Art Histor 80 L
...d much praise. They could cure the sick, counter famine, quell fires, and defeat enemies. Sanchez, 2 There was a direct connection at the grave sight of a martyr. The gravesite was a sight of great religious power. Ancient Roman society believed this to all be unthinkable. To be around the dead, was unclean and did not happen. Romans wanted to be away from the dead not near it. Whereas, Christians, had churches built over important saints, thereby uniting church and gravesite. Back in Roman times, a person’s burial was private and to make it public was not practiced. Depending on social status, the grave was either private, family orientated, or community. An example of a community burial would be as Princess Diana. Another change that occurred when the cult of saints arrived was the mixture of the elite with the masses. Roman’s were not accepting of the poor or women, Christianity opened a door to those who were unfortunate in society. Christianity was certainly more open. “When applied to the nature of religious change in late antiquity, The “two-tiered” model encourages the historian to assume that the change in the piety of late-antique men, of the kind associated with the rise of the cult of saints, must have been the result of the capitulation by the enlightened elites of the Christian church to modes of thought previously current only among the ‘vulgar’”(Brown, 16). Anyone below the elite status, were referred to as “vulgar” and did not have the same rights. The Cult of Saints gave women and the poor status in their own right. Women always represented a minority of the people noted as saints by Christian communities and an even smaller minority of those saints whose relics gained widespread holiness. Ironically however, women who were amongst the living were not given any height authority, but could be considered to be “saintly” in death. Women were even at times Sanchez, 3 prohibited from access to the relics of the saints. “Women had traditionally born significant responsibilities for the burial and care of the dead in Mediterranean societies.” (Mathews, lecture) Christian women of the Roman aristocracy thus became involved in the process of making and finding of shrines for the relics of the martyrs and saints. The cult of saints brought about martyrs and saints. Martyrs were believed to have died for a cause involving their faith or their beliefs. Martyrs were those whom Chr...