The Christianization of Western Baetica: Architecture, Power, and Religion in a Late Antique Landscape by Jerónimo Sánchez Velasco (review)

This volume is a stimulating account of the rise of Christianity from late Roman antiquity to the Moorish conquest of Spain and its ramifications. Its focus is firmly archaeological and epigraphic. The volume itself falls into three unequal parts: a short general historical introduction (30 pages); an in-depth examination of the palaeo-Christian archaeology of the area surveyed (190 pages); and a series of conclusions drawn from that survey (65 pages). The first is a little disappointing. The material on the principate could have been omitted, allowing extra room for a longer discussion of the Visigothic period. Here more on the extent of Byzantine intervention in the peninsula, given the theories put forward in the book, would have been welcome, as would an extension of the hints about how the Church weathered the storm of the Moorish period. It is never easy to order the sections of a book, but this reader would have preferred chapter 11, a careful discussion of the types of ecclesiastical buildings found in the region, to precede rather than follow part two.

Discussion of what the buildings surveyed may tell us about early liturgy is deliberately eschewed, though it is strongly argued that they show that Africa had an important influence on Christianity in the region and that Byzantine elements show the presence of a Byzantine political power. The survey is subdivided into six sections, one for each diocese, and further subdivided into a section on the episcopal seat and one on the surrounding lands. Inevitably some of these sections are larger than others. Sánchez Velasco synthesizes the archaeological material (always carefully noting problems) with the available epigraphy. A strong point here is that key epigraphic texts are quoted in full in Latin in the footnotes, making their contribution immediately accessible to the reader. Sánchez Velasco offers much food for thought. He rejects many of the current interpretations of the Cercadilla complex in Cordoba, seeing the site rather as an early episcopalium gradually evolving over a period of several centuries. He also rejects the view that the episcopalium of Seville lay near the Patio de Banderas and suggests that it lay near the Calle de Marmoles (the 2^nd-century pillars here are seen as re-used elements forming part of a portico). The countryside is not neglected. In particular there is an extended discussion of basilica and the cemetery at Coracho.

Sánchez Velasco is right to underline the rapidity of change to a Christianized society, and also right to stress the impact, physical and mental, that the explosion in Christian building effected. His archaeological survey shows that this process was at times speeded along by the active suppression of pagan worship. This can be seen in the deliberate dismantling/destruction of pagan artifacts in both urban (Cordoba, Écija) and rural (Almedinilla, Priego de Córdoba) contexts. Sánchez Velasco sees the Church as playing a key role as the western empire disintegrated. In particular, he raises the possibility that the Church took over many of the commercial roles of the state, suggesting that this is why the ecclesiastical hierarchy of the region came to be centered on Seville rather than Cordoba. The Church is seen as presenting itself as a force with which the barbarians who invaded the peninsula could do business, and there is the suggestion that this was also the case after the Moorish invasion in the eighth century. The rise of some dioceses at the expense of others in the Visigothic period is regarded as a sign of the secular power wishing to create a more compliant Church. Ecclesiastical building is also seen as much a product of inter-diocesan rivalry as of evangelism. A little more investigation of infra-ecclesiastical politics and religious rivalry between the Church and...