Patrons And Viewers In Late Antiquity

Antiquity was a multi-cultural and multi-religious world. Meetings and interactions between cultures in East and West, and the consequent widespread exchange of ideas had an enormous impact on cultural practices and the creation of identities. These cultural diversities are reflected by both the archaeological material and the written sources. Patrons of luxurious buildings, elaborate grave monuments, and churches used architecture and images to demonstrate political, social and religious power. These buildings and their embellishment with sculpture, mosaics and paintings were strong factors in communicating identity and attitudes both in the public and private spheres. The continuous production of mythological sculpture and mosaics coexisted, sometimes peacefully other times with violent consequences, with an increasing influence from new philosophical mind sets originating in the East, such as Christianity. In this period of rapid social and religious change new patrons appeared, such as bishops, who were responsible for the construction of churches commemorating the Christian triumph. The seminar focuses on the way patrons, pagan as well as Christian, conveyed messages through material culture and the responses of the viewers.

This study examines third- and fourth-century portraits of married Christians and associated images, reading them as visual rhetoric in early Christian conversations about marriage and celibacy, and recovering lay perspectives underrepresented or missing in literary sources. Historians of early Christianity have grown increasingly aware that written sources display an enthusiasm for asceticism and sexual renunciation that was far from representative of the lives of most early Christians. Often called a “silent majority,” the married laity in fact left behind a significant body of work in the material record. Particularly in and around Rome, they commissioned and used such objects as sarcophagi, paintings, glass vessels, finger rings, luxury silver, other jewellery items, gems, and seals that bore their portraits and other iconographic forms of self-representation. This study is the first to undertake a sustained exploration of these material sources in the context of early Christian discourses and practices related to marriage, sexuality, and celibacy. Reading this visual evidence increases understanding of the population who created it, the religious commitments they asserted, and the comparatively moderate forms of piety they set forth as meritorious alternatives to the ascetic ideal. In their visual rhetoric, these artifacts and images comprise additional voices in Late Antique conversations about idealized ways of Christian life, and ultimately provide a fuller picture of the early Christian world. Plentifully illustrated with photographs and drawings, this volume provides readers access to primary material evidence. Such evidence, like textual sources, require critical interpretation; this study sets forth a careful methodology for iconographic analysis and applies it to identify the potential intentions of patrons and artists and the perceptions of viewers. It compares iconography to literary sources and ritual practices as part of the interpretive process, clarifying the ways images had a rhetorical edge and contributed to larger conversations. Accessibly written, The Visual Rhetoric of the Married Laity in Late Antiquity is of interest to students and scholars working on Late Antiquity, early Christian and late Roman social history, marriage and celibacy in early Christianity, and early Christian, Roman, and Byzantine art.

Fifteen papers focus on the active and dynamic uses of images during the first millennium AD. They bring together an international group of scholars who situate the period’s visual practices within their political, religious, and social contexts. The contributors present a diverse range of evidence, including mosaics, sculpture, and architecture from all parts of the Mediterranean, from Spain in the west to Jordan in the east. Contributions span from the depiction of individuals on funerary monuments through monumental epigraphy, Constantine’s expropriation and symbolic re-use of earlier monuments, late antique collections of Classical statuary, and city personifications in mosaics to the topic of civic prosperity during the Theodosian period and dynastic representation during the Umayyad dynasty. Together they provide new insights into the central role of visual culture in the constitution of late antique societies.

This book sheds new light on the religious and consequently social changes taking place in late antique Rome. The essays in this volume argue that the once-dominant notion of pagan-Christian religious conflict cannot fully explain the texts and artifacts, as well as the social, religious, and political realities of late antique Rome. Together, the essays demonstrate that the fourth-century city was a more fluid, vibrant, and complex place than was previously thought. Competition between diverse groups in Roman society - be it pagans with Christians, Christians with Christians, or pagans with pagans - did create tensions and hostility, but it also allowed for coexistence and reduced the likelihood of overt violent, physical conflict. Competition and coexistence, along with conflict, emerge as still central paradigms for those who seek to understand the transformations of Rome from the age of Constantine through the early fifth century.

Inscribing Faith in Late Antiquity considers the Greek and Latin texts inscribed in churches and chapels in the late antique Mediterranean (c. 300–800 CE), compares them to similar texts from pagan, Jewish, and Muslim spaces of worship, and explores how they functioned both textually and visually. These texts not only recorded the names and prayers of the faithful, but were powerful verbal and visual statements of cultural values and religious beliefs, conveying meaning through their words as well as through their appearances. In fact, the two were intimately connected. All of these texts – Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and pagan – acted visually, embracing their own materiality as mosaic, paint, or carved stone. Colourful and artfully arranged, the inscriptions framed human relationships with the divine, encouraged responses from readers, and made prayers material. In the first in-depth examination of the inscriptions as words and as images, the author reimagines the range of aesthetic, cultural, and religious experiences that were possible in spaces of worship. Inscribing Faith in Late Antiquity is essential reading for those interested in Roman, late antique, and Byzantine material and visual culture, inscriptions and other texts, and religious life in the ancient Mediterranean.

