Apologetic Desecration: Christians and the Pagan Holy Places

Daniel Washburn - Stanford University

This paper seeks to understand two remarkable and closely related events - major disturbances in Alexandria occasioned by the bishops George and Theophilus - by setting them within a particular literary context, that of Apologetics. The cause for both of these fourth century riots lies in the bishops' unearthing and mocking secret pagan holy items. Even though great notoriety surrounds these episodes, especially as the second of the two led to the destruction of Alexandria's legendary Serapeum, scholars have not often sought to understand the psychological forces that fueled the confrontations. An examination of the tropes and trends in contemporary polemics reveals that both bishops enacted a time-honored strategy of deprecation when they displayed these objects to the public. They made a clear and careful effort to invert the rules of pagan piety, literally turning cult inside out. Moreover, by putting the objects into mock processions, their actions amounted to a commentary, not simply on the objects themselves, but on the areas that produced them as well.

The tactics employed by some Christians against physical symbols of paganism, then, reflected apologetic techniques used by other Christians in their handling of literary representations of paganism. Events on the ground mirrored and enacted concepts in the realm of rhetoric. Pursuing the connections between Apologetics and Christian actions against pagan holy space illuminates not only the implications inherent in George and Theophilus' processions, but also the aspirations behind certain elements of literary apologetics. These conclusions challenge our notions, already unsteady, of Apologetics so as to suggest that the genre did not disappear completely, but continued in a non-literary existence.