Christian City Research Articles

Spatial Expansion, Planning, and Their Influences on the Urban Landscape of Christian Churches in Canton (1582–1732 and 1844–1911)

Canton (present-day Guangzhou, China) has a long history as a trading port and serves as a window for studying the history of Sino-Western cultural exchanges. Canton was a city built under Confucian orders, leading to significant differences (when compared to Christian cities) in urban functional zoning, layout, urban landscape, and methods for shaping spatial order. Therefore, the churches constructed by Christian missionary societies in Canton merit particular attention in missionary history research and urban planning history. Based on local gazetteers, historical maps, export paintings, Western travelogues, and archives at that time, from a cultural landscape perspective, this article compares and analyzes the spatial expansion of Christian churches and their influences on the urban landscape in Canton in two stages. In the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, the spatial layout of the churches indicated an active integration into Canton City. After the Opium War, churches were not only used for religious purposes but also served as symbols asserting the presence of Christians and Western powers (which made the situation more complicated). Missionary societies attracted believers through the construction of public facilities, building Christian communities centered around churches, thereby competing with authorities for spatial power and influencing the urban functional system and spatial layout controlled by the authorities. Comparatively, the Roman Catholic Cathedral has profoundly changed the traditional landscape order in Canton, while the Protestant Dongshan Church interacted more closely with the city.

Corinth in Late Antiquity: A Greek, Roman and Christian City. By Amelia R. Brown. Library of Classical Studies 17. London: I.B. Tauris, 2018. xiv + 341 pp., 10 pp. of plates. $125.00 hardcover.

Corinth in Late Antiquity: A Greek, Roman and Christian City. By Amelia R. Brown. Library of Classical Studies 17. London: I.B. Tauris, 2018. xiv + 341 pp., 10 pp. of plates. $125.00 hardcover.

God’s Wrath over Antioch, 525–540 CE

Ancient Antioch (modern Antakya) is well known as a city prone to disasters. However, the calamitous events that hit the city between 525 and 540 CE have attracted particular attention. Within a time span of fifteen years, Antioch suffered major destructions by two massive earthquakes, several conflagrations, and a Persian sack. These events are reported in highly dramatic accounts by John Malalas and Procopius. Based on such reports, scholars since the nineteenth century have often interpreted these disasters as the starting point for a general decline of the city beginning in the sixth century. More recent reassessments, in contrast, have highlighted continuities on a variety of levels, emphasizing that over the long term, Antioch displayed high resilience on structural and institutional levels. This article picks up on these more recent findings but strives to approach the subject from a different angle. It focuses on Malalas’s and Procopius’s influential disaster narratives and seeks to further contextualize them. It traces how modern scholarly reception of the literary sources has fostered the traditional picture of “decline,” and it analyzes the narrative strategies of the texts, considering the literary traditions from which they originate and the cultural setting of which they form a part. The article seeks to show that the late ancient reports aim not to establish a picture of decline but rather to present Antioch as a purified, freshly Christianized city emerging from the ashes. It further argues that while it is important to critically reflect upon the rhetorical character of the double narrative of heavenly destruction and recreation, exploring the question of Antioch’s urban development in the sixth century through the lens of contemporary discourse on the Christian city not only increases our sensitivity to the methodological problems connected to these texts but may also lead to a better understanding of our evidence on Antioch’s post-Roman development.

A healthy Christian city: Christianising health care in late fourteenth-century Seville

ABSTRACT This essay traces the interconnected endeavours to forge civic health-care provisions and to Christianise the public sphere in late fourteenth-century Seville. Following waves of plague and civil unrest, and growing religious fervour, Seville of the period was building its civic structures anew. Within this process, the municipality and central religious figures in the city took initiatives to advance health care and public health. This essay demonstrates the breadth of measures invested in pursuing health in the city and their entanglement with the religious agenda. The individuals and institutions which sponsored and endorsed health care also advocated the ideal of a Christian community versed in the principles of the Christian faith. The unique case study of Seville’s closely-knit community of health-care promoters sheds light on the significant role of health care and the perception of health within Iberian religious culture of the period.

