Inscribing Faith in Late Antiquity

Inscribing Faith in Late Antiquity considers the Greek and Latin texts inscribed in churches and chapels in the late antique Mediterranean (c. 300-800 CE), compares them to similar texts from pagan, Jewish, and Muslim spaces of worship, and explores how they functioned both textually and visually. These texts not only recorded the names and prayers of the faithful, but were powerful verbal and visual statements of cultural values and religious beliefs, conveying meaning through their words as well as through their appearances. In fact, the two were intimately connected. All of these texts - Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and pagan - acted visually, embracing their own materiality as mosaic, paint, or carved stone. Colourful and artfully arranged, the inscriptions framed human relationships with the divine, encouraged responses from readers, and made prayers material. In the first in-depth examination of the inscriptions as words and as images, the author reimagines the range of aesthetic, cultural, and religious experiences that were possible in spaces of worship. Inscribing Faith in Late Antiquity is essential reading for those interested in Roman, late antique, and Byzantine material and visual culture, inscriptions and other texts, and religious life in the ancient Mediterranean.

Sean V. Leatherbury is Assistant Professor of Art History at Bowling Green State University, USA, and Research Associate of the European Research Council-funded project Monumental Art of the Christian and Early Islamic East, based in the Faculty of Classics at the University of Oxford, UK. His research focuses on Roman and late antique visual and material culture, and examines the relationship between art and text, issues of identity, and the transformation of the so-called minor arts from the Roman to the Byzantine period. His work has been supported by fellowships from the Getty Research Institute, USA, the Bard Graduate Center, USA, and the Council for British Research in the Levant, UK, and by funding from the Association for the Study and Preservation of Roman Mosaics, UK, and the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research, UK. Currently, he is completing a monograph on the late antique floor mosaics of Syria and co-editing a volume on late antique art and local identities.

List of figures; Acknowledgements; Abbreviations; Chapter One: Introduction; Chapter Two: Material texts; Chapter Three: Framing texts, framing belief; Chapter Four: Ekphrasis and experience; Chapter Five: Embedding texts into images; Chapter Six: Embedded prayers; Conclusion: Reading and seeing faith; Index