Early Christian Buildings in the Northern Cemetery of Sopianae.pdf (original) (raw)
Early Christian Buildings in the Northern Cemetery of Sopianae
To date we have known more than 30 buildings from the cemetery. Of these buildings the most important ones are presented in this paper. The main questions are dealt with: When? Who? What kind of Christians? What kind of rituals did the Christians keep in the cemetery?
Comparative Study of Christian and Pagan Burial Constructions
Mokslas - Lietuvos ateitis, 2013
This paper draws a chronological timeline comparing burial construction traditions and customs in the cradle of Christian religion, and pagan traditions in the Eastern coast of Baltic sea, precisely Lithuania since the early ages of Christianity (1 A.C.) until nowadays. This paper searches for reasons that could have effected cultural transformations, a shifting relation between inhumation and incineration in European culture has been observed. Roman culture used to cremate their dead before Christianity had set in. Baltic pagans at the time were burying their dead in stone circles, and only started incineration during the Middle Ages. Then Christianity was powerful institution, indoctrinating European daily culture. Pagan culture in Lithuanian territory has been erased in 15 th century-only 600 years ago, leaving evident vestiges in traditions and customs of nowadays. These revelations of pagan culture are usually mistaken as Christian or Catholic. The paper focuses on architectural and urban aspects of burial architecture, taking into account social and historical conditions.
The paper addresses the issue of transformation of the emperor Diocletian’s mausoleum in Split into a Christian church, namely the chronology of the process itself and the circumstances under which it happened. The author tries to demonstrate that the funerary building underwent the same process of appropriation and gradual transformation, developing in several stages, just like many other similar buildings did, throughout the Roman Empire. Since the late 19th century, modern scholarship has devoted considerable attention to the problem of original layout and function of Diocletian’s mausoleum at Split. Afterlife of the building up until the 9th century was definitely understudied, partly because of a lack of comprehensive and coherent sources. Thus, it is hardly surprising that it was an American, Mark Johnson, who was the first to examine tetrarchic funerary buildings as a group (in 2009) – in terms of their functions, typology and architectural iconography. However, during the past few decades the study of relevant textual sources, as well as the number of archaeological ones, have multiplied. So has the international scholarly attention given to the process of Christianisation of pagan buildings in general (J. Alchermes, B. Brenk, J.-P. Caillet, G. Cantino Wataghin, B. Caseau, F. W. Deichmann, C. J. Goddard, J. Hahn, J. Hillner, Y. Janvier, M. J. Johnson, A. Karivieri, H.-R. Meier, H. Saradi Mendelovici, J. Vaes, B. Ward-Perkins). Stressing the new approach to relevant textual sources, the author will, at the same time, present some new material evidence in order to corroborate the claim that the pagan mausoleum in Split did not undergo any substantial modifications prior to 6th century. Furthermore, he will demonstrate that the change went through several stages. In a first stage, the building has been obviously transformed into a relatively simple church and only afterwards it was transformed into a cathedral. There is no doubt, that this case study of a transformation of a pagan monument into a Christian one holds many important clues that could put some new light on the processes of transformation of pagan buildings into churches in general. The traditional scholarly interpretation of Croatian archaeologists, historians and historians of art, persists on a hypothesis that the Mausoleum was transformed into a cathedral (that of a runaway Salonitan archbishop) during the 7th century and that this was a one-stage transformation. Conversely, it is usually held that the emperor’s tomb suffered destruction immediately after the Edict of Milan, proclaimed in February 313, awaiting further on 640s to be re-used for a new Salonitan cathedral. However, new interpretive paradigms – that have, unfortunately, circumvented the case of Split – along with the new archaeological evidence surfacing all the time, have put the traditional interpretations to a serious test. Before mentioned innovative approaches to the problem of reuse have resulted in several important conclusions: there were three separate periods of transformation of Roman pagan and secular buildings into churches: the first phase, pertaining mainly to the 4th century, concentrated predominantly on the adaptation of profane, private buildings; the second phase reutilized public buildings of any kind; only in the third phase, during the 5th and 6th century, pagan temples and sanctuaries were finally appropriated. The case of Spalatum fits nicely into these overall results. One should also add that these studies have shown that many extremely important Roman shrines and public monuments (e.g. »Temple of Romulus« at the Roman Forum, Pantheon, Academy in Athens, Serapeum of Alexandria, temple complex on Philae near Aswan) have all been appropriated by the Church only after a long and arduous process that included several steps – the final Christianisation of respective