Christianised sites
Encyclopedia
House church
House church, or "home church", is used to describe an independent assembly of Christians who gather in a home. Sometimes this occurs because the group is small, and a home is the most appropriate place to gather, as in the beginning phase of the British New Church Movement...
es in whatever houses were offered for use by their owners, or were shrines on the burial-sites of martyr
Martyr
A martyr is somebody who suffers persecution and death for refusing to renounce, or accept, a belief or cause, usually religious.-Meaning:...
s or saints, which following the usual classical practice were invariably on the (then) edges of cities - the necropolis
Necropolis
A necropolis is a large cemetery or burial ground, usually including structural tombs. The word comes from the Greek νεκρόπολις - nekropolis, literally meaning "city of the dead"...
was always outside the polis
Polis
Polis , plural poleis , literally means city in Greek. It could also mean citizenship and body of citizens. In modern historiography "polis" is normally used to indicate the ancient Greek city-states, like Classical Athens and its contemporaries, so polis is often translated as "city-state."The...
. In Rome the early basilica
Basilica
The Latin word basilica , was originally used to describe a Roman public building, usually located in the forum of a Roman town. Public basilicas began to appear in Hellenistic cities in the 2nd century BC.The term was also applied to buildings used for religious purposes...
churches of St. Peter's
St. Peter's Basilica
The Papal Basilica of Saint Peter , officially known in Italian as ' and commonly known as Saint Peter's Basilica, is a Late Renaissance church located within the Vatican City. Saint Peter's Basilica has the largest interior of any Christian church in the world...
, Saint Paul Outside the Walls
Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls
The Papal Basilica of St Paul Outside the Walls , commonly known as St Paul's Outside the Walls, is one of four churches that are the great ancient major basilicas or papal basilicas of Rome: the basilicas of St. John Lateran, St. Mary Major, and St. Peter's and Saint Paul Outside the Walls...
and San Lorenzo fuori le Mura
San Lorenzo fuori le Mura
The Papal Basilica of Saint Lawrence outside the Walls is a Roman Catholic parish church and minor basilica, located in Rome, Italy. The basilica is one of the Seven Pilgrim Churches of Rome and one of the five Patriarchal basilicas, each of which is assigned to a patriarchate. St...
, all follow this pattern. This distinction was gradually broken down, perhaps earliest in Roman Africa, as relics of the saints came to be kept in city-centre churches. By the 6th century bishops were often buried inside their cathedral, and other Christians followed. After the Peace of the Church
Peace of the Church
Peace of the Church is a designation usually applied to the condition of the Church after the publication of the Edict of Milan in 313 by the two Augusti, Western Roman Emperor Constantine I and his eastern colleague Licinius, an edict of toleration by which the Christians were accorded complete...
, the old pagan temples continued to function but gradually fell into disuse, and were finally all closed by the decrees of Theodosius I
Theodosius I
Theodosius I , also known as Theodosius the Great, was Roman Emperor from 379 to 395. Theodosius was the last emperor to rule over both the eastern and the western halves of the Roman Empire. During his reign, the Goths secured control of Illyricum after the Gothic War, establishing their homeland...
at the end of the 4th century. Initially they were shunned by Christians, perhaps because of their pagan associations, but also because their shape did not suit Christian requirements: "To the early Church, only one sort of building seemed suitable for christianization: the basilica", which had previously always been a secular type of building. Some of these basilicas were private ones in the homes of wealthy Christians: examples include the 4th century foundations of San Lorenzo in Damaso
San Lorenzo in Damaso
San Lorenzo in Damaso is a basilica church in Rome, Italy, one of several dedicated to the Roman deacon and martyr Saint Lawrence...
and the Basilica di San Clemente
Basilica di San Clemente
The Basilica of Saint Clement is a Roman Catholic minor basilica dedicated to Pope Clement I located in Rome, Italy. Archaeologically speaking, the structure is a three-tiered complex of buildings: the present basilica built just before the year 1100 during the height of the Middle Ages; beneath...
. Eventually the prime sites of the pagan temples were very often occupied for churches, the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva
Santa Maria sopra Minerva
The Basilica of Saint Mary Above Minerva is a titular minor basilica and one of the most important churches of the Roman Catholic Dominican order in Rome, Italy. The church, located in the Piazza della Minerva in the Campus Martius region, is considered the only Gothic church in Rome. It houses...
