Christianised sites

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One aspect of Christianisation was the Christianisation of sites that had been pagan. Few Christian churches built in the first half millennium of the established Christian Church were not built upon sites already consecrated as pagan temples or as high places, the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva (literally Saint Mary above Minerva) in Rome being simply the most obvious example. Sulpicius Severus, in his Vita of Martin of Tours, a dedicated destroyer of temples and sacred trees, remarks "wherever he destroyed heathen temples, there he used immediately to build either churches or monasteries" (Vita, ch xiii), and when Benedict took possession of the site at Monte Cassino, he began by smashing the sculpture of Apollo and the altar that crowned the height. Montmartre was the site of one of the oldest surviving Christian churches in France - Saint Pierre, and where the Jesuit movement was supposedly founded, was earlier a mercurii monte - a high place dedicated to Lugus, a major celtic deity (and one that the romans viewed as a homology of Mercury).

The Encierro
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The Encierro

The conversion of pre-Christian places of worship, rather than their destruction, was particularly true of temples of Mithras, a religion that had been the main rival to Christianity during the second and third centuries, especially among the Roman legions. Mithraism was sufficiently similar to early Christianity that Celsus argued the Christians had no justification for complaining about Mithraism since it was essentially the same in practice [1], and Tertullian and Justin Martyr accused Mithraism of being a diabolicly inspired pre-Christian mockery of Christianity [2][3]; such strong similarities would have made it very easy for such temples to change use overnight, as worshippers would have noticed very little difference in practice.

In Rome the early titular churches, each protected by a patron, were sometimes adapted from the basilica, or auidience hall, of a prominent man's domus. The direct conversion of sacred sites waited for the decrees of Theodosius I at the end of the fourth century, closing the temples.

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[edit] Britain and Northern Europe

In Britain, the legendary King Lucius, was reported by Geoffrey of Monmouth, the often unreliable Christian chronicler, to have deliberately converted all the old temples to churches. Though such openness about the history of church locations was often expressed, such claims about more significant church locations were often more controversial. The Notre-Dame du Taur (meaning our lady of the bull), cathedral church of Toulouse, which according to Christian tradition was founded where a bull stopped running, and is famous for the Encierro festival of running bulls, is thought by archaeologists to more likely have originally been a temple of mithras, since the mithras cult prominently features (allegorical) killing of a sacred bull, and the whole festival and even the name of the church appear, in their eyes, to derive from it.

The British Isles and other areas of northern Europe that were formerly druidic are still densely punctuated by holy wells and holy springs that are now attributed to some saint, often a highly local saint unknown elsewhere. These water sources have always been guarded by supernatural forces in the European imagination. An example of the pre-Christian water spirit is the melusina. As the official Catholic Church expanded its requirements for Christian baptisteries in the 5th and 6th centuries, sacred pagan springs presented natural opportunities. Historically some bath houses and pagan springs were forcibly seized. Cassiodorus, the courtly secretary to the Ostrogoth Theodoric the Great, described in a letter written in A.D. 527, a fair held at a former pagan shrine of Leucothea, in the still culturally Greek region of south Italy, which had been Christianized by converting it to a baptistery (Variae 8.33). In a paper read in 1999, Samuel J. Barnish drew further examples of the transition from miraculous springs to baptisteries from Gregory of Tours (died c. 594) and Maximus, Bishop of Turin (died c. 466).

The great Abbey of Luxueil founded by Saint Columban had its origins in a Gallo-Roman villa that had been ravaged by Attila in 451, and was now buried in the dense overgrown woodland that had filled the abandoned site over more than a century. However, the place still had the advantage of the thermal baths "constructed with unusual skill", as Columban's early biographer, Jonas of Bobbio reported. He further added that, down in the valley, which still gives the town its name Luxeuil-les-Bains, "stone images crowded the nearby woods, which were honored in the miserable cult and profane former rites in the time of the pagans," the monk Jonas records. (Ibi imaginum lapidearum densitas vicina saltus densabat, quas cultu miserabili rituque profano vetusta Paganorum tempora honorabant) [2]. With a grant from an officer of the palace at Childebert's court, an abbey church was built with a sense of triumph within the heathen site and its spectral haunts (ut, ubi olim prophano ritu veteres coluerunt fana, ibi Christi figerentur arae et erigerentur vexilla, habitaculum Deo militantium, quo adversus aërias potestates dimicarent superni Regis tirones).

