City of Saints: Rebuilding Rome in the Early Middle Ages by Maya Maskarinec (review)

City of Saints focuses on Rome between the sixth and ninth centuries, a time when the city was recast from a former imperial capital into the spiritual epicenter of western Christendom. Among the catalysts of this transformation are the numerous saintly relics imported from around the Mediterranean to satisfy the spiritual needs of Rome's citizens and pilgrims and to aggrandize the city's reputation as a "storehouse of saints." A central claim of the book is that the relics of saints translated to Rome were a pivotal element in the city's newfound status as a Christian capital. Moreover, the study of this particular category of "foreign" saints permits the author to explore the agency of those responsible for introducing them to Rome, namely "Byzantine administrators, refugees, monks, pilgrims, and others . . . from across the Mediterranean and western Europe" (3). These agents elevate the focus of the book beyond the papacy, which until recently has been given the lion's share of attention by scholars of Christian Rome. The decision to recast the conventional pope-centered account of Rome's metamorphosis into a Christian capital in light of the city's relations with the Mediterranean and western Europe constitutes this study's most significant contribution.

The book is divided into eight chapters, an introduction, an epilogue and six short appendices. Chapter One begins with an imaginary walk through Rome in the year 752, which serves to familiarize readers with the city at that time. This engrossing chapter functions also as a delightful stand-alone piece. The next four chapters are case studies of how particular neighborhoods in the city were transformed by translated saintly relics. Specifically, Chapter Two explores Byzantine efforts to inflect the Roman Forum with saints of importance to Constantinople—the discussion of the Church of Sts. Sergius and Bacchus is particularly illuminating. Chapter Three treats the installation of St. Caesarius (originally from Terracina) into the traditional home of Rome's Caesars—the Palatine Hill. Chapter Four examines a portion of the Tiber's left bank that welcomed eastern saints, just as it had once served as a dock for eastern grains and goods. Chapter Five brings the reader to Rome's elite neighborhood—the Aventine—where cosmopolitan patrons invited the relics of such non-Roman saints as Boniface and Serapia to take up residence. An obligatory focus on the role that the papacy played in acquiring collections of saintly relics is the subject of Chapter Six. To this end, the author explores commissions at St. Peter's, the Lateran, and Santa Maria Antiqua. The book takes a turn in Chapters Seven and Eight, when attention is directed toward Carolingian patrons and authors, who were eager not only to acquire, but also to officialize "Roman" saints. These chapters drive home the author's contention that Carolingian appropriation and reception magnified and universalized Roman sanctity—whatever the actual geographic origins of that saintliness. Of the appendices that follow the short epilogue, the most engaging and useful is the first, which lists saints from abroad who were venerated in Rome between 500 and 800.

The attention given to these particular "traveling" relics could only have taken place once the willingness to move saintly relics superseded the restrictions that were in place during late antiquity. After laws and customs changed, the Mediterranean came to be crisscrossed by relics. This phenomenon began, like the book, in the sixth century, when Rome's power brokers operated under Byzantine influence. In the three centuries that followed, the practice of importing saints continued, but Romans gradually turned toward the Franks for political affirmation, all the while gaining increasing amounts of independence. The author demonstrates that the imported, transplanted relics of those saints who were venerated—but not martyred—in the city were "critical to Rome's remarkable metamorphosis." Of course, determining the degree to which they impacted conditions in comparison to "native" saints—those that actually died in Rome—is a difficult matter...