The Care of the Dead in Late Antiquity
Abstract
In this provocative book Éric Rebillard challenges many long-held assumptions about early Christian burial customs. For decades scholars of early Christianity have argued that the Church owned and operated burial grounds for Christians as early as the third century. Through a careful reading of primary sources including legal codes, theological works, epigraphical inscriptions, and sermons, Rebillard shows that there is little evidence to suggest that Christians occupied exclusive or isolated burial grounds in this early period. In fact, as late as the fourth and fifth centuries the Church did not impose on the faithful specific rituals for laying the dead to rest. In the preparation of Christians for burial, it was usually next of kin and not representatives of the Church who were responsible for what form of rite would be celebrated, and evidence from inscriptions and tombstones shows that for the most part Christians didn't separate themselves from non-Christians when burying their dead. According to Rebillard it would not be until the early Middle Ages that the Church gained control over burial practices and that "Christian cemeteries" became common. In this translation of Religion et Sépulture: L'église, les vivants et les morts dans l'Antiquité tardive, Rebillard fundamentally changes our understanding of early Christianity. The Care of the Dead in Late Antiquity will force scholars of the period to rethink their assumptions about early Christians as separate from their pagan contemporaries in daily life and ritual practice.
... At one stage Jerome seems to suggest that alms given by others on behalf of a dead person could provide relief from hell. Augustine's ideas on post-mortem almsgiving do not appear in the Enarrationes; in his other works they are secondary to the importance of prayer on behalf of the dead, and he makes it clear that if the dead person was not baptised and had not led a good life, then any such works of mercy on their behalf are useless (See Rebillard 2009). In Augustine, the ascent in Psalms 119-133 is presented as a journey to the heavenly Jerusalem, an undertaking that is expedited by almsgiving. ...
The purpose of this article was to compare Jerome’s and Augustine’s sermons on the fifth book of the Psalms with regard to their views on the rich and the poor. After a brief consideration of the different audiences of Jerome and Augustine, we focused on their attitudes to wealth and poverty, and almsgiving and its relationship to eschatology. In both Jerome’s and Augustine’s commentaries we were confronted with problems regarding the nature of the collections, the composition of the audiences, and a lack of overlap between the two works, but it was possible to discern congruences and differences in their exegesis. In their preaching on poverty and riches, both homilists associated Judas with the devil and wealth. With regard to the identification of Christ and the poor, Jerome offers a somewhat uneasy exegesis in explaining that Christ stands at the right hand of the pauper, although the Lord himself is rich. Augustine mentioned the identification of Christ and the poor a few times in Enarrationes in Psalmos and framed the poverty of Christ within the body of the church, emphasising the common humanity of his congregation. In his sermons, mainly delivered to monks, Jerome advocated total renunciation. Augustine made more allowances for human frailty, advocating partial and gradual dispossession. The Songs of Ascent provided both our authors with the opportunity to consider the place of almsgiving in an eschatological context.
Contribution: We investigate the views of two prominent Latin fathers on wealth and poverty in their sermons on Psalms 109–150. The focus on wealth and poverty is evident. Judas is identified with the rich and Christ with the poor, placing Christ and riches against each other in an either/or position.
... Often, curses were used to deter those who might desecrate a burial site. At some point in the Roman Empire, the violation of a tomb became a public crime, probably with the very edict represented in the Nazareth Inscription (Rebillard, 2009). At present there is no consensus as to the impetus behind the edict's enactment, and opinion has remained divided between the two alternatives already proposed by the very first editor of the text, Franz Cumont (1930). ...
Stable oxygen and carbon isotope analyses are commonly used to attempt to establish the provenance of ancient marble artifacts such as statues and architectural elements. In this study we apply the technique for a novel purpose: establishing the provenance of an important and mysterious inscribed document from the Roman Empire known as the Nazareth Inscription. The stable isotope enrichment in ¹³C and substantial depletion in ¹⁸O provide a unique signature allowing the confident and unexpected identification of the upper quarry of the Greek island of Kos as the source of the marble. This information resolves a near century of debate among ancient historians about the significance of the inscription, hitherto most often connected with Roman reactions to early Christian reports of Jesus’ empty tomb. It is proposed that the edict was issued by Caesar Augustus in response to the desecration of the grave of a famous tyrant from Kos named Nikias, a theory which more logically fits with the provenance of the marble and the events of that time. Isotope analyses of dated and localized inscriptions will deliver vast new data for the high resolution economic history of marble production and distribution around the ancient Mediterranean.
... and "Christian" types on the basis of orientation, presence of absence of funerary goods, and the level of mummification (advocated by Bowen 2002), depends on the notion of strictly bounded religious groups, which may have had something to say about funerary customs, something that has been challenged for other regions of the Roman Empire (Rebillard 2009 The evidence for Manichaeans, living alongside "Catholic" Christians and worshipers of Tutu, shows that there was room for religious differences in the everyday life of villages and cities of the oasis. ...
New archaeological and papyrological discoveries in the Egyptian desert are destined to impact the study of religion in late antiquity. This extended review of An Oasis City (2015) will highlight some of most important findings related to the religious diversity of the region. The tremendous wealth of the new discoveries offers insight into the development of religion during the later Roman Empire. Building on this archaeological overview of Amheida (ancient Trimithis in the Dakhleh Oasis), this paper discusses the local situation of Egyptian religion, Christianity, and Manichaeism in late antiquity, with a particular focus on religious diversity and interaction in everyday life.