(literally Saint Mary above Minerva
Minerva
Minerva was the Roman goddess whom Romans from the 2nd century BC onwards equated with the Greek goddess Athena. She was the virgin goddess of poetry, medicine, wisdom, commerce, weaving, crafts, magic...
) in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
, Christianized about 750, being simply the most obvious example. However this process did not really begin in Rome itself until the 6th and 7th centuries, and was still under way during the Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
, when the Pantheon
Pantheon, Rome
The Pantheon ,Rarely Pantheum. This appears in Pliny's Natural History in describing this edifice: Agrippae Pantheum decoravit Diogenes Atheniensis; in columnis templi eius Caryatides probantur inter pauca operum, sicut in fastigio posita signa, sed propter altitudinem loci minus celebrata.from ,...
was made a church and Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri
Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri
The Basilica of St. Mary of the Angels and the Martyrs is a titular basilica church in Rome, built inside the frigidarium of the Baths of Diocletian. The Cardinal priest of the is William Henry Keeler.- The basilica :...
and San Bernardo alle Terme
San Bernardo alle Terme
San Bernardo alle Terme is a basilica church in Rome, Italy.The church was built in 1598 and was initially given to a French Cistercian group, the Feuillants, through the intercession of Caterina Sforza di Santafiora. Later, after Feuillants disgregation during the French Revolution, the edifice...
made from parts of the enormous Baths of Diocletian
Baths of Diocletian
The Baths of Diocletian in Rome were the grandest of the public baths, or thermae built by successive emperors. Diocletian's Baths, dedicated in 306, were the largest and most sumptuous of the imperial baths. The baths were built between the years 298 AD and 306 AD...
.
By the 7th century attitudes had changed and missionaries to the barbarian nations enthusiastically turned pagan sites immediately over to church use. Sulpicius Severus
Sulpicius Severus
Sulpicius Severus was a Christian writer and native of Aquitania. He is known for his chronicle of sacred history, as well as his biography of Saint Martin of Tours.-Life:...
, in his Vita of Martin of Tours
Martin of Tours
Martin of Tours was a Bishop of Tours whose shrine became a famous stopping-point for pilgrims on the road to Santiago de Compostela. Around his name much legendary material accrued, and he has become one of the most familiar and recognizable Christian saints...
, a dedicated destroyer of temples and sacred trees, remarks "wherever he destroyed heathen temples, there he used immediately to build either churches or monasteries" (Vita, ch xiii), and when Benedict took possession of the site at Monte Cassino
Monte Cassino
Monte Cassino is a rocky hill about southeast of Rome, Italy, c. to the west of the town of Cassino and altitude. St. Benedict of Nursia established his first monastery, the source of the Benedictine Order, here around 529. It was the site of Battle of Monte Cassino in 1944...
, he began by smashing the sculpture of Apollo and the altar that crowned the height. Montmartre
Montmartre
Montmartre is a hill which is 130 metres high, giving its name to the surrounding district, in the north of Paris in the 18th arrondissement, a part of the Right Bank. Montmartre is primarily known for the white-domed Basilica of the Sacré Cœur on its summit and as a nightclub district...
was the site of one of the oldest surviving Christian churches in France - Saint Pierre, and where the Jesuit movement was supposedly founded, was earlier a mercurii monte - a high place dedicated to Lugus
Lugus
Lugus was a deity of the Celtic pantheon. His name is rarely directly attested in inscriptions, but his importance can be inferred from placenames and ethnonyms, and his nature and attributes are deduced from the distinctive iconography of Gallo-Roman inscriptions to Mercury, who is widely believed...
, a major Celtic deity (and one that the Romans viewed as a homology
Homology (anthropology)
In anthropology and archaeology, homology is a type of analogy whereby two human beliefs, practices or artifacts are separated by time but share similarities due to genetic or historical connections...
of Mercury
Mercury (mythology)
Mercury was a messenger who wore winged sandals, and a god of trade, the son of Maia Maiestas and Jupiter in Roman mythology. His name is related to the Latin word merx , mercari , and merces...
).
