, featuring mosaics and paintings in houses of prayer, but it does seem to have been devoid of divine statues. Conflict with foreign occupiers of Judea could come to a crucial flashpoint with the introduction of a statue in the context of Jewish liturgy. The most memorable of these from the Jewish perspective happened under Seleucid rule, when Antiochus IV Epiphanes implemented systematic and forced Hellenization, which led to the Maccabean revolt. Among the many acts abhorred by the Jewish people, one is even memorialized with a specific date (15th of Chislev, 167 bce): when Antiochus’s people “erected a desolating sacrilege on the altar of burnt offering” in order “to pollute the temple in Jerusalem and to call it the temple of Olympian Zeus.”36 33. Wisd. 13:10, 17-19. Trans. adapted from David Winston, The Wisdom of Solomon, AB 43 (New York: Doubleday, 1979), 258, whose commentary also provides excellent contextualization of the text within the Greek philosophical critique of idolatry. 34. Cf. Edward M. Curtis, “Idol, Idolatry,” ABD 3:376–81 for full lists of examples. 35. On these topics, see Steven Fine, Art and Judaism in the Greco-Roman World: Toward a New Jewish Archaeology, rev. ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010); and Lee I. Levine, From Dura to Sepphoris: Studies in Jewish Art and Society in Late Antiquity, Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplementary Series 40 (Portsmouth, RI: Journal of Roman Archaeology, 2000). 36. The two quotes are from different accounts of the Maccabean period: 1 Macc. 1:54 and 2 Macc. 6:2.

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While the texts do not specifically describe a statue, it is almost certain that the “desolating sacrilege” means a statue of Zeus, perhaps even one styled in the manner of Antiochus.37 Later, under Roman occupation, a similar event occurred. The emperor Gaius Caligula, who had not learned the history lesson provided through Antiochus, ordered his general Petronius to have a statue of himself as a god set up in the Jerusalem temple.38 Yet Josephus narrates how the Jewish people pleaded with Petronius to permit them to follow their ancestral customs. Seeing that the mass of people would rather die than permit a divine statue of Caligula in the temple, Petronius had sympathy for them and respected their courage. It remains one of antiquity’s best examples of successful nonviolent resistance.39 The memory of divine statues proposed for the Jerusalem temple lived on as a specter haunting other texts: Wisdom of Solomon; the Gospel of Mark; and 2 Thessalonians, to name a few.40 But the contrast between Roman and Jewish attitudes toward divine statues can be expressed most starkly by narratives of direct invasion of Jewish cult by Roman power—the entrance of conquering Roman generals into the Jewish Holy of Holies. Imagine the disbelief that must have overtaken Pompey, when in 63 bce, as the first Roman to conquer the Judeans, he stepped inside their most holy site. What treasures would he find? What spoils to return to Rome? What deus would he bring home, to incorporate into the Roman pantheon? 37. 1 Macc. 1:46 describes “shrines for idols” as part of the cultural program. See also Dan. 8:13, 11:31, and 12:11. 38. Josephus, AJ 18.262–309. 39. For a full study of Josephus on these issues, see Jason von Ehrenkrook, Sculpting Idolatry in Flavian Rome: (An)Iconic Rhetoric in the Writings of Flavius Josephus (Leiden: Brill, 2012). A recent reflection on this event, occasioned by seeing a statue of Gaius in digital full-color, is: Steven Fine, “Caligula and the Jews: Some Historiographic Reflections Occasioned by Gaius in Polychrome” (Lecture at Virginia Museum of Fine Arts; December 4, 2011). Accessed on August 14, 2014 at http://www.digitalsculpture.org/papers/fine/fine_paper.html. 40. Wisd. 14:17-18; Mark 13:14; 2 Thess. 2:3-4. On possible interpretations of Mark’s enigmatic use of “desolating sacrilege,” see Adela Yarbro Collins, Mark: A Commentary, ed. Harold W. Attridge, Hermeneia (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 2007), 607–12.

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Tacitus reports the moment soberly: “The first Roman to subdue the Jews and set foot in their temple by right of conquest was Gnaeus Pompey: thereafter it was a matter of common knowledge that there were no deum effigie within, but that the place was empty and the secret shrine contained nothing.”41 For a Roman victor, this was a colossal anticlimax. No “images of the gods”? The text suggests that prior to Pompey’s entrance, it was not known among the Romans that the reputation of the imageless god of Judea was accurate. From the Roman worldview, in which gods were definitely visible, the notion was—one might say—impossible to imagine. Over a century later, the emperor Titus would be standing at the door of that temple. His spoils of war from Judea remain on display to this day: the Arch of Titus in Rome highlights the menorah to symbolize the temple’s destruction. But again, there was no divine statue to carry off. They were not able to bring the deus back to Rome. Such cognitive dissonance on the matter of divine statues helps to explain why Tacitus reports the following omen before Titus entered the temple: “Contending hosts were seen meeting in the skies, arms flashed, and suddenly the temple was illumined with fire from the clouds. Of a sudden the doors of the shrine opened and a superhuman voice cried: ‘The gods are departing!’ At the same moment, the mighty stir of their going was heard.”42 On the level of Tacitus’ narrative, this omen serves to show how the gods were on the side of the Romans, while the Judeans were poor in the divinatory arts. But at a prior level of cultural memory, it reveals what some Romans in Judea understood to have occurred. When upon entering, no divine statue was to be found, neither was the god seized. The best explanation—from a Roman perspective—was that the god or 41. Tacitus, Hist. 5.9. Trans. Clifford H. Moore, Tacitus – The Histories, Books IV-V; The Annals – Books I-III, LCL (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1931), 191. 42. Tacitus, Hist. 5.13. Trans. Moore, Histories, 197–98, with punctuation altered.

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gods must have already fled. The Jewish god in the temple could not save his people, but neither could he be captured as a Roman slave or killed as a victim. From the Jewish perspective, God was both there and not there. The God of Israel was the “living” God, one who could precisely not be frozen in a statue. To quote the earlier words of Ezekiel during the Babylonian exile, the Lord had taken “his glory” elsewhere, so as not to give glory to those occupying his temple. 43 Statues before and after Constantine Prior to the conversion of Constantine and the pivotal fourth century, the Christian tradition mostly resembled the Jewish tradition vis-à-vis divine statues. Christians did eventually distinguish themselves theologically from Jews by, among other things, professing that the divine presence of the God of Israel was manifest in the person of Jesus, but that presence was not often reproduced in statues, as a Roman religious impulse would have had it. The limited evidence we have shows that they primarily produced polyvalent signifiers for Jesus (e.g., a cruciform anchor, a fish, a dove) and some figural paintings of him, while on the whole resisting the temptation to sculpt his three-dimensional figure. One exception would be the “good shepherd” or Kriophoros (“ram-bearer”) type of statue, but these too were polyvalent signifiers (Fig. 1).44 In each case, it is difficult to know whether one is looking at Christ or Hermes or some other pastoral figure. The identification of a “statuette of Christ” in Rome’s Palazzo Massimo alle Terme is also uncertain, being interpreted by some as a traditio legis scene, others as a seated

43. The departure and restoration of the “glory of the Lord” to the Jerusalem temple is a major literary device of Ezekiel’s narration of the Babylonian conquest of Judea (Ezek. 9–11, 43–44). 44. This statue type is often interpreted as Christ the Good Shepherd, but here is an example of a Roman copy of a Greek statue of Hermes (Museo Barracco, Rome). Cf. Jennifer Awes Freeman’s chapter in this volume.

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philosopher—and it was originally catalogued as a “seated poetess,” due to feminine characteristics.45

Fig. 1. Hermes Kriophoros. Late Roman marble copy of the Kriophoros of Kalamis. Museo Barracco, Rome. Wikimedia Commons.

45. See summary of opinions in Niels Hannestad, “How Did Rising Christianity Cope with Pagan Sculpture?” in East and West: Modes of Communication. Proceedings of the First Plenary Conference at Merida, ed. Euangelos Chrysos and Ian Wood (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 173–75. Cf. Thomas F. Mathews, The Clash of Gods: A Reinterpretation of Early Christian Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 128. And see Lee Jefferson’s chapter on the traditio legis in this volume.

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As noted above, there are a few ancient textual attestations of statues of Christ: Eusebius describes the Galilean statue ascribed to the woman healed from her flow of blood; and Irenaeus criticizes the statues of a certain Marcellina, who flourished in Rome in the midsecond century. [Marcellina and her followers] also possess images [imagines], some of them painted, and others formed from different kinds of material; while they maintain that a likeness of Christ was made by Pilate at that time when Jesus lived among them. They crown these images, and set them up along with the images of the philosophers of the world, that is to say, with the images of Pythagoras, and Plato, and Aristotle, and the rest. They have also other modes of honoring these images, after the same manner of the Gentiles.46

In a similar passage, Epiphanius says some images or statues (εἰκόνας) were “painted in color” and some made of “gold and silver”; they received “worship” and other “mysteries.”47 Now it is a truism that not all the accusations of heresiographers should be treated as credible, but the use of divine statues for Christ in Rome during the second century is entirely plausible—and even to be expected in that cultural milieu. During the transition from households to housechurches, one can easily picture a domestic shrine or lararium, which formerly held a statuette group of gods and emperors, to contain imagines of Christ. Intact lararia were discovered in Pompeii, and one well-preserved example of a statuette group was discovered near the forum of Corinth, containing at least seven divine figures from the second and third centuries.48 From just such a context comes another piece of literary evidence for a statue of Christ. The third-century 46. Irenaeus, Haer. 1.25.6, during the section on the Carpocratians. Trans. adapted from ANF. 47. Epiphanius, Pan. 27.6.9. 48. Archaeological Museum of Ancient Corinth, S-1999 nos. 4, 7, 8, 11, 12, 14. Published recently in Anastasia Lazaridou, ed., Transition to Christianity: Art of Late Antiquity, 3rd-7th Century AD (New York: Alexander S. Onassis Public Benefit Foundation; Athens: Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Tourism, 2011), 75–78.

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emperor Severus Alexander was said to have included Christ in his personal collection: [I]n the early morning hours he would worship in his lararium, in which he kept the deified emperors (of whom, however, only the best had been selected) and also certain holy souls, among them Apollonius [of Tyana] and, according to a contemporary writer, Christ, Abraham, Orpheus, and others of this same character and, besides, the portraits of his ancestors.49

Descriptions of Marcellina and Severus Alexander thus evince similar rituals of worship for Christ as those afforded to other Roman gods and emperors through statues. It would have been culturally sensible for Christians influenced primarily by Roman cult to have replaced such an imperial domus divina with a Christian familia divina—a set of Christ and his apostles.50 As it turns out, this is precisely what happened during the Constantinian era. The fourth century presented a prime possibility for Christians to adopt the Roman practice of cult and culture vis-à-vis statues. Here let us examine three examples of how Christians in that period of transition portrayed the divine presence of Christ in a Roman way: first, Constantine’s construction of the Lateran Basilica; second, debates about statuary at the founding of Constantinople; and third, a theological reflection of Athanasius on Christ as an imperial statue. By the fifth century, though, evidence of this dabbling in Roman Christian divine statues came mostly to an end, as Christian ritual contended with the continued existence of other divinities—Greek, Roman, and the emperors themselves. Could Christ be worshiped 49. SHA, Severus Alexander 29.1–2. Trans. adapted from LCL, removing “statues of,” since the Latin text says only divos principes . . . et animas sanctiores, before listing the names of those present. The SHA does not always seem reliable, I hasten to add. For another vivid description of a household shrine: Ovid, Ep. ex Pont. 4.9.105–12. 50. Marsengill, “Christian Reception of Sculpture,” 91–97, presents a few bronze statuettes thought to be of Peter, Paul, or other saints from Late Antiquity, and she rightly notes that these types are too rarely treated in studies of early Christian art.

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as the only god, and Rome still retain the others as “art” but not “divinity,” in the words of Theodosius?

Fig. 2. Tapestry showing “Constantine Ordering the Destruction of Pagan Idols.” Pietro da Cortona (Pietro Berrettini), woven at the Barberini tapestry factory, Rome, 1637. Used by permission of Philadelphia Museum of Art, gift of the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, 1959.

At the crux of this question stands Constantine. Was he “the

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destroyer of idols,” or an architect of idolatry? Consider the Renaissance tapestries of the life of Constantine at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, one of which is officially titled “Constantine Ordering the Destruction of Pagan Idols” (Fig. 2). While it is true that a decapitated statue is strewn on the floor, Alexander Nagel’s masterful essay, “The Antique Statue of Christ,” refocuses attention on the scene’s primary action.51 The old statue has already been destroyed, and now Constantine directs the installation of a new statue on its pedestal: a bronze statue of Christ. Nagel shows how the return of statuary in the Renaissance was the archaizing of a past that never was. The imagined past of these artists and their patrons was filled with classical marbles of David and bronzes of Christ, but these were rather “distorted results” of “repressed” desires for “the threedimensional form”—the temptation of Saint Anthony as interpreted by Freud.52 Yet just as a repressed desire, albeit deferred and later distorted, has an original impetus in the past, so too does history show that Christianity really did flirt with the idea of statues of Christ. At the Lateran Basilica, the most important Christian church in Rome (and still the official cathedral church of Rome), Constantine had statues of Christ and the apostles installed at the core of the building’s interior.53 Since none of these survived the sack of Rome by the Visigoths in 410—and they were not replaced afterwards—the statues are rarely noted. But according to the Liber Pontificalis,

51. Alexander Nagel, The Controversy of Renaissance Art (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 129–51. 52. Nagel, Controversy, 129–30. 53. The Liber Pontificalis is a literary production in its own right, of course, and not merely a record. Its historical reliability is not without question, yet this example seems unlikely to have been a later addition. Using the criteria of “embarrassment,” which presumes that transmitters of a text would not willingly introduce something embarrassing to their own tradition, and “dissimilarity,” which presumes that data bearing little resemblance to their traditions immediately before and after are more likely to be accurate, the case of the Lateran statues holds up quite well to historical criticism.

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Constantine placed these “gifts” in the “Constantinian Basilica” (the Lateran Basilica): A hammered silver fastigium—on the front it has the Savior seated on a chair, 5 ft in size, weighing 120 lb, and 12 apostles each 5 ft and weighing 90 lb with crowns of finest silver; for someone in the apse looking at it from behind, it has the Savior sitting on a throne, 5 ft in size, of finest silver weighing 140 lb, and 4 spear-carrying silver angels, each 5 ft and weighing 105 lb, with jewels of Alabanda in their eyes; the fastigium itself weighing 2025 lb of burnished silver.54

In addition, the font of the basilica’s baptistery featured another fivefoot-tall statue of “the Savior in finest silver” and a “silver St John the Baptist.”55 Textual evidence we have, then, for two statues of Christ in silver, the twelve apostles, and John the Baptist. An expert on how to situate and interpret this evidence is Sible de Blaauw, whose magisterial Cultus et Decor chronicles the history of art and liturgy in Rome’s basilicas.56 In two smaller studies, he deals specifically with the fastigium, which he reconstructs as “a linear, screen-like structure, a huge pergola, standing in front of the original and present high altar,” atop four bronze columns (two possible variants, Fig. 3).57 Since there is only one other statue mentioned as church adornment in the Liber Pontificalis and there exists little other evidence for threedimensional statues in early Christian art, one might question the 54. Lib. Pont. 34. Trans. from Raymond Davis, The Book of Pontiffs (Liber Pontificalis) (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1989), 16. Alabanda was a city in Anatolia (SW Turkey) famous for its gemstones. 55. Lib. Pont. 34. Trans. Davis, Book of Pontiffs, 17. 56. Sible de Blaauw, Cultus et decor: liturgie en architectuur in laataniek en middeleeuws Rome: Basilica Salvatoris, Sanctae Mariae, Sancti Petri (Delft: Eburon, 1987). Italian translation published by Vatican Library in 1994. 57. Sible de Blaauw, “Imperial Connotations in Roman Church Interiors: The Significance and Effect of the Lateran Fastigium,” in Imperial Art as Christian Art, Christian Art as Imperial Art: Expression and Meaning in Art and Architecture from Constantine to Justinian (Rome: Bardi, 2001), 138.

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authenticity of the reference.58 Yet later, after the Sack of Rome, it records that emperor Valentinian reconstructed the fastigium that “had been removed by the barbarians.”59 The new one weighed only “1610 lb” and thus seems to have lacked at least some of the adornments of the previous one. If it had held aloft further gifts, it is almost certain the text would have said so, in keeping with the style of the Liber Pontificalis. In a similar way, the description of rebuilding the baptistery mentions no statues, but only that its porphyry columns were restored and “adorned with verses.”60 Even though only a century had passed, it was not deemed appropriate to replace these statues either. Words would suffice. De Blaauw shows how the “formal features” of the fastigium “would have proclaimed its imperial nature.”61 Here were impressive metal columns,

an

enormous

pediment,

and

statues—exactly

the

combination of architecture featured on imperial temples, coins, and other iconography, not to mention precisely those described by Vitruvius as “res regales, royal items in the stage set of the theatre.”62 Some of this imperial imagery would be picked up by postConstantinian Christian artists, but the fastigium-plus-statues model was not.63 Rather, “it belongs to a period of experimental implementation of various traditions in the process of conceiving the most appropriate space for Christian liturgy. The experiment of the statues failed,” even if “certain other elements and motifs of the fastigium were more successful,” appearing especially in later 58. The other is a statue of St. Laurence gifted by Valentinian to that martyr’s church (Lib. Pont. 46). 59. Lib. Pont. 46. Trans. Davis, Book of Pontiffs, 36. 60. Ibid. 61. De Blaauw, “Imperial Connotations,” 141. 62. Ibid., 141–44, citing Vitruvius, 5.6.9. See for examples of iconography. 63. Beat Brenk argues that “Constantine created an ambivalent situation among believers by having his colossal statue in the Basilica Nova and by having put up the so-called fastigium in the Basilica of the Lateran” (The Apse, the Image and the Icon: An Historical Perspective of the Apse as a Space for Images [Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2010], 57).

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mosaics (see below).64 In short, De Blaauw calls the artistic example of the initial Constantinian Basilica a “unique example” and an Irrweg, a “wrong track” or aberration.65 What seemed appropriate “in the turbulence of the transition under Constantine” would become “unthinkable during the eventual Christianization” of the Roman Empire. A wrong track, perhaps—but one to which Christianity returned

over

a

millennium

later,

with

the

Renaissance’s

aforementioned longing for the “antique statue of Christ.”

Fig. 3. Fastigium of the Lateran Basilica. Reconstructions (1987/1994). Used by permission of Sible de Blaauw.

64. De Blaauw, “Imperial Connotations,” 144. 65. This quotation and the next are from Sible de Blaauw, “Das Fastigium der Lateranbasilika: Schöpferische Innovation, Unikat oder Paradigma?” in Innovation in der Spätantike: Kolloquium Basel 6. und 7. Mai 1994, ed. Beat Brenk (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 1996), 64. Trans. my own.

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To modern viewers of Constantine’s Christian building projects, it would seem that none could top those in Rome (Lateran, St. Peter’s, St. Paul’s, etc.) and Jerusalem (the Church of the Holy Sepulchre). But as Jaś Elsner notes, during Constantine’s own lifetime, “arguably the most impressive gesture was the founding of a new capital at Constantinople.”66 Did he also try to establish the statue of Christ there? To the contrary, Eusebius trumpets how Constantine “determined to purge the city that was to be distinguished by his own name from idolatry of every kind, that henceforth no statues might be worshiped there in the temples of those falsely reputed to be gods.”67 Casting a skeptical glance toward Eusebius, though, scholars have debated to what degree Constantine’s conversion and subsequent Christian building programs were actually experienced by the people as religious changes. New evidence of contemporaneous criticisms of Constantine’s Christianization suggests the transformation of Greek and Roman religious sites to Christian sites had a tangible effect. On the basis of a newly published papyrus codex,68 Kevin W. Wilkinson has demonstrated that the great epigrammist, Palladas of Alexandria, was not only a contemporary of Constantine but “a contemporary pagan witness to the final period of Constantine’s reign. More precisely, we have recovered a witness to the religious climate of those years.”69 His epigrams critical of religious change thus corroborate the conclusions of T. D. Barnes, who for decades has argued that Constantine’s conversion had a more dramatic effect on the religious landscape of the empire than most historians would grant.70 Some of the epigrams 66. Jaś Elsner, “Perspectives in Art,” in The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Constantine, ed. Noel Lenski (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 265. 67. Eusebius, VC 3.48. Trans. NPNF2 adapted. 68. Kevin W. Wilkinson, “New Epigrams of Palladas: A Fragmentary Papyrus Codex (P.CtYBR inv. 4000), ASP 52 (Durham, NC: American Society of Papyrologists, 2012). 69. Kevin W. Wilkinson, “Palladas and the Age of Constantine,” JRS 99 (2009): 52. 70. E.g., T. D. Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981).

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treat the topic of statuary in the era, specifically the treatment of Greek and Roman divine statues. Wilkinson shows how they illuminate the changes in Constantinople under Constantine. “The owners of Olympian palaces, having become Christian, dwell here unharmed,” wrote Palladas; “for the pot that produces the life-giving follis [a coin] will not put them in the fire.”71 After his victory, Constantine had gathered precious metals from temples—especially statues—to be melted down and minted as new coinage.72 But this epigram shows that “some brazen gods managed to avoid this end by converting to Christianity—that is, by leaving their pagan cult behind and taking up residence in the new Christian capital of this very Christian emperor.”73 Another epigram refers to “twelve newer gods” on the scene in the Constantinian era, and Wilkinson suggests that Palladas refers to the establishment of the Church of the Holy Apostles (also Constantine’s resting place). At the end of a long epigram inveighing against women who break their vows of chastity, Palladas concludes: “We are left to trust in her oaths and in her religious scruples; but after her oath she can seek out twelve newer gods.”74 It is clear enough that “twelve gods” in Greek culture meant the Olympian gods, but why would a sinful woman turn to the twelve Christian apostles as “newer gods”? Using a later Byzantine source, Wilkinson argues that Constantine’s mausoleum was built on the site of an older altar to the twelve Greek gods (the δωδεκάθεον).75 “After breaking the oath that she had made at the shrine of the pagan Δυωδεκάς, the unchaste woman could take refuge in the twelve newer ‘gods’ that 71. AP 9.528; Wilkinson, “Palladas and the Age of Constantine,” 54. 72. Eusebius, VC 3.54. 73. Wilkinson, “Palladas and the Age of Constantine,” 56. 74. AP 10.56.17–18; Kevin W. Wilkinson, “Palladas and the Foundation of Constantinople,” JRS 100 (2010): 189–91. 75. Nicephorus Callistus, Hist. eccl. 8.55 (PG 146: 220c).

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had replaced them—and without even leaving the altar (as it were).”76 Thus Palladas criticizes the easy availability of forgiveness and conversion in the Christian tradition, while also mocking the inferiority of the newer so-called “gods” to the Olympians. It is true that no source records statues of the apostles in the church—there were “twelve coffins . . . like sacred pillars in honor and memory of the apostolic number,” according to Eusebius—but the threedimensional aspect of “twelve coffins like sacred pillars” surrounding Constantine’s own does call to mind the fastigium from Rome’s Lateran Basilica. There, Christ was enthroned at the center of the twelve apostles in living silver. Here Constantine would rest at the center of the twelve apostles in death. A third example comes from the heart of Christian theological orthodoxy: Athanasius of Alexandria’s Orations against the Arians. Athanasius frequently uses the scripture “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9) in his arguments promoting Father-Son unity in Christian monotheism. One of his illustrations of this idea, which has received very little treatment by scholars, compares Christ to the statue of the Emperor: And one may come to understand this at once from the example of the Emperor’s eikōn. For in the eikōn is the form and appearance of the Emperor, and in the Emperor is that form which is in the eikōn. For the likeness of the Emperor in the eikōn is indistinguishably exact: so that a person who looks at the eikōn, sees in it the Emperor; and he again who sees the Emperor, recognizes that it is he who is in the eikōn.77

Most likely the author imagines something three-dimensional, such as a bust or a full-body statue. The “statue” translation is preferable for two reasons: first, Athanasius’ emphasis on the “indistinguishably

76. Wilkinson, “Palladas and the Foundation of Constantinople,” 191. 77. Athanasius, C. Ar. 3.5. Trans. my own, with consultation of NPNF2.

