Le financement de la construction des églises pendant l’Antiquité tardive et l’évergétisme antique

Abstract

In this paper the author investigates the links between the construction of churches and evergetism in the patriarchates of Antioch and of Jerusalem from the fourth century to the sixth. The exceptionally rich documentation allows a new analysis of the changes in benefactors’ attitudes under the influence of Christianisation. After an introductory summary of the historiographical problems, the author considers the features of the epigraphical material examined here: its abundance, the frequency of dated inscriptions, the good state of preservation of the inscriptions until recent times, as well as the uneven distribution of the material in space and in time. The paper goes on to consider the social standing of benefactors: interventions by aristocrats are relatively rare including even local notables; some ecclesiastical texts define particular features of Christian benefactions, but they are rarely put into practice; collective, sometimes anonymous, enterprises are quite frequent, a feature which distinguishes the generosity of church builders from that of classical benefactors. In a final section the paper examines the self-presentation of donors, stressing the changes in comparison with classical practice. It concludes that the evidence reveals neither a complete break from nor total continuity with classical traditions but mutations, some of which are peculiar to the region here studied, particularly in the social class of donors and in the way they represented themselves.