On a massive stone lintel (limen), Narbonne’s fifth-century bishop, Rusticus, commemorated his reconstruction of the city’s cathedral. A single line running the length of the cornice recorded the date when the lintel was set in place (collokatum)-. in the fourth year of the building project, during the sixth consulship of Valentinian Augustus, three days before the calends of December, in the nineteenth year of his own episcopate (November 29, ad 445). Below the cornice, in four columns filling the lintel’s face, Rusticus advertised his genealogy and his cursus honorum and detailed his management of the project - he was the son and nephew of bishops and had been a monastic colleague and fellow presbyter at Marseille of that city’s future bishop Venerius. The rebuilding, necessitated by a fire, had begun with the destruction of the old church’s walls under the supervision of the presbyter Ursus and the deacon Hermes on the fifth day of the fifteenth year of Rusticus’ episcopate, three days before the Ides of October (October 13, ad 441). The new foundations were in squared stone ( quadrata) and, in the second year of the project, on October 9 (the anniversary of Rusticus’ ordination), the apse had been completed under the management of the subdeacon Montanus. Financial backing came from Venerius, other bishops, and Marcellus, the praetorian prefect who had urged ( exegit) Rusticus to undertake the task (onus) (Le Blant 1856- no. 617; Diehl 1961- no. 1806). The lintel is a remarkable document; but other stones elsewhere also announced Rusticus’ benefactions (and ambitions): a lintel at an ancient church of St. Felix; a column dated precisely to the two hundred and sixty-sixth day of the seventeenth year of his episcopate (July 1, ad 444); an altar proclaiming Orate pro me Rustico vestro; and the previously noted graffiti-covered marble slab from Minerve (Le Blant 1856- no. 609), recording a project Rusticus had commissioned (fieri fecit) in the thirtieth year of his episcopate (Marrou 1970; Heinzelmann 1983- Rusticus 4; Durliat 1995a - 182). Rusticus’ elaborate epigraphic dossier testifies to this combative bishop’s efforts to anchor himself and his community to an inscribed identity amid the turmoil of a mid-fifth-century Narbonensis hedged in by Germanic kings (Mathisen 1989). The effort now appears masterfully shrewd. Connections to the empire were openly affirmed by naming the emperor, dating by consuls, and emphasizing the role of the praetorian prefecture. At the same time, Rusticus underscored those local sources of status and authority that were increasingly important, as the tide of empire receded from southern Gaul. Dating by reference to the years and days of his episcopate not only asserted Rusticus’ personal authority but also promoted a local and more immediately relevant chronology linked to the episcopate of Narbonne. By recalling his own genealogy, his cursus, and his alliances with the region’s other bishops, Rusticus advertised his claims to elite status and municipal authority at a time when so many other institutions of civic government had fallen into disuse. Similarly, his announcement of the curae exercised by members of the local clergy established them in like manner as benefactors of both city and church. Not surprisingly, of course, Rusticus’ inscriptions also publicized his role as a builder of churches, now the key structures with which civic impresarios and patrons were redefining the late antique cityscape. Previously, the elite of Narbonne had associated themselves with the duovirate and had dedicated altars to Vulcan {CIL 12. 4338).
Not long after Rusticus set his name prominently over Narbonne’s cathedral door, Perpetuus, bishop of Tours {ad 458/9-488/9), inscribed his in the apse of his new Basilica of St. Martin. It was not until the later fifth century that a suitable church finally rose over the tomb of the fourth-century bishop Martin. At his death in AD 397, Martin had been buried in a cemetery outside Tours’s walls. Soon thereafter, his grave site, marked by a modest shrine, had emerged as the scene of spectacular miracles. Yet, only during the episcopate of the enterprising Perpetuus did Martin’s relics receive the kind of lavish patronage that already distinguished the tombs of many local martyrs and saints {Gregory of Tours, De virtutibus sancti Martini 1. 6). Perpetuus’ basilica, dedicated in ad 471 {but destroyed by the Normans in ad 997) has left few physical traces {Chevalier 1888; Lelong 1986), but twelve or thirteen texts inscribed on the church’s walls were copied down some time before the year AD 559. Preserved together with a bundle of other documents related to the basilica and the cult of St. Martin, this epigraphic sylloge further attests to the way in which monumental writing contributed to the reinvention of civic history around the tombs of the saints in late Roman and Merovingian Gaul.