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exact” representation works well with a full-body eikōn; second, he extends the example by discussing the “worship” of the eikōn, a ritual practice performed more frequently before statues or busts than before paintings or coins. Thus we have a rare comparison between Christ and an imperial statue.78 Athanasius animates the statue with a speaking role, thus drawing sustained attention to his illustration: “And because the likeness does not differ, the eikōn might say (to one who, after having seen the eikōn, wanted to have a look at the Emperor), ‘I and the Emperor are one; for I am in him, and he in me. What you see in me is what you see in him; and what you have seen in him is what you see in me.’”79 Furthermore, just as a statue receives worship as the real presence of the emperor—recall the episodes of Tiridates before Nero—so too does Christ receive worship as the real presence of God the Father. “Accordingly whoever worships the eikōn, in it worships the Emperor also; for the eikōn is his appearance and form. Since then the Son too is the Father’s eikōn, it must necessarily be understood that the divinity and particularity of the Father are [also] the Son’s being.”80 This hardly seems like orthodox theology from a chief architect of

78. This portrait of Jesus has received little attention from contemporary scholars—an exception being Jensen, Face to Face, 58–59. It is not analyzed in otherwise thorough studies of Athanasius, e.g., James D. Ernest, The Bible in Athanasius of Alexandria (Boston and Leiden: Brill, 2004), 151–59; or Charles Kannengiesser, Athanase d’Alexandrie, évêque et écrivain. Une lecture des traités “Contre les Ariens,” Théologie historique 70 (Paris: Beauchesne, 1983), 318. Kannengiesser argues against Athanasian authorship of the 3rd Oration, but in any case, he does not deal with the statue example. In his excellent treatment of Father-Son theology in Athanasius, Peter Widdicombe analyzes well the ideas argued in C. Ar. 3.1–6, but he does not mention the paradeigma of the statue (The Fatherhood of God from Origen to Athanasius, Oxford Theological Monographs [Oxford: Clarendon, 1994], 201–5). E. P. Meijering, Athanasius: Die dritte Rede gegen dei Arianer, 2 vols. (Amsterdam: Gieben, 1996), 1:65–69, offers a short commentary and concordance to other relevant passages but does not acknowledge or deal with any of the theological problems raised by the example. 79. Athanasius, C. Ar. 3.5. Trans. my own. He gives voice to other objects in 3.8, 3.34, and 3.36. 80. Athanasius, C. Ar. 3.5. Trans. my own.

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orthodoxy—comparing Christianity to the worshiping of a Roman emperor’s talking statue. Elsewhere I have put forward some reasons why this analogy appealed to Athanasius in his cultural context (it captures well the sameness of two distinct things; and the worship of imperial images was widely recognizable), along with some of its drawbacks (it undermines the argument for Christ’s uniqueness; and it implies material createdness of the Son).81 Overall the example of the statue demonstrated the unchangeability of the Son and the Son’s true manifestation of the Father, but its expression of unchangeability for Christ was too static—and too susceptible to idolatry critique. Theologians of the Nicene era ultimately preferred imagery that showed dynamic unchangeability; they sought ways to express how something could be in the highest realm of divine being, unchangeable and unalterable, and yet not be frozen still. Such dynamic unchangeability was better expressed through the images of fountain-stream, source-stream, sun-radiance, light-refulgence, and eternal begetting. Therefore, though some later authors imitated Athanasius’ example of the imperial statue in teaching and preaching, it failed to become one of the mainstream illustrations of orthodox Christology.82

81. Michael Peppard, “Archived Portraits of Jesus: Unorthodox Christological Images from John and Athanasius,” in Portraits of Jesus: Studies in Christology, WUNT II 321, ed. Susan E. Myers (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012), 393–409. This paragraph bears similarity to parts of that essay. 82. For example, see the patristic quotations in John of Damascus, De imaginibus, which cites Methodius, Gregory of Nyssa, John Chrysostom, Basil, and others. Cf. Kenneth Meyer Setton, Christian Attitude Towards the Emperor in the Fourth Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 1941), ch. 8 on “Imperial Images,” which is mainly a summary of the patristic references without much analysis; and Ando, Imperial Ideology, 238–39. There are also earlier examples of using paintings and coins as paradeigmata for Christological ideas. For example, Irenaeus constructs a theological analogy to a king who makes a painting of his son (Haer. 4.17.6). Athanasius also uses an example of a painting: the human person as imago Dei is like a stained painting that needs to be restored, and the Son (as image of the Father) comes to renew the painting to its previous glory (Inc. 14.1–2). We might call this Athanasius’ “Art Restoration” Christology. Cf. Augustine, Trin. 14.16.

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Why Not Statues? The previous examples show the real temptation in the fourth century to imagine Christ or the apostles in statues or other threedimensional memorials. So why, on the whole, did Christians not continue to do this in Late Antiquity? And how did they mediate the divine presence instead? An obvious explanation for why Christians did not propagate thousands of statues of Christ is the inherited polemic against idolatry from the Jewish tradition. This is undoubtedly a necessary aspect of any answer, and many Christian writings from the Roman period powerfully deploy these arguments against material gods.83 But here let us explore two other reasons, both of which would have supplemented the Jewish critique of idolatry. First, if Christians had used statues and accompanying liturgies to “introduce” the cult of Christ to the empire and propagate fealty to it, such moves would likely have felt too similar to previous treatment of Roman emperors. More to the point, Christians in the fourth century had very recent memory of the era of martyrdom, its trials, and the role that imperial statues played in the direct persecution of Christians. The memorialization of Christian martyrs is well documented: Constantine himself built basilicas to famous martyrs in Rome. Because of the continuous architectural, liturgical, and narrative presentations of the martyrs, the persecutions of Decius and Diocletian were never far from mind.84 Funerary meals and feast-day liturgies featured the Acta of the martyrs’ heroic deeds. The very earliest record of a Roman trial of Christians—Pliny’s 83. E.g., Athenagoras, Leg., interpreted in dialogue with Roman art by Nasrallah, Christian Responses, 171–212. 84. For vivid reconstructions of popular piety surrounding martyrs in this era, see Ramsay MacMullen, The Second Church: Popular Christianity 200-400 CE, Writings from the GrecoRoman World Supplements 1 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2009).

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early second-century letter to Trajan—explains the requirement to offer wine and incense to the statues of the gods and the emperor, and several of the later martyrdom narratives involve a confrontation with a statue.85 The Martyrdom of Pionius, for example, arises from the Decian persecution in Asia Minor. Pionius was brought by a temple administrator, Polemon, to make his public sacrifice to the gods of Rome and the emperor. It is not made clear what physical form the gods took—whether statues, busts, or portraits—but the physicality of the ritual is implied. “We do not worship your gods,” Pionius says repeatedly, “nor will we adore the golden image [eikōn, presumably a statue].”86 Pionius contrasts this with “the living God,” whom he and his companions worship. Polemon encourages him instead to visit the temple of Nemesis, and when he rejects that, he begs him, “at least make a sacrifice to the emperor.” Pionius replies, “I do not sacrifice to human beings. For I am a Christian.”

Fig. 4. Constantinian bronze coin (AE3) with labarum and Christogram. RIC VII 19. Used by permission of Classical Numismatic Group, Inc./Wikimedia Commons.

85. Pliny, Ep. 10.96.5. 86. Martyrdom of Pionius 3–8, acc. to Greek edition in Herbert Musurillo, Acts of the Christian Martyrs (Oxford: Clarendon, 1972), 136–46.

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During the later persecution under Diocletian, both the Acts of Marcellus and the Martyrdom of Dasius explicitly contrast imperial images with the worship of Christ. Marcellus was a centurion who, during emperor Diocletian’s birthday celebration in his town, threw down “his soldier’s belt in front of the legionary standards [signis legionis]” and exclaimed, “I am a soldier of Jesus Christ, the eternal king. From now I cease to serve your emperors and I despise the worship of your gods of wood and stone, for they are deaf and dumb images.”87 As with other martyrdom narratives, Marcellus adopts a biblical tone in his speech, virtually quoting idolatry critique from the Jewish tradition. But the military aspect of the contrast he draws maintains verisimilitude. The events were narrated to have occurred before Constantine’s conversion, to be sure, but their literary expression cannot be separated from what happens through Constantine—the labarum (Fig. 4), in which the signum of Christ was raised up on the “cross” of a military standard (vexillum), to occupy the spot previously held by a legion’s symbol or an image of the emperor (carried by an imaginifer). In the case of Dasius, the rejection of imperial images is even more dramatic. Having been chosen by lot to play a sacrificial role in an annual festival of Saturn, Dasius rejected it and was brought before his commanding officer. Bassus the legatus ordered him to “[v]enerate the images of our lords the emperors.”88 When he refused, Bassus implored him, “Dasius, supplicate the holy images of our emperors, which even the barbarian nations worship and serve.” Here the images are “holy” (τὰς ἱερὰς εἰκόνας) and receive “worship” (σέβονται). They appear again on Dasius’ march to martyrdom, which unwittingly imitates a ritual procession: someone walks in

87. Acts of Marcellus 1. Trans. Musurillo, Christian Martyrs, 251. 88. Martyrdom of Dasius 7–8. Trans. Musurillo, Christian Martyrs, 277.

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front of Dasius carrying a “censer” or “thurible” for sacrificial incense, and they try one last time to force him to sacrifice to the images of the emperors. But he picked up the censer, “scattered all their incense about and threw down the impious and unlawful images of the sacrilegious emperors and trampled on them.”89 Such narratives of conflict between Roman imperial ideology and obstinate Christian theology were based on the founding prototype of the Passion Narrative, during which Jesus was characterized as a conquering king, crowned, clad in purple, challenging the image of an emperor as divine ruler on a coin, and so on. An early manuscript illumination of the trial before Pilate even shows the imperial images held aloft by imaginiferi (Fig. 5).90 These ideas were supported by biblical idolatry critique in relation to rulers, which spread from Nebuchadnezzar and Antiochus up through Caligula and Domitian. And in Christian art of the period, the steadfastness of the three Hebrew children before the statue built by Nebuchadnezzar is well attested (Daniel 3).91

89. Martyrdom of Dasius 11. Trans. Musurillo, Christian Martyrs, 279. 90. Codex Purpureus Rossanensis (Rossano Gospels), Illustration 15. For commentary see William S. Loerke, “The Rossano Gospels: The Miniatures,” in Codex purpureus Rossanensis. Museo dell’Arcivescovado. Rossano calabro: Commentarium (Roma: Salerno editrice; Graz: Akademische Druck und Verlagsanstalt, 1987), 145–47. Cf. Kruse, Studien, 53. 91. E.g., in the Catacomb of Marcus and Marcellinus (4th c.) and sarcophagus lid Rep. 338 (4th c.) in San Sebastiano, Rome, the Hebrew children are portrayed as instructed to worship the bust of a ruler that resembles Roman imperial portraiture. Cf. Paul Corby Finney, The Invisible God: The Earliest Christians on Art (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 69–98, esp. 83; and Jensen’s essay in this volume.

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Fig. 5. Codex Purpureus Rossanensis (“Rossano Gospels”). “Christ Before Pilate.” Used by permission of Dsmdgold/Wikimedia Commons.

At a minimum, then, the production and dissemination of statues of Christ would have too closely resembled the use of imperial statues to project a new emperor’s power and propagate his presence. Moreover, as these examples have shown, Christians had very recent memory of particular flashpoints vis-à-vis such statues. Some of the 256

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martyrs’ Acta celebrated in the post-Constantinian era extolled those who imitated Christ unto death precisely by not worshiping an imperial statue.92 Second, late ancient Christians were aware that, as media of divine presence, statues are distinctly susceptible to spectacular destruction. (Indeed, such was the soldier Dasius’ final act of his martyrdom account.) Roman history overall shows how statues can be thrown down, stolen, defaced, beheaded, or otherwise destroyed. A famous incident was when the emperor Tiberius responded to scandal at Rome’s temple of Isis by having the temple destroyed and ordering her statue to be thrown into the Tiber.93 Later centuries saw Christians also defacing or destroying statues, adapting the Roman tradition of damnatio memoriae for disgraced heroes. The emperor Theodosius was at the center of some crucial moments in the 380s–90s: after a tax increase enraged the inhabitants of Antioch, they toppled or defaced statues of the emperor and his family. John Chrysostom, then not widely known, rose to prominence in a series of homilies in response to the fatal riots.94 Chrysostom’s own teacher of rhetoric, Libanius, also intervened and implored Theodosius to save the traditional temples and their contents (in what would become his most famous speech).95 Libanius lamented the destruction of statues, such as a bronze Asclepius in which “art matched nature.”96 He claimed that no sacrifices were offered to it, but it was destroyed anyway, thus appealing to Theodosius’ own sentiments in one ruling that a temple’s statues could remain as “art” not “divinity,” but statues should not receive worship as divine presences.97 Conciliar canons 92. On imitatio Christi in martyrdom, cf. Candida R. Moss, The Other Christs: Imitating Jesus in Ancient Christian Ideologies of Martyrdom (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010). 93. Josephus, AJ 18.65–84. 94. John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Statues. 95. Libanius, Or. 30 (Pro templis). 96. Libanius, Or. 30.22.

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Fig. 6. Basalt bust of Germanicus. British Museum. Used by permission of Marie-Lan Nguyen/Wikimedia Commons.

97. Cod. theod. 16.10.8 and 16.10.10.

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had their say too, as when the Second Council of Constantinople anathematized Theodore of Mopsuestia because he had deigned even to compare the worship of Christ and the worship of the emperor’s image (conveniently not mentioning that Athanasius had once done the same).98 The textual sources speak rather univocally, but Troels Kristensen’s recent book, Making and Breaking the Gods, uses the archeological evidence to chart the great variety of ways Christians responded to divine and imperial statues in Late Antiquity. Destruction is a spectrum, he argues, ranging from obliteration or disfiguring on one end to humiliation, theft, hiding, or appropriative redefinition on the other.99 Sometimes the same example displays more than one type of response. The basalt bust of Germanicus in the British Museum, for example, is both disfigured by having its nose removed—eliminating the possibility for the statue to “breathe” and thus “live”—and also sealed with the sign of Christian initiation (Fig. 6). Like a real initiate, this Germanicus was both killed and raised to new life. Replacing Statues through Art and Ritual If the divine presence of Christ was not mediated through statues, then what did Christians do instead? The full scope of that question cannot be answered here, which would involve holy objects, relics, textual revelation, prayer, song, and all manner of rituals. What we can do is briefly describe the artistic and ritual changes that occupied the very same spaces as divine statues might have. Recall how, after the plundering of the Lateran Basilica by the Visigoths, the silver statues were removed, never to return. Yet as mentioned above, some elements of Constantine’s fastigium were influential, a 98. Second Council of Constantinople (553), Canon 12. 99. Troels Myrup Kristensen, Making and Breaking the Gods: Christian Responses to Pagan Sculpture in Late Antiquity (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2013), Introduction and ch. 1, esp. p. 30.

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fact observable in a preferred artistic medium of the fifth century and beyond: mosaics.

Fig. 7. Apse mosaic, Santa Pudenziana, Rome. Used by permission of Welleschik/ Wikimedia Commons.

The Lateran fastigium’s front side held statues of Christ seated as a ruler and surrounded by apostles. Virtually the same artistic program was featured on the apsidal mosaic at Santa Pudenziana (Fig. 7). Crafted not long after the Sack of Rome that destroyed the fastigium, as one of the first major Christian mosaics, it is not implausible to surmise that its design appropriated that of the Lateran’s statues.100 The seated Christ is surrounded by apostles being crowned, just as the Liber Pontificalis describes the erstwhile statues, gone but not forgotten. In an upper register are four angelic figures, just as existed on the backside of the fastigium. While it is true that this iconographic formula was found across a wide range of media in Rome during 100. Beat Brenk also identifies these similarities, though he does not argue for direct dependence, in “Apses, Icons, and ‘Image Propaganda’ Before Iconoclasm,” Antiquité Tardive 19 (2011): 109–39, esp. 112–13. A larger treatment is his The Apse, the Image, and the Icon: An Historical Perspective of the Apse as a Space for Images (Wiesbaden: Reichert, 2010), esp. ch. 2.

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this period, Brenk argues that “the only figural apse mosaics of the fourth century known are dedicated to the theme of the fastigium, namely Christ with the twelve apostles. . . . [T]his iconography was legitimized in the first half of the fourth century as an official church apse program.”101 The mosaic in the nave of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo at Ravenna (Fig. 8) also resembles the back of the Constantinian pediment, with Christ enthroned and flanked by four angels carrying spear-like rods, just as described for the Lateran.102

Fig. 8. Nave mosaic, Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, Ravenna. Used by permission of Arthur P. Urbano.

Christian mosaics of Late Antiquity were not fully threedimensional—the viewer could not walk around them, as with a statue—but neither were they merely two-dimensional. With their raised texture and shimmering presence of light, they seemed “alive” and interactive with a viewer in ways that other media did not. They thus answered to some degree the need for three-dimensionality in 101. Brenk, The Apse, the Image and the Icon, 29. 102. Similarities noted also by Louise Ropes Loomis, The Book of the Popes (Liber Pontificalis) (New York: Columbia University Press, 1916), 47.

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worship. In terms of Christology, their shining, moving quality when illuminated captured what I earlier called dynamic unchangeability, the feature most desired in fourth-century theology about Christ. Whereas mosaics occupied the walls above or the floor below, divine statues in antiquity typically stood on a pedestal at the focal point of a ritual space. For post-Constantinian Christians, what occupied this nexus was not so much art, but ritual. In temples of traditional Roman religion, altars were not in the apse but usually outside the front entrance, while “the apse was a show-case for the cult statue; but in Christian churches the apse became a background for the cult service.”103 The eucharistic liturgy on the altar of a basilica or martyr shrine thus mediated the presence of the hopedfor divine power, in place of a statue. The Roman mindset presumed the visibility and embodiment of the gods; the Christian negotiation of its Jewish heritage and its newly emphasized Roman-ness thus brought the body of their god, “the body of Christ,” to the pedestal-cum-altar where a statue might have stood. They did not multiply and disseminate the divine presence of Christ through replicated statues, but through a different notion of visibility and embodiment—the “flesh” and “blood” of the body itself. Thinking back for a moment to Flaubert’s imagining of the temptation presented by statues of Christ, we can see how he too dramatized its satisfaction in ritual presence. Just after the temptation of the statues, Saint Anthony is reminded that Christ “reappears, he himself, when we call him!” And at the end of the book, having triumphed over all the temptations, Anthony finally does get to see the face of Christ in the sky: “Day at last dawns; and like the raised curtains of a tabernacle, golden clouds furling into large scrolls uncover the sky. There in the middle, inside the very disc of the 103. Brenk, The Apse, the Image and the Icon, 58. This was also the locus for statues of divine emperor worship, cf. 38–40.

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sun, radiates the face of Jesus Christ.”104 The divine presence was not in the statue, but in the sun as a eucharistic host, enshrined in a monstrance, unveiled by a tabernacle. The art of mosaics and the liturgy of eucharist were media of divine presence that also largely avoided the potential problems of divine statues. Notwithstanding the “emperor mystique” on display in some mosaics of Christ, these were not likely to be confused with images of emperors or other gods, as statues might have been.105 Mosaics were also acceptable in Jewish synagogue art of Late Antiquity,

a

tradition

simultaneously

developing

its

own

iconography and media. In addition, the potential problems of defacement or theft with mosaics were real but far less probable or dramatic than with statues. When mosaics were installed high above, they were virtually immune to desecration; when installed in the floor, they actually invited physical interaction from those walking on them.106 With the eucharist, Christians did replicate a “body” of Christ, but one of “flesh” and not stone or precious metal, as denounced in biblical idolatry critique. Through both mosaics and the eucharist, the divine presence was thus mediated in a tangible way, while continuity with Jewish rejection of divine statues could plausibly be defended. A final, crucial difference from statues is that both mosaics and the eucharist were—though undoubtedly holy—not whole. Whereas statues were only broken by their opponents, these media radiated brokenness by design. The very form of a mosaic issues forth in fragments. There is no materially uniform place where one can point

104. Flaubert, Temptation, 232. 105. As with other essays in this volume, mine is implicitly engaging Mathews, The Clash of Gods, throughout. 106. Though mosaics were seen by some in later centuries to promote “idolatrous” behavior, the fact that they were frequently touched and trod upon somewhat limited the impact of mosaic iconoclasm (as compared with the destruction of statues).

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that captures divine presence, as with a statue of unbroken marble or silver. A mosaic negates by its very nature the presumption of idolatry, since it comes pre-broken, confessing the insufficiency of its own image. So too with the eucharist: in place of a statue of Christ stood individuals around a consecrated Christ in the form of broken bread. The textual traditions related to the eucharist emphasized its essential brokenness, frequently using the Greek word for “broken” or “fragment” to signify the ritual.107 This divine presence was made to be broken. Contrary to a statue, what made this presence real was its fracture. An Anti-Statue for a Jewish Roman God Among the most famous Christian mosaics of Late Antiquity is the dome of the Arian baptistery in Ravenna. Dating from the late fifth century, it showcases a baptismal scene of Christ, surrounded by a procession of the twelve apostles (Fig. 9). Unlike the similar mosaic at the neighboring orthodox Neonian baptistery, this concentric procession has a point of convergence to which the eye is drawn: a ruler’s throne. One might expect Christ enthroned there, as at the Lateran fastigium and the mosaic at Santa Pudenziana (both discussed above). But here the throne lacks the ruler. The figure of Christ is not there, nor is there a statue of him, as a statue of an emperor might rest upon a curule chair to mediate his presence. Instead, resting on the throne, is a cross.108

107. For example, the use of klasma in Mark 6:43 and parallels, Mark 8:8 and parallels, and Didache 9.3–4. 108. This is not the earliest example, as already at Sta. Maria Maggiore in Rome the enthroned cross was part of the triumphal arch. Cf. Beat Brenk, “The Imperial Heritage of Early Christian Art,” in Age of Spirituality: A Symposium, ed. Kurt Weitzmann (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1980), 47–50.

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Fig. 9. Dome mosaic, Arian Baptistery, Ravenna. Used by permission of Sailko/ Wikimedia Commons.

Along with mosaics and the eucharist, the cross stood in place for the tradition of divine statues. Nowhere was this more evident than during the Renaissance’s “rediscovery” of the “antique statue of Christ.” Alexander Nagel cites an oration delivered in the Sistine Chapel in 1511, during which the humanist Battista Casali lamented that some great men from the past received golden statues in their honor in the Forum, others received divine honors, but Christ received only a cross.109 The so-called “Room of Constantine” at the Vatican—designed by Raphael and completed by Tomasso Laureti—vividly depicted such a notion. The painted ceiling, the culmination of Constantine’s works depicted on the four walls below, 109. Cited in Nagel, Controversy of Renaissance Art, 133. My paraphrase from Latin text quoted in Silvana Seidel-Menchi, “Alcuni Atteggiamenti della Cultura Italiana di Fronte a Erasmo (1520-1536),” in Eresia e Riforma nell’Italia del Cinquecento, ed. Albano Biondi (Florence: Sanzoni; Chicago: Newberry Library, 1974), 106 n. 169.

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shows a cross atop a pedestal, with the pedestal’s former statue broken on the floor (Fig. 10).

Fig. 10. Tomasso Laureti, Room of Constantine (ceiling). “Triumph of Christian Religion.” Vatican. Wikimedia Commons.

There are multiple causes for the emergence of the cross as an “antistatue,” in the words of Nagel, but among them must be the sacralization through Constantine and his mother, Helena, of the site on which Jesus’ cross was mounted in Jerusalem.110 The pilgrimage narrative of Egeria depicts well the three-dimensionality of the cross venerated at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.111 Here indeed was the most ancient performance of Christian sculpture in the round. The cross was attended with daily, weekly, and annual rituals, culminating in the great Holy Week liturgies. Even weekday prayers are held both “before the cross” and “behind the cross,” while the services of Good Friday revolve around it entirely and include veneration of the relic of the True Cross. Regardless of which version of the legend of the discovery of the True Cross one considers, it 110. Nagel, Controversy of Renaissance Art, 151. 111. See descriptions of daily and seasonal services in Egeria, Itin. 24–43, esp. 36–37 for Good Friday.

