Notes Set #1
Nov. 5
Constantine:
• Christian and pagan emperor.
• Produced a law that allowed Christianity.
• 2 coins
• his mother and daughter were already Christians.
• Women tended to become Christians and men stayed pagans, before this it was mostly the poor then the elite women.
• Through the influence of the elite women the men became Christian.
• Also had a vision that helped him win over Maxentius.
• Made Rome the capital of Christianity by donating.
• Bishop of Rome, heir to St. Peter.
• Constantine gave them 2 very large properties.
• 1 became the commemorative church of St. Peter, was known as his tomb.
• St. Pater’s on the Vatican Hill.
o A composite of a Renassaince section and a baroque section.
o At the time was the largest church, had been no official churches before that.
o Among these tombs was that of St. Peter. The church had developed into a shrine.
o Shrine as it appears today, used to be a humble tomb, was not an elite cemetery.
• Old St. peter’s
o Basilica (in pagan times it was a civic building): change in orientation, function, and meaning from Roman.
o Martyrium: a place where someone who has died for Christianity is buried and venerated.
o Funerary banqueting hall: ie large gathering place for believers
o NOT: the official seat of the Pope; not the Cathedral of Rome which is St. John Lateran.
• Reconstruction image.
o Difference between pagan and Christian basilica:
▪ Pagan: go to one area
▪ Once it becomes a church has a focus towards the altar, which in St. Peter’s faces the west, right over the tomb of St. peter.
▪ Side aisles are lower, windows up in the top: clerestory
▪ Becomes a model for Christian churches.
▪ 2 side...