Christian and Late Antique Epigraphies

Heidelberger Althistorische Beiträge – Band 60
Franz Steiner Verlag Sonderdruck aus:
The Epigraphic Cultures

of Late Antiquity
Edited by Katharina Bolle,
Carlos Machado and Christian Witschel
Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 2017

CONTENTS
Preface ................................................................................................................. 7
List of General Abbreviations ........................................................................... 9
Katharina Bolle, Carlos Machado, and Christian Witschel

Introduction: Defining the Field –
the Epigraphic Cultures of Late Antiquity ........................................................ 15
I REGIONAL STUDIES
Christian Witschel
Spätantike Inschriftenkulturen im Westen des Imperium Romanum –
Einige Anmerkungen ........................................................................................ 33
Judit Végh
Inschriftenkultur und Christianisierung im spätantiken Hispanien:
Ein Überblick .................................................................................................... 55
Lennart Hildebrand
Fragmentation and Unity: Elites and Inscriptions in Late Antique
Southern Gaul ................................................................................................... 111
Katharina Bolle
Spätantike Inschriften in Tuscia et Umbria: Materialität und Präsenz ............. 147
Ignazio Tantillo
La trasformazione del paesaggio epigrafico nelle città dell’Africa romana,
con particolare riferimento al caso di Leptis Magna (Tripolitana) ................... 213
Stephen Mitchell
The Christian Epigraphy of Asia Minor in Late Antiquity ............................... 271
Leah Di Segni
Late Antique Inscriptions in the Provinces of Palaestina and Arabia:
Realities and Change ......................................................................................... 287
II GENRES AND PRACTICES
Carlos Machado
Dedicated to Eternity? The Reuse of Statue Bases in Late Antique Italy ......... 323
Ulrich Gehn
Late Antique Togati and Related Inscriptions – a Thumbnail Sketch ............... 363
Silvia Orlandi
Orations in Stone ............................................................................................... 407
Lucy Grig
Cultural Capital and Christianization:
the Metrical Inscriptions of Late Antique Rome ............................................... 427
Erkki Sironen
The Epigram Habit in Late Antique Greece ..................................................... 449
Denis Feissel
Trois fonctions municipales dans l’épigraphie protobyzantine
(curator, defensor, pater civitatis) ..................................................................... 473
III THE (NEW) WORLD OF CHRISTIAN EPIGRAPHY
Charlotte Roueché and Claire Sotinel

Christian and Late Antique Epigraphies ........................................................... 503
Georgios Deligiannakis
Heresy and Late Antique Epigraphy in an Island Landscape:
Exploring the Limits of the Evidence ............................................................... 515
Rudolf Haensch
Zwei unterschiedliche epigraphische Praktiken:
Kirchenbauinschriften in Italien und im Nahen Osten ..................................... 535
Mark A. Handley
Scratching as Devotion: Graffiti, Pilgrimage and Liturgy
in the Late Antique and Early Medieval West .................................................. 555
Addresses of Authors ........................................................................................ 595
Colour Plates ..................................................................................................... 599

CHRISTIAN AND LATE ANTIQUE EPIGRAPHIES
Charlotte Roueché (King’s College London) /
Claire Sotinel (Université Paris-Est Créteil)
The aim of this paper is to investigate the interwoven histories of ‘Christian’, ‘late
antique’, and ‘Byzantine’ epigraphies. Over the decades these terms have come to
be used in contradictory and incompatible senses; and sometimes they can only be
interpreted by reference to the interests of the particular author. We wish to examine
how this terminology has evolved, and in what ways it can be useful (or not).
‘CHRISTIAN’ AND ‘CLASSICAL’ EPIGRAPHIES:

THE PARTING OF THE WAYS
‘Christian epigraphy’ became a separate branch of epigraphy only in the 19th cen-
tury, in the West. It took a long way to get there. The very first collections of in-
scriptions, dating back to the 5th century, were compiled along the routes of trav-
ellers and pilgrims, “copying the actual texts of the most remarkable inscriptions,
whether pagan or Christian” to quote Orazio Marucchi’s words.1 This was still the
case of the large Syllogae compiled at the dawn of the Renaissance, from Cola di
Rienzo (ca. 1313–1354) onwards.2 The first printed works were entirely devoted
to non-Christian inscriptions, because their authors were interested in Classical
Antiquity rather than later periods. Interest in early Christianity rose later, mostly
inspired by the controversies between Reformist and Catholic Christians, and was
stimulated by the rediscovery of the Roman catacombs. The Dutchman Jan Gruter,
who published his “Inscriptiones Antiquae Totius Orbis Romani in Corpus Absolu-
tissimum Redactae” in 1603, included a good number of Christian inscriptions. Of
these very few were located by find-spot with other ethnicae inscriptions; most of
them were instead published in a separate category, at the end of the volume, under
the title “Monumenta Christianorum” (pp. 948–962). Gruter’s corpus was both
universal in its chronological, geographical and thematic boundaries, and non-sys-
tematic, depending on the chance of what he had read, discovered or been sent by
his impressive collection of learned friends.
In the 17th century, the study of Christian inscriptions became more and more
dependent on Christian archaeology. Most of these inscriptions were now published
in limited collections as part of studies of Christian cemeteries and basilicas.3 In
1 Marucchi 1910, 41.

