Material Culture of Early Christianity

Course Description

Did early Christians express their faith artistically? If so, what did they create, and to what extent did they leave their mark on the material record of the Roman world? This course explores the creative theological artistry of early Christians in the first three centuries.

We will begin by examining some aspects of Christian symbolism evident across diverse settings. Then we will explore artifacts from four archaeological sites where Christ-followers expressed their theological convictions in imaginative artistic media that took account of their local situations.

• Ostia (Italy), the bustling port city of ancient Rome, where Christians devised cryptic symbols that resonated with their recent experience of martyrdom.
• Dura-Europos (Syria), the militarized frontier town soon to fall to Rome’s enemies, where Christians used art to enhance their experiences of empowerment, illumination, and union with God.
• Smyrna (Asia Minor), a city whose famous philosopher had argued that reality is held together in numerically and geometrically balanced patterns, and where Christians created artistic puzzles that exhibited the mathematical dimensions of their beliefs.
• Pompeii (Italy), a town destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79, where an embryonic form of Christ devotion displayed a simple hope for protection from evil forces and the insecurities of life.

These case studies open new angles of vision onto the ingenuity of pre-Constantinian Christians as they expressed their theological convictions artistically in relation to the realities of their distinct contexts.