[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review]
The volume under review is a Festschrift for Robin M. Jensen, one of the most important scholars of early Christian art and iconography in North America. Jensen, who currently is the Patrick O’Brien Professor of Theology at the University of Notre Dame, is the author of several monographs, of which The Cross: History, Art, and Controversy, published by Harvard University Press in 2017, is worth singling out. As the warm homage written by the editor of the volume, Lee M. Jefferson, emphasizes, Jensen’s influence goes well beyond her published work, and her intellectual generosity and curiosity have brought and continue to bring together a vast network of scholars. This collection of eleven essays honors Jensen with a focused theme: death and rebirth, the importance of which in late antique culture is well outlined in the introduction.
Tabbernee offers a thorough review of the teachings on death and resurrection by the Montanists (according to the preserved logia of their prophets), Tertullian, and the author of the Passion of Perpetua and Felicity. He arrives at the generally accepted conclusion that Tertullian can be deemed a ‘Montanist’—though he did not formally separate himself from the other (Catholic) Christians in Carthage—and that the author of the Passion should not be. Though Tabbernee thoroughly reviews the available textual evidence, one may regret that he does not engage more explicitly with other views (the contributions of Eliezer Gonzalez[1] are mentioned but not discussed, for instance) or discuss arguments that do not support his readings (as in the case of the passage of PPerp 13.8,[2] for instance).
Jefferson discusses the so-called Parousia Panel from the wooden door of Santa Sabina in Rome (fifth century). His main contention is that it depicts a staff extended from Jesus to Peter and Paul. A large part of the paper is dedicated to vindicating the term “staff” as opposed to “wand,” which would insinuate that Jesus could be represented as a magician. The argument is unconvincing. Jefferson also claims to be “delving in the field of digital humanities” by using photogrammetry to confirm that “the panel intentionally depicted a staff” (58). Photogrammetry, however, does not help with the identification of a staff as opposed to a wand. Furthermore, the only image provided (fig. 2.7) seems to be a simple photo of the panel (as the caption states).
Harley-McGowan’s excellent contribution uses The Life of Macrina by Gregory of Nyssa to illuminate the beginnings of the practice of wearing the cross. Indeed, Macrina wore a chain with a phylactery cross-pendant and a cross-relic ring under her clothes. The early history of the use of such pendants and rings is ill-defined. Harley-McGowan reviews both the textual and material evidence and always presents cautious interpretations.
Freeman’s chapter on Noah’s Ark, the Ark of the Covenant, the altar, and the reliquary brings a wealth of material—objects, images, and texts of very disparate periods and locations—that leaves the present reviewer, who is not a specialist of Christian iconography, quite confused. The main takeaway, however, is compelling: the physical form of an object, such as a portable altar or a reliquary, also has a theological function, in that it can link to representations that are not depicted on the object itself.
Hunter’s contribution is a corrective to a stimulating paper by Barkman on the figure of the martyr Crispina in the works of Augustine.[3] While most scholars try to identify the source of Augustine’s information about the martyr when it differs from, or seems more complete than, the information conveyed by the extant Passio, Barkman suggested we focus on how Augustine shapes his presentation of Crispina to fit his theological agenda regardless, so to speak, of the real martyr. While Barkman thought the agenda was Augustine’s controversy with the Donatists, Hunter rightly thinks the agenda is the controversy concerning marriage and celibacy that had been raised by Jovinian and Jerome’s reaction to the latter’s writings, a topic on which Hunter is a well-known specialist.[4]
Latham considers funerary practices and their transformations in late antiquity. Latham first uses a linguistic metaphor, that of a koine and of dialects, to describe how Christian practices do not differ much from non-Christian practices: “In late antiquity, Christians, too, spoke local dialects of the Mediterranean koine of public funerary rites” (167). Latham then borrows the notions of little and great traditions from Robert Redfield’s Peasant Society and Culture (1956) and suggests that a Great Tradition, i.e., a Christian liturgy of death, progressively replaced the little traditions, i.e., the variety of local practices. The Great Tradition is identified with the writing of a comprehensive funerary liturgy by the Roman church between the sixth and the eighth centuries. One may regret that Latham did not try to support in a more detailed manner the claim that the attempt of the church of Rome “seems to have been substantially achieved” (178).