Jerusalem 1099

On 15 July 1099, after more than four and a half centuries of Muslim rule, Jerusalem fell to the army of the First Crusade and for the next 88 years it became once again a Christian city. At that time, the city’s population may have numbered hundreds rather than the thousands of earlier periods, but it seems to have grown afterwards. The size of the late 12th century population may therefore have been closer to that of the mid-11th century, perhaps around 20,000–30,000, that is to say roughly the same size as Acre, Tyre, Florence or London in the same period. Along with these demographic fluctuations and the reduction of the area defended by city-walls, this paper analyses the impact of Christian rule on the town structures. From the conversion of the former Aqṣā Mosque as a royal palace, and then as the Temple’s headquarters, to the renovation of the Citadel as a small triangular-shaped fortress, and mostly to the important changes made in the Holy Sepulchre, with the enlargement of the church and the addition of an adjoining monastic cloister.

RELIGION AND POLITICS IN THE CONTEXT OF THE 6 JANUARY 2021 ASSAULT ON THE US CONGRESS

On January 6, 2021, an angry mob attacked security forces and stormed the United States Congress, a significant portion of which carried placards containing Christian symbols and manifested ultra-religious conduct. The crowd chanted religious slogans and songs mixed with extremist ideological-political landmarks, QAnon conspiracy theories and racist attitudes. The protesters also followed a ritual found in the Bible, in the Old Testament, in the book of Joshua Navi, an Israelite leader to whom God indicated how he would conquer the City of Jericho, full of corrupt and fornicating people if he obeyed the divine command. The participants in the assault followed the same ritual to “conquer” the fortress of the Capitol a month before and repeated it starting with January 5, 2021. Since religion is the belief in God and represents the relationship between the faithful man and divinity, the acquisition of elements of political ideology by ultra-religious people was considered natural and mandatory in shaping a society to develop on Christian principles in the form of a “Christian city”. In this article, by analyzing the attitude of the Christian community in two distinct phases, before and during and after the assault on the US Congress, the result of the manifestation of the phenomenon of ultrareligiosity combined with an extremist political ideology will be revealed.

Book Review of Corinth in Late Antiquity: A Greek, Roman and Christian City, by Amelia Robertson Brown

Brown’s volume is an impressive compilation of the available evidence for the fate of the Greek and Roman versions of the city of Corinth. The city, poised on the Isthmus of Corinth in Greece, has attracted travelers, scholars, and tourists consistently since antiquity. Early excavations, as at so many sites, began with efforts to reach Greek levels, but Corinth was blessed all along with more than a few archaeologists with an interest in things Byzantine and Roman.

Maqasidi Leadership of Minority Religions Figure for Maintaining Tolerance in Manado, Indonesia

Manado's Muslim minority mindset stops social, political, and religious activities. Although Islam is the second-largest religion after Protestantism, this mindset can be seen by the impression that Manado is a 'Christian City' known as the “Tower of a Thousand Churches.” This article describes the strategy of minority religious leaders (Islam) in tolerating the perspective of Maqasid al-Syari'ah. The research data was collected through observation and in-depth interviews with religious leaders from the Islamic boarding school Kiai, IAIN Manado lecturers, and Muslim youth. The research findings show that first, the values ​​of religious tolerance in Manado have developed in the form of slogans, such as "Torang Samua Basudara," " Torang Samua Ciptaan Tuhan, "and "Si Tou Timou Tumou Tou," second, the strategy of Islamic religious leaders in maintaining tolerance through (1) mutual respect for beliefs, (2) fighting for religious teachers and places of worship (mushola) in public schools, (3) creating dialogue forums between religious communities, (4) enlivening Islamic syi'ar, such as majlis taklim, the graduation ceremony for students from all over North Sulawesi, and (5) halal certification. This finding has implications for the Maqasidi type for religious minority leaders in tolerance to protect Muslims' faith.

Representações da Cultura Oriental e Ocidental em Amor e Dedinhos de Pé.