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seems clear that the cross fulfilled a need for three-dimensionality voided by the lack of divine statues. Through pilgrimage to the site, the cruciform processional visuality constructed there radiated out to the rest of the Christian world. The power of that divine presence was mediated too by the innumerable pieces of the True Cross that found their way into churches, reliquaries, and necklace lockets thousands of miles away.112 The cross also had reference points in military symbols, which bolstered its symbolic power in the Constantinian era. The crossbar of a military standard was mentioned above, which Eusebius called “the trophy of the cross.”113 And unlike Severus Alexander, who adorned his bedroom’s lararium with divine statues, Constantine decorated the ceiling of the “principal apartment” of his palace in Constantinople with a large bejeweled cross.114 Even before Constantine exploited the military connection, it was noted by Christians. Tertullian, for example, defended the cross to a Roman audience in this way: Roman religion in the military “venerates the standards, swears by the standards, sets the standards before all the gods. All those rows of images on the standards are but ornaments hung on crosses. Those hangings of your standards and banners are but robes upon crosses.”115 In the sixth century, the hymnodist Venantius Fortunatis epitomized the juxtaposition for all time with Vexilla Regis, a hymn written for the arrival and procession of a large piece of the True Cross in Poitiers: “The military banners of the king

112. I am grateful to Felicity Harley-McGowan for sharing her paper on this topic, “Biting Off More Than You Can Chew: Emotional Extremes in Medieval Devotion to Relics of the True Cross.” Personal communication, August 13, 2014. 113. Eusebius, VC 1.31; cf. 4.21. Trans. my own. 114. Eusebius, VC 3.49. Trans. NPNF2. 115. Tertullian, Apol. 16.8. Trans. T. R. Glover, Tertullian – Apology; De Spectaculis. Minucius Felix, LCL (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1931), 84–85. Cf. Minucius Felix, Octavius 29.6–8.

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come forth / the mystery of the cross shines / on which, in the flesh, the creator of flesh / is hung by the crossbar.”116 And so the Roman Empire’s instrument of torturous capital punishment of Christ became, over several centuries, its most recognizable symbol for the Christian Roman Empire. In place of the statue stood the cross—but we should not really be surprised. Postcolonial theories of power have allowed us to see that dominated, subaltern people are rarely able to resist dominant forces without to some degree mimicking their oppressors. Major cultural changes occur not usually by “adopting” or “rejecting” some aspect of the regime in power; rather, “colonial mimicry” encapsulates how processes and significations of disavowal are necessarily intertwined with the powerful discourse of the authoritative other. The site of interaction between the powerful and the dominated becomes a new space for enunciating hybrid identity. When statues were ripped off their pedestals and crosses put in their place, as by Christians at Ephesus;117 or when imperial images were removed from military standards or thrones and crosses put in their place, it was because there was “some strategic limitation or prohibition within the authoritative discourse itself.”118 A symbol of the empire’s power over life and death, the cross as capital punishment, became for the dominated a sign of hope for resurrection; yet after the conversion of the emperor to the dominated’s symbolic system, the cross was coopted and audaciously situated in place of imperial statues. Mimicry flowed both ways, driven by the desire for dimensionality—as if the cross somehow lay dormant in the statue, waiting to be unveiled. In 116. Venantius Fortunatus, Vexilla Regis, traditional hymn. Trans. my own of first stanza: Vexilla regis prodeunt / fulget crucis mysterium / quo carne carnis conditor / suspensus est patibulo. 117. E.g., the inscription of Demeas, who claims to have destroyed a statue of Artemis and put a cross in its place (possibly fifth century), discussed in Kristensen, Making and Breaking the Gods, 9–22. 118. Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994), 86.

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a way, that is what Tertullian once said, referring to the cruciform infrastructure of sculpted statues: “You hang Christians on crosses and posts; but what statue is there that is not first molded in clay and built on a cross and post? It is on the crossbar that the body of your god is first dedicated. . . . Your gods are molded by sculptors on a cross.” 119 As for the statues of the emperors—they too lived on. On April 25, 604, Pope Gregory the Great received with great pomp the arrival at Rome of new imperial images from Constantinople.120 The emperor Phocas and his consort Leontia were welcomed—their presence, anyway, in their statues—in a procession at the Lateran basilica. By the gathered clergy and senate they were acclaimed—rather, their images were acclaimed—with the chant of “Christ hear us! Long live Phocas Augustus and Leontia Augustus!” We can picture the procession of imperial images up the nave of the Lateran, passing under the place where Constantine’s fastigium had stood for a period of the fourth century, elevating that ephemeral silver statue of Christ. The imperial statues were solemnly marched in an ancient mode of reverence, but now their procession culminated in the anti-statue of Christ, the cross, the ancient mode of imperial domination.

119. Tertullian, Apol. 12.3 and 16.7. Trans. Glover, Tertullian. Minucius Felix, 67 and 83. 120. Latin quotation and discussion in Kruse, Studien, 46–47. Cited also in Mark Humphries, “From Emperor to Pope? Ceremonial, Space, and Authority from Constantine to Gregory the Great,” in Religion, Dynasty and Patronage in Early Christian Rome, 300-900, ed. Kate Cooper and Julia Hillner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 21.

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The Visualization of the Imperial Cult in Late Antique Constantinople

Katherine Marsengill

It is an impossible task for us to imagine the city of Constantinople in Late Antiquity, even given the extant descriptions that provide us with glimpses of the city’s imperial grandeur. The city was filled, we are told, with statues and paintings of gods and heroes, philosophers, and, importantly for the purposes of this book, emperors and empresses, all now long disappeared.1 Equally impossible to grasp is the impact that such images, embedded with the full import of their 1. R. Janin, Constantinople byzantine. Développement urbaine et répertoire topographique (Paris: Institut Français d’Études Byzantines, 1964); G. Dagron, Constantinople imaginaire (Paris: Institut Français d’Études Byzantines, 1984); S. G. Bassett, The Urban Image of Late Antique Constantinople (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004).

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iconographic history and visualized within the language of power, had on the general populace. And indeed the effect would have been grand. Emperor Constantine expanded the existing city in a manner worthy of Old Rome, adding monuments and porticoed streets, which he decorated with lavish sculptures and spolia imported from around the empire. Historians and art historians have carefully reconstructed the fourthcentury city, so far as it is possible.2 Given what we know now of Constantinople in Late Antiquity, the historical narrative of the first Christian emperor’s intentions in founding the city he named for himself have long undergone revision. There can no longer be doubt that Constantine visually transformed his new chosen capital as a platform to proclaim imperial sovereignty. Much less important was its function as a space far from pagan Rome where he could promote the Christian faith, a purpose far more evident in documented policy than in his urban planning or civic decoration.3 In truth, though Constantine and his successors (save Julian) favored Christianity by funding several Christian churches in the capital over the course of the fourth and fifth centuries, Christ was not exalted in the public

2. Pieced together from numerous Byzantine accounts. Among many others, see above, note 1, as well as S. G. Bassett, “The Antiquities in the Hippodrome of Constantinople,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 45 (1991): 87–96, and “Tradition in the Baths of Zeuxippos,” American Journal of Archaeology 100, no. 3 (1996): 491–506; R. Krautheimer, Three Christian Capitals: Topography and Politics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), 48–67; C. Mango, “Antique Statuary and the Byzantine Beholder,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 17 (1963): 55–75; and the commentary on the text by A. Cameron and J. Herrin, Constantinople in the Early Eighth Century: The Parastaseis Syntomoi Chronikai (Leiden: Brill, 1984). 3. Just recently, T. Barnes, Constantine Dynasty: Religion and Power in the Later Roman Empire (Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell, 2014), 111–13, reasserts the idea that Constantine indeed founded Constantinople as a Christian city, against the assertions of many scholars who still say otherwise—e.g., J. O’Donnell, The Ruin of the Roman Empire (London: Ecco, 2009), 181. Divisions in opinions depend on which textual sources one credits, especially taking into consideration the agendas of authors like Eusebius or Zosimus. See L. Grig and G. Kelly, “Introduction,” in Two Romes: Rome and Constantinople in Late Antiquity, ed. L. Grig and G. Kelly (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 3–30, for a thorough description of debates surrounding the Christian versus pagan founding and decoration of Constantinople.

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spaces of Constantinople.4 As far as we know, during this early period, Christian images were kept within or adorned sacred spaces and tombs, and were found on personal votive and decorative objects inside private homes.5 This stands in stark contrast to the many imperial monuments and images that adorned the cityscape, as well as the very visible statues of pagan figures and deities, most of which remained in place for centuries. Public mosaics and paintings of Christ eventually did appear in Constantinople, but it is still a question of when. For example, scholars have speculated about the reality of the legendary icon of Christ that was placed above the palace’s Chalke Gate, which possibly makes an appearance on the possibly mid-fifth-century Trier ivory depicting the translation of a relic to Constantinople.6 It seems that not until the turn of the fifth century was there even a hint that holy images of the Virgin Mary (and presumably of Christ) should be set up in public places as those of the emperor were, and perhaps for the same purpose: for the protection of the city and to offer 4. O’Donnell, The Ruin of the Roman Empire, 181. 5. Of public representations, we know of only a fountain decorated with a gilded statue of the Good Shepherd set up by Constantine, which some general viewers may have understood as Christ; see Eusebius, Vita Constantini III, 49; he also mentions a fountain of Daniel flanked by two lions, but the interpretation for it is dubious; see A. Cameron and S. G. Hall, Eusebius, Life of Constantine: Introduction, Translation and Commentary (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 140, 298. Later writers assume Christian subjects for a small handful of Constantinopolitan statues (likely antique statues reframed as Christian subjects), but only one is identified (likely erroneously) as Christ, and not until the fourteenth century. For a pair of statues that were said to be Adam and Eve, see Mango, “Antique Statuary and the Byzantine Beholder,” 63. For the seated figure believed to be a statue of Solomon, but likely was Asclepius, see Bassett, The Urban Image of Late Antique Constantinople, 148–49; for an equestrian statue that was thought to be Joshua, ibid., 209–11. In 1349, Stephen of Novgorod saw an antique statue he thought was of Christ in the Nea Ekklesia, but scholars doubt it was indeed Christ; see G. P. Majeska, Russian Travelers to Constantinople in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1984), 247. 6. G. Vikan and K. G. Holum, “The Trier Ivory, ‘Adventus’ Ceremonial, and the Relics of St. Stephen,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 33 (1979): 113–33. L. Brubaker argues unconvincingly for a post-Iconoclastic date, asserting that the Chalke Christ was an iconodule invention: “The Chalke Gate, the Construction of the Past and the Trier Ivory,” Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 23 (1999): 258–85.

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political refuge and asylum. However, this particular evidence comes from a sermon by Theophilus of Alexandria, not one preached in the capital, where the emperor remained the supreme protector during this period. And it is admittedly unclear if Theophilus is suggesting that an icon of the Virgin should be put up in the marketplaces like an emperor’s portrait, or merely that icons of the Virgin should be honored just as people honor the images of the emperor.7 The eighth-century Parastaseis syntomoi chronikai records that an icon of the Virgin and Christ had been set up by Constantine near his porphyry column, an image that was later burned by the Arians; however, this is likely anachronistic if not an entirely misrepresented event.8 There is good reason to point out this profound difference between the locations of imperial images and those of Christ in fourth-century Constantinople. For it serves as both a point of departure and a key element for discussions about the influence of the imperial cult and its imagery on the development of Christ imagery. As we will see, the imperial cult was contextually different—it was represented differently and functioned differently in its contexts than the images of Christ found in the churches. This mirrored the way Christianity worked at the time, where there was space in which the emperor and his veneration could exist in a Christian scheme of world order that did not conflict with the goals of the faith. Until around the turn of the fifth century the public spaces were still very much part of the imperial domain and played a significant role in the appearance and adoration of the ruling emperor.9 With the passage of time, 7. Theophilus of Alexandria, Homily on the Virgin 90, 1; preserved in a Coptic manuscript: W. H. Worrell, The Coptic Manuscripts in the Freer Collection, Part II: An Homily on the Archangel Gabriel by Celestinus, Archbishop of Rome, and a Homily by Theophilus, Archbishop of Alexandria, from the Manuscript Fragments in the Freer Collection and the British Museum (New York: Macmillan, 1923), text 308–9, trans. 375. 8. Parast. synt. chron. 10; Cameron and Herrin, Constantinople in the Early Eighth Century, 69.

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when church fathers ushered in an age where God and Christ were not perceived as existing at the other side of an insurmountable divide, the relationship between the emperor and Christ became more focused and images crystalized the rhetoric that expressed the emperor as the embodiment of a sacred office. Without a firm understanding of this period, certain aspects of Late Antique Constantinople as the imperial capital are difficult to make fit comfortably into Christian history. For when it came to the Christian emperor, Christians did a seemingly remarkable turnaround. Christians were supposedly adamantly opposed to the imperial cult until Constantine, because it placed a mortal among the pantheon of false deities.10 The extent to which the imperial cult was a real factor in the persecutions of Christians has been called into question, which merits reconsideration, especially since the imperial cult continued without hesitation right into the Christian empire. Yet it is still remarkable that by the end of the fourth century, figures like Basil, John Chrysostom, and Athanasius favorably used the example of the veneration of the emperor and his image as a means in which to better understand the relationship between the Father and the Son in Christological argument. These Christological precedents would be revived in defense of icon veneration centuries later. How, over the course of the fourth century, the veneration of the emperor became an implicit component of Christian empire and not seen as an obstacle to Christian worship is still much discussed among scholars.11 I leave the complex review of the evolving rhetoric 9. N. Andrade, “The Processions of John Chrysostom and the Contested Spaces of Constantinople,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 18, no. 2 (Summer 2010), 161–89. 10. S. R. F. Price, Rituals and Power: The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 15, on the overstated arguments about the Christian persecutions due the supposedly stark choice presented to them between Christ and the emperor. 11. Please see Douglas Boin’s chapter in this volume, and his forthcoming study on the Christian imperial cult in Late Antiquity that argues against previous interpretations that the Christians were in constant struggle and tension with the imperial cult.

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framing the role of the Christian emperor to historians, where it is more than apparent that the emperor was presented as a sacred if not divine figure. Instead, the purpose here is to explore social methodologies and visual culture of this earliest period, when the imperial cult appeared very much as it had when pagans ruled the empire. A clear separation in the minds of Christian citizens between the domains of veneration, where the emperor occupied the public spaces and Christ remained in his places of worship, helps to explain the phenomenon of Christian imperial cult. But often this approach involves a sharp division between civic and church ritual. It is, as one scholar put it, “covertly Christianizing,” to assume the emotional distances of Christians participating in civic ritual and thus to claim their true beliefs resided in their faith.12 We have seen a persistent need in our scholarship to differentiate between the two, as if civic ritual is somehow a less sacred, empty, or superficial religious performance. Civic ritual belongs to the secular world, so we insist. How far we can claim to know what constituted sacred and secular at the time, even if we could manage the impossible and ascertain the feelings of individuals, is something that also has been questioned by recent scholars.13 All that we can do is examine the ritual and visual expression, as well as the descriptions by contemporaries, in hopes that these will provide insight to us living some 1700 years later. Another way scholars have looked at this issue has been to analyze how the emperor cult was transformed over the course of the fourth century in order to reflect a Christian conception.14 It is an idea 12. Price, Rituals and Power, 10. Price also gives a review of literature that presents the opinion that the imperial cult was completely politic and devoid of any religion (15–16). 13. See Price, Rituals and Power, 1–22, arguing that the Roman imperial cult was not without sacred meaning, especially in the east; idem, “Between Man and God: Sacrifice in the Roman Imperial Cult,” Journal of Roman Studies 70 (1980): 28–43, esp. 28. For a somewhat different opinion on how Christians felt about “pagan” festivals, though not addressing the imperial cult, see R. A. Markus, The End of Ancient Christianity (New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), esp. 110.

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that is supportable by some texts—though certainly there are also texts demonstrating residual pagan conceptions of the emperor—but one that is slower to come into focus in the visual culture. Some very explicit pagan perceptions about the emperor survived in visual culture for much longer than the Christian rhetoric would have us believe. In the fifth and sixth centuries, traditional Roman images of the emperor run parallel to developing images reflecting the notion of Christian emperor as God-appointed ruler. This is not to say that Christianity did not precipitate change or disrupt the ways of imperial cult. But it has been unfairly assumed in much of the early scholarship on the subject that there had been, before Constantine, an uninterrupted, unbroken sameness in the conception of the transcendent emperor (whether one argues that the imperial cult was purely politic, or if one argues the unswerving belief in the emperor as god). Instead, the particulars of how the emperor transcended mere mortals to walk among the gods changed. The position assumes there was not room around the central notions of the emperor’s status for such change to occur until Christianity, when it became politically and ideologically redefined.15 At the opposite side of this argument, 14. For the new role of Constantine in the church and its councils, see J. Straub, “Constantine as koinos episkopos: Tradition and Innovation in the Representation of the First Christian Emperor’s Majesty,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 21 (1967): 37–55, and the related material on the Christian emperor’s role over the course of the Byzantine Empire and the ongoing struggles between the emperor and the church, see G. Dagron, Emperor and Priest: Imperial Office in Byzantium, trans. J. Birrell (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003), esp. 127–43; S. MacCormack, “Roma, Constantinopolis, the Emperor, and his Genius,” Classical Quarterly 25, no. 1 (1975): 131–50; G. W. Bowersock, “From Emperor to Bishop: The SelfConscious Transformation of Political Power in the Fourth Century a.d.,” Classical Philology 81 no. 4 (October 1986): 298–307; A. Momigliano, “How Roman Emperors Became Gods,” The American Scholar 55, no. 2 (Spring 1986): 181–93, esp. 191–93. 15. For example, the very old article by H. Fairfield Burton, “The Worship of the Roman Emperors,” The Biblical World 40, no. 2 (August 1912): 80–91; Price, “Between Man and God,” 33, argues for greater variation within the empire in the observance and ritual of imperial cult, reflecting both the nuanced feelings of the populace about the emperor and deliberate vagueness about the status of the emperor. S. MacCormack, Art and Ceremony in Late Antiquity (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1981), esp. 93–158, discusses the changing conception of imperial apotheosis (consecratio), especially at the end of the third and

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if we see only the rupture caused by Christianity, we do not give proper credit to a period in transition.16 The title of divus was used for the emperor through the fifth century; but so too do we see “holy,” “sainted,” and “another apostle.”17 However, the Christian emperor no longer ascended to Olympus to be among the gods, but to heaven to be with God.18 And, while it may be true, for example, that the cult of the Roman emperors continued into fourth-century Italy just as it always had,19 the only difference being a lack of blood sacrifice (which was not, it has been shown, in itself revolutionary), we should not so easily accept that the lack of sacrifice was a minor distinction. We may look for finer distinctions and even pose a question if imperial priests in the fourth century were pagan or Christian. 20 Indeed, one of the most exciting breakthroughs of the last decade or so has been the number of discussions about Christian participation in Late Antique pagan cults, not as erroneous or misguided, as the Christian authors of the period would have us beginning of the fourth century. See Price, Rituals and Power, esp. 11–16, for a discussion of scholarly literature that treats the imperial cult as purely a political phenomenon, which he challenges in his book. Idem, “Gods and Emperors: The Greek Language of the Roman Imperial Cult,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 104 (1984): 79–95. 16. MacCormack, Art and Ceremony in Late Antiquity, 106–11, about the rupture in the imperial cult in the mid-third century and the significant changes in ideas of the emperor’s divinity and apotheosis that occurred with Diocletian and Constantius. 17. Dagron, Emperor and Priest: Imperial Office in Byzantium, esp. 135–57. The Theodosian code 16. 2. 20 calls Emperor Constantius “sainted,” although this was not a term that would prevail in place of divus to describe the ascendance of the emperor after death. 18. Compare the panegyric describing Constantine’s father, Constantius’ transcendence to Olympus in 310 (discussed by MacCormack, Art and Ceremony in Late Antiquity, 107–8), and Eusebius’ description of Constantine’s soul abiding with God in heaven, Eusebius, Vit. Const. I, 2. 19. C. J. Goddard, “Les formes festives de l’allégeance au Prince en Italie centrale, sous le règne de Constantin: Un suicide religieux?” Mélanges de l’École français de Rome Antiquité 114 (2002): 1025–88. Also, P. Brown, Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350-550 AD (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012), esp. 103. 20. The Council at Elvira in 300 ce forbade imperial priests from attending Christian churches; but after the edict of Milan, they were permitted them as long as they did not engage in blood sacrifices; see R. MacMullen, Christianity and Paganism in the Fourth to Eight Centuries (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1997), 34–35.

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think, but as contextual. That is to say, even those who called themselves Christians would often consciously engage in pagan activities because their complex cultural identities were flexible enough to shift according to the occasion, and without feeling their faith compromised for doing so.21 It is a subtle distinction from the premise that Christians could and did maintain clear lines between what they counted as sacred and what they maintained was secular, for many considered a great deal of overlap to be perfectly acceptable. The lines drawn by bishops, moreover, were softer in the fourth century, sharpening only around the turn of the fifth century.22 There were Christians who would not participate in pagan activities, and there were staunch bishops abjuring their congregations for

21. MacMullen, Christianity and Paganism; A. Cameron, The Last Pagans of Rome (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2011); E. Rebillard, Christians and Their Many Identities in Late Antiquity: North Africa 200-450 CE (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012), esp. 3, who argues that there is a discrepancy between what the individual understands about a group identity and to what extent that actually affects what he does in his everyday life. N. Belayche, “Pagan Festivals in Fourth-Century Gaza,” in Christian Gaza in Late Antiquity, ed. B. Bitton-Ashkelony and A. Aryeh (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 5–22; E. Bolognesi Recchi Franceschini, “The Iron Masks: The Persistence of Pagan Festivals in Christian Byzantium,” in Bosphorus: Essays in Honour of Cyril Mango (Byzantinische Forschungen 21) (Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1995), 117–32; D. M. Gwynn, “The ‘End’ of Roman Senatorial Paganism,” in The Archaeology of Late Antique ‘Paganism,’ ed. L. Lavan and M. Mulryan (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 135–61, draws attention to the shift in scholarship from defining the fourth century as one of conflict to one of interaction, which is much more evident in the material culture than in the polemicized literature. C. Lepelley, “The Use of Secularised Latin Pagan Culture by Christians,” in Religious Diversity in Late Antiquity, ed. D. Gwynn and S. Bangert (Boston and Leiden: Brill, 2010), 477–92; J. North, “The Development of Religious Pluralism,” in The Jews among Pagans and Christians in the Roman Empire, ed. J. Lieu, J. A. North, and T. Rajak (London: Methuen, 1992), 174–93. For historiographical overview of the pagan versus Christian dichotomy and its increasing irrelevance, D. Boin, “Hellenistic ‘Judaism’ and the Social Origins of the ‘PaganChristian’ Debate,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 22, no. 2 (Summer 2014), 167–96. 22. Under the late fourth-century church fathers, whose sermons became more directed toward correcting residual pagan behaviors of their congregations. For Ambrose and his strong Christian leadership that challenged pagans and even emperors, see Brown, Through the Eye of a Needle, 120–47. Augustine became much more strident in his sermons after around the year 400; see also Markus, The End of Ancient Christianity, esp. 110–21. The increasing violence toward pagans and their monuments by Christian-led mobs at the beginning of the fifth century is well known, though MacMullen, Christianity and Paganism, 1–31, argues that these are exaggerated and certainly not as widespread as previously thought.

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attending events hosted by pagans or where pagan rites took place; and there were pagans who disdained Christian gatherings. But there was a vast population of people who existed along a spectrum between the two, as well as a range of rituals and images that rested in an in-between place and defied being categorized as pagan or Christian. Is an image of Christ placed in a pagan shrine alongside images of pagan deities and deified emperors, for example, a pagan or Christian image?23 Moreover, what do we make of Christian priests who secretly kept idols of pagan gods?24 A logical beginning for this discussion would be to return to Constantine’s city as he founded it. Over thirty years ago, in his descriptions of the three Late Antique capitals of the Christian Empire, Richard Krautheimer pointed out what historians had previously been reluctant to admit, namely, that Constantine’s new, “Christian” city was hardly Christian at all.25 The most elevated and important monuments were dedicated to the emperor in a series of spatial and visual markers across the city: his forum with its porphyry column topped by his statue, the palace and hippodrome complex, and his mausoleum (Fig. 1).

23. As Alexander Severus had in his shrine according to Lampridius, Historia Augusta, Severus Alexander 29.2; D. Magie, Scriptores Historiae Augustae, vol. 2 (London and Cambridge: Heinemann, 1953), 235. Also note, however, that the text is notoriously unreliable. There is a similar tradition noted among the Gnostics, however, of keeping images of pagan philosophers and Christian figures as objects of veneration. See Iraneaus of Lyons, Adversus haereses I.25.6. 24. A letter written by Emperor Julian to a priest recommends a former Christian bishop, Pegasius, for a position because, even during his tenure in the church, he had always honored the pagan gods; Julian had even seen with his own eyes Pagasius honor statues of heroes in the temples of Ilios, when Constantius was still emperor; see R. MacMullen and E. Lane, eds., Paganism and Christianity, 100-425 C.E.: A Sourcebook (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992), 267–68. Usually described as a crypto-pagan, it is possible that the bishop included Christ as the supreme deity in the neo-Platonic sense, as did many other people at the time. According to Gregory the Great, a priest in Reggio, Italy, worshiped idols and kept one in his own home; Registri Epistolarum 10.2; J. C. Martin, ed., The Letters of Gregory the Great, Books 10-14, vol. 3 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2004), 714; MacMullen, Christianity and Paganism, 61 and n. 99. 25. Krautheimer, Three Christian Capitals, 60–61.