2 Cf. his “Descriptio Urbis Romae”, ca. 1344–47.
3 Bosio 1632; Aringhus 1651.
This material is under copyright. Any use outside of the narrow boundaries
of copyright law is illegal and may be prosecuted.
This applies in particular to copies, translations, microfilming
as well as storage and processing in electronic systems.
© Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 2017
504 Charlotte Roueché / Claire Sotinel
such volumes, texts of all kinds were presented, pagan and Christian alike, as in
Giovanni Marangoni’s publication of the inscriptions found in the Via Salaria in
1740.4 Rome was then part of the Papal State, and the exploration of early Christian
Rome was heavily loaded with apologetic concerns. It is therefore not surprising to
see that the most distinguished scholars in the field were Catholic clerics.
The first attempt to compile a global collection limited to Christian inscriptions
was probably that of Luigi Gaetano Marini (1742–1815)5 who had gathered a file of
12.000 “monuments with inscriptions in various materials”. In a letter kept with the
manuscript, and published by Marco Buonocore, he expressed the hope that such a
work might be hugely useful “to our holy religion, and to the whole ecclesiastical
history”.6 That Marini considered Christian inscriptions as a category per se can
be proven by the fact that he created a specific classification, only partly similar
to the one adopted by Gruter. The first part of his work included all non-funerary
inscriptions, which were classified in 15 categories, according to the support of
the inscriptions, not their function.7 The funerary inscriptions were then ordered
following a specifically ecclesiastical hierarchy.8
The manuscript, which actually contains 9.000 entries, was never published
for contingent reasons: after the Napoleonic wars, Marini had to move to Paris to
collect some of the treasures transported there by the French army and to get them
back to Rome; besides, he found it more difficult to publish the illustrations needed
than he had hoped. Part of his work was later published, almost without illustration,
by Angelo Mai,9 and later also used by Giovanni Battista De Rossi.
4 Marangoni 1740.
5 “Inscriptiones Christianae Latinae et Graecae Aevi Milliarii”. The collection is preserved in the
Vatican Library in Rome: Codex Vat. Lat. 9071–9074.
6 Buonocore 2007, 203.
7 Vat. Lat. 9071, p. II (Buonocore 2007, 205): Pars I. – I: Vota, precationes, divorum elogia, item
nomina in lipsanothecis, fastus, cycli. – II: Arae, templa, aedes, fontes, donaria, cetera monu-
menta sacra facta data dicata restituta consummata. – III: Dona in commoda ecclesiarum do-
nata legata. – IIII: Inscriptiones honori Augustorum, regum, dynastarum. – V: Inscriptiones
honori virorum et feminarum clarissimarum – VI: Leges, aedificia, loca publica, privata. – VII:
Tituli minores in ligno et in gemmis – VIII: Tituli minores in auro et argento. – VIIII: Tituli
minores in aere. – X: Tituli minores in plumbo. – XI: Tituli minores in ebore – XII: Tituli mi-
nores in vitro. – XIII: Tituli minores in musivo et pictura. – XIIII: Tituli minores in opere do-
liari. – XV: Miscellanea inscriptionum incertarum sedium.
8 Vat. lat. 9071, p. II (Buonocore 2007, 205): Pars II. – XVI: Epitaphia martyrum. – XVII: Con-
fessorum. – XVIII: Epitaphia virginum et matronarum. – XVIIII: Epitaphia pontificum maxi-
morum. – XX: Epitaphia pontificum minorum. – XXI: Epitaphia sacerdotum aliorumque minis-
trorum ad sacra ex utroque clero. – XXII: Epitaphia diaconissarum, viduarum, sanctimonial-
ium. – XXIII: Epitaphia Augustorum, regum, dynastarum, comitum, ducum. – XXIIII: Epi-
taphia magistratuum, onoratorum, palatinorum, doctorum ordinum VV CC SS PP item femi-
