Roman
religion – religions of Rome
-interview
with professor Jörg Rüpke -
Szabó Csaba
University of Pécs, HU
szabo.csaba.pte@gmail.com
Jörg Rüpke
(1962) is one of the leading scholars of Roman religious studies. Chair of the
Comparative Religion at the University of Erfurt since 1999 and fellow of the
Max Weber Center for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies, since 2000 he
chaired numerous international projects and grants, many of them dealing with
various aspects of the Roman religion. With more than 20 individual monographs
and 38 edited volumes, his work became unavoidable in the field of religious
studies. Taking an overview or an account of his work and activity, we can have
a broader view on the actual state of the Roman religious studies – a discipline
in continuous formation and transformation.
You
have learned Latin and theology in various universities in Germany and abroad,
but formed as a scholar in Tübingen, one of the most important center for
religious studies with a rigorous tradition in theological studies. Why you choose the study of Roman religion
and who influenced you in the beginning of your carrier?
In the very beginning
of my studies I was interested in religions of Asia and classical antiquity
too. I learned also Hebrew and Sanskrit, but after a short time I have realized
that I’m much more interested on religious studies. In Bonn I had as a mentor,
prof. Karl Hoheisel (1937-2011) editor and one of the authors of the
Reallexikons für Antike und Christentum, the only person at the faculty who had
special interests in Roman religion. Than in Tübingen I met Hubert Cancik and Burkhard
Gladigow, who had an important role in my formation as a scholar.
Your
Ph.D. thesis dealt with the religious aspects of the wars in Roman times[1].
In the 1990’s your interests will focus especially on the historiography of the
Roman religion and the Roman calendar[2]
followed after 2005 by your studies on religious rituals of the individuum and
the communities[3].
How you choose a topic for a research program?
I don’t really choose
a topic or research program, as a predefined plan. Usually they are born from
my earlier works. For instance, my Ph.D. topic was chosen by professor
Gladigow. I planned a detailed chapter on Roman festivals in military context,
which wasn’t published finally in the Domi
militiae. I spent all my summer of 1992 writing this chapter, on which I
was very fascinated at that time. Actually, in 2-3 months, I wrote the basics
of my habilitation work on Roman calendars. In the 1990’s working on so called
“imperial religion” my interest turned increasingly on regionalism and local
aspects of the Roman religion, which influenced my project on regionalism,
provincialism and individualization too.
During
this 25 year while you became a leading scholar in the study of Roman religion,
the methodology of the religious studies generally – but especially in the
Römische Religionsgeschichte – changed radically. Some of the scholars - like
C. Robert Phillips or Carl Orson – talked even about a crisis in the
methodology[4].
Is it true?
I would not affirm
that we are facing now a real “crisis of the discipline”, because there is in
fact, no united discipline of Roman religious studies. We are facing the
flourishing of Isiac studies or Mithraic studies but having many neglected
aspects too. Historicizing Roman religion is still lacking: a unified view on
Roman religion or even, about ancient religion generally. Christianity and
Judaism is still not integrated in the study of the ancient religions. Theology
deals separately with them, as “church religion” and the religious studies too.
Similarly to this, Judaism are often missing from such project, which deals
with ancient Magic and religion. Important synthetizes are missing from the
current research. We tried to reduce this gap in the research with the
Companion to the Roman Religion[5] and now we are working on the Companion to
the archaeology of religion in the ancient world, which hopefully will also
contribute for shaping the discipline[6].
One
of your major works deal with the priests of the city of Rome, collecting all
the sacerdotal personae from Republican time to Late Antiquity[7].
We see there hundreds of names – many of them remarkable persons of the Roman
history – with different roles from the typology of Joachim Wach: founders of
religions, diviners, magicians, priests…What was the impact of these people in
Rome and in a smaller area, like a provincial city?
They were not so
important as it seems to be. It was not like in the case of ancient Egypt or
the Mesopotamian city – states, where priests had much more power and
influence. They are part of the everyday
life, but the official religion is transmitted mainly by the magistrates.
Priesthood had a second meaning in this social structure. Religion is set free
for individual engagement and self representation in an imperial structure,
which had large free spaces – in ideological and religious terms – for these
functions and the dynamics between different social and religious levels and
manifestations. We must analyze the priesthood of the Roman Empire strictly in
connection with the imperial ideology and the concept of the empire.
Another
book of you – translated in many languages, even in Korean – deals with the
Roman calendar[8].
The number of the sources and the variety of the different urban Fasti are
stunning, but can we reconstruct by these analogies the religious calendar of a
Roman individual too? Or the religious Fasti of a provincial city?
Some of the
intellectuals and the literates surely had personalized calendars. We know this
from ancient sources, like Ovid or Petronius that some of the Romans had
scrolled calendars or marked the black and white days with nails on a wall. It
was a symbol for personal beliefs. In the case of cities, we must highlight the
difference about East and West. In the Near East, the Julian calendar was
introduces lately, because most of the urban centers had their own specific
fasti. However, even in the West, the
local calendars and religious holydays – known mainly from the Hispanic
municipal laws and some fragmentary preserved urban fasti[9] – were
very diversified, with few common festivals, like the Saturnalia or the
imperial holydays. It is important to
mention, that the monumental marble calendars are disappear even from Rome
after the time of Tiberius, which suggest that the new Julian calendar – and
the fasti itself – became an integrated part of the Roman society.
