120 RES 57/58 SPRING/AUTUMN 2010 Figure 1. Restored Jupiter Column, Early Third Century AD Ladenburg. Lobdengau-Museum

120 RES 57/58 SPRING/AUTUMN 2010 Figure 1. Restored Jupiter column, early third century A.D. Ladenburg. Lobdengau-Museum (with original crowning group of Jupiter and a giant). R. Wiegels, Lopodunum II: Inschriften und Kultdenkmäler aus dem römischen Ladenburg am Neckar (Stuttgart: Konrad Theiss Verlag, 2000), fig. 10a. A sacred landscape The creation, maintenance, and destruction of religious monuments in Roman Germany RACHEL KOUSSER In the second to early third centuries A.D., with the tended to focus on its creation, examining issues such as establishment of the first civilian administration and a the chronology, patronage, and artistic style of individual new, more defensible border on the Roman Empire’s monuments. My analysis is more broad-ranging, northwest frontier, the landscape of Roman Germany encompassing not simply the origins but also the was transformed (Rüger 2000; Sommer 1999). Cities, mutilation, renewal, and eventual destruction of sacred towns, and legionary camps were set up, a network of objects—in essence, their full “life cycle”3—as well as roads was cut, and new land cleared for farming. Nor their relation to one another and to the landscape as a was the religious dimension of the landscape neglected. whole. I draw on visual, epigraphic, and archaeological Rather, it was enhanced through the construction of new evidence to reconstruct, insofar as possible, the historical sacred monuments such as temples, shrines, and altars contexts in which such monuments were destroyed. In (Kuhnen 1996; Künzl 1982). This monumentalization addition, I seek to illuminate the possible motivations of the religious landscape was a characteristic product of those who destroyed the monuments, including so- of Roman occupation, and one that must have been called barbarians, such as the Franks and Alamanni,4 particularly striking in a region with few previous the Romans themselves,5 and the early Christians.6 My examples of large-scale stone architecture and statuary.1 sense is that the destructive activities of the “barbarians” It is consequently all the more noteworthy that so have been exaggerated, and the more thoroughgoing many of these sacred monuments have been found in efforts of the early Christians neglected. This has destruction contexts: toppled, buried deep in the ground, important implications both for our understanding of the or smashed into thousands of pieces (Bauchhenss and monuments themselves and for our interpretation of the Noelke 1981:21–26). destruction of images in Roman provincial society. In the present article I foreground this destruction of Before turning to a consideration of the monuments the sacred landscape of Roman Germany.2 Scholars have in question, some brief definition of terms will be useful here. My focus of interest in this article is on violence It gives me great pleasure to thank the many individuals and towards religious objects in Roman Germany and the institutions who assisted me in the writing of this article. Grants from impact such violence had on the articulation of the Columbia University, the Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum in Mainz, the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut in Berlin, and the PSC- CUNY Research Foundation helped to fund my travels. For assistance religious topography—the object of de Polignac’s work particularly— and advice in museums, I would like to thank Dr. Peter Fasold of the than on its development over time, culminating in the destructions of Museum für Vor- und Fruhgeschichte in Frankfurt, Dr. Berndmerk the Late Antique period. Heukemes of the Lobdengau-Museum in Ladenburg, Dr. Margot Klee 3. For a critique of this tendency, and suggestions for a new of the Wiesbaden Museum, Dr. Michael Klein of the Landesmuseum in approach based on the complete biography of objects, see Flood and Mainz, Dr. Ernst Künzl of the Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum Strother 2005; for the Roman world, see Hallett 2005. in Mainz, Dr. Peter Noelke of the Museumsdienst Köln, and Dr. 4. On the Franks and Alamanni as likely suspects see, for example, Nina Willburger of the Landesmuseum in Stuttgart. Audiences at Bauchhenss 1976:12; Bauchhenss and Noelke 1981:24; Noelke the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut in Berlin, the Archaeological 2001:104–105; Noelke 2005:130–131; Spiegel et al. 2002:740–742. Institute of America, and the College Art Association also provided Because of their differing settlement patterns—the Franks largely along useful guidance, as did Francesco Pellizzi and the two anonymous the lower Rhine, the Alamanni by the upper Rhine—the Franks are reviewers of RES; any faults of the article remain my own. generally blamed for destructions in Germania Inferior, the Alamanni 1. The aniconic character of German religion, and the area’s lack for the more numerous destructions in Germania Superior. of temples, became a literary topos beginning with Tacitus (Germ. 9); 5. On the possibility that some apparent destruction contexts were the archaeological record preserves a few counter-examples (Cüppers in fact “ritual burials,” see Bauchhenss and Noelke 1981:25–26. 