Ancestors, martyrs, and fourth-century gold glass

Abstract

This chapter examines the phenomenon of repurposing gold glass discs from glass vessels to affix to burial niches in Rome’s Christian catacombs in the second half of the fourth century CE. Scholars have long offered competing interpretations for the meaning of the gold glass vessels during life and in the catacombs after death but have not adequately explained why individuals chose repurposed objects to adorn loculi rather than new, purpose-made objects. Drawing on theories of prospective memory and metaintentions, the chapter argues that the associations the gold glasses acquired during their use or display as functional vessels by individuals enabled these objects to shape how people would remember their deceased owners in the future, when seeing the repurposed discs in the catacombs. Individual Christians in Rome, I propose, bought and used gold glass vessels with the express intention to embed them subsequently in catacombs in order to condition positive posthumous remembrance of themselves and a feeling of awe and the sacred similar to that engendered by veneration at the tombs and shrines of martyrs.