In her book Sacred Founders, Diliana N. Angelova, professor at the University of California, Berkley, offers an innovative analysis of the discourse of imperial founding, from approximately first century BCE through the sixth century. For Angelova, the discourse of founding is suspended between textual and visual statements, deeply embodied and gendered in cultural practices of the ancient and early medieval Mediterranean. Such a sophisticated approach allowed for a better understanding of imperial founding that articulated and legitimized the imperial authority of the founders. The complexities of this discourse are not merely formal, but include the socio-historical conditions that defined its content and usage.

Among the major duties and rights of imperial figures in Hellenistic and Byzantine realms were the foundation of cities, building of new and restoration of old urban structures (both secular and sacred), and minting of coins. In that context, monumental civic buildings, palaces, statuary, and coins, along with official documents, honorific inscriptions, and celebratory texts, contributed to the discourse of imperial founding. The act of founding a city was considered divine. By extension, the founders received divine honors. Angelova takes an ambitious task: to untangle the origins of sacred founding in Roman imperial discourse, its transition to Christian paradigms, and how gender shaped the discourse of founding.

The first part of the book examines the pan-Mediterranean phenomenon of the city founding. Angelova's focus is on the myth of origin of the city of Rome and the reinvention, renewal, and legitimization of the founding act by imperial figures. Because the founding of a city was understood as being sanctioned by divine authority, it was culturally determined as both imperial and sacred. The second part of the book reveals the multiple threads of the transitioning of the founding discourse from the imperial pagan to the imperial Christian context. The founding of Constantinople and its transformation from a pagan to a Christian city is the case in point. The foundation acts in the Holy Land complement the narrative. The third part of the book investigates the role of bishops in normalizing the discourse of imperial founding within Christianity, with an emphasis on the controversial topic of imperial sacredness. The book evaluates the significance of building by both male and female rulers. Angelova claims that from the time of Augustus, the first Roman emperor, to Constantine, the first Roman emperor who embraced Christianity, “imperial women came to be honored as female founders of the land, and … associated with goddesses and their characteristics” (5). She highlights how Emperor Constantine and his mother, Helena, emerged as the imperial co-founders of the Christian empire and how the legacy of their founding partnership and co-rulership, further enriched with the sacred agency of the Mother of God, empowered imperial women with palpable founding agency.

Angelova demonstrates a command of an impressive range of primary textual sources that she contrasts with a balanced overview of known and less known material from visual arts and architecture. She rightly emphasizes how texts by Tacitus, Eusebius, or Procopius customarily received privileged positions in scholarship and set the standards for our understanding of the late antique and Byzantine realms, despite the fact that these authors were openly misogynists. By rereading numerous texts on imperial founding, tutelage, and honors, and by juxtaposing them with the actual founding acts, donations, and buildings that empresses commissioned in Rome, Constantinople, or in the Holy Land, Angelova reasserts the important role of empresses in the founding discourse. Simultaneously, she questions the tendency of contemporaneous and modern scholars to downplay the significance of buildings, and especially churches, built by imperial women, and to present them as acts of personal piety rather than imperial authority. Her case studies range from Livia to Theodora. Livia, the wife of the first Roman emperor Augustus, and mother of Tiberius, was honored as “the mother of the fatherland,” and deified with the title Augusta. Helena, mother of Constantine, was a land-owner, built funerary and palatial complexes that included a public bath in Rome, supported extensive building campaigns in the Holy Land, and, if not a founder herself, became associated with the Helenianai palace and neighborhood in Constantinople and with the new city of Helenopolis, on the Gulf of Nicomedia. The titles “New Augusta” and “New Helena” bestowed to Byzantine empresses secured them a critical position in the discourse of imperial founding. Angelova argues that the emerging role of the Mother of God for the Christian oikoumene was closely related to the redefinition and renewal of this discourse. By the sixth century, the legacy of sacred motherhood was enriched with prayers and royal depictions in visual arts to Mary as the Queen of Heaven. The ceremonies for an imperial adventus, monetary largesse, and proskynesis highlighted the elevated status of Byzantine imperial women. Even if never officially recognized as Justinian's co-patron, by analyzing epigraphic, visual, and evidence from architectural sculpture, Angelova suggests that Theodora was behind major architectural accomplishments in Constantinople: Hagia Sophia, Hagia Eirine, and SS. Sergius and Bacchus. Seemingly overwhelming analysis of female patronage in Angelova's book, however, should be seen in the light of her attempt to prove and leverage their underrepresentation in scholarship on imperial authority and contemporaneous understanding of the sacred role of female founders along with their male counterparts—husbands, sons, brothers, and fathers. Especially interesting are sections on harmonious co-rulership and partnership in important building projects that stimulated urban growth (Constantine and Helena, Valentian III and Gala Placidia, Eudocia and Theodosius II, Pulcheria and Theodosius II, Justin and Sophia, Justinian and Theodora).

Sacred Founders is a much-needed contribution to the studies of Late Antique and Byzantine social norms and material culture. Due to its interdisciplinary framework and methodologically contested approach, that here places material and visual evidence before the assumed fidelity of texts that downplay the role of women in the founding discourse, the book will be a necessary reference to everyone interested in the history of medieval art and architecture, gender studies, and the notions of imperial founding suspended between idealized representations and actual accomplishments.