Constantine and Rome (review)

Who was Constantine? A religious opportunist? A benevolent but autocratic patron of Christianity? An intolerant despot? All these characterizations have been cogently proposed on the basis of scholarly analysis of documentary evidence and the sifting of historical data derived from textual research. This new book looks at a different body of evidence and captures the character of the man and his era from another angle—the buildings and monuments he erected in the city of Rome.

Although R. Ross Holloway, distinguished professor of art and archaeology at Brown University, is more noted for his books on the archaeology of ancient Rome and Greece than on the subjects he undertakes here, both his erudition and his gifts as a writer are apparent. This succinct and well-illustrated short book will be most valuable to anyone interested in the material culture of Late Antiquity, and it should find a true welcome on the library shelves of historians of early Christianity.

Holloway sets out to illuminate the personal character, religious allegiances, and cultural influence of the Emperor Constantine, starting with his victory over Maxentius and manifest in the appearance of his great public monuments. Beginning with the well-known arch of Constantine, he cogently summarizes the history of this complicated monument. The non-specialist learns that the arch is actually a composite work made up of spolia taken from earlier imperial monuments and sculptural friezes designed to celebrate Constantine himself. The contrast between the panels created by earlier sculptors for such emperors as Hadrian or Marcus Aurelius and the later, actual Constantinian reliefs becomes a visual parallel—or perhaps parable—for the controversy over the character and virtues of Constantine himself. Is the art a barbaric and degraded sign of decline or an emblem of a new spirit and energy in a changing time? Is it a prime example of provincial and proletarian art or a pragmatic and even skillful construction of imperial propaganda?

In his next chapter the author considers the building of the first Christian churches in Rome and the transformation of the civic basilica form into a Christian assembly space. Starting with a vivid description of the old Lateran Basilica, the "first great church of Christendom" (59), Holloway relays the light, atmosphere, and splendor of the original space to the reader's imagination in almost awestruck prose and even offers a somewhat surprising caveat: "No one who has not experienced the mystery of the consecration as part of such a vast congregation can appreciate the power of the eucharistic service in San Giovanni of Constantine's day." He goes on in characteristic prose imaginatively to set the scene for the reader: "In the evening and at night the effect of Constantine's lamps and candles, gold and polished bronze, must also be imagined in the setting of rich furnishings and intense piety they illuminated" (61).

The author then takes us on a tour of early Roman churches and considers both the more modest examples including house churches (Ss. Giovanni e Paolo); converted halls (e.g., S. Croce in Gerusalemme, Sta. Susanna, Sta. Balbina); and titulus churches (S. Clemente, S. Crisogono) as well as the fascinating and evocative ex-urban cemetery churches (e.g., S. Pietro, S. Paolo Fuori le Mura, Ss. Marcellino e Pietro, Sta. Agnese, S. Sebastiano). This tour of churches, however instructive, is put into perspective by the rest of the book and its treatment of the relationship among Christian burial practices, baptism, the martyr cult, pilgrimages to saints' shrines, the construction of imperial mausolea, and the foundation of the Christian catacombs. For example, Holloway cites the recent scholarship on S. Pietro that has demonstrated that the original structure—a martyrium—had no main nave. Unlike S. Giovanni, this was not primarily a place in which the community and its bishop would celebrate the eucharist but rather a gathering place for funerary meals.

The book concludes with the story of the tomb of St. Peter and the successive structures that have been built to enshrine that saint's remains. Beginning...