CHAPTER 2
Constantine, Continuity and Change in the Fourth Century
The Conversion of Constantine
There were various routes for ambitious individuals to rise to imperial power during the Tetrarchy, or rule by two senior Augusti and two junior Caesars, established by Diocletian in 293.1 On the death of Constantius I, Emperor of the West, the army proclaimed his son Constantine as his successor in York on 25 July 306. On the death of Severus, Augustus of the West, Constantine received that title from Maximian, who had previously elevated his father Constantius to the same dignity. There was only one man in the Western Empire who now stood between Constantine and total control, and that was the rebel Maxentius, who had taken the title Princeps and was safe behind the walls of Rome itself. When the senior Augustus, Galerius, died in May 311, overall control, such as it was, collapsed, and the Empire was effectively divided into four. In 312 Constantine marched on Rome. He met Maxentius and his army near Rome at the Milvian Bridge. What happened next is related by Lactantius in a contemporary history: ‘Constantine was advised in a dream to mark the heavenly sign of God on the shields of his soldiers and then engage in battle. He did as he was commanded and by means of a slanted letter X with the top of its head bent round, he marked Christ on their shields.’2 A quarter of a century later, Constantine’s friend and biographer Eusebius recounts quite a different version of the vision:
Who could hesitate to believe the [Emperor’s own] account, especially when the time which followed provided evidence for the truth of what he said? About the time of the midday sun, when day was just turning, he said he saw with his own eyes, up in the sky and resting over the sun, a cross-shaped trophy formed from light, and a text attached to it which said, ‘By this conquer’. Amazement at the spectacle seized both him and the whole company of soldiers which was then accompanying him on a campaign he was conducting somewhere, and witnessed the miracle.
He was, he said, wondering to himself what the manifestation might mean; then while he meditated, and thought long and hard, night overtook him. Thereupon, as he slept, the Christ of God appeared to him with the sign which had appeared in the sky, and urged him to make himself a copy of the sign which had appeared in the sky, and to use this as protection against the attacks of the enemy.3
Within weeks of his victory at the Milvian Bridge, Constantine took the first steps towards building the Lateran Basilica, soon to be followed by St Peter’s Basilica to commemorate the Prince of the Apostles, which some scholars say was on the very spot where the miraculous sign appeared above the site honoured as his tomb. Constantine’s victory was Christ’s victory – yet Eusebius’ protestations indicate that there were, even then, considerable doubts about the story.4 There are, then, two attested witnesses to the vision, but both with the same vested interests, and there are, of course, other more cynical political interpretations of Constantine’s conversion.
The reason Diocletian formed the Dyarchy (rule by a senior and a junior Emperor) and then expanded it to rule by a Tetrarchy (two Augusti and two Caesars), was the problem of unity – there were incursions by barbarians on the long borders of the Empire and dangerous fragmentation. Ethnic, regional and religious diversity created strong centrifugal forces which had to be resisted largely by the office and the person of the Emperor. When Diocletian divided the imperial office, he maintained his personal seniority and so was able to preserve unity in the office while sharing power with another Augustus, and each could depend on a deputy Caesar who would maintain the loyalty of the provinces and the integrity of the limes, or borders of the Empire. However, the succession became chaotic, and by the time Constantine shared the Tetrarchy, the Empire was effectively divided into four independent realms.
The Emperor cult had been a centripetal force as long as the imperial office was undivided. His image was to be found in all public basilicas. Contracts were validated before his image, justice could likewise only be dispensed in his ‘presence’, and at given times all had to sacrifice before his effigy. Whether the basilica was a market, an army drill-hall or the tribune of a governor, it was a religious building by virtue of the cult image of the Emperor in an apse on its end or even a side wall, and before it the swearing of oaths was religiously validated. Most of the great array of religions in the Roman world had no problem with this. But for Christians it was a different matter, and in refusing to sacrifice they were seen to question the guarantee of the integrity of the state. The traditional cults were all under imperial patronage: ‘At the apex of the imperial organisation were the pontifices, who regulated the sacra publica as a whole. At the head of the pontifices was the pontifex maximus. Since the time of Augustus the emperor had been pontifex maximus, while the members of the great priesthoods owed their dignity to imperial favour.’5 While Emperors had previously been unable to bring the Christians under their control, Constantine’s adoption of the chi-rho monogram of Christ (known as the labarum) as the sign under which he would conquer, brought them into his fold. That does not necessarily mean that he gave up all his responsibilities as pontifex maximus. On the Arch of Constantine, erected by the Senate and completed by 315, he is shown very much in the image of his predecessors, with his features having been cut into relief panels originally showing Hadrian, and possibly Marcus Aurelius, carrying out the usual duties of the Emperor, including sacrifice. There is no reference to the miraculous sign in the iconography of the arch, and perhaps not surprisingly, all references to the divine are pagan. Above the frieze showing Constantine’s triumphal entry into Rome is a tondo of Sol Invictus (east face of the arch), and his coinage continued this imagery until 320–21. This was an important imperial cult even before Constantine, and there is evidence for the assimilation of Sol Invictus by Christians as Christ Helios, for example in a mosaic in a mausoleum under St Peter’s itself. There is, of course, a serious question about the nature of this assimilation, and whether it was syncretistic, or borrowing an established ‘vocabulary’, or meant to be a challenge.6 In any event, the sculpture on the Arch of Constantine and the Life of Constantine by Eusebius have very different stories to tell about the completeness of Constantine’s conversion.
It may be that Constantine’s mother, the Dowager Augusta Helena, was already a Christian by this time, or Constantine may have been accommodating himself to the Christians simply to bring them under his domination. Another possibility is that despite the existence of competing Christianities, he may have seen their intellectual vigour, their developing institutional organization, their universalism and drive towards unity of mind and purpose as having possibilities for the greater unification of the Empire. To the extent that this was a conscious policy, future developments would prove it to be pure genius. Whatever the motive, Constantine immediately issued an act of toleration that was to be observed everywhere in the Empire, and in 313 he and Licinius, at that time Emperor in the Balkan provinces, issued the ‘Edict’ of Milan (really only a policy agreed between them) in which freedom of worship was granted to all:
And we have decide moreover with regard to the community of Christians that this should be ordained: if anyone is reported to have purchased in the past either from our Treasury or from anyone else at all those properties in which they used previously to gather, on which formerly a definite policy was laid out in a document sent to your office, they shall restore the said properties to the Christians without payment or any demand for money without any question of obstruction or equivocation ….
And since the said Christians are known to have had other properties in addition to those in which they used to gather, belonging in law to their corporation, that is to the churches, not individual people, you will order all those properties, in accordance with the law expressed above, to be restored to the said Christians, that is their corporation and assemblies, without any equivocation or argument.7
Christians were both numerous and well off, owning considerable property individually and corporately. One of the panels on the Arch of Constantine shows the Emperor giving out the liberalitas, a support dole to Roman citizens, but where the state failed to supply the Roman populus, the Christians were succeeding with their charitable work.8
Maximinus, Emperor in Asia Minor, Syria and Egypt, half-heartedly complied with Constantine’s act of toleration:
Notwithstanding, to the people of Nicomedia and the other cities which with such enthusiasm have made the same request to me – that none of the Christians should live in their cities – I had no option but to give a friendly answer; for this very principle had been maintained by all my predecessors from the beginning, and the gods themselves, without whom all mankind and the whole administration of the Empire would perish, willed that such a request, put forward on behalf of the worship of their Deity, should be confirmed by me. … If therefore anyone decides by his own choice that the worship of the gods must be acknowledged, such persons may appropriately be welcomed; but if some choose to follow their own worship, you will please leave them free to do so.9
The balance between the old gods and the exclusive demands of the God of the Christians was clearly a very delicate negotiation. Maximinus returned to persecution, giving Licinius a reason to eliminate his rival in the east. To avert war, Maximinus issued a decree of toleration as strongly worded as the ‘Edict’ of Milan, but too late, and the Christian issue had become a powerful token in the imperial power game.
Whatever the explanation for his conversion, Constantine became an active patron of the Church, giving grants of money, exempting the clergy from public duties, settling doctrinal disputes, guarding its unity and catholicity, and building on a magnificent scale. Within weeks of his triumphal entry into the city, he commissioned the vast Lateran basilica to be built on the site of the barracks of Maxentius’ guard, the equites singulares, on the Caelian hill beside the Sessorian Palace. It was to be ‘an audience hall of Christ the King’.10 The parallel between the Emperor of Heaven and the Emperor of Rome was not lost on Constantine’s contemporaries; Eusebius described his eventual drive against Licinius for total control of the Empire in precisely those terms:
The champion of the good set out with his son Crispus, that most humane emperor, by his side … then taking God the universal King, and God’s Son the Saviour of all, as Guide and Ally, father and son together divided their battle array against God’s enemies on every side, and easily carried off the victory: every detail of the encounter was made easy for them by God, in fulfilment of his purpose.11
To most of his subjects, the Emperor was divine; now even the Christians conceived the office in sacred terms and recognized Constantine as the instrument of God’s purpose. For Eusebius, the Emperor was God’s representative on earth, and just as Christ was God’s instrument in Creation, so was the Emperor God’s instrument in governing the peoples of the earth.
The Lateran Basilica or Basilica Constantiniana
The cathedral of the Bishop of Rome was to be a structure worthy of his performance of the liturgy before the ‘universal King’, to equal or surpass the basilicas where ceremonial was performed before the Emperor at his ceremonial entry or adventus. It was probably the first of the Constantinian Donations, dating from as early as 312–13, perhaps within two weeks of the battle at the Milvian Bridge, and was consecrated six years later, perhaps in November 318. Originally it was the only monumental building of the liturgy within the walls of Rome.12 Only the foundations and parts of the walls of the original building survive, but the archaeological and documentary evidence is sufficient to give a clear picture of its vastness and magnificence (see Figure 2.1). It was 333 Roman feet long and 180 wide (100 m by 53 m), and despite its size it was built quickly and copied widely. The exterior was plain, with all expense concentrated on the interior. Entering on the longitudinal axis, there were long colonnades separating off the double aisles either side, the shafts and capitals being spolia (reused from elsewhere). During services there were probably hangings between the columns so that the catechumens in the aisles could hear, but not see, the eucharistic service. This would appear to have become widespread practice, since in a sermon at the dedication of the new Cathedral at Tyre built by the young, and very rich, Bishop Paulinus, Eusebius described the cathedral in terms of the membership of the Church, its ‘living stones’, saying: ‘Others he [the Protector, the Word, the divinely bright and saving One] joined to the basilica along both sides, still under instruction and in process of advancing, but not very far removed from the divine vision that the faithful enjoy of what is innermost.’13 This practice may also explain the unusual colonnades along either side at San Crisogono which were connected to the aula by doorways. The nave and possibly also the aisles of the new basilica were lit by a clerestory. The nave terminated in a great apse with the Bishop’s throne canopied by the semi-dome, and the outer aisles ended in projecting rooms for the offerings at the eucharist. In line with these rooms was the chancel of about 65 feet to accommodate the Bishop’s retinue, which by now was considerable. Bishop Paul of Samosata was condemned for arrogating to himself a dais and magistrate’s chair – now, just more than half a century later, the Bishop of Rome was to have imperial honours that Paul could hardly have imagined. Like the Emperor, bishops were to be greeted by genuflection, and eventually (probably between the eighth and eleventh centuries), during the liturgy the honour was also accorded to the altar, relics and the crucifix.14
Only a few hundred yards away from the Basilica Constantiniana was the Sessorian Palace of Constantine’s mother, the Augusta Helena. Performing the liturgy in such a grand context drew it irresistibly towards formal elaboration. The long naves encouraged processions, and bishops and clergy were vested according to their magisterial dignity.
