Christian Archaeology and the Invention of the Early Church in Rome, 1561-1636

This dissertation is fundamentally concerned with how history is summoned to support political and spiritual identity, how facts are shown to be true, and how these processes blur lines between belief, proof, and deceit. In the sixteenth century, Protestants and Catholics looked to the example of the early church to support doctrinal positions and religious identity. It is well known that Catholics responded to the textual criticism of humanists and Protestants, which deconstructed Catholic claims to spiritual and political primacy, with their own history: Cesare Baronio’s Annales ecclesiastici (1588-1603). Scholars see Christian archaeology—largely equated with the work of Antonio Bosio in the catacombs outside Rome’s walls—as supporting Baronio’s textually-based, authoritative, and dogmatic position. The crafting of Catholic history was, in fact, a far more dynamic process, and evidences that at the center of the Church’s dogmatism lay a deep understanding of the epistemological value of observation and material evidence. Stories of the apostles, popes, and martyrs, themselves invented between the fifth and seventh centuries, were reinvented by a network of antiquarians and churchmen between 1561 and 1636 through a sophisticated and creative interpretation of text, topography, and object. Using archival, manuscript, and print sources from several archives and libraries in Rome, I focus on several unstudied and understudied excavations of bodies, objects, and spaces within Rome’s walls between 1605 and 1636. I find that antiquarians offered close observation and analysis of body parts, coins, inscriptions, and building materials as proof that authenticated the ancient bodies of popes and martyrs, and ancient Christian homes. These studies allowed antiquarians to offer more believable (and persistent) versions of Catholic confessional history: the story of Peter’s lengthy bishopric in Rome; the rule of his successors the “popes”; the sacrifice of the early martyrs; the origin of many of Rome’s churches as their homes; and Pope Sylvester’s privileged relationship with the emperor Constantine. These stories, in turn, defended deeply contested doctrinal positions such as Petrine primacy, apostolic succession, and the cult of the relics./nThese excavations show that the resurrection of Christian antiquities in Rome formed a crucial backdrop for the city’s self-image and urban transformation in the seventeenth century. In response to textual criticism, Catholics sought to show that the “Truth” of Catholic doctrine came from the careful observation and study of material evidence—or empirical truth—rather than history, tradition, or papal authority (from which it, in actuality, came). Antiquarian methods and discourses, therefore, emerged from and appealed to shifting perceptions of truth and authority in early seventeenth-century Europe. One result of these studies was a failure to produce a “universal” history of the ancient church, even in the heart of the Catholic world. Physical evidence, whether identified in good faith or fabricated, occasionally contradicted Baronio’s version of history, or offered wholly new interpretations of the time between Peter and Constantine. The excavation of Christian antiquities, moreover, attenuated local, political rivalries over the ownership of relics, forcing antiquarians to negotiate between conflicting textual or devotional traditions. The result was new histories, and a literal revival of Rome’s most ancient churches where a triumphant version of early Christians practicing their faith in their homes can still be seen today.

Advisor: Dandelet, Tom