A collection of original essays, Saints, Sinners, and Sisters showcases the diverse questions currently being asked by gender scholars dealing with French, Netherlandish and German art from the medieval and early modern periods. Moving beyond the reclamation of personalities and oeuvres of 'lost' female artists, the contributors pose questions about gender and sex within specific historical contexts, addressing such issues as intended audience, use of the object, and patronage. These avenues of inquiry intersect with larger cultural questions concerning societal control of women. The book's three sections, 'Saints,' 'Sinners,' and 'Sisters, Wives, Poets' are each preceded by a concise introductory essay, detailing themes and offering reflective comparisons of theses and information. In 'Saints,' contributors look at women who were positive exemplar used by society to uphold standards. In the second section, the essays focus on the power of women's sexuality. The third section expands beyond the customary dichotomous division of the first two to examine women in diverse roles not widely studied as positions of women in those times. This final section expands our definitions of women's responsibilities and realigns them historically; it argues that women, and thus gender, need to be understood within a much broader historical context and beyond simplistic approaches sometimes superimposed by present-day readers on past times. This volume answers an acute need for research on the art of Northern Europe prior to the 20th century, and highlights the possibilities of new directions in the field. The effect of the new scholarship presented here is to broaden the discursive field, allowing fluidity of disciplinary boundaries, resulting in a volume that is illuminating to historians of more than art alone.

The first monograph on the Vita Humana cycle at Tre Fontane, this book includes an overview of the medieval history of the Roman Cistercian abbey and its architecture, as well as a consideration of the political and cultural standing of the abbey both within Papal Rome and within the Cistercian order. Furthermore, it considers the commission of the fresco cycle, the circumstances of its making, and its position within the art historical context of the Roman Duecento. Examining the unusual blend of images in the Vita Humana cycle, this study offers a more nuanced picture of the iconographic repertoire of medieval art. Since the discovery of the frescoes in the 1960s, the iconographic programme of the cycle has remained mysterious, and an adequate analysis of the Vita Humana cycle as a whole has so far been lacking. Kristin B. Aavitsland covers this gap in the scholarship on Roman art circa 1300, and also presents the first interpretative discussion of the frescoes that is up-to-date with the architectural investigations undertaken in the monastery around 2000. Aavitsland proposes a rationale behind the conception of the fresco cycle, thereby providing a key for understanding its iconography and shedding new light on thirteenth-century Cistercian culture.

For those within the fields of art history and Byzantine studies, Professor Henry Maguire needs no introduction. His publications transformed the way art historians approach medieval art through his insightful integration of rhetoric, poetry and non-canonical objects into the study of Byzantine art. His ground-breaking studies of Byzantine art that consider the natural world, magic and imperial imagery, among other themes, have redefined the ways medieval art is interpreted. From notable monuments to small-scale and privately used objects, Maguire's work has guided a generation of scholars to new conclusions about the place of art and its function in Byzantium. In this volume, 23 of Henry Maguire's colleagues and friends have contributed papers in his honour, resulting in studies that reflect the broad range of his scholarly interests.

A new and exciting interpretation of Bosch's masterpiece, repositioning the triptych as a history of humanity and the natural world Hieronymus Bosch's (c. 1450-1516) Garden of Earthly Delights has elicited a sense of wonder for centuries. Over ten feet long and seven feet tall, it demands that we step back to take it in, while its surface, intricately covered with fantastical creatures in dazzling detail, draws us closer. In this highly original reassessment, Margaret D. Carroll reads the Garden as a speculation about the origin of the cosmos, the life-history of earth, and the transformation of humankind from the first age of world history to the last. Upending traditional interpretations of the painting as a moralizing depiction of God's wrath, human sinfulness, and demonic agency, Carroll argues that it represents Bosch's exploration of progressive changes in the human condition and the natural world. Extensively researched and beautifully illustrated, this groundbreaking secular analysis draws on new findings about Bosch's idiosyncratic painting technique, his curiosity about natural history, his connections to the Burgundian court, and his experience of contemporary politics. The book offers fresh insights into the artist and his most beloved and elusive painting.