Pressure of numbers had continuing effects on the liturgy too. The population of Rome in 312 has been estimated by Krautheimer at about 800,000, though others suggest that it had dropped drastically to nearer 250,000–500,000. Krautheimer maintains that as much as a third of the population were either sympathetic to, or were actually members of, the Church; Gibbon had been much more conservative, suggesting 50,000; Lane Fox considers even this too high.15 Even if the numbers were only a third of that, they were served by only 25 known parish churches, or tituli, which continued to function socially and liturgically, for the most part little changed architecturally or functionally from the previous century. There are nine churches which may be connected to pre-Constantinian places of Christian worship, including San Clemente, SS. Giovanni e Paolo, San Martino ai Monti, San Crisogono, Santa Sabina and Santa Pudenziana. Those which had been confiscated during the persecution had been restored by Constantine; some were (further) renovated, but it is difficult to date much of the archaeological evidence precisely to either pre- or post-Constantinian activity. Some of these served as domus or aulae ecclesiae for generations before they were rebuilt or moved to new, more splendid basilicas. For example, the first basilica of San Clemente was not built until the late fourth century, between about 392 and 417; the Titulus Equitii shows first evidence of Christian use either just before or just after the Constantinian donations, then was renovated round about 500, and not reconstructed as the basilica of San Martino ai Monti until the ninth century; at the Titulus Byzantis, the confessio of St John and St Paul has been dated to the middle of the fourth century, and the basilica of SS. Giovanni e Paolo was not built on the site until the turn of the fifth century. This would indicate that at the tituli, worship continued in its less formal community gatherings, only gradually adapting to the new imperial Romanized way of doing things.
Although constant architectural adjustments were being carried out, the tituli would struggle to serve 20,000, and clearly could not cope with as many as a quarter of a million Christians. Even if these estimates are far too high, soon numbers would greatly increase – not always for the best of reasons. The favour shown by the Emperor (and the possibility of personal advancement under the new dispensation) played its part in the burgeoning of the catechumenate, which meant that the new Cathedral, for all its monumental scale, was simply a reflection of the size of the Christian community in Rome. The length of time under instruction was up to three years before baptism, and for many whose aim was simply to be regarded as Christians or who were waiting some while longer for the once-for-all remission of sins provided by baptism, a good deal of Christian teaching was still needed, perhaps even to bring about true conversion:
Thus, the regular liturgies had to assume more of an instructional and formational role than heretofore. It was necessary to try to communicate through the style of liturgical celebration itself something of the majesty of God and the reality of Christ’s sacramental presence, as well as of the appropriate attitude of reverence required before that divinity. Even the introduction of the narrative of institution into Eucharistic prayers at this period may well have been in order that it might serve a catechetical purpose.16
This state of affairs had powerful effects on both the liturgy and similarly on the architecture. The greatest magnificence was reserved for the interiors, and though little of the original Basilica Constantiniana is visible, paintings, drawings and documents come together to conjure a vivid and spectacular scene. The colonnade was of green marble, a fastigium of silver probably spanned above the chord of the apse or (more likely) somewhat forward of the altar, and the Liber pontificalis recounts the arrangement of great silver statues of Christ the Teacher and his Apostles facing the congregation while the clergy in the apse saw Christ enthroned: ‘Like the Emperor, then, Christ revealed Himself in different but complementary aspects to the people and, as it were, to the high officials of His court.’ The four bronze columns still in the Lateran are thought to have supported the fastigium, whether it took the form of a baldacchino or, more likely, a linear gable-end arrangement, and De Blaauw speculates that they may have belonged to the Temple treasure brought from Jerusalem and later given by Constantine.17 The record in the Liber pontificalis continues, enumerating the coloured marble of the columns and revetment lining the walls, the gold of the half dome, seven silver altars (six were most likely to receive the offerings), and there were splendid gifts from the Emperor:
A silver paten weighing twenty pounds.
Two silver scyphi each weighing ten pounds.
A gold chalice weighing two pounds.
Five service chalices each weighing two pounds.
Two silver amae each weighing eight pounds.
A silver chrism paten, inlaid with gold, weighing five pounds.
Ten crown lights each weighing eight pounds.
Twenty bronze lights each weighing ten pounds.
Twelve bronze candlestick chandeliers each weighing thirty pounds.18
The interior was well lit by clerestories and glittered with candlelight glinting off the polished coloured marble and precious metals. The clergy were sumptuously clothed, and the plate that they handled during the liturgy was of heavy beaten silver and gold. The extant interior most evocative of such a magnificent space is the restored fifth-century church of Santa Sabina, with its similar polychrome revetment on the arcades, a timber roof, a large apse and light pouring in. All this could not fail to impress with the glorious majesty of God, and every detail of this had already been theologized in Eusebius (and most likely earlier still), via references to Solomon and the Temple, into an image of the universal Church, and a glimpse of the heavenly Jerusalem.
The Cathedral at Tyre: ‘On Earth as it is in Heaven’
Only a very few years before the consecration of the Cathedral of Rome, Eusebius preached in 315/16 at the dedication of the new Cathedral at Tyre as Bishop of Caesarea and Metropolitan Bishop of Palestine.19 The construction of the two cathedrals must have been contemporaneous, and presumably the theological justification for this new architectural magnificence was not fully developed by Eusebius himself, since in other matters he is enormously erudite but not often original. It is reasonable to suppose, then, that the theology he applied to the Cathedral at Tyre would have been used to justify the magnificence of the Basilica Constantiniana to avoid the disapproval directed at Paul of Samosata.
Eusebius begins his sermon by addressing the clergy and the young Bishop Paulinus, who commissioned and paid for the building: ‘Friends of God, and priests clothed with the sacred vestment and the heavenly crown of glory, the divine unction and priestly garments of the Holy Spirit’. Everything, priests, vestments and the very stones themselves, is allegorized: ‘Shall I call you a new Bezalel, the master builder of a divine tabernacle, or a Solomon, king of a new and far nobler Jerusalem, or a new Zerubbabel, who adorned the temple with the glory that was far greater than the old?’ He laces his prose with heaped-up biblical references and quotations, exhorting all present to hymn and sing the praises of God. He maintains that the building of churches, and their being filled with beautiful votive offerings, is proof of the power of the King of Heaven, and it is important to be able to see their meaning, but that is less important in the sight of God, Eusebius reminds the congregation, than ‘when He looks at the live temple consisting of us all, and views the house of living and immoveable stones, well and securely based on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone.’ He dwells at length on the architectural elements and their correspondence with various members of the Church. Eusebius presents a theology of worship in which the offering by the bishop in his cathedral is a direct parallel of that of Christ himself in the heavenly temple:
In no respect is he inferior to the Bezalel whom God Himself filled with a spirit of wisdom and understanding and with technical and scientific knowledge, and close to the architect of the temples that symbolised the heavenly types. In the same way this man, having the whole Christ, the Word, the Wisdom, the Light, impressed upon his soul, has built this magnificent shrine for God Most High, resembling in its essence the patterns of the better one as the visible resembles the invisible.20
At this time Eusebius’ theology was deeply tainted by subordinationism, which sees the second and third Persons of the Trinity as less exalted than the Father, and he wrote of the great triple entrance of the church as the supreme Father with ‘the secondary beams of the light of Christ, and the Holy Ghost’ on either side. For this tendency he would be branded as an Arian heretic at the Council of Antioch in 325, and would go on to the Council of Nicaea under this cloud, but there he joined the majority in condemning Arius. At that council he met Constantine, for whom this theology of worship, architectural magnificence, patronage and power was highly attractive.
St Peter’s Basilica, Rome
The layout of the Cathedral at Tyre was very similar to Old St Peter’s in Rome (Figure 2.2): an entrance led into a square colonnaded courtyard with a fountain or fountains on the axis. Numerous gateways opened into the aisled basilica with clerestories over the colonnade in the towering walls supporting a wooden ceiling. The floors were of marble laid in patterns. As at Tyre, the entrance of St Peter’s faced the rising sun on the lower slope of the Vatican Hill. Climbing up to the gate and into a large atrium (a post-Constantinian addition not entirely complete until the early sixth century),21 the axis led to a huge bronze pinecone fountain surmounted by a canopy, and then on via numerous doors to the gigantic basilica with a total internal measurement of about 391 by 208 Roman feet. A clear impression of the interior is given by a seventeenth-century fresco by Domenico Tasselli painted before the destruction of Old St Peter’s to make way for the Renaissance rebuilding and there are many drawings of the period by Bramante, Peruzzi, Sangallo, Van Heemskerk and others. It was a funerary basilica, but unlike other funerary halls of Rome it was focused on the grave of the martyr. The site had been a large cemetery containing what was revered as the tomb of St Peter, and being considerably larger than the Lateran Basilica, vast crowds of pilgrims were clearly expected.22
Work was started probably some time between 319 and 322, and the structure was complete by 329. The ‘Life of St Sylvester’ in the Liber Pontificalis records that a golden cross weighing 150 pounds was given by Constantine and his mother Helena, so the basilica must have been completed before she died in 329 or 330.23 St Peter’s is the first basilica built in the form of a cross with transepts. Arguments have been put forward to connect this and its site to Constantine’s vision at the Milvian Bridge – ‘Constantine’s army must have seen the phenomenon [caused by particular atmospheric conditions] south of W. S. W. (before sunset), that is, in the sky over the city, not much above the right river bank, just about the site of St Peter’s.’ Krautheimer originally considered that the plan had remained unchanged throughout its construction, saying that the foundations all belonged to a single building programme, but more recently he revised this view, noting that the eastern (interior) wall of the transept has a foundation of a size that indicates that it may originally have been an exterior wall. If that is the case, then the transept itself may have been the original building onto which the basilican nave was added.24 This revised history of construction also suggests that the nave at first had only a single side-aisle north and south, both of which were subsequently doubled. The apostle’s tomb was on the chord of the apse, enclosed in white marble with porphyry bands and sheltered by a baldacchino on four twisted columns. The baldacchino was linked to the apse by two architraved columns.
This basilica was an enormous covered cemetery and martyrium where the celebration of the eucharist was secondary to the memorial function. The altar was not part of the apostle’s shrine, and was probably a moveable table standing under the triumphal arch at the entrance to the nave. The two distinct architectural sections, nave and transepts, served the dual functions of the building: the transept accommodated the rites associated with the martyr, veneration, the memorial eucharist and oblation tables; the nave and aisles were a covered cemetery where funeral banquets, or refrigeria, were held, a custom that continued until at least 397, when one was held for Paulina, wife of Pammachius.25 The gold and silver furnishings and the rich endowment given by Constantine were even more lavish than at the Lateran. The size and richness indicate the level of regard for Peter by both the Emperor and the people. In life and in death, thousands wished to be near Peter’s special sanctity and touched by his miraculous power.
