Resumen de Death's Dominion: Power, Identity, and Memory at the Fourth-Century Martyr Shrine by Nathaniel J. Morehouse (review)
Morehouse differentiates himself from preceding scholars by arguing, contrary to Saghy and Brown, that the primary purpose of Damasus’s program was to consolidate power and defeat rivals (71–72), attested to in his inscriptions’ alteration of history: thus Hippolytus atones for his schismatic past by rejoining the church in martyrdom, and Peter and Paul are united as citizens of Rome. Paulinus, on the other hand, was lax about behavior at the shrine of local martyr Felix, but bolstered Nola’s prestige through tireless promotion of Felix’s cult and distribution of relics (109–16). Pilgrimage helped bring further unity to Christianity in two ways: people from different social and ethnic backgrounds mixed together in new communities; and pilgrims tended to write about the shrines and their practices, which in turn spread these practices abroad, helping create “uniformity in veneration” (149).