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Fig. 1. Map of Constantinople. Courtesy of Maria Cristina Carile.

These were all visually reflective and representative of the sun: the palace gate may have had a golden roof, though it is not attested until later in the century.26 A gold-clad obelisk marked the spina of the hippodrome around which circulated chariots in evocative rituals long associated with Helios and the revolutions of the eternal cosmos.27 On the tall porphyry column in his forum, his colossal 26. M. C. Carile, “Imperial Palace Glittering with Light: The Material and Immaterial in the Sacrum Palatium,” in Hierotopy of Light and Fire in the Culture of the Byzantine World, ed. A. Lidov (Moscow: Theoria, 2013), 105–35, with review of primary sources describing the golden roof of the Chalke Gate. Idem, “Metafore di luce nelle architetture e nel decoro da Costantino a Costanzo II,” in L’impero Costantiniano e i luoghi sacri, ed. T. Canella and L. Carnevali (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2015), in print.

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statue stood high. Once the figure of Helios, now refitted with his radiantly diademed portrait, the statue crowned the hill just above the hippodrome, overlooking the city and sea beyond as if an omniscient presence.28 Finally, there was the gilded dome of his mausoleum, the Apostoleion, built on the highest hill of the entire city as if a shining beacon. Far from the visualization of a city of God, Constantine incorporated imagery associated with cult of Sol Invictus, brought into the urban planning both because of Constantine’s own fondness for the deity and its imperial traditions, but also perhaps for lack of a visual language of imperial Christianity. The strongest claim he made for his faith could be found in the Apostoleion, where under its central dome he intended his own sarcophagus to be the focus, the apostles of Christ represented around him with either inscriptions or kinds of portraits, awaiting the addition of their relics.29 In this he conceived of his status as semi-divine, more like the Arian Christ, and therefore above the apostles.30 To conflate the time it took to build all of these structures so that a single picture can be drawn is teleological and misleading. If we put time back into the panoramic survey, we see the unfolding of building projects as Constantine prioritized them. Constantine celebrated the founding of his city on 11 May 330, six years after 27. J. Bardill, Constantine: Divine Emperor of the Christian Golden Age (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), esp. 154–55. 28. John Malalas, Chronographia 13, 7; I. Thurn, Ioannis Malalae Chronographia (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2000), 246. G. Fowden, “Constantine’s Porphyry Column: The Earliest Literary Allusion,” The Journal of Roman Studies 81 (1991): 119–31. For further primary sources, graphic evidence, and discussion, see Bassett, The Urban Image of Late Antique Constantinople, 192–204. 29. Eusebius, Vit. Const. IV, 58–60; Cameron and Hall, Eusebius, Life of Constantine, 176–81. See also, C. Mango, “Constantine’s Mausoleum and the Translation of Relics,” Byzantinische Zeitschrift 83 (1990): 51–61. Thorough discussion of the Apostoleion is included in the recent monograph by M. Johnson, The Roman Imperial Mausoleum in Late Antiquity (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), esp. 119–28. 30. Krautheimer, Three Christian Capitals, 64–67. R. Leeb, Konstantin und Christus. Die Verchristlichung der imperialen Repräsentation unter Konstantin dem Großen als Spiegel seiner Kirchenpolitik und seines Selbstverständnisses als christlicher Kaiser (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1992), esp. 93–120.

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he chose the town of Byzanz on the Bosphorus to be Rome’s new capital. In that time he had expanded the hippodrome in order to celebrate the event, which, along with the portion of the palace directly connected to it, is clearly the structure Constantine deemed most important to establish his capital.31 Like the Circus Maximus next to the Palatine Hill in Rome, Constantinople’s hippodrome would play its part in the display of the emperor to his people, and like its older counterpart, it was charged with meaning. Here is where Constantine instituted, on that day in 330, an annual commemorative ritual in which his gilded effigy was processed on a golden chariot into the hippodrome, making the symbolic rotation around the spina with its obelisk that made visible and tangible a single ray of the sun, to stop before the emperor’s box, the kathisma, at the center of the southern long side.32 Constantine ordered that each successive emperor should make proskynesis, prostrating before his effigy, a ritual that was maintained into the sixth century.33 In this way, Constantine guaranteed his veneration for future generations. 31. G. Dagron, L’hippodrome de Constantinople: Jeux, peuple, et politique (Paris, 2011), esp. 123–24; idem, Naissance d’une capitale, Constantinople et ses institutions de 330 à 451 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1974), esp. 320–47; C. Mango, “A History of the Hippodrome of Constantinople,” in Hippodrome-Atmeydani: A Stage for Istanbul’s History, ed. B. Pitakaris (Istanbul, 2010), 36–43. 32. Chronicon Paschale I, 527–30; see C. Mango, Art of the Byzantine Empire 312-1453: Sources and Documents (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986), 10. Also recorded by John Malalas in the sixth-century Chronographia 13, 10; Thurn, Ioannis Malalae Chronographia, 247. Recent discussion of the procession can be found in Bardill, Constantine: Divine Emperor, 151–58; an incisive summary of Constantine’s rituals, including the hippodrome, and the ensuing cult of the emperor is in B. Caseau, “La transmission nel rituale costantinopolitano,” in Costantino I: Enciclopedia Costantiniana sulla Figura e l’Immagine dell’Imperatore del Cosiddetto Editto di Milano 313-2013, vol. 2 (Roma, 2013), 333–45. 33. If we interpret the Chronicon Paschale 1, 701, as such, it is possible that Emperor Phocas had placed his own portrait on the gilded effigy, or replaced the statue with an image of his own, which had been processed into the hippodrome by men in white garments holding candles, and which Heraclius had burned in 610; see also Bardill, Constantine: Divine Emperor, 151. However, the Parastaseis mentions the golden chariot, even though it identifies the statue within as Tyche, not Constantine or any other emperor (Cameron and Herren, Constantinople in the Early Eighth Century, 173).

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For venerated he was. Moreover, opinion of Constantine went beyond his identification as another apostle, as Eusebius had attempted to frame him in his vita of the emperor and as he was already beginning to be recognized as in liturgical commemoration.34 Nor was he venerated only in the imperial ritual he inaugurated in the hippodrome. He was also venerated in displays by the general populace, who, as late as the sixth century, we are told, would spontaneously gather at the foot of the column and direct their prayers to his bronze statue. In the words of Philostorgius in the fifth century, these people acted like Constantine was a god.35 It is not unreasonable to suggest that the chapel placed at the base of the column, of unknown date but perhaps the seventh or eighth century,36 was part of an effort to sanctify the area officially and therefore prevent ad hoc gatherings where the populace, outside of the walls of churches and without the guidance of priests and bishops, appealed directly to their revered founder via his statue. This did not negate the importance of the site, but rather substituted the random events that took place there with high-level rituals carried out by emperor and patriarchs, about which we hear from Constantine VII in his Book of Ceremonies.37 The space within the chapel was also extremely limited and no doubt kept closed to the general public. The rumor about Constantine having put under the column all kinds of relics38 may bespeak some sort of way to render the very ground 34. Vit. Const. IV. 60; Cameron and Hall, Eusebius, Life of Constantine, 149. Theodoret, Church History 1.1; Theodoret, Kirchengeschichte, ed. L. Parmentier and F. Schweidler, GCS 44, 2nd ed. (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1954). 35. Philostorgius, Church History 2, 17; P. Amidon, Philostorgius: Church History (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2007), 35. 36. C. Mango, “Constantine’s Porphyry Column and the Chapel of St. Constantine,” Δελτίον XAE 10 (1981): 103–10. 37. A. Vogt, Constantin VII Porsphyrogénète: Le livre des cérémonies, 2 vols. (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1935), 1:67, 153. 38. M. Karamouzi, “Das Forum und die Säule Constantini in Kostantinopel: Gegebenheiten und Probleme,” Balkan Studies 27 (1986): 219–36.

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of Constantine’s forum holy, not to detract, as some might argue, from the paganism of the statue’s veneration. The fact that we find no mention of the chapel again after the tenth century, coupled with the statue’s fall from the column in 1106, only to be replaced by a simple cross, suggests that, since the statue was destroyed, the site was not restored and thus never used to that purpose again.39 Yet veneration of Constantine was not just directed toward his public image. A small statuette of the emperor with the diadem of Sol survives, which points to private veneration of Constantine (Fig. 2)40 a practice that was consonant with earlier times and previous emperors and perhaps occurred with later emperors as well.41

39. Mango, “Constantine’s Porphyry Column,” 108–9. Unfortunately there is nothing left of the statue, though other fragments of colossal statuary of Constantine survive to tell us the extensive power of his images. Perhaps greatest of all is the enormous marble sculpture that once sat within Constantine’s basilica at the edge of the forum in Rome. The function of this sculpture has rarely been a subject of conjecture, with the exception of Linda Safran, who suggested that Constantine’s colossus deliberately declared his divinity by mimicking similar temple images of Zeus and Jupiter (“What Constantine Saw: Reflections on the Capitoline Colossus, Visuality, and Early Christian Studies,” Millennium: Jahrbuch zu Kultur und Geschichte des ersten Jahrtausends n. Chr. 3 [2006], 43–73). Perhaps it promoted relatable responses in viewers, as well. 40. Now in the National Museum in Copenhagen (and perhaps others have survived of which I am unaware). For the veneration of statuettes in Late Antiquity by Christians, see K. Marsengill, “The Christian Reception of Sculpture in Late Antiquity and the Historical Reception of Late Antique Christian Sculpture,” Journal of the Bible and Its Reception 1, no. 1 (2014): 67–102. 41. A. St. Clair, “Imperial Virtue: Questions of Form and Function in the Case of Four Late Antique Statuettes,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 50 (1996): 147–62, provides a study of four late fourth-century statuettes that she identifies as imperial figures and proposes might have been venerated. For the cultic role of imperial portraits from the first through third centuries, see B. Schneider, Studien zu den kleinformatigen Kaiserporträts von dem Anfangen der Kaiserzeit bis ins dritte Jahrhundert (München, 1976).

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Fig. 2. Bronze statuette of Constantine, 4th c. Photo: The National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen.

While it is true that emperors were not universally worshiped as divinities, and even when posthumously apotheosized were

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recognized only divus, not deus,42 it was not uncommon to include shrine images in one’s home, including statuettes, of emperors both reigning and deceased. So we are told in a surviving inscription in Lugdunum that a certain freedman dedicated a votive shrine with what were likely statuettes of Augustus and Livia in the guises of Mercury and Maia, as well as a portrait of the reigning emperor Tiberius.43 A marble statuette now in the Louvre, representing Hadrian and Sabina (her portrait refashioned by his second wife Lucilla) as Mars and Venus, survives from the second century as a comparison. It is possible that Lucilla had the statuette reworked after Hadrian’s death to promote him as a god.44 The text and statuette, 42. See Price, “Between Man and God”; idem, Rituals and Power, passim. There have been numerous volumes written on the subject of Roman imperial cult, although the matter of emperor worship is still not entirely clarified, and most studies deal with public aspects instead of private practices. Imperial statues were placed within temples but not always venerated directly; instead priests made sacrifices to the gods of that temple on behalf of the emperor. In other instances, the emperor joined his cult to a higher deity in order to be venerated in conjunction with it, since it might be perceived as too far reaching to assume the guise of an immortal god instead of maintaining the status of semi-divine. At other times, the imperial cult was tied not to the person of the emperor but to his genius, numen, or comes. One could honor merely the emperor’s “genius,” or worship the emperor alongside a greater deity he claimed as his personal god, such as Jupiter or Sol Invictus. The goddess Dea Roma was also a common choice, tying the identity of the emperor with the personification of Rome, and equating his well-being with the peace and concord of the entire empire. See D. Fishwick, Imperial Cult in the Latin West, vol. 1 (Leiden: Brill, 1993), 46–82, 150–64; and idem, “Offerings to the Emperor?” Zeitschrift für Papyrologie and Epigraphik 80 (1990): 121–30, where he argues that no votive offerings were made to living emperors and only occasionally to deceased emperors, though they were never considered at the same level as the Olympian gods; G. W. Bowersock, “The Imperial Cult: Perceptions and Persistence (1982),” in Selected Papers on Late Antiquity (Munera 16) (Bari, 2000), 43–56; I. Gradel, Emperor Worship and Roman Religion (Oxford: Clarendon, 2004), who discusses the public and private aspects of imperial cult. For Late Antiquity, see MacCormack, Art and Ceremony in Late Antiquity, and MacMullen and Lane, Paganism and Christianity, 100-425 C.E., 74–78, for a selection of primary sources on the pagan imperial cult. 43. M. Koortbojian, The Divinization of Caesar and Augustus: Precedents, Consequences, Implications (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 161. See also J. Fejfer, Roman Portraits in Context (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2008), 399, for discussion of generic statuettes of togate figures (togatus capite velato), who, although without portraits, may have stood for the emperor or served as markers to indicate his cult. 44. H. Wrede, Consecratio in formam deorum: Vergöttlichte Privatpersonen in der Römischen Kaiserzeit (Mainz: Philipp von Zabern, 1981), 269–70.

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along with another metal statuette of the emperor Nero in the British Museum (Fig. 3) are but small remnants of an undoubtedly vast number of once-extant imperial images, including painted portraits,45 which are seldom discussed in the context of private veneration. Incense and wine offered to the imperial image was common as a way to honor the emperor, though the extent to which this was considered worship akin to that paid to the gods is debatable.46 Setting aside the question of one’s belief in the divinity of the emperor, we can see that this was not extraordinary behavior at a time in which ancestor and philosopher cults involved incensing their images and placing garlands and lamps nearby as means of honoring both the living and deceased. Wine and food were offered to graves, customs that continued right up through the Early Byzantine period.47 Such actions, and even praying to the images of loved ones, did not signify a belief in their divinity.48 It was more significant if one believed the power of the person to whom veneration was directed would be directed back toward the venerator, which suggests that most common persons were more likely to look for immediate benefactors, not imperial favor.

45. Nero’s statuette is in the British Museum. Although there is only one painted panel with imperial portraits that survives (of Septimius Severus and his family dated around 200 and now in the Staatliche Museen, Berlin), there is at least one instance of an icon of an equestrian god whose face may have been made with the portrait of the emperor Caracalla. There is also a text describing painted icons of the deified Augustus and Livia as well as Tiberius set up at a festival in Gythium. For discussion and bibliography, see K. Marsengill, Portraits and Icons: Between Reality and Spirituality in Byzantine Art (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 204 and n. 57. 46. Above n. 42. 47. MacMullen, Christianity and Paganism, 110–16. 48. On the various types of portraits that were venerated in Rome and Byzantium, see Marsengill, Portraits and Icons, passim.

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Fig. 3. Bronze statuette of Nero, 1st century CE. Photo: © The Trustees of the British Museum.

A little evidence suggests that prayers were directed toward some

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emperors and their statuettes or images, likely because these particular emperors were considered extraordinary even among the rulers of Rome, but also because they had direct bearing on the lives of the ones offering prayers. Only someone in the hierarchy with higher access would likely bother to expand his household shrine past the usual lares and ancestors, someone like Ovid, who kept statuettes of Augustus and Livia with their son and grandsons, to which he daily offered prayers and incense.49 Outside of intimate devotions, there is the rhetoric telling of an emperor’s power. Ovid speaks of how Augustus would one day ascend to heaven where he would listen to “our prayers though absent.”50 Within twenty-five years of Constantine’s death, some people, we are told, directed prayers to and were answered by the deceased Emperor Julian.51 Julian had also acted as an intercessor during his lifetime on at least one occasion, when he prayed to Poseidon to calm the sea.52 One might argue that this is all well and good for the pagans. Christians did not participate in emperor worship of this kind, as is well known from the early apologists who forbade it as well as the Jewish precedent of being granted exemption from the imperial cult. When Constantine became emperor, we can see how a new space was carved out in which the emperor could be venerated because he was God-appointed, not because he was divine. Yet pagan vestiges remained in practices such as praying at Constantine’s column and venerating statuettes of Constantine that were very likely kept in home shrines. The extent to which these supplicants were fully “Christianized” 49. Epist. ex. Pont. iv 9; Price, “Gods and Emperors: The Greek Language of the Roman Imperial Cult,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 104 (1984): 92. 50. Ovid, Met. 15, 868–70; MacCormack, Art and Ceremony in Late Antiquity, 99. 51. Libanius, Or. 18, 304; Price, “Gods and Emperors,” 92; MacCormack, Art and Ceremony in Late Antiquity, 135, 331 n. 203. 52. Libanius, Or. 18, 274; MacCormack, Art and Ceremony in Late Antiquity, 136.

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cannot be known. It is likely that they considered themselves fully Christian and saw no conflict of faith in their actions, no matter the censure of Philostorgius. Fourth-century Christians were living in a world where they could visualize the superhuman abilities of an emperor who existed far above mere mortals. They breathed an air thick with tradition. And, it was not only believable that such elevated men were capable of drawing the attention of God or other supernatural powers, it was perfectly acceptable and expected for their emperors to act on behalf of their people. Late Antique pagans and Christians did not give up their traditional beliefs, especially regarding rituals that had worked to secure the empire for centuries with grand expressions of prosperity, such as the circus games where blood sacrifices had been common until Constantine forbade them. Honoring the emperor in temples had been part of that continuous cycle, which continued under Constantine, though again without blood sacrifices. Such things united the disparate members of the city and empire and continued to do so. A cult statue of Theodosius I joined the Mithraeum at Sidon (to which his sons also contributed in their due time) and his image was added to the temple of Hadrian, carved in relief with representations of his wife and Arcadius, but also with goddesses Artemis, Athena, and Selene.53 These were the actions carried out in the age-old manner of venerating emperors within the gods’ temples, never mind Theodosius’ anti-pagan policies.54 And while Theodosius likely had full knowledge of the implications of being shown in the company of pagan gods within pagan temples, there are many more among the lesser folk of the empire who did not make clear distinctions. Christians could very well participate in 53. See F. Miltner, Ephesos, Stadt der Artemis und des Johannes (Vienna: Deuticke, 1958), 104–6; G. Fowden, “Bishops and Temples in the Eastern Roman Empire, a.d. 420-435,” Journal of Theological Studies 29, no. 1 (1978); 63–78, esp. 62; MacMullen, Christianity and Paganism, 35. 54. MacMullen, Christianity and Paganism, 35; F. Miltner, Ephesos, Stadt der Artemis und des Johannes, 104–6; Fowden “Bishops and Temples in the Eastern Roman Empire,” 63–78, esp. 62.

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pagan activities, and not just activities during which they knowingly and temporarily disregarded their religion. Rather, they believed their participation presented no conflict at all. Indeed, Christians believed in a multiplicity of supernatural sources, as revealed by the sermons of church fathers and in the material culture. Many citizens protested that they were doing nothing wrong, just as bishops were constantly reminding them they were in error. The story played out in the fourth and fifth centuries and even, indeed, well into the sixth century until bishops gained control of these rituals, sacralized them, directed them toward the cult of the saints, and took over pagan feast days and sites formerly dedicated to gods and lesser spirits.55 Christians seem genuinely confused as to why churchmen were preaching out against some of their behaviors, and it is safe to say many disregarded them.56 On more than one occasion, Augustine felt compelled to explain to his congregation that it is not, in fact, the case that people should worship God in anticipation of heavenly rewards and worship demons (pagan gods) in order to benefit here on earth.57 The phenomenon was widespread. So, too, did his Greek counterpart, John Chrysostom, address those in his congregation who believed in a variety of lesser powers to whom they directed their prayers for mundane blessings.58 As late as 429 Christians were seeking healing at the shrine of Isis in Alexandria, prompting Cyril to replace the sacred site of the goddess with a martyr’s relic.59 And yet the perception that the old powers lingered still is evident enough in numerous survivals of magical texts and talismans where we are reminded that Christians daily relied 55. MacMullen, Christianity and Paganism, passim. Rebillard, Christians and Their Many Identities in Late Antiquity, 71–72; Brown, Through the Eye of a Needle, 201–3. 56. Rebillard, Christians and Their Many Identities in Late Antiquity, esp. 61–91. 57. In. psalm. 34.1.1, In. psalm. 40.3, among others; Rebillard, Christians and Their Many Identities in Late Antiquity, 71–72. 58. Homily I: Against those who say demons govern human affairs. 59. MacMullen, Christianity and Paganism, 123–24.

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on a myriad of forces. An armband from Syria or Palestine made of a string of medallions has combined a Christian narrative scene of the Annunciation, the cross, text from Psalm 90, a boat’s prow that was a sign of victory and protection, and a holy rider that is completely ambiguous in its religious affiliation, divided by links with representations of the evil eye (Fig 4).60

Fig. 4. Amuletic armband, 6th or 7th c. Photo: The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore.

This probably belonged to a Christian who looked to Christ to express his religious faith, but also to other, more ancient powers for protection—a Christian who covered his bases. In another sermon, Augustine rhetorically mulled over a reply 60. From the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore; see G. Vikan, Early Christian Pilgrimage Art (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 2010), 66–69.

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that many members of his congregation had given him when he questioned their participation in a popular pagan holiday. When Augustine asked them why good Christians would worship as pagans do, they protested, “‘It isn’t a god . . . it’s the genius of Carthage.’”61 In Augustine’s complaint we see the ancient regard for civic deities still very much in place in Carthage—the bishop’s opposition as well as the contextual mindset of Christians who did not see anything contradictory in being a Christian and a citizen of Carthage honoring the civic deity just as generations before had done. The harmony and prosperity of the city relied upon such age-old celebrations. But this was not Constantinople, where Augustine’s words would likely have been disregarded. Similarly, Augustine’s preaching against the circus would hardly have had an effect in the capital, where the hippodrome served as a kind of temple to the emperor. To speak out against veneration of the emperor, or Constantine’s effigy in the annual celebration, might invite trouble, as it did for John Chrysostom, who brought about his own exile when he criticized the excessive displays of zeal the people directed toward the silver statue of Eudoxia when it was unveiled in the Augustaion in 404, even though the veneration of the statue had been carried out as it always had been regarding such images.62 As one author has so eloquently described the phenomenon of Late Antique religion, “In the spaces between [man and God] cult performs its magical tasks by supplication and conjuration.”63

61. Sermon 62, 10; passage translated in Rebillard, Christians and Their Many Identities in Late Antiquity, 77, who then argues here that it is not necessary that they believe this festival to be devoid of meaning, but rather, as citizens of Carthage, they felt that their Christian faith was not relevant in this context. See also MacMullen, Christianity and Paganism, 146. 62. Sozomen, Church History 8, 20. On the significance of imperial statuary in precious metals as declarative of divinity, see K. Scott, “The Significance of Statues in Precious Metals in Emperor Worship,” Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 62 (1931): 101–23. 63. A. Al-Azmeh, The Emergence of Islam in Late Antiquity: Allāh and His People (New York and Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 89.

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Besides, in the capital, the genius of the city of Constantinople was revered alongside the emperor. This, too, was instituted by Constantine. His golden effigy, processed in the hippodrome, held in its hand a representation of Tyche, the city’s deity which he had already transformed from a local goddess into the Roman Flora, renamed Anthousa, so as not to omit his power over Rome and yet make her unique.64 If we are to credit Zosimus, Constantine built temples to Roman Fortuna and Rhea Kybele, one of the city’s ancient protective goddesses, and within the porticoes of the Augustaion, their cult statues were prominently displayed.65 I see no reason to doubt that the statues were there, and even if not given sacred precincts, were kept for the obvious reasons that they were associated with the emperor and the empire. They were in the city square next to the palace that had been called the Tetrastoon until Constantine erected an honorific statue to his mother, Helena, at its center, perhaps aligning her identity, as well, with the protective goddesses of the city. These statues of female deities existed in sharp contrast to the much slower rise of the profile of the abutting basilica, the Hagia Sophia (interestingly, another female personification, albeit Christian), which was not dedicated until 360, long after Constantine’s death. Epigraphic and visual evidence reveals that Constantine and his successors kept the associations between emperor and these deities, especially Victory, but also Roma and Constantinopolis (Anthousa), very present in the empire.66 Imperial 64. Philostorgius, Chronographia I, 530; trans. Mango, Art Byz. Emp., 8. L. Lavan, “Political Talismans? Residual ‘Pagan’ Statues in Late Antique Public Space,” in The Archaeology of Late Antique ‘Paganism’, 439–78, discusses statues that still retained their important functions, including the tychaiom (451–52), which he argues lasted until the sixth century. 65. Zosimus, New History 2, 31; R. T. Ridely, Zosimus, A New History: A Translation with Commentary (Canberra: Australian Association for Byzantine Studies, University of Sydney, 1982), 38. Bassett, The Urban Image of Late Antique Constantinople, 155–56, argues that the statues merely decorated porticoes and were not set up in temples. For discussion of the patron deities of Byzantium and Constantinople, see V. Limberis, Divine Heiress: The Virgin Mary and the Creation of Christian Constantinople (New York: Routledge, 1994), esp. 15–20.