Peppard presents three examples of Mary Magdalene as an upright witness that are more similar to her portrait in Scripture as Jesus’s close, faithful disciple than to her portrait as the penitent, maudlin figure that dominated her western iconography after Gregory the Great conflated her with the unnamed woman of Luke 7. One example is late antique—another panel from the wooden door of Santa Sabina—while the other two are medieval.
Ellison studies the “meeting again in heaven after death” motif in early Christian texts and artifacts. While some scholars used to claim that for Christians family and nuptial ties dissolved after death, Ellison shows that a sense both of communal reunion and of familial reunification can be read into the evidence. I note, however, that no item of early Christian art mentioned by Ellison (whether gold-glass medallions or sarcophagi) seems to point towards a communal rather than a familial reunion.
Eastman’s contribution considers the cults of Peter and Paul in late antiquity as presented in the textual tradition of their martyrdom and the imagery of gold-glass medallions. Eastman contends that over time the different version of Peter’s martyrdom coopted cultic practices at the site of his burial. The texts, however, comment on caring for Peter’s burial rather than on a cult at his tomb. Regarding Paul, Eastman gathers testimonies that point to the presence of a cloth or shroud associated with Paul in the Roman Basilica of Paul Outside the Walls. Finally, he shows that gold-glass medallions represent Peter and Paul only as glorified apostles. One may wonder what relates these corpora of evidence beyond their association with Peter and Paul
McGowan offers a close reading and careful interpretation of the language on death, sacrifice, and the eucharist in the so-called middle recension of the letters of Ignatius of Antioch. He shows how the idea so familiar to modern readers of sacrifice as self-abnegation too often affects the understanding of his language.
Herrmann and Hoek look at representations of post-biblical martyrs and of Lawrence in particular. They show how a combination of attributes (crosses, snakes, and tunics) may allow precise distinctions among martyrs, even though their iconography is diverse. Their special focus is on North African artifacts from the fifth and sixth centuries.
Overall, this carefully edited and well-illustrated volume is a fitting tribute to Robin Jensen. All the authors have done an excellent job in keeping to the overarching theme of the volume, which makes it a valuable contribution to the scholarship on the attitudes towards death and rebirth in late antiquity.
Authors and Titles
Introduction, Lee M. Jefferson
- Death and Rebirth within North African Montanism, William Tabbernee
- The Church as the Locus of Miracles: Santa Sabina and Revisiting the Staff of Jesus in Early Christian Art, Lee M. Jefferson
- Wearing the Cross: Macrina, the Cross, and Co-Crucifixion, Felicity Harley-McGowan
- Altar-ed Arks: Form as (Theological) Function in Late Antique and Early Medieval Reliquaries, Jennifer Awes Freeman
- Marriage and Martyrdom in Roman North Africa: Augustine and Crispina of Tebessa, David G. Hunter
- “Bring Out Yer Dead”: A Funerary Ritual Koine and Its Christian Dialects from Little Traditions to a Great Tradition, Jacob Latham
- Apostolic Posture: Mary Magdalene as Witness to Death and Resurrection in Art, Michael Peppard
- Reuniting after Death, Defining Familial Piety in Life: A Case of Rhetoric in Word and Image, Mark D. Ellison
- Undead Apostles and The Development of Cultic Practices, David L. Eastman
- To Die for God: Sacrifice, Eucharist, and Martyrdom in Ignatius of Antioch, Andrew McGowan
- Crosses, Snakes, and Tunics: St. Lawrence and Other Martyrs, Annewies van den Hoek and John Herrmann, Jr.
Notes
[1] Eliezer Gonzalez, The Fate of the Dead in Early Third Century North African Christianity: The Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas and Tertullian (Tübingen, 2014).
[2] See Éric Rebillard, ed., Greek and Latin Narratives about the Ancient Martyrs (Oxford,, 2017), p. 319 n. 101 for a quick overview.
[3] Heather Barkman, “‘Stubborn and Insolent’ or ‘Enfeebled by Riches’? The Construction of Crispina’s Identity”, in Papers Presented at the Seventeenth International Conference on Patristic Studies Held in Oxford 2015. Vol. 24, St Augustine and His Opponents, Studia Patristica 98 (Leuven, 2017), pp. 181–89.
[4] See, among other contributions on the topic, David Hunter, Marriage, Celibacy, and Heresy in Ancient Christianity: The Jovinianist Controversy (Oxford, 2007).