This paper will focus on the conflicts between Orientals and Westerners living in Macao at the beginning of the 20th century. The film Amor e Dedinhos de Pé by the director Luís Filipe Rocha, based on the homonymous novel by Henrique de Senna Fernandes will be analyzed from a perspective of a memory film as it presents a historical reconstruction that portrays the society of Macao at a time when the region was under Portuguese rule. Through the adventures and misadventures of a young man from a declining bourgeois family, both the novel and the film denounce the contrast between Eastern and Western cultures that coexisted at the time. The relationship between the inhabitants will also be seen as a mirror of the social relations that show particularly intense moments of people’s life of the “Christian City” characterized by magnificent ballrooms, well dressed people and homes with servants, which contrasts with the poverty environment lived in the “Chinese Quarter” of dirty and tight alleys where people of humble appearance wander. The city described by Luís Filip Rocha is a place of encounters and disagreements, and also of (i)moral confrontations between East and West which help to characterize the main characters who, at various times, transgress the rules established by a closed and discriminatory society.

Review: Corinth in Late Antiquity: a Greek, Roman, and Christian City, by Amelia R. Brown

Review: Corinth in Late Antiquity: a Greek, Roman, and Christian City, by Amelia R. Brown

콘스탄티누스 대제의 기독교 주화와 정치 종교적 함의

Constantine the Great was the first ruler to mint Christian coins. His Christian coins typically bear images of the cross, Christ’s name (key-ro) and images of the “Hand of God,” which are generally the most numerous coins in largest volume. Cross coins were issued by Constantine the Great from 319, but the total quantity was not large. It still suggests that the cross was not yet a central symbol of Christianity until the time of the Great Era. Instead, various Christian symbols were used in coins. The name of Christ was also used frequently on the coins.BR The Christian coinage of the Great Empire contributed greatly to the spread of Christianity, which clearly served as a decisive factor in the social and economic internalization of Christianity in the Roman Empire. Among the coin-making directors of Christian cities such as Ephesus and Constantinople, obviously there were a large number of Christians, so they were able to publish Christian coins in cooperation with the high priest. Crosses on coins issued in these cities can be seen as clearly meaning Christianity.BR Nevertheless, Constantine generally took a gradual attitude and a hybridist approach in issuing Christian coins. In terms of the rate of coin issuance, many coins sought to follow the traditional form. In the early days of the reign, the issuance of castings, including pagan images and phrases, was also permitted, and the quantity was gradually reduced. The characteristics of Constantine’s Christian coinage are a mixture of pagan gods and crosses, and a mixture of pagan phrases and Christ names. This reveals the religious syncretism of the great emperor. In the 30-year reign of Constantine, the total number of coins issued is about 500. A total of 11 kinds of all coins included the cross, and 10 coins were named Key-roh. The type of cross coins was comparatively small, but the amount of issue was considerable. In other words, rather than various symbols, they repeatedly published coins of focus on crosses and slogans.BR In the Constantine coinage, Christian patterns, such as crosses, Christian names, and religious phrases, were used in the margins, as well as in equipment such as pitches, shields, and military flags. This style of coinage is also consistent with the records of Eusebios’ writing. If many of the 4th century Christian coins included Christian symbols, the 5th century coins that followed became many independently engraved Christian symbols, apart from the items such as flags or weapons. If the Christian symbol in the fourth-century Constantine coinage gave the impression of religious decoration, it can be said that the sixth-century Christian coins showed not only decoration, but also Christianity itself as the center of empire and politics.