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coins likewise often include representations of Constantinopolis, until Christ appeared on Justin II’s gold solidus in the late seventh century.67 Shrine statuettes of Roma and Constantinopolis from this period survive as well (Fig. 5). Other very traditional images lauded the emperor in his capital over the late fourth century and into the fifth century. Theodosius surpassed Constantine by having a large monolithic obelisk imported from Egypt. At the base was carved his own image on each side. The visual evidence provided by the larger-than-life emperor seated in the palatial kathisma overseeing the circus games and receiving offerings undermines any Christian attempt to curtail this important display of imperial might (Fig. 6).

66. On victory ceremonial, M. McCormick, Eternal Victory: Triumphal Rulership in Late Antiquity, Byzantium and the Early Medieval West (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986); L. Lavan, “Political Talismans? Residual Pagan Statues in Late Antique Public Space,” in The Archaeology of Late Antique Paganism, ed. L. Lavan and M. Mulryan (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 439–78, discusses the ongoing significance of statues and images of Victory; for Roma and Constantinopolis, see M. C. Toynbee, “Roma and Constantinopolis in Late-Antique Art from 365 to Justin II,” Journal of Roman Studies 37 (1947): 135–44; G. Bühl, Constantinopolis und Roma: Stadtpersonifikationen der Spätantike (Kilchberg and Zürich: Akanthus, 1995); for the relationship between imperial cult and the personifications of Roma and/or Constantinople functioning in the traditional sense as his genius, first clearly applied in political rhetoric to Constantius II by Themistius, see MacCormack, “Roma, Constantinopolis, the Emperor, and His Genius.” She argues Sol-Invictus was Constantine’s comes (his divine protector); however, it is clear that he linked his cult with the city’s tyche, as well. Both MacCormack, Art and Ceremony in Late Antiquity, and Limberis, Divine Heiress, argue that the tyche was transformed into the Virgin as protectress by the sixth or seventh century. 67. For a coin of Justin II with Constantinopolis, see W. W. Wroth, Catalogue of Imperial Byzantine Coins in the British Museum, vol. 1 (London, 1908), pl. XI, 1.

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Fig. 5. Statuette of Anthousa, fourth century. Photo: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

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Fig. 6. Base of Theodosius’ obelisk, northwest face, ca. 390. Hippodrome, Istanbul. Photo: Wikimedia commons.

Imperial statues increasingly crowded the public spaces, the fora and porticoes. Not just for Eudoxia were the excessive demonstrations over her statue, as Theodosius II reminded his people to restrain themselves in front of his portrait and to direct their worship to the Supreme Deity alone.68 Columns with statues of emperors were erected for Theodosius I in the Forum Tauri, for his son Arcadius in a nearby forum, and for Theodosius II just outside the city at Hebdomon. When an earthquake displaced the statue of Theodosius I, though it miraculously remained upright at the base, the column was later recrowned with a bronze statue of Anastasius I in 504.69 68. De imagines imperialibus, delivered 5 May 425; C. Pharr, The Theodosian Code and Novels and the Sirmondian Constitutions (Union, NJ: The Lawbook Exchange, 2001), 432. 69. See Malalas, Chronographia 16.13; ed. I. Thurn, Ioannes Malalae Chronographia (Berlin, de

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Justinian’s equestrian statue topped his sixth-century column in erected in the Augustaeion. Marcian’s column, dated to around 450, drew on ancient apotheosis imagery. The statue has disappeared, but the column survives and the eagles representing the emperor carried aloft that were carved at each corner of the capital are still discernible (Fig. 7).70 All of this is not remarkable in itself. What is remarkable is that Christ did not make an appearance with the emperor in the Late Antique cityscape of Constantinople. Some may credit an early Christian aversion to sculpture and its idolatrous connotations. However, it is clear enough from recent reexamination that early Christian apologists, if those are to serve as our primary evidence, did not equate sculpture in general with idols but rather criticized those who mistook material fashioned by men into likenesses of false and nonexistent beings.71 Nevertheless, any fourth-century viewer in the streets of Constantinople, in the fora and the hippodrome, would have had impressed upon him the idea of an empire under the absolute rule of the emperor, not one overseen by the supreme God. It was not anything like the message that could be gleaned in the throne room of Michael III some four centuries later where the emperor sat under a mosaic of Christ enthroned.72 By then, the ideology of the emperor as the earthly appointed ruler in Christ’s stead was firmly in Gruyter, 2000), 328; English trans. C. Mango, Art of the Byzantine Empire 312-1453: Sources and Documents (Cambridge: Medieval Academy of America, 1986), 46. 70. W. Müller-Weiner, Bildlexicon zur Topographie Istanbuls: Byzantion-Konstantinupolis-Istanbul bis zum Beginn des 17. Jahrhunderts (Tübingen: Wasmuth, 1977), 54–55. 71. In general, see S. Bigham, Early Christian Attitudes Toward Images (Rollinsford, NH: Orthodox Research Institute, 2004); for a discussion of Tertullian’s text about Christians celebrating the imperial cult (Apology 35.2–3), see Rebillard, Christians and Their Many Identities in Late Antiquity, 28, who points out that Christians were doing all of which Tertullian was accusing them. However, Tertullian does not seem to say that celebrating the emperor is unchristian, only that there is a lack of decorum that characterizes the festivals that Christians should avoid (“Shall religion be reckoned an occasion for indulgence?”); text in MacMullen and Lane, Paganism and Christianity, 100-425 C.E., 78. 72. Anthol. graeca I, 106; see Mango (1986), 184.

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place with the visual vocabulary to complement it. By contrast, after Constantine’s death, Eusebius described a commemorative painting of the first Christian emperor that was copied and dispersed throughout the empire, visualizing his heavenly ascendance to abide with God; but the painting featured Constantine enthroned on the arc of heaven alone.73

Fig. 7. Column of Marcian, ca. 450, Istanbul. Photo: detail of Alessandro57 for Wikimedia commons.

A painting that had been above the palace gate while Constantine was still living had shown him, accompanied by his sons, trampling an evil serpent. God did not appear there, either. Nor did Christ; only 73. Vita Constantini IV, 69; Cameron and Herrin, Constantinople in the Early Eighth Century, 181.

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the christogram appeared above him, just as it appeared embossed on his helmet and shield in some of his minted coins. The perception of the emperor was quite different during Late Antiquity up until around the beginning of the fifth century. This was because the conception of God was different. The God of the Constantinian age was transcendent and immaterial, as was Christ, and their power was limited to the spiritual realm. Fourth-century Christianity “revered Christ, but it kept him out of this world.”74 The emperor, then, was the visible countenance of the invisible God and he retained pagan associations about divinity made present through the emperor. He was “praesens deus,” as a late fourth-century military oath recorded by Flavius Vegetius Renatus makes clear. In the standard oath, the soldiers swore by God, Christ, and the Holy Spirit. But they also swore “by the Majesty of the Emperor which second to God is to be loved and worshipped by the human race . . . faithful devotion should be given, unceasing homage paid him as if to a present and corporeal deity.”75 Indeed, it is not until the beginning of the fifth century that imperial images and images of Christ were seen together, and this occurred in God’s domain, the church.76 And we must look to the 74. Brown, Through the Eye of a Needle, 201. 75. Epitoma rei militaris II, 5; N. P. Milner, Vegetius: Epitome of Military Science (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2001), 35. Dagron, Emperor and Priest: Imperial Office in Byzantium, 131, says about the oath that it is not clear if Christian writers were making an original statement or revising imperial ideology, “when they so clearly went beyond what was acceptable to Christianity in lauding the emperor.” 76. What may be a portrait bust of Constantina appears in the barrel-vaulted ambulatory of her mausoleum outside Rome, where Christian images also are depicted. It would be fair enough to imagine Constantine’s portrait was placed inside the Apostoleion, as well as imagery related to the apostles and perhaps Christ, too (though more consistent would have been a jeweled cross); but there is no mention of any of this. In any case, both Constantina’s and Constantine’s monuments are imperial mausolea, not churches. In the early fifth-century San Giovanni Evangelista, dedicated by Galla Placidia in Ravenna, the apse program, we are told (since it is long gone), had clipeate portraits of several emperors and empresses with an image of Christ presented either in the apse or on the face of the apsidal arch. See Agnellus of Ravenna’s description of San Giovanni in D. Mauskopf Deliyannis, The Books of the Pontiffs of the Church of Ravenna (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2004), 151; for

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sixth century to find any extant images of the emperor and Christ occupying the same space. To bring to the fore the best example from the era, in the apse mosaic of the Church of San Vitale, Ravenna, Christ sits on a globe as if ruler of the cosmos, handing out a martyr’s crown and holding the apocalyptic scroll as if doling out legislation (Fig. 8).

Fig. 8. View of apse mosaic, San Vitale, Ravenna, ca. 545. Photo: author.

In the vision of Christ we recognize the iconography of rulership; it is hard not to draw upon the association. However, if we look at the portrait of the emperor Justinian in the adjoining mosaic panel, frontally static in his frozen procession, richly diademed and wearing a purple chlamys clasped by a fibula, neither he nor the iconography used to depict him looks anything like Christ (Fig. 9).

a reconstruction of the apse program, C. Ihm, Die Programme der christlichen Apsismalerei vom 4. Jahrhundert bis zur Mitte des 8. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 1960), 17.

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Fig. 9. View of mosaic panel featuring Emperor Justinian I and entourage, San Vitale, Ravenna, ca. 545. Photo: author.

Christ presents a similar jeweled crown to Saint Vitalis, but if one follows the direction of Christ’s gesture, the crown that is worn adorns the brow of the emperor depicted just below. It is as if to make a statement that the one who already wears the crown will carry it to heaven with him. He is not the perfect reflection of the heavenly ruler, but his own entity, apart from the clergy and yet at the head of it, an intercessor and yet outside of the hierarchy of the saints. 77 This is a crucial point to understand the relationship between imperial iconography and images of Christ as ruler. Until the fifth century, whatever visual language of power that artists, theologians, and ideologues employed for each, the contexts were not the same. Christ was the ruler of the sacred spaces of the churches, where bishops preached the greatness of the supreme God and the need for 77. J. Elsner, Art and the Roman Viewer: The Transformation of Art from the Pagan World to Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), esp. 177–89.

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all Christians to abandon their other gods. They do not, however, suggest that the emperor’s veneration should be abjured. It is not mere prudence, nor can this be attributed to a rapid reorganization of the understanding of imperial cult to fit Christian needs. Much had changed about the role of the emperor when Constantine ruled, and was still evolving a century later; but much stayed the same. The fourth-century emperor was the public face of God, but not a secularized god, at least not in the sense that we would understand the word. Rather, saeculum in the sense of “worldly,” those things close at hand.78 The emperor was to be venerated as the worldly aspect of an otherworldly God, who was beyond the reach of mortals and their everyday lives. Christians, in turn, embraced a number of other solutions to help them secure their well-being and prosperity, to the frustration of the bishops—turning to the gods of old, and to the rituals rightly belonging to the emperor, city, and empire to ensure their continued successes. They also retained their investments in power of their ancestors from beyond the grave, and increasingly the supernatural power of the martyrs and saints. That is, of course, another story, already well told. By way of conclusion I would quote Peter Brown about fourthcentury Christians from his recent monograph: . . . Christian monotheism had by no means drained the world of its numinous qualities. Christianity had merely placed a new god far above the visible universe. Christ was a high god. He was a god appropriate to another life, in another world beyond the stars. Since Constantine, Christ had also been the god of emperors. He was a high god, suitable to the high purposes of a head of state.79

Brown’s insight goes far to explain the mindset of Christians who saw a wider world filled with a multiplicity of powers. Constantine 78. Brown, Through the Eye of a Needle, 203. 79. Ibid., 202.

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adopted Christ as his divine protector, but kept the tyche and the associated goddesses of fortune and victory close at hand as part of a visual repertoire that stretched back centuries, yet also spoke of a new age. But he did not display himself next to Christ; rather, like his face substituted on the statue of Helios, Constantine became the face of Christ, whose visage could be seen and venerated in the churches. In fourth-century Constantinople, to travel between public adulation of the emperor and the interior worship of Christ was not to readjust one’s beliefs, to adapt to the different situations, to suspend one set of notions while engaged in the other. Emperor and Christ, civic and Christian were two focal points in an ellipse, visual markers around which circulated a well-ordered universe. The citizens of Constantinople participated by attending to its presentation, spectators at the edges of the hippodrome’s oval and filling the aisles around the long plan of the basilica of Hagia Sophia. Later, the ovoid and domed central space of the sixth-century Hagia Sophia would echo in finer detail and subtle manner the shape of the hippodrome. It was in these later centuries, the later antiquity and the beginning of the Byzantine Empire, that the emperor’s portrait would enter the church, with a new statement about the relationship between the emperor and Christ.

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9

Does the Hinton St. Mary Mosaic Depict Christ?

Adam Levine

The mosaic floor from Hinton St. Mary (Fig. 1)—originally from Dorset, England but now in the British Museum—may be the only extant mosaic of Christ from Late Antique Britain, although some scholars question whether the image does in fact depict the Son of God. Indeed, whether or not that image depicts Christ has been the subject of significant debate.1 1. While the literature on the Hinton St. Mary mosaic is particularly extensive, the first studies of the floor summarize much of the discussion. See especially: Jocelyn M. C. Toynbee, “A New Roman Mosaic Pavement Found in Dorset,” Journal of Roman Studies 55 (1964): 7–14; Marcel Simon, “Bellérophon chrétien,” in Mélanges offerts á Jérôme Carcopino (Paris: Hachette, 1966), 890–904; Hugo Brandenburg, “Bellerophon Christianus? Zur Deutung des Mosaiks von Hinton St. Mary und zum Problem der Mythendarstellungen in der kaiserzeitlichen dekorativen Kunst,” Römische Quartalschrift 63 (1968): 49–86; Stefan Hiller, Bellerophon: ein griechischen Mythos in der römischen Kunst (Münchner Archäologische Studien 1) (München, 1970),

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Fig. 1. Mosaic Floor, CE 325-375. Hinton St. Mary in Dorset, England. Photo: British Museum.

It is not my purpose here to determine the relative merits of arguments over whether the central image of the Hinton St. Mary mosaic illustrates Christ. As the very existence of the debate underscores, the mosaic can be interpreted in multiple ways by different viewers. What this essay does endeavor to demonstrate, however, is that the varied contemporary interpretations were very likely mirrored by multiple interpretations in antiquity as well. My project here, then, is to provide some plausible interpretations for an ambiguous and potentially non-Christian image for which we have a dearth of evidence concerning the artist’s and patron’s intents. This essay proceeds by first describing the mosaic, its iconography, and its archaeological context in two sections. The third section esp. 66ff. For an important early summary that identifies the image as Christ, see: Janet Huskinson, “Some Pagan Mythological Figures and Their Significance in Early Christian Art,” Papers of the British School in Rome 29 (1974): 73–78.

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broadens the context in which the mosaic is discussed to Late Antique Britain in order to demonstrate that the Second Sophistic interest in paideia, which was widespread across the empire from the second century on, should be extended to the discussion of Hinton St. Mary. The final section proposes both a general Christian reading of the mosaic floor and a more specific synkristic reading that would have been particular to a certain subgroup of Late Antique Christians. I. The Hinton St. Mary Mosaic The mosaic’s remains, which were found in 1963, spread over the floors of two rooms (sometimes called a “bipartite room”).2 Together, the whole mosaic measures nearly 550 square feet. In the larger room a central roundel depicts the bust of a man, flanked by pomegranates, with a chi-rho monogram behind his head (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2. Detail of Figure 1. Photo: British Museum.

Busts of four men, which probably were meant to represent the four winds but perhaps depict the four seasons, surround the central figure 2. On the topographical details and archeological context of the Hinton St. Mary mosaic, see especially: Kenneth S. Painter, “The Roman Site at Hinton St. Mary, Dorset,” The British Museum Quarterly 32 (1967): 15; Christopher C. Taylor, “The Later History of the Roman Site at Hinton St. Mary, Dorset,” The British Museum Quarterly 32 (1967): 31–35.

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in each corner of the room, while four lunettes on each side of the floor show three images of dogs chasing deer and one image of a tree. In the smaller room the floor mosaic consists of three panels. In the central panel a roundel, larger in size than the one with the chi-rho monogram, shows Bellerophon mounted on Pegasus and in the act of slaying the Chimera with his spear.3 The flanking scenes show dogs in jeweled collars chasing stags. The borders and gaps between these major panels are filled with geometric and vegetal decorations.4 The mosaic may have been commissioned by the owner of the “villa” or it may also have been repurposed for the individual’s floor; there has been some discussion over whether the mosaic was intended originally for a vault (perhaps at some other location), although that suggestion seems rather unlikely.5 Whoever commissioned it, the mosaic was manufactured by a local British workshop, one of several working in Late Antiquity.6 The specific workshop has been identified on the basis of style, iconography, and method as the same that laid floors for a number of other southern British villas.7 The mosaic has been dated roughly to the fifty years between 325 and 375 ce, with at least one scholar suggesting on the basis of the bust3. Cf. Jocelyn M. C. Toynbee, The Christian Roman Mosaic, Hinton St. Mary, Dorset: Dorset Monographs No. 3 (Dorset, 1964), 5. 4. On the iconography of the Hinton St. Mary Mosaic, see: Toynbee, “A New Roman Mosaic Pavement,” esp. 8–10. 5. For the suggestion, see: Kenneth S. Painter, “The Design of the Roman Mosaic at Hinton St. Mary,” Antiquaries Journal 56 (1976): 49–54. 6. For a discussion of Romano-British mosaic workshops, see especially: David J. Smith, “The Mosaic Pavements,” in The Roman Villa in Britain, ed. Albert L. F. Rivet (London, 1969), 71–125; David E. Johnston, “The Central Southern Group of Romano-British Mosaics,” in Roman Life and Art in Britain: A Celebration in Honour of the Eightieth Birthday of Jocelyn Toynbee, Volume 1, ed. Julian Munby and Martin Henig (Oxford, 1977), 195–215; Peter Johnson, “Town Mosaics and Urban Officinae,” in Roman Towns: The Wheeler Inheritance, ed. Stephen J. Greep (London, 1993), 147–65. On specific workshops, see: Peter Johnson, “The Ilchester-Lindinis Officina,” Mosaic 8 (1983): 5–8; Stephen R. Cosh, “The Lindinis Branch of the Corinian Saltire Officina,” Mosaic 16 (1989): 14–19. 7. David J. Smith, “Three Fourth-Century Schools of Mosaic in Roman Britain,” in La mosaïque gréco-romaine I, ed. Henri Stern (Paris, 1965), 101–2; Martin Henig, The Art of Roman Britain (London, 1995), 124–25.

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figure’s hairstyle (which parallels that on coinage of Constantius II) that the mosaic dates from circa 345 ce (Fig. 3).8

Fig. 3. Solidus of Constantius II, ca. CE 352. Photo: American Numismatic Society.

There has been debate concerning whether the mosaic served a ritual function, a suggestion that in turn has resulted in some speculation that the Hinton St. Mary site may have been a shrine or church of some sort.9 Although scholarly consensus falls against the position, the better rebuttal is that even if Hinton St. Mary did serve a religious function, it also served as a house—that is, at the very most Hinton St. Mary was a “house-church.”10 As such, even if the room served a religious purpose, it was also a functional room in a wealthy individual’s villa. Armed with this information, what can we say about whether the

8. Cf. Richard Reece, “A Date for Hinton St. Mary?,” Mosaic 2 (1980): 21–22; W. H. C. Frend, The Archaeology of Early Christianity: A History (Minneapolis, 1996), 351. See also: T. Sam N. Moorehead, “The Hinton St. Mary Head of Christ and a Coin of Magnentius,” in Image, Craft and the Classical World: Essays in Honour of Donald Bailey and Catherine Johns, ed. Nina Crummy (Montagnac, 2005), 209–12. 9. See especially: Charles Thomas, Christianity in Roman Britain to CE 500 (Berkeley, 1981), 181–83. 10. Cf. Kenneth S. Painter, “Villas and Christianity in Roman Britain,” The British Museum Quarterly 35 (1971): 166–67.

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roundel in the larger room is Christ? Those in favor of understanding the image as Christ draw on several pieces of evidence, most notably the presence of the chi-rho monogram behind the figure’s head.11 The association between the chi-rho and Christ, already well established in other parts of the Empire, appears to extend to Britain; a roughly contemporaneous wall-plaster from Lullingstone shows the monogram flanked by an alpha and an omega (Fig. 4), an apparent reference to Rev. 22:13.12

Fig. 4. Wall-Plaster, fourth century CE. Lullingstone, Kent, England. Photo: British Museum.

Also marshaled by the “Christ camp” are iconographical similarities including: (1) the bust’s facial features (which are similar to other beardless images of Christ), (2) the figure’s tunica and pallium (in which Christ was frequently depicted), and (3) the flanking pomegranates (which were used in early Christian art as an allusion to paradise and, more generally, salvation).13 The final piece of evidence 11. See especially: Toynbee, The Christian Roman Mosaic, 11–14. 12. On Lullingstone, see especially: Geoffrey Wells Meates, The Roman Villa at Lullingstone (Maidstone, 1987). On the wall-plaster in question, see especially: Kenneth S. Painter, “The Lullingstone Wall-Plaster: An Aspect of Christianity in Roman Britain,” The British Museum Quarterly 33 (1969): 131–50. 13. On the pomegranates, see: Dominic Perring, “‘Gnosticism’ in Fourth-Century Britain: The

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DOES THE HINTON ST. MARY MOSAIC DEPICT CHRIST?

in support of interpreting the figure as Christ is a law passed by Theodosius II and Valentinian III, dated to 427 ce, that seems to prohibit the depiction of Christ on floors.14 Such a decree may imply that there was a substantial enough practice of depicting Christ on floors in the years before 427 to warrant such a piece of legislation. Despite the seemingly compelling grounds for identifying the figure in question as Christ, each of these arguments can be questioned. The chi-rho monogram could have been seen as a general sign of victory associated, above all else, with the emperor and, more specifically, with the Constantinian dynasty.15 The iconographical parallels with Christ, while all true, are also all probably overstated. The tunica and pallium were used frequently to depict philosophers or nobility; the pomegranate is nonspecific to Christian iconography; and, as we have already seen, the image in the roundel is similar enough to imperial imagery on coinage to at least give pause to anyone seeking to designate the figure as Christ beyond a shadow of a doubt. As far as the law prohibiting floor mosaics of Christ is concerned, the law could also be read literally as evidence for the disapproval of such a practice. Given that the floor at Hinton St. Mary is possibly the only image of Christ from Roman Britain, it seems dangerous to extrapolate a tradition of floor representations of Christ on the basis of this one, ambiguous image. In other words, the figure in question certainly could have been interpreted as Christ; it equally could have been interpreted as an emperor, a hybrid deity, or perhaps something that would have been obvious then but that is now lost to us (i.e., the owner of Frampton Mosaics Reconsidered,” Britannia 34 (2003): 107–8. On the relationship with Orphism, see: Paul Arthur, “Eggs and Pomegranates: An Example of Symbolism in Roman Britain,” in Roman Life and Art in Britain, Volume 2, 370–71. 14. Codex Iustinianus 1.8.1, “. . . signum Salvatoris Christi nemini licere vel in solo vel in silice vel in marmoribus humi positis insculpere vel pirgere, sed quodcumque reperitur tolli . . . ,” 15. Cf. Hiller, Bellerophon, 82. On the chi-rho’s association with victory (although he identifies the bust as Christ), see especially: Brandenburg, “Bellerophon christianus?,” 81–85.

