Civic Cults Research Articles

Hekate of Lagina: a goddess performing her civic duty

AbstractThe Hellenistic Sanctuary of Hekate at Lagina represents the only site at which Hekate received state-sponsored cult at a monumental temple and a privileged place in the local pantheon. Elsewhere in Karia and the wider Greek world, Hekate was associated with magic and the underworld and received personal dedications at doorways and crossroads. This portrayal was echoed in art, where her character manifested in her triple-bodied form. Yet, at Lagina, part of the city of Stratonikeia, she was always represented with a single body. She was the focus of civic cult, in particular during the Hekatesia-Romaia festival, which celebrated the political alliance between Stratonikeia and Rome. Through an analysis of inscriptions, representations of the goddess in sculpture and coins, and the ritual use of the complex, this article concludes that Hekate of Lagina was a syncretic and singular figure who did not exist outside of Stratonikeia, and that her function at Lagina was primarily political, as a civic patron. As a goddess who oversaw life’s transitions and acted as a saviour of her people, she was uniquely suited to the role. The goddess and her sanctuary were used by the local population to create community identities and to negotiate their relationships with the wider world, particularly their imperial rulers.

Städtische Philosophenkulte in der griechischen Welt zwischen Archaik und Hellenismus – Fakten und Fiktionen

The aim of this paper is to provide a systematical analysis of civic cults for philosophers in the Greek world as attested in literary and epigraphic sources for philosophers in Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic times. It examines six philosophers and persons who were connected with philosophy: Anaxagoras, Aristotle, Athenodorus of Tarsus, Iollas of Sardis, and Pythagoras. The main focus is on questions of the historicity of the cults as well as on their argumentative setting in the context of biographical accounts of the respective persons.

The Gods, the State, and the Individual: Reflections on Civic Religion in Rome. By John Scheid. Translated and with a foreword by Clifford Ando. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015. Pp. xxiii+174. $55.00.

<i>The Gods, the State, and the Individual: Reflections on Civic Religion in Rome</i>. By John Scheid. Translated and with a foreword by Clifford Ando. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015. Pp. xxiii+174. $55.00.

The Vegetarian Festival and the city pillar: the appropriation of a Chinese religious custom for a cult of the Thai civic religion

The Krabi Provincial Administrative Organization, in co-operation with the Krabi provincial government (southern Thailand), has since 2006 organized a conjoint street procession of the Chinese shrines in the province, in the course of their Vegetarian Festival, to a prayer at the Krabi City Pillar. Two heretofore unrelated rituals, one a popular Chinese custom, the other a cult of Thai civic religion, with roots in Indian Brahmanism, were thus amalgamated. The conspicuous conjoint procession, bringing together the discrete processions of numerous shrines dispersed throughout the province, transformed the character of the shrines' processions, and superimposed an encompassing Thai cosmography upon the localized cosmic images engendered by the festival rituals in the individual shrines. The spectacular event, featuring pierced or otherwise self-mutilating spirit mediums of the various shrines, made Krabi a potential competitor with the established centers of the festival, Phuket and Trang, for the patronage of domestic and Chinese diasporic devotees; but the ‘gruesome’ and repetitive character of the mediums' performances seems to impair the chances of the conjoint procession of becoming a major attraction for Western tourists. This article relates the context, process and consequences of this appropriation of a popular Chinese custom for a Thai civic cult and discusses it in terms of a comparative framework for the study of change in tourism-related festivals.

Constructing a commemorative culture: American veterans and memorialization from Valley Forge to Vietnam

Ever since Philippe Ariès identified World War I as the conflict that witnessed the peak of the 'civic cult of the dead', scholars have tended to interpret the response to death in battle in the context of that 'war to end all wars'. In the case of the United States, the militarized commemorative culture that lies at the heart of its national identity has a personal and political resonance, expressed through a combination of public ceremonial constructions and practices and personal published narratives. Together these comprise the commemorative response both to the dead of war and surviving veterans. This response is designed to contain and control the death resulting from warfare, and is one that, although developed in the context of nineteenth-century conflict, clearly prefigured the development of late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century European military commemorative ritual which, in turn, influenced the evolution of commemoration in the twentieth-century United States.

The Archaic Polis of Azoria: A Window into Cretan ‘Polital’ Social Structure

This article seeks to build a structural model for the development of the Cretan polis through an analysis of the civic structure of Archaic Azoria. Azoria’s civic structural network is compared to that of the early polis on mainland Greece. Insights gained from comparative modeling of elite-sponsored civic structure in these two regions are applied to Crete, allowing us to construct a more robust network of early ‘polital’ structure for that island. Results of this analysis indicate that Cretan elites constructed their positions within the Cretan polis through methods such as exclusion. They additionally show that the unique relationship between civic institutions and those of the Cretan inter-polital sanctuary highlights the role that the institutions within the andreion and within civic cult play in polis development, as well as elucidating the unique character of the family–community interface on Crete. Results of this analysis highlight important issues in the emergence of the Cretan polis, and suggest fruitful future research.

