Journal of Theological Studies, NS, Vol.

60, Pt 1, April 2009

DOMUS ECCLESIAE: RETHINKING

A CATEGORY OF ANTE-PACEM
CHRISTIAN SPACE
Abstract
Historians of religion, art, and archaeology often invoke the term domus
ecclesiae (o9 ko" t8" 2kklhs0a") as a technical category to denote a house or
building that had been materially adapted for Christian ritual during the

Downloaded from http://jts.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of Guelph on October 22, 2012

ante-pacem period. Most employ the term in the belief that it is genuinely
pre-Constantinian, and that Christians in this period described their cult
spaces as renovated houses. This essay demonstrates the inaccuracy of
both assumptions, and shows that the first attested literary use of the
term dates no earlier than 313 CE, when Eusebius of Caesarea (d. 339)
used it in his writings to designate a church building without any indica-
tion of its architectural form or history. Following a discussion of the
term’s modern history and an analysis of the ancient literary evidence,
the essay concludes with a brief look at the material evidence for
domus ecclesiae, which, with one exception (the complex at Dura-
Europos), also dates to the post-Constantinian period.

SINCE the publication of Richard Krautheimer’s Early Christian

and Byzantine Architecture in 1965, domus ecclesiae has been a
key term in scholarship on ante-pacem Christian space and com-
munity.1 It has appeared as the subject of studies on the pre-
Nicene language and experience of Christian cult space; in
monographs on early Christian architecture and liturgy; in
books focusing on methodological approaches to ante-pacem
Christian social organization; in socio-legal analyses of
Byzantine religious foundations; in general encyclopedias of

A version of this paper was first presented at the November 2007 meeting
of the Society of Biblical Literature in San Diego, CA. I am grateful to Kim
Bowes and especially to Anthony Kaldellis for their comments and suggestions.
1
Richard Krautheimer, Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture
(Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1965), pp. 27–30, henceforth ECBA. While
Krautheimer popularized the phrase, he was not the first to discuss it: see e.g.
Joseph Mede, Churches, That is, Appropriate Places for Christian Worship; Both
in and Ever since the Apostolic Times (London, 1638), pp. 51–2; Joseph
Bingham and Robert Bingham, Origines Ecclesiasticae: Or, The Antiquities of
the Christian Church (London: 1840 edn.), p. 340; Louis Duchesne, Christian
Worship: Its Origins and Evolution, trans. M. L. McClure (London: SPCK,
1910), pp. 399–400; Fernand Cabrol and Henri Leclercq, s.v. domus ecclesiae in
DACL (Paris: Letouzey and Ané, 1920–53), vol. 3, pt. 2, pp. 1441–3; Willy
Rordorf, ‘Was wissen wir über die christliche Gottesdiensträume der vorkon-
stantinische Zeit?’, ZNW 55 (1964), pp. 117–18.
ß The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.
For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org
doi:10.1093/jts/fln173 Advance Access publication 3 February 2009
 DOMUS ECCLESIAE 91
late antiquity; and in popular histories of art and early
Christianity.2 The term has even passed into the domain of gen-
eral knowledge: not only does domus ecclesiae have its own Italian
Wikipedia entry, but it is also featured in the online version of
the Encyclopedia Britannica.3 Scholars typically invoke domus
ecclesiae as an architectural category, to denote houses that
early Christians had physically modified to accommodate their
liturgical and organization needs.4 Most believe that the phrase is
genuinely pre-Constantinian, coined by Christian authors in the