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the villa whose appearance we can never know).16 Before exploring how those interpretations might have co-mingled, it is necessary to consider the physical and intellectual contexts that would have shaped viewers’ interpretations of the mosaic, not least because there is no obvious reason to identify the beardless image from Hinton St. Mary as Christ. As we shall see in a later section, there was a rich tradition of synkrisis between Bellerophon and Christ, but none of this helps to identify the ambiguous figure as the Son of God; after all, Bellerophonic synkriseis were possible with the emperor, a noble villa-owner, or any number of possible individuals that the Hinton St. Mary floor could be thought to illustrate. The remainder of this essay will explore how a Late Antique “Christian” visitor to the villa at Hinton St. Mary may have made sense of this ambiguous mosaic. In the course of this discussion, a new synkristic interpretation of the floor will be offered that all Christian visitors to the Hinton St. Mary villa may have shared. Late Antique Christianity, however, was comprised of different subgroups, many of which had somewhat different theologies. As such, within the broadly standard reading offered here, a more nuanced variant will be offered that can accommodate one possible interpretation by viewers who adhered to a particular “type” of Late Antique Christianity. Before building these arguments though, it is necessary to look at the physical and intellectual contexts that would have shaped viewers’ interpretations of the Hinton St. Mary floor. II. The Physical Context: The Function of the “Mosaic Rooms” Whatever the intellectual and religious contexts for interpreting the 16. For the most compelling argument that the figure represents an emperor, see: Susan Pearce, “The Hinton St. Mary Mosaic: Christ or Emperor?,” Britannia 39 (2008): 193–218. For an argument that the figure represents a syncretic deity, see: Roy T. Eriksen, “Syncretistic Symbolism and the Christian Roman Mosaic at Hinton St. Mary: A Closer Reading,” Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society 102 (1980): 43–48.

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Hinton St. Mary mosaics in Late Antiquity, all viewers, regardless of background, would have experienced our floor in a way circumscribed by the architectural setting of the villa.17 Although concerned with Spanish and North African mosaics, Susanne Muth’s Erleben von Raum—Leben in Raum provides one model for how to approach viewer experience at Hinton St. Mary. Muth rightly criticizes attempts to enforce overly reductive, monolithic readings onto

mosaics,

preferring

instead

to

allow

interpretations to arise from viewer experience.

many

possible

18

The rooms paved with our mosaic have been likened both to a triclinium and a forecourt. Although it is entirely possible that the room may have been used for either purpose (or both), it is more likely that the rooms were intended to function as reception chambers.19 During the fourth century, Roman Britain saw the introduction of apsidal triclinia and stibadia as well as the semi-circular marble table, the sigma, which appeared alongside them.20 Bignor villa in Sussex and the villas from Lullingstone and Frampton, which 17. Cf. Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, “The Social Structure of the Roman House,” Papers of the British School at Rome 56 (1988): 43–97; Rolf A. Tybout, “Roman Wall-Painting and Social Significance,” Journal of Roman Archaeology 14 (2001): 33–56. For a Romano-British case study, see: Sarah Scott, Art and Society in Fourth-Century Britain: Villa Mosaics in Context, Oxford University School of Archaeology Monographs 53 (Oxford, 2000), esp. ch. 5. 18. Susanne Muth, Erleben von Raum—Leben in Raum: zur Funktion mythologischer Mosaikbilder in der römisch-kaiserzeitlichen Wohnarchitektur (Heidelberg, 1998). 19. Patricia Witts calls the room a “non-dining,” “non-private” reception room, although the dismissal of dining activities may be overly restrictive. See: Patricia Witts, “Mosaics and Room Function: The Evidence from Some Fourth-Century Romano-British Villas,” Britannia 31 (2000): 320. On the possibility for the use of our room in dining, see: Stephen R. Cosh, “Seasonal Dining Rooms Romano-British Houses,” Britannia 32 (2001): 219–42. Cosh actually agrees with Witts that the primary function of the Hinton St. Mary room was probably not related to dining, but he does admit that his conclusion is uncertain (p. 239) and he also provides a compelling argument for multiple uses of Romano-British villa rooms. 20. Cf. Katherine Dunbabin, “Convivial Spaces: Dining and Entertainment in the Roman Villa,” Journal of Roman Archaeology 9 (1996): 66–80; Simon P. Ellis, “Late-Antique Dining: Architecture, Furnishings and Behaviour,” in Domestic Space in the Roman World: Pompeii and Beyond—Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplementary Series Number 22, ed. Ray Laurence and Andrew Wallace-Hadrill (Portsmouth, 1997), 41–42.

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will be discussed in more detail in the following section, provide only some of the many local examples of a trend that appears to have been widespread across the empire.21 The Hinton St. Mary rooms, however, are plainly rectangular, a fact that suggests either that the larger room with the problematic roundel was not intended as a ceremonial dining room or that it diverged from the general trend of including an apsidal niche. While the latter possibility cannot be ruled out categorically, it seems unlikely for two reasons. First, the mosaic’s style and the majority of the iconography are similar to other Late Antique villas from Britain. While the beardless figure is important, discrepant, and the focus of much of the scholarship on the floor, the image of Bellerophon occurs in several other mosaics from Roman Britain (see the following section). Scenes of the hunt, geometric ornament, vegetation, and personifications were also mainstays of British mosaic decoration, as they were across the empire.22 In short, the Hinton St. Mary mosaic is more similar to other mosaic floors than it is different, so it is difficult to understand why its owners may have retained a rectangular triclinium against the prevailing trend of the time. Second, one “functional” purpose of the apsidal structure (and its sigmoidal seating) is that by setting the diners back, they could see the entire room; by contrast, it would be difficult not to obstruct a floor mosaic in a rectangular dining room.23 Perhaps the floor was made to be covered, although such a suggestion seems somewhat counterintuitive. While the iconography itself remains constant whatever the use of 21. Cf. Sarah Scott, “The Power of Images in the Late Roman House,” Domestic Space in the Roman World, 53–59. 22. Cf. Richard Brilliant, “The Hunt,” in Age of Spirituality, Catalogue, ed. Kurt Weitzmann (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1979), 83–91. 23. Katherine Dunbabin, “Triclinium and stibadium,” in Dining in a Classical Context, ed. William J. Slater (Ann Arbor, 1991), 125–28 and 135; Witts, “Mosaics and Room Function,” 309–10.

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DOES THE HINTON ST. MARY MOSAIC DEPICT CHRIST?

the room, the viewers’ experiences of the images change dramatically depending on the room’s use, not least because in the case of a meal it is not clear how much or what parts of the floor may have been obstructed. Complicating matters still further, the use of rooms in Late Antiquity appears to have been less standardized than we might imagine. What may have functioned as a reception hall on one visit may have been the location of a dinner the next. As the owners and repeat visitors experienced the images on the floor in different situations, alternative meanings may have presented themselves. It is impossible to document all these various (re-)interpretations; however, it is important to acknowledge that the exigencies of “real life” detract from what we can intuit about Late Antique art and its reception. We can still say with a modicum of certainty that at least some visitors would have experienced the rooms housing the Hinton St. Mary floor mosaic as a reception hall. Such a conclusion is strengthened by the similarity of our rooms to other reception areas, like the rooms from the villa from the site of Woodchester (Fig. 5). The British Museum excavations of Hinton St. Mary found that the mosaics come from a set of rooms at the northeastern edge of a structure some thirty meters in length. At Woodchester the reception hall contained a considerably larger mosaic of Orpheus (about 100 meters in length) that also was found at the northern edge of a villa (Fig. 6).

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Fig. 5. Sketch of Movement Pattern at the site of Woodchester, from Scott, “The power of images in the late Roman house,” 63.

Fig. 6. Mosaic Floor, fourth century CE. Woodchester, Gloucestershire, England. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

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DOES THE HINTON ST. MARY MOSAIC DEPICT CHRIST?

Both sets of rooms, despite their differing sizes, have similar layouts featuring smaller, thinner vestibules decorated with “dynamic” action scenes that sit in front of larger, main rooms with “static” images set in large roundels. This layout, which was typical of reception areas in Romano-British villas,24 ensures a certain experience of the space. As an individual entered the vestibule, s/he would have been propelled forward by the movement of the dynamic scenes into the main reception hall where a larger, static, well-framed mosaic would offer an opportunity for contemplation. In interpreting the image in the main reception area, however, a viewer inevitably would have referred back to the mosaic in the vestibule. The juxtaposition of the two images and the order in which they were viewed would have affected how the iconographical program as a whole was understood; and as the next section attempts to demonstrate, one structural paradigm for interpreting the mosaic floor would have been reliant on an elite viewer’s paideia. III. The Social Context: Paideia in Roman Britain To state the obvious, paideia was not a British invention, and if paideia made its way to Britain then it stands to reason that it would have been imported, if not directly from the eastern empire then “downthe-line” by successive waves of cultural transmission originating in the east.25 Mechanisms supporting either type of import are not hard to imagine. Movements of people and the transportation of goods through trade provide somewhat stochastic methods of transferring

24. Scott, “The Power of Images in the Late Roman House,” 61–66. 25. See especially: W. H. C. Frend, “A note on the influence of Greek immigrants on the spread of Christianity in the West,” in Mullus: Festschrift Theodor Klauser, Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum—Ergänzungs Volume 1, ed. Alfred Stuiber and Alfred Hermann (Münster, 1964), 125–29; Edward Champlin, Fronto and Antonine Rome (Cambridge, 1980), 29–44. See also: Johannes Hahn, Der Philosoph und die Gesellschaft: Selbstverständnis, öffentliches Auftreten und populäre Erwartungen in der hohen Kaiserzeit (Stuttgart, 1989), 175–76.

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certain cultural attributes from one locale to another. Other, more clearly defined channels existed as well, such as the appointment of governors. As late at the early fifth century, non-British governors were still being appointed to manage the province: Chrysanthus, who probably served under Honorius, was born in Constantinople and spent time in Italy before being appointed governor of Britain.26 More direct still, nearly a century earlier an imperial presence was established near York when Constantius Chlorus retired to the northern British city.27 Although York was certainly never the equivalent of Rome, we can imagine a certain courtly infrastructure emerging around the new capital.28 However paideia crossed the Channel, its presence would indicate that the thought structures associated with it would have been in use. This implies that rhetoric and its attendant concepts, especially synkrisis, would have been part of the interpretive discourse. As such, for viewers of the Hinton St. Mary mosaic familiar with the central concepts of paideia, a synkrisis of the two roundels may have been a perfectly natural framework for understanding the iconography. The question then is: Although we may be able to imagine mechanisms for transmitting paideia at an abstract level, do we have firm material evidence that paideia was important in Britannia? Little had been written on the role of paideia in Britannia until the past several decades.29 An increasing number of scholars, however, 26. Michael E. Jones, The End of Roman Britain (Ithaca, 1998), 154. 27. Cf. Paul Bidwell, “Constantius and Constantine at York,” in Constantine the Great: York’s Roman Emperor, ed. Elizabeth Harley, Jane Hawkes, and Martin Henig (York, 2006), 31–40. For an earlier and more general account, see: R. G. Collingwood and John N. L. Myres, Roman Britain and English Settlements (New York, 1928), 277–79. 28. Cf. Jocelyn M. C. Toynbee, Art in Roman Britain (London, 1962), 198; Roger Ling, “Brading, Brantingham and York: A New Look at Some Fourth-Century Mosaics,” Britannia 22 (1991): 154–57. 29. For exceptions, see: Anthony A. Barrett, “Knowledge of the Literary Classics in Roman Britain,” Britannia 9 (1978): 307–13; Sarah Scott, “Elites, Exhibitionism and the Society of the Late Roman Villa,” in Landscapes of Change: Rural Evolutions in Late Antiquity and the Early

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have turned their focus to the existence of classical learning in Roman Britain, a trend that reached its culmination with Ruth LeaderNewby’s important and recent contribution on Late Antique British silver.30 The importance of Leader-Newby’s study (as well as those that preceded hers) is that it argues that paideia was pronounced, among other places, in the elite domestic sphere.31 Several pieces of evidence support the assertion that paideia was present among the upper classes in Roman Britain, including a number of mythological scenes from floor mosaics.32 One scholar has gone so far as to suggest that the mosaic scenes and their compositional similarity to the literary sources from which they were excerpted suggest an intimate understanding of ancient Greek literature.33 Indeed, a familiarity with Middle Ages, ed. Neil Christie (Aldershot, 2004), 52. On the Latin Provinces, see: Peter Brown, The World of Late Antiquity (London, 1971), 115–22; Greg Woolf, Becoming Roman: The Origins of Provincial Civilization in Gaul (Cambridge, 1998), 54–77. 30. Ruth E. Leader-Newby, Silver and Society in Late Antiquity: Functions and Meanings of Silver Plate in the Fourth to Seventh Centuries (Aldershot, 2004), 123ff. For an earlier work that implies the expression paideia occurred across the empire, see: Katherine M. D. Dunbabin, The Roman Banquet: Images of Conviviality (Cambridge, 2003), 141ff. For the “phenomenon” driving Dunbabin’s observations, see: Simon P. Ellis, “The End of the Roman House,” American Journal of Archaeology 92 (1988): 565–76. 31. Nicholas F. Hudson, Dining in the Late Roman East, Ph.D. Book (University of Minnesota, 2006). On the expression of personal identity in houses more generally, see: Wallace-Hadrill, “The Social Structure of the Roman House,” 43–97; Ellis, “Late-Antique Dining: Architecture, Furnishings and Behaviour,” 41–52. For a critique pointing out the use of paideia in nondomestic settings, see: Anthony Cutler, “Review: Silver and Society in Late Antiquity: Functions and Meanings of Silver Plate in the Fourth to Seventh Centuries by Ruth E. LeaderNewby,” American Journal of Archaeology 109 (2005): 820–22. 32. Cf. David J. Smith, “Mythological Figures and Scenes on Romano-British Mosaics,” in Roman Life and Art in Britain, Volume 1, 105–58; Bryn Walters, “Fourth Century ‘Orphic’ Halls in Britain,” Mosaic 7 (1982): 23–26; Sarah Scott, “An outline of a new approach for the interpretation of Romano-British mosaics, and some comments on the possible significance of Orpheus mosaics in fourth-century Roman Britain,” Journal of Theoretical Archaeology 2 (1991): 29–35; Anthony J. Beeson, “Venus and the Fan,” Mosaic 22 (1995): 4–14; Patricia Witts, “Bacchus on Romano-British Mosaics,” Mosaic 22 (1995): 15–19. 33. Cf. Barrett, “Knowledge of the Literary Classics,” 307ff. See also: Roger Ling, “Roman Mosaics in Fourth-Century Britain: Classical Values in a Disintegrating World,” Apollo 144 (1996): 16–22; Roger Ling, “Three Inscriptions on Romano-British Mosaics,” in Otium: Festschrift für Volker Michael Strocka, ed. Thomas Ganschow and Matthias Steinhart (Remshalden, 2005), 219–22.

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Greek language is implied by a set of inscriptions found on mythological floor mosaics from a villa at Aldborough in Yorkshire,34 perhaps partially explained by the proximity to Constantius’ court. The inscriptions, which some have argued are a signal of a “classical education,”35

identify

Mount

Helicon

(ΕΛΗΚΩΝ)

and,

in

36

fragmentary but clear Greek lettering, a muse. Of the Aldborough inscriptions, Roger Ling sums up the situation admirably: Did the diners who saw the figures while reclining on a stibadium in the room’s apse all really know Greek, or were the labels designed to show off the patron’s bilingualism? There are very few inscriptions in Greek on mosaics in the North-Western provinces. The exceptions known to me are a third-century pavement at Cologne with labelled portraits of Greek dramatists and thinkers, and a late second-century one in Autun containing portraits of Epicurus, Metrodorus, and Anacreon accompanied by lengthy quotations in Greek. In each case there is a conscious display of literary culture, and the Aldborough Muses must be seen in a similar light. Even if the labels were conventional, being taken without comprehension from copy-books, the very use of Greek made a statement about cultural affiliation.37

It is perhaps not surprising that Autun appears as a parallel; Eumenius’s panegyric For the Restoration of the Schools, delivered in and concerned with Autun, is the most Isocrotean panegyric of all the Panegyrici Latini. Eumenius’ background—he claims to have had an Athenian grandfather—and the form of his panegyrikos is an indication not only of paideia in that Western city but also that there was some degree of movement across the empire. With such 34. Janine Lancha, Mosaïque et culture dans l’Occident romain Ie-IVe s. (Rome, 1997), 318–23; David S. Neal and Stephen R. Cosh, Roman Mosaics of Britain, Volume 1: Northern Britain (London, 2002), 314–18. 35. See especially: Smith, “Mythological Figures and Scenes,” 119f. See also: Reinhard Stupperich, “A Reconsideration of Some Fourth-Century British Mosaics,” Britannia 11 (1980): 290. 36. Roger Ling, “Inscriptions on Romano-British Mosaics and Wall-Paintings,” Britannia 38 (2007): 71–74. 37. Ling, “Inscriptions on Romano-British Mosaics and Wall-Paintings,” 87.

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movement, of course, traditions would have been carried from place to place. Is there any British parallel to Eumenius—that is, do we have any evidence for a direct transmission from the east to Britannia? Although far from direct, a key iconographic element of the Hinton St. Mary mosaic, the use of pomegranates, implies a cultural movement between the halves of the empire. Pomegranates, of course, are not autochthonous to Britain; their relatively accurate representation, however, suggests cultural interchange with areas from which they are harvested. The conduit for such exchange may have been through the circulation of elite cultural artifacts since the only known examples of pomegranates from Roman Britain are found either on villa mosaics or silver jewelry.38 More robust evidence for cultural exchange between the east and the west has been found at the site of Corbridge in Northumberland (near Newcastle). Corbridge is perhaps best known as the find-spot for the much-discussed “Corbridge Lanx,” an object that several scholars have suggested includes distinctly “eastern” characteristics 39 The lanx, a silver tray, depicts an unidentified but transparently mythological scene set in a bucolic landscape.40 Two registers of carefully

modeled

figures—animals

on

the

bottom

and

anthropomorphic figures on the top—are encircled by a finely detailed vegetal border that runs around the periphery of the platter. Whatever the relationship of this object with eastern workshops, the more interesting piece of evidence for direct contact with the east

38. Thomas, Christianity in Roman Britain, 95; Arthur, “Eggs and Pomegranates,” 367ff.; Catherine Johns, The Jewellery of Roman Britain: Celtic and Classical Traditions (London, 1996), 142. 39. Cf. P. Gardner, “A Silver Dish from the Tyne,” The Journal of Hellenic Studies 35 (1915): 71; Otto Brendel, “The Corbridge Lanx,” The Journal of Roman Studies 31 (1941): 106 and 125. For a discussion of the potential eastern influence on other silverwork, see: W. H. C. Frend, “Syrian Parallels to the Water Newton Treasure?,” Jahrbuch für Antike und Christentum 27/28 (1984–85): 146–50. 40. In all likelihood the composition presents Artemis approaching Apollo at his shrine with an oracle seated above an altar; who the other two female figures represent is less clear.

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is an inscription from the same site that records a Greek dedication from a priestess of Herakles of Tyre to her patron deity.41 Although the relationship between the inscription and the lanx can only be a subject for speculation, the latter provides insight into how an object like the lanx may have been commissioned. As with the mosaics from Aldborough, the Corbridge Lanx was a domestic object that would have been used in an elite setting, presumably for entertaining (perhaps for service during a meal). Whatever its functional purpose, the lanx also served to communicate the wealth and paideia of its owners through its mythological iconography and classicizing style. The inscription, on the other hand, attests to the presence of an eastern cult as well as some understanding of the Greek language. The diffusion of this cult from Tyre to Corbridge and the language of the inscription both imply a movement of people and ideas that may have served as the same channel by which paideia was transferred. That is, the demand for an object like the lanx in many ways presupposes a certain type of client whose existence is implied by our inscription. The

inscriptions

from

Corbridge

and

Aldborough

are

complemented by a number of engraved gemstones, many of which were incorporated into rings that also featured Greek text.42 The gems and rings almost certainly would have been owned by members of the elite; many are made of extremely rare and precious materials, such as the ring from Stonham Aspal in Suffolk (now in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford) which is set in gold (of 97 percent purity) and is one of the few examples of a sapphire found in the western provinces.43 In conjunction with the Aldborough and 41. Cf. Eve Harris and John Richard Harris, The Oriental Cults in Roman Britain, Volume 6 (Leiden, 1965), 26. 42. Cf. John Boardman and Diana Scarisbrick, The Ralph Harari Collection of Finger Rings (London, 1977), no. 36; Martin Henig, A Corpus of Roman Engraved Gemstones from British Sites, British Archaeological Reports—British Series 8 (Oxford, 1978 [1974]), esp. nos. 742–43.

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Corbridge inscriptions, these gems indicate a degree of linguistic heterogeneity not normally discussed in the case of Roman Britain. More important, the use of Greek occurs on objects that would have been commissioned by aristocrats. The premium placed on language and its juxtaposition with mythological scenes in various media provides compelling evidence that the Second Sophistic values enshrined in paideia had followed the route of Herakles’ priestess or Hinton St. Mary’s pomegranates and found their way to Late Antique Roman Britain. It follows then that the Hinton St. Mary floor, which after all was located in an elite domestic setting, would have been situated within this same cultural matrix. More specific to our mosaic, scenes like the mythological emblema of Bellerophon and Pegasus slaying the Chimera were embedded in the elite literary culture of prosaic commentary. An example, albeit a much earlier one (from the third century bce), that encapsulates the type of conversation that occurred around these subjects is recorded by the epigrammatic poet Posidippus, who recounts an artist’s production of a gem engraved with the image of Pegasus. As Kathryn J. Gutzwiller translates the epigram: Pegasus etched upon misty jasper—the artist’s Hand and mind working together, have caught it, superbly: Bellerophon has fallen to Cilicia’s Aelian Plain, his colt has pranced off into the deep blue sky—and so he carved him, on this ethereal stone, free of the reins, shuddering, still, at the bit.44

While the subjects of the epigram and the Hinton St. Mary mosaic 43. C. Frances Mawer, “A Lost Ring from Suffolk,” Britannia 20 (1989): 237–41. On an earlier, potentially imperial ring, see: Martin Henig, “The Victory-Gem from Lullingstone Roman Villa,” Journal of the British Archaeological Association 160 (2007): 1–7. 44. Posidippus, II.33–38, in Frank Nisetich, “The Poems of Posidippus,” in The New Posidippus: A Hellenistic Poetry Book, ed. Kathryn J. Gutzwiller (Oxford, 2005), 20. For the Latin, see: Posidippus, II.33–38, in Posidippi Pellaei quae supersunt omnia, ed. Colin Austin and Guido Bastianini (Milan, 2002), no. 14.

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correspond closely, the more important point here is that there was a well-developed tradition of interpreting elite objects with mythological scenes in erudite ways that continued throughout Late Antiquity. Consider as an example Ausonius, a fourth-century ce rhetor and epigrammatic poet (to whom we will return in greater detail below), who composes a poem in which he wishes “May Pegasus hereafter run on your right side . . .”45 Although Ausonius’ poem refers to Pegasus as one of the four horses in Phosphorus’ quadriga,46 the point is that excurses on mythology were an appropriate means for articulating paideia. The scene of Bellerophon from Hinton St. Mary was exactly the type of scene with an entrenched history in this interpretive discourse. It thus seems that there is good reason to suppose that paideia was an important component of elite Romano-British culture, and that the subject of the Hinton St. Mary floor may have facilitated discussions that would have allowed individuals to express their knowledge. What remains unclear, however, is whether Christians in Late Antique Britain necessarily would have shared the paideia that can be imputed to certain non-Christian elites. Fortunately, there is some evidence for Christian elites—or at least, elites with knowledge of Christian tradition and iconography. One important example comes from a floor mosaic at Frampton, also in Dorset.47 Like Hinton St. 45. Ausonius, “Epigram 7,” in Ausonius: Epigrams—Text with Introduction and Commentary, ed. Nigel M. Kay (London, 2001), 82. 46. On the potential relationship between (Christ-)Helios and Bellerophon, see: Simon, “Bellérophon chrétien,” 890ff. 47. For the first publication of the mosaics, see: Samuel Lysons, Reliquiae Britannico-Romanae, Volume 1, Part 3 (London, 1813), pls. 3–7. On Frampton in general, see: R. A. H. Farrar, “The Frampton ‘Villa,’ Maiden Newton,” Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society 78 (1956): 81–83; Martin Henig, “James Engleheart’s Drawing of a Mosaic in Frampton, 1794,” Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Archaeological Society 106 (1984): 146. On Frampton’s Christian iconography, see especially: Perring, “‘Gnosticism’ in Fourth-Century Britain,” 97ff. On the pagan iconography, see: Stephen R. Cosh, “A Possible Achilles at Frampton,” Mosaic 23 (1996): 13–15; Anthony J. Beeson, “The Frampton Trident Bearer,” Mosaic 27 (2000): 4–7.

