Posts Tagged ‘Arch of Constantine’
“When demons are required someone will always be found to supply the part”*…
… Interestingly, that role, Professor Martha Rampton explains, has evolved…
Christianity developed in a world with a well-articulated understanding of a multilayered and hierarchical universe that was, above all, animated. Most inhabitants of the ancient world envisioned cosmic energy as alive, meaning that the essence of physicality, spirituality and ethics rested in a host of supernatural sentient beings. Among those beings were demons who dwelt in the space between the earth and the Moon.
In the mid-2nd century, CE Justin Martyr explained the role of demons in Christian thought. The sons of God succumbed to intercourse with human women, and they begot children called the Nephilim (meaning giants). The progenies of the Nephilim were demons. These demons enslaved the human race, sowing wars, adulteries, licentiousness and every kind of evil. All the pagan gods, Justin warned, were, in fact, demons who haunt the earth. The North African bishop Augustine offered a different genealogy. He identified demons as the rebel angels who fought alongside and suffered the same fate as Lucifer (also known as Belial, Beelzebub, the Devil, Satan, and the ‘Day Star’) whom God cast out of heaven after he mounted a failed rebellion.
Both pagan and Christian ideologies envisioned demons in prominent roles but, for pagans, demons could be both good and bad. They resembled deities in that they shared in their immortality, but they were also subject to obnoxious, irrational cravings. Demons were positioned between humans and gods, and could act as guardian angels. Demons were corporeal, though of a material much lighter than, and superior to, the human form; they could move faster than mortals, read thoughts, and slip in and out of spaces impossible for the human body to occupy.
For the Church, all demons were malevolent. Christians saw demons as shape-shifters who copulated promiscuously with human beings, controlled the weather, sickened their victims, flew through the atmosphere, impersonated the dead, predicted the future, and were always to be feared…
Rampton then leads us through the shaping thoughts of Lactantius, Augustine, and others…
… The foundational metaphors of Christianity and paganism differed and conflicted with one another. The importance of place emerged for Christians as they crafted a new identity and a way to express it through ritual. Pagans looked to the natural world for meaning. Christian identity, on the other hand, was manifest in human-made consecrated structures such as churches and shrines. The new place of worship had to be one where demons did not feel welcome. When Christians established consecrated sites (the settings of ritual), they were often competing with pagan holy places that abounded in the world of nature – spots near lakes, beneath trees, at hallowed rocks, and in forests. Although Near Eastern and Mediterranean religions were temple-oriented with a sophisticated concept of enclosed ceremonial, the common person did not, as a rule, enter the hallowed domain, and most popular ritualistic, religious activity took place in the fields or outside the temple precinct – in short, out of doors.
Christians created a new kind of space where demons dared not tread and in which continuity with old rites and the worldview they stored were thwarted. These churches provided a clean slate on which Christians could write in the language of ritual. The building became a symbol for the new religion. It was more than just a different location from those frequented by pagan celebrants and inhabited by their demonic deities. It was a new concept of place particular to Christianity – cleansed of demons, consecrated to that special creator god who does not inhere in his creation (trees, rocks, springs) and should not be worshipped through it. Nothing filled demons with dread and kept them at bay like a sanctified church. The motif of demons fleeing in terror from a consecrating bishop was familiar in late antiquity when the fight against idolatry was a matter of openly confronting pagan cults. In the 3rd century, Gregory the Miracle-Worker prayed at the local temple, and the next morning the temple warden could not induce a lingering demon to enter. Christian structures were fortifications against demons.
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The distinctive Christian approach to death emerged as a central feature in the competition with pagans for cultural dominance. Despite the radical differences in pagan and Christian notions of mortality, there were also similarities, and these frustrated the new religion in its effort to establish itself as unique.
Necromancy in the ancient world pertained to the practice of calling the dead back to life for the purpose of learning the future. Pagan works portray contact with the dead as ghoulish and repugnant, but, if approached gingerly and undertaken for desirable ends, it was justified. Revivification of the dead was a major feat that required concentrated syncopation with cosmic powers, and such collaboration was realised and made safe through carefully executed rituals. For example, in his novel The Golden Ass, the 2nd-century pagan philosopher Apuleius relates a story of the corpse of Thelyphron, whom the Egyptian prophet Zatchlas temporarily revivifies so that the deceased can solve a mystery regarding his sudden demise…
Many people in late antiquity saw Jesus and his followers as necromancers. This perception brought forth persistent denials from some of the best minds of the Patristic era. In one respect, pagans were right, Jesus had redefined death, and Christians did approach the deceased differently than their polytheistic neighbours. Whereas most pagan cults dreaded, shunned and burned the dead, Christians formed tender and mutually beneficial relationships with the spirits (and, in some cases, the material remains) of those who ceased to exist on a mortal plane. Rather than ostracising the dead beyond the city limits, by the 2nd century, Christians sought out the remains of their loved ones.