Christianizing Asia Minor: Conversion, Communities, and Social Change in the Pre-Constantinian Era by Paul McKechnie

Reviewed by: Christianizing Asia Minor: Conversion, Communities, and Social Change in the Pre-Constantinian Era by Paul McKechnie Ulrich Huttner Paul McKechnie Christianizing Asia Minor: Conversion, Communities, and Social Change in the Pre-Constantinian Era Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019 Pp. 332. $99.99. More and more studies explore the processes of Christianization in Asia Minor, and we are grateful to Paul McKechnie for having set an important milestone in this field. It is not the first time that the author has contributed to the discussion, as his survey about Christian city councilors is well-known (Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion 5 [2009]: 1–20). The title of his new book may be a little misleading as it does not treat all of Asia Minor, but focuses only a [End Page 341] small part, Phrygia and its “mixed urban-rural communities” (16). Explaining the religious developments, McKechnie refers to an idea drafted by P. L. Berger: the shift of the “sacred canopy” spread out over the territories controlled by the Romans (88, 196, 246). Chapter One focuses on Colossae: the Pauline Epistle to the Colossians is one of the central sources, and a pivotal question regards the kind of philosophy the author assails. There is every reason to suppose the Epistle was reacting to a complex texture of Greek, Phrygian, and Jewish traditions. In connection with this discussion, McKechnie provides a consistent sketch of the development of Jewish communities in Phrygia, underpinned by some instructive considerations of Talmudic evidence. As always he is very cautious about dividing the different religious identities too sharply: sometimes it is impossible to distinguish Jewish from Christian epitaphs. Chapter Two (“Hierapolis”) takes a look at one of the best-known towns in Phrygia. Here, McKechnie draws the line of Christian authority from Philippus, who came together with his daughters from Palestine to the Lycus Valley, further on to Papias and Apollinarius in the time of Marcus Aurelius. He makes some persuasive points in his reconstruction of a network of bishops in the province of Asia, but it remains doubtful whether they really belonged to the same kinship group (Eusebius, H.E. 5.24.6: συγγενεῖς) or were based in Hierapolis (59–61). Chapter Three, “Teachers of Asia: Ignatius, Polycarp, Paul and Thecla,” turns to Iconium and Pisidian Antioch as important scenes of action. The Acts of Paul and Thecla are rooted in inner Anatolia, and McKechnie is right to emphasize the author’s local knowledge. Polycarp’s Smyrnaean martyrdom and Ignatius’s epistles on the other hand rather illuminate the coastal zones of Asia Minor. Chapters Four and Five trace the development of Montanism: neither the biography of its founder is clear, nor the details of topography and chronology. Montanus came from the prophetical tradition one could observe among the earliest Christians. Integrating the first Christian epitaphs from Temenothyrae into Montanist evidence (132–38) may not convince everyone: the “presbytera” mentioned on one of them could even have belonged to a Christian movement opposing to the Montanists (S. Mitchell in P. Thonemann, ed., Roman Phrygia [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013], 168–97; challenged by McKechnie,144–46). Chapters Six and Seven examine the testimonies about Aberkios, bishop of Phrygian Hieropolis under Marcus Aurelius. McKechnie’s remarks on his famous epitaph and the biblical echoes found in this text are highly illuminating. The opinion that Aberkios is to be identified with Avercius Marcellus, mentioned as anti-Montanist by Eusebius (H.E. 5.16.3), may be contested, but McKechnie is certainly right in explaining parts of the inscription in terms of its Montanist background (158–60). As always with hagiography, the historical evaluation of the Vita Abercii poses a lot of problems. It is significant that McKechnie submits the first English translation of this interesting text (263–87). There are a lot of details in the Vita explained by McKechnie in an excellent way, but taking the Acta Petri and their alleged influence on the Vita Abercii as a base for dating the latter (169–70) seems unconvincing. [End Page 342] Chapter Eight is about Apollonia in the Phrygo-Pisidian borderlands. McKechnie pinpoints one of the leading families during the time of Augustus, and he can...

Architectural and spatial organization of fortified settlements in Western Alania

The article is dedicated to the medieval settlements architectural peculiarities revealing in Western Alania. These settlements were situated in the river ravines in the Karachay-Cherkessia territory. According to the planning criterion two types of settlements have been revealed: traditional and contaminated. The traditional type was formed during the pre-Christian period. Its three-part structure was the universe mythological model spatial manifestation. The contaminated type appeared during the Christian period. The peculiarities of its architectural and spatial organization are connected to the fact that its planning structure developed according to the byzantine Christian city scheme with the traditional Alan culture understanding. These types developed following the fortified settlement pattern, whose planning structure consisted of a citadel, a fortress and a fortified hillfort, but both types had different fortifications. According to the fortification criteria and the location in the landscape the above-mentioned types are united within a group of three kinds fortified settlements: the main fortresses (the vanguards), naturally protected settlements and guarded settlements (cultural and ideological centers, trade and craft centers).

