BUILDING IN EARLY MEDIEVAL ROME, 500 - 1000 AD Robert Coates-Stephens PhD, Archaeology Institute of Archaeology, University College London ProQuest Number: 10017236 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest. ProQuest 10017236 Published by ProQuest LLC(2016). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Abstract The thesis concerns the organisation and typology of building construction in Rome during the period 500 - 1000 AD. Part 1 - the organisation - contains three chapters on: ( 1) the finance and administration of building; ( 2 ) the materials of construction; and (3) the workforce (including here architects and architectural tracts). Part 2 - the typology - again contains three chapters on: ( 1) ecclesiastical architecture; ( 2 ) fortifications and aqueducts; and (3) domestic architecture. Using textual sources from the period (papal registers, property deeds, technical tracts and historical works), archaeological data from the Renaissance to the present day, and much new archaeological survey-work carried out in Rome and the surrounding country, I have outlined a new model for the development of architecture in the period. This emphasises the periods directly preceding and succeeding the age of the so-called "Carolingian Renaissance", pointing out new evidence for the architectural activity in these supposed dark ages. At the same time I have discovered and presented physical evidence for the important papal rebuilding of the city's fortifications and water-supply during the eighth and ninth centuries. A thorough re-examination of over one hundred years of archaeological publications has provided data for a new outline of the city's early medieval habitation. A picture emerges of an increasingly independent, centralised building administra­ tion run by the Church of Rome, breaking away very early from the ambit of Byzantium, and almost entirely uninfluenced by developments in Carolingian Europe. The eclipse of papal authority at the end of the ninth century led to an increasingly vital sector of private architectural patronage. At the same time, however, building techniques never departed radically from those of the Early Christian, or indeed Late Roman, periods. CONTENTS Acknowledgments 5 Proper Names & Abbreviations 6 Introduction 7 PART ONE; ORGANISATION OF CONSTRUCTION Chapter I : Funding & Administration 9 1.1 Civil Funding & Administration 10 1.2 Church Funding & Administration 19 1.3 Private Funding 26 Chapter 2: Materials 3 5 2.1 Timber 3 5 2.2 Metal 42 2.3 Stone: 46 2.3.1 Tufa 46 2.3.2 Marble 50 2.4 M ortar & Concrete 56 2.5 Brick & Tile 62 2.6 Other Materials 67 2.7 Supply of Spolia 69 Chapter 3: Labour 7 4 3.1.1 Architects 7 4 3.1.2 Architectural Tracts 7 9 3.2 Craftsmen g 5 3.3 Unskilled Labour 9 5 PART TWO: TYPOLOGY OF CONSTRUCTION Chapter 4: Ecclesiastical Architecture 1 0 0 4.1 The First Dark Age, 640-755 101 4.2: The Second Dark Age, 860-1000 131 4.2.1 Surviving New-Built Churches 13 2 4.2.2 Disappeared New-Built Churches I 3 5 4.2.3 Churches Converted from Ancient Structures 140 4.2.4 Substantial Repair-Work I 4 3 Chapter 5: City Walls & Aqueducts 1 4 5 5.1.1 The Aurelianic Walls: textual evidence 1 4 5 5.1.2 The Aurelianic Walls: physical evidence % 5 0 5.2.1 The Aqueducts: textual evidence I 5 7 5.2.2 The Aqueducts: physical evidence 1 7 0 Chapter 6 : Domestic Architecture 1 3 4 Conclusions 202 Appendix 1 204 Bibliography 210 List o f Figures 233 List of Plates 234 Acknowledgments I would like to thank my supervisors, Richard Reece and Tim Potter, for all their help, advice and encouragement. The following have provided indispensable assistance: Guido Battaglia, Carlo Buzzetti, Amanda Claridge, Stefano Coccia, Lucos Cozza, Catherine Davidson, Janet DeLaine, Emma Dench, Andrea Desideri, Ugo Falesiedi, Simona Manacorda, Federico Marazzi, Giorgio Orioli, Antonella Parisi, Carlo Pavolini, Michael Poole, Giusepina Sartorio, Valerie Smith, Margerita Steinby, Edmund Thomas. Proper names and abbreviations in the text: Regarding church appellations, I have attempted to follow what appears to be the most common practice when writing in English: disappeared buildings in Latin, surviving ones in Italian. S. Peter’s, for some reason, always seems to be left in English; so it is here. The gates of the Aurelianic Walls and the aqueducts I have left in Latin; exceptions are Porta Chiusa, whose name in Roman times is unknown, and Porta Maggiore, known as Maiore for most of the middle ages (representing the ancient Porta Praenestina). When Porta S. Giovanni is used as opposed to Porta Asinaria, it always signifies the modem gate of Gregory XIII. Abbreviations commonly appearing in the text are as follows (a complete list is found with the bibliography): AM = Archeologia