This book, weighty in format and solid in content, is divided into two parts. The first provides a corpus of texts in Latin dating from the late fourth to the late sixth centuries with descriptions of buildings erected for Christian purposes. Three authors of such texts are of particular importance, Paulinus of Nola (already the subject of an important book by the author), Venantius Fortunatus, and Gregory of Tours; to these are added pope Damasus, Prudentius, Sidonius Apollinaris, Avitus of Vienne, Ennodius of Pavia, Martin of Braga, and the poems that appear in the so-called sylloge of Martinellus. The material occurs in a variety of genres, including descriptions in verse, among which epigrams predominate, and prose, in particular letters, although descriptions also turn up in homiletic, historical, and hagiographical writings. This corpus of data is supplemented by evidence from the fathers of the church and epigraphic material. The texts that are considered are not devoid of problems, with the works of Avitus displaying textual difficulties while the poems of Ennodius, as the author expresses it, have a complex connection to reality that becomes extremely difficult to understand. In some cases, it is possible to use physical survivals to interpret the descriptions. The authors are worked through one by one. In each case we are offered a summary introductory account that is followed by the Latin text of the relevant passages, accompanied by a translation into French; in cases where there is an existing translation, the familiarity of the author with the subject matter sometimes allows her to offer improvements.
Having laid out this corpus of data, the author proceeds in the second part of the book to a detailed discussion of the vocabulary that occurs in it. The opening section considers this from the point of view of architectural theory, aesthetics, and Christian spirituality. We begin with an examination of words used in these texts that concern architecture in a general sense, these being aedificatio and its cognates aedificare and aedificium; ars, artifex, opus, fabrica, ratio, and forma. In each case, we proceed from author to author, drawing on the corpus of material assembled in the first part of the book. Later sections consider the words used for the relationship between the different parts of a building and its décor, the visual appearance of buildings with reference to beauty and spirituality, the aesthetic categories, specifically concordia, discors, and varietas, and the use to which such discourse was put in the service of the truths of the Christian faith. The authors of these texts are shown to be poised between two poles. To the one side lies the discourse of earlier Latin writers, among whom Vitruvius was particularly prominent, while on the other is Christian spirituality, in the light of which the Christian writers of late antiquity are shown to have had an astonishing capacity to ‘refunctionalize’ traditional images and words.
We then proceed to a discussion of the words used for Christian buildings. The eminent Latinist Christine Mohrmann held that terms for the church in the sense of a building only appear in the third century, and attributed this apparent delay to material and spiritual factors, but here her theory is nuanced, in a critique of her work that can be set beside that of the Nijmegen School mounted by Tim Denecker.[1] The terms ecclesia and basilica are considered at length. The former could also be used of the church as a community, while basilica necessarily referred to a building. Gregory of Tours marks an important stage in the way these words were employed, for he generally used ecclesia of a building within the walls of a town, while a basilica tended to be extra muros, although such a building could also be called a basilica. Two terms borrowed from domestic architecture, aedes and domus, that are widely used for Christian buildings from the end of the fourth century, are then considered. The latter is particularly interesting, for not only did the word ‘Dominus’ lurk behind it, but it retained more the sense of a dwelling place, the ‘home’ could be that of God, a saint, or sometimes a bishop. The discussion then turns to the terms templum, a word with complex overtones that was also used of pagan buildings and, in the Bible, of the Temple in Jerusalem; delubrum; and fanum, the last only being used by Venantius Fortunatus. Next are terms that came to be used for Christian buildings by a kind of ‘semantic conversion’, aula (traditionally a palace or room), and arx (citadel, sanctuary) the former chiefly and the second exclusively occurring in poetic texts. Both had resonances that could be used with effect by Christian authors, for the former suggested the palace of God and the latter the citadel of heaven. Less common are two words of more general sense, fabrica and machina, neither of which would continue to be used as a designation for Christian buildings. Words used for little buildings (basilicula, cellula, oratorium – this one alone a Christian creation -, and sacellum), buildings used for baptism (aula, baptisterium, fons, lavacrum; the second of these terms is used by Pliny the Younger when describing villas), and terms used metonymically (atria, culmen, tecta) are evaluated. Overall, the breadth of the range of terms suggests a desire among these authors for a rhetorical variatio, which Herbert de la Portbarré-Viard suggests should be respected by the translators of texts such as these, who should avoid translating them as simply ‘church’, because the specific associations of the words are often present in the minds of the authors. The last section considers the words used for different parts of Christian buildings, and of the space of a basilica, on the inside and outside.
