[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review]
Comparing the two cities of Constantinople and Jerusalem in late antiquity is not as easy a task as one might think. Both Konstantin Klein and Johannes Wienand admit as much in the introduction to this volume. Although both cities rose in prominence concurrently in the fourth century, they had vastly different histories, fulfilled different practical roles within the empire, and were fundamentally unequal in status. Constantinople was an imperial capital and home of the emperors, while Jerusalem was only rarely visited by the imperial family but was historically significant as the site of Christ’s life, death and resurrection. This makes a more direct comparison between more similarly constructed cities, such as in Lucy Grig and Gavin Kelly’s volume Two Romes: Rome and Constantinople in Late Antiquity, more or less unfeasible. Instead, the authors take a somewhat less directed approach here in an attempt to understand the ideological similarities, differences, and relationships between these two cities in the late antique period. In this ambition City of Caesar, City of God is largely successful.
The papers have been organised thematically into four parts. While there is some overlap between these parts, this separation is logical and each paper fits with its given theme.
Part One, ‘The Centers of a New World Order’, consists of two chapters by Kai Trampedach and Rene Pfeilschifter respectively which function as introductions to the two cities, and they set the tone for what follows. Trampedach’s essay effectively covers the historical background of Palestine with a particular focus on developments from the fourth to the sixth century. For the relative newcomer to the history of this area, this paper provides some welcome context for the rest of the volume. Comparatively, Pfeilschifter’s chapter does not construct a chronological history of New Rome’s development (which he correctly asserts ‘would all too easily become imperial history’, p. 39), but instead considers the role of Constantinople as the ‘City of Caesar’ in contrast to Jerusalem as the ‘City of God’.
Part Two, ‘Urban Topographies Connected’, is the longest section and primarily deals with the physical attributes of the two cities. Neslihan Asutay-Effenberger and Shlomit Weksler-Bdolah’s joint paper uses recent archaeological evidence to assess the differences in both the construction and ideological purpose of the city walls of Jerusalem and Constantinople. From this paper, it is clear that the Theodosian land walls were built primarily as a grand imperial project, utilising almost entirely new building material, while the walls of Jerusalem were built using spolia from the Second Temple period and, as such, were intended to replace the Jewish character of the city with a Christian one. Marlena Whiting’s chapter considers the road network between the two cities and its development as a pilgrim’s route, arguing for the inherent interconnection between military, economic and religious uses for the networks. Konstantin M. Klein’s paper focuses on the development of saint and martyr cults in late antiquity. Of particular interest here is the role of both holy women and imperial women in the development of Palestine’s religious landscape, especially the empress Eudocia, who Klein argues is most prominent in providing the stimulus for the veneration of saints in Jerusalem. The last paper of Part Two is Trampedach’s second contribution to the volume and considers the sixth-century Nea Church. It compares the literary accounts of the church by Procopius of Caesarea and Cyril of Scythopolis with the archaeological findings first published in 2012. In doing so, Trampedach paints a clearer picture not only of the structure of the church, but also Justinian’s ideological reasoning for the construction of the Nea Church on Mount Zion.
Part Three ‘The Power of Religion and Empire’ is more specifically focused on the intersection of religion and imperial ideology. Johannes Wienand’s paper ‘Eusebius in Jerusalem and Constantinople’ differs from the rest of the volume in that he focuses specifically on the fourth century. The central theme of this chapter is the creation of the image of a Christian Roman emperor through the orations of Eusebius, first at Jerusalem and then at Constantinople. Nadine Viermann’s chapter considers the rhetoric and politics of church-building in sixth-century Constantinople and specifically tackles the impact of rivalry between Justinian and the influential patricia Anicia Juliana on the churches of Constantinople. Jan Markus Kötter returns to the development of the bishopric of Jerusalem, which was briefly covered in Trampedach’s first chapter. Kötter’s treatment looks in closer detail at the ecclesiastical politics that led to Jerusalem’s increasing importance as a central pillar of the late antique church.
