Priuatim deos colere. Reflections on private worship in Rome and the Western Roman world

This year's lectures were devoted to a theme we've never explored in detail: worshipping the gods privately. What does this mean?

The study of past religions is subject to fashions that express themselves in different ways, with more or less far-reaching consequences. Over the past few years, we've already reviewed the many ways in which Roman gods and theologies are still, or were in the past, approached. A few years ago, we also criticized the way in which certain recent authors claim to deconstruct the understanding of Greek and Roman religions that has been attempted. We also drew attention to the fact that this deconstruction was not, as we were led to believe, the result of totally unprecedented perspectives but, on closer examination, was rooted in theories that in fact originated in Protestant theology, and claim to interpret Greek and Roman religions on the same model, and according to principles as anachronistic as those of the ^19th century. If we follow the logic of this deconstruction, the fault of research carried out since the beginning of the ^20th century is that it has focused exclusively and excessively on the religion of the city, i.e., on public religion, totally ignoring what would constitute the true religion, that which preoccupies the individual, in search of a personal link with a divinity likely to ensure his salvation in the hereafter. In short, the history of religions is criticized for focusing on religions that were already moribund in the ^3rd, ^2nd and ^1st centuries BC. In our lecture of six years ago, and in a book(Les dieux, l'État et l'individu. Réflexions sur la religion civique à Rome, Paris, 2013), we pointed out that this judgment is ultimately based on a profound misunderstanding of Roman society and the notion of the individual as conceived in the ancient world. We have regularly pointed out that ancient documents do not attest to the existence of any religious deficit, particularly of a private nature, either in the last centuries before or in the first four centuries after Christ.

Our comments on the role of the individual in Roman religions have often seemed too cursory, and so for some time we've been toying with the idea of devoting an entire lecture to this question, exploring in greater depth the exact place that the religious system of ancient cities reserved for the individual. More specifically, we wanted to analyze the type of behavior that individuals could have, outside of civic religion. This is certainly not the first time that a study has attempted to define private religion in this way. More than a century ago, Attilio De Marchi devoted two volumes to this theme, which remain a reservoir of quotations(Il culto privato di Roma antica. I. La religione nella vita domestica. Iscrizioni e offerte votive, Milan 1896; II. La religione gentilizia e collegiale, Milan, 1903). After him, a host of shorter and longer works were published, dealing in one way or another with the question of private worship. To take just three examples, Annie Dubourdieu's book on Les origines et le développement du culte des Pénates à Rome (1989), Nicole Boëls-Janssen's La vie religieuse des matrones dans la Rome archaïque (1993), and M.-O. Laforge's La religion privée à Pompéi (2009). It's only more recently that interest has turned more generally to private cults, as evidenced by two volumes, one from Padua (M. Bassani, Fr. Ghedini (eds.), Religionem significare. Aspetti storico-religiosi, strutturali, iconografici e materiali dei sacra privata, Rome, 2011), the second from a colloquium in Bliesbruck (A. Bérenger (ed.), Les cultes domestiques dans l'Occident romain, in Dialogues d'histoire ancienne, 39, 2, 2013, chap. " Les cultes domestiques dans l'occident romain", pp. 17-71). These studies are all useful, but they obviously don't meet the perspective we wanted to give our lecture. Unlike these studies, which are otherwise excellent in their respective fields, our intention was not to describe private religious life, or even any of its aspects. Nor was it our intention to draw up a catalog of private places of worship, as George Boyce and then Th. Frölich did for the Pompeii lararies, or Annemarie Kaufmann-Heinimann for Augst. All of these elements have played a part in our research, and the above-mentioned authors have all provided us with both new perspectives and previously unpublished documents.

The aim of this year's lecture was thus to respond to the accusation that historians of Greek and Roman religions often neglect the individual and private sphere, and focus solely on public worship. It's not certain that an ancient Roman would have grasped the nature of the difficulty. On the other hand, as we've said over and over again, if historians of Roman religion have worked mainly on the public religions of the cities of the Greco-Roman world, it's because this is precisely the field that offers the most usable sources. They did not do so with the intention of obscuring the fact that, from the ^3rd century BC onwards, mankind was longing for religious reform and a Saviour. The most effective response to these accusations is to scrutinize everything we know about private religion. In particular, we need to examine whether the devotion shown to the gods in this setting, deemed closer to the individual, was of a different type to that which took place in the city, with its forum, festivals and public rites.

Priuatim deos colere. Reflections on private worship in Rome and the Western Roman world

Documents and media

Program

Priuatim deos colere. Reflections on private worship in Rome and the Western Roman world (1)

Priuatim deos colere. Reflections on private worship in Rome and the Western Roman world (2)

Priuatim deos colere. Reflections on private worship in Rome and the Western Roman world (3)

Priuatim deos colere. Reflections on private worship in Rome and the Western Roman world (4)

Priuatim deos colere. Reflections on private worship in Rome and the Western Roman world (5)

Priuatim deos colere. Reflections on private worship in Rome and the Western Roman world (6)

Priuatim deos colere. Reflections on private worship in Rome and the Western Roman world (7)

Priuatim deos colere. Reflections on private worship in Rome and the Western Roman world (8)

Priuatim deos colere. Reflections on private worship in Rome and the Western Roman world (9)

Priuatim deos colere. Reflections on private worship in Rome and the Western Roman world (10)

Priuatim deos colere. Reflections on private worship in Rome and the Western Roman world (11)

See also