Judicial Nightmares and Christian Memory

An institution whose effects were as traumatic, mundane, spectacular, and ordinary as the Roman trial necessarily left its imprint on the consciousness, both waking and unwaking, of the empire's subjects. The experience of going to court provoked a recursive dynamic in which images of the judicial process were recalled and replayed. Memories of trial and punishment became a kind of recollection that was an ekphrasis of the experience. Since Roman courts were so central to their history and to their ongoing experience, Christians, and their texts, especially reflect this imperial subjectivity. The judicial nightmare was a rhetorical form that both enabled memory and configured response. The dreamworld of Christian consciousness reveals what was necessary to the making of this kind of subjectivity, and the necessary qualities of the memories themselves.