This book explores the ways in which medieval Christians sought to memorialize the deceased: with tombs, cenotaphs, altars and other furnishings connected to a real or symbolic burial site. Reverent memorial for the dead was the inspiration for the production of a significant category of artworks during the Middle Ages - artworks aimed as much at the laity as at the clergy, and intended to maintain, symbolically, the presence of the dead. Memoria, the term that describes the formal, liturgical memory of the dead, also includes artworks intended to house and honour the deceased. A dozen essays analyze strategies for commemoration from the 4th - 15th century: the means by which human memory could be activated or manipulated through the interaction between monuments, their setting, and the visitor. Building upon from the growing body of literature on memory in the Middle Ages, the collection focuses on the tomb monument and its context as a complex to define what is to be remembered, to fix memory, and to facilitate recollection. The papers were originally presented at the 1994 meetings of the College Art Association, the International Congresses of Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, and the University of Leeds, England, in 1995.

Experiencing the Last Judgement opens up new ways of understanding a Byzantine image type that has hitherto been considered largely uniform in its manifestations and to a great extent frightening, coercive and paralysing. It moves beyond a purely didactic understanding of the Byzantine image of the Last Judgement, as a visual eschatological text to be 'read' and learned from, and proposes instead an appreciation of each unique image as a dynamic site to be experienced. Paintings, icons and mosaics from the tenth to the fourteenth century, from inside and outside of the Byzantine Empire, are placed within their specific socio-historical milieus, their immediate decorative programmes and their architectural contexts to demonstrate that each unique image constituted a carefully orchestrated and immersive experience of judgement. Each case study outlines the differences that exist in reality between these images that are often subsumed under one iconographic label, making a case against condensing dynamic, lived images into apparently static pictorial 'types'. Images of the Last Judgement needed the body, mind and memory of the viewer for the creation of meaning, and so the experience of these images was unavoidably spatial, gendered, corporeal, mnemonic, emotional, rhetorical and most often liturgical. Unpacking Byzantine images of judgement in light of these various facets of experience for the first time helps to elucidate the interaction of past individuals with the image, and the ways in which such encounters were intended to benefit the communities that made and lived alongside them.

Delightful, oft-reprinted guide to the foliate heads so common in medieval sculpture. This was the first-ever monograph dedicated to the Green Man. The Green Man, the image of the foliate head or the head of a man sprouting leaves, is probably the most common of all motifs in medieval sculpture. Nevertheless, the significance of the image lay largely unregarded until KathleenBasford published this book - the first monograph of the Green Man in any language -and thereby earned the lasting gratitude of scholars in many fields, from art history and folklore to current environmental studies. This book has opened up new avenues of research, not only into medieval man's understanding of nature, and into conceptions of death, rebirth and resurrection in the middle ages, but also into our concern today with ecology and our relationship with the green world. It is therefore a work of living scholarship and its publication in paperback will be greatly and justly welcomed.

A study of the representation of education in material culture, at a period of considerable change and growth. On the facade of Chartres cathedral serene personifications of the arts of grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, music, arithmetic, geometry and astronomy present passers-by with a vision of education as an improving process leading to greater knowledge of God. The arts proved a popular subject in medieval imagery, and were included in manuscripts, stained-glass and luxury metalwork objects as well as on the facades of churches. These idealized figures contrast with many textual accounts of education, in which authors recorded the hardships of student poverty and the temptations of drink and women to be found in the cities where teachers were increasingly establishing themselves. Thisbook considers how and why education was explored in the art and architecture of the twelfth century. Through analysis of imagery in a wide range of media, it examines how teachers and students sought to use images to enhance their reputations and the status of their studies. It also investigates how the ideal models often set out in imagery compared with contemporary practice in an era that saw significant changes, beginning with a shift away from monastic education and culminating in the appearance of the first universities. LAURA CLEAVER is Senior Lecturer in Manuscript Studies, Institute of English Studies, University of London.