narum inlustrium. – XXV: Epitaphia militum, professorum, negotiatorum, artificum, opificum
VV HH LL DD item fem HH. – XXVI: Epitaphia parentum, filiorum, item alumnorum. – XXVII:
Epitaphia maritorum et uxorum. – XXVIII: Epitaphia fratrum, sororum, cognatorum. – XXVI-
III: Epitaphia libertorum et servorum, item patronorum. – XXX: Epitaphia defunctorum
nomine uel ab incertis posita, item fragmenta sepulchralia omne genus. – XXXI: Epitaphia
neophytorum et catechumenorum. – XXXII: Epitaphia Hebraeorum.
9 Mai 1831.
Christian and Late Antique Epigraphies 505
It was only with De Rossi and Edmond Le Blant that Christian epigraphy truly
became a separate branch of epigraphy. Le Blant, converted to Christian archaeo
logy and epigraphy after traveling to Rome and meeting De Rossi in 1847, devoted
his life, as a civil servant in Napoleonic France, to the collection and publication of
the Christian inscriptions of Gaul. He published the first volume of his “Inscriptions
chrétiennes de la Gaule antérieures au VIIIe siècle” (ICG) in 1856.10 The preface
of the second volume (1865) was the draft of his “Manuel d’épigraphie chrétienne
à partir des marbres de la Gaule” (1869).11 If the textbook makes the art, ‘Christian
epigraphy’ was born at this point. Even if he published before De Rossi, who had to
deal with a far larger number of inscriptions, Le Blant must be seen as his disciple
rather than as his competitor. De Rossi is the one scholar who is usually regarded,
and rightly so, as the founding father of Christian epigraphy. He began collect-
ing inscriptions for the “Inscriptiones Christianae Vrbis Romae” (ICUR) in 1841,
but the first volume of ICUR was published only in 1861. It contained all the in-
scriptions dated by consuls, presented in chronological order. In the second volume
(1888) inscriptions known from manuscripts were edited and organized themati-
cally, following a less sophisticated classification than in Marini’s manuscript: dog-
matic and historical texts; tituli of martyrs, popes and famous people; inscriptions
concerning the erection of large basilicas, baptisteries and minor buildings. The
work was later continued (from 1922 onwards) but, with Le Blant and De Rossi,
Christian epigraphy definitely took a separate path from the rest of the discipline.
The influence of De Rossi was immense, mostly in Italy and in France, chan-
nelled by the École française de Rome, founded in 1873 and directed by Le Blant
from 1883 to 1888. Among the first members of the École was Louis Duchesne, a
brilliant and original Catholic priest, and a student at the École pratique des hautes
études. In Rome he met De Rossi and became one of his closest friends and best col-
leagues. He in turn became director of the École française in 1893 (only two years
before De Rossi’s death) and contributed a lot to the close cooperation between
French and Italian scholars in early Christian studies. It would be too detailed to
enumerate all the corpora of Latin Christian inscriptions that were directly inspired
by Le Blant, De Rossi and Duchesne.12
The textbook industry was very active too. In 1910 Marucchi published his
“Epigrafia Cristiana”,13 and René Aigrain his little “Manuel d’épigraphie chré
tienne” in 1912/13.14 But the trend towards establishing Christian epigraphy as a
category of its own was not only a Franco-Italian feature. Marucchi’s textbook was
translated into English in 1912;15 and in 1924, the German Ernst Diehl published
10 ICG I–II.
11 Le Blant 1869.
12 See the paper by Pietri 1988 with a bibliography that includes the works of Paul Monceaux for
Northern Africa and Jacques Zeiller for Dalmatia.
13 Marucchi 1910.
14 Aigrain 1912/13.
15 Marrucchi 1912.
the “Inscriptiones Latinae Christianae Veteres” (ILCV),16 an outstanding collection

