Rogue Classicism tells us that yesterday was (by one way of reckoning) the anniversary of the day the Roman armies breached the walls of the upper city of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. Now Jim Davila at PaleoJudaica tells us of Sean Kingsley, a British archeologist who believes he has traced the whereabouts of the treasures of the Jerusalem Temple. Their route takes several twists and turns through the patristic era, as they move from Jerusalem to Rome to Constantinople to North Africa before settling back in Judea. Kingsley believes the treasures, including the sacred Menorah, are buried beneath an ancient monastery in the wilderness. You can piece the story together by reading this and this.

One of my favorite photos from last year’s St. Paul Center pilgrimage to Rome is of Scott Hahn telling the sad story of Jerusalem’s fall, while all the pilgrims gazed upon the Arch of Titus. The Arch’s sculptured walls vividly illustrate Jerusalem’s tragedy in terms of the pagan Romans’ triumph.

We’ll be back to tell the tale in May of 2007, God willing. Please consider joining us!

Yesterday, I drove with David Scott to see the exhibit “Cradle of Christianity” at the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage in Cleveland, Ohio. It’s an overwhelming experience. In one large room, we saw the casket of Caiaphas, the only surviving inscription of Pontius Pilate, a very early Christian altar and baptismal font, plus reliquaries, chalices, crosses — and a very large portion of the Temple Scroll from Qumran. The exhibit closes soon. If you can drive there, please do. You don’t want to miss this rare opportunity to stand so close to the material remains of Christianity’s origins.

Remember late last year when a prison work crew in Israel unearthed a third-century Christian church — perhaps the oldest ever discovered? It had an altar and intact mosaics and dedicatory inscriptions, including one hailing Jesus as God. It seems that excavations have been halted for lack of funds. Unbelievable.

Hat tip: Rogue Classicism.

A late Roman villa was recently unearthed in the ancient city of Laodicea. Its rooms were lavishly decorated with expensive mosaics.

You might remember the city from the Book of Revelation (3:14-19), where it is the subject of this oracle: “And to the angel of the church in Laodicea write: ‘…I know your works: you are neither cold nor hot. Would that you were cold or hot! So, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew you out of my mouth. For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing; not knowing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. Therefore I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, that you may be rich, and white garments to clothe you and to keep the shame of your nakedness from being seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, that you may see. Those whom I love, I reprove and chasten; so be zealous and repent.”

According to archeologists, the site indeed shows signs of tremendous prosperity: “The city was at its most famous and important in the first century B.C., with most of the remains of the city dating from this era … Many monumental buildings were constructed via donations from local residents.”

And then comes the apocalyptic stuff: “Laodicea was eventually almost completely destroyed by an earthquake and subsequently abandoned. Two theaters of different sizes, a stadium and gymnasium … and a large church are the most notable ruins in the ancient city.”

Kind of makes you glad Christians in your town aren’t prosperous or lukewarm, huh?

Source: Turkish Daily News.

The Greek and Latin Fathers get ample notice. The Coptic and Syriac Fathers have definitely been a growth industry in patristics. But the Armenian Fathers remain little known in my corner of the world. We’re certainly indebted to the ancient Church of Armenia for its love of books. Some of the great works of the Greek and Latin Fathers are known today only because we have Armenian translations! The Church in Armenia coexisted, sometimes less than peacefully, with an equally vibrant Jewish culture. Scholars believe that the Armenian Jews preserved many musical, liturgical, and ascetical traditions of the Second Temple period. The Church assimilated a good bit of these, too.

All this came to mind as I read about archeologists’ recent discovery of ancient cave churches in Armenia. You can look it up.

David Scott points us to several excellent Augustine-related sites:

A slide show of the archeological remains in Hippo.

More cultural and historical material on Christianity in Roman Africa (plus more slide shows).

You’ll find these links and more at the St. Paul Center’s site, SalvationHistory.com.

Rogue Classicism, just back from summering in Sicily (It sure beats sizzling in Sumer), tells us that a fourth-century bronze bust of the Empress (St.) Helena is on sale for two and a quarter million bucks. Holiness pays.

The ancient Lebanese port of Byblos “has survived the Romans, the Crusades and the armies of Alexander the Great but now it faces a 21st century menace, brought to its shores on a tide of war — oil pollution.” A heavy oil slick, produced by the bombing of a power plant, is now lapping at the old city’s fortified stone walls. It’s an estimated 10,000-15,000 tons of oil washing up on an 87-mile stretch of coastline. (Read more of the story here.)

A few months back, we posted on St. Aquilina, Byblos’s famous little-girl martyr of the third century. Pray for Lebanon. Pray for peace.

Back in July, I posted on the traditions of St. Thomas the Apostle’s work in India, suggesting a strong case for their plausibility, given the state of Roman trade with India in the mid-first century. Recent archeological excavations confirm what we read in the ancient geographers and naturalists: Rome was dependent on India’s spices, textiles, gems, dyes, and perfumes. Moreover, there were already well established Jewish settlements in India, and the synagogues would have been natural starting points for Thomas, as the synagogues of Europe were for other apostles.