The idea that the dead could live again was a central tenet of Christian belief. Following his resurrection, Jesus assured humanity that they could have eternal life. In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus invests the disciples with the power to emulate his miracles, including resuscitating the dead. In the Gospel of John, Jesus revivifies Lazarus who had been gone for four days.
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Early Christians bristled when others censured them for necromancy, certainly because the efficacy of the necromantic art rested on demons of the lower air, but also because they sought to distinguish themselves from the many other religions and belief systems in the ancient world. Christian authors worked tirelessly to defend Jesus specifically and Christians generally against accusations of maleficium (malignant magic). Throughout the Early Middle Ages (c500-1000), Christian writers insisted that the power of their holy men and women rested not on demons that lurked between the Moon and the earth, and not on elaborate rites, but on faith, simple Christian rituals, and ultimately on God alone. Elaborate rituals equated to demonism…
Christians walked a tightrope on the issue of revivification. The earliest Christian theologians were univocally in harmony with their pagan neighbours on the evils of using (or trying to use) the deceased either for fortune-telling or to exploit the power of death’s liminal state for nefarious purposes. Dealings with reanimated corpses involved the worst sort of traffic with demons. Yet Jesus and his closest male followers resuscitated the deceased, and all Christians honoured the spirits and bodily remains of departed saints and fostered friendly relationships with these special dead. In the end, through sermons from the pulpit and private correction in the confessional, Christian intellectuals were able to convince converts that Christian resurrection was different from necromancy.
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Christianity was ultimately successful at establishing itself as the only legitimate religion in the Roman world. However, the struggle for supremacy was protracted and hard fought. The Church was met with the challenge of facing down an ancient, finely-chiseled and much beloved cultural system of which demons and magic were a part. Christianity’s success was due, in part, to the development of a new and thoroughgoing system of rituals responsive to its own worldview…
The history of Christian belief- it took a tremendous effort to distinguish early Christianity from the finely tuned world of pagan beliefs and rituals: “Miracles not magic,” in @aeonmag.
* Margaret Atwood
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As we go deep on demons, we might recall that it was on this date in 306 that Constantine I (AKA Constantine the Great) was proclaimed Roman emperor by his troops. Nine years later, on this date in 315, the Arch of Constantine was completed near the Colosseum in Rome to commemorate Constantine’s victory over rival emperor Maxentius at the Milvian Bridge.
In the meantime, Constantine had warmed and then converted to Christianity. He played an influential role in the proclamation of the Edict of Milan in 313, which declared tolerance for Christianity in the Roman Empire. And he convened the First Council of Nicaea in 325, which produced the statement of Christian belief known as the Nicene Creed.
“They swore by concrete. They built for eternity”*…
Understanding how the materials we use work– and don’t work– together…
For most of a red swamp crayfish’s life, cambarincola barbarae are a welcome sight. Barbarae – whitish, leech-like worms, each a couple of millimeters long – eat the swamp scum off the crayfish’s shells and gills, and in most cases improve the crayfish’s health and life expectancy. Together, barbarae and crayfish form a mutualistic symbiotic relationship. Both species benefit from their cohabitation, and barbarae have evolved to the point where their entire life cycle, from egg to adult, occurs while attached to a crayfish.
But their symbiosis is contextual – a tentative truce. Young crayfish (who molt their shells more frequently and therefore accumulate less scum) don’t need much cleaning, and will take pains to remove barbarae from their shells. And even when molting has slowed and a crayfish has allowed the symbiosis to flourish, there are limits to barbarae’s loyalty: If there isn’t enough food for them to survive, they’ll turn parasitic, devouring their host’s gills and eventually killing them.
Like symbioses, composite materials can be incredibly productive: two things coming together to create something stronger. But like crayfish and barbarae, their outcomes can also be tragic. Rarely are two materials a perfect match for each other, and as the environment changes their relationship can turn destructive. And when composites turn destructive – as was evident in the reinforced concrete when the Champlain Towers North were inspected back in 2018 – the fallout can be catastrophic.
The history of what we now call composite materials goes back many thousands of years. For modern consumers, the most common composites are fiber-reinforced plastics (the colloquial “carbon fiber” and “fiberglass”), but perhaps the first composites in history were reinforced mud bricks. The Mesopotamians learned to temper their bricks by mixing straw into them at least as early as 2254 BC, increasing their tensile strength and preventing them from cracking as they dried. This method continues around the world today.
But by far the most commonly used composite material in history is steel-reinforced concrete. Roman concrete usage started as early as 200 BCE, and almost three centuries later Pliny the Elder included a note about what appears to be high quality hydraulic concrete in his Naturalis Historiae. These recipes were subsequently forgotten, and the material largely disappeared between the Pantheon and the mid nineteenth century. Modern concrete involves some legitimate process control: limestone and other materials are heated to around 900° C to create portland cement, which is then pulverized and mixed with water (and aggregate) to create an exothermic reaction resulting in a hard and durable object. The entire process consumes vast amounts of power and produces vast amounts of carbon dioxide, and the industry supporting it today is estimated to be worth about a half a trillion dollars.