of thousands of Christian inscriptions already edited in many different places.17
Even in the world of Greek inscriptions, where the amount of texts known at
this time was not as huge as in Rome, a separate path for Christian epigraphy was
developing. In 1880 the young William Ramsay arrived in Asia Minor, and imme
diately began to produce a flood of articles on epigraphic discoveries. He decided
to explore the inland regions, rather than the great cities of the coast, which meant
that he had a limited range of literary texts on which to draw; the Acts of the Apos-
tles, saints’ lives and bishops’ lists were therefore crucial to his research.18 Ramsay
worked with enormous energy, and poured out articles in several periodicals;
for example, in the 1882 Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique he published a
dated Christian epitaph from Hieropolis,19 which was recognized by Duchesne as
a version of a text to be found in the Life of Saint Abercius.20 This underlined
the relevance of the Christian literary tradition to the inscriptions which Ramsay
was discovering, and encouraged him to focus increasingly on the history of early
Christianity and its epigraphic heritage. In 1883 both Ramsay and Duchesne in-
dependently recognized the expression ἔσται αὐτῷ πρὸς τὸν θεόν as specifically
Christian;21 in the view of Henri Grégoire, Duchesne and Ramsay thus “fondèrent
en 1883 l’épigraphie chrétienne”.22 William M. Calder, Ramsay’s pupil, appointed
Hulme Professor of Greek at Manchester in 1913, added to the post a ‘Lectureship
in Christian Epigraphy’.23
Franz Cumont, inspired by De Rossi and Duchesne, published in the Mélanges
d’Archéologie et d’Histoire of 1895 an inventory of 445 Christian inscriptions from
Asia Minor, ranging from the 3rd to the 15th century.24 The project of a “Corpus
Inscriptionum Graecarum Christianarum” was formed in 1898, under the patronage
of the École française d’Athènes.25 The major result of this venture was Grégoire’s
“Recueil des inscriptions grecques chrétiennes d’Asie mineure” (1922).26 This vol-
ume demonstrates why projects that aimed at producing specifically ‘Christian’
corpora failed to make progress with regard to the Greek-speaking areas of the
Roman Empire. Grégoire included inscriptions from the whole period from 395 to
16 ILCV 1925–1967. The work was not intended as an exhaustive corpus, but as a thorough study
of all kinds of Christian inscriptions, like Hermann Dessau’s Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae
(see Preface, p. I–IX).
17 Ferrua 1933, 248–250.
18 “I resolved to read over the Byzantine authors, the Acta Conciliorum and the Acta Sanctorum,
as well as the ordinary authorities” (Ramsay 1890, 7).
19 Ramsay 1882a, 518–520 no. 5.
20 Duchesne 1883; see also Ramsay 1882b. For the Life of Saint Abercius, see PG 115, pp. 1211–
1248.
21 See Ramsay 1883, 400 f., citing Duchesne at 401 n. 1; Duchesne 1883.
22 See Grégoire 1961, 34.
23 Calder 1920, 42 n. 1.
24 Cumont 1895.
25 Homolle 1889.
26 Grégoire 1922. One should also note Millet/Pargoire/Petit 1904 and Lefebvre 1907 as well
as Bees 1941 and GCIC.
1453 – and even a few from after 1453. He also included 4th-century inscriptions
which bear the names of Christian Emperors or the ministers of those Emperors,
even when they do not have any overtly Christian connotations; in this way even
texts honouring the well know pagan praefectus praetorio per Orientem, Fl. Eu-
tolmius Tatianus, were included.27 This approach exemplifies a crucial problem:
is every honorific monument erected in the 5th or 6th century to be regarded as a
‘Christian’ inscription? If so, by contrast with what? Should we include every text
which shows a cross, and omit any text that does not include one?28 Should such
material be relegated to the end of a general corpus – and should it be described
as ‘Christian’ or as ‘Byzantine’? The influence of Louis Robert on this evolution
was probably decisive: he had always taken a sceptical view of the ‘Christian’ ven-
tures of his colleagues, and his authority probably assisted their decline. It is there-
fore mostly in the western, Latin-speaking world that ‘Christian epigraphy’ has
remained a specific branch of epigraphy, and it is only recently that this notion had
been challenged.
THE AGENDA OF ‘CHRISTIAN EPIGRAPHY’
The parting of the ways between Classical and Christian epigraphy was a deliberate
move decided by De Rossi, after Theodor Mommsen had asked him to join the CIL
project. It might be of interest to read a letter he sent to his friend Dom Beranger,
a Benedictine monk and an influential archaeologist, in 1853:29
“Les propositions que l’on me fait ne peuvent pas être plus flatteuses et honorables; mon nom
devrait être à la tête de tous les volumes avec ceux de MM. Mommsen et Henzen; et la direction
de l’ouvrage confiée in solidum à nous trois seulement. Peut-être rien ne se concluera à cause
de ma délicatesse envers le gouvernement Pontifical, et de mon amour pour les antiquités chré-
tiennes. Car j’exige que les inscriptions chrétiennes de Rome (soient) laissées en propriété à la
Typographie Pontificale qui doit en faire l’édition et que par conséquent elles ne soient pas ré-
pétées dans le Corpus de Berlin. Plus, j’exige que les inscriptions chrétiennes [des autres pays]
soient renfermées dans un ou plusieurs volumes à part des payennes (sic), de sorte que l’édition
romaine et celle des volumes Inscriptionum Christianarum extra Urbem Romam etc. imprimé
à Berlin compose un corpus général des Inscriptions chrétiennes. Ces propositions ne sont pas
tout à fait au goût des Allemands et je crains qu’elles ne finissent par être absolument rejetées”
All the same, it would be unfair to pretend that Christian epigraphy developed in a
separate branch of epigraphy only because of apologetic intentions. It is very likely
that the primary reason for this development was the sheer volume of inscriptions
found in Rome while exploring the catacombs, linked to the impossibility to study
them in the same way as other inscriptions. In particular, it proved to be difficult
to deal with chronological problems, because very few Christian inscriptions were
dated. The first aim of the project of studying them separately was precisely to
constitute a body of reference allowing it to establish a relative chronology of the
27 Grégoire 1922, ii; cf. PLRE I Tatianus 5.

