Paul the Martyr: The Cult of the Apostle in the Latin West.

• Author: Van Dam, Raymond
• Position: Book review

Paul the Martyr: The Cult of the Apostle in the Latin West. By DAVID L. EASTMAN. Writings from the Greco-Roman World Supplement Series, vol. 4. Atlanta: SOCIETY OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE, 2011. Pp. xx + 238, illus. $30.95 (paper).

After his extensive journeys throughout Asia Minor and the Greek peninsula, the apostle Paul sailed to Rome for a trial before the emperor. At the end of Acts of the Apostles he was still living in Rome as a preacher and a teacher. For the remainder of his life only legendary accounts survive. The most famous and most durable of these legends claimed that eventually Paul was beheaded as a martyr at Rome.

David Eastman has now provided an excellent overview of the development and significance of the cult of Si. Paul in the western empire through the sixth century. Because Paul soon joined the apostle Peter as a patron saint of Rome, his cult was most prominent at the capital. The cult of St. Paul was furthermore honored in Gaul. Spain. and North Africa.

At Rome the cult of St. Paul was venerated at two principal sites a few miles outside the great walls. One site was south of the city near the Tiber River. As Eastman notes. over time the legends offered "an increasing level of precision about the details of Paul's martyrdom" (p. 16). Eventually the legends identified the persecuting emperor as Nero and located Paul's execution and burial on the road leading to Ostia. In the early fourth century the emperor Constantine constructed a church that included the saint's tomb. According to Eastman, this church signified a new cooperative relationship. Now "the apostle and the emperor worked together as . . . protectors of this great city" (p. 27). A century later the emperor Theodosius replaced this small church with a much more extravagant building that was larger even than the Church of St. Peter on the Vatican. Subsequent bishops of Rome. including Leo in the mid-fifth century and Gregory at the end of the sixth century, modified the area around the tomb, and many pilgrims visited. The Church of St. Paul outside the Walls remains a pilgrimage destination today. Within the last decade archaeologists have discovered an ancient sarcophagus in this church, and Pope Benedict has recently asserted that it contains the saint's remains (p. 38).

The other important site for the veneration of St. Paul was located among the catacombs southeast of the city on the Appian Way. Initially Christians gathered there to celebrate...