The New Jerusalem and Pilgrimage
St Peter’s did not have its own regular services and congregation, it was a pilgrimage church, and as such played a part in the dissemination of an increasingly standardized liturgy that was developing in the fourth century, but it was above all the Holy Land and sites associated with the life of Christ that were of primary importance in this:
The fourth century was a time when Christians travelled to other parts of the world much more than they had tended to do before, and consequently were more aware of other ways of worshipping than they formerly had been. There were pilgrims to the Holy Land, who not only saw what was done in that liturgical centre and carried the news back home, but also came into contact with the liturgical practices of other Christians arriving there from different parts of the world, as well as those through whose regions they passed on the way. One might say that Jerusalem became an important hub of the liturgical import-export business, a clearing-house for attractive ideas and practices.26
The liturgy was clearly transferable, and relics were portable, but above all architecture could re-create the holy places as at Santa Croce in Gerusalemme with the canopy over the relic of the True Cross imitating Constantine’s Anastasis. Real connections were established with the people and events of salvation history, orthodoxy and theological allegiance were declared visually, and authority was established within the hierarchical architectural structure as a visual equivalent of ecclesial and imperial structures. Architecture was a powerful tool; after all, it shaped the spaces where heaven and earth met.
Even at the beginning of the fourth century, pilgrimage was by no means unknown. Then, as now, Palestine offered a spiritual geography which gave a tangible reality to the scriptures. Earlier in the third century, Origen wrote of Christians wanting ‘to trace the footsteps of Jesus and of his disciples, and of the prophets’.27 Some time after the death of Septimus Severus in 211 and the accession of Caracalla, Eusebius records that Alexander, Bishop of Cappadocia, was invited to share the Episcopal duties of the See of Jerusalem with its bishop Narcissus, who, he records, was 116. Alexander ‘journeyed from Cappadocia, his original see, to Jerusalem, in order to worship there and to examine the historic sites’.28
The topography of Jerusalem had changed radically since the days of Jesus. For one thing, Golgotha, the site of the crucifixion, and the tomb too had been outside the city wall until 41–44, when Herod Agrippa built the Third Wall, extending the city in an arc to the north and north-west. In May 70, the city was destroyed as punishment for the revolt which had begun in 66, and Jews were forbidden to enter. In 130/31, on the ruins, Hadrian founded Aelia Capitolina, dedicated to Jupiter Capitolinus. Epiphanius, Bishop of Salamis and a native of Palestine, maintained that before that time there was little left ‘except for a few houses and the little church of God. That was the upper room, where the disciples entered when they had returned from the Mount of Olives after the Ascension of the Redeemer. It was built there, namely on Zion.’ It would appear that a Christian community had managed to survive, and in his record of martyrs of Palestine, Eusebius mentions Vales, a deacon in this community.29
Tons of rubble were used to level the area to the west of Temple Mount covering the traditional site of Golgotha and the tomb. Both on the Mount and on the levelled area, Hadrian built temples; the latter, Eusebius maintains, included a temple to Venus which would have been a particular abomination to Christians – though Eusebius may have supplied this detail for rhetorical reasons. In the 290s he described the site as ‘Golgotha, “place of a skull”, where Christ was crucified, which is pointed out in Aelia to the north of Mount Sion’, so when Bishop Makarios of Jerusalem excavated here in 327, it would appear that was because there was a continuing tradition in the Jerusalem Church about the location of this most important site of the resurrection, as there was about the site of the nativity in Bethlehem, the Mount of Olives and the Oak of Mamre – just as the Jews preserved a sacred geography relating to scripture. All these traditional locations would become important pilgrimage sites for Christians under Constantine and his successors.30 Constantine’s mother, the Augusta Helena, made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 326 and was instrumental in the founding of great buildings at holy sites.
Buildings of the New Jerusalem
In 333 a nameless pilgrim from Bordeaux arrived in Jerusalem; the date can be firmly established because he mentions the consuls for that year. The record of the journey lists all the stopping-places to change horses, and indicates whether it is a milestone, fortress, palace or city. Interestingly, the traveller gives cumulative distances between the major centres: Rome, Milan, Constantinople and Jerusalem. Naturally, in the west Rome and Milan are most prominent, and in the east Constantinople and Jerusalem may not initially appear surprising, but Constantinople had only been founded three years before, in 330, and Jerusalem was only now being transformed from Hadrian’s Aelia Capitolina to the Holy City of the biblical narratives. This was only nine years since Constantine’s conquest of the East and already it was being reconceived within a Christian geography of Empire.31 It is worth quoting his description at length since it is the fullest contemporary account of Constantine’s New Jerusalem. This is what he found:
Climbing Sion from there [as you leave Jerusalem] you can see the place where once the house of Caiaphas used to stand, and the column on which they fell on Christ and scourged him still remains there. … As you leave there and pass through the wall of Sion towards the Gate of Neapolis, … on your left is the hillock Golgotha where the Lord was crucified, and about a stone’s throw from it the vault where they laid his body, and he rose again on the third day. By order of the Emperor Constantine there has now been built there a ‘basilica’ – I mean ‘a place for the Lord’ – which has beside it cisterns of remarkable beauty, and beside them a baptistery where children are baptized. …
On the Mount of Olives, where the Lord taught before his passion, a basilica has been built by command of Constantine. … A mile and a half eastwards from there is the village called Bethany, and in it is the vault in which was laid Lazarus, whom the Lord raised. …
Four miles from Jerusalem, on the way to Bethlehem, on the right of the road, is the tomb in which was laid Jacob’s wife Rachel. Two miles further on, on the left, is Bethlehem, where the Lord Jesus Christ was born, and where a basilica has been built by command of Constantine. … It is nine miles to Terebinthus, where Abraham lived and dug a well beneath the terebinth tree, and spoke and ate with the angels. An exceptionally beautiful basilica has been built there by command of Constantine.32
Much earlier, Eusebius of Caesarea had mapped scripture onto the geography of Palestine in the Onomasticon of about 300, so the oral traditions had already been recorded locally and the terrain itself was already regarded as Holy. Within that geographical and theological matrix, places and forms of worship would be constructed. The specific forms of architecture and liturgy developed here would exert a strong influence along the return journey of the pilgrim routes.
The Basilica at Mamre
In the Life of Constantine (3.53.3) Eusebius tells us that Constantine wished to honour the oak at Mamre where Abraham received ‘the Saviour himself with the two angels’. There was already a walled courtyard and a well under the ancient oak that Josephus says was ‘a huge terebinth-tree, which is said to have stood there ever since the creation’.33 This tree had long been venerated by pagans, Jews and, some say, Christians, though that is disputed.34 Whether or not the place was visited by Christians, Constantine considered it holy as the site of a theophany (the appearance of God to Abraham), and his mother-in-law Eutropia, a pilgrim to Palestine, told him of pagan sacrifice there. By building a church at the site, he presumably wished to prevent the defilement by pagan worship of the holy place where God himself appeared.
The plan of the church, built just before 330, is not very clear, but it appears that a portico replaced the eastern wall of the enclosure, giving access to a small basilica with an apse and side chambers. Its size indicates that it was not for congregational worship, but rather for personal pilgrimage, and that is confirmed by the way it is presented in early pilgrim accounts.35
The Lazarium
During the liturgical year, the bishop and his congregation in Jerusalem performed peripatetic services, most particularly during Lent and the Easter season. These itinerant liturgies survived in a truncated form in the great medieval processional liturgies of Eastertide. The original fourth-century liturgies are described in great detail by the pilgrim Egeria, who travelled from somewhere in Gaul via Constantinople to the Holy Land between 381 and 384 – an amazing feat for a woman under contemporary conditions.36 Of course, the Empress Helena made the pilgrimage too, but she will have travelled in a style rather different from Egeria’s, even if Egeria sometimes enjoyed the protection of guards. She describes how: ‘In our part of the world we observe forty days before Easter, but here [in Jerusalem] they keep eight weeks.’37 On the Saturday of the seventh week, the eve of Palm Sunday, the congregation would gather at the Lazarium to mark events leading up to the Passion:
About half a mile before you get to the Lazarium from Jerusalem there is a church by the road. It is the spot where Lazarus’ sister Mary met the Lord. All the monks meet the Bishop when he arrives there, and the people go into the church. They have one hymn and an antiphon, and a reading from the gospel about Lazarus’ sister meeting the Lord. Then, after a prayer, everyone is blessed, and they go on with singing to the Lazarium.
By the time they arrive there so many people have collected that they fill not only the Lazarium itself, but all the fields around. They have hymns and antiphons which – like all the readings – are suitable to the day and the place. Then at the dismissal a presbyter announces Easter. He mounts a platform, and reads the Gospel passage which begins ‘When Jesus came to Bethany six days before the Passover’. After this reading, with its announcement of Easter, comes the dismissal. They do it on this day because the Gospel describes what took place in Bethany ‘six days before the Passover’ and it is six days from this Saturday to the Thursday night on which the Lord was arrested after the Supper. Thus they all return to the Anastasis [Church of the Holy Sepulchre] and have Lucernare in the usual way.38
Although not all would have such stamina, this pilgrim was living the liturgy, and the lectionary was arranged so that the worshipper was living the scriptures too. It is easy to see why pilgrims returned with a desire to re-create the liturgy and its setting, and with relics to create the immediacy of a physical connection to the sacred events and geography. Egeria tells of the lengths to which some were willing to go to collect a relic. On Good Friday at the veneration of the True Cross, the Bishop had to keep a hand on either end of the relic with the deacons all round him on guard, because ‘all the people, catechumens as well as faithful, come up one by one to the table. They stoop down over it, kiss the Wood, and move on. But on one occasion (I don’t know when) one of them bit off a piece of the holy Wood and stole it away.’39
There is a wonderful freshness and excitement to Egeria’s account, and in quite lean prose she still pauses frequently to dwell on the sacred geography of the liturgical progression, punctuated by buildings commissioned by the Emperor of Rome for the Emperor of Heaven, which reveals the importance assumed by an increasingly formal architectural setting for an increasingly formal rite. It was clearly possible to participate in only some stages of this sequence, since many in the crowd seem to have joined the celebration at the Lazarium itself, but for those strong enough to sustain the lengthy participation, the sequence is seen as a coherent whole that fits into the run of daily offices, ending in ‘Lucernare’, the evening office at four. Another mention of the use of the Lazarium in a similar way by Egeria is on the fifth day of Epiphany, and all the Constantinian foundations in and near Jerusalem are used in sequence during the octave.40
The Church of the Nativity
The Church of the Nativity at Bethlehem was, not surprisingly, even more closely integrated into the celebrations of the liturgical year. At Epiphany, the festival continued for the whole of the octave. The church founded by Constantine’s mother, Helena (a pilgrim at the great age of 80), at the cave of the nativity in Bethlehem was a large, almost square (28.3 m by 29 m), basilica consisting of nave and two aisles either side. Although the present building in Bethlehem is sixth-century, built on an even grander scale by the Emperor Justinian, the columns and capitals of the colonnades are consistent with fourth-century work, and may well have been reused from the original church. It was preceded by a forecourt (30 m) which led into a large atrium (45 m by 28 m) before entering the church on the axis. The culmination was an octagonal martyrium raised by three steps at the east end, focused on a platform raised a further three steps. A large opening in the middle of this platform gave a view of the grotto.