28 E. g. ala2004, 38 and 40 (on the same monument).
29 Johnson 2003, 49.
inscriptions.30 Furthermore, the study of exclusively Christian themes or expres-

sions, or of ecclesiastical hierarchy and organisation, is of little interest for people
who do not study Christianity, and it is easy to see the advantage of collecting
the Christian material alone. When inscriptions were collected among others in
geographical corpora, they might become “lost in the sea of pagan inscriptions”.31
Collecting them in specific ‘Christian’ corpora was therefore at least convenient for
historians of Christianity.
There was nevertheless, from the very beginning, something wrong in mak-
ing ‘Christian epigraphy’ a separate subject. This is not because of its apologetic
dimension; it certainly would be interesting, in terms of the intellectual history of
Catholicism in 19th and 20th century, to study further the network of scholars in-
volved in the creation of a Christian epigraphy, but it would be futile to make fun
of the religious enthusiasm often expressed.32 What makes ‘Christian epigraphy’ so
unsatisfactory as a model is the fact that in order to exist at all it constantly needs to
specify what its object is; indeed, all the specialists in the field have recognized that
many late antique inscriptions do not present any explicit sign of Christianity. What
then is a ‘Christian’ inscription? Many epigraphists, from De Rossi on, have asked
this very question. The answers to it are quite significant. With a typically French
taste for systematic definitions, Paul Monceaux writes:33
“Jusqu’à la fin du IVe siècle, c’est-à-dire jusqu’à la mise hors la loi du paganisme, une inscrip-
tion chrétienne est une inscription qui porte en elle-même une preuve évidente de christianisme.
Depuis le début du Ve siècle, et surtout, en Afrique, depuis l’invasion vandale, on doit consi-
dérer comme chrétienne toute inscription qui ne contient pas un indice certain de paganisme”
Such a statement can be acceptable only if we believe that the definition of ‘Chris-
tianity’ itself is clear cut and, at the same time, if we assume that Roman society, at
the beginning of the 5th century, had become “wholly Christian”, to use the words
of Henri-Irénée Marrou. This was certainly the opinion of most scholars in the
19th and in the first half of the 20th century. But even so (and given the fact that no
historian of early Christianity, whatever his/her personal religious position is, can
seriously share such a view today), Monceaux’s understanding of the subject still
raises a major difficulty: as such, Christian inscriptions do not form a consistent
corpus. With regard to the first three centuries AD, ‘Christian epigraphy’ aims at
collecting epigraphic testimonia in order to scrutinize evidence for the beginnings
30 This is precisely why De Rossi published all known consular inscriptions in the first volume of
ICUR.
31 “Une partie seulement figurent au tome VIII du Corpus ou dans les deux Suppléments parus; et
ces inscriptions chrétiennes y sont publiées ordinairement sans commentaire, perdues dans le
flot des épitaphes païennes.“ (Monceaux 1903, 60).
32 By the way, this enthusiasm was not only a religious one: Le Blant was under the patronage of
Napoleon III because of the conservative religious policy of the government, but probably even
more because of the imperial obsession with national origins of France. While Le Blant was
collecting the most ancient inscriptions of Gaul, Napoleon, himself an editor of Caesar’s Gallic
Wars, was promoting the myth of Vercingetorix.
33 Monceaux 1903, 61. Pasquale Testini made almost exactly the same point in his introduction:
Testini 1980.
of Christianity and to analyse its specificity in epigraphic terms;34 the effort of the
epigraphist is thus directed towards discerning Christianity in inscriptions so that,
through a regressive method, one gets closer to its original appearance.35 The ap-
proach to the epigraphic material of the post-Constantinian period is entirely differ-
ent: now it becomes important to detect ‘paganism’ in inscriptions, in order to dis-
card them from the collection. When a new edition of the “Inscriptions chrétiennes
de la Gaule” was planned, Marrou decided to “discuter, pour pouvoir les écarter
en connaissance de cause (les inscriptions) dont le caractère chrétien nous a paru
pour le moins contestable” and to put them in a category of ‘pseudochristianae’.36
Working in this way, the result can only be a corpus that does not provide the same
sort of information for different historical epochs. The turning point might vary
in the different regions of the Roman Empire, but in any corpus collecting both
pre- and post-4th-century inscriptions, ‘Christian epigraphy’ develops from being
“l’épigraphie d’une croyance et de ses fidèles”37 to being the epigraphy of every-
body, with the exception of the ‘last pagans’. Understood in this way, ‘Christian
epigraphy’ in the later periods of Antiquity does not provide specific information
on Christianity (inscriptions which might give explicit insights into the evolution
of Christianity are “lost in the sea” of religiously nondescript inscriptions); it may
at best provide distorted information on a society in which Christianity had become
the dominant religion, but one has to take into account that studying Christianity is
not the only key to understand what was going on in Late Antiquity. Such a view of
‘Christian epigraphy’ is thus problematic both for the study of Christianity and for
the study of the late antique Roman Empire. This is why it is necessary to question
the significance of the notion of a specific ‘Christian epigraphy’ as a whole, as has
increasingly been done over the last decades.
FROM ‘CHRISTIAN EPIGRAPHY’ TO ‘LATE ANTIQUE EPIGRAPHY’?
In 1988, an international conference that took place in Bologna was entitled “La
terza età dell’epigrafia”, meaning, in a continental and politically correct way,
something like “the old age of epigraphy”; it was probably the first conference
entirely dedicated to late antique epigraphy. Many papers dealt with Christian in-
scriptions, but only two directly addressed the problem which interests us here.38 A
flamboyant paper by Gabriel Sanders sketched a general history of Christian epig-
raphy, insisting in a traditional way on the difficulty of sorting out Christian from
34 Carletti 1988, 133. For Asia Minor, see Destephen 2010; and the paper of S. Mitchell, in this
volume pp. 271–286.
35 A good example for such a method is given by Gabriel Millet’s foreword to Lefebvre 1907,
VI: “Εὐψύχει appartient à deux groupes d’épitaphes: les unes, d’un christianisme douteux, re-
montent au IIe siècle; les autres, certainement chrétiennes, sont du Ve. Ces deux groupes se font
valoir l’un l’autre. Les plus récentes confirment les présomptions qui ont fait placer les
premières parmi les plus vénérables vestiges du christianisme égyptien”.
36 Foreword by Marrou, in: RICG I, p. 10.
37 Pietri 1988, 631.
38 Donati 1988.
non-Christian inscriptions.39 Much more interesting was Carlo Carletti’s seminal