Chromatius of Aquileia and the Making of a Christian City. By Robert McEachnie. New York: Routledge, 2017. ix + 194 pp. $155.00 cloth.

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THE CHANGING FACES OF CORINTH - (A.R.) Brown Corinth in Late Antiquity. A Greek, Roman and Christian City. Pp. xxiv + 341, ills, maps. London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2018. Cased, £69, US$120. ISBN: 978-1-78453-823-1.

THE CHANGING FACES OF CORINTH - (A.R.) Brown Corinth in Late Antiquity. A Greek, Roman and Christian City. Pp. xxiv + 341, ills, maps. London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2018. Cased, £69, US$120. ISBN: 978-1-78453-823-1.

English

Dolisie is the third largest city of Congo, located at the enterance of the Mayombe forest. This city became an urban center when, in 1933, the colonial administrator Blanchet set Chemin de Fer Congo-Ocean (CFCO) in the center for the construction and management of the country’s main railways. At that time, Protestant and Catholic missionaries had settled there for a longtime. But at the end of the CFCO works in 1934, a great number of Muslims - that were traveling-companions of explorers such as Pierre Savorgnan De Brazza for the purpose of valuing the Middle-Congo-settled there as farmers and tradesmen. Therefore, culturally speaking, the city of Dolisie is a Christian city. It is in such a Christian milieu, in the village of colonization that Muslim cult settled itself, with the construction of the city’s first mosque in 1937. One of the well-known Muslim at that time was Sy Biranti Kao, born in about 1892 in Tuabu, Eastern Senegal, where he went back and died in 1974. It appears that there had been no religious troubles between such a settlement and Christendom. It was the beginning of an endlessly renewed migration, and also the beginning of fraternization between Muslims and Christians in an urban milieu. Key words: Settlement, Muslim cult, Dolisie, Christian milieu, fraternization.

Cemeteries and urban form: a historico-geographical approach

Research in urban morphology rarely takes account of the specific forms of burial grounds. This paper offers a synthesis of how Christian cities of the dead mirror the cities of the living, and provides an overview of different Western European ‘funeral epochs’. The shifting location of burial grounds relates to major changes in town planning and building. Adopting a historico-geographical approach, micro-morphological transformations of grave-plot forms and their cardinal orientations and accessibility are explored in the context of changing religious beliefs, rules on hygiene, and practical and aesthetic considerations. The role of cemeteries in fringe-belt development is presented, using Vienna as a historical case study.

Ciudades de Andalucía: paisajes e imágenes. Siglos XIII-XVII by Andrea Mariana Navarro

