Clivedurdle

Que?

First part was only a quote from wiki to illustrate the issues, second was Gregory clearly showing the policy of building on existing.

Is that not game set and match that gods were turned into saints?

Didymus

Here's another photo of the fresco in the necropolis under St. Peters. The image isn't cropped as much as the one in Mountain Man's post.


It's from The Tomb of St. Peter (or via: amazon.co.uk) by Margherita Guarducci © 1960, Hawthorn Books. With a little stretch of the imagination, the horizontal rays could be taken as the horizontal timber of the cross. Okay, maybe a big stretch of the imagination.

It's not inconceivable that early Christians converted some pagan icons into Christian icons, either by modification or by re-identification, but that doesn't constitute a wholesale Christianization of pagan iconography. Nor is it any sort of evidence that Christianity was syncretized by Eusebius using bits and pieces of Roman and Hellenistic cults.

I don't have any research to back it up, but think it's entirely possible that there was more demonization than Christianization of ancient idols and ceremonies.

Ddms

Clivedurdle

What exactly is xian in that picture, apart from xians assuming it is?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4468275.stm

Roger Pearse

The necropolis under the 4th century St. Peter's basilica is a *pagan* necropolis of the first century AD. When Peter was buried there in a modest tomb, he was buried in that necropolis, on the side of the Vatican hill.

When Constantine's architects began to build the huge basilica in the 4th century, they had to bury the tombs in earth. They sliced off the roofs of some of them and packed them as well, thereby creating a foundation and incidentally preserving the tombs.

The presence of paganism in tombs in that street is natural, and the fact that there is a huge basilica over the top is not connected.

The argument is that the Julii were Christians, if I understand it. But I don't know the details.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Roger Pearse

No. It doesn't address the issue at all.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Clivedurdle

And you quoted possible parallels in art - equivalent I assume to Buddhas having Greek artistic parallels.

All I have done is suggest a parallel explicitly stated by Gregory, and remember the vision of Peter in Acts. There has never been a problem with xianity recycling ideas - they did normally sanctify it by praying some munbojumbo about cleansed in the blood of the lamb or similar because they had the strongest magick direct fron god.

Tom Sawyer

I don't know about the Saints, but the angels are pretty much the Christians way to be able to tell people they're a monotheistic religion while keeping all the gods that the other religions have. You've got the Warrior named Michael instead of Mars, the Herald named Gabriel instead of Hermes, the Healer named Raphael instead of Nuadu, the Trickster named Lucifer instead of Loki, etc, etc.

Pretty much every old pagan position has a corresponding fellow in Christian mythology but they just demoted them to angels and/or saints so they can say they're monotheistic instead of polytheistic.

Toto

THE TOMB OF ST. PETER by Margherita Guarducci is available online.

Clivedurdle

http://www.jstor.org/pss/297774

Toynbee - shrine of St Peter.

Clivedurdle

And I want to check this assumption that dates of burial are a signature of a xian burial.

I see a slow evolution over time, until eventually a cuckoo tries to pretend it has thrown everything else out of the nest.