archeology and history
The ruins of the temple were excavated under a parking lot in the town of Spello.
Archaeologists have unearthed the ruins of an ancient Roman temple in Spello, Italy, by poring over the letters of a 4th-century Roman ruler.
Three interior walls of a monumental structure, probably an ancient pagan temple, have been excavated below the parking lot in a medieval hilltop city. Their location was determined by Douglas Boyne, a history professor at St. Louis University, based on a letter written by Constantine, the Roman emperor who ruled from 306 to 337 AD.
The Letters of Constantine, discovered in the 18th century, allowed the inhabitants of Spello to commemorate religious holidays in their hometown instead of traveling to other festivals far away. Instead, the emperor instructed towns to build temples to worship the Flavian dynasty, whom he regarded as his divine ancestors.
For Boyne, the letter was a wonderful thing. Although Constantine was, by his orders, the first Roman emperor to embrace Christianity, he still associated himself with “imperial cults” and was a prominent figure who left his mark on the empire with monuments such as the Colosseum. He was trying to worship his family.
“The location of this temple has never been determined with certainty before,” Boyne said. in a statement“However, with its inscriptions and references to temples, Spello offered the very interesting possibility of a large-scale discovery of an imperial cult under Christian rulers.”
To locate the structure, the research team used subsurface imaging to search for potential ruins. A few weeks later, they received promising images of where the structure’s foundations appeared to be and began excavation. First his two adjacent walls came to the surface, then the inner wall. Further excavations are planned to reveal what lies beneath the soil at the site.
But Boyne already believes this first discovery is important because it could provide insight into how the Roman Empire transitioned from pagan worship to Christianity. Although Constantine adopted a new religion, it took almost 70 years for Christianity to be officially recognized by Emperor Theodosius and for pagan believers to convert as well. The Temple of Spello could shed further light on a period of slow but meaningful social change.
“This building, in its own very radical way, demonstrates the staying power of a pagan tradition that had been in the ground for centuries before the rise of Christianity,” Boyne said. I did. “It shows us how the Roman emperors continued to negotiate their values, hopes, and dreams for the future of their empire and their empire, without tearing down or burying the past.”
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