Reshaping Past and Present: Expressing Power Through Architectural Reuse in Late Antique Italy and Gaul
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
History
Date of Award
Summer 8-18-2025
Abstract
In the early sixth century C.E., King Theoderic of Ostrogothic Italy and Bishop Avitus of Vienne each made very different choices concerning the reuse of structures and architectural elements. Romans commonly reused and recycled building material throughout their history, but the heightened cultural visibility of architectural reuse in late antiquity created imaginative space for its explicitly ideological employment. Despite the common culture shared by Roman elites in southern Gaul and Italy, different regional circumstances demanded different responses. Theoderic leveraged architectural reuse as a component of his plan to establish himself as the legitimate ruler of Roman Italy. The elite educated Roman sense of the past had become increasingly distant and mythologized, creating opportunities for Theoderic to insert himself into and reshape stories Roman senators told themselves about their past. Like Roman rulers had for centuries, he inscribed his power in stone, but unlike Roman emperors he did so with explicit rhetoric of architectural reuse. Meanwhile, Avitus chose to reject the reuse of churches built and consecrated by those he considered heretics. Instead of triumphally appropriating sacred spaces and objects, Avitus pushed back against culturally normative but potentially dangerous architectural reuse, employing power and persuasion to protect Homoean (Arian) Christians in Burgundy from persecution and his new Catholic king, Sigismund, from potential civil war. Although Theoderic and Avitus differed in their approach to architectural reuse, both employed it strategically to accommodate and appeal to locally powerful elites. While past emperors may have intended an ideological reading of their reuse, the king and the bishop almost certainly did. The overtly political meaning they imbued into their decisions to reuse structures – or not – constitutes a shift in how the powerful interacted with their built environment in Roman late antiquity. Thanks to the evolving popular Roman perception of their antique past, a practice designed for centuries to be invisible came into its own as a tool of statecraft.
Advisor
Sharon Kowalsky
Subject Categories
Arts and Humanities | History
Recommended Citation
Mancuso, August Rodney, "Reshaping Past and Present: Expressing Power Through Architectural Reuse in Late Antique Italy and Gaul" (2025). Electronic Theses & Dissertations. 1285.
https://lair.etamu.edu/etd/1285
