STUDIES IN ANCIENT ARCHAEOLOGY - J. Bintliff, K. Rutter (edd.) The Archaeology of Greece and Rome. Studies in Honour of Anthony Snodgrass. Pp. xii + 460, b/w & colour ills, b/w & colour maps. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016. Cased, £95. ISBN: 978-1-4744-1709-9.

Abstract

Drawing on the sermon collections of Caesarius and the Eusebius Gallicanus preachers, she outlines what the clergy wanted lay people to know. This included biblical stories, Psalms, prayers and fundamental doctrines such as the incarnation, the nature of Christ and the afterlife. Dialogue, the exploration of doubt and theories of reciprocity between human and divine all served as mechanisms through which lay instruction was undertaken and demonstrated, even if the results did not always meet clerical expectations. The brief survey of epitaphs with which the chapter ends offers a glimpse into lay attitudes towards the afterlife, perhaps less difficult to document than other theological beliefs, but still an elusive element of religious experience. Although it is not itself a study of lived Christianity in late Roman and Merovingian Gaul, the written and material evidence that B. analyses here offers many of the elements that such a study would include, with lay experience at its centre rather than its periphery. Her book can be recommended to any reader with an interest in the rich religious culture that flourished in the last phases and long aftermath of Roman imperial rule in Gaul.