In the first full-length study of Judith of Flanders (c. 1032-1094), Mary Dockray-Miller provides a narrative of Judith's life through analysis of the books and art objects she commissioned and collected. Organizing her book chronologically by Judith's marriages and commissions, Dockray-Miller argues that Judith consciously and successfully deployed patronage to support her political and marital maneuverings in the eleventh-century European political theater. During her marriage to Tostig Godwinson, Earl of Northumbria, she commissioned at least four Gospel books for herself in addition to the numerous art objects that she gave to English churches as part of her devotional practices. The multiple treasures Judith donated to Weingarten Abbey while she was married to Welf of Bavaria culminated in the posthumous gift of the relic of the Holy Blood, still celebrated as the Abbey's most important holding. Lavishly illustrated with never before published full-color reproductions from Monte Cassino MS 437 and Fulda Landesbibliothek MS Aa.21, The Books and the Life of Judith of Flanders features English translations of relevant excerpts from the Vita Oswinii and De Translatione Sanguinis Christi. Dockray-Miller's book is a fascinating account of this intriguing woman who successfully negotiated the pitfalls of being on the losing side of both the Norman Conquest and the Investiture Controversy.

The continued influence and significance of the legend of Arthur are demonstrated by the articles collected in this volume. The enduring appeal and rich variety of the Arthurian legend are once again manifest here. Chretien's Erec et Enide features first in a case study of the poet's endings and medieval theories of poetic composition. Next follows an essay that comes to the rather surprising-but- convincing conclusion that the "traitor" spoken of in the opening lines of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is neither Aeneas nor Antenor, but Paris. Another essay dealing with Sir Gawain, this time in Malory's Morte Darthur, offers among other things an answer to the question of how Gawain knows the exact hour of his death. Few native Irish Arthurian tales have come down to us: a discussion of "The Tale of the Crop-Eared Dog" shows it to be both bizarre and popular, as witnessed by the many manuscripts in which it is preserved. The materiality of the Arthurian legend is represented here by a detailed treatment of the lead cross supposedly found in the grave of King Arthur at Glastonbury Abbey in 1191. Finally, this volume continues Arthurian Literature's tradition of publishing unfamiliar or previously unknown Arthurian texts, in this instance an original Middle English translation of the story of the sword in the stone, from the Old French Merlin. ELIZABETH ARCHIBALD is Professor of English Studies at Durham University, and Principal of StCuthbert's Society; DAVID F. JOHNSON is Professor of English at Florida State University, Tallahassee. Contributors: Lindy Brady, David Carlton, Neil Cartlidge, Nicole Clifton, Oliver Harris, Richard Moll, Rebecca Newby.

When she died in 2016, Dr Jennifer O'Reilly left behind a body of published and unpublished work in three areas of medieval studies: the iconography of the Gospel Books produced in early medieval Ireland and Anglo-Saxon England; the writings of Bede and his older Irish contemporary, Adomnan of Iona; and the early lives of Thomas Becket. In these three areas she explored the connections between historical texts, artistic images and biblical exegesis. This volume brings together seventeen essays, published between 1984 and 2013, on the interplay of texts and images in medieval art. Most focus on the manuscript art of early medieval Ireland and England. The first section includes four studies of the Codex Amiatinus, produced in Northumbria in the monastic community of Bede. The second section contains seven essays on the iconography and text of the Book of Kells. In the third section there are five studies of Anglo-Saxon Art, examined in the context of the Benedictine Reform. A concluding essay, on the medieval iconography of the two trees in Eden, traces the development of a motif from Late Antiquity to the end of the Middle Ages.(CS1080)

Engaging with the imaginative, nonreligious response to Gothic sculpture in German-speaking lands and tracing high and late medieval notions of the 'living statue' and the simulacrum in religious, lay, and travel literature, this study explores the subjective and intuitive potential inherent in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century sculpture. It addresses a range of works, from the oeuvre of the so-called Naumburg Master through Freiburg-im-Breisgau to the imperial art of Vienna and Prague. As living simulacra, the sculptures offer themselves to the imaginative horizons of their viewers as factual presences that substitute for the real. In perceiving Gothic sculpture as a conscious alternative to the sacred imago, the book offers a new understanding of the function, production, and use of three-dimensional images in late medieval Germany. By blurring the boundaries between viewers and works of art, between the imaginary and the real, the sculptures invite the speculations of their viewers and in this way produce an unstable meaning, perpetually mutable and alive. The book constitutes the first art-historical attempt to theorize the idiosyncratic character of German Gothic sculpture - much of which has never been fully documented - and provides the first English-language survey of the historiography of these works.

