WHAT TEMPLES STOOD FOR: CONSTANTINE, EUSEBIUS, AND ROMAN IMPERIAL PRACTICE BY STEVEN J. LARSON B.S., PURDUE UNIVERSITY, 1987 B.A., UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA, 1992 M.T.S., HARVARD UNIVERSITY DIVINITY SCHOOL, 1997 A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE DEPARTMENT OF RELIGIOUS STUDIES AT BROWN UNIVERSITY PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND MAY 2008 © Copyright 2008 by Steven J. Larson VITA !"#$%"&'()"*)"!)+*$)$,'-*%."!)+*$)$"')"/$)0$(1"23."24567"!"8'9,-:;:+"$"&$8<:-'(=%" degree in Industrial Engineering at Purdue University in 1987. Following this, I worked as an engineer at Cardiac Pacemaker, Inc. in St. Paul, Minnesota. I left this position to pursue studies in the Humanities at the University of Minnesota. There I studied modern $(;"$)+">'+:()"?(::@"80-;0(:"$)+"-$)A0$A:"$)+"A($+0$;:+"#*;<"$"&$8<:-'(=%"+:A(::"*)"B(;" History from the Minneapolis campus in 1992. During this period I spent two summers studying in Greece. I stayed on in Minneapolis to begin coursework in ancient Latin and Greek and the major world religions. Moving to Somerville, Massachusetts I completed a 9$%;:(=%"+:A(::"$;"C$(D$(+"E)*D:(%*;1"F*D*)*;1"G8<''-"*)"244H"0)+:r the direction of Helmut Koester. My focus was on the history of early Christianity. While there I worked $%"$)":+*;'(*$-"$%%*%;$);"I'(";<:"%8<''-=%"$8$+:9*8"J'0()$-."Harvard Theological Review, as well as Archaeological Resources for New Testament Studies. In addition, I ,$(;*8*,$;:+"*)"K('I:%%'(%"L':%;:("$)+"F$D*+">*;;:)=%"MB(8<$:'-'A1"$)+";<:"N:#" O:%;$9:);P"8'0(%:.";($D:--*)A";'"%*;:%";<('0A<'0;"?(::8:"$)+"O0(@:17"O<$;"I$--."!"&:A$)" doctoral studies at Brown University in the Religious Studies departmen;"$%"$"F:$)=%" Fellow. At Brown, I continued my studies in the history of early Christianity but with a greater emphasis on Late Antiquity. I was a teaching assistant for six courses in the history of Christianity and methods in the study of religion. I continued to work as an editorial assistant, but now for the American Journal of Archaeology in Boston. At the QRRR"G'8*:;1"'I"S*&-*8$-"T*;:($;0(:"U:A*')$-">::;*)A."!"+:-*D:(:+"$",$,:(":);*;-:+."MV$%" the Synagogue at Capernaum Built as a Christian Locus SanctusWP"That same year, I J'*):+">$(;<$"/'0@'#%@1=%"?(:$;"O:9,-:":X8$D$;*')";:$9"$;"K:;($."/'(+$)."#<:(:"!"+0A" iii for two seasons. While there I was awarded a Pierre and Patricia Bikai Fellowship to conduct dissertation research at the American Center for Oriental Research in Amman, Jordan. My studies at Brown consisted of preliminary exams in the New Testament under Stanley K. Stowers (Literary theory and Luke-Acts; Paul and Hellenistic philosophy) and Late Antique Christianity under Susan Ashbrook Harvey (Holy Land pilgrimage; Christianization of temples). In 2002, I was awarded a Brown University Dissertation !"##$%&'()*+$,*-*),$."/0*$1*2$1&0-10(1"3&*45(#6(17*),$7,-89*:1*;<<=, I was a Mellon Intern in Ancient Art at the Rhode Island School of Design Museum, where I catalogued 0'"*85&"583&*>?@-10(1"*/$(1*/$##"/0($19*:1*-66(0($1A*:*%$,B"6*-&*-*C"+","1/"*&0-++* member of the Rockefeller and Sciences Libraries at Brown University, and as a writing 050$,*-0*0'"*51(D",&(0?3&*E,(0(17*2"10",9*:1*;<<F, I delivered a pape,*"10(0#"6A*GH'"* I,$4#"8*%(0'*C"#(7($5&*H$#",-1/"*(1*0'"*!$5,0'*2"105,?J*-0*0'"*K$,0'*L8",(/-1* Patristics Society Annual Meeting in Loyola University, Chicago. At the same conference the following year, :*7-D"*-*)-)",*"10(0#"6A*GM5&"4(5&*$+*2-"&-,"-*$1*0'" New :8)",(-#*>-&(#(/-&9J*L#&$A*:*/$10,(450"6*0$*0'"*C"#(7($5&*N056("&*O,-65-0"*2$##$P5(58*-0* >,$%1*Q1(D",&(0?*%(0'*-*),"&"10-0($1*"10(0#"6A*GE'-0*H"8)#"&*N0$$6*!$,R*M5&"4(5&A* 2$1&0-10(1"A*-16*C$8-1*:8)",(-#*25&0$8&9J*:*-8*-1*-/0(D"*8"84",*$+*0'"*N$/("0?*$f Biblical Literature and the North American Patristics Society. iv PREFACE The idea for this project arose out of visits to archaeological sites in Greece, Turkey, Israel, and Jordan. I was struck by the frequency with which Christian churches were built upon the foundations of temples. The practice of a new cult utilizing the sites of the old cult seemed to me to be a good place for analyzing how Late Roman society changed its religion. Such religious re-structuring offers an opportunity to work with visual and spatial material in a field dominated by texts and the passage of time. The project, then, began as an attempt to bring two sets of evidence together: Late Antique literature concerning the fate of temples and recent archaeological findings. The reason for this was that these two resources, in a sense, tell two different stories. The first (both Christian and non-Christian) is concerned almost primarily with publicizing a small number of cases where a temple was dramatically taken over and destroyed. Such publicity has dominated our picture of the structural changes that occurred in the cities in the Late Roman Empire. The latter