Downloaded from http://jts.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of Guelph on October 22, 2012

second and third centuries to describe their renovated, hybrid
house churches.
2
Pre-Nicene language and experience of cult space: Christine Mohrmann,
‘Les Denominations de l’église en tant qu’edifice en grec et en latine au cours
des premiers siècles chrétiens’, RSR 36 (1962), pp. 155–74; Harold Turner,
From Temple to Meeting House: The Phenomenology and Theology of Places of
Worship (The Hague: Mouton, 1977), pp. 157–77; Hans-Josef Klauck,
Hausgemeinde und Hauskirche im frühen Christentum (Stuttgart: Verlag
Katholisches Bibelwerk GmbH, 1981), pp. 69–81; Victor Saxer, ‘Domus eccle-
siae—oikos tes ekklesias’, Römisches Quartalschrift für christliche Altertumskunde
und Kirchengeschichte 83 (1988), pp. 167–79. Early Christian architecture and
liturgy: Klaus Gamber, Domus Ecclesiae (Regensburg: Verlag Friedrich Pustet,
1968); J. Boguniowski, Domus Ecclesiae: Der Ort der Eucharistiefeier in den
ersten Jahrhundert (Rome, 1987), pp. 338–44; L. Michael White, Building
God’s House in the Roman World: Architectural Adaptation among Pagans,
Jews, and Christians (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990) and
The Social Origins of Christian Architecture, vol. 2: Texts and Monuments for
the Christian Domus Ecclesiae in its Environment (Valley Forge, PA: Trinity
Press International, 1997); Neil Christie, From Constantine to Charlemagne:
An Archaeology of Italy AD 300–800 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), pp. 101–2.
Byzantine religious foundations: J. P. Thomas, Private Religious Foundations in
the Byzantine Empire (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press,
1987), pp. 8–10. Methodological approaches to early Christian social formation:
Carolyn Osiek, ‘Archaeological and Architectural Issues and the Question of
Demographic and Urban Forms’, in Anthony J. Blasi, Jean Duhaime, and
Paul-André Turcott (eds.), Handbook of Early Christianity: Social Science
Approaches (Walnut Creek, CA: Alta Mira Press, 2002), p. 100.
Encyclopedias and general books: Glen Bowersock, Peter Brown, and Andre
Grabar (eds.), Late Antiquity: A Guide to the Post-Classical World (Cambridge,
MA: Belknap Press, 1999), p. 375, s.v. ‘Church Architecture’; Philip Esler
(ed.), The Early Christian World (London: Routledge, 2000), pp. 711–17;
Hugh Honour and John Flemming, A World History of Art (Upper Saddle
River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2005), s.v. ‘From domus ecclesiae to Christian
basilica’.
3
5http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domus_ecclesiae and www.britannica.com/
eb/topic-168844/domus-ecclesiae4.
4
Krautheimer, ECBA and White, Building God’s House and The Social
Origins of Christian Architecture, both discussed in detail below. See also
Paul Corby Finney, ‘Early Christian Architecture: The Beginnings (A
Review Article)’, HTR 81 (1988), pp. 319–39, who discussed the term in
the manner defined by Krautheimer and White without reflection or comment.
92 KRISTINA SESSA
This essay aims to correct assumptions about the phrase’s
alleged ante-pacem antiquity and to raise questions about its
heuristic utility as an architectural category of Christian cult
space.5 I shall demonstrate that the earliest attested use of the
term domus ecclesiae (in Greek as o9 ko" t8" 2kklhs0a") dates to
c.313–39 CE, when it first appeared in the writings of Eusebius of
Caesarea (260/5–339).6 Eusebius used the term simply to denote
the physical buildings belonging to and used by a Christian com-
munity. I suggest that he chose the phrase o9 ko" t8" 2kklhs0a" in

Downloaded from http://jts.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of Guelph on October 22, 2012

the light of the household’s ecclesiological significance in
Christian thought, not because the term reflected the church’s
architectural characteristics as a renovated house. As we shall
see, there is no ante-pacem literary evidence that writers used
this term or otherwise described the material phenomenon that
the term is commonly thought to express. The dearth of evi-
dence for domus ecclesiae as a pre-Constantinian phrase and
architectural phenomenon will be further underscored at the
end, when I turn briefly to the material evidence, which, with
the single exception of the complex at Dura-Europos, is also
post-Constantinian.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE TERM: DOMUS ECCLESIAE IN MODERN

