Sacred Stimulus: Jeru M In The Visual Christianization Of Rome Oxford Studies In Late Antiquity

Sacred Stimulus is about the effect Jerusalem had on the formulation of Christian art in Rome during the fourth and fifth centuries. Galit Noga-Banai looks at the visual Christianization of Rome from an almost neglected perspective: not in comparison to pagan art in Rome, not as reflecting the struggle with the emergence of New Rome in the East--topics that have both been studied extensively--but rather as visual expressions of the idea of Jerusalem and its holy sites. Contesting the ownership of the historical events and their mythical venues, Rome, as suggested in Sacred Stimulus, constructed its own set of holy sites and foundational myths and, already in the second half of the fourth century, expropriated for its own use some of Jerusalem's sacred sites and legends.

The selective analysis suggested here is based mostly on visual sources; if until now the study of Rome's competition with Jerusalem, as part of the Christianization of Rome, has been avoided due to the dearth of relevant textual sources, the present volume focuses on the visual data and insists on treating it no less seriously than written evidence. The book addresses a series of artistic products, which together point to a clear Roman attitude towards Jerusalem in the second half of the fourth century, and to a change of attitude during the fifth century.

Sacred Stimulus does not deal with new or unpublished artistic evidence, instead relying on well-known and central works of art that include mosaic decoration, sarcophagi, wall paintings, portable art, and architecture. By doing this, the book exposes the role played by Jerusalem in the genesis of Christian art in Rome. Noga-Banai's consideration of earthly Jerusalem as a conception that Rome used, or had to take into account, in constructing its own new Christian ideological and cultural topography of the past sheds a light on connections and analogies that have not been preserved in literature. What may seem to be a narrow lens actually becomes quite broad, offering solutions to long-standing questions regarding specific motifs and scenes.