Graffiti, scratched or drawn on the walls of religious shrines, provide unique unmediated evidence of how ordinary men and women, many of them pilgrims, invoked and sought the help of God and the saints in Late Antiquity. The papers in this volume document and discuss cultic graffiti across the entire late antique Mediterranean, and into Nubia and Arabia. The principal focus is the Christian world, but there are also papers that look back to pre-Christian practice, and into the world of early Islam. Presenting evidence that is often unfamiliar, this is an important volume for anyone interested in the History and Archaeology of Late Antiquity. In examining cultic practice, we are almost always compelled to view the actions of devotees through texts written by the ecclesiastical elite, often with a clear hagiographical agenda in mind - cultic graffiti are evidence produced by the protagonists themsleves.
Author(s): Antonio E. Felle, Bryan Ward-Perkins
Series: Contextualizing the Sacred, 11
Publisher: Brepols Publishers
Year: 2021
Language: English
Pages: 250
City: Turnhout
Front Matter
Rebecca R. Benefiel. 1. Graffiti in Religious Spaces in First-Century Pompeii: Lararia, Neighbourhood Shrines, and Graffiti in the Early Roman Empire
Marlena Whiting. 2. Contextualizing Christian Pilgrim Graffiti in the Late Antique Holy Land
Leah Di Segni. 3. Jewish Devotional Graffiti and Dipinti in the Holy Land
Francesco Guizzi. 4. ‘Servant of the Apostle Philip’: Byzantine Graffiti from Hierapolis of Phrygia (Turkey)
Antonio E. Felle. 5. Late Antique Christian Graffiti:The Case of Rome (Third to Fifth Centuries CE)
Carlo Carletti. 6. At the Origins of European Pilgrimage: The Devotional Graffiti of the Anglo-Saxons in Rome (Seventh–Ninth Centuries)
Jacques van der Vliet. 7. Inscribing Space in Christian Egypt
Alain Delattre. 8. Graffiti from Christian Egypt and the Cult of the Saints: A Case Study from Dayr Abū Ḥinnis
Paweł Nowakowski. 9. Pilgrims and Seafarers: A Survey of Travellers’ Graffiti from the Aegean Islands
Efthymios Rizos. 10. Associational Religion in Late Antiquity? Professional Groups, Factions, and Confraternities in Christian Cultic Graffiti
Frédéric Imbert. 11. Religious Graffiti from Early Islam in Arabia and the Near East
Adam Łajtar. 12. Cultic Graffiti in Christian Nubia (Sixth to Fifteenth Centuries)
Antonio E. Felle. 13. Inscriptions, Graffiti, Graffiti devotionis causa: Some Concluding Notes and Reflections
Bryan Ward-Perkins. 14. Graffiti and Religion: Some Concluding Remarks and Perspectives
