Although the title of this volume highlights the notion of conversion, the contributions offer a range of perspectives on the roles of the material, visual, and ritual aspects of the Christianization of the Roman World. Its chapters also center on the role of the body in various ways, from the impacts of contacts and rituals to the power and importance of the individual body after death. As a unifying theme, the contributions in this volume use material and visual cultures as entry points and expand into many different geographical and historical contexts, perspectives, and methodologies. Following the introduction, which establishes the volume's agenda and contents, there are eight contributions divided into three sections: body-changing touch, body-affecting objects, and commemorating deceased bodies.

In the first contribution to the section on body-changing touch, Barbara Bruderer Eichberg examines the evolution of the rites involved in baptism, especially the consecration of the water. The author primarily consults the written directions and ritual instructions appearing in sacramentaries, opening and closing with visual material from the Carolingian-age Drogo Sacramentary. Framed chronologically, the chapter reexamines the development of baptismal prayers and rituals through the lens of multisensory experience, and identifies a number of important shifts, including the commencement of consecrating baptismal water in the fourth century, rituals that heighten water's salvific nature and imbed Trinitarian underpinnings into baptism in the seventh century, and, in its final pages, a number of important Carolingian reforms. In the second chapter in this section, Pavla Tichá and Markéta Kulhánková survey the coeval institutions of the Phrygianum of the cult of Cybele and St Peter's Basilica, both in the area of the Vatican Hill, through the lenses of lived space and embodied memory. Through a discussion of the relevant plans, material culture, and texts, they suggest that various ritual functions helped to charge both the lived and conceived space in radically different ways for two communities within the same perceived space. The final contribution shifts attention to the figure of Jesus in his role as a spiritual and physical healer. Here, Robin M. Jensen surveys the representations of Jesus as a healer and in the act of healing in both literature and images, which could bee see as particularly appealing to early Christian converts and aided in their formation of a distinctly Christian identity.

In the second section, which focuses on body-affecting objects, Gajane Achverdjanová and Ivan Foletti open by reevaluating decorated ivory combs from early fifth-century Rome and positing their function as objects of purification in “initiation spaces” such as baptisms. Because they were employed by individuals across different socio-economic levels and by both men and women, there was a universality in their use in the rituals of purifying the body and, by extension, in metaphor for purifying the soul. Baptism was also central to Zuzana Frantová's contribution on ivory diptychs, in particular the cases of the Milan Diptych and the Trivulzio plate. Here, the materiality and display evoked past practices of the Roman elite and their traditions, one adopted as the Church continued their creation and use as ritual objects. The last chapter in this section interrogates the short-lived “Rite of the Cilicium,” a coarse mat of goat hair used in fourth- and fifth-century rituals. Here, Juliette Day examines its function in exorcisms and renunciations, arguing these rituals were augmented by the cilicium's sensory presence, used to remind the participant of their sins through discomfort and the symbolic function of the object through its associations with biblical models of penitence.

The two contributions to the final section focus on the commemoration of deceased bodies in different contexts. First, Megan Bunce explores the function of shrines and burials in the Christianization of early medieval Britain and its importance in structuring the church's liturgy and architecture. The author argues that shrines played a central role in the Christianization of societies and were highly influential in shaping the emerging cult of relics seventh-century Britain. In the second, Alžběta Filipová and Adrien Palladino move to the continent to continue an examination of the cult of relics, here focused on the influence of Ambrose of Milan through the case studies of the San Nazaro casket and the San Garlate deposit. An analysis of the imagery, materiality, and imperial references illustrates how these particular objects would communicate their importance to newly Christianized Roman elites and illuminates the transformation of the once condemned practice of handling and dividing bodies of the dead into a new network where holy relics elevated churches in a new “sacred topography.”

Given the focus on visual material, it is no surprise that the chapters in the volume are all well illustrated, with color images both large and small integrated with the text. Although the papers are often not in direct conversation with one another, the strong focus on using both visual and textual evidence creates a different sense of cohesion, a product of the origins of the volume in the presentations made at the 2020 conference at Masaryk University. Together, they offer novel ways to think about objects, spaces, bodies, and experiences, set against the context of conversion, early Christian practices, and later innovations.