The final part of the book, ‘Jerusalem, Constantinople and the End of Antiquity’, deals with the developing implications of the concepts of Jerusalem and ‘New Jerusalem’ for the succeeding centuries. Paul Magdalino leads off with a consideration of late antique apocalyptic thought. He uses the case of the Church of St. John the Apostle to highlight a particular imperial project to transform Constantinople from the ‘City of Caesar’ to the ‘City of God’, or in his own words ‘from Babylon the Great to New Jerusalem’ (p. 272). The brief penultimate chapter by James Howard-Johnston considers the role of Jerusalem in the briefly reunited empire of Heraclius at the end of the last Roman-Persian war. Of particular interest to Howard-Johnston are the circumstances that surrounded Heraclius’ retranslation of the True Cross to Jerusalem and the potential of the episode to symbolise a new, more anti-Jewish, Christian rule, which was halted by the Arab conquests. Lastly, Lutz Greisiger’s essay looks at the development of Christian ceremonial entries into Jerusalem from the seventh to the twentieth century. Greisiger emphasises how each entry, especially in the modern era, was choreographed in relation to the optics of previous entries, whether the participants wished to avoid comparisons to the contentious past or embrace them.
From all this, one can see that City of Caesar, City of God takes a varied and multidisciplinary view of the two late antique cities. Despite this, there is one glaring absence from the volume that casts a shadow over the entire work, namely the impact of the Arab conquests on the relationship between Constantinople and Jerusalem. In his paper, Pfeilschifter points out that both Istanbul and Jerusalem were and remain important cities in the Islamic world. One may argue that this volume is focused on ‘Late Antiquity’, which in this case has been broadly defined as stretching from the fourth to the seventh centuries CE. One might agree with this definition for late antiquity, but, even then, the seeming avoidance of Islam and the Arab conquests is strange, given the conquest of Jerusalem and siege of Constantinople in the second half of the seventh century. Even when presented with the opportunity to go beyond the confines of late antiquity, as in Part Four, there is scarcely any mention of Islam outside of general context. In contrast, papers such as those of Asutay-Effenberger and Weksler-Bdolah, as well as Trampedach and Howard-Johnston consider extensively the Jewish character of Jerusalem and how an increasingly anti-Jewish Christian outlook affected the topography and politics of the city.
On a more positive note, many of these essays function as good introductions to the other works of their authors. Pfeilschifter’s chapter, for example, offers a summarised version of his earlier Der Kaiser und Konstantinopel. Of central importance to this work, and adeptly summarised in this chapter, is Egon Flaig’s concept of ‘Kaiserakzeptanz’ (or the ‘acceptance system’, in English language scholarship). In basic terms, this theory generally stands somewhat opposed to the idea of the imperial system being a dynastic monarchy and instead posits the emperor as reliant on certain groups (for example, the Senate, the armies, or, most significantly for Constantinople, the urban populace) who must ‘accept’ his right to rule. If any of these groups was displeased with the current emperor, they could choose to elevate their own imperial candidate. It was thus vital for every emperor to cultivate a working relationship with the key acceptance groups of the imperial capital, where most emperors resided after the fourth century. In highlighting this concept here, Pfeilschifter is helping to introduce it to a broader readership which may not be aware of his monograph.
Another significant example of this is Whiting’s contribution in which she introduces her own concept (first coined for her paper in Anna Collar and Troels Myrup Kristensen’s Pilgrimage and Economy in the Ancient Mediterranean): the braided network. In Whiting’s own words, the braided network ‘is made up of several strands that are bound together, but also intersect and diverge’. This applies to the late antique road network as it was ‘built by the imperial administration and the military for communication and supply needs, but it was also equally used for other purposes, like trade and pilgrimage’ (p. 112). The idea of the braided network is an excellent way of conceptualising the different, but intrinsically connected, modes of communication and could be usefully adopted more widely, for example in studies on other pilgrim routes in the Middle Ages.
