This volume compares Constantinople and Jerusalem in late antiquity, circa the fourth to the seventh centuries, across an introduction by the editors and twelve papers in English organised in four subsections. Selected and mainly imperial buildings, such as churches and city walls, literary texts and people, particularly emperors, in each city are contrasted, with some new conclusions drawn on their dating, relationships and historical significance. The physical, spiritual and Roman imperial legacy of the new Christian and Roman importance of each city is thus explored through this series of comparative case studies, alongside other binaries such as imperial vs Church patronage, art combined with ceremony, religion vs ideology, and the evolving institutions of both the Roman empire and the Christian Church.

The contributors are mainly German or British, with credits for the colloquia and grants leading to the volume spread among Heidelberg and Frankfurt universities (‘Polyphony of Late Antique Christianity’ project, funded by a Leibniz Prize of the German Research Foundation at the latter), the British Kenyon Institute and the DEIAHL of Jerusalem, and the German Archaeological Institute (DAI) in Istanbul/Constantinople. Each paper has its own footnotes and bibliography, some with figures, which are helpful for dipping into chapters in an open access work of this sort. Two small maps of each city with the major monuments marked were prepared by L. Schöps; for Jerusalem, I would add ‘Rotunda’ to ‘Anastasis’, show the Mount of Olives and spell Golgotha as elsewhere in the volume with an ‘o’ rather than ‘a’. There is a brief general index, and indexes of names, places and literary sources at the end of the volume. The papers will be of interest to scholars of late antiquity and Byzantium, particularly those studying these specific cities or the monuments, texts and historical events analysed by the individual papers.

The editors’ introduction succinctly states the reason for the volume, to delve deeper into the results of the dramatic rise of these two relatively peripheral Roman cities from circa 300 into new prominence as the Christian Roman imperial capital city and the site of sacred pilgrimage for the state religion. The three-way interaction among emperor, Church and people from Eusebius to the pilgrim Egeria spanned political, religious and monumental activity, building up both cities into symbolic and historical places of new power, triumph and selective display of constructed memory.

The many and varied physical interconnections between the cities are well traced by M. Whiting in her article on routes and networks, in Part 2, while their contrasts are summed up in Part 1’s articles by K. Trampedach and R. Pfeilschifter. Constantinople was remade by Constantine and his successors as New Rome, new imperial residence and therefore also City of Peace, yet in late antiquity it always took second place, both to Rome and to the newly Christianised Jerusalem and Palestine, with a Christian ‘Holy Land’ and city (re)created by the blending of topography, texts and ‘new’ relics found in Roman Aelia Capitolina. Events of enduring importance in each city from empress Helena’s excavations and the mushrooming of Constantinople’s Christian population to the wider growth of monasticism, the cults of martyr saints, church construction, Christianisation of Roman institutions and the making of ‘Patriarchal’ bishoprics are all briefly covered.

The other papers in Part 2 on ‘Urban Topographies Connected’ include Klein comparing (mostly female) saints, martyria and patrons in the second half of the fifth century; Trampedach in a second paper placing Justinian’s Nea Church in Jerusalem as a counterpart to both his (second) Hagia Sophia imperial cathedral and Solomon’s temple; and the civic fortification walls contrasted by N. Asutay-Effenberger (Constantinople) and S. Weksler-Bdolah (Jerusalem). Though the latter paper is well illustrated with new and updated pictures and plans, the question raised as to Eudoxia or Eudocia as first builder of the walls of Jerusalem deserves more attention, and there are more typographical errors than in the rest of the volume.

The third section is more text-focused, as the Christianised oratory of Eusebius instructing Constantine, the reception of Solomon as a temple-builder from the Hebrew Bible turned Christian Old Testament, and the reaction of the bishops of Jerusalem to the Church Council of Chalcedon are all probed for their significance for each city’s development, in both concrete buildings and the budding imperial Roman Christian imagination.

In Part 3 Wienand adds thoughtfully to H. Drake’s work with a deep dive explicating the original context of composition, performance and intent for Eusebius’ orations ‘On Christ’s Sepulcher’, at its consecration in Jerusalem as well as in Constantine’s palace in Constantinople in September/November 335, and his ‘Tricennial Oration’ in praise of Constantine again in Constantinople in 336 (combined as appendices to his posthumous vita). Here we see how speech-making connected with Constantine’s constructions and Eusebius’ travels, publications and legacy literally created almost ex nihilo both two imperial Christian cities and an enduring model of Christian basileia. N. Viermann contrasts how Solomon, his temple and ‘Old Testament’ builder-leaders were combatively recast by Anicia Juliana and Justinian, both in their churches of St Polyeuctus and the second Hagia Sophia and in the texts commissioned for those buildings, from the epigram in the Palatine Anthology to hymns such as ‘On Earthquakes and Fires’. J.-M. Kötter concludes the section by tracing the short-term impact of Chalcedon’s 451 elevation of Jerusalem’s episcopal authority, which made it a patriarchate, but still subordinate in most matters to both old and new imperial capitals, Alexandria and Antioch.

Finally, Part 4 closes the volume with papers on various ways in which the ‘end’ of late antiquity was experienced in Jerusalem, and to a lesser extent Constantinople. P. Magdalino probes the origins, mosaic decor and meaning of the monumental octagonal church of St John the Apostle at the Diipion (Hippodrome starting gate) in Constantinople, reused as the Ottoman sultan’s menagerie and demolished c. 1605–1610 (for the construction of the Blue Mosque). He argues it was begun by Phokas for a display of legitimacy and piety, but finished and decorated with Apocalypse iconography by Heraclius in part for apotropaic power, dedicated to St John following the raising of the siege of 626, reconquest of Jerusalem, desires of Patriarch Sergius, oratory of Theodore the Syncellus, and commentary on the book of Revelation (attributed to St John) by Andrew of Caesarea. The rivalry between Roman and eastern (Persian, then Muslim Arab) forces for control of Jerusalem and the True Cross, and Heraclius’ return of the latter in ceremony in 630, perhaps evoked on the Joshua Roll, are the subject for J. Howard-Johnston’s paper. This leads to L. Greisiger’s paper, last in the volume and temporally, an overview of (mainly Christian) triumphal entries into Jerusalem, from Torah precedents through the New Testament gospels and on through Heraclius in late antiquity into the Crusades and the modern times of European pilgrims, ‘Allenby of Armageddon’ (Rev. 16:16), and the re-enactment of his seizure of Jerusalem for British forces from the Ottoman Empire in 1917/2017. The paper forms a fitting coda to this engaging and thoughtful volume, as Greisiger argues that Christianised triumphal entries into Jerusalem always had, and continue to have, apocalyptic overtones drawing on both Hebrew scripture and Jewish traditions alongside the Gospels, while those of emperors into Constantinople via the Golden Gate continued Roman practices and ideologies of restoration, renewal and the bringing of peace to the city, empire and hence world.