In Ritual Sites and Religious Rivalries in Late Roman North Africa, Lander examines the rhetorical and physical battles for sacred space between practitioners of traditional Roman religion, Christians, and Jews of late Roman North Africa. By analyzing literary along with archaeological evidence, Lander provides a new understanding of ancient notions of ritual space. This regard for ritual sites above other locations rendered the act or mere suggestion of seizing and destroying them powerful weapons in inter-group religious conflicts. Lander demonstrates that the quantity and harshness of discursive and physical attacks on ritual spaces directly correlates to their symbolic value. This heightened valuation reached such a level that rivals were willing to violate conventional Roman norms of property rights to display spatial control. Moreover, Roman Imperial policy eventually appropriated spatial triumphalism as a strategy for negotiating religious conflicts, giving rise to a new form of spatial colonialism that was explicitly religious.
Author(s): Shira L. Lander
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Year: 2016
Language: English
Pages: 299
City: Cambridge
Cover
Half-title
Title page
Copyright information
Dedication
Table of contents
List of Illustrations
Preface
List of Abbreviations
Introduction: Scaffolding
1 Foundational Assumptions
Memory and Place
Spatial Violence or Vandalism?
Identity versus Identification
2 Christian Perceptions of Communal Places
Perceptions of Space
Churches as Seats of Episcopal Authority
Places as Bodies
Place Meanings and Ritual Behaviors
Summary
3 Internecine Christian Contestation
Spatial Contestation
Archaeological Evidence of Internecine Spatial Contestation
Architectural Dispossession, Spatial Supersession, and Sectarian Conflict
4 Christian Supersession of Traditional Roman Temples
Christians and Traditional Roman Religion
Roman Attacks on Churches
Rhetorical Supersessionism Meets Architectural Dispossession
Architectural Dispossession: The Archaeological Record
Temple of Ceres-church at Thuburbo Maius
Church I at Thamugadi (Timgad, Algeria)
Temple of Asclepius-church Djebel Oust
Church III (so-called Basilica of Servus) at Sufetula
Conclusion
5 Christian Supersession of Synagogues
Synagogues as Holy Spaces
Attitudes toward Synagogues in Roman Legislation
Synagogues as Sites of Architectural Displacement: The Archaeological Record
Synagogues and Spatial Supersession: The Literary Record
Summary
Conclusion: Ritual Spatial Control, Authority, and Identification
Select Bibliography
Index
