Aude Busine

Aude Busine is Professor of Ancient History at the Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) and Honorary Researcher at the Belgian Fund for Scientific Research (F.R.S.-FNRS). Her research focuses on the religious and cultural history of the eastern, Hellenic-speaking part of the Roman Empire, with a particular interest in civic discourses on time and space.

The project

Title: Memories of stones. The construction of a memorial landscape in the Late Roman East (4th-6th centuries).

"In the eastern provinces of the Roman Empire, the landscape of Greek cities underwent major upheavals. On the one hand, these were the result of new local evergetic policies due to administrative centralization in the new capital, and the economic consequences this had on the cities. On the other hand, they are the consequence of the development of Christianity, with the establishment of new places of worship and new uses for the city. Spurred on by the anti-pagan policies of emperors and local dignitaries, cities saw the closure, abandonment or refurbishment of temples, emblematic buildings of pagan worship, as well as the construction of new places of worship adapted to the practice of the new religion (churches, martyria, cemeteries). Numerous studies have attempted to understand, measure and map these changes in the field. More recently, researchers have also looked beyond the concrete reality of the urban landscape to the symbolic charge attributed to these changes. The aim of these four lectures is to explore the imaginary dimensions of the changing cityscape, by studying the various discourses that have been developed on the basis of material reality. The stones, buildings still standing or in ruins, inscriptions and statues, become the pretext for the elaboration of a memorial landscape, rooted in the history and culture of a changing world in which Christianity developed and eventually imposed itself."

Institution: École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE)

Selective Bibliography

Books:

• Religious Practices and Christianization of the Late Antique City, Leiden – Boston, 2015, rééd. 2021.
• Paroles d’Apollon. Pratiques et traditions oraculaires dans l’Antiquité tardive (IIe - VIe siècles), Leiden – Boston, 2005.

Articles:

• « 'No Longer Does Phoebus Have a Cabin'. Emperor Julian and the Fall of the Temple of Apollo in Delphi », in E. G. Simonetti, Cl. Hall (éd.), Divination and Revelation in Later Antiquity, Cambridge, 2023, p. 208-221.
• « The Dux and the Nun. Hagiography and the cult of Artemios and Febronia in Constantinople », Dumbarton Oaks Papers 72 (2019), 93-111.
• « Basil and Basilissa at Ancyra. Local legends, hagiography and cult », Greek, Roman and Byzantine studies, 59 (2019), p. 262-286.
• « From Stones to Myth. Temple Destruction and Civic Identities in the Late Antique Roman East », Journal of Late Antiquity 6.2 (2014), p. 325-346