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Epigraphy as Spolia — The Reuse of Inscriptions in Early Medieval Buildings

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 August 2013

Robert Coates-Stephens
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Papers of the British School at Rome , Volume 70 , November 2002 , pp. 275 - 296
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Copyright © British School at Rome 2002

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References

1 On the discovery of the Ludi Saeculares texts, see: Notizie degli Scavi di Antichità (1891), 90; Barnabei, F., ‘I commentarii dei ludi secolari augustei e severiani scoperti in Roma sulla sponda del Tevere presso S. Giovanni dei Fiorentini’, Monumenti Antichi Pubblicati per Cura della Reale Accademia dei Lincei 1/3 (1891), 601–10Google Scholar; Marchetti, D., ‘Relazione a S.E. il Ministro, intorno allo scavo sulla riva sinistra del Tevere, presso il ponte Vittorio Emmanuele, per il recupero di altri frammenti delle lapidi relative ai ludi secolari’, Monumenti Antichi Pubblicati per Cura della Reale Accademia dei Lincei 1/3 (1891), 611–16Google Scholar; Mommsen, T., ‘Commentarium ludorum saecularium quintorum qui facti sunt imp. Caesare Divi F. Augusti Trib. Pot. VI’, Monumenti Antichi Pubblicati per Cura della Reale Accademia dei Lincei 1/3 (1891), 617–72Google Scholar; Lanciani, R., Notes from Rome (London, 1988), 230Google Scholar. The wall ran for 30 m parallel to the river-bank, 4.5 m below modern ground level. It was 3.0 m high and 1.7 m thick, and its facing was composed of brick and fragments of marble and tufa. The phrase used to describe its appearance (‘costruzione tumultuaria’) is typical of early archaeological descriptions of masonry that we now know to be of eighth-/ninth-century date (cf. Colini, A., ‘Storia e topografia del Celio nell'antichità’, Atti della Pontificia Accademia Romana di Archeologia. Memorie 7 (1944), 97Google Scholar), and in fact both Marchettiand Lanciani concluded that it had been built in the eighth century, perhaps to prevent flooding. Hadrian I's project to ease congestion at the Pons Sancti Petri is described in the Liber Pontificalis (97.72). The reference specifically concerns the right bank, and speaks of a foundation on the river channel's edge of more than 12,000 tufa blocks; but we would logically expect a similar work to have been carried out at the other end of the bridge. An alternative explanation for a large eighth-/ninth-century wall at this point would be that it was a result of the early medieval reconstruction of the Aurelianic Walls (cf. Coates-Stephens, R., ‘The walls and aqueducts of Rome in the early Middle Ages’, Journal of Roman Studies 88 (1998), 166–78Google Scholar). Unfortunately, all phases of the walls’ river-stretch are very poorly known.

2 Lanciani, Notes (above, n. 1), 230, imagined the inscriptions had been set up inside the residence of the Quindecemviri Sacris Faciundis, which he located near modern Santa Maria in Vallicella, and that the inscriptions had been taken from there to the building-site on the riverbank in the eighth century. La Rocca, E. (La riva a mezzaluna (Rome, 1984), 55Google Scholar), on the other hand, imagined that they were originally set up in an open-air shrine in the Tarentum, more or less in the same area where they were reused (an opinion broadly shared — at least regarding the location — by Coarelli, F., Campo Marzio (Rome, 1997), 74–100Google Scholar). On the question of ‘building/spoliation permits’ in early medieval Italy, see Ward-Perkins, B., From Classical Antiquity to the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1984), 203–29Google Scholar.