This church was by no means as large as the Lateran or St Peter’s, but there were similarities to the latter in its axial planning which ran from the atrium, to the double-aisled basilica, which was rather loosely attached to an eastern martyrium where the congregation could circulate on either side during the service. Magnificent mosaic floors of the late fourth century have been excavated in the nave and the octagon, so these may have been seen by Egeria, but not the pilgrim of Bordeaux, who saw the church when it was very new and the decoration incomplete. By the end of the fourth century, gold and silver were already so much associated with the most sacred focus of the church itself that what was widely believed (by both Origen and Jerome) to be the very mud cradle of Jesus had been replaced by one of silver.41 In a church celebrating the first appearance of the Lord, it was of course breathtakingly arrayed for Epiphany, along with the other churches associated with the life and saving passion of Christ:
And on this day in this church [on Golgotha] and at the Anastasis and the Cross and Bethlehem, the decorations really are too marvellous for words. All you can see is gold and jewels and silk; the hangings are entirely silk with gold stripes, the curtains are the same, and everything they use for services at the festival is made of gold and jewels. You simply cannot imagine the number, and the sheer weight of the candles and the tapers and lamps and everything else they use for the services.42
At Easter, the Church of the Nativity was again decorated like the great churches in Jerusalem, and on the eve of the fortieth day after Easter (Ascension) there was a vigil service there, followed by ‘the usual service, with presbyters and the bishop preaching sermons suitable to the place and the day’. It is unclear from this whether ‘the usual service’ was eucharistic or not. Crowfoot thinks not: ‘At the moment when these sanctuaries were planned evidential considerations were uppermost, as I read the texts of Eusebius and Cyril: the shrines were not built for liturgical worship but that all might see the places where Christ was born and buried and rose from the dead.’43 To return to the services, curiously the fortieth day seems not to be described as the Ascension, nor does it take place at Eleona on the Mount of Olives in the Imbomon, ‘the place from which the Lord ascended into heaven’.44 The Ascension Egeria places on the fiftieth day (Pentecost), which is celebrated with a day-long peripatetic service beginning at the Great Church, the Martyrium on Golgotha.
The Great Church or Martyrium, Golgotha, and the Anastasis
Christian worship in Jerusalem was focused on Constantine’s own foundation, the Great Church, which was also called the Martyrium, or ‘witness’ to the resurrection: ‘New Jerusalem was built at the very Testimony to the Saviour, facing the famous Jerusalem of old.’45 This description by Eusebius may point to a reason why no events in the life of Christ associated with the Temple, such as the Presentation, were celebrated on Temple Mount. Jesus’ prophecy about the destruction of the Temple had been fulfilled that ‘there will not be left here one stone upon another, that will not be thrown down’ (Matthew 24:2). In fact, in the fourth century two pinnacles of the Temple appear still to have been in existence, but in surviving copies of Egeria’s own text, at any rate, there is no mention of services or prayers of any kind being offered there by the Christian community.46 Their new Holy of Holies was the Anastasis, or cave of the resurrection, ‘where the bright angel once announced good news of a new birth, for all men, revealed through the Saviour’ (VC, 34).
Eusebius’ Life of Constantine may well have been a work of flattery, but the magnificence of the Constantinian buildings in Jerusalem described by him is amply confirmed by Egeria. Constantine himself had written to Bishop Macarius to build ‘a basilica superior to all other places, but the other arrangements also, may be such that all the excellences of every city are surpassed by this foundation’. From the outset, Constantine had determined to construct a complex of buildings on the site of Golgotha and the cave of the resurrection. Macarius was instructed to request from Dracillianus, governor of the province, whatever labour or materials were necessary for the work to be as fine as possible: ‘It is right that the world’s most miraculous place should be worthily embellished.’ What Bishop could resist an invitation like that from an Emperor? Work started in 325/26.
The entrance to the complex was from an ordinary street of shops, which must have presented an astonishing contrast. It was designed to allow a view into the colonnaded court and attract passers-by. The façade of the basilica faced the rising sun, and the entrance had gigantic heavily decorated columns between three doors, and unusually for a Constantinian church, Eusebius maintained that its exterior was also of polished stone ‘by no means inferior to marble’. The basilica was again double-aisled with marble columns, coloured marble revetment and gilded coffered ceilings. Opposite the entrance was the apse (at the west end), which rose to the full height of the nave, ‘the hemisphere attached to the highest part of the royal house, ringed with twelve columns to match the number of the Apostles of the Saviour, their tops decorated with great bowls made of silver which the Emperor himself had presented to his God as a superb offering’.47 Krautheimer finds it difficult to reconcile this treatment with the apse of the basilica, and thinks the reference should be to the Aedicule in the Anastasis. Doors at the west end of the aisles of the basilica gave onto an open court with colonnades on three sides, a polished marble pavement, and in the south-east corner, the rock of Calvary. Further to the west was the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, a centrally planned martyrium, containing the holy Cave itself. The archaeology has broadly confirmed Eusebius’ description of the plan. There is some scholarly disagreement concerning the dating of the Anastasis Rotunda, which Krautheimer considers to be after 336, or even the death of Constantine in 337, though Biddle dates it somewhat earlier, in 335.48
The buildings on Golgotha were central to the worship of the Christian community in Jerusalem throughout the year, even during the Great Week before Easter when the services geographically followed the movements of Jesus’ passion. In the normal pattern there were daily services beginning before dawn, when the doors of the Anastasis itself were opened and the monks and nuns gathered with a few lay people. They sang antiphons and responses to hymns and psalms until first light, when the clergy arrived and the bishop would go directly into the cave. He began the service proper with a prayer for all and a blessing for the catechumens, then another prayer and a blessing for the faithful. Emerging from the sanctuary, he then laid his hand on each in turn as a blessing, and there was a dismissal. Very similar services took place at noon and at three in the afternoon. At four there was ‘Lucernare’, when all the lamps and candles were lit from a flame that was kept constantly burning in the cave. The bishop and presbyters then entered and took their seats, and the appointed hymns and antiphons continued. After these, the bishop rose and approached the sanctuary and a deacon offered the prayers for individuals, and after each name a large boys’ choir would sing kyrie eleison. At the end, the bishop said a collect and the prayer for all. The deacon summoned the catechumens to bow their heads, and the bishop blessed them from his place. After another prayer, the same was done for the faithful. The dismissal was followed by the bishop laying his hand on each. With hymns and antiphons, all the faithful accompanied the bishop to the Cross. This does not mean the relic of the Cross, but rather the rock of Calvary, which makes sense geographically, since the relic could otherwise be incorporated into the service at the Anastasis as on Good Friday – elsewhere Egeria refers to ‘the Great Church built by Constantine on Golgotha Behind the Cross’.49 Before the Cross there was a prayer, and blessings for the catechumens and for the faithful by the hand of the Bishop, and all this was repeated behind the Cross. By this time, dusk was beginning to fall.
On Sundays the people would gather in much the same way, but outside in the court in front of the Anastasis. According to Egeria, they gathered in very considerable numbers.50 Again there were hymns and antiphons, and at cock-crow the bishop went directly into the Anastasis and the cave itself, ‘already ablaze with lamps’. There were three psalms with responses alternating with three prayers, followed by the prayer for all, the cave was censed and the bishop read the gospel account of the resurrection. They went with singing to the Cross, where there was a psalm and a prayer, the blessing and dismissal. Then the bishop laid his hand on the people as they left. A time of rest followed, or for the strong there was a vigil until daybreak, when the people again assembled at the Great Church ‘and they do what is everywhere the custom on the Lord’s Day’ (25.1). As always, Egeria gives no details concerning the holy mysteries, since they would be known to her readers on the one hand, and the profane might come to know their secrets on the other.
However, the bishop of whom Egeria wrote was St Cyril of Jerusalem, whose Catechetical Lectures (or Mystagogical Catecheses) to the newly baptized give both detail and the underlying sacramental theology. Interestingly, Cyril encourages the catechumens to ‘imagine catechesis is a building’.51 In his Fifth Address on the Mysteries, he begins: ‘At our previous meetings you have, thanks to God’s kindness, received instruction enough about baptism, anointing, and the communion of the body and blood of Christ. We must now move on to our next subject, for our intention today is to put the crowning piece on to the edifice of your spiritual equipment.’52 He then proceeds to outline the communion, from the lavabo and then the kiss of peace, to the anaphora or offering. Within this, the eucharistic prayer ‘makes mention of sky and earth and sea, of sun and moon and stars and of all creation, rational and irrational, visible and invisible’ (5.6). Egeria refers to ‘what is everywhere the custom’, indicating to her ‘sisters’, for whom she wrote, that they, probably as far away as Gaul or Spain, would at least broadly recognize the rite as standard, but Cyril’s description of the prayer of consecration indicates that there may have been variation at that point at least, or extemporization by the celebrant may even have continued to be the practice. This section ends with the ‘Holy, holy, holy’ of the Sanctus to join the prayer with that of the celestial host in the heavenly sanctuary. Next he describes the invocation of the Holy Spirit, or epiclesis (5.7), prayers ‘for all who need aid that we, who also need it ourselves, offer this sacrifice’ (5.8), those who have died (5.9 and 5.10), and the Lord’s Prayer. There is an invitation to communion (5.19), and a cantor sings ‘O taste and see that the Lord is good!’ from Psalm 34, verse 8 (5.20). The faithful are told to cup their hands, making ‘your left hand a throne for your right, which is about to receive your king. … Carefully sanctify your eyes with a touch of the holy body and then consume it, taking care to lose none of it’ (5.21). Similarly with the cup: ‘and while the moisture is still on your lips, touch them with your hands and sanctify your eyes, your forehead and all your senses. Then wait for the prayer and give thanks to God for counting you worthy of such mysteries’ (5.22). The prayer is at least as familiar to us as to Egeria’s readers.
At this most important service of the week, it was customary for any presbyter present to preach, and finally for the bishop to deliver a sermon as well, so that the service would last from dawn to 10 or 11 p.m. Egeria found it necessary to add that ‘the object of having this preaching every Sunday is to make sure that the people will continually be learning about the Bible and the love of God’, implying that preaching, or at least at such length, was not usual at home in Gaul.
After the dismissal, ‘in the way that is usual everywhere’, and therefore not described, all proceed with singing to the Anastasis, where only the faithful enter. The bishop enters the railed area by the cave, says a thanksgiving, the ‘prayer for all’ and the series of blessings. It is approaching noon by the time of the final dismissal. In the afternoon, as on every day of the year, there is Lucernare. However peripatetic, the festal services do not interrupt the regularity of the offices; however elaborated, the larger biblical narratives supplied by the readings and the preaching enhance the coherence and enlarge the new emphasis on the teaching function of the liturgy.
