Art at the Crossroads of Religion: Polytheistic, Christian, and Islamic Art in Antiquity

Catalog description

People often single out the reign of Constantine (A.D. 306-337) as the point in history when Rome transformed from a polytheistic empire to a Christian empire. This course questions the strict divide between the categories of "pagan" and "Christian" in Rome in the imperial period and beyond. Through a close examination of the artistic and architectural record, students will come to understand that this dichotomy is a modern invention; for people living in the Roman Empire, religious identities were extraordinarily fluid. Indeed, traditional polytheistic religion and Christianity remained closely intertwined for centuries after Constantine "Christianized" the Empire. Moreover, religious pluralism had been a fundamental part of Roman culture since the founding of ancient Rome. We will survey a range of material culture, including public statuary, sarcophagi, silver hordes, and temples and churches. We will also examine sites such as the border city of Dura-Europos in Syria to explore how religious identities in the Roman Empire (including Judaism, early Christianity, and so-called mystery cults) intertwined even when Rome was still supposedly a "pagan" Empire. The course pays particular attention to the art and architecture produced under Constantine, whom people today often remember as Rome's first Christian emperor but who represents, in fact, a complex amalgam of polytheistic and monotheistic practices and identities. We will also explore how Christian art slowly but ultimately became the predominant visual culture in the Roman Empire. Finally, we will examine how Early Islamic art and architecture exploited the Greco-Roman visual tradition to the ends of this new religion. Offered as ARTH 325 , ARTH 425 and CLSC 325 . Counts as a CAS Global & Cultural Diversity course.