In Francia, the site chosen for the abbey of Luxueil were the ruins of a well-fortified Gallo-Roman settlement, Luxovium, that had been ravaged by Attila in 451, and was now buried in the dense overgrown woodland that had filled the abandoned site over more than a century; the place still had the advantage of the thermal baths ("constructed with unusual skill", according to Columbanus' early biographer, Jonas of Bobbio
Jonas of Bobbio
Jonas of Bobbio or Jonas Bobiensis was a Columbanian monk and writer of hagiography, among which his Life of Saint Columbanus is outstanding....
) down in the valley, which still give the town its name of Luxeuil-les-Bains
Luxeuil-les-Bains
Luxeuil-les-Bains is a commune in the Haute-Saône department in the region of Franche-Comté in eastern France.-History:Luxeuil was the Roman Luxovium and contained many fine buildings at the time of its destruction by the Huns under Attila in 451...
. Jonas described it further: "There stone images crowded the nearby woods, which were honoured in the miserable cult and profane former rites in the time of the pagans". With a grant from an officer of the palace at Childebert's court, an abbey church was built with a sense of triumph within the heathen site and its "spectral haunts".
In country places and among country people (pagani
Paganism
Paganism is a blanket term, typically used to refer to non-Abrahamic, indigenous polytheistic religious traditions....
) as Jean Seznec
Jean Seznec
Jean Seznec was a historian and mythographer whose most influential book, for English-speaking readers, has been La Survivance des dieux antiques, 1940, translated as The Survival of the Pagan Gods: Mythological Tradition in Renaissance Humanism and Art,, 1953...
observes euhemerist dismissal by Christian writers of pagan deities as once having been human was insufficient cause to abandon old ways: "in country districts, the chief obstacle to Christianity was offered by the tenacious survival of anthropomorphic
Anthropomorphism
Anthropomorphism is any attribution of human characteristics to animals, non-living things, phenomena, material states, objects or abstract concepts, such as organizations, governments, spirits or deities. The term was coined in the mid 1700s...
cults; here the problem became one of still further humanizing the divinities of springs, trees and mountains, in order to rob them of their prestige". In Britain and the Celtic northwest of Europe, the divinities of springs were transformed into local saints who were often venerated only at the location of their "holy well
Holy well
A holy well, or sacred spring, is a small body of water emerging from underground and revered either in a Pagan or Christian context, often both. Holy wells were frequently pagan sacred sites that later became Christianized. The term 'holy well' is commonly employed to refer to any water source of...
".
Basilica
The Latin word basilica , was originally used to describe a Roman public building, usually located in the forum of a Roman town. Public basilicas began to appear in Hellenistic cities in the 2nd century BC.The term was also applied to buildings used for religious purposes...
, or auidience hall, of a prominent man's domus
Domus
In ancient Rome, the domus was the type of house occupied by the upper classes and some wealthy freedmen during the Republican and Imperial eras. They could be found in almost all the major cities throughout the Roman territories...
.
During the Reconquista
Reconquista
The Reconquista was a period of almost 800 years in the Middle Ages during which several Christian kingdoms succeeded in retaking the Muslim-controlled areas of the Iberian Peninsula broadly known as Al-Andalus...
and the Crusades
Crusades
The Crusades were a series of religious wars, blessed by the Pope and the Catholic Church with the main goal of restoring Christian access to the holy places in and near Jerusalem...
, the cross served the symbolic function of physical possession that a flag would occupy today. At the siege of Lisbon
Siege of Lisbon
The Siege of Lisbon, from July 1 to October 25, 1147, was the military action that brought the city of Lisbon under definitive Portuguese control and expelled its Moorish overlords. The Siege of Lisbon was one of the few Christian victories of the Second Crusade—it was "the only success of the...
in 1147, when a mixed group of Christians took the city, "What great joy and what a great abundance there was of pious tears when, to the praise and honor of God and of the most Holy Virgin Mary the saving cross was placed atop the highest tower to be seen by all as a symbol of the city's subjection."
Britain and Northern Europe
Roman Britain
Roman Britain was the part of the island of Great Britain controlled by the Roman Empire from AD 43 until ca. AD 410.The Romans referred to the imperial province as Britannia, which eventually comprised all of the island of Great Britain south of the fluid frontier with Caledonia...
, the legendary King Lucius
Lucius of Britain
Saint Lucius is a legendary 2nd-century King of the Britons traditionally credited with introducing Christianity into Britain. Lucius is first mentioned in a 6th-century version of the Liber Pontificalis, which says that he sent a letter to Pope Eleuterus asking to be made a Christian...