3 Ward-Perkins, From Classical Antiquity (above, n. 2), 213–17, gave a cogent summary of Deichmann's theories on spolia, which emphasized motives of convenience over ideology. See also Janvier, Y., La législation du bas-empire romain sur les édifices publics (Aix-en-Provence, 1969), esp. pp. 347ffGoogle Scholar. Brenk, on the other hand, claimed that the use of spolia would have been more expensive, as well as more inconvenient, than that of newly-produced material, and that spolia architecture was the result of a deliberate ideological and aesthetic change in imperial art policy willed by Constantine himself (Brenk, B., ‘Spolia from Constantine to Charlemagne: aesthetics versus ideology’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 41 (1987), 106CrossRefGoogle Scholar). See also Romano, M., ‘Materiali di spoglio nel battistero di San Giovanni in Laterano: un riesame e nuove considerazioni’, Bollettino d'Arte 70 (1991), 31–71Google Scholar, esp. pp. 31, 34, 59–60, where Latin terms such as fragmenta docta are used by the art historian to provide an erudite antiquarian veneer for an entirely modern analysis. The arguments over spolia will recur throughout the following discussion.

4 Lapis Satricanus (Archeologische Studiën van het Nederlands Instituut te Rome, Scripta Minora V) (The Hague, 1980Google Scholar). For Athens and Delos, see Frantz, A., The Athenian Agora XXIV. Late Antiquity: A.D. 267–700 (Princeton, 1988), 5Google Scholar. Kinney recently has reviewed the early evidence for the use of spolia in Rome, concentrating on the reuse of sculpture, especially during the third century AD: Kinney, D., ‘Spolia. Damnatio and Renovatio Memoriae’, Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 42 (1997), 117–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Athens: Frantz, Agora (above, n. 4), 125–41. Northern Italy: Mura delle città romane in Lombardia. Atti del convegno (Como, 1993)Google Scholar, 23 (Milan), 44 (Como), 110 (Pavia) and 198 (Verona). Comitium: Lanciani, Notes (above, n. 1), 250–1.

6 For construction materials in Rome, as studied in church walls dating from the sixth to the twelfth centuries, see: G. Bertelli, A. Guiglia Guidobaldi and P. Rovigatti Spagnoletti, ‘Le strutture murarie degli edifici religiosi di Roma dal VI al IX secolo’, Rivista dell'Instituto Nazionale di Archeologia e Storia dell'Arte 23–4 (1976–7), 95–172; M. Avagnina, V. Garibaldi and Salterini, C., ‘Le strutture murarie degli edifici religiosi di Roma nel XII secolo’, Rivista dell'Instituto Nazionale di Archeologia e Storia dell'Arte 23–4(1976–1977), 173–256Google Scholar.

7 Contemporary attitudes to spoliation are discussed in Ward-Perkins, From Classical Antiquity (above, n. 2), 214–15. Blockley would assign John of Antioch's account of the riots in 456 to the ‘lost’ history of Priscus of Panium — Blockley, R., The Fragmentary Classicising Historians of the Later Roman Empire 2 (Liverpool, 1983), 335Google Scholar. Pompeianus's inscription (CIL X 1199) is cited in Ward-Perkins, B., ‘The cities’, in Cameron, A. (ed.), The Cambridge Ancient History XIII (Cambridge, 1998), 381Google Scholar.

8 The Theodosian Code also legislates against the spoliation of tombs at 9.17 and 9.38.8.

9 For the decline of ‘scientific scholarship’, see Frend, W., Archaeology of Early Christianity (London, 1996), 5–8Google Scholar — cf. Sozomen: ‘some say that the facts were first disclosed by a Hebrew who dwelt in the East, and who derived his information from some documents which had come to him by paternal inheritance; but it seems more accordant with truth to suppose that God revealed the fact by means of signs and dreams; for I do not think that human information is requisite when God thinks it best to make manifest the same’, translated in Hartranft, C., Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers 2 (Oxford/New York, 1891Google Scholar). Even more superstitious attitudes to epigraphic evidence are evident in the eighth-century text on Constantinople, Parastaseis Syntomoi Chronikai, translated by Cameron, A. and Herrin, J. (Leiden, 1984Google Scholar). More expansive discussion of the ‘end of Greek historiography’ can be found in A. Cameron and L. Conrad (eds), Papers of the First Workshop on Late Antiquity and Early Islam: the Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East 1. Problems in the Literary Source Material (Princeton, 1992). For miraculous reliclabels, see Liber Pontificalis 93.24: ‘In the venerable patriarchate the holy pope [Zacharias] discovered St George the martyr's sacred head, kept safe in a casket; in this he also found a note made out in Greek letters, indicating its identity’ (translated in Davis, R., The Lives of the Eighth-Century Popes (Liverpool, 1992))Google Scholar. For archaeological examples of such labels, see De'Cavalieri, P. Franchi, ‘Le reliquie dei Martiri Greci nella chiesa di S. Agata alla Suburra’, Rivista di Archeologia Cristiana 10 (1933), 235–60Google Scholar. Lateran Livy: Vattasso, M., Frammenti d'un Livio del V secolo recentemente scoperti: CodVatLat 10696 (Rome, 1906), 11–12Google Scholar.

