The buildings of the Roman empire, especially those of the third, fourth, and fifth centuries, were only as distant from the peoples of Europe and the Mediterranean littoral as those of the sixteenth or seventeenth century are in many towns in Britain. A vast number was still visible, especially in cities such as Reims, Trier, Lyon, Arles, Paris, Tours, Verona, Jerusalem, Carthage and Constantinople/Istanbul, let alone Rome itself (Greenhalgh 1989). Yet the perception of the Roman remains was necessarily affected by the transformation of function of many of the remaining buildings. Constantine’s great aula at Trier, for example, had been converted into a Christian basilica, but the most dramatic shift of focus was in Rome itself. After the foundation of Constantinople, Rome developed as the capital of the Bishop of Rome and as a Christian city (Pfeil 1929; Krautheimer 1980, 1983; J. Smith 2000). These changes are evident even in the physical orientation of the city. In the third and fourth centuries Rome was still focused on the forum but, for political reasons, Constantine tried to locate the Pope some little distance away at the Lateran, Rome’s official cathedral. St Peter’s basilica, also built by Constantine, however, was established on the site of his shrine and became the center of pilgrimage and the de facto cathedral. Traders, stall holders, inn keepers and the like began to congregate in Trastevere and the area now known as the Old City in order to serve and benefit from the pilgrim traffic. In consequence the Lateran became increasingly isolated and the Forum also less used, though archaeological evidence indicates that the latter remained unaltered and unencroached upon until the end of the eighth century. Recent excavations as part of the papal Millennium Project have unearthed a very fine Carolingian villa built in the forum c.800 alongside a street of similar date, though the grandee for whom it might have been built is a matter of conjecture. The Forum, therefore, despite the consecration and Christianization of many of the great buildings, and the rich decoration of such churches as Santa Maria Antiqua and SS Cosmo e Damiano, would nevertheless have retained much of the character and majesty it had possessed in late antiquity. Knowledge of the buildings of Rome and the emperors who had had them erected was entwined with Christian traditions. There were, for example, hosts of martyrs associated with the excesses of Nero in ad 64 and possibly Domitian ad 8196, and persecutions under Decius 249-51 and Diocletian c.303. Many obscure members of Roman families from the period of the principate were elevated as martyrs and saints. As well as the shift in the concentration of the population of Rome there is the extraordinary building activity in the city, with an impressive number of new basilicas erected between 380 and 440. Building styles incorporated many classical reminiscences (especially in the use of Ionic and Corinthian columns). Classical antiquity, therefore, was reshaped within a new Christian context, which in its turn inspired architecture in the early middle ages and beyond.
Some indication of how early medieval visitors and pilgrims reacted to Rome is to be found in the itineraries and syllogai. These are collections of recorded inscriptions from monuments, especially in Rome, which resemble in some respects the “walking routes” provided in modern tourist guides. They are arranged in a sequence following the route of pedestrians and are the consequence of pilgrims, visitors, or tourists noting and copying down the inscriptions they saw. The Einsiedeln sylloge from the early ninth century is one of the best known of these texts. It walks readers from St Peter’s and the Tiburtine bridge into the city, taking them to Trajan’s column and the baths of Diocletian, the Palatine Forum and then over many bridges and under many arches, including the triumphal arches of Constantine and Severus. It records the inscriptions concerning the warmaking and imperial expansion under Hadrian, Trajan, and Marcus Aurelius. The ninth-century visitor also visited the Capitoline hill and the theater of Pompey, and recorded the Christian inscriptions of such major Roman churches as St Peter’s, S. Paolo fuori le mura, Sta Sabina, S. Pancrazio, S. Sebastiano (Rossi 1857-1888; Walser 1987). These accounts, of course, also served as possible guides for what to see in Rome for other visitors in the future.
The combination of interests in classical and secular antiquity, in the military successes of the imperial past and in the saints of the early Christian city in these syllogai and itineraries represents a tradition on which the twelfth-century author of The Marvels of Rome clearly drew. He, too, combined the accounts of Roman churches and Roman martyrs and saints with ancient classical and secular monuments on which there is laconic detail (Gregorius Magister trans. Osborne 1987). The Marvells ofRome provides a guide to the devout pilgrim as well as to the monuments of Roman civic life, therefore, and it incorporates a certain amount about the city of Rome itself. Certainly the Christian basilicas and the subsequent elaborate building programs of many popes reoriented the religious places and created many new locations of religious devotion. Recent research on medieval church buildings in Rome has revealed a history of transformation and new building work as well as places that simply ceased to be used and were replaced by others. Rome, despite having been treated over the past sixteen hundred years as a giant quarry, with many fine buildings despoiled (though some were converted for alternative use), the marble burnt for lime for further building work, and the metal stripped off, has continued to impress all who see it and to inspire those wealthy enough to adorn it further in a constant process of renewal. Yet even the Christian sacred topography was anchored in the pagan Roman past, for Livy described a topography of religious devotion supporting the political life of the city. Livy’s expression of Rome’s religious centrality may well have exerted some influence in Francia and Italy, for his work was known and copied with, for example, ninth - and tenth-century witnesses to the text in two main families from Corbie, Fulda, the Loire region, and elsewhere. A host of other texts from classical antiquity, all widely disseminated throughout Europe from the Carolingian period onwards, moreover, offered similarly vivid reflections on Rome’s physical structures, its religious cults, its history, and its role as a symbol of power.
World History