... Рељеф, рад Антонианоса из Афродизије (Antoniano d'Afrodisia) пронађен је 1908. године, у дворишту античке виле (Rizzo, 1909, стр. 4 (1834), Dill (1905), Rebillard(2009), Horsley (1997, Harrill (1998) и други. Натпис је значајан за познавање Антинојевог култа, али и за познавање других колегија и правила која су за чланове важила, па је много пута публикован и цитиран. ...
... ( ) Rebillard (2009) denies the existence of Christian cemeteries during the third century, but scholars have strongly debated that denial. They have criticized the interpretations of some of the textual sources cited by Rebillard, and pointed to the archaeological evidence, which indicates the existence of Christian cemeteries at this time (Duval 2000, 448-57;Fiocchi Nicolai 2016;Guyon 2005, 235-53). ...
... 88 Meanwhile, Rebillard sees this change as having taken place in the second century since cremation was still the norm in the first century. 89 Finally, Nock is unclear on the timing of this change, but sees it as having taken place during the time of the Roman Empire. 90 In any case, by the fourth century, it is clear that inhumation had become the standard practice of disposing the dead among Christians throughout the Roman Empire. ...
This article explores how death was understood in late Antiquity in Greco-Roman and Christian cultures. It argues that, in consistency with many other cultures such as Judaism and other ancient Middle Eastern cultures, Greco-Roman cultures, by their practices towards the dead, exhibited fear and hopelessness. However, early Christians, because of their belief in the resurrection based on the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ, exhibited hope in their attitudes toward death. After surveying the last rituals which were performed when death became imminent, the article proceeds to compare and contrast both the Greco-Roman and early Christian practices pertaining to the disposal of the bodies of the dead and any post-disposal practices. In the changing religious landscape, while attitudes towards the dead in Greco-Roman cultures evidenced the social distinctions based on their political and economic status, no such distinctions were made in Christian cultures.
A strange thing happened to Roman sarcophagi in the third century: their Greek mythic imagery vanished. Since the beginning of their production a century earlier, these beautifully carved coffins had featured bold mythological scenes. How do we make sense of this imagery's own death on later sarcophagi, when mythological narratives were truncated, gods and heroes were excised, and genres featuring no mythic content whatsoever came to the fore? What is the significance of such a profound tectonic shift in the Roman funerary imagination for our understanding of Roman history and culture, for the development of its arts, for the passage from the High to the Late Empire and the coming of Christianity, but above all, for the individual Roman women and men who chose this imagery, and who took it with them to the grave? In this book, Mont Allen offers the clues that aid in resolving this mystery.
In Isis in a Global Empire, Lindsey Mazurek explores the growing popularity of Egyptian gods and its impact on Greek identity in the Roman Empire. Bringing together archaeological, art historical, and textual evidence, she demonstrates how the diverse devotees of gods such as Isis and Sarapis considered Greek ethnicity in ways that differed significantly from those of the Greek male elites whose opinions have long shaped our understanding of Roman Greece. These ideas were expressed in various ways - sculptures of Egyptian deities rendered in a Greek style, hymns to Isis that grounded her in Greek geography and mythology, funerary portraits that depicted devotees dressed as Isis, and sanctuaries that used natural and artistic features to evoke stereotypes of the Nile. Mazurek's volume offers a fresh, material history of ancient globalization, one that highlights the role that religion played in the self-identification of provincial Romans and their place in the Mediterranean world.
The main focus of the article are the reasons and circumstances behind the desecration of the graves of the Christians in Nicomedia in the year 303, as presented in Eusebius’s account. A short time before that, another wave of persecutions directed at Christians had begun there on the order of Emperor Diocletian. When a fire broke out in the imperial palace, Christians were named as responsible for setting the fire (incendium). After they had been sentences to the death penalty, they were executed by beheading with a sword (decapitatio), burning alive (crematio, vivicomburium) or drowning. However, as we can read in the Ecclesiastical History, the repression did not end there, as it was decided that the bodies of the convicts were to be exhumed and thrown into the sea. The current article aims at analyzing the above events from the perspective of regulations and customs observed by the Romans with reference to convicts and their bodies. Moreover, while rejecting Eusebius’s claim that the desecration of the graves was dictated by the fear that the burial ground of the martyrs might lead to the development of their cult, the article analyzes the possible motives for attempting to eradicate all the traces of the executed Christians on the side of the Roman authorities. With the aid of Lactantius’s account, the article discusses, among others, the concept of treating Christians as enemies (hostes).
Whoever speaks of memory must not remain silent about death. The preservation of knowledge, events and also sensations, etc. gains its importance precisely through the fundamental transience of human activity. The memory of the lifeworld of the deceased therefore does not provide authentic documentation, but is predetermined by socially handed-down concepts of remembering (or not remembering). Against this background, the contributions in this volume deal with the relationship between memory and reference to the past in the context of the tense interplay between mortality, death and society. With contributions by Thorsten Benkel, Ekkehard Coenen, Oliver Dimbath, Jan Ferdinand, Carsten Heinze, Nina Leonhard, Matthias Meitzler, Christoph Nienhaus, Melanie Pierburg, Sarah Peuten, Leonie Schmickler, Nico Wettmann and Laura Völkle.
Religion is never simply there. In Religion and the Everyday Life of Manichaeans in Kellis, Mattias Brand shows where and when ordinary individuals and families in Egypt practiced a Manichaean way of life. Rather than portraying this ancient religion as a well-structured, totalizing community, the fourth-century papyri sketch a dynamic image of lived religious practice, with all the contradictions, fuzzy boundaries, and limitations of everyday life. Following these microhistorical insights, this book demonstrates how family life, gift-giving, death rituals, communal gatherings, and book writing are connected to our larger academic debates about religious change in late antiquity.