, was reported by Geoffrey of Monmouth
Geoffrey of Monmouth
Geoffrey of Monmouth was a cleric and one of the major figures in the development of British historiography and the popularity of tales of King Arthur...
, the often unreliable Christian chronicler, to have deliberately converted all the old temples to churches. The historical actuality is nowhere more forthrightly discussed than in the famous letter from Pope Gregory I
Pope Gregory I
Pope Gregory I , better known in English as Gregory the Great, was pope from 3 September 590 until his death...
to Mellitus
Mellitus
Mellitus was the first Bishop of London in the Saxon period, the third Archbishop of Canterbury, and a member of the Gregorian mission sent to England to convert the Anglo-Saxons from their native paganism to Christianity. He arrived in 601 AD with a group of clergymen sent to augment the mission,...
, about to join Augustine of Kent among the Anglo-Saxons:
- So when almighty God has led you to the most reverend man our brother Bishop Augustine, tell him what I have long gone over in my mind concerning the matter of the English: that is, that the shrines of idols amongst that people should be destroyed as little as possible, but that the idols themselves that are inside them should be destroyed. Let blessed water be made and sprinkled in these shrines, let altars be constructed and relics placed there: since if the shrines are well built it is necessary that they should be converted from the worship of demons to the service of the true God, so that as long as that people do not see their very shrines being destroyed they may put out error from their hearts and in knowledge and adoration of the true God they may gather at their accustomed places more readily.
Though such openness about the history of church locations was often expressed, such claims about more significant church locations were often more controversial. The Notre-Dame du Taur
Saint Fermin
Saint Fermin of Amiens is one of many locally venerated Catholic saints. Fermin is the co-patron of Navarra, where his feast, the 'San Fermín' in the capital Pamplona, is forever associated with the Encierro or 'Running of the Bulls' made famous by Ernest Hemingway...
(Our Lady of the Bull), cathedral
Cathedral
A cathedral is a Christian church that contains the seat of a bishop...
church of Toulouse
Toulouse
Toulouse is a city in the Haute-Garonne department in southwestern FranceIt lies on the banks of the River Garonne, 590 km away from Paris and half-way between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea...
, which according to Christian tradition was founded where a bull stopped running, and is famous for the Encierro
Encierro
The Running of the Bulls is a practice that involves running in front of a small group of bulls that have been let loose, on a course of a sectioned-off subset of a town's streets...
festival of running bulls, is thought by archaeologists to possibly be a converted temple of Mithras, whose myth focused on the tauroctony
Tauroctony
The tauroctony scene is the cult relief of the Mithraic Mysteries. It depicts Mithras killing a bull, hence the name 'tauroctony', given to the scene in modern times possibly after the Greek ταυροκτόνος "slaughtering bulls", which derives from ταῦρος "bull" + κτόνος "murder", from κτείνω , "I...
, the probably-astrological killing of a sacred bull.
Druid
A druid was a member of the priestly class in Britain, Ireland, and Gaul, and possibly other parts of Celtic western Europe, during the Iron Age....
ic are still densely punctuated by holy wells and holy springs that are now attributed to some saint
Saint
A saint is a holy person. In various religions, saints are people who are believed to have exceptional holiness.In Christian usage, "saint" refers to any believer who is "in Christ", and in whom Christ dwells, whether in heaven or in earth...
, often a highly local saint unknown elsewhere. These water sources have always been guarded by supernatural forces in the European imagination. An example of the pre-Christian water spirit is the melusina. As the official Catholic Church expanded its requirements for Christian baptisteries in the 5th and 6th centuries, sacred pagan springs presented natural opportunities. Historically some bath houses and pagan springs were forcibly seized. Cassiodorus
Cassiodorus
Flavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator , commonly known as Cassiodorus, was a Roman statesman and writer, serving in the administration of Theodoric the Great, king of the Ostrogoths. Senator was part of his surname, not his rank.- Life :Cassiodorus was born at Scylletium, near Catanzaro in...
, the courtly secretary to the Ostrogoth
Ostrogoth
The Ostrogoths were a branch of the Goths , a Germanic tribe who developed a vast empire north of the Black Sea in the 3rd century AD and, in the late 5th century, under Theodoric the Great, established a Kingdom in Italy....
