Tuesday, April 23rd, 2024, at 19:30 CET at the National Museum of Antiquities, Leiden
Prof. Dr Barbara E. Borg
The true burial site of Peter and Paul?
Christians and Jews on the Appian Way
Despite the current catholic orthodoxy that the original burial sites of the martyr saints Peter and Paul were where they are still venerated – underneath their churches on the Vatican hill and on the Via Ostiense – a controversy still surrounds an enigmatic site at the third milestone of the Appian Way. The present, 17th-century church of Saint Sebastian was built over an early, simple cult site for the apostles and a 4th-century Basilica Apostolorum. Based on archaeological evidence, Professor Dr. Barbara Borg argues that it was here, in a former pozzolana mine, that the apostles were believed to have been buried from at least the 2nd century onwards, and she will trace how their cult developed from ordinary funerary cult to martyr cult.
Prof. Barbara E. Borg is Professor of Classical Archaeology at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa and has published widely on Greek and Roman art and archaeology. Over the past 15 years, she has focussed her research on funerary customs and the topography of the city of Rome and its surroundings. Recent publications include her two monographs Crisis and ambition: tombs and burial customs in third-century CE Rome (2013), and Roman tombs and the art of commemoration: contextual approaches to funerary customs in the second century CE (2019). Since 2022, she has been leading the EU-funded ERC project ‘The INscribed city: urban structures and interaction in imperial ROME’.
Program
19:00 Doors open
19:30 Welcome and introduction by Diederik Burgersdijk (BABESCH Foundation)
19:40 BABESCH Byvanck Award, presented to Dominika Walentyna Kaszubska (Scuola IMT Alti Studi, Lucca)
19:45 BABESCH Byvanck Lecture by Barbara Borg (Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa)
Discussion, moderated by Diederik Burgersdijk