SCHOLARSHIP
During the first half of the twentieth century, scholars began to
emphasize the domestic context of early Christianity, and the fact
that communities assembled and worshipped in private buildings,
such as houses.7 Emphasis on the house as a place of assembly and
worship encouraged historians, and especially archaeologists, to
search for clues in texts and the material record for the physical
structures in which ante-pacem Christians congregated. Scholars
5
It builds on Theodor Klauser’s critique of Klaus Gamber’s use of the
term domus ecclesiae in Gamber, Domus Ecclesiae. See Klauser, JhAC 11/12
(1968–9), pp. 214–24, especially pp. 221–2. I also found insightful Saxer,
‘Domus ecclesiae—oikos tes ekklesias’, who emphasized the conceptual nature
of the phrase over any ‘architectonic’ meaning. Unlike Saxer, I do not associ-
ate these terms or the ideas they connote with the third century.
6
Research for this essay was conducted through word searches using the
CLCLT and TLG databases.
7
E.g. Floyd Filson, ‘The Significance of Early House Churches’, Journal of
Biblical Literature 58 (1939), pp. 105–12. The literature from the second half
of the twentieth century is vast: see White, Building God’s House, pp. 2–10,
who provides an overview of scholarly trends on early Christian social orga-
nization and architecture, and the essays in David L. Balch and Carolyn Osiek
(eds.), Early Christian Families in Context (Grand Rapids, MI: William B.
Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2003).
 DOMUS ECCLESIAE 93
concur that Christians of the first and early second centuries
worshipped in their houses without carrying out any material
changes, for there is no archaeological or literary evidence to
suggest physical alteration for ritual use. However, many claim to
have found architectural connections between these unrenovated
‘house churches’ and the later fourth- and fifth-century Christian
basilicas. While some originally posited a direct link between the
atrium of the domus and the post-Constantinian basilica (a link
permanently severed in an important article published by J. B.

Downloaded from http://jts.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of Guelph on October 22, 2012

Ward-Perkins in 1954), others saw intermediary changes taking
place in the late second and third centuries, which involved the
physical construction or renovation of the house to meet new
liturgical and organizational needs.8
Among those who argued for the existence of deliberately
modified, ante-pacem house churches was the German scholar J. P.
Kirsch, who studied the post-Constantinian neighbourhood
basilicas of Rome known as tituli. In a monograph published in
1918, Kirsch claimed that directly beneath the city’s tituli lay the
remains of houses that had been renovated in the third century for
Christian worship and assembly.9 To substantiate his claim, he
cited recent excavations on tituli such as S. Clemente and SS.
Giovanni e Paolo, where archaeologists had discovered the
remains of older houses beneath the post-Constantinian basilicas.
Instead of the Latin domus ecclesiae, Kirsch used the German
translation, ‘‘die Häuser der Kirche’, to denote the allegedly third-
century renovated house churches.10 According to Kirsch, ‘the
houses of the church’ were originally private homes built or
renovated to accommodate the more complex liturgy and clerical
organization of the third-century Roman church.11
As his notes in Early Christian and Byzantine Architecture
indicate, Krautheimer relied directly on Kirsch for his con-
ceptualization of the domus ecclesiae as a distinct developmental
stage of Christian architecture and community.12 According to
8
J. B. Ward Perkins, ‘Constantine and the Origins of the Christian
Basilica’, PBSR 12 (1954), pp. 69–90. White, Building God’s House, pp.
12–20 reviews the older scholarship.
9
Johann Peter Kirsch, Die römischen Titelkirchen im Altertum (Paderborn:
Druck und Verlag von Ferdinand Schöningh, 1918).
10
Kirsch, Die römischen Titelkirchen, pp. 127–38.
11
Ibid. pp. 134–5.
12
Krautheimer, ECBA, p. 482, n. 22. He also cited L. Voelkl, RAC 29
(1953), pp. 49 V. and Klauser, JhAC 11/12 (1968–9), the latter added for the
1975 edition. Krautheimer did not cite Rordorf’s article published the year
before ECBA, which defined the domus ecclesiae largely in socio-functional
terms, as a building whose rooms were used no longer for domestic purposes,
94 KRISTINA SESSA
Krautheimer, the increasing size and complexity of the Christian
congregations in Rome and elsewhere c.200 CE precipitated the
need for more permanent, customized meeting places, which he
claimed were called domus ecclesiae:
These manifold ends could not be met either by a private house,
taken over unchanged, or by an apartment temporarily at the disposal
of the congregants. They could be met only by a regular meeting
house, owned by the congregation in practice if not in fact. Such a
structure would be called a domus ecclesiae, an oikos tes ekklesias, or, in