Theodoric the Great
Theodoric the Great
Theodoric the Great was king of the Ostrogoths , ruler of Italy , regent of the Visigoths , and a viceroy of the Eastern Roman Empire...
, described in a letter written in A.D. 527, a fair held at a former pagan shrine of Leucothea
Leucothea
In Greek mythology, Leucothea , "white goddess") was one of the aspects under which an ancient sea goddess was recognized, in this case as a transformed nymph....
, in the still culturally Greek region of south Italy, which had been Christianized by converting it to a baptistery (Variae 8.33). In a paper read in 1999, Samuel J. Barnish drew further examples of the transition from miraculous springs to baptisteries from Gregory of Tours
Gregory of Tours
Saint Gregory of Tours was a Gallo-Roman historian and Bishop of Tours, which made him a leading prelate of Gaul. He was born Georgius Florentius, later adding the name Gregorius in honour of his maternal great-grandfather...
(died c. 594) and Maximus
Maximus
Maximus is the Latin term for "greatest" or "largest". In this connexion it is used to refer to:*Circus Maximus *Pontifex Maximus, the highest priest of the ancient Roman College of Pontiffs...
, Bishop
Bishop
A bishop is an ordained or consecrated member of the Christian clergy who is generally entrusted with a position of authority and oversight. Within the Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox Churches, in the Assyrian Church of the East, in the Independent Catholic Churches, and in the...
of Turin
Turin
Turin is a city and major business and cultural centre in northern Italy, capital of the Piedmont region, located mainly on the left bank of the Po River and surrounded by the Alpine arch. The population of the city proper is 909,193 while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat...
(died c. 466).
The great Abbey of Luxeuil founded by Saint Columban had its origins in a Gallo-Roman villa that had been ravaged by Attila in 451, and was now buried in the dense overgrown woodland that had filled the abandoned site over more than a century. However, the place still had the advantage of the thermal baths "constructed with unusual skill", as Columban's early biographer, Jonas of Bobbio reported. He further added that, down in the valley, which still gives the town its name Luxeuil-les-Bains, "stone images crowded the nearby woods, which were honored in the miserable cult and profane former rites in the time of the pagans," the monk Jonas records. (Ibi imaginum lapidearum densitas vicina saltus densabat, quas cultu miserabili rituque profano vetusta Paganorum tempora honorabant) http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/basis/columban.html. With a grant from an officer of the palace at Childebert's court, an abbey church was built with a sense of triumph within the heathen site and its spectral haunts (ut, ubi olim prophano ritu veteres coluerunt fana, ibi Christi figerentur arae et erigerentur vexilla, habitaculum Deo militantium, quo adversus aërias potestates dimicarent superni Regis tirones).
In Britain
Britain in the Middle Ages
England in the Middle Ages concerns the history of England during the Medieval period — from the end of Roman rule in Britain through to the Early Modern period...
and many other parts of Europe trees were also sometimes seen as sacred or the home of tree spirit
Spirit
The English word spirit has many differing meanings and connotations, most of them relating to a non-corporeal substance contrasted with the material body.The spirit of a living thing usually refers to or explains its consciousness.The notions of a person's "spirit" and "soul" often also overlap,...
s. When Britain was Christianised this resulted in a change of the landscape. In some instances sacred groves were destroyed to discourage belief in tree spirits. One of the most famous of these was the Irminsul
Irminsul
An Irminsul was a kind of pillar which is attested as playing an important role in the Germanic paganism of the Saxon people. The oldest chronicle describing an Irminsul refers to it as a tree trunk erected in the open air...
, whose ancient location is no longer known (though it may have been located at Externsteine
Externsteine
The Externsteine are a distinctive rock formation located in Ostwestfalen-Lippe of northwestern Germany, not far from the city of Detmold at Horn-Bad Meinberg. The formation is a tor consisting of several tall, narrow columns of rock which rise abruptly from the surrounding wooded hills...
), was obliterated by Charlemagne
Charlemagne
Charlemagne was King of the Franks from 768 and Emperor of the Romans from 800 to his death in 814. He expanded the Frankish kingdom into an empire that incorporated much of Western and Central Europe. During his reign, he conquered Italy and was crowned by Pope Leo III on 25 December 800...