10 For the sylloges of Roman inscriptions compiled by the Anglo-Saxons and Franks, see Silvagni, A., ‘Nuovo ordinamento delle sillogi epigrafiche di Roma anteriori al secolo XI’, Dissertazioni della Pontificia Accademia Romana di Archeologia, 2nd ser. 15 (1921), 227–9Google Scholar. On Hadrian I's epitaph, see Leclercq, H. in Dictionnaire d'archéologie Chrétienne et de liturgie VI. 2 (Paris, 1925), 1964–7Google Scholar, and Petrucci, A., Le scritture ultime (Turin, 1995), 55–6Google Scholar.

11 The most prestigious epigraphic texts of early medieval Rome are given in Silvagni, A., Monumenta epigrafica Christiana I (Vatican City, 1943Google Scholar); see taw. XV. 5, 8–10; XXXVII. 4–5; XXXIX. 6 for those mentioned here. The epitaphs are published in Inscriptiones Christianae Urbis Romae, old and new series. Pope Vigilius (537–55) replaced Damasus's poems on the martyrs, damaged during the sieges of the Gothic Wars, in imitation Philocalian script (V. Fiocchi Nicolai, ‘Strutture funerarie ed edifici di culto paleocristiani di Roma dal III al VI secolo’, in Manzella, I. Di Stefano (ed.), Le iscrizioni dei cristiani in Vaticano (Vatican City, 1997), 138–9Google Scholar). For less assured imitations of Damasus's inscriptions, see De Rossi, G.B., ‘Iscrizioni rinvenute dinanzi la chiesa dei SS. Cosma e Damiano sulla Via Sacra’, Bullettino di Archeologia Cristiana 6 (1889), 134–7Google Scholar.

12 For Santa Maria and Boldetti, see Frend, Archaeology of Early Christianity (above, n. 9), 24. The Aqua Virgo inscription is presented in CIL VI 31564 and Bullettino della Commissione Archeologica Comunale in Roma 9 (1881), 197Google Scholar. Other early (c. sixth-century) reuse of inscriptions for paving is recorded in late antique housing beneath Venezia, Piazza (Bullettino della Commissione Archeologica Comunale in Roma 30 (1902), 287–9Google Scholar), on the Esquiline (Bullettino della Commissione Archeologica Comunale in Roma 14 (1886), 196–8Google Scholar) and on the Aventine, (Bullettino della Commissione Archeologica Comunale in Roma 21 (1893), 5Google Scholar).