Downloaded from http://jts.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of Guelph on October 22, 2012

the local parlance of Rome, a titulus; community centre or meeting
house best renders the meeting of the various terms. Once purchased,
the structure would as a rule have to be altered to fit the congrega-
tion’s needs. Occasionally community houses may even have been
built ex novo. But all known community houses remain bound in
plan and design to the tradition of utilitarian domestic architecture,
as well as subject to the regional variations of third-century building
within the Roman Empire.13
Although the wording of the passage suggests an ancient terminol-
ogy (‘such a structure would be called a domus ecclesiae’),
Krautheimer may have been among the first to use the Latin
term, the Greek o9 ko" t8" 2kklhs0a", and titulus in this precise
manner.14 Krautheimer extended Kirsch’s hypothesis about
Rome to the wider empire, largely through discussion of the com-
plex of renovated domestic buildings excavated at Dura-Europos,
which date to the mid-third century. In Krautheimer’s opinion, the

but for religious ones. (Rordorf, ‘Was wissen wir über die christliche
Gottesdiensträume der vorkonstantinische Zeit?’, p. 118).
13
Krautheimer, ECBA, p. 27. Curiously, Krautheimer did not use the term
domus ecclesiae in his technical discussions of the structures beneath S.
Clemente or SS. Giovanni e Paolo in the Corpus Basilicarum Christianarum
Romae: The Early Christian Basilicas of Rome (IV–IX cent.) (Vatican City:
Pontificio istituto di archeologia cristiana, 1937), vol. 1, pp. 117–36, 267–303
(hereafter CBCR). Nor does domus ecclesiae appear in his 1939 essay, ‘The
Beginnings of Early Christian Architecture’, Review of Religion 36 (1939),
pp. 127–48. There Krautheimer preferred the English phrases ‘community
house’ and ‘house of the community’ to denote the supposed renovated
houses turned cult spaces.
14
Pace White (Building God’s House, p. 154, n. 36), Adolf von Harnack did
not originate this use of domus ecclesiae: it appears in neither the 1924 German
edition of the Die Mission und Ausbreitung des Christentums nor in the abridged
1908 English translation, both cited by White. Kirsch was also more careful
than Krautheimer and White: he distinguished between the titulus (which he
correctly recognized as a post-Constantinian term), ‘die Häuser der Kirche’,
which he identified with the third-century house-turned-church, and the domus
ecclesiae, which he defined as domestic buildings associated with a church in
which clergy lived (Kirsch, Die römische Titelkirchen, p. 1).
 DOMUS ECCLESIAE 95
domus ecclesiae at Dura suggested that the physical alteration of
domestic space for Christian religious use was a widespread
phenomenon.
Since 1965, references to the domus ecclesiae as a distinct and
historically attested type of ante-pacem cult space have prolifer-
ated. The term’s popularity, especially over the last two decades,
owes a great deal to the work of L. Michael White. White’s 1992
study of the architectural development of private cult space,
Building God’s House in the Roman World, presents a more fine-