evidence, however, increasingly gives support for a wide spectrum of possible fates for temples: continued cultic use, reuse for other purposes (secular and religious), abandonment, physical decay, and deliberate destruction. With this framework in mind, then, I planned to augment the limited scope of the literary evidence with relevant examples of material culture for the structural history of particular temples. The next question was: What were the geographical limits from which these examples should be culled? Is it possible to correlate specific sites mentioned by Late Antique authors with present-day excavations? The answer turned out to be: very rarely, and those few instances where there is a correlation give us little new information v with which to interrogate the literary accounts. What is needed to round out the picture is a survey of sites more extensive than those that ancient authors felt compelled to discuss. I decided to focus upon those excavated sites within the Late Roman provinces of Palaestina and Arabia. I visited many of these sites and excavated at one of them (Petra) for two seasons. I then gathered annual excavation reports for this area from the library at the American Center for Oriental Research in Amman, Jordan. Looking through these reports, however, it became clear that there was little substantial cultural information to be gained from simply surveying the known archaeological data from a particular region. The most pertinent information, namely, the means and date of desacralization for a particular cultic site, was very rarely discernible from the material remains.1 In addition, even in those instances where it was found that a church had been built upon an earlier monumental structure, it was frequently impossible to identify that structure with any certainty. There are exceptions, but not enough to justify using a localized survey to answer questions raised by the literature. It became apparent after this that there are more fundamental issues that should take precedence over the addition of excavated evidence to the analysis of literature (which is nevertheless an important task). These arise from the relationship between the concerns of the ancient authors and those of modern scholars. Material evidence remains useful for making an argument for the various possibilities of cultic site reuse, but cannot hold an equal place in an analysis of cultural change. It became necessary instead!at least as a work of Religious Studies!to attend to the terms (and thus the assumptions) that frame 1 "#$%&'()**)$+),))$-.*/0.,$(.#$1)'),2*3$,42)56$7.1'(.)4*48&'.*$)9&5),')$:41$2()$5)#21;'2&4,$4:$<.8.,$ sites all too often does not elucidate the nature or reason for its demise=>$?7+)2(&,@&,8$A.8.,-Christian B&4*),')C>$&,$DE A. Drake, ed., Violence in Late Antiquity: Perceptions and Practices [Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006] 266). vi the scholarly debate on the fate of temples in Late Antiquity. This is a study, then, of narratives, or how the history of cultic structures is itself structured. It is a study of the conceptual walls necessarily constructed for any discussion of the physical ones. The question of limits remained, however. Abandoning a geographical approach led to considering a more chronological one. It seemed best to start from the beginning, that is, with the first instances of Pagan temple desacralization ostensibly initiated in the name of Christianity. These first instances occurred under the Emperor Constantine (fl. 306-337 CE). Focusing on the reign of Constantine and the sudden patronization of Christian communities also afforded me the opportunity to consider how this changing of the religious guard was explained by both ancient and modern authors. And there is no other author who provides us with more information on Constantine (and with such rhetorical richness) than Eusebius of Caesarea (fl. 314-339 CE).2 This is a study, then, of the discursive and building practices of the Emperor Constantine as presented in the writings of Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea. 2 Many others wrote on his reign, including another contemporary Lactantius, but none to the same extent as Eusebius. Most others were in fact largely indebted to him for their material on this period. vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would especially like to thank Professor Susan Ashbrook Harvey for the immense amount of time she spent on this project, her expertise in all things Late Antique, and her patience. This dissertation was long in coming and I am grateful for all her help. I would also like to thank Professors Ross S. Kraemer and Stanley K. Stowers for their close and quick readings of each chapter, and their historical and, especially, theoretical suggestions, which have brought greater rigor to my often meandering analysis and opened up many possibilities for further work on the subject.