First translation of two vivid accounts of French thirteenth-century tournaments, rich in detail and an impassioned defence of tournaments and their importance. The Romance of Le Hem and The Tournament at Chauvency are eyewitness accounts of the famous tournaments held in 1278 at Le Hem on the banks of the Somme in north-eastern France, and in 1285 at Chauvency in Lorraine. Written within weeks of the events they describe, they record in vivid detail not only the jousts and the melees but also the entertainments and dramatic interludes which preceded, followed and embellished these festivals of martial sport. As Sarrasin makes clear, theatre as well as jousting, and jousting in the context of enacted stories, were central to what took place at Le Hem, involving elaborate role-play by participants as figures from Arthurian romance. And few medieval accounts of events have such thrilling immediacy as Jacques Bretel's record of Chauvency. He sat in a prime place, on the fourth step of the stand, and the reader sees and hears the action as if sitting at his shoulder - and eavesdrops on conversations, too. He gives remarkable insights into the surprising role played by song, and into how the whole event was perceived and understood. These intriguing works are invaluable source material for scholars not only of medieval chivalry and tournaments but also of festivities and performance.

The twelve papers written for this volume reflect the wide scope of Annemarie Weyl Carr's interests and the equally wide impact of her work. The concepts linking the essays include the examination of form and meaning, the relationship between original and copy, and reception and cultural identity in medieval art and architecture. Carr's work focuses on the object but considers the audience, looks at the copy for retention or rejection of the original form and meaning, and always seeks to understand the relationship between intent and perception. She examines the elusive nature of 'center' and 'periphery', expanding and enriching the discourse of manuscript production, icons and their copies, and the dissemination of style and meaning. Her body of work is impressive in its chronological scope and geographical extent, as is her ability to tie together aspects of patronage, production and influence across the medieval Mediterranean. The volume opens with an overview of Carr's career at Southern Methodist University, by Bonnie Wheeler. Kathleen Maxwell, Justine Andrews and Pamela Patton contribute chapters in which they examine workshops, subgroups and influences in manuscript production and reception. Diliana Angelova, Lynn Jones and Ida Sinkevic offer explorations of intent and reception, focusing on imperial patronage, relics and reliquaries. Cypriot studies are represented by Michele Bacci and Maria Vassilaki, who examine aspects of form and style in architecture and icons. The final chapters, by Jaroslav Folda, Anthony Cutler, Rossitza Schroeder and Ann Driscoll, are linked by their focus on the nature of copies, and tease out the ways in which meaning is retained or altered, and the role that is played by intent and reception.

Originally published between 1920-70, The History of Civilization was a landmark in early twentieth century publishing. It was published at a formative time within the social sciences, and during a period of decisive historical discovery. The aim of the general editor, C.K. Ogden, was to summarize the most up to date findings and theories of historians, anthropologists, archaeologists and sociologists. This reprinted material is available as a set or in the following groupings: * Prehistory and Historical Ethnography Set of 12: 0-415-15611-4: GBP800.00 * Greek Civilization Set of 7: 0-415-15612-2: GBP450.00 * Roman Civilization Set of 6: 0-415-15613-0: GBP400.00 * Eastern Civilizations Set of 10: 0-415-15614-9: GBP650.00 * Judaeo-Christian Civilization Set of 4: 0-415-15615-7: GBP250.00 * European Civilization Set of 11: 0-415-15616-5: GBP700.00

The phenomenon of iconoclasm, expressed through hostile actions towards images, has occurred in many different cultures throughout history. The destruction and mutilation of images is often motivated by a blend of political and religious ideas and beliefs, and the distinction between various kinds of 'iconoclasms' is not absolute. In order to explore further the long and varied history of iconoclasm the contributors to this volume consider iconoclastic reactions to various types of objects, both in the very recent and distant past. The majority focus on historical periods but also on history as a backdrop for image troubles of our own day. Development over time is a central question in the volume, and cross-cultural influences are also taken into consideration. This broad approach provides a useful comparative perspective both on earlier controversies over images and relevant issues today. In the multimedia era increased awareness of the possible consequences of the use of images is of utmost importance. 'Iconoclasm from Antiquity to Modernity' approaches some of the problems related to the display of particular kinds of images in conflicted societies and the power to decide on the use of visual means of expression. It provides a deeper understanding of the mechanisms of the phenomenon of iconoclasm. Of interest to a wide group of scholars the contributors draw upon various sources and disciplines, including art history, cultural history, religion and archaeology, as well as making use of recent research from within social and political sciences and contemporary events. Whilst the texts are addressed primarily to those researching the Western world, the volume contains material which will also be of interest to students of the Middle East.