13 Another reason for inscriptions being reused face upwards would be in cases where the opposite face remained unworked: the inscribed side would therefore have presented a better surface. (I am grateful to Charles Crowther for this suggestion; he cites the pavement of the fifth-century Byzantine basilica in Priene.) For the inscription of Marea/Laurentius, see De Rossi, G.B., ‘L'elogio metrico di Marea insigne personaggio della chiesa romana e vicario del papa Vigilio’, Bullettino della Commissione Archeologica Comunale in Roma 7 (1869), 17–31Google Scholar. It was found during the excavations of 1866 reused as a threshold, whose doorway subsequently had been blocked. Allowing time for such blocking, and especially for the passage of footsteps prior to this, which had almost entirely worn away the lettering of the text, we should imagine that the inscription arrived at Santa Maria long before Boldetti's time. On the other hand, the epitaph was still in its original site — almost certainly the cemetery of Santa Felicità on the Via Salaria — in the mid-seventh century, when it was partially copied for the sylloge now known as Lauresheim IV (Inscriptiones Christianae Urbis Romae 1st ser. II, 117; dating by Silvagni, ‘Nuovo ordinamento’ (above, n. 10), 196–7). Santa Maria was restored by Popes Hadrian I, Gregory IV and Benedict III, before being entirely rebuilt by Innocent II from 1139; of these interventions, it may be significant that Hadrian I also carried out restoration works at the cemetery of Santa Felicità. (Large-scale translations of relics, however, which probably led to the wide-scale reuse of catacomb inscriptions inside the city, were constant from c. 756 to 855.)

14 Mitchell, J., ‘Literacy displayed: the use of inscriptions at the monastery of S. Vincenzo al Volturno in the early ninth century’, in McKitterick, R. (ed.), The Uses of Literacy in Early Medieval Europe (Cambridge, 1990), 186–225Google Scholar.

15 See, for example, De Lachenal, L., ‘I Normanni e l'antico: per una ridefinizione dell'abbaziale incompiuta di Venosa in terra lucana’, Bollettino d'Arte 96–7(1996), 1–80Google Scholar.

16 For San Vincenzo see: J. Patterson, ‘The Roman inscriptions’, in Mitchell, J. and Hansen, I. (eds), San Vincenzo al Volturno 3: the Finds from the 1980–86 Excavations (Spoleto, 1999), 19–70Google Scholar. Inscriptions of all periods are frequently used by builders to clean their trowels and plaster-knives at the end of a day's work in modern Rome (see, for example, the proprietorial plaque of San Lorenzo in Panisperna following recent works on the house at Via Panisperna, no. 60).

17 Bullettino della Commissione Archeologica Comunale in Roma 28 (1900), 15, n. 2Google Scholar; Notizie degli Scavi di Antichità (1900), 49, 295; Lanciani, Notes (above, n. 1), 294–5, assigned the stone inscription to a later restoration, perhaps of the fifth century, carried out by the Neratius of the inscription. Bartoli, A., ‘Lavori nella sede del Senato Romano al tempo di Teoderico’, Bullettino della Commissione Archeologica Comunale in Roma 73 (1949–1950), 79ff.Google Scholar, on the other hand, assigned it to the building's original phase. The question seems to hang above all on the style of the lettering. The plaster inscription recently has been placed on display at the Crypta Balbi Museum in Rome (where it is dated to c. 800, however). A more mundane case of ancient inscriptions being plastered over in their new architectural context would appear to be the pieces from Corbridge reused in the late seventh-century crypt of the Anglo-Saxon church of Saint Wilfrid at Hexham (Bailey, R., ‘St. Wilfrid. Ripon and Hexham’, in Karkov, C. and Farrell, R. (eds), Studies in Insular Art and Archaeology (Oxford (Ohio), 1991), 4–5Google Scholar).

18 The distinction between the structure and its inscriptions, of course, can be artificial — a notable case being the Augustaeum at Ankara, converted to a church some time after Theodosius, with its monumental texts of the Res Gestae of Augustus, carved on the pronaos walls, left in situ: Foss, C., ‘Late antique and Byzantine Ankara’, Dumbarton Oaks Papers 31 (1977), 65CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Would they have been plastered over? Interestingly, the internal walls of the cella were inscribed with crosses, a sanctification practice well-known from sarcophagi, friezes, statues, temples and city walls throughout the empire.