structures being the last one. This was even more true in the case of structures forming the part of imperial estates or public property, which could not have been subjected to arbitrary destruction with impunity. As the Diocletian's palace itself was actually built on an imperial property, established as such as early as the 1st century AD and retained as part of the fiscus for centuries to come, by-passing this fact naturally resulted in some outdated theories that will now obviously have to be overcome. As a part of unalienable property of the crown, the palace at Spalatum as well as the mausoleum were under imperial supervision. Thus for any suspension of its usual function an imperial decree was necessary in order to freely dispose with the building. The removal of its pagan contents could only have taken place in several stages, during a protracted time-span: suspension of pagan cult practices, desacralization, dissolution of imperial prerogatives attached to the building, followed by the possible exemption of the parts of its inventory, ultimately its Christianisation and adaptation for a new use. The archaeological findings of the earliest post-Diocletianic phase hardly received any attention, although they seem to hold many important clues which can shed light on its later development. These useful archaeological details consist of several examples of Early Christian sculpture, found during excavation works in and around the cathedral, that can be firmly dated. Thanks to these remains, dating from the mid-6th century, we are able to date the earliest Christian adaptations of the mausoleum to the same period. On the one hand, this seems to confirm that the adaptation of octagon for Christian usage happened at least a hundred years earlier than the mid-7th century; on the other hand, it implies that the original state of the building was left intact for a much longer period of time than it has been previously hypothesized. This can be further corroborated drawing on a variety of sources, dating from 4th, 5th and 6th century (Ammianus Marcellinus, St. Ambrose of Milan, Codex Theodosianus, Codex Iustinianus, etc.). Particularly important is the evidence provided by Sidonius Apollinaris (late 480s), which seems to confirm that the emperor's mausoleum was still in function during the Gallic bishop's lifetime. Although these facts and material traces have all been common knowledge for many years, neither the data in question nor its implications for the process of Christianisation were never considered in relation to one another. Consequently, most arguments hitherto offered for the conclusions about the mentioned process were inevitably incomplete. Some other issues have also never received explanation. For example, how did the frieze on the top of the interior – bearing images of Diocletian, his wife Prisca, Hermes Psychopompos and erotes – ever survive the supposed Christian reprisal? Furthermore, how is it possible that the iconographically most important relief of the same frieze, positioned directly above the main niche (and probably representing emperor’s apotheosis), reached 16th century undamaged? All of this, again, points to the conclusion that there was no immediate or noteworthy Christian retribution at the expense of the dead emperor, namely that important parts of the mausoleum's pagan interior were left in place at least up to 6th century, when the first functional modifications took place. To sum up, one should differentiate between the conversion of pagan mausoleum into a church and the subsequent elevation of the latter to the status of a cathedral, which was a much later and contextually different event. Under what circumstances did the former event take place? The importance of the palace during the transitional period from Late Antiquity to Early Middle Ages is confirmed by its inclusion in the so-called Ravenna Cosmography, compiled by an anonymous cleric in Ravenna around 700. In it the structure is recorded as Spalathron, Spalathrum and as such included among other civitates, that is among small towns. As it is generally accepted, the data concerning these settlements and towns recorded by the Anonymous from Ravenna were based on geographical and topographical knowledge gathered prior to the 560s. Thus, it seems that the palace itself certainly retained its important position in the years prior to 6th century, only for it to be further emphasized by a settlement forming in it roughly in the early 500s. Apart from this, the existence of a town called Spalatum is attested by a number of Early Christian churches in the palace, built as early as the 6th century. The settlement, surely, predated the transition of populace from the town of Salona that, probably, happened during the 7th century. Again, the alterations in question must have happened during the 6th century and were, most surely, arranged by the then-inhabitants of the Palace. The question that remains is who initiated these large-scale interventions. Considering the well-known policy of emperor Justinian I (527-565) towards the Church after the Gothic wars of 535-555, it can be assumed that at least some parts of Diocletian's palace were ceded by the Byzantine government to the Ecclesia catholica Salonitana under archbishops Honorius II (528-547) or Peter (554-562). Thus, most of these alterations could be attributed to them, in close collaboration with the Byzantine military units stationed in the palace at the time.