The purpose of the article is to present the reaction of the early Christians to the emergence and the spread of the great epidemics. During the early Christian ages (2nd–3rd centuries) different plagues devastated people of the Roman Empire. Christianity has already prepared some modes of activity to deal with epidemics. These were both ideological and practical means. The main conclusion is that the pestilences during which Christians might show their moral principles, the special manner of life, and activity were one of the reasons to explain conversion to Christianity.
Despite the multitude of burial, cremation and disposal options now available in modern
society, current western attitudes to death often bring with them expectations of ‘normality’.
There is a general belief that, despite the distances of time and space that separate
us, there will still be elements within ancient burial traditions that we can recognise,
behaviour that we can easily interpret as being respectful towards the dead. Many of the
beliefs that underpin these expectations of ‘normality’ or ‘respect’, draw substantially on
Judaeo-Christian traditions, which took shape in the Levant1 during the latter half of the
1st millennium BC and 1st millennium AD. These beliefs differ substantially from those
of past societies in the region, as witnessed by references in the Old Testament (Isaiah
65.2-6), which highlight the difficult relationship between the requirements of monotheism and the traditional cult of the dead. The ‘Invisible Dead’ Project, carried out at Durham University between 2012-2014 and funded by the John Templeton Foundation, has sought to chart the long-term development of attitudes to the dead, from c. 4000 BC down to 400 AD (Chalcolithic to the end of the Roman period), through an examination of documentary and archaeological evidence for the form, scale, and significance of mortuary practices.
This paper aims to presents some initial results from the project. We will explore some of
the emerging trends in treatment of the human body and wider developments in society,
economy and religious belief. We also seek to consider the ways in which scholarly attitudes to the dead, as an object of study, have impacted upon the kind of questions asked of the material and the various lenses through which burial has been examined, in particular by researchers working on different periods. As this paper will demonstrate, burial practices and the beliefs behind them differ across space and time, and the treatment of human remains in the past cannot simply be understood as a direct equivalent of ‘burial’ as understood today.
During the late fourth century CE, Daphne near Antioch in Roman Syria was a place of both cohabitation and confrontation between various religious groups and contributed to the construction of their religious identity. In 351–352, the corpse of a Christian martyr named Babylas was buried near the famous temple of Apollo. Some ten years later, the emperor Julian had the body sent away on the ground that it impeded the pagan cult, hoping that its disappearance would cause Apollo to return. However, the famous Christian preacher John Chrysostom argued that the power of the martyr lingered in Daphne even after his coffin was removed, thus asserting the supremacy of Christianity over the pagan god. While trying to verbally christianize Daphne’s space, Chrysostom also disparaged the local synagogue, even though it was a popular spot for local Christians and may have been dedicated to biblical figures who were also worshipped by them. He did so to enforce the spatial and theological boundaries between Jews and Christians.KeywordsLate AntiquityRoman EmpireAntiochReligious competitionApolloEmperor JulianMartyr BabylasJohn ChrysostomMatronaChristianization
Time is integral to human culture. Over the last two centuries people's relationship with time has been transformed through industrialisation, trade and technology. But the first such life-changing transformation – under Christianity's influence – happened in late antiquity. It was then that time began to be conceptualised in new ways, with discussion of eternity, life after death and the end of days. Individuals also began to experience time differently: from the seven-day week to the order of daily prayer and the festal calendar of Christmas and Easter. With trademark flair and versatility, world-renowned classicist Simon Goldhill uncovers this change in thinking. He explores how it took shape in the literary writing of late antiquity and how it resonates even today. His bold new cultural history will appeal to scholars and students of classics, cultural history, literary studies, and early Christianity alike.
Debates on whether early Christians relied solely on exorcism and other miraculous healing under the assumption that all diseases are a result of demonic activity, continue. On the one end of this scholarly continuum are those who hold that early Christians only approached disease and healing as purely spiritual phenomena (hence, focusing on exorcism and other kinds of miraculous healing), while, on the other end, others have argued that early Christians accepted a naturalistic view of the causes for diseases and, consequently, sought naturalistic solutions to diseases. However, like in many other areas of life and thought in early Christianity, there is truth in both of these contentions. Rather than choose sides in this debate, this paper will argue that, just like in other areas, early Christians chose and modified existing approaches to sickness and death based on their understanding of the scriptural teachings on these subjects. As such, their approaches provide some key lessons to the current Covid-19 stricken Church.
Recent research at Soba focuses on the tangible and intangible heritage of the medieval capital of Alwa kingdom, whose remains cover approximately 275 ha. About 222 ha of this area has been built up or transformed into agricultural land in the past 30 years. An ethnographic survey was also carried out in the built-up area to understand how the residents engage with the archaeological heritage and material remains. The undeveloped area of the capital (53 ha) was the focus of interdisciplinary archaeological fieldwork conducted in 2019 and 2020. A large-scale geophysical survey, using a fluxgate gradiometer and ground-penetrating radar, was initiated in the undeveloped area, and excavation trenches were opened to verify distinctive magnetic anomalies. Along with the ethnographic and geophysical data, the study of the pottery, burials, and stratigraphic sequence (supplemented with radiocarbon dates) provides new insights into the spatial organization of the medieval capital.