Downloaded from http://jts.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of Guelph on October 22, 2012

tuned model of the domus ecclesiae. For example, he delimited his
definition of the domus ecclesiae to renovated structures (discarding
ex novo constructions included by Kirsch and Krautheimer); but
he also widened it, to encompass any building ‘specifically adapted
or renovated for such religious use’.15 For White, in other words, a
domus ecclesiae need not have been a house. He also observed that
some material evidence for domus ecclesiae dates to after 313,
noting that ‘the archaeological evidence indicates that the domus
ecclesiae . . . form continued well after the point when basilicas had
supposedly become the norm [in the post-Constantinian
period]’.16 White even coined a term, the aula ecclesiae or ‘hall
church’, which he presented as another category of renovated pre-
Constantinian cult space.17 Nevertheless, he understood the domus
ecclesiae as a specially adapted cult space, which third-century
Christians typically built and described in their texts.18 In his
second book, subtitled Texts and Monuments for the Christian
Domus Ecclesiae and its Environment, White presented what he
believed to be the literary and material evidence for the domus

15
White, Building God’s House, p. 21; The Social Origins of Christian
Architecture, p. 25.
16
White, Building God’s House, p. 23.
17
Ibid. p. 22 and especially p. 155, n. 49. White admits that he invented
the Latin term aula ecclesiae, though as his note explains, it was inspired by
Harnack’s model of the ‘Saalkirche’, described in Die Mission und Ausbreitung
des Christentums (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1924), pp. 615–7. Krautheimer too
discussed the ‘assembly hall’ as a particular phase of pre-Constantinian church
architecture in ‘The Beginnings of Early Christian Architecture’, pp. 133–5.
Since there is no confusion over this term’s origins, I will not discuss it,
though we might question the methodological value of coining unattested
Latin phrases to describe ancient phenomena.
18
White, The Social Origins of Christian Architecture, pp. 9–26, and 126,
where it is clear that he saw the third century as the floruit of the domus
ecclesiae.
96 KRISTINA SESSA
ecclesiae as both a physical building and a perceived form of
Christian place.19

LITERARY EVIDENCE FOR DOMUS ECCLESIAE/o9 ko" t8" 2kklhs0a"

ANTIQUITY
IN

Although widely regarded as a material phenomenon, argu-

ments for the pre-Constantinian building and ritual use of domus
ecclesiae rest heavily upon textual evidence. Most scholars

Downloaded from http://jts.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of Guelph on October 22, 2012

presume that the phrase itself is well attested in third-century
sources and that third-century writers described the renovation of
houses to serve as churches in the liturgical sense of the term.20
Neither assumption is correct.
Whether rendered in Greek (o9 ko" t8" 2kklhs0a") or Latin
(domus ecclesiae), the phrase itself defies obvious translation and
oVers little insight into its original context or meaning. Modern
readers usually translate it either literally (and elliptically) as
‘house of the church’ or more loosely as ‘assembly house’ or
‘community house’. Some simply employ it as an ancient-
sounding synonym for ‘house church’, and ignore the more
specific definition adopted by Krautheimer, White, and others.21
To be clear, however, there is nothing in the Latin or Greek that
identifies the term as an architectural category of Christian cult
space: only context would allow this interpretation. As we shall
see, the literal translation is probably the best one.
Before examining the earliest attestation of the term in the
writings of Eusebius, let us first cast aside texts most commonly
cited in support of a third-century date for domus ecclesiae as a
phrase and phenomenon. Here I discuss only those passages
which contain the phrase itself or which clearly convey a house’s
material conversion into a church, since ‘renovation’ is the crux of
modern definitions of the domus ecclesiae. Thus I shall not
examine the well-known biblical associations of the religious
community with the household (e.g. Isa. 56:7; 2 John 10; and
3 John 10), the numerous references to early Christians meeting
in private houses (e.g. 1 Cor. 16:19; Rom. 15:3–5; Gesta apud
19
Ibid. This collection of sources (both pre- and post-Constantinian) on the
place of Christian assembly is presented as a companion volume to Building
God’s House.
20
In the main, relatively few scholars actually cite texts to corroborate the
putative third-century history of the term; most often they simply assume an
ante-pacem context without documentation.
21
See e.g. Gamber, Domus Ecclesiae, pp. 13–14; Turner, From Temple to
Meeting House, pp. 157–77; Klauck, Hausgemeinde und Hauskirche, p. 69.
 DOMUS ECCLESIAE 97
Zenophilum), or the manifold domestic metaphors used to denote
the ecclesiological community (as in the writings of Cyprian).22
These are authentically pre-Constantinian expressions, but none
incorporates the phrase domus ecclesiae or conveys the specific
notion of a house physically adapted to accommodate worship or
assembly. Consequently, they cannot be claimed as evidence for
the domus ecclesiae in the technical, modern sense of the term.
One allegedly pre-Constantinian text cited as a source for a
domus ecclesiae is the Passio Sancti Caeciliae, a narrative