What does it mean to identify oneself as pagan or Christian in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages? How are religious identities constructed, negotiated, and represented in oral and written discourse? How is identity performed in rituals, how is it visible in material remains? Antiquity and the Middle Ages are usually regarded as two separate fields of scholarship. However, the period between the fourth and tenth centuries remains a time of transformations in which the process of religious change and identity building reached beyond the chronological boundary and the Roman, the Christian and ‘the barbarian’ traditions were merged in multiple ways. Being Pagan, Being Christian in Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages brings together researchers from various fields, including archaeology, history, classical studies, and theology, to enhance discussion of this period of change as one continuum across the artificial borders of the different scholarly disciplines. With new archaeological data and contributions from scholars specializing on both textual and material remains, these different fields of study shed light on how religious identities of the people of the past are defined and identified. The contributions reassess the interplay of diversity and homogenising tendencies in a shifting religious landscape. Beyond the diversity of traditions, this book highlights the growing capacity of Christianity to hold together, under its control, the different dimensions – identity, cultural, ethical and emotional – of individual and collective religious experience.

The Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity is the first comprehensive reference book covering every aspect of history, culture, religion, and life in Europe, the Mediterranean, and the Near East (including the Persian Empire and Central Asia) between the mid-3rd and the mid-8th centuries AD, the era now generally known as Late Antiquity. This period saw the re-establishment of the Roman Empire, its conversion to Christianity and its replacement in the West by Germanic kingdoms, the continuing Roman Empire in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Persian Sassanian Empire, and the rise of Islam. Consisting of over 1.5 million words in more than 5,000 A-Z entries, and written by more than 400 contributors, it is the long-awaited middle volume of a series, bridging a significant period of history between those covered by the acclaimed Oxford Classical Dictionary and The Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages. The scope of the Dictionary is broad and multi-disciplinary; across the wide geographical span covered (from Western Europe and the Mediterranean as far as the Near East and Central Asia), it provides succinct and pertinent information on political history, law, and administration; military history; religion and philosophy; education; social and economic history; material culture; art and architecture; science; literature; and many other areas. Drawing on the latest scholarship, and with a formidable international team of advisers and contributors, The Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity aims to establish itself as the essential reference companion to a period that is attracting increasing attention from scholars and students worldwide.

Ordet tradition kan tillægges mange betydninger, og som begreb har det en lang historie bag sig i den vestlige kultur. Selve ordet stammer fra det latinske tradere, at overlevere, og er et vigtigt begreb, når man forsøger at tolke det antikke menneskes sociale relationer ud fra arkæologiske fund. Forandring kan ikke forklares uden man kender til og er bevidst om den materielle kultur set over en længere tidsperiode. Derfor søger arkæologer ved hjælp af longue durée-perspektivet at spore vedvarende forandringer i det arkæologiske materiale. Dette rigt illustrerede værk fører læseren fra det forhistoriske Santorini til senantikkens Rom, fra detaljerede tekstilbeskrivelser til prædikantlister hugget i sten, for at undersøge, hvordan tradition har spillet en rolle i overleveringen af kultur. Hver af bogens bidragydere undersøger et specifikt aspekt af traditionens afgørende rolle i forståelsen af, hvordan identitet skabes og bevares i antikkens verden. Kultiske ritualer, brugen af magiske objekter og symboler, offerfund i græske helligdomme, begravelsesportrætter og jernalderens keramik er blandt de mange elementer, der bliver beskrevet. Tradition viser, hvordan kultur er iboende i os alle, og hvordan handlinger og objekter spiller en afgørende rolle i kulturel kontinuitet og forandring. Med sin grundige tværfaglige tilgang til emnet tilfører Tradition ny viden til forståelsen af den klassiske og antikke verden. Bidragydere: Niels Bargfeldt/Cecilie Brøns/Jane Fejfer/Solvejg Hansen/Signe Isager/Ifke van Kam-pen/Arja Karivieri/Jens Krasilnikoff/Eva Mortensen/Christian Mühlenbock/Marjatta Nielsen/Nora Petersen/Rubina Raja/Sine Grove Saxkjær & Jan Kindberg Jacobsen/Stine Schierup/Lone Wriedt Sørensen/Christina Videbech/Kristina Winther-Jacobsen. Jane Fejfer er lektor i klassisk arkæologi på Københavns Universitet Mette Moltesen er tidligere museumsinspektør ved Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek. Annette Rathje er lektor emerita i klassisk arkæologi ved Københavns Universitet. Tradition – from the Latin tradere, literally to hand over or hand down – has many meanings and as a concept has a long history in Western culture. When using archaeological remains to interpret the social relations of people of Antiquity, tradition becomes an important concept. We cannot explain change without knowing and being conscious of la longue durée of material culture. Thus, over a long-term perspective archaeologists seek to trace a record of continual change. This lavishly illustrated book takes readers from prehistoric Santorini to Late Antique Rome and discusses the role of tradition in the transmission of culture and the creation, maintenance and negotiation of identity in the ancient world. Covering a wide array of subjects, including cultic rituals and the use of magical objects and symbols, votive traditions in Greek sanctuaries, funerary portraits, and Iron Age pottery, Tradition reveals how culture inheres in each and how actions and objects alike play a role in the continuation and change of culture. With its thoroughly interdisciplinary approach, Tradition breaks new ground in the studies of the classical and ancient world. Contributors: Niels Bargfeldt/Cecilie Brøns/Jane Fejfer/Solvejg Hansen/Signe Isager/Ifke van Kampen/Arja Karivieri/Jens Krasilnikoff/Eva Morten-sen/Christian Mühlenbock/Marjatta Nielsen/Nora Petersen/Rubina Raja/Sine Grove Saxkjær & Jan Kindberg Jacobsen/Stine Schierup/Lone Wriedt Sørensen/Christina Videbech/Kristina Winther-Jacobsen. Jane Fejfer is associate professor of classical archaeology at the University of Copenhagen. Mette Moltesen is former curator of Ancient Sculp-ture at Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen. Annette Rathje is associate professor emerita of classical archaeology at the University of Copenhagen.