1990, 169), but traces of monumental building and sculpture remain 6. A few scholars have suggested that the early Christians were rare (Quast 1997; Todd 2004:103–135). the predominant destroyers of religious monuments in the Rhineland, 2. Scholarly discussions of the sacred landscape (Alcock 1993; although their work has had limited influence on the field as a whole Polignac 1995) have shown the usefulness of this concept for the (Bauchhenss and Noelke 1981:24–25; Kuhnen 1992:42–43; Müller Greco-Roman world; my emphasis, however, is less on the origins of 1975; Waas 1939). 122 RES 57/58 SPRING/AUTUMN 2010 sacred landscape in that region. Because the Romans brought out more explicitly, as man-made structures generally depicted their gods in human form, this echoed and enhanced its natural features. The temples, violence was directed above all towards figural images, shrines, and altars established by the Romans were set ranging from modest votive reliefs to grandiose cult up, frequently, at sites already marked as sacred (Kuhnen statues. It can thus be construed as falling under the 1996:18–20). They arrogated to themselves the worship rubric of “iconoclasm,” a popular if highly contested given earlier to the landscape’s natural features and term in modern scholarship. Initially associated with the guided it towards Roman practices. In this way, one religiously motivated destruction of figural images in might speak of a cultural, indeed, an explicitly religious particular historical periods—above all, the Byzantine imperialism, which followed in the wake of Roman iconoclastic controversies7—it has recently been military conquest. construed more broadly, as applying, for instance, to But to describe the Romans’ sacred landscape solely French Revolutionary activity against symbols of the in these terms would be simplistic. The occupying forces Ancien Régime, or the attack on the World Trade Center.8 certainly suppressed some traditional religious activities This broader definition of iconoclasm is useful because (for example, Druidism) and, just as certainly, imposed of its flexibility. It does not prejudge the motivations some new, Roman-derived modes of worship, such as of the iconoclasts, and it leaves open the possibility of the imperial cult.9 At the same time, they encouraged or a range of destructive responses to images, including at least permitted the creation of new, culturally hybrid selective mutilation and programmatic reuse as well as religious monuments, which drew on both native and complete annihilation (Mitchell 2005:125–132). Roman traditions in a highly original synthesis (Fischer I find this broader, more flexible definition of 1971; Künzl 1982). The works of art that resulted were iconoclasm very helpful for approaching the case of successful, because they spoke to both constituencies. Roman Germany. While scholars have frequently blamed In the German provinces, this relates, above all, to a single social group for all violence towards images in the extremely popular and prominent votives known the region, my examination of the evidence has led me as “Jupiter columns” (figs. 1, 5, 7).10 Romans could to conclude instead that a number of different actors appreciate their use of the quintessential classical were at work, adopting a range of iconoclastic strategies architectural form, the column, as well as their Latin and with varying motivations. I have thus used the term inscriptions, and their sculpted images of divinities based “iconoclasm” in this broad sense, supplementing it when on familiar imperial types (Bauchhenss and Noelke possible with more specific terms. 1981:388–390; Krause 1987). Locals, by contrast, could see in these columns a reference to former traditions of tree worship, often enhanced by the representation of Creating a sacred landscape: Roman conquest and the leaves or vines on the column shaft (Bauchhenss and transformation of the German borderlands Noelke 1981:83–84; Rüger 2000:510–511; Thomas Although the focus of this article is on the destruction 1994:156). They might also appreciate the selection of of monuments, it is necessary to begin by looking gods, chosen with an eye to local equivalences—for briefly at the origins of the sacred landscape of the instance, the Roman Jupiter for the Celtic sky god Roman Empire in Germany. One should note that for the Taranis (Bauchhenss and Noelke 1981:83; Hefner 1967; indigenous inhabitants of the area, the landscape

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