. Another major ancient holy tree was Thor's Oak
Thor's Oak
The Donar Oak was a legendary oak tree sacred to the Germanic tribe of the Chatti, ancestors of the Hessians, and an important sacred site of the pagan Germanic peoples....
, which was deliberately desecrated and destroyed by a Christian missionary named Winfrid (later canonised as Saint Boniface
Saint Boniface
Saint Boniface , the Apostle of the Germans, born Winfrid, Wynfrith, or Wynfryth in the kingdom of Wessex, probably at Crediton , was a missionary who propagated Christianity in the Frankish Empire during the 8th century. He is the patron saint of Germany and the first archbishop of Mainz...
).
Greece
In Greece, the occupation of pagan sites by Christian monasteries and churches was ubiquitous. Hellenic AphrodisiasAphrodisias
Aphrodisias was a small city in Caria, on the southwest coast of Asia Minor. Its site is located near the modern village of Geyre, Turkey, about 230 km from İzmir....
in Caria was renamed Stauropolis, the "City of the Cross".
Iberia
Santiago de Compostela
Santiago de Compostela is the capital of the autonomous community of Galicia, Spain.The city's Cathedral is the destination today, as it has been throughout history, of the important 9th century medieval pilgrimage route, the Way of St. James...
is a major site of Christian pilgrimage, and said in Christian tradition to originate as the burial place of Saint James the Great
Saint James the Great
James, son of Zebedee was one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus. He was a son of Zebedee and Salome, and brother of John the Apostle...
; pilgrims traditionally follow the Way of St. James
Way of St. James
The Way of St. James or St. James' Way is the pilgrimage route to the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela in Galicia in northwestern Spain, where tradition has it that the remains of the apostle Saint James are buried....
until they reach the Cathedral, but then, having visited the church, continue to Cape Finisterre
Cape Finisterre
right|thumb|300px|Position of Cape Finisterre on the [[Iberian Peninsula]]Cape Finisterre is a rock-bound peninsula on the west coast of Galicia, Spain....
. The continuation to Cape Finisterre is regarded by historians as unjustifiable for Christian reasons, but Finisterre has a prominent pre-Christian significance, it was considered to literally be the edge of the world (hence the name finisterre, meaning end of the world), due to it seeming to be the westernmost point of Europe (in reality, even though it juts out to the west, the more subtle Cabo da Roca
Cabo da Roca
Cabo da Roca is a cape which forms the westernmost extent of mainland Portugal and continental Europe...
holds the honour). In pre-Christian times, the souls of the dead were believed to trace their way across all Europe to Finisterre and follow the sun across the sea, and their route, the Santa Compaña, became a significant pilgrimage throughout south western Europe. Santiago de Compostela itself was held to be the place where the dead gathered together, and where their paths finally all joined together for the final stretch of the journey; one possible etymology of Compostela is burial ground, suggesting that even the name derives from the pre-Christian belief. To historians, the church was put in place to divert the pilgrims to Christianity, rather than the pilgrimage coming after the church.
Rome
In Rome itself, numerous buildings including pagan temples and other sites were converted into churches, and several major archeological sites owe their survival to this. On the Roman ForumRoman Forum
The Roman Forum is a rectangular forum surrounded by the ruins of several important ancient government buildings at the center of the city of Rome. Citizens of the ancient city referred to this space, originally a marketplace, as the Forum Magnum, or simply the Forum...
alone, the Curia Iulia or Roman Senate
Roman Senate
The Senate of the Roman Republic was a political institution in the ancient Roman Republic, however, it was not an elected body, but one whose members were appointed by the consuls, and later by the censors. After a magistrate served his term in office, it usually was followed with automatic...
building (Sant'Adriano in Foro), the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina
Temple of Antoninus and Faustina
The Temple of Antoninus and Faustina is an ancient Roman temple in Rome, adapted to the church of San Lorenzo in Miranda. It stands in the Forum Romanum, on the Via Sacra, opposite the Regia.-The temple:...
(San Lorenzo in Miranda), and the Temple of Romulus
Santi Cosma e Damiano
The basilica of Santi Cosma e Damiano is a church in Rome, Italy, located in the Roman Forum. It is one of the ancient churches called tituli, of which cardinals are patrons as deacons: the Cardinal Deacon of the Titulus Ss. Cosmae et Damiani is Giovanni Cheli...
