In this stimulating, well-researched, and wide-ranging study, Shepardson argues that space in fourth-century Antioch was not a neutral entity. Drawing heavily on the work of social geographers, she argues that places are ‘socially and rhetorically constructed, and they in turn shape the politics that take place in and around them’ (p. 128). The apparent obviousness of space is, indeed, the mark of a successful imaginative geography.
And it is imaginative geography that forms the subject of the book. The ravages caused by repeated earthquakes, the challenge posed by continuous occupation as well as the lapse of time and, crucially, the current devastation of the region have all conspired to preclude the possibility of in-depth archeological reconstruction of the concrete places and spatial relations of late ancient Antioch. Thus, although Downey's map of Antioch is included in the front material, the book makes little if any allusion to this cartographic image (not even to illuminate the claims of Libanius on whose Oration 11 it is largely based). Nor do studies of the expected components of a late ancient city play a significant role in the argument: we do not hear about the dimensions of the porticoes, the layout of the streets or of the markets with their vendors' stalls. One regrets the decision not to draw on archaeological material from comparable sites, for surely it would have made the spaces that Shepardson describes seem sharper and more defined, and thus the contestation over them more tangible and real. But the only physical structures that do figure largely in the analysis are the churches of Antioch, which have been recently illuminated by Wendy Mayer and Pauline Allen (The Churches of Syrian Antioch, 300–638 CE, 2012) with their customary admirable care. Otherwise, the book focuses on the imaginary construction of space. With some apology to mathematicians, we might describe the enterprise as one of topology, or spatial theorising, rather than topography, or spatial description.
The person at the heart of this imaginative enterprise is John Chrysostom. His distinctive thinking is thrown into high relief by comparison with the writings of his contemporaries, among whom Libanius looms especially large. The other crucial interlocutor is Theodoret. The study as a whole, however, chiefly illuminates the distinctive perspective of Chrysostom.
In terms of its structure, the book proceeds through a series of topoi. The first chapter examines urban places of teaching, as Shepardson compares the teaching venues occupied by Libanius with those used by preachers. This comparison is truly illuminating. It uncovers not only a fascinating hierarchy of place, but also a lively – and shared – competition over securing the most prestigious positions. Location was thus a key factor in power negotiation (p. 43). Where a place lacked prestige, it could be enhanced by the spatial manipulation of its contents. For Christians, this meant relics.
The second chapter pursues exactly this theme, moving to the outskirts of the city to explore the role of the relics of Babylas in the Christian contestation of the elite suburb of Daphne. At stake in this rhetorical manipulation of the physical landscape was the shifting of collective memory, and with memory, Christian identity and claims to power (pp. 78–9).
The subject of religious contestation takes centre stage in the following chapter, which examines the spatial rhetoric used by Chrysostom in combating the Jewish Christians of Antioch as well as the Anomoeans. Here, Shepardson focuses on the triangulation of three contested spaces: the house, the church and the synagogue. Again and again, we see Chrysostom ‘fighting to patrol his community's boundaries, identifying where in Antioch his listeners should and should not go’ (pp. 92, 97, 111).
Chapter iv turns to the urban-rural divide. Despite the usual elite stereotypes that privileged the city, as the centre of paideia and sophistication over the uncivilised countryside, Chrysostom's rhetoric insists that true orthodoxy and orthopraxy are to be found in the countryside. Indeed, he locates these quite specifically in the shrines of the martyrs and in the caves of ascetics (p. 130). The turmoil that followed the riot of the statues (in the spring of 387), when the monks of the mountains came into the agora and the prominent citizens fled to the country ‘offered Chrysostom a unique opportunity to imagine a reordered Christianized Antioch’ (p. 162).
This creation of an idealised landscape, dotted with shrines and temples, classrooms and saints, which Libanius, Chrysostom and Theodoret effected through their literary descriptions, Shepardson argues, can be usefully compared to maps. And maps always involve politics. For maps, as cartographers insist, not only encode political ideology but also actively shape the ways in which people ‘perceive, and act in, the world around them’ (p. 172). Thus the ‘textured landscapes’ evoked by Libanius, Chrysostom and Theodoret, should be appreciated for what they were, namely strategies designed ‘to reshape local behavior and religious identity’ (p. 200).
A final chapter widens out the lens, to view a larger territory. Shepardson discusses how church leaders elsewhere in the Empire, in Palestine, Egypt, North Africa and Spain, used shrines and martyria to reshape their local topographies in order to define religious orthodoxy and to bolster their own authority (pp. 226, 239).
As even this brief précis suggests, this study covers a lot of ground. Along the way it makes many interesting and valuable observations, but perhaps its largest contribution lies in the way in which it raises up spatial realities and relationships as topics for further fruitful investigation.