Medievale; BA = Bollettino di Archeolo- gia; BAG = Bullettino di Archeologia Cristiana; BICA = BuUettino dell’Istituto di Corre- spondenza Archeologica; Brev. = Breviarium Ecclesiae Ravennatis; Bull. Comm. = Bullettino della Commissione Archeologica di Roma; CBCR = Corpus Basilicarum Christianarum Romae; CC = Codex Carolinus; CIC/C/D/N = Corpus luris Civilis/Codex/Digest/Novellae; CEL = Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum; CTh = Theodo- sian Code; Dial. = Gregory I, Dialogues; FUR = R. Lanciani, Forma Urbis Romae; ICUR/ns = Inscriptiones Christianae Urbis Romae/nova series; LC = Liber Censuum; LD = Liber Diumus; LP = Liber Pontificalis; LPR = Agnellus, Liber Pontificalis Ecclesiae Ravennatis; LTUR = Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae; MEC = Monumenta Epigra- phica Christiana; MEFR/A/M = Melanges de l’Ecole Française de Rome/Antiquite/Moyen Age-Temps Modernes; MGH CM = Monumenta Germaniae Historica Chronica Minora; NS = Notizie degli Scavi; PL = Patrologia Latina; PS = Pragmatic Sanction; RAC = Rivista di Archeologia Cristiana; Reg = Gregory I, Registrum; SSCISAM = Settimane di Studio del Centro Italiano di Studi suH’Alto Medioevo; Var. = Cassiodorus, Variae; VZ = Valentini-Zucchetti, Codice Topografico délia Citta di Roma NB. Ail references to Procopius cite volume and page numbers of the complete Loeb edition of H. Dewing. Introduction Despite an awakening of interest in recent years, the fate of post-imperial Rome still tends to inspire the same views in Britain today as it did in tenth-century Constantino­ ple: "Listen! That stupid dullard of a pope does not know that the sacred Constantine transferred to this city the Imperial sceptre, the Senate, and all the Roman knighthood, leaving in Rome nothing but vile slaves, fishermen, confectioners, poulterers, bastards, plebeians, and underlings" (Liudprand, Leg. Const. 51). The idea of Rome as a decaying backwater has generally included the city's architecture. By now, however, the work of a number of Italian scholars has extended the corpus of Roman construction techniques well into the middle ages, proving a remarkable continuity in the selection and use of materials. Most importantly, Richard Krautheimer's exhaustive studies of church architecture up to the end of the ninth century have pushed the "period of the decadence" into a slightly narrower chronology. We are presented now with a cyclical picture of architecture in Rome after the fall of the Western Empire, based on the evidence of the city's surviving or excavated churches. However, if we stray outside the field of purely ecclesiastical architecture, or even outside the field of church-building in certain particularly rich periods, we are left with very little. No study has been attempted of the Aurelianic Walls during the early middle ages, nor of the aqueducts, both of which we know from the texts to have been of para­ mount importance at the time; nothing is known of domestic architecture beyond the obscure descriptions in some tenth-century property documents; lastly, and perhaps most surprisingly, the period seems to be punctuated by two "dark ages", comprising the years 640-750 and the entire tenth century, from which even the study of churches has been missing. With such incomplete typological study of architecture in the period, it is perhaps not surprising that very little work has been done on the background of the building 8 industry: the finance for architecture, the procurement of materials and labour, and above all the architects themselves. In this thesis I intend to present a general study of precisely these aspects of architecture missing from previous works on the subject. Part One will serve as a back­ ground against which individual buildings and projects can be considered; it deals with the funding and administration of building, with the materials of construction, and the labour- force. Part Two presents the first-ever studies of church-building in our two dark ages, the physical evidence for the reconstruction of the city walls and aqueducts, and a preliminary discussion of housing during the period. The overall timespan, 500 - 1000, is great. My intention has been to cover the entire "early medieval period". There are, of course, numerous reckonings for the "begin­ ning" and "end" of the middle ages. Nowadays, it seems that the most common starting- point for the Italian "Alto Medioevo" is the Lombard invasions and the time of Gregory the Great. I propose to commence at an earlier date, for several reasons. Firstly, the Lombards had absolutely no effect upon the development of achitecture in Rome itself; I am looking to the installation of the Byzantine administration to provide a legal framework for building policy in the civil sector.