(Santi Cosma e Damiano) were transformed into churches, and the churches of San Giuseppe dei Falegnami
San Giuseppe dei Falegnami
San Giuseppe dei Falegnami is a Roman Catholic church in Rome, Italy. Located in the Forum Romanum, the church dates to 1540 and is dedicated to Saint Joseph....
and San Pietro in Carcere were built above the Mamertine Prison
Mamertine Prison
The Mamertine Prison — or Tullianum — was a prison located in the Forum Romanum in Ancient Rome. It was located on the northeastern slope of the Capitoline Hill, facing the Curia and the imperial fora of Nerva, Vespasian, and Augustus...
nearby, where Sts. Peter and Paul were reputed to have been held. The previously mentioned Pantheon and Baths of Diocletian were also converted into churches.
one of the most richly adorned churches, the Basilica di San Clemente
Basilica di San Clemente
The Basilica of Saint Clement is a Roman Catholic minor basilica dedicated to Pope Clement I located in Rome, Italy. Archaeologically speaking, the structure is a three-tiered complex of buildings: the present basilica built just before the year 1100 during the height of the Middle Ages; beneath...
, was, according to Christian tradition, built on top of Titus Flavius Clemens's private home, as he had allowed early Christians to worship in his home, due to having pro-Jewish sympathies. An early 2nd century Mithraeum stands across the Roman street from the house and can be visited by visitors. Other Mithraea have been excavated under churches, such as Santa Prisca
Santa Prisca
Santa Prisca is a basilica church in Rome, devoted to Saint Prisca, a 1st century martyr, on the Aventine hill. It was built in the 4th or 5th century over a temple of Mithras, and is recorded as the Titulus Priscae in the acts of the 499 synod....
, and Santo Stefano Rotondo
Santo Stefano Rotondo
The Basilica of St. Stephen in the Round on the Celian Hill is an ancient basilica and titular church in Rome, Italy. Commonly named Santo Stefano Rotondo, the church is the National church in Rome of Hungary dedicated to Saint Stephen and Saint Stephen of Hungary...
.
Several churches, especially in Rome, are said to have been built on the sites of the earlier burial places of martyrs in the catacombs of Rome
Catacombs of Rome
The Catacombs of Rome are ancient catacombs, underground burial places under or near Rome, Italy, of which there are at least forty, some discovered only in recent decades. Though most famous for Christian burials, either in separate catacombs or mixed together, they began in the 2nd century, much...
or elsewhere. The sanctification of burial places, and placing tombs inside churches, was a novelty of Christianity, and a break with pagan tradition, where burials were regarded as unclean, and usually only allowed beyond a set distance from a city's walls.
The Vatican
St. Peter's BasilicaSt. Peter's Basilica
The Papal Basilica of Saint Peter , officially known in Italian as ' and commonly known as Saint Peter's Basilica, is a Late Renaissance church located within the Vatican City. Saint Peter's Basilica has the largest interior of any Christian church in the world...
, the church of the Vatican
Vatican City
Vatican City , or Vatican City State, in Italian officially Stato della Città del Vaticano , which translates literally as State of the City of the Vatican, is a landlocked sovereign city-state whose territory consists of a walled enclave within the city of Rome, Italy. It has an area of...
, is traditionally located at the burial place of Simon Peter, and most parties, including the Roman Catholic Church, agree that the basilica was built on top of a large necropolis
Necropolis
A necropolis is a large cemetery or burial ground, usually including structural tombs. The word comes from the Greek νεκρόπολις - nekropolis, literally meaning "city of the dead"...
on the Vatican Hill
Vatican Hill
Vatican Hill is the name given, long before the founding of Christianity, to one of the hills on the side of the Tiber opposite the traditional seven hills of Rome...
. In 1939, an excavation underneath the grottoes which lie directly under the current Basilica, uncovered several surviving Roman mausoleum
Mausoleum
A mausoleum is an external free-standing building constructed as a monument enclosing the interment space or burial chamber of a deceased person or persons. A monument without the interment is a cenotaph. A mausoleum may be considered a type of tomb or the tomb may be considered to be within the...
s from the necropolis, and in the area directly under the high altar, below the grottoes, the excavators found a structure resembling a temple that they named the aedicula (meaning little temple). According to the official vatican sanctioned report, underneath the aedicula the 1939 excavation uncovered an empty grave, and, where the grave went under a red wall, they found a set of bones that the vatican claims were Simon Peter's, since they had been able to find a nearby graffito
Graffito
Graffito is the singular form of the Italian graffiti, meaning "little scratch".Graffito may also refer to:*Graffito *Graffito...
which the vatican states said that peter is inside. These archaeological remains are now pointed out on private tours of the necropolis excavation site as being the original .