Downloaded from http://jts.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of Guelph on October 22, 2012

commemorating the third-century Roman martyr Caecilia.23 At
the end of the passion, the anonymous author described how
Caecilia converted her baths into a baptistery and had her domus
consecrated as an ecclesia.24 Were the passion an authentically
third-century text, we might have our domus ecclesiae since the
transformative, material dimension is expressed, even if the phrase
itself was not used. However, scholars have long recognized the
Passio S. Caeciliae as a post-Constantinian narrative, dating to the
fifth or even sixth century.25 It is not an authentic eyewitness
account of a pre-Constantinian martyrdom and thus cannot be
used as ante-pacem evidence for the domus ecclesiae.
DiVerent problems attend the Clementine Recognitions, another
frequently cited source.26 This is a third-century narrative of
22
See discussions in Ulrich Meyer, Soziales Handeln im Zeichen des
‘Hauses’: Zur Ökonomik in der Spätantike und im frühen Mittelalter
(Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1998), pp. 62–70, 189–205; Saxer,
‘Domus ecclesiae—oikos tes ekklesias’, and Mohrmann, ‘Les Denominations de
l’église’, who was especially interested in the vocabulary used by early
Christians to denote the physical place of their community. It is notable that
Mohrmann did not discuss domus ecclesiae among the early attested terms,
although she did invoke the phrase to denote what she described as an
‘epoch’ of ante-pacem community life, when Christians met in private houses
(p. 169).
23
Rordorf, ‘Was wissen wir über die christliche Gottesdiensträume der vor-
konstantinische Zeit?’, p. 117; J. M. Petersen, ‘House Churches in Rome’, VC
23 (1969), p. 269; Finney, ‘Early Christian Architecture’, p. 331.
24
Passio S. Caeciliae 31–2, ed. Hippolyte Delehaye in Étude sur le légendier
romain: Les saints de novembre et de décembre (Brussels: Société des Bollandists,
1936), pp. 219–20.
25
Albert Dufourcq, Étude sur les Gesta Martyrum romains (Paris: De
Boccard, 1900–10; repr. 1988), vol. 1, pp. 287–312.
26
J.-R. Laurin, ‘Le Lieu du culte chrétien d’après les documents littéraires
primitifs’, Analecta Gregoriana 79 (1954), pp. 48–9; Rordorf, ‘Was wissen wir
über die christliche Gottesdiensträume der vorkonstantinische Zeit?’, p. 117;
Boguniowski, Domus Ecclesiae, p. 91; Finney, ‘Early Christian Architecture’,
p. 331; White, The Social Origins of Christian Architecture, p. 51; G. Snyder,
Ante Pacem: Archaeological Evidence of Church Life before Constantine (rev.
edn., Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2003), pp. 143–4.
98 KRISTINA SESSA
Clement of Rome’s travels with Peter in the east. While originally
written in Greek (perhaps based on a Syrian Grundschrift), the
Clementine Recognitions is extant only in Rufinus of Aquileia’s
Latin translation. Rufinus died in 411 CE, but he finished the
translation sometime after 407, and dedicated it to Gaudentius of
Brescia.27 In Book 10.71, we read how Theophilus, a leading man
in Antioch, ‘consecrated a large basilica (ingentem basilicam) in his
house in the name of the church, in which the cathedra was
established by all the people for the apostle Peter, and the entire