The New Perspective of the New Jerusalem
One of the aspects of worship in Jerusalem most admired by Egeria was the way readings, psalms and prayers were carefully selected according to both the occasion and place of the particular service. This suggests that the discipline at home amongst her sisters was to read the books of the Bible and the psalms straight through. The great joy of pilgrimage to the Holy Land was to connect with the life of Christ and biblical events. Services during the liturgical year and the movement between sites within or between services built up these larger narratives, and the architectural settings made their contribution to those narratives and controlled access to, and the experience of, the places and relics which provided the existential links with the sacred stories:
The same concern for the emotive power of the liturgy can be seen in Cyril’s exploitation of its celebration at the very places where each saving incident took place. In addition to the Martyrium, the Anastasis and the rock of Calvary, there were services at Sion, the Lazarium, the Eliona, the Imbomon, the place of the Agony, and that of the Arrest; there were also visits to Bethlehem.53
Although local practice in liturgy and architecture continued to dominate, especially in the countryside, the power of the Holy Places and relics could be transferred, transporting the sacred geography and the associated liturgical and architectural forms to major centres across the Empire. This contributed to a growing uniformity of liturgy, and to some extent, already at this early date, even of architecture in what was now becoming ‘Christendom’, strengthening the catholicity of the Church and the unity of the Empire.
Santa Pudenziana, Rome
Around the year 390 in Rome, only a few years after Egeria’s return home, a large thermae bath was converted into the Church of Santa Pudenziana. Over the next fifteen years it was decorated with elaborate mosaics – in the apse, rather than pure gold, it had the first programme of figural mosaics executed in a church in Rome.54 The apse mosaic (Cover illustration) shows Christ clothed in gold and purple below a jewelled Cross flanked by the Beasts of the Apocalypse, while he himself is flanked by the Apostles wearing Senatorial togas. They are accompanied by a woman representing the Church of the Jews on one side holding a wreath over the head of Peter, and one on the other holding a wreath over the head of Paul, standing for the Church of the Gentiles. One Apostle is missing from either side as a result of the mosaic being cut down in alterations of 1588. Egeria had described (37.1) a cross erected on Golgotha, and that it was also possible to place the Bishop’s throne on the rock, both of which are presumably shown in the mosaic. In the background of the composition the scene is surrounded by the buildings of the courtyard on Golgotha, and beyond are seen the buildings of the New Jerusalem. In its style there is a new classicism after the fourth-century ‘provincialism’, or perhaps better, the hieratic emphasis of the art of the Tetrarchy.
The message of the apse mosaic is clear: Christ is the Emperor of Heaven, the Cross his throne, and the Apostles his heavenly court in the New Jerusalem. This reality of heaven is reflected on the earth beneath, in the worship of the Church, in the Christian Empire, and in the rebuilding of Jerusalem in the Holy Land and in the Churches of the Empire:
Again and again, we find these two features in the pictures of the events of the Bible as they are seen on the walls of the basilicas. On the one hand, they are strictly historical, often, indeed an exact topographical record of the past: many of the Holy Places of Palestine, as of Egypt, Ur and Chaldaea, are included. In their picture of the Birth of Christ, the artists would never forget to show the grotto, which all pilgrims had seen in Bethlehem; and, in the scene of the Easter morning, they would never fail to place, behind the stone on which the man clad in white speaks to the three women, the memoria which stood beneath the dome of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, which contained the cave of the authentic grave. We even hear of a cycle of pictures which showed Abraham’s Oak at Mamre, the Pillar of Salt (Lot’s wife), the twelve stones in Jordan, the House of Rahab in Jericho, the burial cave of Lazarus, the Pinnacle of the Temple and many other of the sights of Palestine.55
Imperial imagery had been taken up in the decoration of churches; imperial forms dominated ecclesiastical architecture, and imperial ceremonial, dress and badges of office exerted a powerful influence over both the liturgy and liturgical dress. In 318 Constantine gave bishops jurisdiction over legal cases involving Christians, beginning a process of integration of the clergy into the legal, civic and social structures of the Empire. Bishops ranked with the illustres, amongst the highest dignitaries, and could claim the same rights, privileges and signs of rank: the pallium (a white woollen mantle), special shoes, headgear, ring and throne. Ceremonial attached to rank was to be performed in the presence of the bishop – he was to be greeted with a kiss of his hand and accompanied by candles and incense. As for the Bishop of Rome, he, like the Emperor himself, was to be greeted with genuflection, his foot kissed, and on arrival at a church he was met with singing, from which the Introit developed.56
Santa Croce in Gerusalemme
In the Sessorian Palace in Rome, the Empress Helena had a huge hall, which had originally been built c. 200, converted to a Palatine Chapel in 329, and endowed it with a relic of the True Cross, housed, it has been suggested, under a canopy which was a copy of Constantine’s Anastasis over the Holy Sepulchre.57 An apse was added, and two transverse walls supported by double columns separated it into three spaces – a narrow one at the apsidal end for the clergy, the wide central section for the imperial household, and a third narrow section at the back for retainers. The presence of the relic, and Helena’s own pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 326–27, were reflected in the dedication of the building, and doubtless also in the way the liturgy was celebrated. Certainly, by the late fourth century, c. 382, Pope Damasus modelled the Roman daily office on that of Jerusalem. By the fifth century, papal ‘stational masses’ had developed to help cope with the crowds that engulfed the Lateran, especially on the great feast days. The pope would be led in solemn procession by a large entourage of clergy to Santa Croce in Gerusalemme on Good Friday, Santa Maria Maggiore for the first mass of Christmas, and Santo Stefano Rotondo on the next day, St Stephen’s Day. Rome came to celebrate its own sacred geography through the liturgy in a way that had clear parallels with the Jerusalem of St Cyril.
The Architecture of Death, and of Rebirth
Centrally planned memoriae, as at Golgotha and Bethlehem, took their architectural form from the imperial mausoleum. ‘The adaptation of central plan to temple architecture began in the second-century when Hadrian had the Pantheon rebuilt after it had long been favoured for imperial mausolea. … It was especially popular for martyria or churches built to memorialize key events in the biblical tradition and in the life of Christ, or to commemorate martyrs who had died for the faith.’58 Just as the basilica, with its imperial associations, was thought appropriate for the worship of the Church, with Christ occupying the apse as Emperor of Heaven, so the imperial mausoleum was considered appropriate as the memoria of aspects of his life and death. The theology of baptism, the death of the sinfulness of the old Adam and rising to new life in Christ, made the centralized martyrium an eloquent architectural form for the baptistery.
Mausolea
Constantine probably prepared the circular imperial mausoleum (now the Tor Pignattara) on the Via Labicana, leading out of the city from Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, for himself before he moved the capital of the Empire to Constantinople. He had it built partly over a Christian catacomb along with its attached funerary Basilica of SS. Marcellino e Pietro, and partly over a portion of the cemetery used for the loathed equites singulares, who had been Maxentius’ bodyguard at the Milvian Bridge. Constantine obliterated their camp by building the Basilica Constantiniana, and set aside the laws protecting burials to obliterate their cemetery, building this church and mausoleum, as a part of his damnatio memoriae of Maxentius.59 The stamps on the bricks show them to be Constantinian, and the integration of the planning indicates that the mausoleum was never free-standing. Its interior was covered in coloured marble and porphyry, and a coin of 324–26 embedded in its mortar dates the addition of the revetment, or stone facing. The niches below the windows of the circular drum supporting the dome were covered in mosaic, still visible in the sixteenth century.60 The mausoleum had a memorial, not a liturgical function, but its symbolic function and architectural form will be of importance when considering the development of the baptistery. The funerary Basilica of SS. Marcellino e Pietro will have functioned in a very similar way to St Peter’s, as a covered cemetery. Architecturally, it differed in having its side walls continuous with the sweep of the apse, creating a complete ambulatory, rather than having an apse added to a square end wall as at St Peter’s.
To get an impression of how the Tor Pignattara originally looked, it is necessary to go to Santa Costanza on the Via Nomentana (see Figure 2.3). This mausoleum was attached to another apse-ended funerary basilica dedicated to St Agnes. Excavations in the nineteenth century are said to have revealed a font in the church, which at the time was linked to the reference in the Liber Pontificalis to Constantine being prevailed upon by his daughter and his sister (both named Constantina, hence Santa Costanza) to build a church for Sant’ Agnese and a baptistery, supposed by some to be this martyrium. All this has been much disputed, and some date the structure to 337–57, when the younger Constantina was living in Rome, but what is important here is to note the close formal connection between the martyrium and the baptistery because of the theology of baptism: the dying to sin of the old Adam and rising to new life in Christ.61
Like the Tor Pignattara, Santa Costanza is another round mausoleum with a circular vaulted ambulatory (Plate 1). The vault has a splendid mosaic, of which about thirty per cent is original; the mid-nineteenth-century restoration was clearly very carefully done and faithful to the original. The mosaic shows cupids, vines, flowers and greenery in a design consistent with pagan Roman art. The iconographic status of the mosaic is problematical, encouraging some to connect the building with Constantine’s nephew, Julian the Apostate, who renounced Christianity on becoming Emperor. Most, however, in the absence of further evidence, accept the claims of the Liber Pontificalis, adding that at this early date, Christian art was content to use the earlier forms, invested with new meanings in the new context. In this connection, it is interesting to note that the Mausoleum of Centcelles near Tarragona is just about contemporary with Santa Costanza, and similarities in its decorative programme suggest that it was built for Constantine’s son Constans. Its dome mosaics are in registers – the lowest with scenes of stag hunting, an allegory of the Christian soul based on Psalm 42, and the next register up was of Old and New Testament themes.62 Above that was a further range showing ‘enthroned figures in scenes of imperial ceremonial’. Were the lost upper registers of Santa Costanza similarly reserved for biblical scenes? Around the years 1538–40, the Portugese artist Francesco d’Ollanda produced a watercolour of the Santa Costanza dome mosaics as they then existed. It shows a register of Old Testament themes, including the Sacrifice of Cain and Abel, and in the upper register included the Miracle of the Centurion and presumably other New Testament themes.63 The imperial tradition of mausolea continued with Constantine’s astonishing Church of the Apostles in the New Rome (Constantinople), where he rested with the companions of the Lord himself, and there is also the Mausoleum of Theodoric in Ravenna.
Apse-ended Funerary Basilicas
In all there are six examples of Constantinian apse-ended funerary basilicas, including San Lorenzo on the Via Tiburtina, and the recent discovery in 1990 on the Via Ardeatina. Their remains are very fragmentary, making the Church of the Apostles (or San Sebastiano) in old Rome, very near the latter on the Via Appia, an extremely important, still extant, example of an apse-ended funerary basilica with ambulatory. The interior has been largely remodelled, and the early work can only be seen on the exterior. Interestingly, recent work has suggested that Maxentius may have begun the Church of the Apostles before his confrontation with Constantine:
It is possible that the basilica is a genuine Constantinian building but was achieved by the same architect who constructed the tomb of Romulus which remained intact very close by. Alternatively, it is possible that Maxentius himself began the work on a Christian basilica employing the architect who had served him so well previously. This latter explanation would thus explain the failure of the Liber Pontificalis to attribute the foundation to Constantine.64
The basilica was built on or over a memoria commemorating St Peter and St Paul which had graffiti addressed to the Apostles dating from the middle of the third century. There also seems to have been an object of veneration in a small niche.65 As at St Peter’s, a very large number of Christians wished to be buried at this site, which had been sanctified by the presence of the Apostles and which still contained the grave of St Sebastian. Thousands of bodies were laid under the floor.
