E08364
Inscriptions - Inscribed architectural elements
The inscription is laid out in three lines on the voussoir-blocks of an arch, the text constituting six lines of verse, as presented here:
Cede prius nomen / [no]vitati cede vet/ustas.
Regia letan[t]er v/ota dicare [l]i[b]/et.
Haec Petri Pauliqu/e sedes Cristo / [i]ubente resurgit.
Unu[m q]ues[o pa]/res, unum duo [su/mit]e munus.
Unus h[on]/or celebre[t qu/os h]abet una fides. (5)
[Pres]sb[yteri / ta]men [h]ic o[pus est / et cura Probanti.
'Give way previous name, give way age to newness.
It is right to joyfully consecrate the royal vows.
This seat of Peter and Paul rises by the orders of Christ.
I ask you, who are equal, you two to accept one gift,
That one honour may celebrate those of one faith.
This is the work and care of the presbyter Probantius.'
A second inscription, opening with '+ Aeclesia ...' followed the inscription recorded above (see the second Image); but too little of it has been found to make any sense of it.
Text: Duval 1982, no 68.
Translation: Stanisław Adamiak
Ceremony of dedication
Cult PlacesCult building - independent (church)
Source
This inscription was recorded in the nineteenth century on seven fallen voussoir-blocks from an arch, discovered at Aïn Ghorab in the region of Tebessa. It is not known whether they are still there.This same site also produced an inscription recording building work in a basilica dedicated to a martyr Casta (see E08312).
Discussion
The inscription closely follows much of the wording of the lost (but recorded) dedicatory inscription of a church of Peter and Paul in Rome, funded by the empress Eudoxia during the pontificate of Sixtus III (432-440), present-day San Pietro in Vincoli (ILCV 974; ICUR II, p. 110, no 67, and 134 no 3). This dates our African inscription to after around 440.Lines 1 and 2, and the first half of line 3, echo precisely the opening of the Roman inscription; the second half of line 3 is wholly new; lines 4 and 5 again echo precisely two lines in the inscription from Rome; while line 6 adjusts the Roman text to credit the work to a different presbyter: Probantius here in Africa, rather than Philippus in Rome. This close echoing means our text can be reconstructed with confidence where it is lacunose.
Line 2, copied from Rome, with its reference to 'royal vows', makes no sense in this African context, while in Rome it was entirely suitable (as recording Eudoxia's patronage). If the wording in line 1 is accurate (rather than another blind parroting of the inscription in Rome), then our church was an older one, now renovated and rededicated to new saints. Might it, as Duval speculates, have been a former Donatist or Arian church, now rededicated in the triumphant 'Catholic' faith?
The precise role of Probantius (mentioned in line 6) is somewhat unclear: the phrase attributing the opus et cura ('work and care') to him would in an inscription normally refer to the supervision of the work (as it does in the Roman model), rather than to its instigation or patronage (which in the Roman inscription are attributed to Eudoxia, if somewhat allusively, and to Pope Sixtus). Furthermore, the scale of this project (with some major building work) was probably beyond the means of all but a few presbyters. On the other hand, Probantius is the only person named (unless the second, substantially lost inscription went on to name others), so he may have been the patron of the building.
Bibliography
Edition:Duval, Y., Loca sanctorum Africae: Le culte des martyrs en Afrique du IVe au VIIe siècle (Rome: École Française de Rome, 1982), vol. 1, 146-148, no. 68.
Further reading:
Diehl, E. (ed.), Inscriptiones Latinae Christianae Veteres, I, Berlin 1925, 182, no. 974 (= ILCV).
Eastman, D., Paul the Martyr: The Cult of the Apostle in the Latin West (SBL Writings from the Greco-Roman World. Supplements 4; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2011), 168-169.
Images
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From Y. Duval 1982, no. 68
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From Y. Duval 1982, no. 68
Stanisław Adamiak, Bryan Ward-Perkins
17/07/2023
| ID | Name | Name in Source | Identity | S00008 | Paul, the Apostle | Paulus | Certain | S00036 | Peter, the Apostle | Petrus | Certain |
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Please quote this record referring to its author, database name, number, and, if possible, stable URL:
Stanisław Adamiak, Bryan Ward-Perkins, Cult of Saints, E08364 - http://csla.history.ox.ac.uk/record.php?recid=E08364