The Roman cemetery of Sopianae 2 (present day Pécs in Southern Hungary) is one of the few extant Late Antique burial sites in Europe. 3 Its intricate layout and the exquisite decoration of its burial chambers have intrigued scholars ever since its discovery in the late eighteenth century. Because of its fresco paintings-representing Christograms, the Virgin Mary, and the Apostles Saint Peter and Saint Paul-nineteenth-and twentieth-century scholarship identified the cemetery as 'Christian.' 4 Ongoing archaeological excavation and revisionist scholarship, however, triggered the reassessment of the site. Recent archaeological research estimates only a handful of the burial chambers Christian. 5 On the basis of research conducted on five hundred two Roman inhumation graves excavated in five groups in the northern cemetery of Sopianae and in the cemetery on Czindery Street, 6 this paper presents novel interpretations of the Roman cemetery along with new archaeological finds, focusing on the thorny problem of how to 1 The authors would like to express their gratitude to Marianne Sághy for her critical remarks and helpful suggestions during the successive stages of edition of this paper. 2 Sopianae developed from several small Celtic settlements into a Roman town by the second century. At the beginning of the third century, it became an autonomous Roman municipium in Pannonia Province. At the end of the fourth century, when Pannonia was divided into four smaller provinces, Sopianae became the administrative capital of Valeria Province in the Northeastern part of Pannonia. 3 Ferenc Fülep, Sopianae. The History of Pécs during the Roman Era, and the Problem of the Continuity of the Late Roman Population. Translated by Mrs. István Telegdy. (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó,1984); idem, "A pécsi későrómai ókeresztény mausoleum feltárásáról." [On the Excavation of the Late Roman Early Christian Mausoleum of Pécs.]
Treasures and Traces of Old Christian Cemeteries
Art Out. Expressing the Art Lounge., 2015
The old Christian cemeteries of Europe acquire more and more historical prominence on the basis of their monuments and of the people interred there. An inquisitive eye nevertheless should focus on the less famous cemeteries as these ones prove to be jewelries of art and precious historical testimonies.
From the pagan cemetery to the Christian churchyard
The most important goals of my article are to present the fundamental religious, mental, political and social changes in Transylvanian Basin in the 11–13th Centuries, the process of transition from ‘paganism’ to Christianity in the light of burial customs: from the pagan cemetery (with a wide range of varieties: weapon, pottery for food and drink in the graves, horse parts, which symbolized the rank or respect of a deceased person, or the prestige of the family – through the deceased person), the transitional period cemetery (without horse-weapon burials, but some everyday tools (knives, strike-a-lights) may indicate the fact that medieval Christian Puritanism was not a characteristic feature of these people) to the Christian churchyard. The characteristics of the 'churchyard cemeteries' are the existence of the church or its remains and the density of the graves, with poor furnishing. In many cases we find multiple graves or the superposition of graves. Although in the previous era the rank or respect of a deceased person, or the prestige of the family (through the deceased person) was symbolized by different categories of weapons, horse burials and funeral garments adorned with jewellery, in the churchyard the family prestige was symbolized by the place of the graves. This tendency is very well indicated by Theodulf's decree, which, at the end of the 9th century, emphasised that bishops, monks and priests can be buried in the church and, what is most interesting to us, laymen who are worthy of it can also be interred there. This symbolic 'competition' of power and wealth meant the same in the case of medieval laymen as the jewels, weapons and/or parts of horses in the burials of the bygone pagan times. Churchyard cemeteries are known in many sites in the Transylvanian Basin, but mainly from the 12th century on. Nevertheless we know few cemeteries, which can be dated in the first half (Alba Iulia-Catedrală), or the second half of the 11th Century (Cluj-Mănăştur). As a conclusion, I want to point out that dating of the ’churchyard’ from the Transylvanian Basin cannot be connected to the decrees of the synods in Szabolcs (1092), Tarcal (about 1100) and Esztergom (1104–1112/1113). They appeared much earlier, and a very important aim of our research is, apart from the categorisation and analysis of the archaeological data, to point out the non-scientific nature of this mixed argumentation.
Himmelwärts und erdverbunden? Religiöse und wirtschaftliche Aspekte spätantiker Lebensrealität (Band 1 des Clusters 7 des DAI)
This paper discusses sixth- and seventh-century building and termination deposits found during the excavations of a commercial-residential building at Sagalassos (SW Taurus Mountains, Turkey). The nature of the objects deposited, the condition of the objects at the time of their deposition, the exact contexts of the objects and the nature of the building, structure or item of furniture they were associated with are scrutinised. After a discussion on how such deposits relate to contemporary Christianity, this paper ends with an inquiry into the reasons for the general neglect of such ritual deposits in studies of the late antique eastern Mediterranean and highlights the advantages of integrating archaeological evidence in the research on late antique religion.