Reviewed by: Ciudades de Andalucía: paisajes e imágenes. Siglos XIII-XVII by Andrea Mariana Navarro Payton Phillips Quintanilla Andrea Mariana Navarro, Ciudades de Andalucía: paisajes e imágenes. Siglos XIII-XVII ( Madrid: Dykinson 2017) 402 pp. In Ciudades de Andalucía: paisajes e imágenes. Siglos XIII-XVII, Andrea Mariana Navarro makes an important contribution to a growing corpus of peninsular scholarship that connects the medieval to the early modern and the literary to the historical. Navarro's succinct and useful introduction (11–14) explains her approach to the study of urban images and imaginaries through the interdisciplinary lens of cultural history. By recuperating the individual and collective voices of those people who inhabited, governed, visited, or were otherwise tasked with visually or textually representing the Christian kingdoms of Córdoba, Jaén, and Sevilla (which were conquered by Ferdinand III in 1236, 1246, and 1248, respectively) between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries, [End Page 255] she explores the ways in which the subjective constructions of these kingdoms are marked by sensorial and affective experiences, social values, economic or political interests, and cultural expectations and models. This is especially pertinent to a key discussion woven throughout her book's four chapters and nearly four hundred pages: the relationship between the real and the ideal as these kingdoms' cities and territories self-consciously transformed into "modern" spaces in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Significantly, Navarro's study includes the non-urban spaces (señoríos, villas, aldeas, etc.) that existed in often-complicated interdependence with the great Christian cities of medieval and early modern Andalucía—including, in addition to each kingdom's namesake, Úbeda, Baeza, and Andújar in the Kingdom of Jaén; and Carmona, Jerez de la Frontera, and Écija in the Kingdom of Sevilla. (It should be noted that, although this book covers the thirteenth through seventeenth centuries, the Kingdom of Granada, which was conquered in 1492, is not a protagonist of its pages but, rather, a secondary character.) The relationship between the urban and the rural is privileged in the two chapters that comprise Part One of Navarro's book: "El espacio exterior de las ciudades" (19–149). Chapter One, "Imágenes de la ciudad y su territorio" (19–100), introduces the reader to the kingdoms of Córdoba, Jaén, and Sevilla, beginning with their jurisdictional construction and authority as they passed from Muslim to Christian rule, and the political and economic instability that these jurisdictions suffered after the fourteenth century. Then, by contrast, the rather stable textual constructions of Andalucía (in Castilian, Arabic, and other languages), century after century, asserted and praised the region's unparalleled beauty, riches, and fertility, often making use of classical texts, myths, legends, nostalgia, or sentimentality alongside first- and second-hand accounts and observations. Navarro then tackles the subject of the pictorial vistas urbanas that grew in popularity and demand from the sixteenth century onward, demonstrating their congruence with the major tropes already seen in textual constructions of Andalucía, which included a clear adherence to the traditions of laudatio and locus amoenus and a heavy focus on the symbiotic relationship between the city, its waterways, and its countryside. Chapter Two, "Imágenes de la ciudad-fortaleza" (101–149), examines the forms and functions of the walls (with their gates and towers), castles, forts, and other structures that physically and symbolically defined both Andalucía's cities and its fluctuating frontiers. The purposes of these fortifications went far beyond resisting enemy forces or serving as sites of rendition: they enabled and regulated trade, travel, and communication; they were wielded by nobles and royals in struggles for power and sovereignty; and they assisted in establishing and maintaining social hierarchies and cultural identities within the cities themselves. Even as city walls slowly transformed from defensive into decorative structures (if not into ruins), and the alcázares from military into residential compounds, they continued to characterize Andalucía's urban centers by projecting multivalent images, both without and within. Appropriately, these physical and symbolic gateways also serve as entrée into to the second half of Navarro's study, which focuses on the material, social, and spiritual lives...

Coming Home? The Imminent Immanent City

This essay, given as the third of three lectures comprising the Charles E. Test Lectures at the Madison program at Princeton in May 2017, concludes the project of defending T. S. Eliot s suggestion that the future of Western societies will be determined by a contest between Christianity and modern paganism. Accepting for purposes of discussion the claim that the pagan city has succeeded in displacing the Christian city, the essay asks whether this development is something to celebrate or to lament. The question is considered both with respect to the prospects for community and with respect to the question of human flourishing or a meaningful life.

The Pagan City, the Christian City, and the Secular City

This essay, given as the first of three lectures comprising the Charles E. Test Lectures at the Madison program at Princeton in May 2017, initiates the project of defending T. S. Eliot’s suggestion that the future of Western societies will be determined by a contest between Christianity and “modern paganism.” The essay attempts to give an account of “paganism” as immanent religiosity, in contrast to the transcendent religiosity of later Judaism and Christianity. It then discusses the displacement of paganism by Christianity in late antiquity, but suggests (using Ronald Dworkin as the central example) that paganism has enjoyed a revival in recent times. Hence, our current cultural struggles are less helpfully thought of as clashes of “religion v. secularism” than as a struggle between competing forms of religiosity.