This book argues that Robert Willis's presentations were fundamental to the format of British Archaeological Association meetings and to the creation of medieval architectural history. It discusses the background to his study of Canterbury in terms of his own research.

The premise of this volume is that the ubiquity of lactation imagery in early modern visual culture and the discourse on breastfeeding in humanist, religious, medical, and literary writings is a distinct cultural phenomenon that deserves systematic study. Chapters by art historians, social and legal historians, historians of science, and literary scholars explore some of the ambiguities and contradictions surrounding the issue, and point to the need for further study, in particular in the realm of lactation imagery in the visual arts. This volume builds on existing scholarship on representations of the breast, the iconography of the Madonna Lactans, allegories of abundance, nature, and charity, women mystics' food-centered practices of devotion, the ubiquitous practice of wet-nursing, and medical theories of conception. It is informed by studies on queer kinship in early modern Europe, notions of sacred eroticism in pre-tridentine Catholicism, feminist investigations of breastfeeding as a sexual practice, and by anthropological and historical scholarship on milk exchange and ritual kinship in ancient Mediterranean and medieval Islamic societies. Proposing a variety of different methods and analytical frameworks within which to consider instances of lactation imagery, breastfeeding practices, and their textual references, this volume also offers tools to support further research on the topic.

Under the guidance of the leading experts on baptismal fonts and the co-directors of the Baptisteria Sacra Index, the world's only iconographical inventory of baptismal fonts, a research project at the University of Toronto, this collection of essays by a group of European and North American scholars extends the traditional boundaries associated with the study of baptismal fonts. The 'visual' is privileged, whether it is in the metaphysical, literary or empirical realms of scholarship, offering a rich understanding of the powerful role of baptism played in medieval and renaissance society. In the quest for a holistic understanding of the vessels, the settings and contexts, the rituals and the spiritual significance of the font, itself, the contributors have turned to a range of sources, folkloric tales, baptismal records, liturgical sermons, civic records, literary accounts, hagiographies and historical documents about local families, communities and ecclesiastical developments. Previous scholarship about baptismal fonts has often focused on the purely stylistic, iconographical and liturgical perspectives, using primarily ecclesiastical and liturgical documentation. This collection of essays shows the wealth of new information that baptismal fonts can offer when scholars adopt interdisciplinary approaches and engage in readings that question traditional assumptions inherited in scholarship.

In 1559 and 1561, the Antwerp print publisher Hieronymus Cock issued an unprecedented series of landscape prints known today simply as the Small Landscapes. The forty-four prints included in the series offer views of the local countryside surrounding Antwerp in simple, unembellished compositions. At a time when vast panoramic and allegorical landscapes dominated the art market, the Small Landscapes represent a striking innovation. This book offers the first comprehensive analysis of the significance of the Small Landscapes in early modern print culture. It charts a diachronic history of the series over the century it was in active circulation, from 1559 to the middle of the seventeenth century. Adopting the lifespan of the prints as the framework of the study, Alexandra Onuf analyzes the successive states of the plates and the changes to the series as a whole in order to reveal the shifting artistic and contextual valences of the images at their different moments and places of publication. This unique case study allows for a new perspective on the trajectory of print publishing over the course of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries across multiple publishing houses, highlighting the seminal importance of print publishers in the creation and dissemination of visual imagery and cultural ideas. Looking at other visual materials and contemporary sources - including texts as diverse as humanist poetry and plays, agricultural manuals, polemical broadsheets, and peasant songs - Onuf situates the Small Landscapes within the larger cultural discourse on rural land and the meaning of the local in the turbulent early modern Netherlands. The study focuses new attention on the active and reciprocal intersections between printed pictures and broader cultural, economic and political phenomena.

