Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-5r2nc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-11T21:04:11.004Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Temples Converted into Churches: The Situation in Rome

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Frances J. Niederer
Frances J. Niederer
Affiliation:
Hollins College
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The intimate connection between religious rites and civic activities in ancient Rome made it imperative that the Christian Church establish early certain tolerant policies. In a society where even granaries and police barracks had altars to guardian deities, where a citizen could not pay taxes, enter a museum, or collect his dole without coming into contact with an official religion, it was impossible to designate certain areas or buildings as “secular” and others as “religious,” to permit entry to some places and forbid it to others. Thus we find Tertullian about 200 A. D. writing in his De Spectaculis: “There is no law forbidding the mere places to us. For not only the places for show-gatherings, but even the temples, may be entered without any peril of his religion by the servant of God, if he has only some honest reason for it. … The places themselves do not contaminate, but what is done in them.” With the adoption of the new religion as that of the State itself, however, the situation changed. Buildings like the Senate chamber, inaugurated as templum and dedicated to the goddess Victoria, had to continue in their civic functioning. But what of the temples proper—those buildings which could not now justify their existence in terms of civil, social, or political activity?

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 22 , Issue 3 , September 1953 , pp. 175 - 180
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1953

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Ante-Nicene Christian Library, XI, 16.Google Scholar

2. Eusebius, Life of Constantine, II, translation from Duchesne, L., Early History of the Christian Church (1931), II, 60.Google Scholar

3. Codex Theodosianus, XVI, x, 3Google Scholar, translation from Grisar, H., History of Rome and the Popes in the Middle Ages (1911), I, 23.Google Scholar

4. Cod. Theod., XV, I, 19Google Scholar, transl. from Grisar, I, 124.

5. See for the Eastern situation: Deichmann, F., “Frühchristliche Kirchen in antiken Heiligtümern,” Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäologisohen Instituts, LIV (1939), 105 ff.Google Scholar

6. Cod. Theod., XVI, x, 8, 10, 15Google Scholar; Codex lustiniani, I, xi, 3Google Scholar; VIII, xii, 11.

7. See on the diaconiae: Niederer, F., “Early Medieval Charity,” Church History, XXI, No. 4 (1952), 285 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, ser. 2, XIII, Epistles 66, 76, pp. 325, 329.Google Scholar

9. Liber Pontificalis (ed. Duchesne), I, 317.Google Scholar

10. Mirabilia, transl. by Nichols, , The Marvels of Rome, (1889), pp. 48–49.Google Scholar Martyrologies, however, give the date of Christian dedication as May 13.