19 Pagan inscriptions reused at old Saint Peter's are presented in Lanciani, R., Wanderings through Ancient Roman Churches (London, 1920), 96–9Google Scholar. For the inscription of Aelius, see Ghetti, B. Apollonj, Ferrua, A., Josi, E. and Kirschbaum, E., Le esplorazioni sotto la confessione di San Pietro in Vaticano (Vatican City, 1955), 195 and fig. 149Google Scholar. For the reuse of pagan inscriptions and tabulae luxuriae for loculi slabs: Bullettino della Commissione Archeologica Comunale in Roma 16 (1888), 176; Bullettino della Commissione Archeologica Comunale in Roma 4 (1876), 200Google Scholar; Lanciani, Notes (above, n. 1), 399. The same practice is found in Jewish catacombs (Frey, J.B., Corpus Inscriptionum Judaicarum (Vatican City, 1936–1952), I, 546–55Google Scholar), and, indeed, in purely pagan contexts of reuse — Ashby, T., ‘The classical topography of the Campagna Romana’, Papers of the British School at Rome 1 (1901), 160Google Scholar. The idea that the fourth-century builders of Saint Peter's intended that the old religion be trampled by the Christians finds nearcontemporary justification in Mark the Deacon's account of the reuse of stones from a pagan temple to build a church in Gaza, cited by Ward-Perkins, B., ‘Re-using the architectural legacy of the past, entre idéologic et pragmatisme’, in Brogiolo, G. and Ward-Perkins, B. (eds), The Idea of the Town between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (Leiden, 1999), 233Google Scholar.

20 For Saints Alexius and Boniface and Saint Pancras see: Bibliotheca Sanctorum III, 324 and Acta Sanctorum, Maii III (Paris, 1867), 17–22Google Scholar. A fragment of one of the dedicatory inscriptions of the Baths of Diocletian was reused as the threshold of Santi Alessio and Bonifacio until 1752 (CIL VI 1131a); a dedication to Diocletian is recorded in the pavement of San Pancrazio by M. Armellini, Le chiese di Roma (second edition) (Rome, 1891), 954 (he imagined it had first been used to seal a loculus in the catacombs below). For Damasus's inscription reused, see Silvagni, Monumenta (above, n. 11), tav. IX. 1. A good example of an art historical interpretation providing contradictory explanations for the motives behind the use of spolia is De Lachenal, ‘Normanni’ (above, n. 15), 64 and 68: the reuse of Roman inscriptions from the Forum at Venosa in the unfinished Norman abbey of the Trinity is said to have been executed by the Altovilla patrons in order to tie themselves into local Roman tradition and legitimize their own position as heirs to Roman rule — here we are urged to infer ‘respect’ for the stones' origins (p. 64); later, it is suggested that the reuse of similar texts in a subsequent phase was intended to signal the Normans' disrespect for the Roman papacy (p. 68).

21 Lanciani, Notes (above, n. 1), 307. It was identified as a ‘torretta o campanile’ by G. Boni, Notizie degli Scavi di Antichità (1900), 306, followed by Baddeley, St Clair, Recent Discoveries in the Forum 1898–1904 (London, 1904), 19Google Scholar. More details on the excavations are given in Bullettino della Commissione Archeologica Comunale in Roma 27 (1899), 220–1Google Scholar, and Bullettino della Commissione Archeologica Comunale in Roma 28 (1900), 273Google Scholar. The assembly to elect Pope Stephen III in 768 took place at the Three Fates, although there is no specific textual reference for a ‘papal podium’ (Liber Pontificalis 96.11); the stratigraphy and construction techniques of the structure would suit an early medieval (c. eighth-century) date.

22 The bases were published as CIL VI 36947, 36952 and 36959.

23 Pisa Cathedral: Settis, S., ‘Continuita, distanza, conoscenza. Tre usi dell'antico’, in Settis, S. (ed.), Memoria dell'antico nell'arte italiana III. Dalla tradizione all'archeologia (Turin, 1986), 395–8Google Scholar. Venosa: De Lachanal, Normanni (above, n. 15). The individual interpretations, however, can be extremely tendentious (see n. 20).