In 2015, an unusual burial was uncovered during construction works at Great Casterton, Rutland. A male adult human skeleton, secured at the ankles with a pair of iron fetters and a padlock, was buried in a probable ditch. Iron hobnails were present around the feet of the individual. A radiocarbon date (AMS) from the burial produced a date of a . d . 226–427 with 95.4 per cent probability. This example appears to be the first definitive archaeologically excavated instance of an individual buried in this manner in Roman Britain. The character of the burial may imply that this was a slave, although other possibilities are also considered, as are the wider social and symbolic implications of the inclusion of shackles in a burial.
This article explores the materiality of the Orthodox Christian cult of the Epitaphios on Good Friday of 2020 when, during the COVID-19 pandemic, social distancing and isolation were deemed the most effective means of protecting societies from exposure to the virus. Epitaphios is a metonym that references a venerated object, a decorated cloth or wooden icon bearing the image of Christ prepared for burial. It is placed upon a wooden bier, representing the Tomb of Christ, also called the Epitaphios. During the pandemic, people reacted inventively to restrictions imposed on practicing this communal cult publicly in churches by constructing homemade Epitaphioi and displaying them in privately-owned spaces. We examine the materiality of the homemade Epitaphioi in the context of popular religion, evaluating how crisis may divert the forces of the longue durée into a different channel, and how ethnographic analogy may be useful for understanding ritual and cult in archaeology.
A Praga de Cipriano foi uma pandemia que durou 21 anos, entre 249 e 270 d.C., ocorrida no contexto do período denominado, convencionalmente, Crise do Século III (235‑284 d.C.). No presente artigo, busca-se expor as principais correntes de interpretação acerca dessa pandemia, de modo a compreender como esse surto epidêmico impactou um contexto de acontecimentos críticos, o qual impôs desafios ao Estado imperial e à sua população. Nesse sentido, com base nas evidências documentais disponíveis, intenta-se refletir sobre as respostas sociais e políticas dadas à pandemia, a partir da compreensão das políticas empreendidas pelos imperadores no espaço temporal da ocorrência dessa praga. Recorre-se, para tanto, aos tratados Ad Demetrianus e De mortalitate, de Cipriano de Cartago, entre outros documentos de autores antigos que fornecem dados sobre a pandemia (De laudi martirii, de Pseudo‑Cipriano; Vita Cipriani, de Pôncio, o Diácono; Epistula, de Dionísio de Alexandria, descrita por Eusébio de Cesareia, em Historia Ecclesiastica). Em nossa opinião, a Praga de Cipriano foi um expressivo aspecto do chamado contexto da Crise do Século III, que influenciou diretamente as políticas religiosas e sociais dos imperadores romanos do período, em especial, no tocante aos territórios da África romana.
International Conference
Aix-Marseille (France) - November 4–5, 2021
DEATH AND THE SOCIETIES OF LATE ANTIQUITY
New methods, new questions?
Significant developments in the methodologies used both in the field and in the laboratory have paved the way for a renewal of thinking about the populations and burial practices of Late Antiquity. Alongside work done on the period and the role of burial practices (see for example Boissavit-Camus et al, 1996; Boyer, 2019; Cartron et al, 2016; Chavarría-Arnau, 2007; Granier, 2017; Guyon, 2005; Heijmans, 2004; Lambert, 2013; Nissen-Jaubert, 2007; Rebillard et al, 2009), the emergence of the area of study then known as “field anthropology” (Duday, 2005) has been crucial in reshaping the focus of research. Recent studies, aided by a proliferation of archaeological examples, reveal a desire to re-examine and revise data, not only anthropological, but also archaeological and historical (Barbiera, 2012; Boyer et al, 2014; Buchet, 1996; Castex et al, 2015; Chavarría-Arnau, 2019; Kacki et al, 2017; Laubry, 2016; Lauwers et al, 2016). These studies increase our knowledge about the treatment of the dead, the place of death among the living, the location of burial sites, and even the structure of tombs; all these elements are of course variable according to region and culture.
These recent studies, which now tend to be multidisciplinary, help us to re-examine accepted truths and to revitalize our thinking about the way in which these ancient societies envisaged Death and managed their dead in the context of the multiple changes occurring within the Roman Empire and on its margins.
Late Antiquity is marked by its political, social, economic, and cultural evolutions. This period of major societal changes initially saw the coexistence of Roman institutions and new social structures, especially those emerging from the early Christian religion. The societies of Late Antiquity are therefore characterized by a mosaic of political, social, and cultural entities, both in the heart of the Empire's provinces and on their borders.
Can this plurality of situations also be detected in the burial practices of the period? Which elements help us to identify and define this diversity? And to what extent can burial practices really help us to understand the living conditions of ancient communities and their developments? Between the first centuries of the Roman Empire and Late Antiquity, what degree of either continuity or change in demographic and cultural dynamics do these practices reveal?
Specific reflection on the world of the dead, on a large geographic and thematic scale and in all its disciplinary plurality, has therefore become essential. Anthropology and its related sciences (biology, archaeothanatology, biochemistry) are crucial to this, alongside archaeological, historical, environmental, and societal approaches. This call for papers is for a two-day event dedicated to examining this set of questions.
Research themes for proposals may therefore include a wide range of topics, such as:
Relationships between land ownership and land rights and the creation of burial sites
Access to land use and land rights, particularly in an urban context, evolved at the same time as the creation of new burial sites. Did these practices lead to a change in land rights or was it rather the case that the evolution of these rights (brought about by change in the urban framework) facilitated new practices? These questions call for an exchange of ideas between archaeo-anthropological approaches and studies of texts relating, for example, to changes in land use or to the availability of certain areas for use for the dead.