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Mary, Frampton has images of a chi-rho (in this case isolated in its own emblema) as well as a roundel featuring Bellerophon slaying the Chimera. Lullingstone in Kent, another equally important example, also features scenes of Bellerophon slaying the Chimera and, as we have already seen, a chi-rho monogram flanked by an alpha and an omega on its wall (the rape of Europa, with Jupiter disguised as a bull, is also part of the Lullingstone mosaic).48 While the chirho monogram from Hinton St. Mary may be explained as a nonChristian symbol, the argument is harder for Lullingstone, whose chi-rho monogram is juxtaposed with an obvious scriptural citation. The juxtaposition of this symbol with scenes of Bellerophon and Europa suggests knowledge of classical mythology and, perhaps more important, the inscription accompanying the Europa mosaic suggests a certain facility with “classical” literature.49 As Arthur A. Barrett notes, the inscription alludes to Vergil through the use of an Ovidian couplet; in one deft move, the owner of the Lullingstone villa establishes his or her paideia alongside knowledge of Christian iconography.50 Other examples of Christian symbolism on objects of elite patronage include engraved gemstones, some of which incorporate chi-rho monograms alongside standard invocations such as “May you live.”51 Likewise, some of the silver found in British 48. On Lullingstone in general, see: Geoffrey W. Meates, The Lullingstone Roman Villa (London, 1955). On Lullingstone’s Christian iconography, see especially: Jocelyn M. C. Toynbee, Art in Britain under the Romans (Oxford, 1964), 221–27; Painter, “The Lullingstone Wall-Plaster,” 131–50. 49. For a brief overview of the Bellerophon iconography in Roman Britain, see: Katherine M. D. Dunbabin, Mosaics of the Greek and Roman World (Cambridge, 1999), 95–98. 50. Cf. Barrett, “Knowledge of the Literary Classics,” 307ff. On Vergil’s influence on the Frampton mosaics, see: Antony A. Barrett, “A Vergilian Scene from Frampton Villa, Dorset,” Antiquaries Journal 57 (1977): 312–14. More generally, see: Roger Rees, “Introduction,” in “Romane Memento”: Virgil in the Fourth Century, ed. Roger Rees (London, 2004), 1–16. On Vergil’s influence on Christian thought, see: Sabine MacCormack, The Shadows of Poetry: Vergil and the Mind of Augustine (Berkeley, 1998), esp. 45ff. 51. Frederick H. Marshall, Catalogue of the Finger Rings, Greek, Etruscan and Roman, in the Departments of Antiquities, British Museum (London, 1907), no. 626.

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hoards appears to have been used in the eucharistic liturgy. For example, the Water Newton hoard includes a silver bowl with the inscription: “O Lord, I Publianus, leaning upon you (or prostrating myself) honour your sacred altar.”52 The inscription—written in dactylic hexameter, which was associated with epic poetry—is a further indication of paideia among Christians.53 The majority of our mosaic’s viewers would have been members of the elite, and in light of the overlap between Christians and the upper class evidenced by the material remains, it is not difficult to imagine that at least some of the viewers may have been Christian. It is also overwhelmingly likely that in Late Antique Britain, with its diverse religious landscape,54 no single form of Christianity would have been adopted by all Christians. Instead, as was common elsewhere in the later Empire, we should expect that a number of different forms of Christianity were in circulation. What this means in practical terms is that any Christian interpretation of the Hinton St. Mary floor must accommodate different forms of Christianity and not reduce Christian viewers to a monolithic whole. Even allowing for this diversity, however, the paideia that viewers shared, regardless of their religious affiliations,55 meant that one of the structuring principles of any interpretation probably would have been synkrisis. IV. Interpreting the Image What then might a Christian think upon seeing an image of 52. Cited in W. H. C. Frend, “Pagans, Christians, and ‘the Barbarian Conspiracy’ of a.d. 367 in Roman Britain,” Britannia 23 (1992): 122. 53. See also: Kenneth S. Painter, The Water Newton Early Christian Silver (London, 1977), 14–16. 54. See especially: Henig, Religion in Roman Britain, 20ff.; Dorothy Watts, Religion in Late Roman Britain: Forces of Change (London, 1998), 115ff. 55. See especially: Martin Henig, “Ita intellexit numine inductus tuo: some personal interpretations of deity in Roman religion,” in Pagan Gods and Shrines of the Roman Empire, Oxford University Committee for Archaeology, Monograph 8, ed. Martin Henig and Anthony King (Oxford, 1986), 159–69.

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Bellerophon slaying the Chimera? Any member of the educated elite, whom as we have seen certainly composed some of the viewers of the Hinton St. Mary mosaic immediately would have identified the scene in the roundel since the Chimera cannot be confused for any other creature and since Bellerophon was identified as its slayer as early as Homer’s Iliad and Hesiod’s Theogony.56 Although the scene is itself easily identifiable, it is important to realize that the image of Bellerophon slaying the Chimera was not necessarily important for the symbolism of that particular act. The story of the Chimera’s defeat is but a single component in a larger myth about Bellerophon, and the slaying of the Chimera, as the most famous part of the myth, could have served as a metonym for the entire myth. In spite of the close association of Bellerophon with the Chimera, many different versions of the myth were in circulation. For example, in the Iliad, Pegasus is not mentioned while in The Golden Ass, Apuleius satirizes the confrontation: I reflected that it was panic more than anything which had induced the celebrated Pegasus to take to the air, and that the tradition that he had wings was justified because he leapt upward as high as heaven in his fear of being bitten by the fire-breathing Chimaera.57

Although these variations are noteworthy, it is also important to realize that the image of Bellerophon slaying the Chimera was not necessarily important for the symbolism of that act. The story of the Chimera’s defeat is but a single component of a larger myth about Bellerophon. The slaying of the Chimera, as the most famous part of the myth, was both a defining and recognizable act as well 56. Hesiod, “The Theogony,” VII.20, in Hesiod, the Homeric Hymns, and Homerica, trans. Hugh G. Evelyn-White (Cambridge, 1914), 159; Homer, The Iliad, VI.190–290, trans. Ian Johnston (Arlington, 2006), 127–30. 57. Apuleius, “The Golden Ass,” VIII.16, in Apuleius: The Golden Ass, trans. P. G. Walsh (Oxford, 1994), 149.

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as a metonym for the entire myth. Any synkrisis involving the Bellerophon roundel would extend beyond the story of the Chimera’s death to the entire narrative. That narrative, pieces of which will be elucidated below, are particularly important in understanding how the Hinton St. Mary floor may have been understood by Christian viewers. The image of Bellerophon slaying the Chimera, like the story behind it, was not necessarily standardized,58 and the iconographic formula used at Hinton St. Mary is especially important to the interpretation of the mosaic. Bellerophon, whose face has been removed, rides a galloping Pegasus and thrusts a spear into the Chimera’s goat head. It is worth recalling that the roundels are flanked by two scenes of dogs hunting stags. Bellerophon’s task, which any elite viewer would have known was not voluntary, was thrust upon him by the Lycian King and in that respect was similar to a hunt. Bellerophon here is like the dogs—not a willing hunter per se, but an accomplished hunter fulfilling someone else’s demands. Once the analogy between Bellerophon and the hunt registered with a viewer, however, an interesting observation on the iconography of the roundel might have emerged: Bellerophon, on his steed with the Chimera between Pegasus’ legs, is in the same configuration as scenes of a nobleman’s homecoming (cf. Fig. 7).59

58. For a discussion of iconographic variation within the corpus of Bellerophon images as early as the Archaic period, see: Marilyn Low Schmitt, “Bellerophon and Chimera in Archaic Greek Art,” American Journal of Archaeology 70 (1966): 341. 59. Cf. Katherine M. Dunbabin, The Mosaics of Roman North Africa: Studies in Iconography and Patronage (Oxford, 1978), 118–21; Thomas Mathews, The Clash of Gods, 34–35.

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Fig. 7. Mosaic Floor Showing Nobleman’s Homecoming (Middle Register, Left), late fourth century CE. Villa of Dominus Julius, Carthage. Photo: Musee de Bardo.

In the context of the villa, with its elaborate and expensive mosaics, it may not have been too far of a leap to see a relationship between Bellerophon and the villa owner. Both had wealth, hunted, and lived on estates (Bellerophon was awarded a vineyard after his successful conquests). Bellerophon had other attributes, including “the best qualities of men” and “beauty,” with which Hinton St. Mary’s owner would have been only too happy to be associated.60 Such a reading changes, however, as the viewer crosses the threshold from the vestibule to the main hall. In a semi-circular mosaic, the viewer is again presented with a hunting scene, which leads the viewer to the central roundel that features the beardless figure flanked with pomegranates and set in front of a chi-rho monogram. The chi-rho’s meaning, even for Christians, had multiple dimensions. On its most general level, the monogram was simply a symbol of victory.61 The juxtaposition of the chi-rho symbol with 60. Homer, Iliad, 6.193–95.

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a hunting scene—the central roundel is flanked by hunting scenes on three of four sides—would have facilitated the association of the symbol with the scene of Bellerophon. Moreover, the fact that the chi-rho monogram and the figure in front of it, like the Bellerophon mosaic, are circumscribed by roundels also would have linked the two images. The identification of the chi-rho monogram, the potential association of the symbol with victory, and the formal connections between the roundels in both rooms would have helped to transfer the meaning of the Bellerophon mosaic from an allusion to the nobleman’s hunt to an illustration of victory. In such a reading, the viewer may have reinterpreted the image of the hero on Pegasus not as a gentleman hunting but, rather, as a sort of adventus with the vanquished foe, in this case the Chimera, underneath his horse’s feet (cf. Figs. 8, 9). The adventus would have called to mind imperial imagery, and it is here that we reencounter the possibility that the image in the roundel may have been interpreted as Constantius.

61. On the association with the labarum and victory, see: Rudolph H. Storch, “The Eusebian Constantine,” Church History 40 (1971): 148–49; Belting, Likeness and Presence, 109–11.

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Fig. 8. Adventus, Trajanic Relief from the Arch of Constantine, ca. 119 CE. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

Fig. 9. Adventus, Reverse of Antoninianus of Probus, ca. 276 CE.

The interpretation of the mosaic floor would have shifted once more

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if a Christian viewer identified the beardless bust as Christ. Although it is by no means beyond doubt that the image was intended to depict Christ, for the reasons cited above there are some compelling reasons to suppose that at least some viewers of our mosaic would have understood the beardless figure as an image of Christ. If a viewer did interpret the beardless image in the roundel as Christ, how would that have affected the viewer’s understanding of the floor in its entirety? The most obvious effect, in light of the aforementioned compositional similarities between the two roundels, would be to visually link Bellerophon with Christ. The result would have been a synkrisis of the two not dissimilar to the approach Plutarch used in his Lives. Fortunately, several extant early Christian sources provide insights into the shape that such a synkrisis could take.62 Justin Martyr, who was as much a part of an elite of literati as he was a Christian “apologist,”63 provided the earliest and most explicit synkrisis between Christ and Bellerophon.64 The basis for Justin’s comparison was a tradition that after Bellerophon had completed his heroic acts, he became disenchanted with the world, disbelieving the existence of the gods and, in a fit of rage, he resolved to scale Olympus on Pegasus. The hero’s attempt to ascend to heaven failed; he and Pegasus fell to earth and were wounded. At the end of Euripides’ tragic version of the myth, Bellerophon repents for his actions and dies shortly thereafter.65 Despite the superficial similarity of Bellerophon’s and Christ’s ascents to heaven, it is clear that the myth 62. While we cannot be certain that visitors to Hinton St. Mary necessarily were familiar with writings by the church fathers, some of the authors’ reflections may be indicative of the types of interpretations available to Christians who shared the same paideia. 63. Cf. Guerra, “The Conversion of Marcus Aurelius and Justin Martyr,” 171–87; Nasrallah, “The Rhetoric of Conversion,” 467–74. 64. On the expansion of Justin’s ideas by later church fathers, see: Yves-Marie Duval, “Bellérophon et les ascètes chrétiens: ‘Melancholia’ ou ‘otium’?,” Caesarodunum 2 (1968): 189–90. 65. Cf. Christoph Riedwieg, “The ‘Atheistic’ Fragment from Euripides’ Bellephrontes (286 N2),” Illinois Classical Studies 15 (1990): 39–53; Christoph Riedwieg, “TrGF 2.524—A Euripidean Fragment,” The Classical Quarterly 40 (1990): 124–36.

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of the former differs radically from that of the latter. Bellerophon was a man who attempted to assail heaven and was rebuffed; Christ was the Son of God, descended to earth, and was welcomed back to heaven after his own sacrifice. The juxtaposition of these two roundels, therefore, may have called to mind not only the similarities between the two figures but also their differences. In the First Apology, Justin spends his twenty-first chapter analogizing Greco-Roman myths, including Bellerophon’s, to Christ’s ascension. Bellerophon “. . . who, though of mortal origin, rose to heaven on the horse Pegasus”66 is further likened to Christ in chapter 54 when he writes: And since through the prophecy of Moses it had not been expressly signified whether He who was to come would be the Son of God, and whether, mounted on a foal, He would remain on earth or ascend into heaven, and because the name of “foal” could signify either the foal of an ass or of a horse, they, not knowing whether the predicted one would bring the foal of an ass or of a horse as the sign of His coming, nor whether He was the Son of God or of a man, as we said before, said that Bellerophon, a man born of men, had himself gone up to heaven on the horse Pegasus.67

Justin’s synkrisis, which identifies the tradition of ascending to heaven as the salient similarity shared by Christ’s and Bellerophon’s stories, seems particularly relevant to the case of Hinton St. Mary, in part since the excerpt suggests that among the elite that were the likely viewers of the Hinton St. Mary floor Bellerophon would have been recognizable, even to Christians. Likewise, Justin’s synkrisis ties Bellerophon to Pegasus, who in turn was intimately tied to Bellerophon’s defining act, the slaying of the Chimera (recall how Pegasus equally called to mind Bellerophon for Posidippus). It follows 66. Justin, Apol. 21.28. 67. Ibid., 54.62.

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from Justin’s excerpt, then, that Pegasus functions as a sort of signifier of Bellerophon—that is, the presence of Pegasus would have identified the figure on its back as Bellerophon. As Justin’s synkrisis demonstrates, such an identification could have been made by a Christian. The barrier to such an interpretation was not religion; it was education. Whether or not the viewers were aware of Justin Martyr’s comparison is almost beside the point. Justin is in certain respects generalizable; the First Apology simply articulates a possible synkrisis that those with paideia may have drawn given the juxtaposition of the roundels on the Hinton St. Mary floor. On our floor, this synkrisis is visually expressed in the shared form of the roundel and the similar iconographies of the men, presumably both beardless.68 At this point, our analysis of the floor could pivot in two different directions. On the one hand, the synkrisis between the two figures could morph into a topos. Bellerophon’s ascent to heaven, whatever his victories on earth against beasts like the Chimera, was ultimately a failure. Thus the “signs” of Bellerophon’s victory—Pegasus and the Chimera—are ultimately related to his earthly acts; Christ’s victory, by contrast, was signified by the chi-rho, which symbolized his triumph over death and his ultimate ascent to heaven. Justin explicates this difference with an explicit comparison of Bellerophon as “a man born of man” with Christ, the “Son of God.” On the other hand, it is possible that the synkrisis with Bellerophon remained one viewed in a more positive light. After all, whatever the metonymic qualities of the chimera-slaying iconography, the scene itself is a heroic one. Bellerophon’s fall may be presaged, but it is not physically depicted. A more literal reading might then associate 68. Although Bellerophon’s face has been lost to us, other Romano-British mosaics show him without a beard. If the trend held at Hinton St. Mary, then the beardless appearance of both human figures may have further facilitated the possibility of seeing one in terms of the other.

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Bellerophon—as a sort of man-god that tamed Pegasus, slayed the Chimera, and ascended Olympus—not only with Christ but also with the emperor, who at that time looked rather similar to the figure depicted in the roundel. The emphasis in the previous sentence is intentional: it is not necessary that the image in the Hinton St. Mary mosaic be seen as either “Christ” or “Constantius.” It is entirely plausible that an interpretation could have conflated both readings. It is hard to know the degree to which Constantius’ official portraits depict his actual appearance, but to the extent that there was any resemblance it would not have been lost on the elite viewers of the Hinton St. Mary mosaic.69 A large issue of bronze medallions, probably minted in Rome,70 depicts the emperor seated frontally, holding a scroll in his left hand, and flanked by personifications of Roma and Constantinopolis, the latter of which he showers with gold coins (Fig. 10). The scene, which has some affinities to the image of the emperor from the Chronography of 354 (Fig. 11), may be indicative of imagery with which Romano-British viewers were familiar.

69. See especially: Robert Owen Edbrooke Jr., “The Visit of Constantius II to Rome in 357 and Its Effect on the Pagan Senatorial Aristocracy,” The American Journal of Philology 97 (1976): 40–61. 70. Cf. Jocelyn M. C. Toynbee, “Roma and Constantinopolis in Late-Antique Art from 312 to 365,” The Journal of Roman Studies 37 (1947): 135–44.

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Fig. 10. Reverse of Medallion of Constantius II between Roma and Constantinopolis, mid fourth century CE. Photo: American Numismatic Society.

The similarity between Christ and Constantius was a visual device that functioned in the same way that earlier dynastic portraiture (even among unrelated emperors) operated—that is, “likeness” establishes a claim to continuity.71 While the association of Christ with Constantius may have been received as a communication of Christ’s imperial attributes, it is also possible that Christ may have been associated more specifically with the Constantinian dynasty. The similitude of Christ to Constantine’s son and successor may have directed the viewer of our mosaic to consider a comparison between the two. Fortunately, examples of such comparisons made by the elites of the western provinces are preserved in the form of several speeches collectively known as the Panegyrici Latini. While the topics of these panegyrics are related to local concerns,72 their form and foci provide insights into how an elite viewer may have responded to the Hinton St. Mary mosaic. 71. Cf. Nodelman, “How to Read a Roman Portrait,” 10–24. 72. Cf. Brian H. Warmington, “Aspects of Constantinian Propaganda in the Panegyrici Latini,” Transactions of the American Philological Association 104 (1974): 371–84.

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Fig. 11. Canstantius II Distributing Largesse, from the Chronography of 354, seventeenth century CE. Photo: Barberini MS, Vatican Library (http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/ chronography_of_354_07_emperors.htm).

It would be beyond the scope of this essay to interrogate these panegyrics comprehensively; however, the relationship between the image of Christ and image of Constantius suggests, as mentioned above in the context of imperial portraiture, that a plausible interpretation may have looked, as Menander Rhetor mentions in his prescriptions for panegyric, that an emperor ought to be associated with his forebears. For example, in panegyrics addressed to Constantine, several orators go to great lengths to legitimize his rule by proclaiming him the rightful heir to Constantius. Thus, for example: “And it was you whom that great man [Constantius], an

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Emperor on earth and a god in heaven, fathered in the first flower of his youth.”73 Or less explicitly: Among all who share your majesty, I aver you have this distinction, Constantine, that you were [born] an Emperor, and so great is the nobility of your lineage that the attainment of imperial power has added nothing to your honor, nor can Fortune claim credit for your divinity, which is rightfully yours without campaigning or canvassing. 74

Other rhetors stressed the antiquity of Constantine’s lineage by attempting to tie his family to the emperor Claudius. As one anonymous panegyrist put it thus: And so I shall begin with the divinity who is the origin of your family, of whom most people, perhaps, are still unaware, but those who love you know full well. For an ancestral relationship links you to the deified Claudius, who was the first to restore the discipline of the Roman Empire when it was disordered and in ruins . . .75

Since it would not have escaped notice that Christ predated the Constantinian dynasty, the floor (in this reading) subtly claims Christ as an ancestor to Constantine and his successors in the same way that the panegyrists claim Claudius as a relation. None of the foregoing should be read as an argument for reading the beardless figure on the Hinton St. Mary floor mosaic as either Christ, Constantius II, or some hybrid version of the two. However, in the context of the villa, and in consideration of the likely viewing audience for our mosaic, it is entirely possible that an individual may have viewed the figure as meaning multiple things simultaneously. And in the event such an interpretation was engaged, there are plausible grounds to understand the mosaic in question as an image of both Constantius II and Christ. In this frame, not only do other 73. “Panegyric of Constantine,” in The Panegyrici Latini, 222. 74. Ibid., 221. 75. “Panegyric of Constantine,” in The Panegyrici Latini, 219–20.

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readings remain possible; they are inevitable. Through a close inspection of the mosaic floor from Hinton St. Mary, we have uncovered not only a new plausible reading, but also a strong argument for demolishing the notion of monolithic, “group” interpretations. Surely Late Antique viewers were as varied as we are today, and we must imagine that their interpretations were as nuanced. ****

The notion that the Bellerophon and Christ roundels were subject to a synkrisis that ultimately resulted in a topos is a plausible Christian reading of the mosaic floor; however, Late Antiquity featured multiple different types of Christianity. We must ask then what type of Christians these viewers might have been. While we can probably never know the answer with certainty, some clues present themselves from the archeological context and the material costs necessary to produce the villa. Whatever the precise date of the Hinton St. Mary villa, it seems fairly clear that by the end of the fourth century, the site was either less intensively used or abandoned.76 The general population of Dorset falls off dramatically near the turn of the fifth century, a fact evidenced by the near-disappearance of coins from the archeological record.77 The type of Christianity imagined for (some of) the viewers of the Hinton St. Mary floor, therefore, must be consistent with the forms of Christianity circulating in the western provinces at least by

76. Painter, “The Roman Site at Hinton St. Mary, Dorset,” 26. 77. Ibid., 27. Painter suggests that the fall-off might have to do with the conspiratio barbarica of ce 367, for which see: Roger Tomlin, “The Date of the ‘Barbarian Conspiracy,’” Britannia 5 (1974): 303–9; R. C. Blockley, “The Date of the ‘Barbarian Conspiracy,’” Britannia 11 (1980): 223–25; Frend, “Pagans, Christians, and ‘the Barbarian Conspiracy’ of a.d. 367,” 121ff.

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the end of the fourth century; other readings would be inappropriate and/or anachronistic. For this reason, the remainder of this section will explore an “orthodox” reading of the Hinton St. Mary mosaic as an anti-Priscillianic polemic.78 Priscillianism was a “heresy” introduced in the fourth century by Priscillian, who, according to the contemporaneous historian Sulpicius Severus, was a rich layman from Galicia (modern-day Spain). Priscillian was well versed in the classics and had an “excellent intellect.”79 Priscillianism is often called a “Gnostic-Manichaean” synthesis for its dualistic theology; however, as Raymond Van Dam has documented, neither Gnosticism nor Manichaeism was particularly widespread in the western provinces during the fourth century.80 Some of Priscillianism’s interpretation is a function of revisionist fifth- and sixth-century heresiologies.81 Priscillianism stands apart from other “heresies” as perhaps the most notorious “heterodoxy” of its time.82 The cult’s popularity and influence is attested to both by its longevity—Priscillianism retained adherents into the sixth century—as well as the morbid fact that Priscillian was the first “heretic” to be killed. Jerome, in a polemical digression that forms part of a letter concerning Pelagianism, speaks to Pricillianism’s notoriety while likening the cult to Manicheism when he writes: “Then there is Priscillian in Spain whose infamy makes him as bad as Manichæus, and whose disciples profess a high 78. The argument here is neither that an anti-Priscillianic polemic was the only reading possible nor that the mosaic was intended as such; rather, the argument is that one possible meaning to at least one potential viewer may have been as an anti-Priscillianic polemic. 79. Sulpicius Severus, “Sacred History,” II.46, trans. Alexander Roberts, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Volume 11, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (Buffalo, 1894), 119. 80. Raymond Van Dam, Leadership and Community in Late Antique Gaul (Berkeley, 1992 [1985]), 105. 81. See especially: Virginia Burrus, The Making of a Heretic: Gender, Authority, and the Priscillianist Controversy (Berkeley, 1995), 126ff. 82. On the Priscillianism in general, see: Henry Chadwick, Priscillian of Avila: Occult and the Charismatic in the Early Church (Oxford, 1976).