This type of covered cemetery was a short-lived phenomenon, and once filled with bodies, they probably tended to fall into disuse after a few generations. Recent ideas concerning the origin of the apse-ended basilica, if true, would throw an interesting light onto Constantine’s religious position:
Why did Constantine and his architects unite a basilica with the mausoleum and why did they give it its unusual form? The basilica extended burial within the walls of the imperial funeral structure to individuals not of the imperial family. This is not an act to be expected from a pagan. It is an act of Christian charity. As he opened his purse to the poor, orphaned children and women in distress, Constantine opened his door to his Christian brothers and sisters in a way unknown to the pagan, for whom the tomb and the household were inseparable. He housed them in the tomb complex intended for himself and occupied by his mother.66
It may have been a grand and pious gesture, but in the event, he would have rather different company in his final resting place in his new imperial capital. One puzzling aspect of this, however, is that the Tor Pignattara was added only in 324–26, possibly about a decade after the basilica itself was built, and Helena herself did not occupy the tomb until c. 330. A simpler interpretation has also been offered: ‘Constantine and his family transformed the gesture of linking the emperor’s favoured dead (the most recent case being the equites singulares) with himself by providing funerary basilicas for the milites christi.’67
The iconography of the circular imperial mausoleum reached back through Diocletian’s, built just at the turn of the fourth century at Spalato (Split), to Hadrian’s in Rome (completed by 139), the Mausoleum of Augustus (end of the first century BCE), and may refer back to the tomb of Alexander himself.68 They were not merely tombs, but also heroa, where ‘heavenly honours’ were offered to the individual commemorated.69 Such a form was appropriate for the martyria at Bethlehem and the Holy Sepulchre, commemorating the birth and resurrection of Christ who had ascended into heaven. The unification of the circular mausoleum and the basilica in the form of the apse-ended basilica speaks of the hope of heaven for the Christian dead crowded under its floor. Furthermore, these structures were usually built over or near the graves of martyrs with memorials celebrated on their ‘birthdays’, that is to say the anniversaries of their martyrdom. Even the imperial family wanted to be near the sanctity of their presence or the place where they showed the way to heaven.
Baptisteries
The plan of Santa Costanza is found again with only minor, but significant, variation in the foundations of the Lateran Baptistery (see Figure 2.4). A baptistery was part of the Lateran scheme from the beginning, and archaeological excavations have revealed that the present octagonal brick structure stands on more substantial early fourth-century foundations which originally supported a round structure with eight engaged columns where the angles of the present octagon now stand. Formally, this is a martyrium, the clearest proof of a theology of baptism as a sharing in the death and risen life of Christ.70
The original entrance was on the opposite side of the building, that is, beside the Cathedral rather than onto the piazza as now. The present porch (which stands in the original position beside the Cathedral) is fifth-century, as are the present octagonal walls of the baptistery, but again the porch is on earlier foundations. There was, then, from the very time of Constantine’s victory or within a very short time, a grand antechamber to accommodate the preliminary rites that must already have grown up around baptism itself. Many resemblances between the ceremonial elaborations of the Christian and pagan services of initiation have recently been traced:
This accumulation of points of resemblance between Cyril’s baptismal practice and the pagan initiation rites confirms Hugo Rahner’s belief that there was here and elsewhere a conscious attempt to assimilate into Christian practice some of the liturgical techniques of the mystery-religions.
If any one person is to be singled out as the original thinker behind this scheme, the most likely candidate is Constantine. Before his conversion the Emperor had been a devotee of the one god symbolised by the Unconquered Sun, and had been initiated into various mysteries.71
It is widely held that the rite became more dramatic, even awe-inspiring, in order to bring about an emotional conversion in those amongst the great number being baptized, who were doing so for less good reasons, given recent imperial favour expressed towards Christianity. Both the dramatic setting and the more elaborated rites would appear to have been in place earlier than would be expected if they simply developed in response to the gathering pace of conversions. This lends weight to Edward Yarnold’s argument that the more pagan style of mysteries in the initiation rites was attributable to Constantine himself.72 This certainly rings true in the light of a pagan and imperial architectural form being taken over directly as the new prototype baptistery.
Of course, we know nothing of the fourth-century decoration of the Lateran Baptistery, but some of the fifth-century work does survive, including a beautiful mosaic with gold and green tendrils on a deep blue ground in the north-east apse of the porch, and the overall scheme may have been not unlike that of S. Giovanni in Fonte, Naples (from c. 400) with its scenes from the New Testament, Christian symbolism including the Evangelists, figures of the Apostles, and in the centre the Christogram against a starry sky. High on the wall of the Lateran baptistery a section of green and red porphyry panelling with yellow scrollwork is still to be seen. Columns, capitals, bases, pilasters and lintels are spolia (architectural salvage) of the finest quality first-, second- and third-century work, and had probably been salvaged again from the fourth-century for the fifth-century building.
There were many ceremonies that made up the baptismal rite, and the architecture was planned to take these into account – with the progression from the dark apsidal porch and vaulted circular ambulatory, to its well-lit central domed space forming a monumental baldacchino over the font. Oratories to John the Baptist and St John the Evangelist were added in the fifth century. Not all churches used all the ceremonies, and the order could also vary, but these regional variations of the early part of the century diminished towards its end.73
The second, octagonal, structure (see Figure 2.4), which was possibly built by Sixtus III (432–40), was widely copied at the end of the fourth century, at Mariana, Corsica in the early fifth, and a simpler version with an arcade rather than an ambulatory at Fréjus, in Provence. The shape of the font varied, with a cross-shaped font at Mariana, but the octagon, as at Marseilles and Fréjus, became standard. The form has been attributed to St Ambrose’s baptistery in Milan as early as 386 on the evidence of a poem attributed to him describing the symbolism of the eight sides as a reference to the eighth day – the seven days of creation, and the eighth is the resurrection and new creation – but in De Sacramentis he speaks of fonts in the shape of tombs, as at Dura. The actual shape of the Milan font is in doubt, but not its symbolism. Even a hexagonal font could be understood in terms of the sixth day, when Christ was crucified.74 In Ravenna, both the Baptistery of the Arians (of the late fifth century; see Figure 2.5) and the Baptistery of the Orthodox (the lower part of the early, and the dome of the mid-fifth century; see Figure 2.6)) are octagonal. The latter preserves the most complete impression of a contemporary baptistery in its fabric and its wonderful decorative programme. Rising through the zones, the gaze meets the prophets, then 16 Minor Prophets, and in the mosaic of the dome is a band of empty thrones and altars, Apostles, and finally the central roundel of the Baptism of Christ.
Aquileia
The Cathedral at Aquileia in northern Italy was in a minor place, but set over a major see. Three buildings of the complex, consisting of double cathedral and episcopal residence, may have been ‘completed prior to 319 and perhaps as early as 313’, that is, during the episcopate of Bishop Theodore, who is commemorated in an inscription saying that he ‘made everything happily and dedicated it gloriously’. However, an eyewitness, Athanasius, refers to the church as ‘under construction’ between 336 and 345. He had been expelled by the Eastern Bishops, and was present at the Easter service in the Cathedral of Aquileia in 345, from where he addressed that year’s Festal Letter. In his Apology to Constantius in the mid-350s, in which he was defending himself against charges including the celebration of the liturgy in an unconsecrated church, he defends himself by referring to the Easter Service at Aquileia attended by Constantius’ own brother Constans, which was also held in an unfinished, and similarly unconsecrated, church.75
The double churches (see the plan, Figure 2.7) are actually aulae ecclesiae, and are built over a structure supposed by Krautheimer to be a domus ecclesiae, a notion not entirely compatible with the archaeological evidence.76 The two halls were painted with garden scenes, and the floors were covered with splendid mosaics. These were arranged in panels showing animals and birds in the northern hall, as might be used in secular contexts, but in the southern hall, the east end (nearest the entrance) was entirely covered with a single panel showing fish and fishermen and three scenes from the story of Jonah, swallowed by the whale, regurgitated, and reclining under the gourd. It is a neat allegory of Christian salvation through the waters of baptism. Other panels further west showed a Good Shepherd, and another a ‘Victory between probable symbols of the eucharist’.77 The twin halls were linked by a transverse section which provided for baptism, suggesting the possibility that one hall was for the catechumens, the other (the northern hall) for the celebration of the liturgy. The complex was contemporary with the Lateran, but its architecture and even the constructional details are more closely related to the Rhineland and the double cathedral at Trier.78 The continuing strength of the connection between northern Italy and the Rhineland is demonstrated by the fact that Ambrose of Milan himself was born at Trier c. 339.
During the second half of the fourth century, the northern hall was rebuilt, doubling its dimensions in both directions, and it was possibly this rebuilding that was witnessed by Athanasius. It is very likely that the differences between the episcopal architecture of Rome and the double cathedral at Aquileia can be accounted for by reference to differences in liturgical practice. The main differences are described by Ambrose. In the first place, in Aquileia there was a longer preparation period, running from enrolment at Epiphany to Easter, rather than from the beginning of Lent. The day before baptism, the apertio, or touching of the nostrils and ears of the candidate by the bishop, took place. This has most recently been interpreted as ‘the remnant of a transition to a period of “restricted” teaching’. There was a pre-baptismal anointing, described by Ambrose as an athlete preparing for combat, and finally (a departure which Ambrose found simply embarrassing) there was the washing of feet, which took place before baptism in Aquileia. The authority of Ambrose and his See of Milan, especially in liturgical matters, was second only to Rome in the West, and exercised considerable influence in the East as well.79
In Rome, pre-baptismal ceremonies took place as the candidate progressed through the architectural spaces on the way to the font in the light under the ‘monumental baldacchino’ of the dome with its drum resting on eight columns; in Aquileia, it is tempting to speculate that the pre-baptismal ceremonies took place as the candidates entered through the south-eastern door (with the apertio perhaps taking place here?), via a small room previously associated with baptism, which may have been for undressing the candidate, with full anointing of the body perhaps taking place in the first bay of the southern hall. The renunciation of the devil in the Eastern rite was performed facing west, reflected in the orientation of the mosaic in the next bay, if the orientation is as for the officiant. The candidate then turned back towards the east in the next bay to undertake the ‘contract with Christ’ implied in Ambrose’s description.
The precise unfolding of the rite in time is easier to reconstruct than in space, since each locality will differ in layout; however, in broad terms, the complex mosaics and their orientations would appear to define the processional route and its stations for the various ceremonies of the pre-baptismal rite, taking the candidate gradually deeper into the architectural complex until reaching the font in the transverse hall:
Mosaics might be designed to mark on the floor the patterns of use of a room: the habitual location of furniture, the division into parts serving different purposes, or the desired flow of movement. They could establish … a hierarchy of use between different spaces, … and could link areas connected in function. The choice of themes could convey a message about the function of the room, or about the significance of the activities that went on there.80
By the middle of the fourth century, and almost universally by the time of Egeria, detail concerning the mysteries was withheld, often until after the candidates had been initiated, so they would certainly not be made entirely obvious in the detail of the mosaic, but the complexities of the pattern and its directionality must correspond to the complexity of the movement of the participants.