Dealing
with the faith of the ancient man is a risky job. We know some puzzles from
different periods, times and places about the faith and individual acts,
feelings, cloths, places and instruments of religious manifestation. It is like
reconstructing the life of a star by astronomers: you need analogies. What do
we know about Roman religion in fact?
About the feelings and
direct, religious experiences of the Roman people we have very few information.
But we can ask also, what do we know the religious experience of our
generation? We had almost the same lack of information about the religiosity of
the people from the beginning of the XXth century. With the
exception of some personal journals, short remarks, poems and interviews we
don’t know how they interacted and lived their religion. It is the same with
the Romans: we have mainly the official façade of the religiosity, the self
expression and representation of the people, with some laconic sources of
personal religiosity, mainly from literary and epigraphic texts.
You are
a member and coordinator of many international projects. Some of them, like the
“Religiöse Individualisierung in historischer Perspektive” (second project:
2012 – 2017) has already a great echo in the international literature[10].
What are the perspectives and main ideas of this project?
In this project we are working together with theologians,
historians, archaeologists and historians of religions mainly from Europe, but
having also collaborators from India, China and New Zeeland. Our main aim is to bringing together
discernable patterns, mainly focusing not only one society, but the transfer of
different agents of religion in and outside of a group. We also want to analyze
some historiographical aspects, redefining also the term of “religion” in the
frame of this new perspective of the individual. As a perspective for this project, we will
organize small workshops and conferences on the topic.
Another project is entitled “Lived
Ancient Religion (2012-2017)”[11].
In this work we can find many young scholars also, dealing with some particular
aspects of ancient religion like the small sanctuaries, the religious life of
Ostia or Karanis. Why this project was founded and what are the main tasks of
it?
The project is aiming to present the “lived religion” not
as a supplementum or alternative for “cults” and “polis religion”, but as a
perspective of it. Using the methodology of Meredith McGuire on embodied
practices of the contemporary religion only as a starting point, the project’s
aim is not to recreate a methodology of this kind for ancient societies and
individuals, but more to use as a starting point for new perspectives. Having
already organized important workshops and conferences, the research group will
meet next time at Copenhagen in May, 2014[12].
Beside publishing books and
articles on Roman religion, religious studies and historiography, you are also
a very dynamic culture diplomat, elected in 2012 as a member in the German
Council of Science and Humanities. How do you see the future of classical
studies in Germany and generally, in Europe? What are the main problems or
tendencies and how could we change it?
Classical studies as a privilege of the intellectual
bourgeois is in disappearance even in Italy, Germany or Switzerland. However, it is still easier to find
financial support for project in the Western countries. Many of the studies are
focusing on “globalization” in Roman world or on the relation of Rome and China
– as a postmodern, actual topic. But this is only what the professionals see.
For the rest of the world it is very important to present to Roman Empire and
it’s heritage in Europe, the Near East and North Africa as an opportunity to
share, making international projects and collaborations.
Bibliography
|
Phillips,
R. 2007. Approaching Roman religion:
the case for Wissenschaftgeschichte. In: Rüpke J. 2007. 12-25.
|
Rüpke, J.
2011. Time and festival. A Cultural
history of the Calendar. Seoul.
|
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Rives,
D. 2010. Graeco
– Roman Religion in the Roman Empire: Old Assumptions and New Approaches. In: Currents in Biblical Research 8,
240-299.
|
Rüpke, J.
2012. Lived ancient religion: questioning
„cults” and „polis religion”. In: Mythos
5, 191-204.
|
|
Rüpke, J.
1990. Domi militiae. Die religiöse
Konstruktion des Krieges in Rom. Stuttgart.
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Rüpke, J.
2013. (Ed.) The individual in the
religions of the Ancient Mediterranean. Oxford.
|
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Rüpke, J.
1993. Religion bei Eduard Norden: die
’Altrömischen Priesterbücher’ im wissenschaftlischen Kotext der dreissiger
Jahre. Magdeburg.
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Rüpke, J.
2014. (Ed.) A Companion to the
archaeology of the ancient world. New York (forthcoming)
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Rüpke, J.
1995. Kalender und Öffentlichkeit: die
Geschichte des geschichtlichen Bewusteins und seiner Verschiftlichungsformen
in der Antike. Potsdam.
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Rüpke, J.
2001. Religion der Römer: eine
Einführung. München.
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Rüpke, J.
2005. Fasti sacerdotum. Prosopographie
der stadtrömischen Priesterschaften römischer, griechischer, orientalischer
und jüdisch – christlicher Kulte bis 499 n. Chr. Stuttgart.
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Rüpke, J.
2007. (Ed.) A Companion to Roman
Religion. New York.
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[5] Rüpke 2007.
[7] Rüpke 2005.
[8] Rüpke 2011.
[10] Rüpke 2013.
[12]
Workshops of the project: Presence of death in lived
religion. 11th EASR Annual Conference 2012 „Ends and beginnings”,
Södertörn University, Stockholm, 23-26 August, 2012; Archaeology of Lived Religion in Antiquity,
Rome, 5-7th November, 2012; “Sharpening the knife”: making religion
effective in everyday life. Erfurt, 11-14 June, 2013; The role of
objects-creating meaning in situations. Eisenach, 9-11 October,2013; Stories
told and memories uttered – Ettersburg/Weimar, 29-31 January, 2014,