article, questioning, perhaps for the first time, the pertinence of the model itself
and introducing the new category of ‘neutral’ inscriptions.40 This newly designed
category, he stated, represents 89 % of the 531 most ancient inscriptions in the cata-
combs of Rome. These inscriptions are “deprived of any specific Christian charac
ter but – and it is important to say it – as well of any specific pagan one”.41 Carletti
did not mean that these inscriptions had not been made by or for Christian persons,
but he suspected that the search for the expression in epigraphic terms of a “Chris-
tian specificity”42 might be deceptive. Over the next 20 years, Carletti went on
exploring the implications of his new approach to the study of Christian inscrip-
tions and the epigraphic habit of Christians.43 Establishing a distinction between a
‘Christian epigraphy’ and an ‘epigraphy of Christians’ was indeed ground-breaking,
in that it introduced a clear difference between documenting a religious practice and
documenting a social group.
It is important to note that the study of Jewish epigraphy soon encountered the
same problems. Jewish epigraphy had only recently taken full independence from
Christian epigraphy, to which it had long been no more than an annexe. The first
corpus of Jewish inscriptions was collected by a French Catholic priest, Jean-Bap-
tiste Frey, and published by the Istituto Pontificio di Archeologia Cristiana in 1936
and 1952.44 By 1987, only two more corpora had been published, for Egypt and
Cyrene.45 At this time, scholars pursuing ‘Jewish epigraphy’ were interested in
very much the same topics as those studying Christian epigraphy: method, cultural
identity, community, religion, and Jewish tradition, although there was probably
more emphasis on socio-economic status and ethnicity.46 Very soon, however, the
pertinence of the criteria used to identify Jewish inscriptions came to be questioned
in a more radical way than in Christian studies, and yet these interrogations in-
volved Christian texts as much as Jewish ones.47 There is only a fine line between
such a sceptical view and a more fundamental interrogation of the limits between
religious groups or the significance of religious affiliations in general.48 This is
precisely why the old question “who is/was a Christian?” is too crude to be very
useful to Christian studies nowadays. Christians, like Jews, should be studied in
context, and fortunately this now happens more and more. Christianity was only
one (possible) aspect of the ‘identity’ of people living in Late Antiquity; they were
also Roman or Greek, soldiers or craftsmen, men or women, etc. Corpora of Chris-
tian inscriptions may still be useful – and indeed, we could hardly work without
them – but the material contained in them needs to be plunged again into the sea of
39 Sanders 1988.
40 Carletti 1988.
41 Carletti 1988, 119.
42 Carletti 1988, 133.
43 Carletti 1997; 2008; 2010.
44 Frey 1936/52.
45 Lewis 1957; Applebaum 1979; Lüderitz 1983.
46 Kant 1987.
47 Kraemer 1991.
48 Felle 2007 with bibliography.
all the inscriptions of the epoch in question. This would certainly be a useful turn
in Christian studies; but it is even more true when it comes to late antique studies.
THE NATURE OF ‘LATE ANTIQUE EPIGRAPHY’
Grégoire’s volume included overtly Christian inscriptions, as well as others that