Expressing social identity in death
How was the identity of individuals maintained in death in the communities of Late Antiquity? It is important to understand how various burial choices reflect the social, cultural, or religious beliefs of the different communities. Can grave markings, or indeed the absence of markings, tell us about the position of the individuals in society, or about their beliefs?
Detecting the plurality of cultures and communities in their perception of death, bodies, and tombs
The evolution of thinking and its plurality lead to the emergence of often highly diverse ideas relating to death. This plurality can be seen in the first centuries of the Roman period, thanks to the multitude of communities that each had their own established practices. In the light of changes to the sociocultural framework of Late Antiquity, how were understandings of the body, death, and tombs (as a structure) or burial sites (in terms of location and topography) transformed? How did these transformations translate into burial practices?
Reorganization of the Empire and burial practices
Late Antiquity saw significant changes, both political and territorial. Did the evolution of the political and administrative management of the Empire, the change in the urban framework of many cities, or the reorganization of land in the countryside bring about transformations in burial practices? Or was there in fact a form of continuity within the mortuary gestures adopted?
Looking beyond the conceptual framework, there were a number of very specific transformations of an economic, cultural, political, or social nature. Did these changes also influence burial practices?
Relationships between population groups in the expression of burial practices
Both at the wider scale of the Empire and its neighbors and at the smaller scale of the group (civitas, town, community), the relationships between the different population groups may affect the practices adopted by each. Did certain population groups influence others in the implementation and expression of burial practices? If so, which ones and how?
Populations: Composition, evolution, plurality
Exchange between populations took place right from the beginning of the Empire, and even before. Trade routes naturally involved the movement of individuals, changing the composition of human groups over time. How were communities characterized and how did they evolve? What were the burial practices and beliefs of the populations in the territories in the west of the Roman Empire and on their margins? Specific events can also affect the composition of population groups: it is important to assess the impact that incidents of mass mortality—caused by factors related to health, war, or the environment—can have on the composition of human groups and on burial practices in the short and long term. For example, the Antonine Plague, which occurred in the 2nd century AD, directly affected the economic life and indeed the very structure of the Empire during the 3rd century. What are the long-term consequences of a pandemic of this nature?
These themes can be approached from numerous angles, whether archaeo-anthropological, biological, historical, archaeological, topographical, or societal. We especially welcome multidisciplinary papers, whether these are synthetic or based on case studies.
The conference languages are French and English.
Proposals for oral communications or posters (in English, or in English and French) must be submitted by January 31, 2021 to mortantiquitetardive@gmail.com. Proposals must include the title of the presentation (in English, or in English and in French), a list of authors with their respective institutional affiliation and contact details, a summary (in English, or in English and in French) of 1800 characters for posters or 3000 characters for presentations, and a biography of the authors (in English, or English and French) of 1000 characters.
Oral communications will be 15 minutes long, followed by 10–15 minutes of discussion time. Accompanying PowerPoints should be in English, even for presentations that will be delivered in French. Posters are to be in English.
Organising Committee
Gaëlle Granier (Archaeo-anthropologist, researcher, CNRS, UMR 7268 ADES), Charlotte Boyer (PhD student in Archaeo-anthropology, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, UMR 7041 ArScan – UMR 7206 EAE), Elisabeth Anstett (Anthropologist, Senior Researcher, CNRS, UMR 7268 ADES).
Keynote speakers
Alexandra Chavarria-Arnau (Università degli Studi di Padova, Padoue)
Eric Rebillard (Cornell University, New York)
Scientific committee
Llorenç Alapont-Martin (Université de Valence, Espagne), Elisabeth Anstett (UMR 7268 ADES, Aix-Marseille Université, Marseille), Reine-Marie BÉrard (UMR 7299 CCJ, Aix-Marseille Université, Aix-en-Provence), Brigitte Boissavit-Camus (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, UMR 7041 ArScan, Paris), Charlotte Boyer (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, UMR 7041 ArScan – UMR 7206 EAE, Paris), Isabelle Cartron (Université de Bordeaux, UMR 5607 Ausonius, Bordeaux), Dominique Castex (UMR 5199 PACEA, Université de Bordeaux, Bordeaux), Olivier De Cazanove (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, UMR 7041 ArScan, Paris), Alexandra Chavarria-Arnau (Università degli Studi di Padova, Padoue), Gaëlle Granier (UMR 7268 ADES, Aix-Marseille Université, Marseille), Sacha Kacki (UMR 5199 PACEA, Université de Bordeaux, Bordeaux), Chiara Maria Lambert (Università degli Studi di Salerno, Salerne), Nicolas Laubry (Ecole Française de Rome, Rome), Michel Lauwers (UMR 7264 CEPAM, Université de Nice-Sophia-Antipolis, Nice), Anne Nissen (Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, UMR 7041 ArScan, Paris), Eric Rebillard (Cornell University, New York), Pascal Sellier (UMR 7206 EAE, Musée de l'Homme, Paris).
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Chavarría-Arnau A., 2019. “The Topography of Early Medieval Burials : some reflections on the Archaeological Evidence from Northern Italy (Fifth-Eight Centuries)”. In : Escalona J., Vésteisson O., Brookes S. (eds.), Polity and Neighbourhood in Early Medieval Europe, Turnhout: Brepols, p. 83-120.
Duday H., 2005. « L’archéothanatologie ou l'archéologie de la mort ». In : O. Dutour, J.J. Hublin, B. Vandermeersch (dir.), Objets et méthodes en paléoanthropologie, Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques, Orientations et méthodes n° 7, Paris, p. 153-217.
