Petrusnachfolge und Kaiserimitation: Die Grablegen der Päpste, ihre Genese und Traditionsbildung by Michael Borgolte (review)

BOOK RFAlEWS6?5 shows how the Jewish tradition of concentrating evil in a historical figure such as Antiochus TV developed into the Christian pattern ofidentifying tyrants such as Nero as the Antichrist, though there was also a tendency to identify Antichrist as a group of heretics such as gnostics, or as a political institution such as the Roman Empire. Augustine identified the Antichrist with heretics and schismatics but cautioned that we must also guard against Antichrist in the evil inclinations within ourselves. For Augustine and his successors, the Antichrist was above all "the power of the Lie." Without dwelling on trivial details, McGinn provides a good account of important depictions of Antichrist by such medieval figures as Gregory the Great, Adso, Joachim, and Gerhoh; he also points out the increasing use of Antichrist as a rhetorical device against one's opponents during the reform controversies of the eleventh through thirteenth centuries. The rhetorical utility of the Antichrist increased still more from the thirteenth century, when the Emperor Frederick II could be named Antichrist by papalists. Papal propagandists reaped the whirlwind in the later Middle Ages, when John Wycliff and then John Hus called the pope, or the papacy in general, the Antichrist. The political rhetoric of Antichrist reached its height among the Protestant reformers ofthe sixteenth century, when Catholic theologians such as Bellarmine and Suarez had to spend (or waste) considerable ink in refuting the identification of the pope with Antichrist. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Protestant propagandists used the Antichrist as a tool against other Protestants as well as against Catholics. The English Civil War was the last major explosion of such rhetoric, and McGinn shows that since 1660 the Antichrist has not often been taken seriously by either politicians or theologians. The revival of Antichrist in the twentieth century in radical Protestant thought such as Dispensationalism is an historical anomaly. Antichrist is unlikely to rear his/her ugly head, even in the movies, as the mird millennium approaches. No more could be asked from this book—save one thing: a formal bibliography . Since the publishers' blurb represents the book as having more pages than it actually does, one assumes that a mistaken editorial decision deleted a previously existing bibliography. Though McGinn's footnotes are desirably full, nothing replaces a bibliography for the convenience of readers. Jeffrey B. Russell University of California, Santa Barbara Petrusnachfolge undKaiserimitation: Die Grablegen derPäpste, ihre Genese und Traditionsbildung. By Michael Borgolte. [Veröffentlichungen des Max-Planck-Instituts für Geschichte, 95.] (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht. 1989. Pp. 430, with two fold-out charts and 28 black-and-white plates.) 606BOOK REVIEWS From Petrus Mallius in the twelfth century to Ferdinand Gregorovius in 1857 to Renzo Montini in 1957 to Michael Borgolte, the tombs of the popes have attracted the interest of scholars. Mallius looked mainly for epigraphic records while Gregorovius and others were concerned especially with the art history of the papal tombs. Borgolte studies primarily the places where the popes were buried in an attempt to see what those locations can tell us about wider themes in papal history. Borgolte identifies two basic kinds of burials: the purely personal that depended on the choice of the pontiff and the successive burial of popes in the same place. This book is really about the latter kind of burial, and the author emphasizes three traditional locations. From 2 17 to 314 the popes were buried in the catacomb of San Callisto. Between the early sixth and the early tenth century St. Peter's was the location of papal burials. In the twelfth century the Lateran served as the final resting place for ten of sixteen popes. Borgolte reviews the literature concerning the location of Peter's tomb and the graves of his immediate successors, but concludes that too little can be known for certain about these burials to permit speaking of an early tradition of burial ad Sanctum Petrum. The periods between the demonstrable successive burials display certain trends as well. After the Constantinian peace of the Church popes were in the fourth and fifth centuries buried in a number of locations around Rome, although there was a concentration in the catacomb...