This slender volume, the author's revised doctoral thesis, claims to ‘fill … a void in scholarship … on the rise of the martyr cult in late antique Christianity’ (p.178). The making of the cult of the saints being a growth industry in historiography, this is a big claim to make. The book encompasses the Roman world and gives a diachronic picture of the construction and monumentalisation of the martyrs’ tombs after the Constantinian turn as well as of their reception and recycling in the fifth century, suggesting that the bridge linking the two was way too fragile before this synthesis. Morehouse brings together a ‘star team’ of impresarios and critics whose works about relic cults are extant -- the emperors Constantine and Julian the Apostate, bishops Athanasius of Alexandria, Damasus of Rome, Paulinus of Nola, Ambrose of Milan and Augustine of Hippo, the ascetics Apa Shenute and Sulpicius Severus, the poet Prudentius, the cleric Vigilantius and the nun Egeria – and stresses the importance of pilgrimage in the creation of a ‘unified cultural memory’ at the shrine. Drawing on recent scholarship rather than on a new exegesis of the sources, the book follows up the construction of ‘cultural memory’ at the martyr shrine from the fourth to the fifth century.
Inspired by Mark C.Taylor's photo collection published as Grave matters that Morehouse terms a ‘contemporary burial ad sanctos’, the introduction provides a summary of shrine and relic scholarship, and presents the research question, the source material and the theoretical framework of the book. On the basis of textual, rather than archaeological sources, it seeks to describe the struggle for control of the illustrious grave, ‘the struggle to determine how the graves of the important Christian dead would be used to fabricate an image of Christianity which would ultimately determine the direction of the church in the fifth and sixth centuries’ (p.5). This promises a deconstructionist approach to the cult based on texts (as opposed to a historical interest in the martyr or an archaeological approach to the shrine), a Foucauldian concern with power, and an Assmannian involvement with cultural memory. Stating that monuments never ‘just happen’, the author focuses on monumentalisation – what it means, in what context, and whose power it serves. Using today's prominent jargon of ‘identity’ and ‘cultural memory’, the introduction, however, ducks away from a definition of ‘cultural memory’ and identity as used in the book. Is it individual/communal religious experience, collective memory or the very impact of the monument that shape Christian identity at the shrine?
Chapter i (‘To begin: the life of the dead is set in the memory of the living’) offers an overview of the preservation of the memory of the dead in the Roman world before the fourth century. Taking a chronological approach to the subject, it surveys imperial mausolea, the role of the family and funerary collegia, the formation of Christian identity, the origins of the Christian catacombs (with an excursus into the koimeterion-debate in scholarship), the burial of the Christian poor and of the Christian martyrs. As this is the longest chapter, almost one-third of the book deals with polytheist burial practice and persecuted, pre-Constantinian Christianity. A wide variety of topics are presented, sometimes chronologically, more often with random quotes from scholarship. It gives the impression of a bibliographical essay that summarises scholarship without new interpretations. Little is known about third-century Christian graves and martyr theology, therefore it is problematic to assume that burial and relics did not play a central role in the Church, but exercised a strong pull on the masses. Without supportive sources, quotations from prominent modern theorists are unconvincing when arguing for the existence of ‘popular practice’ concerning relics (pp.49–50).
Chapter ii (‘To build up: the erection of shrine and reputation’) focuses on two persons who tapped into the power of the martyr cult in the fourth century: Constantine and Damasus. It narrates their epochal role in monumentalising martyr cults with urban basilicas and suburban catacomb inscriptions. For the author, what unites the emperor and the bishop is their ‘use of the bodies of the important dead as a means of expressing and solidifying their power, as well as cementing the cultural memory that they personally crafted for a Christianity which heretofore had no single memory to which to cling’ (pp.55–6). This is a strong statement, balanced by another, namely that Constantine and Damasus drew on previous traditions. On third-century Roman martyr cult? The connection between chapters i and ii remains unexplored, partly because the pre-Constantinian martyr tombs are known from archaeological, not literary, sources. The chapter emphasises the use of the bodies of the martyrs and the manipulation of their memory by the emperor and the bishop in order to consolidate their power and to create unity. This describes Damasus’ enterprise better than that of Constantine, whose power rested on military victory and political manoeuvering rather than on the martyrs. The author does not raise the issue of religious belief.
Chapter iii (‘To control: the places and practices associated with the remains of the saints’) overviews the attitudes of fourth-century Latin bishops (Ambrose, Augustine), ascetics (Paulinus, Sulpicius Severus) and a fifth-century Egyptian monastic leader (Apa Shenute) to martyr relics. It comprises examples of finding martyrs, distributing relics, preaching on the feast days of the martyrs, celebrating their intercession in poems, prescribing proper Christian behaviour at the tomb. These topics are usually treated in different compartments in scholarship, because it is difficult to present them comprehensively. The examples -- more anecdotal than comprehensive, often taken out of context, disregarding regional and local variability – are meant to illustrate the ways in which men in power establish control over the memory of the martyrs. As a lone representant of Eastern Christianity, Apa Shenute looks particularly odd in a Latin Christian context, because the circumstances in which he wrote remain unexplained.
Chapter iv (‘To reject: not everyone loves a corpse’) presents the non-Christian and Christian critics of the cult of relics, the emperor Julian, Athanasius of Alexandria and Vigilantius of Calagurris. The debate reflects regional differences and a desire to delineate boundaries between pagans and Christians as well as between various Christian groups. The pagan Julian was appalled by the Christian veneration of the dead, while the Christian critics found the veneration of the dead ‘pagan’. According to Morehouse, Athanasius sought to distance himself from non-Christian practices (p.144), but neither the Meletians nor the Arians were pagans.
Chapter v (‘To accept: unification through travel’) argues for the creation of trans-local cultural memory and the unification of the cultural memory of the martyrs through pilgrimage. Exploring anonymous pilgrim narratives, Egeria's itinerary, Paula's visit to Egypt and the Holy Land and Prudentius’ pilgrimage to Rome, the chapter presents a wide variety of differently motivated middle- and upper-class religious travel, claiming that this sought to create ‘a common Christian social identity’ around the relics with uniform celebration (p.171). Regional differences were smoothed by international pilgrimage and thus contributed to the universality of Christianity.
Death's dominion is an ambitious short book that attempts to cover all aspects of the cult of the martyrs in the Roman Empire. Taking issue with salient points in recent scholarship, it reads like a challenging bibliographical essay. The strength of the book is its global outlook and synthetic treatment of the interpretative problems that make it useful for undergraduate courses about the rise of the Christian martyr cult. It is, however, weak in theory and in cross-disciplinary discussion. Substantial archaeological, epigraphic, and historical material that supplement the uneven literary record has been left out, historical rigour and contextualisation has been sacrificed. References are made mostly to sources translated into English and to English-language scholarship. Repetitious use of ‘cultural memory’ makes the reader wonder what exactly cultural memory meant for the widely different protagonists that people the pages. The book deals with religious phenomena without including religion in the interpretive framework. Morehouse takes a starkly secular glimpse at the rise of the cult of the saints, explaining it as an issue of power and control alone, as if faith did not have anything to do with it. The writing style is lucid and fast-paced, but marred by heavy use of jargon. The addition of a map indicating the persons, shrines and sites discussed would have been helpful.