Lullingstone Villa, Britannia
In the middle of the fourth century, in faraway Britannia, where circumstances were different and the influence of the Bishop of Rome weaker, the north wing of a large villa was converted to a church. In Gaul, founders of early monasteries tended to come from wealthy landed families, or frequently built within or on the site of Roman villas, as Gregory of Tours tells us of St Aredius (see below, pages 137–8). If these practices had reached Britain, then Lullingstone presents the right circumstances.81 Evidence suggests that there was farming activity here beside the river even before the Roman occupation, and a house on the site by the end of the first century. The north wing originally had the form of a ‘Romano-British Temple’. By the turn of the third century the house was partly destroyed, abandoned, and reoccupied at the end of the century. Early in the fourth century a young man and woman were buried in this part of the villa, and though there were some similarities to Christian burial (for example, the bodies were covered with gypsum), other details suggest that it was pagan.82 By the 330s the villa had been decorated with good-quality (if provincial) mosaics with elegant Latin and sophisticated pagan literary references, and two large antique portrait busts. By the mid- to late fourth century, a room with Christian decoration had been added, most probably in Christian use from c. 350/60 until after 383:83
The renovation of the chapel room is the only clear indication of Christian presence. Yet, insofar as the proclivities of the owner and his/her family were likely part of the change, it may suggest an earlier Christian presence. On the other hand, it is clear that the nymphaeum and pagan shrine … continued in use throughout much of the fourth century, even after the Christian chapel was installed above.84
In the next stage of renovation, the chapel wing was given an independent entrance and the internal connection to the rest of the house was sealed, so the wing was used by those outside as well as within the household. On the west wall of the chapel was a frieze of six panels separated by painted columns, each containing a praying figure. These figures were of both sexes and of different ages, perhaps representing a family, possibly the patron’s. The south wall had chi-rho monograms and a landscape showing what may be the villa, or alternatively a scriptural scene.85 The chapel remained in use up to the early fifth century, when it was destroyed again by fire.
There were other contemporary churches in Britannia, though there are no other securely identifiable sites; for instance, even the examples at Silchester, Colchester, Lincoln and Richborough have been disputed. It is possible, though unlikely, that a church was in the villa at Hinton St Mary, Dorset, with its pavement displaying a roundel containing a head with a chi-rho behind it, almost certainly a head of Christ, though it is conceivably an imperial portrait (now in the British Museum). Not far away, at Frampton, was found a room with an apse and a cruciform mosaic floor with a chi-rho. The anteroom to this has mosaic floors with pagan imagery, like Hinton St Mary and Lullingstone showing Bellerophon. Of course, there may have been a complicated situation where both pagan and Christian worship was happening concurrently (as appears to have been the case at Lullingstone), but the possibility seems very remote here.86 On the other hand, the pagan motifs may have been ‘baptized’, so to speak, and used allegorically for Christian purposes, for example with Bellerophon referring to an active fight against evil, and the hounds and deer possibly referring to ‘hunted’ Christians, though a precise reading is difficult to reconstruct. Most would say the design is Christian, and even that the rooms ‘were, from time to time used for Christian worship’, but some have gone so far as to suggest that the floors are ‘explicitly Christian’ and must belong to chapels or house-churches.87
There is a growing body of evidence relating to Roman Britain, and Martin Henig maintains that: ‘Two conclusions seem inescapable from a reading of the evidence: congregations of Christians were actually growing in the fifth and sixth centuries, not declining, and to be Christian was coming to be seen as the same thing as being Roman, as, indeed, it was almost everywhere else in Europe.’88 Recent excavations at Bradford on Avon have been interpreted in support of this view, with the suggestion that during the fifth to sixth centuries a baptistery was created within a villa complex by laying a circular curb on, and partially cutting through, a fourth-century mosaic. The font, either of stone or perhaps a lead tank (of which many exist with chi-rho monograms), would have stood within this walled enclosure.89 An interesting illustration, possibly of the baptismal liturgy in an architectural setting, is shown in the Walesby tank, a fragment of a lead tank ploughed up at Walesby, near Market Rasen, Lincolnshire. Though only a fragment, above a chi-rho it appears to show a short frieze of three panels separated by columns. The central panel shows a naked female candidate for baptism between two other women; the panel to the right shows three male figures, and there appears to have been a like panel to the left. If contemporary pictorial conventions are applied, the architectural setting may be reconstructed as a baptistery or a columned ciborium related to the Richborough type of font, but apparently with four rather than six columns, though such a schematic convention cannot be expected to provide that level of detail. Excavations at Richborough have suggested that its baptistery was a wooden construction.90
These lead tanks could have been for baptism or footwashing. Perhaps their ‘afterlife’ can throw some light on how they were originally used. Some of the lead tanks that have been excavated seem to have been deliberately cut into pieces before being buried (quite apart from any damage since sustained in the course of ploughing). Such treatment is not likely to have been given by invaders, but as now, being an object used in a sacrament, a redundant font should be buried and/or broken up, rather than re-used for another purpose. This argues for their having been portable fonts, taken on carts to baptisms by the bishop in much the same way that clergy went out from minster churches to administer the sacraments.
The Water Newton Liturgical Silver91
Although we know that there were many Christian churches in Roman Britain, only Lullingstone has been identified with certainty. But there are numerous other possibilities. Still less has been established about the liturgical use of such settings on the periphery of the Empire. Lullingstone itself was clearly used for prayer, as attested by the decoration of the chapel, but the architecture tells us very little else except the broad timescale, the possible makeup of the congregation, and that pagan worship continued. There is, however, other evidence to consider. In 1975 a hoard of Christian silver was unearthed at Water Newton, Cambridgeshire, within the Roman town of Durobrivae. Some of the objects were clearly votive, unique examples of Christian silver plaques similar to pagan ones dedicated as thank-offerings. Two of the cups, potentially for liturgical use, have dedicatory inscriptions, so we can deduce a little more about their use. On the deeper cup ‘there is also an inscription …. It is a line of verse, a dactylic hexameter, which reads, “sanctum altare tuum, Domine, subnixus honoro” [“I honour your sacred altar, Lord”].’ Because of the inscriptions, and for formal reasons, the hoard has been dated to the second half of the fourth century; secondly, ‘if … the inscription on the deep cup incorporates reminiscences of the Old Latin Bible and of the Mass, particularly that for the newly baptized in Milan, which St Ambrose describes, the inscription must be from the last decades of the fourth century’.92 The most recent study of the hoard proceeds meticulously and cautiously to establish that this is the earliest surviving liturgical service, ‘but, it has to be remembered that the concept of exclusively liturgical silver had not been formed clearly in the fourth century. [The vessels] acquired their character from the authority of the person using them’ (p. 10). It is the inscriptions that set certain of these pieces apart as liturgical plate used at specific points in the service. The hinge of the ingenious argument is this: ‘As regards what follows it must be remembered first that in late antiquity books were expensive and rare, that memory played a far greater role in all culture than nowadays, that much literature, including large parts of the Bible, was known by heart, and consequently the use of a single word would act as the reminder of whole swathes of scripture and the liturgy’ (p. 13). The phrase ‘sacred altar’ is traced to Ambrose of Milan and the Easter acclamation by the newly baptized:
The people who have been purified and enriched with wonderful gifts [Baptism and Confirmation] begin to walk in procession towards the altar, saying: ‘Introibo ad altare Dei, ad Deum qui laetificat iuventutem meam.’ Having stripped themselves of the last traces of the ancient error, renewed in the youth of the eagle, they hasten to the heavenly banquet. They enter then, and, seeing the holy altar prepared, they cry out: ‘You have prepared a table before me.’
There is a strong suggestion here that Publianus, who dedicated this cup, did so to celebrate his own Easter baptism. The echoes of Milan imply that it was either Ambrose’s liturgy or one very like it that was used along with the cup itself at this very point. Moreover, the inscription may have been the prompt for the next section of the service. Another possibility is that this cup was a reliquary which would have been illuminating of quite other Christian practices, but the evidence is attenuated and unconvincing. If the argument is correct that these objects constitute a liturgical set, then it gives a peculiarly personal, even intimate, insight into the celebration of the contemporary form of the celebration of the mass.
Conclusion
Perhaps at Aquileia, and certainly at Lullingstone, the setting of worship had developed according to the earlier model of architectural adaptation in a way that characterized second- and third-century Christianity. The liturgy celebrated, certainly at Aquileia, and probably at Lullingstone, in the late fourth century (unless remarkably independent of the Milan-inspired mass at Durobrivae) was much more highly elaborated and universally recognizable than the liturgy of those early centuries. The inscription is evidence of just how fixed the liturgy had become by this point, even in this northern diocese. The evidence suggests that were Egeria even to have travelled north as far as Britannia on the edge of empire, she would have recognized most of what she saw and heard as ‘the way it is done everywhere’ – barring a few strongly rooted local variations about which she would doubtless have written at length to her sisters.
The liturgy was becoming standardized, though a good deal of local variation continued. It was seen as the outworking, in the time and the place of the participants, of the universal worship of God – joining the worship of heaven with worship on earth. The hallowed time of worship would naturally unfold most effectively in holy space, which was quintessentially provided by the cult of martyrs and places of witness associated with the life of Christ, or other theophanies, as at Mamre. So the identification of these sites (often said to be by direct revelation) was exceedingly important, as was their architectural articulation. Once authenticated and framed architecturally and liturgically, the place, as a point of connection with the worship of heaven, could paradoxically become highly portable, in images on ivories,93 through repeated references to their particular architectural form, or if a physical connection could be made by means of a relic. This phenomenon was to be seen at the Holy Places of Jerusalem, transported to Rome at Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, with its relic of the True Cross. Proximity to the graves of the martyrs in Rome, particularly at St Peter’s, allowed others buried there to share the protection of the martyr’s sanctity. Constantine would share the holiness of the collected relics of the Apostles themselves, and be interred as the ‘thirteenth Apostle’ in Constantinople. By these means, sacred geography would continue to spread across the Holy Roman Empire through architectural references to St Peter’s, the Baptistery of the Lateran, and the Holy Sepulchre. Observing these phenomena demonstrates that there is both a liturgical and an architectural dimension to the worshipper’s entry into the presence of God, participation in the worship of heaven, and understanding of salvation history.
The ceremonial of the liturgy was becoming highly elaborate, and in the case of baptism, highly dramatic; but it was not mere theatre, it was the articulation of the fundamental truths of heaven and earth – spiritual, religious and political. Constantine worshipped in the palace, only once having been recorded attending a cathedral service. That was the Cathedral of Holy Peace in Constantinople for the Easter Vigil in 337, only weeks before his death. The Emperor was a ceremonial figure and always its focus, so it would have been difficult to know what to do with an emperor at the liturgy.94 In that sense, Constantine was an emperor of the old mould, keeping the Church at arm’s length, presiding over its Councils and brokering unity, but not himself becoming embroiled. It was different with his sons, who by their participation in the liturgy became implicated in factional controversies, as happened to Constans at Aquileia. Ceremonial and architecture were powerful in shaping realities – they bestowed authority, even sanctity, and created power relationships. Old Rome had proved resistant to Constantine; in founding Constantinople, ‘New Rome’, he would be able to shape authority, sanctity and power to suit his own taste.