Granier G., 2017. « Evolution de la conception de la mort et de la gestion des morts dans l’espace urbain et péri-urbain durant l’Antiquité : l’exemple des nécropoles tardives de Vienne et Arles ». in : De Larminat (S.), Corbineau (R.), Corrochano (A.), Gleize (Y.), Soulat (J.) (dir.) : Rencontre autour de nouvelles approches de l’archéologie funéraire. Actes de la 6e Rencontre du Groupe d’anthropologie et d’archéologie funéraire, 4-5 avril 2014, INHA, Paris, Publications du GAAF, 6, p. 285-290.
Granier G., 2011. Approche archéo-anthropologique des ensembles funéraires de l’Antiquité Tardive. L’exemple des sites urbains de Vienne et Arles (IIIe-VIe siècles), Thèse de Doctorat en Anthropologie biologique, Aix-Marseille Université, 469 p.
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Heijmans M., 2004. Arles durant l’Antiquité tardive. De la Duplex Arelas à l’Urbs Genesii. Ecole française de Rome, Rome, 448 p.
Kacki S., Zitelli F., Blanchard P., Chapoulie R., Castex D, 2017. Dynamique de constitution des sépultures plurielles de la catacombe des Saints Pierre-et-Marcellin (Rome) : apport des analyses physico-chimiques. 6e Rencontre du Groupe d’anthropologie et d’archéologie funéraire, Apr 2014, Paris, p. 205-209.
Lambert C.M., 2013. “Episcopus, civitas, territorium nella documentazione epigrafica della Campania tardoantica”. in : Atti del XV Congreso Internacional de Arqueología Cristiana (XV CIAC). Città del Vaticano Casa ed. Vaticano, p. 1523-1540.
Laubry N., 2016. “Les espaces funéraires des collèges dans l'Italie romaine.” in : Rodríguez-Gutiérrez O., Tran N., Soler Huertas B. (éd.), Los espacios de reunión de las asociaciones romanas. Diálogos desde la arqueología y la historia, en homenaje a Bertrand Goffaux, Séville (Colleción Historia y Geografía, 325), p. 115-135.
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Rebillard E, Rawlings E, Routier-Pucci J, 2009. The Care of the Dead in Late Antiquity. Cornell University Press, 240 p.
This article examines the early Christian reception of the apocryphal book Tobit, focusing on Greek and Latin Christian interpretations from the 2nd to the 5th century CE. The study asks: how did early Christians read Tobit and for what purposes? The article provides an overview of how and why Tobit ended up in the Christian Bible, whether canonical or apocryphal. It then examines how the figures of Tobit and his son, Tobias, function as a moral exemplum in early Christianity, especially related to almsgiving and financial management, burials and the care of the dead, marriage and parenthood, prayer, the suffering and endurance of Tobit, and the role of Tobit in the Christian understanding of angels. The article demonstrates that Tobit had a rich and diverse reception in early Christian biblical interpretation, especially in the Latin church of the West. CONTRIBUTION: This article investigates the historical reception of the apocryphal Book of Tobit in early Christian thought. The focus is especially on the varieties of thought regarding Tobit. The article provides an overview of how and why Tobit ended up in the Christian Bible, whether canonical or apocryphal. It then examines how the figures of Tobit and his son, Tobias, function as moral exempla.
This article is the first to consider book 8 of the Palatine Anthology as an integrated collection. Book 8 consists of funerary epigrams of Gregory of Nazianzus. We consider how the book is structured as a coherent collection, what its place in the Palatine Anthology is and, above all, how these underdiscussed poems contribute to the changing discourse of death in fourth-century Christianity. We also look at how the poems contribute to the Byzantine culture in which the Palatine Anthology was put together. The article reveals how Gregory rewrites both the positive values of death in a Christian community and negative descriptions of those who transgress such values.
JOURNAL OF GREEK ARCHAEOLOGY 4, 2019
This paper aims at identifying the materiality of female presence in the burial context along two main strands of funerary ritual and cultic behaviour. The first concerns the mourning of the dead and female devotional practice, while the second involves the deposition of personal objects carrying protective and apotropaic properties (usually related to health and fertility), and the creation of secret and mysterious κατάδεσμοι or defixiones (as expressions of sexual desire through binding curses). The ultimate aim is to visualise women in the Late Antique – Early Byzantine period within the often marginalised and overlooked domestic and cultic spheres, in order to appreciate their position in a (largely) Christianised Eastern Roman society between the late 4th and early 8th centuries AD. Material and visual evidence for female presence in funerary ritual and cultic context has been put together and consulted, while textual references and inscriptions related to binding curses and other ‘magic’ related paraphernalia have also been considered in order to read the gendered association of death. Religious iconography of later centuries depicting saintly women in funerary-related areas within churches and the acts of women as mourners, mothers and wives, on the other hand, help immensely in comprehending female manners and extraordinary behavioural patterns in both funerary ritual and cult.
Despite the popularity of the cult of Mithras in Rome in the 4th century AD, the archaeological record provides evidence for only two tombs associated with the followers of Mithras. The lack of Mithraic burials is most likely linked with the pro-Christian bias towards the funerary material found in the Roman catacombs, which had dominated the catacomb scholarship since their re-discovery in the late sixteenth century. However, following a recent development in the understanding of how the subterranean cemeteries were used in antiquity, it is possible to begin a re-evaluation of the available material. An arcosolium from the Catacomb of SS. Peter and Marcellinus decorated with two separate dining scenes may shed new light on our knowledge about Mithraic burials in Rome. In the case of this particular tomb, the evidence suggests that the owner(s) of the arcosolium were most likely pagans, possibly followers of Mithras, who migrated to Rome from north of the Alps in the early 4th century AD.