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esteem for you.”83 Or, as Jerome puts it elsewhere: “Priscillian [was] an enthusiastic votary of Zoroaster and a magian before he became a bishop.”84 Apart from its dualistic theology, Priscillianism became the object of animosity for its ascetic mysticism, which advocated for a withdrawal from the evils of material society. Priscillianism, it appears, was at least as dangerous for its subversion and critique of the social order as it was for its dogma.85 Although Priscillianism was an important fourth-century religious development, it is not clear that Priscillianism itself would have spread to Britain. Indeed, only circumstantial evidence can be offered in support of the cult’s presence. Even if Priscillianism crossed the Channel, the expense that went into producing (and presumably maintaining) Hinton St. Mary makes it extraordinarily unlikely that the villa’s inhabitants were Priscillianic devotees given the sect’s interest in renouncing the trappings of wealth.86 Even if the cult did not make its way to Britain in any meaningful way, it is probable that late fourth-century viewers of the Hinton St. Mary mosaic would have been aware of Priscillianism and the controversy around it. Two particular sources of evidence support this assertion. First, Priscillian’s persecution was an interprovincial affair: while Priscillian himself came from Galicia, he was first tried in 384 ce in Bordeaux and executed the following year in Trier. The trial at Trier was adjudicated by the emperor, Magnus Maximus, who 83. Jerome, “Letter 133: To Ctesiphon,” trans. W. H. Fremantle, G. Lewis, and W. G. Martley, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Volume 6, 273. 84. Jerome, “Letter 133,” in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Volume 6, 273. 85. Cf. Kimberly Bowes, “‘. . . Nec sedere in villam’: Villa-Churches, Rural Piety and the Priscillianist Controversy,” in Urban Centers and Rural Contexts in Late Antiquity, ed. Thomas S. Burns and John W. Eadie (East Lansing, 2001), 323–48. It is interesting that the ascetic impulse so widely condemned in the fourth century later would become an important component of mainstream Christian worship (consider ascetic “stylite” saints and the status that they achieved in Byzantine pilgrimage). 86. Perring, “‘Gnosticism’ in Fourth-Century Britain,” 121–22.

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was a British usurper. The notoriety of Priscillianism encapsulated in Jerome’s polemic, which shows knowledge of the cult as far away as Antioch by 415 ce, was due in part to the fluid politics of the time and to the multiple locations that hosted episodes in the Priscillianic controversy. Second, a number of textual and in particular epistolary sources suggest the widespread knowledge of (if not adherence to) Priscillianic theology; the best known of these documents is a series of letters written between Paulinus of Nola and his teacher, Ausonius, whom we have already encountered.87 Both men came from Bordeaux, and the occasion of their letters was Paulinus’s decision to travel to Spain, where Ausonius feared that his student would be corrupted by Priscillianic doctrine. As Dennis Trout has argued convincingly, Ausonius aired this fear through a metaphor to the story of Bellerophon.88 Ausonius writes: But who has encouraged your long silence? Let the impious one turn no sound to advantage; let no joys enliven him, no sweet songs of the poets, no shifting melody of the plaint; let no wild beasts, no cattle or birds delight him, nor Echo, who hidden in the woody groves of the shepherds, consoles us, returning our words. Sad, needy, let him dwell in deserted wastes and in silence roam the vault of the Alpine ridge, as it is said once Bellerophon, out of his mind, avoiding the company and traces of men, vagrant, wandered through trackless places.89

Perhaps more striking than Ausonius’ letter was Paulinus’s response. Paulinus was clearly quite offended by the comparisons drawn between him and Bellerophon and, as we will see below, between his wife Therasia and the power-thirsty early Roman queen Tanaquil. Paulinus responds: “Therefore, revered father don’t rebuke me for 87. See also the polemics of Jerome and Augustine. On Jerome, see: n. 819. On Augustine, see: Augustine, “To Consentius: Against Lying,” trans. H. Browne, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Volume 2 (Buffalo, 1887), 481f. For a general discussion, see: Duval, “Bellérophon et les ascètes chrétiens,” 189–90. 88. Dennis Trout, Paulinus of Nola: Life, Letters, and Poems (Berkeley, 1999), esp. chap. 4. 89. Ausonius, “Letter to Paulinus,” translated in Paulinus of Nola, 70.

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having turned to these pursuits wrongly or revile me for my wife or the imperfection of my mind; I have neither the troubled mind of Bellerophon nor a Tanaquil, but a wife like Lucretia.”90 Trout explains the correspondence as follows: In Bellerophon’s demented wandering Paulinus detected, as Ausonius perhaps intended, not a curse to be called down on some other but an allusion to his own way of life, to the new, socially subversive mores to which Ausonius feared Paulinus had become (unwitting) victim.91

The “socially subversive mores” to which Trout refers is Priscillianism’s asceticism, a religious approach that saw a general surge in popularity during the fourth century.92 That asceticism should have been associated with Bellerophon—both by the antiascetic Ausonius and the pseudo-ascetic Paulinus—indicates that the equation between Bellerophon and asceticism had a real cultural resonance among those who knew the myth. For those with paideia, in other words, Bellerophon could have served as a potential symbol for Priscillianism as well as a critique of one of the group’s central practices. The equivalence between Bellerophon and asceticism was picked up in the early fifth century by the Roman poet Rutilius Claudius Namatianus, whose elegiac poem De Reditu Suo describes a voyage from Rome to Gaul in which the monks (monachoi) on the Tuscan island of Capraria are alluded to as follows:

90. Paulinus, “Letter to Ausonius,” translated in Paulinus of Nola, 71. 91. Ibid. 92. Cf. Dennis Trout, Secular Renunciation and Social Action: Paulinus of Nola and Late Roman Society, Ph.D. Book (Durham, NC: Duke University, 1989), 144–70. It is possible that the threat posed by asceticism resulted in the leveling of other, more damning but less accurate charges (such as the association with Manicheism) in order to more quickly stamp out the Priscillianic “threat.” See: Van Dam, Leadership and Community, 82–85. Consider also Martin of Tours’s opposition to Priscillian’s condemnation. See: Sulpicius Severus, “Sacred History,” II.50, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Volume 11, 121.

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As we advance at sea, Capraria now rears itself—an ill-kept isle full of men who shun the light. Their own name for themselves is a Greek one, monachoi (monks), because they wish to dwell alone with none to see. They fear Fortune’s boons, as they dread her outrages: would anyone, to escape misery, live of his own choice in misery? What silly fanaticism of a distorted brain is it to be unable to endure even blessings because of your terror of ills? Whether they are like prisoners who demand the appropriate penalties for their deeds, or whether their melancholy hearts are swollen with black bile, it was even so that Homer assigned the ailment of excessive bile as cause of Bellerophon’s troubled soul; for it was after the wounds of a cruel sorrow that men say the stricken youth conceived his loathing for human kind.93

Namatianus in this passage, like Ausonius before him,94 likens Bellerophon and his joylessness to asceticism. The relationship between the ascetic and Bellerophon continued throughout the fifth century; the metaphor between the two has been well documented by, among others, Yves-Marie Duval.95 What emerges then is a transitive relationship: Priscillianism was associated with asceticism, and asceticism, particularly the Priscillianic brand of asceticism, was associated with Bellerophon. To these already-established arguments, there is another reason to think that the Hinton St. Mary mosaic may have brought to mind the association between Bellerophon and Priscillianism. Priscillian in particular was thought to have a particular sway over women. Sulpicius records that “. . . women, who were fond of novelties and of unstable faith, as well as of a prurient curiosity in all things, flocked to him in crowds.”96 Although Priscillian advocated celibacy, his proximity to women and insistence on their inclusion in his cult 93. Rutilius Claudius Namatianus, “de Reditu suo,” I.441–54, in Minor Latin Poets, Volume 2, ed. John Wight Duff and Arnold Mackay Duff (Cambridge, 1934), 805. 94. Trout speculates that Ausonius was an influence. Cf. Trout, Paulinus of Nola, 71. For a more recent and more confident assertion, see: Garth Tissol, “Ovid and the Exilic Journey of Rutilius Namatianus,” Arethusa 3 (2002): 435–46. 95. See especially: Duval, “Bellérophon et les ascètes chrétiens,” 183–90. 96. Sulpicius Severus, “Sacred History,” II.46, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Volume 11, 119.

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earned him accusations of sexual misconduct. As Sulpicius notes later: “In fact, Priscillian did not deny that he had given himself up to lewd doctrines; had been accustomed to hold, by night, gatherings of vile women, and to pray in a state of nudity.”97 Bellerophon, like Priscillian, had an association with females and, more specifically, had a reputation for sexual misconduct, even if it was undeserved. Bellerophon’s exile was the result of his rebuff of sexual advances from queen Anteia, who in fury and embarrassment over his rejection of her accused Bellerophon of attempted rape, a charge that ultimately results in his being tasked to kill the Chimera, itself a female creature. Visual depictions of the slaying the Chimera are, after a fashion, quite sexual: Bellerophon is shown with a long, phallic spear he plunges into the beast. As we have already seen, a number of variations of the Bellerophon myth were in circulation, none of which characterized the method of Chimera’s death as a stabbing by spear.98 Whatever the iconographic precedent, the disjunction between the myth and its depiction may have accentuated the sexual parallels between Priscillian and Bellerophon. Bellerophon’s relationship to women is further established by the elaboration of his myth, first by Pindar and later by the likes of Apollodorus, to include Bellerophon’s successful campaigns against the Amazons.99 Ausonius himself seems to imply the relationship between Bellerophon and Priscillian when, in a letter to Paulinus, he likens his pupil’s Spanish wife to Tanaquil, an “imperious” Roman

97. Ibid., 121. See also: Burrus, The Making of a Heretic, esp. 136–40. 98. This is not to suggest that the image was intended to carry a sexual meaning, but see: Scott, Art and Society in Fourth-Century Britain, 157. Some scholars have argued more generally that domestic mosaics were open to erotic interpretations where the iconography warranted. Cf. Muth, Erleben von Raum, 177f. On the sympotic associations of domestic (and potentially erotic) imagery, see: Ezio Pellizer, “Outlines of a Morphology of Sympotic Entertainment,” in Sympotica: A Symposium on the Symposion, ed. Oswyn Murray (Oxford, 1994), 177–84. 99. Cf. Pindar, “Olympian Ode,” 13, in The Odes of Pindar, trans. Geoffrey S. Conway (London, 1972), 63ff.

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queen “skilled in pagan religious ritual.”100 The analogy on its surface may seem appropriate—after all, like Tanaquil, Paulinus’s wife, Therasia, seems to have engineered her husband’s relocation—but the analogy quickly breaks down. Tanaquil was interested in her husband’s seizing power; Therasia’s motive was less certain. Trout suggests

that

Ausonius

invoked

Tanaquil

to

emphasize

Priscillianism’s association with the occult,101 but for anyone who knew the mythology of the city of Rome it would not have been lost on them that Tanquil’s husband, Tarquinius Priscus, and Priscillian had names sharing the same root—priscus (“ancient”). The association of Bellerophon with Priscillian himself through references to sexual conquest and deviance were not necessary to connect Bellerophon with Priscillianism; however, there is some reason to think that such a meaning could have been ascribed to an image of Bellerophon based on these secondary and tertiary similarities. After all, it was just this sort of wordplay that was cultivated by the rhetorical exercises of the progymnasmata.102 An association between Bellerophon and Priscillian(ism) had the potential to recast the Hinton St. Mary floor as a polemic against Priscillianic doctrine rather than a straightforward synkrisis and topos of the hero and Christ. The roundel showing Bellerophon is both a triumphant account of the nobleman’s hunt and, at the same time, a warning that such wealthy individuals, even those of heroic repute, stand to lose grace by following a route of Priscillianic asceticism. The anti-Priscillianic polemic would have only been heightened by the context of the scene: a sumptuously decorated villa owned, presumably, by a wealthy member of the elite.

100. Ausonius, “Letter to Paulnus,” cited in Paulinus of Nola, 69. 101. Trout, Paulinus of Nola, 69. 102. Cf. Aelius Theon, “The Exercises,” 81–82, in Progymnasmata: Greek Textbooks of Prose Composition and Rhetoric, ed. George A. Kennedy (Leiden, 2003), 31.

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DOES THE HINTON ST. MARY MOSAIC DEPICT CHRIST?

It is important to note that there is almost no doubt that the mosaics were not intended to comment on Priscillianism, which very well may not have existed at the time the floor was laid. However, a late fourthcentury Christian with paideia may have understood the mosaic in the context of contemporaneous religious developments. Indeed, the fact that the association between Bellerophon and Priscillianism was made by the likes Justin and Ausonius and recognized as an appropriate metaphor by Paulinus and Namatianus demonstrates the potential resonance of such a synkrisis among elite Christians in Late Antiquity. The anti-Priscillianic interpretation offered here is consistent with the sociohistorical and intellectual contexts of Roman Britain and thus provides one potential reading for the mosaic floor from Hinton St. Mary. Whether such an interpretation was ever undertaken is almost beside the point: the plausibility of such an understanding gets to the complications of decoding how ambiguous Late Antique images were understood.

349

Index

Acts of the Apostles, 57, 77

Arcadius, 18–19, 221, 291, 298

Acts of Paul, 61

Arch of Constantine, 29, 31, 45,

Acts of Peter, 61–63, 66–67, 71, 79

333 Arch of Galerius, 3, 19, 28

Acts of Peter and Paul, 61

Arch of Titus, 237

Adventus, 6, 13–14, 25–28, 31–33,

Arian baptistery (Ravenna), 264,

45, 332-33

265

Agnus Dei, 190–193

Arnobius, 217–18

Ambrose, 179

Artemis, goddess, 268, 291, 323

Ammianus Marcellinus,

Asia Minor, 106, 109, 111, 253

30–31Anthony (saint), 225–27,

Assman, Jan, 100

243, 262

Athanasius, 33, 249, 250–51, 271,

Anthousa, goddess, 295–97 Antiochus IV Epiphanes, 235–36, 255 Antoninus Pius, 39, 207, 211 Apocryphon of James, 34

275 Athena, goddess, 291 Augustine, 57–59, 68, 137, 165, 179, 190, 292, 294 Augustus (emperor), 38–39, 87,

Apollo, 45, 170, 173, 321, 323

104, 205–6, 213, 232, 269, 287,

Apostoleion, 282, 301

290

Apotheosis, 6, 14, 33, 38–41,

Aurelian Wall, 89

43–44, 95, 299

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Aurum coronarium, 15–16, 18–19, 21

269, 272, 277, 280, 291, 305, 338–39; Imagery: 9, 42–3, 186, 214, 238, 241–42, 259, 265,

Bardill, Jonathan, 43–44, 282–83

274, 282, 284–86, 300–01;

Bartoli, Pietro Santi, 93–94, 96

Rituals: 30, 41, 44, 45, 283,

Belting, Hans, 3, 4, 50, 257

290, 294–95

Brandenburg, Hugo, 53, 55, 63–65, 84, 95, 139, 307, 313 Brenk, Beat, 18, 123, 141, 144, 245–46, 261–62, 264 Brown, Peter, 5, 123, 162, 304, 321 Bruun, Patrick, 41, 43

Constantinople, 9–10, 19, 24, 185, 214, 219, 241, 247–48, 267, 269, 271–75, 283, 294–95, 299, 305, 320 Constantius I, 27–28, 30, 40, 214, 222 Constantius II, 30, 32, 41, 193, 215, 296, 311, 337-38, 340

Caelus, 38, 81 Caligula, 38, 109, 236, 255 Cameo of Tiberius, 38–39 Carthage, 68, 108–09, 111, 294, 331 Catacombs, 8, 59–60, 65, 160, 164, 184

Cosmas and Damian, Basilica, 82, 190–92 Cross; as labarum: 30, 138, 253–54, 331; as relic (“True Cross”): 138, 266–67 Crucifixion, 121, 129–30, 132, 140–41, 155, 157

Christogram, 31, 253, 301

Cyprian, 58, 68, 72, 79

Christology, 52, 74, 251, 262

Cyril, Bishop of Alexandria, 292

Claudius, 39, 340, 345-46 Clement of Alexandria, 22, 45, 177, 184 Consecration, 6, 14, 38, 40–43, 95, 277 Constantine (emperor), 2, 5–6, 17, 26, 29, 31, 53, 55, 73, 92, 185, 243, 246–49, 252, 254, 266–67,

352

Damasus, 60, 92 damnatio memoriae, 257 David (Hebrew Bible), 175–76, 179, 186, 243 Deckers, Johannes, 14, 17–18, 22, 53–55, 72–73, 80, 83, 160

INDEX

Diocletian, 40, 216, 220, 252, 254, 278 Divus, 207, 278, 287

Grabar, Andre, 2–4, 8, 40–41, 50–52, 55, 72, 83, 119–31, 139, 143, 151–5 Gregory Nazianzus, 18, 129, 135

Egeria, 266 Elijah, 40, 43–4

Gregory the Great, 127, 180, 269, 280

Emperor Mystique, 4, 6, 51, 80, 124–25, 161, 263

Hadrian, 27, 230, 287, 291

Entry to Jerusalem, 24–6, 31

Hagia Sophia, 295, 305

Ephesians, Letter to, 98, 129

Helena, 266, 295

Ephrem of Syria, 178

Helios, 29, 43, 281, 283, 305

Epiphanius, 240

Hermes, 173, 184, 194, 238–39

Eucharist, 228, 262–65, 328

Hippodrome, 219, 222, 280–84,

Eusebius, 26, 41, 43, 59, 69, 101, 137–38, 184–86, 226, 240, 247, 249, 267, 272–73, 278, 282, 284, 300

294–95, 298–99, 305 Holy Apostles, Church of (Constantinople), 248 Holy Sepulchre, Church of (Jerusalem), 247, 256

Flaubert, Gustave, 225, 262 Forum, Constantine’s, 280–81,

Hypogeum on Via Dino Compagni, 52, 75, 78–79, 84

285 Fortuna, goddess, 295

Idolatry, 9, 217–18, 235, 243, 247, 251–52, 254–55, 263–64

Galatians, Letter to, 56–57

Ignatius of Antioch, 103

Galla Placidia, 163–64, 186–87,

Imperial cult, 2–3, 5, 7, 18, 50, 52,

189, 192–93, 302 Germanicus, 38, 258–59

56, 83, 87–88, 93, 97, 104, 112, 121, 274–78, 287, 290, 304

Golgotha, 34, 139, 141, 192

Irenaeus, 21, 59, 226, 240, 251

Good Shepherd, 8, 162–68, 170,

Isis, 257, 292

181, 183, 186–87, 176–77, 179, 184–85, 189–90, 194–95

Jerome, 57–58, 177, 342–44

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Jerusalem Temple, 104, 235–36, 238 John the Baptist, statue of, 3, 244 John Chrysostom, 33, 257, 275, 292, 294 John of Damascus, 50, 251 Julian, emperor , 18, 49, 50, 272, 280, 290 Jupiter, 30, 50, 60, 80, 93, 95–97, 99, 101, 112, 200, 202–03, 217–18, 327 Justin Martyr, 81, 137, 334, 336 Justinian, Emperor, 299, 302, 303

Magi (adoration), 6, 14–18, 20–21, 23, 47 Marcion, 23, 69, 115, 118, 130, 137 Mars, god, 205, 287 Martyrdom of Polycarp, 101–02, 106–08, 110 Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicity, 61 Mathews (Thomas), viii, 2–6, 26, 32, 51, 80, 84, 120, 123–24, 157, 161–62, 189, 192, 194 Maxentius, 29, 40, 213–14 Milvian Bridge, 26, 29

Kantorowicz (Ernst), 4, 25, 161, 121, 124

Moses, 52, 62–72, 74, 81, 83–84, 86, 174, 177–78, 335

Kathisma, 283, 296 Krautheimer, Richard, 92, 95, 280

Neonian baptistery (Ravenna), 264 Nero, 27, 60–61, 155, 232–33,

Lactantius, 218

250, 288–89

Lateran Basilica, 9, 241, 243–44, 246–47, 249, 259–61, 264, 269

Origen, 74, 179–80, 250

Leclercq, Henri, 149, 179, 183

Orpheus, 164, 173–74, 184,

Leo the Great (bishop), 1, 11,

188–89, 241, 318, 321

22–23

Osiris, 169, 174

Libanius, 257, 290

Ostia, 53–54, 104, 229

Liber Pontificalis, 92, 243–45,

Ovid, 199–201, 241, 290, 346

260–61 Livy, 18, 229

Palladas, 247–49 Paul (apostle), 24, 56–61, 73, 75, 85, 98, 105, 108

354

INDEX

Paulinus of Nola, 21, 142, 344–49 “Peter” (1 Peter), 7, 97–101, 105, 107–08, 110 Peter (apostle), 7, 34, 52, 54, 56–58, 60–68, 70–74, 77–79,

San Vitale, Church of, 161, 302–03 Scilli, martyrs of, 101, 103–05 Septimius Severus, 27, 116, 207, 216, 288

82, 84, 86, 98–101, 105,

Severus Alexander, 241, 267, 280

107–08, 110, 112

Shepherd of Hermas, 183

Peter and Paul, (see traditio legis)

Sol, 30, 38, 45, 282, 285, 287

Philostorgius, 284, 291, 295 Phocas, 269, 283

Tertullian, 7, 9, 23, 59, 69, 101,

Plato, 171–72, 177, 180, 229, 240

108–10, 115–18, 130, 137–38,

Pompey, 236–37

151, 183, 198–99, 217, 223,

Porphyry Column, 245, 274,

228, 267, 269, 299

280–81 Pseudo-Dionysius, 164

Theodore of Mopsuestia, 259 Theodosius, 186, 192, 220–21, 248, 257, 291, 313; Column:

Rhea Kybele, goddess, 295 Roma (goddess), 39, 204, 296, 337-38 Rossano Gospels, 24, 255–56

19, 296, 298 Theophilus, Bishop of Alexandria, 274 Tiberius, 38–39, 205–06, 213, 231, 257, 287

S. Sebastiano, Church of, 59–60, 92, 255 Sant’Apollinare Nuovo (Ravenna), 21, 261 Sta. Costanza, 52, 65, 72–79, 81–82, 84, 132, 192–93 Sta. Maria Maggiore, 16, 193, 264 Sta. Pudenziana, 79–80, 188–89, 192, 260, 264

Tiridates, 233, 250 Titus, 95, 206, 211, 237 traditio legis (Giving of the Law to Peter and Paul), 6–7, 51–56, 60, 68, 72–74, 76, 79–81, 84, 86, 193, 239 Trajan, 27, 50, 132, 134, 136, 231–32, 253 Tyche, 283, 295–96, 305

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Valens, presbyter of Philippi, 101–02

Victory (goddess), 29–30, 208–09, 213, 229

Valentinian III, 220–21, 313 Vespasian, 206–07, 211–12

Zacchaeus, 24, 33

Via Praenestina, 89–92, 94, 96–97,

Zosimus, 103, 272, 295

99, 101, 110, 112

356

The Art of Empire contends that the art and imagery of Late Antiquity requires a deeper understanding of the context of the imperial period before and after Constantine. The chapters in this collection each treat an aspect of the relationship between early Christian art and the rituals, practices, or imagery of the empire. The long-held belief that the beginnings of Christian art can be understood simply by Constantine’s acceptance of the religion and the imperial cult must be discarded. These chapters offer a new and fresh perspective on the development of Christian art in its imperial background.

Jefferson and Jensen

Subverting the empire’s image

Praise for The Art of Empire “This is an exciting and up-to-date collection of cutting-edge essays on early Christian art. Its editors and contributors include many of the most interesting current scholars in the field, crossing the disciplinary boundaries between art history, theology, and religious studies.” Jas’ Elsner Corpus Christi College, Oxford

“This wonderful collection of essays offers a refreshing shift in the paradigms for interpreting early Christian art in the first five centuries. In innovative ways the nine essays challenge many prevailing theses in the field of early Christian art. More specifically, the book contests the two most dominant models: that Christian artistic enterprises made little or no reference to the visual language of the imperial cult, and that early Christian art is so decontextualized from the wider Roman culture that it is nearly sui generis. Thanks to Jefferson and Jensen, scholars and students alike will welcome both the scholarship and the new approaches of the authors.” Vasiliki Limberis Temple University

Lee M. Jefferson is assistant professor of religion at Centre College in Danville, Kentucky. He is author of Christ the Miracle Worker in Early Christian Art (Fortress Press, 2014), and various journal articles on Christian art. Robin M. Jensen is the Patrick O’Brien Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame. She is the author of Baptismal Imagery in Early Christianity: Ritual, Visual, and Theological Dimensions (2012); Living Water: Images, Symbols, and Settings of Early Christian Baptism (2011); Face to Face: Portraits of the Divine in Early Christianity (Fortress Press, 2004); and many others. Religion / Christian History

The Art of Empire

“The Art of the Empire includes nine studies, each of which deal in their own way with the relationship between imperial iconography and early Christian art. The contributions are the result of dialogue rather than a common view, and they include discussions of ritual, practice, and theology that provide a valuable context for early Christian art. Highly recommended!” Annewies van den Hoek Harvard Divinity School