Religious Practices and Christianization of the Late Antique City (4th–7th cent.) ed. by Aude Busine (review)

Like Romanization, Christianization is elusive, yet often invoked. Unlike Romanization, however, Christianization remains under-theorized. Does Christianization mean to make someone or something, or both, Christian? What sorts of things can be Christianized and how? The present volume aims, in part, to remedy this situation through, primarily, a series of case studies of specific cities or places, complemented by a few programmatic analyses of more general interest. This volume also seeks to widen the scope of the Christianization of ancient cities—a phenomenon commonly addressed through church construction (and temple destruction), episcopal authority (and declining civic governance), and conversion (with the suppression of ancient Mediterranean traditional religions)—by considering the role of religious practices, very broadly defined, in making a city Christian.

Though mostly case studies, three contributions in particular engage the problem of Christianization more broadly. Aude Busine, “Introduction,” rightly insists that the role of religious practices—the “progressive integration of Christianity” (p. 3) in civic life—has received little attention, despite the vibrancy, vitality, and visibility of such practices. Civic festivals and ceremonies, for example, continued for a long time—albeit secularized (or desacralized) and/or adapted. To chart this long process, Busine proposes a three-stage model: one, secularization (oddly omitting the work of Richard Lim), which ostensibly created religiously neutral civic spaces; two, Christian adaptation or appropriation of local religious practices; and, three, the eventual elimination of alternatives. The scheme seems to map roughly onto the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries. Whatever the precise (and locally determined) chronology, Busine articulates a flexible and useful model of Christianization. Hervé Inglebert, “Conclusions: De la cité rituelle à la communauté sacramentelle,” tackles the Christianization of cities quite programmatically. Inglebert outlines a trajectory of the Christianization of cities (in a convenient table) in which cultic civic cohesion gave way to religiously neutral civic cohesion (games and the figure of the emperor), religiously neutral cohesion dominated by Christian rituals, Christian hegemony, and finally a so-called sacramental community. Johannes Hahn, “Public Rituals of Depaganization in Late Antiquity,” explores whether or not “depaganization” was ritualized, a compelling concept which captures the occasional violence of Christianization. Hahn concludes that the imperial government, which always preferred law and order, did not develop such incendiary rituals, while bishops sometimes did so, often enabled by imperial support—for example, the ritualized violence during the destruction of the Serapeum, which included a satirical parade of cult objects from a Mithraeum.

A second group of essays addresses the nexus between religious practice and material culture. Claire Sotinel, “Christianisme antique et religion civique en Occident,” addresses the Christianization of civic defense and so also civic identity. In the fourth- and fifth-century Latin west there were no specifically Christian civic defense rituals, and so Christianity was not yet the civic (defense) religion. Even the crosses embedded in Rome’s wall, whose modest size and variability suggest that they were not “officially” sanctioned, may date to the late-fifth or early-sixth century (and not the early fifth century), hinting that Christianity became Rome’s civic (defense) religion only then. Kristine Iara, “Lingering Sacredness: The Persistence of Pagan Sacredness in the Forum Romanum in Late Antiquity,” provocatively proposes the (eventual) maintenance of the memory of traditional Roman sacred places by Christians in a multi-stage history of “pagan” sacrality in the late ancient Roman Forum. During the fourth century, the Forum remained much as it had been with its “pagan” cult sites. After the fourth century, “pagan” buildings were not restored, but they endured. In the fifth and sixth centuries, “pagan” sites fell into ruin—though some sites were not immediately re-used—concomitant with the erection of churches in the Forum. Iara concludes that material endurance suggests lingering sacrality, a memory of Roman traditional religion maintained by Christians. Bryan Ward-Perkins, “Four Bases from Stratonikeia: A (Failed) Attempt...