BMCR 2009.02.14, Kim Bowes, Private Worship, Public Values

Kim Bowes, Private Worship, Public Values, and Religious Change in Late
Antiquity.  Cambridge/New York:  Cambridge University Press, 2008.  Pp.
xvi, 363.  ISBN 9780521885935.  $95.00.

Reviewed by Carlos Machado, Ruprecht-Karls-Universitaet Heidelberg
([email protected])
Word count:  2016 words
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Late antique Christianity has traditionally attracted more than a fair
share of ink, from scholars of different backgrounds and interests. And
yet, Kim Bowes's book, Private Worship, Public Values, and Religious
Change in Late Antiquity, manages to be both original and relevant: not
a small feat in a field experiencing constant renovation. The book
deals with a largely neglected topic, the impact of powerful secular
men and women on the spiritual life and organization of the Christian
community in the fourth and early fifth centuries. Our grand narrative
of the Christianization of the Roman Empire tends to be too reliant on
the role (and visions) of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, and too
confident in the smooth and linear character of a process that was
actually complex and prone to multiple trends. The author argues her
case in a simple and clear way, and even if the reader might disagree
with a few issues, her argument is persuasive and stimulating.

The book is divided into four chapters, with a short introduction and
conclusion. The introduction presents the general argument of the book
and explains the perspective adopted. Studies of late antique
Christianity tend to concentrate on the Church as an institution, with
occasional forays into individual bishops and holy men. As a result,
the role of the members of the church tends to be overlooked.[[1]] B.
then discusses the question of how to define 'public' and 'private',
categories that are fluid and in a permanent dialectic relationship.
The influence of social historians of the Annales School is clear from
the outset, in terms of approach and definitions, and private worship
is seen as a social phenomenon and therefore closely linked to the
social structure of the late Empire.

Chapter 1 considers the issue of public and private worship in Roman
religious life in the late Republic and early Empire, and serves as a
background for the rest of the book. Although Roman authorities and
writers were keen on defining the boundaries between these spheres in
their relationship with the sacred, the very character of Roman society
made these boundaries fluid and uncertain. Roman priests were powerful
and rich politicians, and inevitably brought their social conventions
and networks with them. What Roman jurists would define as 'public' was
to a large extent privately appropriated. B. emphasises the social
context of these definitions, and considers a large variety of sources:
literary texts, laws, inscribed altars, as well as domestic
architecture. The case was very different for Christians. Although
Christianity did not have an officially recognized public character,
there was a constant tension between private worship and community
life. The discussion of these questions starts with specifically Roman
notions, and although this method is adopted partly as a consequence of
the evidence available, it risks misrepresenting the huge diversity of
practice in the provinces as mere echoes of those found in the imperial
capital. It is problematic to use Cicero and passages of the Digest to
discuss notions of public and private in Rome, as it underestimates the
important changes between late Republican and early Imperial society.
This becomes even  more complicated, however, when African and Eastern
writers are brought into the equation. The risk of turning multiple
voices into a coherent discourse is difficult to resist. This is not a
minor methodological issue, since it detracts from one of the great
merits of the next chapter, the analysis of cultural values and
conceptions in their specific social context.

The contrast between traditional Roman religious life and Christianity
had important consequences when Constantine made the new religion
legal. This is explored in an urban context in chapter 2, where B.
looks at Rome and Constantinople to understand the role of private
patrons at a time when the public character of their religion was being
explicitly asserted. The discussion of the old capital is much richer,
due to the evidence available. Roman aristocrats used their houses as
spaces for worship, learning and discussion. Large private apsidal
halls were convenient spaces for religious gatherings, and B. makes
important observations concerning the Christianization of Roman
topography. Recent work on the dating of churches is used judiciously,
and the fine illustrations and maps found throughout the book are
particularly useful here. Scholars usually place much emphasis on the
location of basilicas and tituli, but one cannot understand these
developments without considering the importance of aristocratic houses
and their use as spaces of worship. Powerful patrons also built public
halls for assembly, and retained considerable influence over the
community that gathered under their sponsorship. As a result, Rome's
Christianity was marked by the collaboration/competition between the
official ecclesiastical structure and its powerful patrons.

If Roman bishops had to live with such a tense and unstable situation,
the picture is even more troubling for Constantinople. The nature of
the evidence available puts B. in much less certain terrain here, but
her suggestions are nevertheless of great interest for Church
historians and topographers. In the case of the new capital, the pace
of church-building by the court and clergy only picked up by the end of
the fourth century, and house churches necessarily played a crucial
role until then. Constantine left his capital a 'wild West-type city'
(in the words of the author), with numerous positions in the upper
hierarchy being occupied by a recently arrived and ambitious
aristocracy. As a result, aristocratic preferences had a great impact
on episcopal politics, and the analysis of the careers of John
Chrysostom and Gregory Nazianzen is illuminating in this respect.

Chapter 3 moves this discussion to the countryside, focusing
exclusively on the West. The chapter is divided into two parts, one
dedicated to the main aspects of private worship, the other to a
regional survey. Here too traditional practices of building mausolea,
domestic shrines, and estate temples continued, only in a Christian
fashion. Powerful landowners had a great impact on the shape of rural
Christianity, and this is shown in terms of the spread of asceticism as
well as in the building of spaces for worship, which required the
presence of clerics. B.'s analysis of Paulinus of Nola and his ascetic
community (established before he was made bishop) is particularly
interesting, and it clarifies important aspects of rural society,
Christian belief and aristocratic life in Italy.

