‘And He Transformed Their Temple into a Church’: The Redefinition of Sacred Spaces in Libya in Late Antiquity

Abstract

The aim of studying the context in which churches were built in honour of the Theotokos or dedicated to her in North Africa, as well as in the rest of the Empire, during the sixth century, is to gain a more thorough understanding of Justinian I’s political programme, the utility of unifying dogma and the religious conversion of dissident elements, such as pagans, Jews, Samaritans etc. These issues are addressed by analysing the spatial—principally architectural—and rhetorical superposition of Orthodox Christianity on the places of worship of other communities. It is held here that it is possible to demonstrate that this redefinition of space went a long way towards reinforcing the identity of provincial populations, especially in conflictive or border areas, which had to be secured within the territories that the Byzantine Empire had recently recovered so as to guarantee their political loyalty.

Keywords

• Byzantine Africa
• <i>Renovatio imperii</i>
• Procopius of Caesarea
• sacred space
• overlapping cults
• <i>Theotokos</i>