Bellum civile 6,564-569 describes how the witch Erictho disrupts a funeral. In its context the expression cognato in funere refers not to any putative relatives of Erictho (not mentioned elsewhere) or to relatives of some anonymous deceased person (so Korenjak), but to the only group of people Erictho shares some kind of bond with, namely her ‚sisters'the Thessalian witches.
This book makes an original contribution to the newly thriving field of ancient Greek and Roman performance and dance studies. It offers a better grasp of ancient perceptions and conceptualizations of dance through the lens of literary texts. It gives attention not only to the highly encoded genre of pantomime, which dominates the stages in the Roman Empire, but also to acrobatic, non-representational dances. It is distinctive in its juxtaposition of ancient theorizations of dance with literary depictions of dance scenes. Part I explores the contact zones of ancient dance discourse with other areas of cultural expression, especially language and poetry, rhetoric and art, and philosophy and religion. Part II discusses ekphraseis of dance performances in prose and poetry. The main bulk of the book focuses roughly on the second century CE (discussing Plutarch, Lucian of Samosata, Athenaeus, the apocryphal Acts of John, Longus, and Apuleius), with excursions to Xenophon and Nonnus. Dance is performative and dynamic, and its way to cognition and action is physical experience. This book argues that dance was understood as a practice in which human beings, whether as dancers or spectators, are confronted with the irreducible reality of their own physical existence, which is constantly changing.
When Christianisation started spreading in the Mediterranean world and beyond, a fundamental issue was how people would receive the new faith. According to Peter Burke and his cultural hybridity theory, an exchange of information and culture affecting both sides takes place when an encounter between two cultures is established. In the history of humanity, there are countless examples of such contacts, not always passive and peacefuL Nonetheless, these exchanges are not always equal in terms of consequences for the groups involved, but it is certain that they all get mutually influenced, which in turn brings about changes. The result of this encounter and exchange is not simply pagan or "purely" Christian, but something new, a hybrid identity product of a clash of cultures. In this paper I will give examples of how this hybridization happened during the process of Christianisation of the Western Europe from 4lh to 7th century and I will focus on the history of Gaul, Spain and Britain during this period.
Charity towards one's neighbor has always been a typical element of Early Christian practice. In this paper, the author discusses the development of a particular aspect of this practice: The Care of Prisoners. The early Christians looked after prisoners, slaves, the condemned and those taken as hostages and they worked to resolve some of the situations as well. This practice required a good amount of organization, which did not go unnoticed by the Roman authorities of the time.
Darlene L. Brooks Hedstrom offers a new history of the field of Egyptian monastic archaeology. It is the first study in English to trace how scholars identified a space or site as monastic within the Egyptian landscape and how such identifications impacted perceptions of monasticism. Brooks Hedstrom then provides an ecohistory of Egypt's tripartite landscape to offer a reorientation of the perception of the physical landscape. She analyzes late-antique documentary evidence, early monastic literature, and ecclesiastical history before turning to the extensive archaeological evidence of Christian monastic settlements. In doing so, she illustrates the stark differences between idealized monastic landscape and the actual monastic landscape that was urbanized through monastic constructions. Drawing upon critical theories in landscape studies, materiality and phenomenology, Brooks Hedstrom looks at domestic settlements of non-monastic and monastic settlements to posit what features makes monastic settlements unique, thus offering a new history of monasticism in Egypt.
Spanning the entire history of the city of Rome from Iron Age village to modern metropolis, this is the first book to take the long view of the Eternal City as an urban organism. Three thousand years old and counting, Rome has thrived almost from the start on self-reference, supplementing the everyday concerns of urban management and planning by projecting its own past onto the city of the moment. This is a study of the urban processes by which Rome's people and leaders, both as custodians of its illustrious past and as agents of its expansive power, have shaped and conditioned its urban fabric by manipulating geography and organizing space; planning infrastructure; designing and presiding over mythmaking, ritual, and stagecraft; controlling resident and transient populations; and exploiting Rome's standing as a seat of global power and a religious capital. © Rabun Taylor, Katherine Wentworth Rinne, and Spiro Kostof 2016. All rights reserved.
Following its violent conquest by Charlemagne (772-804), Saxony became both a Christian and a Carolingian region. This book sets out to re-evaluate the political integration and Christianization of Saxony and to show how the success of this transformation has important implications for how we view governance, the institutional church and Christian communities in the early Middle Ages. A burgeoning array of Carolingian regional studies are pulled together to offer a new synthesis of the history of Saxony in the Carolingian empire and to undercut the narrative of topdown Christianization with a more grassroots model that highlights the potential for diversity within Carolingian Christianity. This book is a comprehensive and accessible account which will provide students with a fresh view of the incorporation of Saxony into the Carolingian world.
This chapter looks at late antique religion from the perspective of the study of ritual and its function in popular culture. It examines the role of ritual in influencing the rhythms of everyday life in the towns and cities and also the countryside of the period. The chapter also examines the ways in which ritual served to define both quotidian and extraordinary events and activities, such as the key moments of the lifecycle as well as those of the calendar. The analysis of rituals begins by looking at the calendrical rituals, including the question of Sabbath observance. The chapter next examines concerns for ritual separation before considering “shared” and “blended” festivals in Late Antiquity. After looking at examples of both continuity and innovation the final type of rituals considered are those related to the human lifecycle: birth, marriage, and death.
