Les lieux de culte mithriaques face aux chrétiens dans la Rome tardo-antique

Abstract

The issue of the Late Antique Roman Mithraism’s topographical network and the impact of the spreading of Christianity on these realities has long been an object of interest. In particular, this took place in the context of the– sometimes highly ideologically laden – investigation of the link between this growing religion and the “ Mysteries of Mithra” – to borrow the title of F. Cumont’s work. Despite the paradigmatic shifts in historiography and the fact that new, mainly archeological, data emerged during the last decades, the debate isn’t closed. An in-depth and dispassionate study is required. After a preliminary step involving the compilation of the Mithraic places of worship attested in the fourth-and fifth century Rome and the sharing of some findings drawn from it, this paper firstly proposes a series of considerations on the argument of a competition with the Church network. This is followed by a meticulous examination of the case of three mithraea (S. Clemente, S. Prisca and Castra Peregrinorum/ S. Stefano in Rotondo) whose end is regularly related to an intervention of Christians. The inquiry demonstrates that a competitive strategy in the churches settlement cannot be inferred – likenesses in the dynamics of both worships being possible explanatory factors – and that the data related to the three mithraea do not allow to favour the option of a Christian action, and drafts an innovative hypothesis (the “ritual closure”) in order to explain the material ending of these mithraea.