In Britain and many other parts of Europe trees were also sometimes seen as sacred or the home of tree spirits. When Britain was Christianised this resulted in a change of the landscape. In some instances sacred groves were destroyed to discourage belief in tree spirits. One of the most famous of these was the Irminsul, whose ancient location is no longer known (though it may have been located at Externsteine, was obliterated by Charlemagne. Another major ancient holy tree was Thor's Oak, which was deliberately desecrated and destroyed by a Christian missionary named Winfrid (later canonised as Saint Boniface).

[edit] Iberia

Santiago de Compostela is a major site of Christian pilgrimage, and said in Christian tradition to originate as the burial place of Saint James the Great; pilgrims traditionally follow the Way of St. James until they reach the Cathedral, but then, having visited the church, continue to Cape Finisterre. The continuation to Cape Finisterre is regarded by historians as unjustifiable for Christian reasons, but Finisterre has a prominent pre-Christian significance, it was considered to literally be the edge of the world (hence the name finisterre, meaning end of the world), due to it seeming to be the westernmost point of europe (in reality, even though it juts out to the west, the more subtle Cabo da Roca holds the honour). In pre-Christian times, the souls of the dead were believed to trace their way across all europe to Finisterre and follow the sun across the sea, and their route, the Santa Compaña, became a significant pilgrimage throughout south western europe. Santiago de Compostela itself was held to be the place where the dead gathered together, and where their paths finally all joined together for the final stretch of the journey; one possible etymology of Compostela is burial ground, suggesting that even the name derives from the pre-Christian belief. To historians, the church was put in place to divert the pilgrims to Christianity, rather than the pilgrimage coming after the church.

[edit] Rome

In Rome itself, one of the the most richly adorned churches, the Basilica di San Clemente, was, according to Christian tradition, built on top of Titus Flavius Clemens's private home, as he had allowed early Christians to worship in his home, due to having pro-Jewish sympathies. However, according to its archaeology, the basilica appears to have been built on top of an early 2nd century Mithraeum, suggesting that the people who were worshipping in Clemens' home were actually followers of Mithras. Its archaeology also suggests that when it was expanded in the 4th century, and was demonstrably a Christian, rather than Mithraic, place of worship, the Christian altar was placed directly above the earlier one to Mithras. Not all of the more minor ancient basilicas have had archaeological excavations, but some of those that have, especially amongst the oldest basilicas, are now known to have been built around earlier Mithraeums, including Santa Prisca, and Santo Stefano Rotondo.

[edit] The Vatican

St. Peter's Basilica, the church of the Vatican, is traditionally located at the burial place of Simon Peter, and most parties, including the Roman Catholic church, agree that the basilica was built on top of a large necropolis on the Vatican Hill. In 1939, an excavation underneath the grottoes which lie directly under the current Basilica, uncovered several surviving Roman mausoleums from the necropolis, and in the area directly under the high altar, below the grottoes, the excavators found a structure resembling a temple that they named the aedicula (meaning little temple). According to the official vatican sanctioned report, underneath the aedicula the 1939 excavation uncovered an empty grave, and, where the grave went under a red wall, they found a set of bones that the vatican claims were Simon Peter's, since they had been able to find a nearby graffito which the vatican states said that peter is inside. These archaeological remains are now pointed out on private tours of the necropolis excavation site as being the original .