were simply to be classified as late antique or Byzantine; and it was not illustrated.
During the period between the World Wars, however, it was becoming more cus-
tomary to record inscriptions in photographs. After the First World War, the Ameri
can Society for Archaeological Research in Asia Minor was formed, and it sent a
series of expeditions to the region with the specific purpose of using photography
to record inscriptions. The first volume of the “Monumenta Asiae Minoris Antiqua”
(MAMA) was published by Calder in 1928.49 Calder had already travelled in the
area with Ramsay between 1908 and 1913, and some of their copies were included
in the book. He also commented on the difference in method:50
“As compared with the speed of the hand-copyist, ours was necessarily slow. Many ancient
blocks are so placed that it takes time and trouble to heave them into a position where the cam-
era or the squeeze brush can reach them”
The MAMA expeditions were thus committed to a far higher quality of recording
than that of the pre-War travellers; and photography in general has been essential
to the identification of a ‘late antique epigraphy’. In so many cases it is the look of
the inscription that determines its dates. Until then, many late antique inscriptions
had lain undetected in corpora, unless, of course, they were evidently Christian; so
‘Christian’ had indeed been a useful label.
The MAMA project also paid for Robert to travel in Asia Minor, and, as so
often, he transformed and defined the subject. His travels enabled him to add to his
astonishing erudition a strong sense of how (late antique) texts actually looked. In
1948 Robert published Hellenica IV, entitled “Épigrammes du Bas-Empire”.51 In
that volume he examined a considerable number of verse texts, full of traditional
mythological allusions, which had conventionally been thought to be of the impe-
rial period; and to clarify their chronology he used the neutral expression “basse
époque imperial”.
After that, as scholars came to identify more such material, terminology contin-
ued to vary. Clearest of all was perhaps Emilian Popescu by calling his work con-
cerning Romania “Inscriptiile grecesti si latine din secolele IV–XIII descoperite în
România”.52 Equally ponderous and specific is the title “The Late Roman and Early
Byzantine Inscriptions of Athens and Attica” used by Erkki Sironen,53 although the
terms ‘early’ and ‘late’ still present problems. Denis Feissel, Robert’s pupil and
49 Calder 1928.
50 Calder 1928, x.
51 Robert 1948.
52 Popescu 1976.
53 Sironen 1997.
the scholar who has done most to illuminate the epigraphic material of this period,
still retained the term ‘Christian’ when he published his “Recueil des inscriptions
chrétiennes de Macédoine du du IIIe au VIe siècle”,54 but the collection of his very
valuable commentaries in the Bulletin Épigraphique was published as “Chroniques
d’epigraphie byzantine”.55
Gradually a new consensus has been developing: the epigraphic cultures, along
with other cultural phenomena, of the period from the late 3rd to the early 7th cen-
tury are increasingly described as ‘late antique’ (and those of the subsequent centu-
ries as ‘Byzantine’) – that is, not by genre, or by religious affiliation, but by period.
It is only the study of late antique inscriptions in their own right which is gradually
permitting us to identify the characteristics of the epigraphy of the period. And this
in turn is an important tool for understanding the nature of the period. There are
several striking changes from the preceding centuries in epigraphic practice from
the late 3rd century onwards: there is the major reduction in the number of (new)
inscriptions;56 there is a shift to different types of text – for example an increas-
ing proportion of imperial pronouncements, or inscribed acclamations.57 There are
major changes in the aesthetic of inscriptions: carefully-cut texts look very dif-
ferent from those of earlier centuries, not at least because they no longer appear
to conform to a uniform standard.58 There is an increasing use of honorific verse,
and a reduced use of patronymics. All such changes need to be seen as important
evidence for understanding the culture of the period, rather than being relegated to
specialist discussions.
This leaves us with interesting research questions for the future: to what extent
are the characteristics of late antique epigraphy different in East and West? When
do these various phenomena develop – and why? In a world of official Christianity,
what might the presence or absence of Christian indicators mean? It is to be hoped
that the removal of the institutional categorization of ‘Christian epigraphy’ may
enable a more nuanced, and more fruitful, interrogation of the evidence.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Frey 1936/52 = J.-B. Frey, Corpus Inscriptionum Iudaicarum. Receuil des inscriptions juives qui
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Lefebvre 1907 = G. Lefebvre, Recueil des inscriptions grecques chrétiennes d’Égypte, Le Caire
1907.
54 RICM.
55 Feissel 2006.
56 See, for example, Meyer 1990.
57 On imperial pronouncements, see Feissel 1999; on acclamations, see Roueché 1984.
58 See ala2004, Introduction 8 for illustrations.
Lüderitz 1983 = G. Lüderitz, Corpus jüdischer Zeugnisse aus der Cyrenaika, Wiesbaden 1983.
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tiennes de l’Athos, Paris 1904.
Popescu 1976 = E. Popescu, Inscripțiile grecești și latine din secolele IV–XIII descoperite în
România (Inscriptiones intra fines Dacoromaniae repertae Graecae et Latinae anno CCLXXXIV
recentiores), București 1976.
Sironen 1997 = E. Sironen, The Late Roman and Early Byzantine Inscriptions of Athens and Attica,
Helsinki 1997.
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Aigrain 1912/13 = R. Aigrain, Manuel d’épigraphie chrétienne I–II, Paris 1912/13.
Aringhus 1651 = P. Aringhus, Roma subterranea novissima, Roma 1651.
Balance et al. 1961 = M. H. Balance et al., Sir William Calder 1881–1960, AS 11, 1961, 29–37.
Bosio 1632 = A. Bosio, Roma sotterranea, Roma 1632.
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2002, Barcelona 2007, 203–209.
Calder 1920 = W. M. Calder, Studies in Early Christian Epigraphy, JRS 10, 1920, 42–59.
Carletti 1988 = C. Carletti, ‘Epigrafia cristiana’ – ‘epigrafia dei cristiani’: alle origini della terza
età dell’epigrafia, in: Donati 1988, 115–135.
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Carletti 2008 = C. Carletti, Epigrafia dei Cristiani in Occidente dal III al VII secolo. Ideologia e
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Christian and Late Antique Epigraphies

