Death in a New Key: The Christian Turn of Roman Sarcophagi

Christian sarcophagi were produced in Rome during a long fourth century for a narrow audience. Their iconography marks a discontinuity in a centuries-old medium, a turn away from pagan and profane themes towards biblical narratives and Christian ideas. Following their patrons and viewers, these sarcophagi “converted” to a new religion and visually expressed its novel conception of death. This dissertation approaches these monuments as autonomous historical documents that merit examination on their own terms, which is not to deny the importance of social, economic, religious or artistic developments. Some of these extrinsic elements of context are addressed in the initial chapters. In particular, inferences are drawn concerning the cohort of individuals who bought, occupied and saw these sarcophagi based on estimates of cost and the Roman income distribution. Visibility, conditions of access and the circumstances of reception are also examined. Following these contextual considerations, the study focuses on two distinct and chronologically separated groups of Christian sarcophagi. The first consists of monuments with the Jonah theme, the single most popular form in the period before 350 CE. Jonah sarcophagi are representative of the widespread use of scriptural symbolic narrative, combining Old and New Testament allusions with other potential associations. The second group are sarcophagi displaying the so-called traditio legis (a modern Latinism), an important example of the late-century “conceptual” forms that allude to religious tenets without any specific scriptural anchor. This complex and controversial form of representation suggests a composite design, a conflation of images into a single form. Through a close reading of both the Jonah and traditio legis sarcophagi, the discussion elucidates various facets of reception and a range of over-determined and alternative meanings. The conclusion considers how the fourth-century Roman sarcophagi contributed to the construction of a Christian imaginaire of Christian death among their viewers.Ph