At some point in late antiquity, most scholars believe, Christians reversed the powerful valence of death pollution and considered corpses and bones to be sacred. The rise of the ‘Cult of the Saints’ or ‘cult of relics’ is widely accepted as a curious social phenomenon that characterized late antiquity. This paper argues that although present elsewhere in the late Roman Empire, no such ‘corporeal turn’ happened in Rome. The prevailing assumption that it did – fostered by the apologetic concerns of early modern Catholic historiography – has led us to gloss over important evidence to the contrary, to read our own assumptions into our extant textual, material, and archaeological sources. As a ‘case study’, this paper considers the so-called ‘Crypt of the Popes’ in the catacombs of Callixtus, which is universally presented unproblematically as an authentic burial chamber attesting to an age of persecution and the strength of Catholic apostolic succession. This paper argues, by contrast, that the chamber is not what it seems; it is, rather, a case of early modern historiographical artifice masquerading as late antique Roman Christianity.
In recent years scholars have re-evaluated the "parting of the ways" between Judaism and Christianity, reaching new understandings of the ways shared origins gave way to two distinct and sometimes inimical religious traditions. But this has been a profoundly textual task, relying on the writings of rabbis, bishops, and other text-producing elites to map the terrain of the "parting." This book takes up the question of the divergence of Judaism and Christianity in terms of material--the stuff made, used, and left behind by the persons that lived in and between these religions as they were developing. Considering the glass, clay, stone, paint, vellum, and papyrus of ancient Jews and Christians, this book maps the "parting" in new ways, and argues for a greater role for material and materialism in our reconstructions of the past.
This study addresses the Old Saxon Heliand’s expanded version of the “Massacre of the Innocents” narrative in light of contemporary Germanic infanticide practices. It is well established that one of the primary purposes of the Heliand, a vernacular adaptation of the Gospel that refigures Jesus as a Germanic lord, was to draw the newly converted Saxons away from indigenous practices that conflicted with Christian beliefs. I argue that the Heliand’s brutal descriptions of the Massacre’s violence and its pathos-laden accounts of the mothers’ sorrow at the loss of their children served as a way to condemn the Saxons’ practice of killing unwanted children through abandonment or exposure, as well as a means to acknowledge the trauma that victims of the practice undoubtedly experienced. Particular attention is paid to the lexical choices the poet makes while describing Herod’s soldiers, the slain children, and the sorrowful mothers.
In the fourth and fifth centuries C.E., food provides a dense and value-laden web of meaning which lay and monastic Christians use to negotiate their identity with the culture at large, but also vis-à-vis each other. The works of Shenoute of Atripe are a valuable source of insight into the workings of this discourse in a Christian community, since they embrace both internal monastic instruction (the Canons) and public sermons (the Discourses). The first half of this paper constructs Shenoute's ideology of the Christian meal in terms of the larger discourse of food in which it participates. He draws on traditional Greco-Roman values of hospitality and patronage, communal assembly and ritual eating, and food production and distribution to create a holistic definition of the Christian meal as one that embodies charity, social mutuality, gratitude to God, ritual correctness, obedience to spiritual authority, and transparent labor practices. The second half of the paper looks at Christian festivals, martyr feasts, and lay-sponsored Eucharists, of which Shenoute is invariably critical, through the lens of this definition. Although Shenoute tries to use his authority and sense of monastic uniqueness to enforce distinctions between lay and monastic meals and between ritual and social meals, the discourse of food on which his ideology depends resists tidy division along such lines.
This is a delightfully deceptive works that start out with a simple, seemingly arcane question-can you libel or slander the dead?-and develops it outward, tackling larger and larger implications, until it ends up straddling the borders between law, culture, philosophy, and the meaning of life. A full answer to this question requires legal scholar Don Herzog to consider what tort law is actually designed to protect, what differences death makes-and what differences it doesn't-and why we value what we value. Herzog is one of those rare scholarly writers who can make the most abstract argument compelling and entertaining.
It is often assumed that Ireland entered recorded history with the emergence of organized Christianity on the island at some point in the fourth or fifth century C.E. This assumption has meant that the histories of late antique and early medieval Ireland are primarily viewed through the lens of conversion. Religious identities, frequently imagined as a binary opposition of “Christian” and “pagan,” have been a dominant historiographical focus. This essay argues that it is more fruitful to examine the relationship between Ireland and its neighbors from c. 150–c. 550 C.E. through a frontier dynamic, a dynamic in which religious identity was but one factor among many. By recasting the Irish experience in this way, it is possible to take a more comparative approach which cuts against the grain of Irish exceptionalism. Moreover, situating Ireland within the scholarly discourse of late antiquity allows for a new and nuanced understanding of the social and religious changes that characterized this period on the island.
Recent work has advanced our understanding of human crania found in London's upper Walbrook valley, where skull deposition appears to have peaked during the occupation of the Cripplegate fort, itself probably built soon after London's Hadrianic fire. Although this fire is usually considered to have been accidental, parallels can be drawn with London's Boudican destruction. This article explores the possibility that these three strands of Hadrianic evidence — fire, fort and skulls — find common explanation in events associated with a British war of this period. This might support the identification of some Walbrook skulls as trophy heads, disposed as noxii in wet places in the urban pomerium .
L'etude de dix inscriptions juives provenant de Corycus (Empire byzantin, Cilicie) et datees principalement des V e et VI e siecles montre non seulement que les juifs se sont integres a la vie politique et economique de la cite mais aussi, tout comme la societe de Corycus, qu'ils furent touches par le passage du paganisme au christianisme