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Christian and Late Antique Epigraphies

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Heidelberger Althistorische Beiträge – Band 60

Franz Steiner Verlag Sonderdruck aus:

The Epigraphic Cultures

Franz Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 2017

List of General Abbreviations ........................................................................... 9

Katharina Bolle, Carlos Machado, and Christian Witschel

III THE (NEW) WORLD OF CHRISTIAN EPIGRAPHY

Charlotte Roueché and Claire Sotinel

Addresses of Authors ........................................................................................ 595

Colour Plates ..................................................................................................... 599

‘CHRISTIAN’ AND ‘CLASSICAL’ EPIGRAPHIES:

1 Marucchi 1910, 41.

the “Inscriptiones Latinae Christianae Veteres” (ILCV),16 an outstanding collection

THE AGENDA OF ‘CHRISTIAN EPIGRAPHY’

27 Grégoire 1922, ii; cf. PLRE I Tatianus 5.

inscriptions.30 Furthermore, the study of exclusively Christian themes or expres-

FROM ‘CHRISTIAN EPIGRAPHY’ TO ‘LATE ANTIQUE EPIGRAPHY’?

non-Christian inscriptions.39 Much more interesting was Carlo Carletti’s seminal

THE NATURE OF ‘LATE ANTIQUE EPIGRAPHY’

Grégoire’s volume included overtly Christian inscriptions, as well as others that

Epigraphic Corpora and Compilations

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