Despite the differing methodologies on display in this volume, there is one overriding theme that is touched upon in almost every contribution: the inherent and never resolved ideological tension between the ‘City of God’ and the ‘City of Caesar’. Despite being the capital of the empire, Constantinople held little Biblical significance and so, as Pfeilschifter puts it, was ‘always in second place’. In contrast, Jerusalem lacked political significance, but was open to the outside influence of the emperor and his family due to the city’s religious significance. Thus, imperial building projects abounded in Jerusalem from the fourth century on, despite the fact that no emperor visited the city until the seventh century. The relationship between these cities then, as demonstrated repeatedly throughout this volume, was at once reciprocal, unequal, and competitive. The contributions of Pfeilschifter, Klein, Wienand, Kötter and Magdalino all deal with this relationship directly and it can be seen more broadly in the others.
A minor issue is the use of figures in this volume. There are twenty-five figures in total, and the first two are maps of Constantinople and Jerusalem, which are excellently detailed in comparison to other modern works (see, for comparison, the maps in Grig and Kelly’s Two Romes). The issue arises when one looks at the concentration of the remaining figures: the next nineteen are all associated with Asutay-Effenberger and Weksler-Bdolah’s paper. Three more are attached to the Whiting’s subsequent chapter and there are no more figures until Greisiger’s contribution, which is nearly two hundred pages further on. While excusable, there are actually opportunities to provide more illustrations throughout, for example in Greisiger’s chapter. In a few instances, Greisiger discusses some photographs in detail and provides a URL link. While this is serviceable for the online version of this volume, it makes for an unwelcome inconvenience for those using the print edition. This is likely less an issue of authorial intent and more of an issue on the publishing side, but it is still something of a missed opportunity. Likewise, there were opportunities for illustrations of reconstructions of some of the structures discussed, such as the Nea Church, or images of surviving artistic evidence, such as the Joshua Roll mentioned in Howard-Johnston’s chapter.
For those interested in the ideology of imperial power and Christianity in late antiquity, this book is easy to recommend, even for a relative newcomer. This recommendation is helped by the fact that City of Caesar, City of God is Open Access, which will no doubt increase the volume’s impact. While there are missed opportunities and areas for expansion, as a whole this book presents a diverse, yet cohesive, look at the late antique world of Constantinople and Jerusalem.
Authors and Titles
Introduction: Constantinople & Jerusalem in Late Antiquity: Problems – Paradigms – Perspectives – Konstantin Klein and Johannes Wienand
Part One: The Centers of a New World Order
The Making of the Holy Land in Late Antiquity – Kai Trampedach
Always in Second Place: Constantinople as an Imperial and Religious Center in Late Antiquity – Rene Pfeilschifter
Part Two: Urban Topographies Connected
Delineating the Sacred and the Profane: The Late-Antique Walls of Jerusalem and Constantinople – Neslihan Asutay-Effenberger and Shlomit Weksler-Bdolah
From the City of Caesar to the City of God: Routes, Networks, and Connectivity Between Constantinople and Jerusalem – Marlena Whiting
Neighbors of Christ: Saints and their Martyria in Constantinople and Jerusalem – Konstantin M. Klein
A New Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem? The Construction of the Nea Church (531–543) by Emperor Justinian – Kai Trampedach
Part Three: The Power of Religion and Empire
Eusebius in Jerusalem and Constantinople: Two Cities, Two Speeches – Johannes Wienand
Surpassing Solomon: Church-building and Political Discourse in Late Antique Constantinople – Nadine Viermann
Palestine at the Periphery of Ecclesiastical Politics? The Bishops of Jerusalem after the Council of Chalcedon – Jan-Markus Kötter
Part Four: Jerusalem, Constantinople and the End of Antiquity
The Church of St John the Apostle and the End of Antiquity in the New Jerusalem – Paul Magdalino
Jerusalem in 630 – James Howard-Johnston
From ‘King Heraclius, Faithful in Christ’ to ‘Allenby of Armageddon’: Christian Reconquistadores Enter the Holy City – Lutz Greisiger