Catholic sources frequently cite the official vatican report verbatim. The vatican sanctioned expedition has, however, been heavily criticised by non-Catholic sources for its lack of scholarly behaviour:

  • the entire excavation was kept secret for 10 years, 4 years beyond the end of the Second World War.
  • the excavators were Jesuits
  • the critical scholar involved in checking the bones was only allowed to do so on condition that they did not publish the results
  • the bones were found only when the pope himself was at the site
  • the excavation was destructive to the aedicula floor, and insufficient notes were kept, such that it is now impossible for independent archaeologists to verify how much of the findings are genuine
  • the graffito was found when it suddenly appeared a few days after the find of the bones when they started looking for a connection to Simon Peter.

One of the few critical scholars to have assessed the bones, came to the conclusion that they cannot be Simon Peter's, at least not all of them, as there are 5 leg bones, requiring at least 5 legs, and that the collection of bones also includes animal remains as would be found from food (chicken bones, etc.), making it strange for them to have been found collected together into a small pile and pushed under a wall in an otherwise empty grave. More tellingly, the soil attached to the bones appears not to come from the empty grave, suggesting that they did not actually lie there, and leading sceptical scholars to suggest that the bones had actually been collected by the excavators from around the necropolis, and only grouped together by vatican officials, with heavily sceptical scholars arguing that the vatican officials were deliberately committing fraud, to explain why there seemed to be a temple under the high altar.

The graffito itself is more ambiguous than the vatican conclusion would appear; several letters are missing, and though the vatican concludes that it states petr[os] en[i], meaning peter is inside, the gap between en and what seems to be an i is rather large, and several scholars have suggested that the text actually states petr[os] en[dei], meaning peter is not inside - a warning against mistaking the location for Simon Peter's grave; another alternative possibility for the text, according to scholars, is petr[o] [g]en[es], meaning rock-born, which would be a direct reference to Mithras, and suggesting that the aedicula was quite literally a mini-temple[4]. The graffito itself was found on a piece of plaster, that supposedly, according to the vatican, had broken from a nearby wall in such a way that it is no longer possible to tell which part it came from, making it near impossible to tell whether the missing parts of the text are still in place and readable. Sceptics have argued that this is excessively convenient for the vatican, and some have even argued that it was deliberately broken from the wall so that what it originally said could not be seen[5].

An image from the necropolis under the vatican in which Jesus = Mithras
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An image from the necropolis under the vatican in which Jesus = Mithras

Most of the rediscovered tombs in the necropolis under the Basilica are demonstrably non-Christian, but those that appear to be Christian, is one which depicts Sol Invictus, a late form of Mithras, using the same clear iconography as other Sol Invictus images, but identifies it as a Christian image, identifying Sol Invictus to be the same individual as Jesus. Publicly viewable excavations of the Piazza San Pietro, the piazza directly in front of the Basilica, discovered that underneath it lay an altar to Mithras, as well as one to Attis, a figure that like Mithras was amongst the Osiris-Dionysus group of mystery religions. Several scholars have thus argued that the parts of the Vatican Hill on which the Basilica now lies were originally sacred to Mithras, perhaps due to its location on the western edge of Rome, where the sun sets.

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Origen, Contra Celsum
  2. ^ The devil, whose business is to pervert the truth, mimics the exact circumstances of the Divine Sacraments. He baptises his believers and promises forgiveness of sins from the Sacred Fount, and thereby initiates them into the religion of Mithras. Thus he celebrates the oblation of bread, and brings in the symbol of the resurrection - Tertullian
  3. ^ Having heard it proclaimed through the prophets that the Christ was to come and that the ungodly among men were to be punished by fire, the wicked spirits put forward many to be called Sons of God, under the impression that they would be able to produce in men the idea that the things that were said with regard to Christ were merely marvellous tales - Justin Martyr
  4. ^ A sketch of the exact graffito in question, as found, and its possible readings, is available at [1]
  5. ^ ibid

[edit] References

[edit] External links

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