Now come further hints that the evidence for Roman commerce has been plentiful all along, but suppressed. Pottery, coins, and other artifacts turn up regularly, but people in the villages would rather not have archeologists disrupt their lives (certainly a difficult situation). Rumor has it, too, that nationalist movements do not welcome evidence of ancient Indian Christianity or contact with the Roman West. It’s un-PC. Thus, the best policy is often to sweep the shards under the porch.

IOL carried a story yesterday, “Ancient Indian Port Faces Extinction,” by Jeemon Jacob. It concerns a village in Kerala, a region traditionally associated with St. Thomas’s apostolate. In fact, it concerns a port that might have been St. Thomas’s landing in India. Excerpts follow:

Pattanam, India — Pottery shards, beads, Roman copper coins and ancient wine bottles litter the strata beneath this small seaside village in India’s southern Kerala state.

The 250 families, mostly agricultural labourers, who live in Pattanam, 260km north of Kerala’s capital Thiruvananthapuram, find the objects pretty, but would rather dig up the ground and build larger homes.

But according to archaeologists KP Shajan and V Selvakumar, they may be destroying the remnants of Muziris, a well-documented trading port where Rome and India met almost 3 000 years ago.

Muziris mysteriously dropped off the map.

They say that, based on remote sensing data, a river close to Pattanam had changed its course and the ancient port may have been buried due to earthquakes or floods.

The two are worried construction activity in the village will destroy evidence about the existence of the port before they get the chance to examine it scientifically.

“There is no doubt that Pattanam was a major port that is linked to Indo-Roman trade,” Shajan said. “But we can’t confirm whether it was Muziris. We need more collaborative evidence to support our findings.”

A majority of the families that live in Pattanam are demolishing old tiled-roof structures and replacing them with concrete buildings right in the middle of the 1,5km zone where Shajan and Selvakumar say Muziris was possibly located.

Muziris was a port city mentioned in several ancient travelogues and scholarly texts as a major centre of trade between India and Rome, especially in pepper and other spices around the second century BC to probably as late as the sixth century AD.

Christianity may have been introduced to the sub-continent through Muziris, historians say. But Muziris mysteriously dropped off the map – maybe to war, plague, or disaster.

The two archaeologists say they want to find out for sure and have asked local preservation groups to help.

Kerala’s Historical Research Council, an independent body that promotes research in history, says it has written to the Archaeological Survey of India, which is in charge of protecting monuments and historical places, to take steps to protect Pattanam.

But KV Kunjikrishnan, a professor of history, says neither the government nor the Archaeological Survey of India has responded.

“The construction activity in the area may destroy vital evidence of historical importance,” says Kunjikrishnan.

Pattanam housewife Sheeba Murali says ancient beads pop out from the ground after heavy rains and the 30-year-old history graduate, like some other villagers, collects them and hands them over to the archaeologists.

Villagers say they used to get gold coins from the site, but kept the finds quiet.

“Nobody admits whatever things they get. We are scared that the government may take over our land for archaeological survey,” says villager Arun Rajagopal.

It was from Rajagopal’s land that the two archaeologists discovered beads, layer of bricks, wine bottles, jars, pendants and copper coins.

Selvakumar says the ancient bricks, which the villagers used to build their homes, bore a close resemblance to those used 2 500 years ago.

“During my excavations I collected a wide range of pottery which goes back to the historic date. Amphorae, roulette ware, beads, nails and several other artefacts such as copper coins were also recovered,” he says.

But Sheeba says villagers will continue building new homes.

“My children need a decent place to stay when they grow up. But I am thrilled to live in a place where history sleeps,” she says.

I’d quibble with the estimate of 2,500-3,000 years ago. Roman trade with India seems to have begun to boom right around the middle of the first century, with the discovery of the trade winds that made open-sea sailing possible. Other than that, the story — like so much of the painstaking Indian research I mentioned in my July post — gives us a clearer vision of a certain world, a lost world — a world where, I believe, St. Thomas walked.

UPDATE: Bread and Circuses posts links to useful background material on the port of Muziris.

PaleoJudaica and Thoughts on Antiquity report that bombing in Iraq may have destroyed ancient Syriac inscriptions. This follows upon news of damage to archeological sites in Lebanon and Israel.

Christians everywhere should mourn the loss of so many lives in the Middle East and beg heaven for the gift of peace. Recall the words of the Prophets as they saw and foresaw so much blood and rubble: “How long, Lord? How long?” So many have died. So many are leaving the region. With the further destruction of their cultural heritage will come an incalculable loss of religious memory, tradition, and identity. This is a deep and painful wound to the Church, the world, and each and every one of these suffering persons. It won’t show up on the newsreels. But it’s real collateral damage. Pray heaven for peace.

If you’ve visited this site even once, you already know I’m an archeology nerd. This is a good season for archeology nerds. Archaeology magazine’s cover story heralds a new golden age in the field, and I’m willing to believe it. Even the mainstream media have picked up on it, with intense reportage on the Gospel of Judas this year.

My particular nerdiness (as you can guess from the title of the blog) hovers around archeological sites related to the patristic era. These don’t attract the media the way classical and biblical digs do. So I’ve got to do my own digging to find the news for you — like the astonishing recent discovery of third-century Christian inscriptions in the Basque region, and the Coptic apocrypha found in an ancient trash heap in Egypt.