Catholic sources frequently cite the official Vatican report verbatim. The Vatican sanctioned expedition has, however, been heavily criticised by non-Catholic sources for its lack of scholarly behaviour:
- the entire excavation was kept secret for 10 years, 4 years beyond the end of the Second World War.
- the excavators were Jesuits
- the critical scholar involved in checking the bones was only allowed to do so on condition that they did not publish the results
- the bones were found only when the pope himself was at the site
- the excavation was destructive to the aedicula floor, and insufficient notes were kept, such that it is now impossible for independent archaeologists to verify how much of the findings are genuine
- the graffito was found when it suddenly appeared a few days after the find of the bones when they started looking for a connection to Simon Peter.
One of the few critical scholars to have assessed the bones, came to the conclusion that they cannot be Simon Peter's, at least not all of them, as there are 5 leg bones, requiring at least 5 legs, and that the collection of bones also includes animal remains as would be found from food (chicken bones, etc.), making it strange for them to have been found collected together into a small pile and pushed under a wall in an otherwise empty grave. More tellingly, the soil attached to the bones appears not to come from the empty grave, suggesting that they did not actually lie there, and leading sceptical scholars to suggest that the bones had actually been collected by the excavators from around the necropolis, and only grouped together by vatican officials, with heavily sceptical scholars arguing that the vatican officials were deliberately committing fraud, to explain why there seemed to be a temple under the high altar.
Most of the rediscovered tombs in the necropolis under the Basilica are demonstrably non-Christian, but among those that appear to be Christian, is one which depicts Sol Invictus
Sol Invictus
Sol Invictus was the official sun god of the later Roman empire. In 274 Aurelian made it an official cult alongside the traditional Roman cults. Scholars disagree whether the new deity was a refoundation of the ancient Latin cult of Sol, a revival of the cult of Elagabalus or completely new...
, using the same clear iconography as other Sol Invictus images, but identifies it as a Christian image, identifying Sol Invictus to be the same individual as Jesus.
The New World
Few Native American sites in North America could compare with the pyramid temples of MexicoMexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
and Central America
Central America
Central America is the central geographic region of the Americas. It is the southernmost, isthmian portion of the North American continent, which connects with South America on the southeast. When considered part of the unified continental model, it is considered a subcontinent...
. Often the Christianized site in Spanish America gives no indication of its former use, as at the site of a pyramid shrine to the god Huitzilopochtli
Huitzilopochtli
In Aztec mythology, Huitzilopochtli, also spelled Uitzilopochtli , was a god of war, a sun god, and the patron of the city of Tenochtitlan. He was also the national god of the Mexicas of Tenochtitlan.- Genealogy :...
that was dismantled to provide stone for the Franciscan monastery that now houses the Museo Nacional de las Intervenciones
Museo Nacional de las Intervenciones
The Museo Nacional de las Intervenciones is located in a former monastery, which was built on top of an Aztec shrine. The museum in split into two sections...
.
See also
- Germanic ChristianityGermanic ChristianityThe Germanic people underwent gradual Christianization in the course of Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. By the 8th century, England and the Frankish Empire were Christian, and by AD 1100 Germanic paganism had also ceased to have political influence in Scandinavia.-History:In the 4th...
for the Christianization of the Germanic peoples - Christianisation
- The Christianised calendar
- Christianised Myths and Imagery
- Christianised rituals
- Summit crossSummit crossA summit cross is a cross on the summit of a mountain or hill that marks the top. Often there will be a "summit register" at the cross, either in a container or at least a weatherproof case....
External links
- Jorge Quiroga and Monica R. Lovelle, "Ciudades atlánticas en transición: La “ciudad” tardo-antigua y alto-medieval en el noroeste de la Península Ibérica (s.V-XI)" from Archeologia Medievale vol xxvii (1999), pp 257–268 Christianizing Late Antique Roman sites from the 6th century onwards.
- Sceptical account of the remains under St Peter's Basilica
- Catholic apologist account of the remains under St Peter's Basilica