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Sacred Ritual, Profane Space: The Roman House as Early Christian Meeting Place

  • Paperback
  • 248 pages
  • Publisher: McGill-Queen\'s University Press
  • 15 x 22.7 x 1.6 cm

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For students, historians and curious believers

Shows how faith shaped ancient home life rituals

Deepen your grasp of early church history today

Discover the fascinating way early Christians integrated their faith into the Roman domestic world.

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The first three centuries of Christianity are increasingly seen in modern scholarship as sites of complexity. Sacred Ritual, Profane Space examines the Christian meeting places of the time and overturns long-held notions about the earliest Christians as utopian rather than place-bound people. By mapping what is known from early Christian texts onto the archaeological data for Roman domestic spaces, Jenn Cianca provides a new lens for examining the relationship between early Christianity and sites of worship. She proposes that not only were Roman homes sacred sites in their own right but they were also considered sacred by the Christian communities that used them. In many cases, meeting space would have included the presence of the Roman domestic cult shrines. Despite the fact that the domestic cult was polytheistic, Cianca asserts that its practices likely continued in places used for worship by Christians. She also argues that continued practice of the domestic cult in Roman domestic spaces did not preclude Christians from using houses as churches or from understanding their rituals or their meeting places as sacred. Raising a host of questions about identity, ritual affiliation, and domestic practice, Sacred Ritual, Profane Space demonstrates how sacred space was constructed through ritual enactment in early Christian communities.
Sacred Ritual, Profane Space: The Roman House as Early Christian Meeting Place and The Essential History of Christianity
The Essential History of ChristianitySacred Ritual, Profane Space: The Roman House as Early Christian Meeting Place

  • Title

    Sacred Ritual, Profane Space: The Roman House as Early Christian Meeting Place

  • Author

    Jenn Cianca

  • Book Format

    Paperback / softback

  • Publisher

    McGill-Queen\'s University Press

  • Published

    May 2018

  • Weight

    377g

  • Page Count

    248

  • Dimensions

    15 x 22.7 x 1.6 cm

  • ISBN

    9780773553330

  • ISBN-10

    0773553339

  • Eden Code

    4688320