Notes
1 Standard works treating the history and the architecture of this period include Krautheimer (1980 and 1965), Lane Fox (1986) and Eisner (1998); for important recent discussions of Constantine, see Leadbetter (2000), Curran (2000) and Holloway (2004).
2 Lactantius, De Mortibus Persecutorum, 44.5, translated in Creed (1984), p. 63.
3 Eusebius, Vita Const., I, 28–9, translated in Cameron and Hall (1999), pp. 80–81.
4 For the connection with the siting of St Peter’s Basilica, see Jongkees (1966), pp. 37–40; on the scale of the difficulties faced by Constantine and the building problems, see Toynbee and Ward Perkins (1956), pp. 12–17; concerning the two versions, see Cameron and Hall (1999), pp. 204–11.
5 Holloway (2004), p. 13.
6 Dunbabin (1999), pp. 249–51, illustrated on p. 250; Snyder (2003), pp. 120–22; Cameron (1993a), pp. 55–6; Jensen (2000), p. 42.
7 Lactantius, De Mortibus Persecutorum, 48, in Beard, North and Price (1998), 2, p. 284.
8 On the sculpture, see Holloway (2004), p. 28.
9 Eusebius, The History of the Church, 9a.8, in Louth (1989), pp. 295–6.
10 Krautheimer (1980), p. 22.
11 Eusebius, 9.3, translated in Louth (1989), p. 332; see also p. xii.
12 For a very full discussion of the dating, see Curran (2000), pp. 94–5; see also Krautheimer (1983), p. 15, and De Blaauw (1987), p. 11.
13 Eusebius, 4.63, translated in Louth (1989), p. 320; and see below, pages 173–5.
14 Klauser (1979), pp. 114–15.
15 See Krautheimer (1980), pp. 4 and 18, and (1983), pp. 102–3, as opposed to Hodges and Whitehouse (1983), pp. 50–51; Lane Fox (1986), pp. 268–9, estimates that Christians were ‘perhaps (at a guess) only 2 percent of the Empire’s population by 250’ (p. 317), making the number more than 20,000 sixty years earlier.
16 Bradshaw (2002), p. 219.
17 De Blaauw (1987), p. 54.
18 For details, see L. Duchesne (1886–92) Le Liber Pontificalis, vol. I, p. 172, Paris, Krautheimer (1983), pp. 16 and 20, and Krautheimer (1986), p. 48 (see also n. 24, p. 460); the translation is from Holloway (2004), p. 59.
19 Louth (1989), pp. xviii and xxx; the Williamson translation can be found on pp. 306–22.
20 Ibid., p. 311.
21 See Beard, North and Price (1998), pp. 114–15.
22 See Jongkees (1966), where many of the drawings are reproduced and discussed.
23 Ibid., pp. 31–5, addresses various aspects of dating.
24 See ibid., pp. 37–9, for the argument concerning the vision of Constantine, and also Lane Fox (1986), p. 616, Krautheimer (1986), p. 56, for his original (and most generally accepted) analysis, and Holloway (2004), p. 79, for a discussion of the most recent considerations.
25 Ibid., p. 84.
26 Bradshaw (2002), p. 222.
27 Origen, Comm. Joann. 1.28, quoted in Wilkinson (2002), p. 6.
28 Eusebius, The History of the Church, 6.11.2, translated in Louth (1989), p. 189.
29 See Wilkinson (2002), p. 10, where the quotation from Epiphanius is also translated.
30 For the archaeological background for the tomb of Christ, see Biddle (1999), especially pp. 54–73; for the background to early Christian pilgrimage, see Wilkinson (2002), pp. 4–11.
31 See Eisner (2000), especially pp. 187–9.
32 Translated in Wilkinson (2002), pp. 30–34.
33 Josephus, The Jewish War, 4, 533, translated in Thackeray (1979), p. 159.
34 Taylor (1993), p. 94.
35 See Eusebius, Vita Constantini, 3. 51–3, in Cameron and Hall (1999), pp. 141–3; Lane Fox (1989), p. 674; Krautheimer (1986), p. 59, and Wilkinson (2002), pp. 22–3, and the translation from Egeria’s Travels on p. 91.
36 For a description of contemporary travel conditions, see Leyerle (2000), and for detail of Egeria’s journey, see Wilkinson (2002).
37 Egeria, 27.1, in Wilkinson (2002), p. 148.
38 Egeria, 29.4–6, in Wilkinson (2002), pp. 150–51.
39 Egeria, 37.2, in Wilkinson (2002), p. 155.
40 Egeria, 25.11, in Wilkinson (2002), p. 147.
41 Crowfoot (1941), pp. 29–30.
42 Egeria, in Wilkinson (2002), p. 146.
43 Crowfoot (1941), p. 28.
44 See Egeria, 42 and 43.5, in Wilkinson (2002), pp. 159 and 160.
45 Eusebius, Vita Constantini, 3, 33, translated in Cameron and Hall (1999), p. 135; translation of Eusebius’ description can also be found following on pp. 135–7; even Taylor (1993) concedes that ‘this discussion suggests that the Jerusalem Church was able to preserve an accurate memory of where Golgotha was situated, but only up until the fourth century’ (p. 140).
46 See especially ibid., p. 88 where the twelfth-century text of Peter the Deacon, based heavily on Egeria, is translated.
47 Passages from Eusebius translated in Cameron and Hall (1999), pp. 134–5, 136.
48 Both references are to Krautheimer (1986), p. 60 n. 45, and p. 61; Biddle (1999), p. 67, at least in a preliminary way, seems to accept that it was ‘dedicated in 335’.
49 Egeria, 25.1, in Wilkinson (2002), p. 145; the discussion is based on Egeria’s very full account.
50 Egeria 24.8, in Wilkinson (2002), p. 144.
51 Yarnold (2000), p. 36.
52 Cyril, Fifth Address, 1, translated in Wiles and Santer (1975), p. 190.
53 Yarnold (2000), p. 51.
54 Krautheimer (1980), p. 40; Beckwith (1970), p. 33, dates the mosaic to the papacy of Innocent I, 401–17; see also Jensen (2000), pp. 108–9.
55 Van der Meer (1967), pp. 92–3.
56 Klauser (1979), pp. 34–5; for legal aspects, see also Lane Fox (1986), p. 667.
57 Krautheimer (1983), p. 129 n. 16, referring to Guarducci (1978), pp. 77ff.
58 White (2000), p. 735.
59 Curran (2000), p. 101.
60 See Holloway (2004), pp. 90 and 87.
61 Ibid., pp. 94–9, with Krautheimer (Corpus, 1.16, pp. 34–5), dates the building’s dedication ‘after she [Constantina] was widowed in 337’; Claridge (1998), p. 375, dates it to ‘about 337–57, when Constantina was living in Rome, perhaps in a villa nearby’.
62 Dunbabin (1999), p. 251.
63 See Beckwith (1979), p. 27.
64 Curran (2000), p. 99; but see also Holloway (2004), p. 108.
65 Krautheimer, Corpus, IV, pp. 112ff; also Snyder (2003), pp. 180–89.
66 Holloway (2004), p. 114.
67 Curran (2000), p. 102.
68 Claridge (1998), p. 183.
69 Price (1987), especially pp. 77–80 and his discussion of the treatment of divi.
70 See the discussion of initiation in Johnson (2000), pp. 487–9.
71 The quotation is from Yarnold (2000), p. 54, where he also cites Rahner (1963), pp. 3–45, and Barnes (1981), p. 36.
72 Bradshaw (1996), p. 22; Bradshaw (2002), pp. 213–17; Yarnold (2000), pp. 247–67.
73 A detailed analysis of the sequence of the baptismal rite is given in Yarnold (1978), pp. 97–105; a comparative table is found in Bradshaw (1996), p. 24.
74 See Barral I Altet (2002), pp. 58–61; Yarnold (1978), p. 103; Whitaker (1970), p. 130; Davies (1962), pp. 1–42, and Davies (1982), pp. 101–2.
75 McLynn (2004), p. 243.
76 Krautheimer (1986), p. 43; inscription noted in White (1996–97), vol. II, pp. 207–8; eyewitness report mentioned in ibid. p. 202, where a plan is reproduced. The late fourth-century plan is reproduced in Krautheimer (1986), p. 44. For arguments relating to the domus ecclesiae, see especially ibid., pp. 204–7; see also Snyder (1985), pp. 137–40, who is more positive about the possibility of the aula being pre-Constantinian.
77 Dunbabin (1999), p. 71.
78 See Krautheimer (1986), pp. 85–7.
79 See also in this connection Duchesne (1903), pp. 32ff.
80 Dunbabin (1999), p. 304, the conclusion of the study.
81 Morris (1989), p. 97; see also Percival (1976), pp. 182–99, and Dunn (2000), p. 139.
82 White (1996–97), vol. II, pp. 248 and 249.
83 Eisner (1998), pp. 136–38, dates the work cautiously to the ‘later fourth’; White (1996–97), vol. II, p. 254, dates the work by numismatic evidence to 360, along with Meates, Greenfield and Birchenough (1952), pp. 35–8, the original excavator, somewhat earlier to c. 350–60; Dunbabin (1999) p. 97 dates the mosaics to the mid-fourth century.
84 White (1996–97), vol. II, p. 254.
85 Thomas (1981), pp. 94 and 180–81; see also Petts (2003), pp. 80–81, where the figures and monogram are reproduced.
86 For other possibilities, see ibid., pp. 83–6, including fonts, pp. 90–99; see also Thomas (1981), pp. 214ff.
87 I am grateful to Martin Henig for this suggestion concerning Bellerophon; see Dunbabin (1999), pp. 95–6; but the Christian design is accepted by Thomas (1981), p. 182, and even its use for worship, p. 183; the stronger position is presented by Black (1986), p. 150.
88 Henig (2004), p. 18.
89 See Corney (2004), pp. 11–13.
90 See Thomas (1981), pp. 221–4, reconstruction on p. 222, Richborough discussed pp. 216–17; see also Petts (2003), p. 91.
91 The argument in Painter (1999) is worth summarizing in some detail; it answers in detail the criticism of Thomas (1981) and also Frend (1997).
92 Ibid., p. 3.
93 Such as ‘The Maries at the Sepulchre’ preserved in the Castello Sforzesco in Milan and ‘The Maries at the Sepulchre and the Ascension’ at the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum in Munich, the ivory buckle of St Caesarius (470–542 from his tomb at Arles) and examples at the Victoria and Albert Museum including ‘Three Maries at the Sepulchre’ (no. 380-1871), a Crucifixion from Metz of c. 860 (no. 251-1867) showing two round sepulchres below with faces three high in the two doors of each, all looking towards the crucified Christ, and a Crucifixion with other scenes (again from Metz, c. 880–900, no. 266-1867) showing the three Maries, one with a censer, at a round Sepulchre very reminiscent of one of the towers at Saint-Riquier. On the reverse of this last example is a carving which shows that it had been the upper half of a Consular diptych of c. 520–30.
94 See McLynn (2004), pp. 236ff.