But in spite of the fortunes that have been invested in the portland cement process (as well as in a wide range of concrete admixtures, which are used to tune both the wet mixture and the finished product), the true magic of contemporary concrete is the fact that it is so often reinforced with steel – dramatically increasing its tensile strength and making it suitable for a wide range of structural applications. This innovation arose in the mid-nineteenth century, when between 1848 and 1867 it was developed by three successive Frenchmen. In the late 1870s, around the time that the first reinforced concrete building was built in New York City, the American inventor Thaddeus Hyatt noted a critical quality of the material: through some fantastic luck, the coefficients of thermal expansion of steel and concrete are strikingly similar, allowing a composite steel-concrete structure to withstand warm/cool cycles without fracturing. This quality opened up the floodgates, and in the 1880s the pioneering architect-engineer Ernest Ransome built a string of reinforced concrete structures around the San Francisco Bay Area. From there it was history.
More than any other physical technology, it is reinforced concrete that defines the 20th century. Versatile, strong, and (relatively) durable, the material is critical to life and industry as we know it. Reinforced concrete was the material of choice of Albert Kahn, who with Henry Ford defined 20th century industrial architecture; reinforced concrete is a key part of nearly every type of logistical infrastructure, from roads to bridges to container terminals; reinforced concrete makes up the literal launch pads for human space travel. It’s a critical component of power plants, dams, wind turbines, and the vast majority of mid- to late-twentieth century homes and apartment buildings. Its high compressive strength makes it ideally suited for footings and foundations; its high tensile strength lets it cantilever and span great distances easily.
But reinforced concrete is really only 140 years old – the blink of an eye, as far as the infrastructure of old is concerned. The Pantheon was built around 125 CE, by which time the Romans had been experimenting with concrete construction for well over 300 years. When we see the Pantheon, we’re seeing a mature method – a technology with full readiness, being used in an architectural style that’s tuned for its physical properties.
By contrast, even our most iconic steel-reinforced concrete buildings are prototypes…
Early on in the history of steel-reinforced concrete, it was known that the high alkalinity of concrete helped to inhibit the rebar from rusting. The steel was said to be sealed within a monolithic block, safe from the elements and passivated by its high pH surroundings; it would ostensibly last a thousand years. But atmospheric carbon dioxide inevitably penetrates concrete, reacting with lime to produce calcium carbonate – and lowering its pH. At that point, the inevitable cracks and fissures allow the rebar inside to rust, whereupon it expands dramatically, cracking the concrete further and eventually breaking the entire structure apart.
This process – carbonatation, followed by corrosion and failure – was often visible but largely ignored into the late twentieth century. Failures in reinforced concrete structures were often blamed on shoddy construction, but the reality is that like the crayfish and the barbarae, the truce between concrete and steel is tentative. What protection concrete offers steel is slowly eaten away by carbonatation, and once it’s gone the steel splits the concrete apart from the inside…
There are of course many potential innovations to come in reinforced concrete. Concrete mixtures made with fly ash and slag produce high strength and durable structures. Rebar rust can be mitigated by using sacrificial anodes or impressed current. Rebar can be made of more weather resistant materials like aluminum bronze and fiberglass. Or the entire project could be scrapped – after all, the CO2 emitted by the cement industry is nothing to thumb your nose at. Whatever we do, we should remember that the materials we work with are under no obligation to get along with one another – and that a symbiotic truce today doesn’t necessarily mean structural integrity tomorrow.
On composites, crayfish, and reinforced concrete’s tentative alkalinity: “A Symbiotic Truce,” from Spencer Wright (@pencerw), whose newsletter, “The Prepared” (@the_prepared), is always an education.
* Gunter Grass
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As we delve into durability, we might recall that it was on this date in 315 that the Arch of Constantine officially opened. A triumphal arch in Rome dedicated to the emperor Constantine the Great, it was constructed of Roman concrete, faced with brick, and reveted in marble.
Roman concrete, like any concrete, consists of an aggregate and hydraulic mortar – a binder mixed with water (often sea water) that hardens over time. The aggregate varied, and included pieces of rock, ceramic tile, and brick rubble from the remains of previously demolished buildings. Gypsum and quicklime were used as binders, but volcanic dusts, called pozzolana or “pit sand”, were favored where they could be obtained. Pozzolana makes the concrete more resistant to salt water than modern-day concrete.
The strength and longevity of Roman marine concrete is understood to benefit from a reaction of seawater with a mixture of volcanic ash and quicklime to create a rare crystal called tobermorite, which may resist fracturing. As seawater percolated within the tiny cracks in the Roman concrete, it reacted with phillipsite naturally found in the volcanic rock and created aluminous tobermorite crystals. The result is a candidate for “the most durable building material in human history.” In contrast, as Wright notes above, modern concrete exposed to saltwater deteriorates within decades.
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