Art and holy powers in the early Christian house (review)

Reviews 157 dictionary of the Popes (Oxford, 1986), M . A. H. Ferguson's Bibliography of English translations from medieval sources 1943-1967 (New York, 1974), or any similar such guide, or the New Catholic Encyclopedia (very useful for medievalists). John O. Ward Department of History University of Sydney Maguire, E. D., H. D. Maguire and M. J. Duncan-Flowers, Art and holy powers in the early Christian house (Illinois Byzantine Studies, No. 2), Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1989; paperback; pp. xii, 251; 53 figures, 151 monochrome plates; R. R. P. US$24.95. This catalogue was published in conjunction with an exhibition organized by the Krannert Art Museum of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and shown first there and then at the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor from 27 October 1989 to 29 April 1990. The catalogue entries were written in the main by Maggie Duncan-Flowers whde Eunice and Henry Maguire wrote the introduction and prefaces to each of the nine sections. The contributions and help of many others is acknowledged. The exhibition contained 156 domestic items, mostly of the third to sixth centuries A.D., drawn from a number of public museums in the USA, two in Canada, and from one private collection. The largest number came from the Kelsey Museum, including over thirty objects from the University of Michigan's excavations at Karanis in Egypt. The World Heritage Museum in the University of IUinois and the Royal Ontario Museum were the other major contributors. Over two-thirds of the material had not been published previously, including all the objects from the World Heritage Museum. With very few exceptions the objects are from the Eastern Mediterranean and where there are inscriptions they are in Greek. Approximately 40 objects clearly allude to Christianity in their decoration, including 8 lamps, 8rings,7 crosses and other items of jewellery, 4 pilgrim tokens, 2 ampullae and 4 amulets. Among unusual or rarely displayed objects are an L-shaped bronze curtain hook in the form of afinger(2), a wooden door with its pivots and cased wooden bolt (29), baskets of woven reeds (42 and 43), an ironfrying-panwith folding handle (65), an earthenware mirror plaque in the shape of a shrine (137), and a bronze censer in the form of a female head (138). The material is arranged in nine sections: furnishings, lighting, storage and security, eating and drinking, clothing, jewellery, grooming, health, and play. Each item is illustrated. In addition to these photographs there are 53 black and white plates of further material chosen to complement the text of the 158 Reviews introduction and prefaces. A group of eight colour plates, four of manuscript illuminations, illustrate how the household objects were used. The aim of the substantial introduction is to show how the decoration on many of these objects can lead the viewer one stage further beyond the physical objects themselves and their practical function to a world of intangibles with which their owners in the early Christians centuries may have associated them. Thus the designs are grouped into two categories, some clearly alluding to Christianity and others of a non-Christian character. Virtually all, whether Christian or not, may have been considered either to have apotropaic powers or to invoke health and prosperity. Even the Christian symbols, such as the cross, may have served a superstitious and apotropaic purpose, for example on the lintel of a door, rather than the didactic purpose it would have served in an ecclesiastical context. There is reason to believe that the apotropaic functions of motifs such as Herakles knots, circled dots, and octagonal designs, were appreciated by Christians and pagans alike. Images of prosperity, such as Nilotic scenes and lavishly adorned personifications of Earth or the seasons, and even pagan gods like Venus and Neptune were symbols which both Christians and pagans found not only comfortable but at some level meaningful. This argument is supported by reference to literary sources, particularly the Greek Christian writers of the Eastern Mediterranean of this period, notably Clement of Alexandria in the second century and John Chrysostom in the fourth, who inveighed against such attitudes. There are a...