The lengthy and painstakingly detailed discussion of various words is followed by a short general conclusion, in which the findings of each chapter are summarized and more wide-ranging points made. The question of the audience of the texts is addressed, and the extent to which their authors saw themselves as writing for posterity. She finds that they did, although the fact that the authors of the Libri Carolini drew on the works of Paulinus and Prudentius and Carolingian poets used Venantius Fortunatus as a model is not strong evidence for the audience these authors had in mind. Finally, attention is drawn to a passage at the beginning of the Libri Historiarum of Gregory of Tours, in which the historian expressed an awareness of writing in a simple style that, while some would find fault with it, would nevertheless be accessible to many people. At a time when literary education was becoming more restricted, Gregory’s writing in such a way would have made discourse on Christian buildings more accessible, although I wonder whether such self-deprecation was a form of captatio benevolentiae that is not to be taken literally. Arguing from the slice of evidence with which she has been concerned, the author ends by taking issue with the theory expressed by Iogna-Prat in a monumental work,[2] according to whom a decisive turn which saw church building become central to society occurred at the beginning of the ninth century, but which she places earlier. She concludes by expressing a wish to extend her inquiry into the Middle Ages, in the period preceding that studied by Iogna-Prat.
The deeply impressive study presented by Herbert de la Portbarré-Viard is essentially linguistic and functions independently of realia, but maps indicate the location of the towns mentioned in the work, plans of Rome, Milan, Clermont, and Tours mark the location of the Christian buildings within them, and a series of figures shows the ground plans of some of the buildings. And quite apart from its main line of argument, there is much to learn from this book. One notices in passing an emphasis on things that shine, the frequency with which mosaics are mentioned, and repeated reference in the works of Venantius Fortunatus to old things becoming new and a feeling that things were getting better, a view from within Merovingian Gaul that not all would accept.[3] A useful deviation from the main argument examines the application of the word titulus to churches in Rome. The word is only used once to refer to a Christian building in the corpus being considered here, in a reference to the ‘titulus of Paul’ in an account of Roman church of San Paolo fuori le Mura by Prudentius, and on the basis of work done on the meaning of the word in a Roman context by Pietri and Guidobaldi she shows that his use of the word was without architectural significance. Essentially, this work offers very precise readings of a set of texts rather than the arguing of a thesis. While the style can be somewhat abstract, a large volume of difficult evidence is treated scrupulously. While much of the book offers the nuancing of received views, its overall contribution is its use of unexpected data to throw light on the complex relationship of Antike with Christentum. The vocabulary of the texts discussed shows an appropriation of the classical past by the Christian religion analogous to that which took place in other spheres, and casts a different light on that endlessly fascinating frontier.
Notes
[1] Tim Denecker, ‘The Nijmegen School and its ‘Sociological’ Approach to the So-Called ‘Sondersprache’ of Early Christians’, Latomus 77 (2018) 335-57.
[2] La Maison-Dieu Une histoire monumental de l’Église au Moyen Âge (v.800-v.1200), Paris 2006.
[3] But similar emphases occur elsewhere. Compare, for example, lines of an inscription associated with a mosaic placed by a bishop of Ravenna in the fifth century: Cede vetus nomen, novitati cede vetustas, Pulchrius ecce nitet renovati gloria fontis (Agnellus of Ravenna, Liber Pontificalis Ecclesiae Ravennatis, 28).