Constantinople. Ritual, Violence, and Memory in the Making of a Christian Imperial Capital by Rebecca Stephens Falcasantos

Abstract

Reviewed by: Constantinople. Ritual, Violence, and Memory in the Making of a Christian Imperial Capital by Rebecca Stephens Falcasantos Sarah Bassett Constantinople. Ritual, Violence, and Memory in the Making of a Christian Imperial Capital. By Rebecca Stephens Falcasantos. [Christianity in Late Antiquity Series, 9.] (Oakland: University of California Press. 2020. Pp. xii, 221. $95.00. ISBN: 9780520304550.) This study addresses the Christianization of Constantinople from its foundation by Constantine in 324 to the death of Theodosios II in 450. It examines the growing presence of Christianity within the framework of three intertwined areas of theoretical inquiry, viz., ritual, conflict, and memory, to suggest three phases of Christian development. The first, in the 320s and 330s, saw Christianity as one cult among many. In a second, late-fourth-century phase, Christianity was the dominant religion. By the mid-fifth century, it predominated. The purpose in charting this course is twofold: to analyze public ritual activity in Constantinople and to create a model for addressing Christianization elsewhere (p. 9). Five chapters document this progression. Chapter One examines the religious landscape of late antiquity and continuities between pagan and Christian practice. Chapter Two considers these practices in the context of Constantinople, arguing that the city was not a Christian foundation. Chapter Three looks at violence among the city’s Christian factions, and Four outlines the ways in which ritual performance established individual religious communities within the city. Finally, Chapter Five observes the emergence of a specifically imperial Christianity. The book is puzzling. Although well-grounded in theoretical approaches, its historiographical understanding is problematic. The author emphasizes that the [End Page 174] city was not a Christian foundation, and claims that this study is the first to challenge the idea of Constantinople as such (p. 180). This assertion is incorrect. Arguments over the nature of the foundation go back to the nineteenth century. More recently, others, this reviewer included, have made the case for a non-Christian foundation.1 Source materials are also misrepresented, as with the assertion that the fifth-century Notitia Urbis Constantinopolitanae omits the Column of Constantine (pp. 104–05). It does not. The column appears in the sixth region as “Columnam purpuream Constantini.”2 There is also misunderstanding of the city’s topography in the assertion that pagan temples would have loomed over the city center (p. 80). While it is true that temples survived in Constantinople, most stood on the slopes leading down to the sea. They would not have been visible from the higher, enclosed space of the Augusteion, nor do they appear to have been on Christian processional routes. The more interesting question with respect to such activity is what the backdrop of the city’s monumental colonnaded boulevards, classic examples of empire architecture, or the presence of a Capitolium along the Mese, a well-trodden processional route leading away from the city center, brought to Christian urban movement. These mistakes matter because argumentation hinges upon them. At the same time, they reflect a laudable desire to engage the material evidence for Constantinopolitan topography. It remains therefore all the more unfortunate that attention to evidence for and scholarship pertinent to the built environment was not more careful, as this material would have bolstered the book’s claims. For example, the fifth century saw an increase in church building documented not only in the Notitia, but also by archaeological excavation.3 Misunderstandings aside, the sense of Christianity’s growing presence and its increasingly imperial manifestation is convincing. In this respect the book achieves its end and stands as a welcome contribution to the understanding of Constantinople’s early development. Sarah Bassett Indiana University Footnotes 1. Sarah Bassett, The Urban Image of Late Antique Constantinoplem (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 17–18, for historiographical discussion. 2. 7.7 in Otto Seeck, Notitia Dignitatum (Berlin, 1876), p. 230. 3. Thomas Mathews, Early Churches of Constantinople: Architecture and Liturgy. University Park, PA. Copyright © 2023 The Catholic University of America Press ...