What influence did aristocratic patrons have on the shaping of rural
Christianity? This question is addressed in the second part of chapter
3, where regional differences in the relationship between land-owners
and bishops are analysed. The choice of areas discussed is based on the
identification of three types of relationship between bishops and
land-owners: close collaboration (North Africa); absence of a proper
ecclesiastical structure (Northern Italy and Britain); and open
conflict (Hispania and Southwestern Gaul). In spite of (or perhaps
because of) its didactic nature, this is in my opinion the least
convincing part of the chapter. It is important to consider private
worship in its specific social context, and the regional diversity of
the late Roman West certainly deserves attention. The division into
types remains artificial, however, and the situation in North Africa or
Hispania, for example, was much more complex than the types discussed.
The risk of associating religious practice with  a specific social
structure is that one can  forget the importance of religious belief.
Christianity is then restricted to its social function, whether as a
form of legitimising social dominance (as in Africa) or emphasising the
social distinction between landlords and their dependents (as in
Britain).

The late antique period, with the rise of Christianity, was marked by a
'revolution' in the private sphere, and chapter 4 considers the
'ideologies of the Private'. The chapter focuses on two contrasting
attitudes: while Christian and imperial authorities were concerned with
the spread of heresy and superstition in domestic spaces, Christian
writers insisted on the role of private asceticism as a form of
renunciation of secular life. These different concerns led to
contrasting evaluations of the private sphere, as either damaging or
favourable to a proper Christian life. One is left to wonder whether
there were other attitudes towards private Christianity;  assuming an
opposition between these two conceptions is too simplistic. Jerome and
Damasus worked as close collaborators, and yet one was a keen promoter
of private asceticism, while the other was haunted by private meetings
and political divisions. In spite of this criticism, the author
succeeds in showing that there were different ways of defining 'the
private' in the late Roman world, and this is a salutary warning to
scholars who might see these categories as natural and unproblematic.

We are reminded in the conclusion that the conversion of the Roman
aristocracy should be seen in the context of the traditional practices
and culture of this group. The aristocratic notion of what was private
had an important influence on the development and affirmation of the
Church, while bishops maintained an ambivalent attitude towards this
group. While the commitment and support of powerful patrons were
important elements in Church life, their power and interests were
constantly at odds with the priorities of the ecclesiastical elite.
Although the Christianization of the Roman Empire was ultimately
controlled by the Church, the role played by aristocrats and their
networks of friends and clients cannot be neglected.

It would be interesting to see how the actions of emperors and members
of their families influenced the developments analysed here. One of the
difficulties in discussing private life in this period is where to draw
the line--a line that, as B. herself points out, was constantly
shifting. To what extent were the actions of an emperor private or
public? Descendants of emperors, members of the imperial family, and
retired members of the court were also members of the aristocracy, and
their ambiguous status must have played an important role in the
definition of what was deemed proper or possible to a recently
converted Christian. The case of the splendid villa in Carranque,
Spain, and its possible association with Maternus Cynegius, discussed
in chapter 3, is a good case in point. The chronological boundaries
chosen, c.300-450, are also sometimes a limitation. The period between
Constantine and the end of the Theodosian dynasty represents a
reasonable historical unit, but it also represents the exceptional
heyday of private worship in the Christian Empire, as the author
herself notes (p. 224). The reader is left with the impression that the
most important transformation should not be sought in the initial
conversion of the Empire, as the continuities are striking and well
demonstrated, but in the later incorporation of imperial structures
into the ecclesiastical organization, at least for the West.

This book is commendable not only for adding great complexity to our
view of late antique Christianity, but especially for the type of
scholarship it represents. Being an archaeologist, B. shows great
knowledge of many sites all over the western Empire, from North Africa
to Britain, whilst understanding the limits of the evidence. The
methodological questions raised concerning the identification of rural
churches, villa architecture, and even the topography of Rome are
interesting and thought-provoking. At the same time, she is aware of
the contribution of texts to the topics under discussion, and proves
that although they can be biased, they can nonetheless be profitably
incorporated into the discussion of aristocratic religious life.
Different strands of scholarship and different types of evidence are
integrated in an efficient way, and Private Worship will be of interest
to a wide audience. Not even the irritating system adopted by CUP for
the references, with Harvard-style notes at the end of the volume
(forcing the reader to spend a long time chasing sources and
citations), undermines the attractiveness of the book. This is not just
a book about the religious history of the later Roman Empire, but a
good example of total history in the style of Marc Bloch and Georges
Duby. Scholars have recently criticized late antique scholarship for
neglecting the crucial, 'hard' questions of social relations and
historical change that marked this period. B's work is a fine example
of how these wider questions can be re-addressed, without neglecting
the important contributions of cultural and religious historians.


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Notes:


1.   This is changing, however: see the essays collected in K. Cooper
and J. Hillner (eds.), Religion, Dynasty and Patronage in early
Christian Rome. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.