Professor makes monumental discovery in Italy

Douglas Boin, Ph.D., professor of history at Saint Louis University, made a major announcement at the annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America, revealing that he and his team have discovered an ancient temple Roman which adds significant information about social change. from pagan gods to Christianity within the Roman Empire.

“We found three walls of a monumental structure that evidence suggests belonged to a Roman temple dating back to the period of Constantine,” Boin said.

“It dates from the fourth century AD and would be a remarkable addition to the landscape of this corner of Italy. It will contribute significantly to the understanding of the ancient city, the ancient cityscape and late-century urban society. “Roman Empire, because it shows the continuities between the classical pagan world and the early Christian Roman world that are often blurred or erased from broad historical narratives.”

Boin and his excavation team made a monumental discovery over the summer. Boin, an expert on Roman antiquity and its religious transitions, had been digging in the town of Spello, the famous medieval hilltop town about 20 minutes from Assisi and 2.5 hours north of Rome. Boin chose the city based on a rescript from a 4th-century letter from Emperor Constantine to residents regarding a religious festival.

This rescript, discovered in the 18th century, allowed the inhabitants of Spello to celebrate a religious festival in their hometown rather than traveling a great distance to attend another festival. However, to do this, the city was required to erect a temple to honor and venerate Constantine’s divine ancestors, the Flavian family, thus demonstrating how multicultural Roman society was at the time. era.

“There was remarkable religious continuity between the Roman world and the early Christian world,” Boin said.

“Things did not change overnight. Before our discovery, we never had the impression that there were real physical and religious sites associated with this latest ‘imperial worship practice.’ From the inscription and its reference to a temple, Spello offered very tantalizing potential for a major discovery of an imperial cult under a Christian ruler.”

Boin traveled to Spello and oversaw underground imaging to determine if there were any potential ruins beneath the surface that needed to be discovered. After several weeks, and almost by chance, Boin finally received promising images under a parking lot where the temple was suspected to be located.

Very carefully, the team dug into the ground until they found two adjacent walls. Further excavation uncovered what Boin believes to be the interior walls of the temple. This temple immediately became what Boin calls the greatest evidence of imperial worship in 4th-century Italy and the late Roman Empire.

“There is evidence from other places in the Roman world that Christian leaders supported imperial cult practices,” Boin said.

“We knew that pagans worshiped in their temples in the fourth century, but these findings were all small and inconsequential. And we knew that Christians supported imperial worship, and we knew this without any idea of ​​where it was happening .this would have happened.”

“This temple bridges these two landmarks, and in this respect it is unlike any temple I know of in the Mediterranean world of the fourth century Roman Empire. Any study of imperial worship in the Roman Empire of the fourth century will now need to be studied. to take into account this temple, which is an incredible discovery to make.”

With this discovery, Boin can now show how very slowly the societal changes of the time took place. Although Constantine was the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity, it would take almost 70 years for Christianity to become the official religion of the Roman Empire, under Emperor Theodosius. During this period, it still took many convincing and gradual changes for those who worshiped pagan gods to convert to Christianity.

“It changes everything about how we perceive the pace of social change and our impression of the impact of social and cultural change,” Boin said.

“This building, in a very radical way, shows us the persistence of pagan traditions that had been in place for centuries before the advent of Christianity, and it shows us how Roman emperors continued to negotiate their own values, their own hopes and dreams for the future of the Emperor and the Empire without overturning or burying the past.”

Boin and his team will return to Spello next summer to completely excavate the area to examine the entire temple, where he hopes to make even greater discoveries.

“We’re about to give people a very visible piece of evidence that really shakes up the neat and tidy way that people think about big moments of cultural change,” Boin said.

“Cultural changes are never as big as we think when we experience them, and there are many gray areas between people’s customs and broader society and culture. And many of them can be left aside. “That this temple was potentially a temple dedicated to Constantine’s divine ancestors as a way to worship the emperor in an increasingly Christian world at the time, it’s so bizarre and I love that we could put it into practice. light.”