City of Saints: Rebuilding Rome in the Early Middle Ages

Description

It was far from inevitable that Rome would emerge as the spiritual center of Western Christianity in the early Middle Ages. After the move of the Empire's capital to Constantinople in the fourth century and the Gothic Wars in the sixth century, Rome was gradually depleted physically, economically, and politically. How then, asks Maya Maskarinec, did this exhausted city, with limited Christian presence, transform over the course of the sixth through ninth centuries into a seemingly inexhaustible reservoir of sanctity? Conventional narratives explain the rise of Christian Rome as resulting from an increasingly powerful papacy. In 'City of Saints', Maskarinec looks outward, to examine how Rome interacted with the wider Mediterranean world in the Byzantine period. During the early Middle Ages, the city imported dozens of saints and their legends, naturalized them, and physically layered their cults onto the city's imperial and sacred topography. Maskarinec documents Rome's spectacular physical transformation, drawing on church architecture, frescoes, mosaics, inscriptions, Greek and Latin hagiographical texts, and less-studied documents that attest to the commemoration of these foreign saints. These sources reveal a vibrant plurality of voices—Byzantine administrators, refugees, aristocrats, monks, pilgrims, and others—who shaped a distinctly Roman version of Christianity. 'City of Saints' extends its analysis to the end of the ninth century, when the city's ties to the Byzantine world weakened. Rome's political and economic orbits moved toward the Carolingian world, where the saints' cults circulated, valorizing Rome's burgeoning claims as a microcosm of the "universal" Christian church. Introduction CHAPTER 1. A City of Saints CHAPTER 2. Imperial Saints Triumphant in the Forum Romanum CHAPTER 3. St. Caesarius on the Palatine: Enriching Rome by Imperial Orders CHAPTER 4. Miraculous Charity Along the Tiber’s Banks CHAPTER 5. Fashioning Saints for the Affluent on the Aventine Hill CHAPTER 6. Collectivities of Sanctity in Early Medieval Rome CHAPTER 7. Carolingian Romes Outside of Rome CHAPTER 8. A Universalizing Rome Through the Lens of Ado of Vienne Epilogue APPENDIX 1: Saints from Abroad Venerated in Rome, ca. 500–800 APPENDIX 2: Theodotus and S. Angelo in Pescheria APPENDIX 3: The "Translatio" of St. Caesarius from Terracina to Rome APPENDIX 4: The Spread of St. George’s Cult APPENDIX 5: An Early Medieval "Diaconia" Dedicated to St. Nicholas? APPENDIX 6: The "Passio" of St. Boniface of Tarsus Abbreviations Notes Bibliography Index Acknowledgments