A New Religious Koine
By the late fourth/early fifth century, the wide spread of Christianity with imperial
and episcopal support had effectively altered the traditional religious koineof the empire.
One way to assess this transformation is to look at what happened to the public
cultic celebrations that had formed the essence of the early and mid-fourth-century
religious koinereflected by the Calendar of 354 from Rome. The games and circuses
which did indeed continue were justified as custom or entertainment. Pagan holidays
were illicit, and so many disappeared. Others, although illicit, retained their rituals
and customs, but acquired new Christian meanings; so, for example, the carrying of
pictures of Isis on board her sacred ship, part of the popular festival to Isis cele-
brated in March (Isidis navigium) and associated with public vows on behalf of
the emperor’s well-being by the fourth century, continued in the early fifth century
in the Christian festival of the Carnevale, held in conjunction with Easter; at this
festival, the ship or a representation of it was carried by assembled celebrants, its
meanings now linked with Christ’s resurrection (Alföldi 1937: 46ff.). And the rites
of the Caristia to honor the ancestral spirits of the dead were likely continued under
the guise of the Christian festival of St. Peter’s chair on February 22 (Salzman 1990:
47).
Other pagan holidays were still popularly celebrated but desacralized. A good
example of one of these is the celebration of the pagan holiday of Lupercalia. From
earliest Roman times, this holiday had been a purificatory rite which, with the lash-
ing of women with whips, promoted fertility. By the third century ce, the holiday
had been reinterpreted into a rite of the punishment and public penance of women;
purification was interpreted as spiritual, not only sexual, but still within a pagan
context. The ritual of female flagellation fell under attack at the end of the fifth
century when, in 494, the pope labeled these rites as “diabolica figmenta.” A Christian
senator opposed the pope, arguing that the Lupercalia was merely an imagoof the
former pagan festival and its continuance was important for the well-being (salus)
of the Roman community. Individual flagellation was necessary for individual
purification for sin. Moreover, this senator argued, this ritual was a long-standing
Roman tradition (Gelasius I, Lettre, p. 162, ed. G. Pomarès [SC 65]). In this instance,
the pope won; he successfully labeled this ritual as paganism and used it to under-
mine the influence of Rome’s senatorial aristocracy (Markus 1990: 131–5). But the
holiday could have had another trajectory; although the Lupercalia died out in Rome,
it continued to be celebrated in Constantinople until the tenth century as a Christian
holiday (Wiseman 1995b: 17).
As arbiter of religious matters, it was the bishops who, by and large, determined
which festivals and practices were acceptable or not. Much would depend on the
local initiative of the bishop, and even his attitude could change over time. Hence,
when confronted with festivals in north Africa which he deemed pagan, Augustine
took it as his duty to repress them only in his later years as bishop, after 399 ce
(Aug. Epist.29.9; Enarratio in Psalmos88.14 =CCL88, 1294; and De catechizandis
rudibus 25.48 = CCL 46, 172). Similarly, as bishop, Augustine took it upon
124 Michele Renee Salzman