The Archaic Polis of Azoria

This article seeks to build a structural model for the development of the Cretan polis through an analysis of the civic structure of Archaic Azoria. Azoria’s civic structural network is compared to that of the early polis on mainland Greece. Insights gained from comparative modeling of elite-sponsored civic structure in these two regions are applied to Crete, allowing us to construct a more robust network of early ‘polital’ structure for that island. Results of this analysis indicate that Cretan elites constructed their positions within the Cretan polis through methods such as exclusion. They additionally show that the unique relationship between civic institutions and those of the Cretan inter-polital sanctuary highlights the role that the institutions within the andreion and within civic cult play in polis development, as well as elucidating the unique character of the family–community interface on Crete. Results of this analysis highlight important issues in the emergence of the Cretan polis, and suggest fruitful future research.

Luto e culto cívico dos mortos: as tensões da memória pública da Revolução Constitucionalista de 1932 (São Paulo, 1932-1937)

O artigo trata das tensões na memória pública da Revolução Constitucionalista, baseando-se na análise da invenção do culto cívico dos mortos em combate entre 1932 e 1937. Busca compreender a relação entre o luto como expressão dos sentimentos pessoais da perda e o culto cívico dos mortos, que estabelecia um sentido político preciso para a morte dos combatentes.

Identité politique et religion dans la cité classique

The religious dimension is a fundamental aspect of the Greek citizen’s political identity, and it is its different facets that I shall study in this article. A range of practices exercised beyond the public and official religious manifestations of the polis, such as worship at family cults, phratries and demes, contribute to the definition of a political identity. Similarly, some civic cults are expressed at family level and concern the individual as a private person. All these forms of worship show how individual just as collective religious practices have a share in construing a political identity. They also encourage one to explore the definition of political identity itself, as well as the concepts of 'individual and ‘private’ in the context of the polis.

Cities of God: The Religion of the Italian Communes 1125-1325 (review)

Cities of God: The Religion of the Italian Communes 1125-1325. By Augustine Thompson, O.P. (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press. 2005. Pp. xiv, 502.) Augustine Thompson might not dissent from the proposition that the most important thing about this book is its existence. As he remarks, studies of Italian medieval religion have often focused on heresy or on institutional structures, devoting little attention to everyday religious practices that were (mostly) orthodox because the performers hardly considered any other possibility. On the other hand, standard treatments of the Italian communes have often neglected religion. Perhaps scholars in the field have been looking at medieval and Renaissance Italians in the hope of finding the ancestors of their rational, humanistic selves; they may also have been subconsciously afraid of shrinking the all-important gap between medieval Italians and their contemporaries elsewhere in Europe. Certainly that might seem to be one of this book's effects. Not its least valuable aspect is that it is, in large part, a richly documented in-depth description of the Christian faith and practice of one medieval society. How precisely did this differ from urban Christianity elsewhere in Europe? Differences emerge, or are hinted at, from time to time. The northern or central Italian cathedral acquired a distinct identity as the baptismal 'mother church' of the whole diocese that was impossible for the cathedrals of the large dioceses common north of the Alps. At least within the city, baptism created not only the Christian but the citizen; these were Christian communities in their nature. Urban political autonomy in the period under review had its religious effects: the celebration of the civic patron was used as a public demonstration of submission to the authority of the commune. Much more often than not, the cathedral was the locus of this cult, even when (as with St. James at Pistoia or the Volto Santo at Lucca) it was not focussed on the cathedral's titular saint. Bologna's manufactured civic cult of San Petronio was an exception in being located elsewhere. Presumptive higher literacy rates and, perhaps, the especially intimate involvement of the friars in Italian urban life are other areas in which one might perhaps look for an Italian difference. By 1300 both the politics and the religion of the communes were being reshaped under a variety of pressures. The lady who, albeit a practising Cathar, paid for a new roof for Orvieto Cathedral was an anomaly no longer to be tolerated; the Christianity that qualified one for membership in urban society had to stand official scrutiny, and the loosely regulated forms of lay piety that had nurtured and been nurtured by the independent commune progressively underwent the directive influence of the friars as the thirteenth century wore on. …

The Sociological Factors Behind Philippians 3.1-11 and the Conflict At Philippi

This article suggests that the argument in Phil. 3.1-11 was shaped by the particular sociological and historical situation of the Philippian church, namely, the ongoing conflict between the church and Roman society at Philippi. This was a conflict caused—at least in part—by a clash between the Christian gospel and the ideology of the civic cult of the city. The identity of the agitators in Phil. 3.2-6 was most likely Jewish-Christian, that is, Judaizers. Their appeal to accept circumcision would have been theologically attractive for the Philippian believers as a means of securing their identity as true members of God's people. Moreover, for a church which suffered from the clash with the surrounding society, the same message would also have been sociologically attractive as a means of mitigating the conflict and obtaining recognition as a religio licita and protection from Rome. Therefore, Paul strongly warns the Philippian believers against the agitators and encourages them to identify with the power and sufferings of Christ and not with the Jewish community.