The inscriptions in prose and verse commissioned by Perpetuus, penned in part by eminent men of letters and set upon the church’s walls, functioned in multiple ways to guide visitors to Martin’s tomb. They encouraged the humility and purity of heart prerequisite to fulfillment of the vows that brought pilgrims to the basilica {5-7). They assured readers {and listeners) that Martin was present to welcome them, yet also resident in the starry ‘‘citadel [arx] of heaven’’ {5). They provided captions for the basilica’s murals: a gospel scene of the widow’s mites, Christ walking on the water, and an image of Jerusalem {8-10). A lengthy poem by Paulinus of Perigueux, who in those same years set to poetry Sulpicius Severus’ influential Life of Martin, apparently glossed depictions of the living Martin’s miracles, admonishing visitors to acknowledge the healings and exorcisms unfolding before their eyes: ‘‘Seek his protection; you do not knock at these doors in vain’’ {11). Martin’s tomb was awash in words: the pilgrim, passing through the basilica’s apsidal arch as if climbing Jacob’s ladder {12; Gen. 28: 17), approached the ‘‘temple of God and the gateway to heaven [vere templum dei est et porta coeli].’’ Martin, confessor, martyr, and apostle, was wholly present at his grave, even while his soul rested in the hand of God {13-15). In the apse at the basilica’s eastern end, beyond the holy Martin’s tomb, a poem by Sidonius Apollinaris {16), litterateur and bishop of Clermont, advertised Perpetuus’ patronage {Luce Pietri 1983: 372-405, 798-822, whose numeration is followed here; Gilardi 1983; Luce Pietri 1984, 1988; Pietri and Biarne 1987: 32-4; Van Dam 1993: 308-17, with English translations).
The dossier of Perpetuus illustrates well how words inscribed on a church’s ‘‘very blocks and stones’’ (11. 6) might guide interpretation of the basilica complexes that were now often at the affective center of urban life and identity. Perpetuus’ church arose in a Christian cemetery zone where Martin’s grave had been one of many (Pietri and Biarne 1987: 26). Resplendent with marbles, mosaics, and glass, the basilica was now the scene of a series of annual vigils that included the anniversaries of Martin’s elevation to the episcopate (July 4) and his depositio (November 11). Martin’s tomb now attracted a constant stream of pilgrims. Wayfarers sought the saint’s favor in matters of health and welfare. They squatted in the courtyards. They took home souvenirs and relics. Some surely scrawled messages recording their visits. Burial continued around the basilica and ad sanctum. Tours’s bishops, with few exceptions, were now laid to privileged and protected rest near Martin, while other graves accumulated in the surrounding zones (Luce Pietri 1986; Van Dam 1993: 135). Gradually the area around the basilica became crowded with other structures: churches, monasteries, courtyards, and shrines. Indeed, by the time of Gregory, bishop of Tours ad 573-594, this suburban zone outrivaled the town as an attraction for visitors (Van Dam 1993: 128-35).
The image of Martin, whose life and immediate legacy had once been divisive, had slowly become central to the image of Tours. By the time of Perpetuus’ episcopate, Paulinus of Perigueux could style Tours the ‘‘city of Martin’’ (Vita 5. 295). The same impulses were emerging elsewhere in the late Roman world. Churches and martyria decorated with inscriptions and images had already arisen in Milan, Vienne, Tarragona, Carthage, and many towns and cities. The roots of such behavior lay in the fourth century and led back to Rome. There, Christian cult and Christian leaders had quickly adopted the medium of monumental writing. In a city still resplendent with generations of inscribed private and imperial monuments, inscriptions adorned the first imperial churches of the city, soon decorated the subterranean tombs of the martyrs, and continued longer than in many other places in the Latin west to express the self-understanding of the lay and clerical communities of the city.
The fourth century had seen grand structures erected over the graves of the Roman martyrs and saints (Curran 2000: 90-115). At the Vatican basilica of St. Peter, a series of inscriptions, some in mosaic, announced the names of Constantine and other members of his family, linking them with the construction of the building and its cult (e. g., Inscriptiones christianae urbis Romae, ii: 4092-5; Holloway 2004: 77-84). Rome’s bishops soon followed suit, in mosaic, on marble, and on liturgical objects (e. g., Inscriptiones christianae urbis Romae, ii: 4096-7). Still notable for their elegant script, the verse epigrams (elogia) of bishop Damasus (ad 366-84), praising the Roman martyrs and installed on marble tablets throughout the city’s martyria and churches, harked back to the heroic age of the Roman church. As monumental texts, these elogia rescripted the civic history once promoted in other officially sanctioned ‘‘halls of fame’’ scattered throughout the city’s public and imperial fora. For subsequent generations, these epigraphic poems provided the cornerstones for a revision of public memory that recast Rome as the city founded by Peter, Paul, and Lawrence (Trout 2005). But throughout Late Antiquity, as the destination of pilgrims, Rome also educated others in the ways of Christian epigraphic culture: travelers returned home with those copies of the city’s inscriptions that often form the core of the medieval syllogae (Everett 2003: 243-8). Over the course of several centuries, monumental writing remained prominent among the strategies by which late antique communities reestablished their corporate identities in a world of religious and social change. Moreover, epigraphy proved capable of defining, as well as weathering, some of the tumultuous transitions of the age.
World History
