Houses of the holy: Roman and Christian domestic piety in the Latin West, 100--600

This dissertation describes the religious aspects of domestic life for Roman and Christian families with a focus on the Latin West (c.100--600 CE). Using an interdisciplinary methodology, this work examines the literary, archaeological, artistic, and epigraphic evidence in order to uncover popular notions of divine beings, sacred spaces, and the religious role of the family within the home. It finds that, although pagan and Christian domestic religion had strong structural similarities, Christianity transforms the meaning of the holy within the home. This in effect changed the symbolic basis of family life in Late Antiquity.; The first half of the dissertation explores Roman conceptions of deities and ancestors within the domestic pantheon to see how they were understood to function within that space. It continues with an investigation into the ways in which domestic space served to house these invisible beings. Furthermore, it examines the importance of domestic religion in the lives of the Roman family and discovers that cult served to underlie basic conceptions of familial identity and its connections to the past.; The second half of the dissertation compares the Christian with that of the non-Christian Roman domestic religious milieu. It surveys the rhetoric of Christian leaders who attempt to discourage belief in the domestic divine and their dependence upon common Greco-Roman attitudes toward popular belief. It also finds that Christians continued to fill their domestic spaces with divine presences in the form of angels and relics. Then, it looks at the Christian home and discovers that there is evidence for a continued tendency to make spaces for the holy. Finally, this dissertation considers the Christian family's relationship to the domestic divine and finds that they do not use domestic cult as a means of self-construction but rather as a context for personal piety.