churches may have originated as private buildings whose owners
gave over some space inside them for Christian gatherings. In
most cases, it is difficult (if not impossible) to identify which
rooms might have been used by Christians, but in the remains of
aninsula(apartment building) lying beneath the later church
of SS. Giovanni e Paolo, there is a room in which a fresco was
painted, perhaps at the very beginning of the fourth century,
showing a praying figure. Around the same time, major renova-
tions of the building were undertaken, perhaps to provide for an
enlarged meeting area for Christians. Similar renovations can be
found also in the remains of buildings underlying the later church
of S. Crisogono. Meanwhile, at Aquileia in northern Italy, a huge
church, consisting of two large halls, was built very early in the
fourth century: it can be dated from inscriptions recording its
construction under the city’s bishop, Theodore, whose name also
appears in a list of clergy attending a church council at Arles in
- The size of his church, together with the sumptuous quality
of the mosaics with which it was decorated, suggest a large
Christian community in the city already by the end of the third
century (Snyder 1985).
Apart from buildings, the most extensive material remains
for pre-Constantinian Christianity are burial sites. Christians
(along with Jews and pagans) constructed subterranean complexes
of burial chambers called catacombs. There is extensive evidence
for these at Rome, and in several other cities too (Stevenson 1978;
Rutgers 2000). It is clear that catacombs continued to be used
throughout late antiquity, meaning that the earliest burials are
often difficult to date precisely. It seems most likely that the
earliest Christian catacombs are no earlier than the third century.
Certain cemeteries acquired special status through their associa-
tion with the burials of martyrs: at Rome, for example, the burial
ground on the Vatican hill was regarded as the resting place of
the apostle Peter already by the time Constantine ordered the
construction of a church there in the early fourth century.
The catacombs and the church from Dura Europos have also
yielded some of the earliest examples of Christian art. Frescos
SOURCES AND THEIR INTERPRETATION1
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