The essays collected in this book were delivered at the XLII Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies, held in London in 2009 to accompany the exhibition Byzantium 330-1453, at the Royal Academy. The exhibition was one of the most ambitious and complex exhibitions ever mounted at the Royal Academy, as well as one of the most popular, and the overall aim of the book is to reflect on the exhibition of Byzantine art, both as an academic and popular exercise, and through the choice and discussion of individual objects. Exhibitions present a very different picture of Byzantium and its culture from works of history. The choices of object for display, their arrangement, and the underlying aims of exhibition curators and designers mean that every exhibition presents a different picture of Byzantium. Particular emphases can be placed, whether on everyday life or high court culture; Constantinople or the provinces; or claims of continuity or change over the Byzantine millennium. The essays explore aspects of the image of Byzantium that results from these choices. Given the enormous popularity of exhibitions of Byzantine objects (continued after the completion of this volume by exhibitions in Paris, Bonn and Istanbul), art has become one of the most popular and accessible means of popularizing Byzantium to a wide public audience. Hitherto there has been no general consideration of either the historiography of Byzantine exhibitions or the ways in which they have been set up to present different aspects of Byzantine culture to an academic and general public. The essays are divided into 3 sections: Exhibiting Byzantium sets the 2009 exhibition into the context of other exhibitions of Byzantine art and considers the issues involved in curating and viewing such major collections of medieval art; Object Lessons offers a set of studies of individual objects that were in the exhibition; Byzantium through its Art moves to consider Byzantine art more widely, thinking about the different ways in which objects can be used to study Byzantine culture and society. These are preceded by an introduction by the editors which sets the volume in context.

The twelve papers written for this volume reflect the wide scope of Annemarie Weyl Carr's interests and the equally wide impact of her work. The concepts linking the essays include the examination of form and meaning, the relationship between original and copy, and reception and cultural identity in medieval art and architecture. Carr's work focuses on the object but considers the audience, looks at the copy for retention or rejection of the original form and meaning, and always seeks to understand the relationship between intent and perception. She examines the elusive nature of 'center' and 'periphery', expanding and enriching the discourse of manuscript production, icons and their copies, and the dissemination of style and meaning. Her body of work is impressive in its chronological scope and geographical extent, as is her ability to tie together aspects of patronage, production and influence across the medieval Mediterranean. The volume opens with an overview of Carr's career at Southern Methodist University, by Bonnie Wheeler. Kathleen Maxwell, Justine Andrews and Pamela Patton contribute chapters in which they examine workshops, subgroups and influences in manuscript production and reception. Diliana Angelova, Lynn Jones and Ida Sinkevic offer explorations of intent and reception, focusing on imperial patronage, relics and reliquaries. Cypriot studies are represented by Michele Bacci and Maria Vassilaki, who examine aspects of form and style in architecture and icons. The final chapters, by Jaroslav Folda, Anthony Cutler, Rossitza Schroeder and Ann Driscoll, are linked by their focus on the nature of copies, and tease out the ways in which meaning is retained or altered, and the role that is played by intent and reception.

This collection of fifteen papers ranges from the author's initial interest in the Tapestry as a source of information on early medieval dress, through to her startling recognition of the embroidery's sophisticated narrative structure. Developing the work of previous authors who had identified graphic models for some of the images, she argues that not just the images themselves but the contexts from which they were drawn should be taken in to account in 'reading' the messages of the Tapestry. In further investigating the minds and hands behind this, the largest non-architectural artefact surviving from the Middle Ages, she ranges over the seams, the embroidery stitches, the language and artistry of the inscription, the potential significance of borders and the gestures of the figures in the main register, always scrutinising detail informatively. She identifies an over-riding conception and house style in the Tapestry, but also sees different hands at work in both needlecraft and graphics. Most intriguingly, she recognises an sub-contractor with a Roman source and a clownish wit. The author is Professor of Anglo-Saxon Culture at The University of Manchester, UK, a specialist in Old English poetry, Anglo-Saxon material culture and medieval dress and textiles.

Integrating the written sources with Rome's surviving remains and, most importantly, with the results of the past half-century's worth of medieval archaeology in the city, The Making of Medieval Rome is the first in-depth profile of Rome's transformation over a millennium to appear in any language in over forty years. Though the main focus rests on Rome's urban trajectory in topographical, architectural, and archaeological terms, Hendrik folds aspects of ecclesiastical, political, social, military, economic, and intellectual history into the narrative in order to illustrate how and why the cityscape evolved as it did during the thousand years between the end of the Roman Empire and the start of the Renaissance. A wide-ranging synthesis of decades' worth of specialized research and remarkable archaeological discoveries, this book is essential reading for anyone interested in how and why the ancient imperial capital transformed into the spiritual heart of Western Christendom.