Well, today gives me (and my ilk) yet another reason to celebrate with chocolate. It’s the memorial of St. Helena, the patroness and perhaps the foundress of the field of archeology. A few months back, I reviewed Evelyn Waugh’s novel on her life, Helena, a book by turns touching and hilarious. Waugh makes full use of his artistic license, as there are big blank spots in the historical record of Helena’s life.

We probably have a good idea of what she looked like, from coins honoring her. The face on the coin at Wikipedia fits the confident, determined, wry woman we meet in the pages of Waugh’s novel. Waugh manages to make her sexy, too, which gives Helena perhaps a unique status in the lists of novelistic treatments of the canonized. Pious authors usually have these subjects embalmed, or miraculously incorrupt anyway, by page five.

Here’s a summary of what our friend the Catholic Encyclopedia has to say about Helena:

The mother of Constantine the Great, born about the middle of the third century, died about 330. She was of humble parentage; St. Ambrose referred to her as a stabularia, or inn-keeper. Nevertheless, she became the lawful wife of Constantius Chlorus. Her first and only son, Constantine, was born in 274.

In the year 292 Constantius, having become co-Regent of the West, gave himself up to considerations of a political nature and forsook Helena in order to marry Theodora, the stepdaughter of Emperor Maximianus Herculius, his patron. But her son remained faithful and loyal to her. On the death of Constantius Chlorus, in 308, Constantine, who succeeded him, summoned his mother to the imperial court, conferred on her the title of Augusta, ordered that all honor should be paid her as the mother of the sovereign, and had coins struck bearing her effigy. Her son’s influence caused her to embrace Christianity after his victory over Maxentius. This is directly attested by Eusebius: “She became under his influence such a devout servant of God, that one might believe her to have been from her very childhood a disciple of the Redeemer of mankind.”

Tradition links her name with the building of Christian churches in the cities of the West, where the imperial court resided, notably at Rome and Trier. Despite her advanced age she undertook a journey to Palestine when Constantine, through his victory over Licinius, had become sole master of the Roman Empire, subsequently, therefore, to the year 324. She explored Palestine with remarkable discernment and “visited it with the care and solicitude of the emperor himself.” Then, when she “had shown due veneration to the footsteps of the Savior,” she had two churches erected for the worship of God: one was raised in Bethlehem near the Grotto of the Nativity, the other on the Mount of the Ascension, near Jerusalem. She also embellished the sacred grotto with rich ornaments. It is Rufinus who first relates the story that she directed the excavation of the True Cross and Jesus’ tomb.

Her memory in Rome is chiefly identified with the church of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme (Holy Cross in Jerusalem), which was built on soil imported from the Holy Land (thus the name “in Jerusalem”). Pilgrims to this church receive the indulgence assigned to a pilgrimage to the sacred sites.

Constantine was with his mother when she died, at eighty or so, around 330 (the date on the last coins known to have been stamped with her name). Her body was brought to Constantinople and laid to rest in the imperial vault of the church of the Apostles. Her remains were transferred in 849 to the Abbey of Hautvillers, in the French Archdiocese of Reims.

Bread and Circuses gives us a rare close-up of a golden bust of the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius, who reigned 161-180. Marcus was a stoic philosopher and the last of the so-called “Five Good Emperors.” While other pagan philosophers admired the fortitude of the Christian martyrs, Marcus held Christianity, and especially its martyrs, in contempt. In his Meditations, he mentions Christianity only once, disdainfully.

How blessed and happy is the soul that is always ready, even right now (if need be), to be separated from the body, whether by way of extinction, or dispersion, or continuation in another place and state. But its readiness must proceed, not from an obstinate and peremptory resolution of the mind, violently and passionately set upon opposition, as we find in Christians; but from a peculiar judgment, with discretion and gravity, so that others may be persuaded also and drawn to follow the example, without any noise and passionate exclamations.

Marcus was a persecutor of the Church. And, though he issued his executive orders in cold blood, his attitude inspired the non-stoic rabble to form murderous anti-Christian mobs. Between the executions and the riots, it was a difficult time for believers. Christian victims of Marcus’s reign include Justin Martyr, Blandina and Pothinus, and possibly Polycarp. But the same hostile climate also produced a great flowering of Christian apologetic literature, some of it directed at Marcus himself, from great Fathers such as Melito of Sardis. The sociologist Rodney Stark holds that the Church grew at an alarming pace during this period, at least 40% per decade. Further proof of The Tertullian Principle: The blood of the martyrs is seed.

Visit Bread and Circuses and behold the persecutor who inadvertently brought about such blessings in the Church. In spite of Marcus’s contempt for Christians, Christians have harbored a fondness for him. Witness the judgment of the old Catholic Encyclopedia: “Marcus Aurelius was one of the best men of heathen antiquity.”

I own a biography of the American martyr Father Marquette that concludes with a line not from Jesus Christ, but from Marcus Aurelius: “Take pleasure in one thing and rest in it, in passing from one act to another, thinking of God.”