Downloaded from http://jts.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of Guelph on October 22, 2012

multitude assembled daily to hear his preaching’.28 First, no
sensible rendering of the Latin can produce the phrase domus
ecclesiae. Rufinus never used it, nor presumably did the equivalent
appear in the original Greek. But does the passage suggest the idea
of a domus ecclesiae, that is a house materially renovated for reuse
as a church? It is unclear what Rufinus meant to connote through
the use of consecrare, since by c.400 Western churches had not yet
developed any special material process or sanctifying ritual to
convert existing spaces into churches.29 In any event, he was
almost certainly not suggesting a physically renovated house
church, since the only change described was the introduction of a
single piece of furniture, Peter’s cathedra. The Clementine
Recognitions is thus not a proof-text for the third-century domus
ecclesiae.
The final possible witness to a third-century use of the term
domus ecclesiae is arguably the strongest, although it has gone
virtually unnoticed: Origen’s second homily on Exodus, probably
preached at Caesarea sometime between 238 and 244 CE.30 Trying
to make sense out of a seemingly nonsensical statement in Exod.
1:21 about midwives building houses for themselves because they
feared the Lord, Origen oVered his congregation the following
interpretation: Sin autem videas, quomodo scripturae novi ac veteris
27
Caroline Hammond Bammel, ‘The Last Ten Years of Rufinus’ Life and
the Date of his Move South from Aquileia’, JTS, NS 28 (1977), p. 393 thought
he probably did not complete the translation until after 410 CE. F. X. Murphy,
Rufinus of Aquileia, his Life and Works (Washington, DC: Catholic University
of America, 1945), p. 113 dated the translation to 404 CE.
28
Clementine Recognitions 10.71, ed. Bernard Rehm, Die Pseudoklementinen
II: Rekognitionen in Rufins Übersetzung (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1965), p.
371.2–6: Theofilus, qui erat cunctis potentibus in civitate sublimior, domus suae
ingentem basilicam ecclesiae nomine consecraret, in qua Petro apostolo constituta
est ab omni populo cathedra, et omnis multitudo cotidie ad audiendum verbum
conveniens.
29
Duchesne, The Origins of Christian Worship, pp. 399–418.
30
Unnoticed except by Harnack, Die Mission und Ausbreitung des
Christentums, p. 614, n. 7.
 DOMUS ECCLESIAE 99
testamenti timorem dei docentes domos ecclesiae faciant, ut universum
orbem terrae orationum domibus repleant, tunc, quod scriptum est
rationabiliter scriptum videbitur.31 Here Origen apparently used the
term ‘houses of the church’, though in a metaphorical rather than
material manner, as a parallel construction to the more familiar
‘houses of prayer’, a biblical phrase commonly used by Christian
authors to denote the church as both a physical place and an
assembly.32 Nevertheless, with this passage one can seemingly make
a case for domus ecclesiae as an authentically third-century term.

Downloaded from http://jts.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of Guelph on October 22, 2012

However, like the Clementine Recognitions, Origen’s Greek
homilies on Exodus are known only through a Rufinian transla-
tion. In addition to the fact that the passage seems to evoke a
symbolic space and not an architectural category, Rufinus’
interventions seriously vitiate claims for using the passage as
evidence for the third-century use of the phrase domus ecclesiae/
o9 ko" t8" 2kklhs0a". First, Rufinus was infamous for his ‘loose’
translation style, and his preference for paraphrase over ‘word for
word’ rendition of Greek into Latin.33 Second, he was already
familiar with the phrase domus ecclesiae apart from its (hypothe-
tical) appearance in Origen’s homily. In his translation of
Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History, probably executed just before
Rufinus began work on Origen’s homilies on Exodus,34 Rufinus

31
Origen, Hom. Ex. 2.2, ed. Marcel Borret in Origène: Homélies sur l’Exode
(Sources chrétiennes, 321; Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1985), p. 76. ‘However if
you were to observe that in teaching the fear of God, the Scriptures of the
New and Old Testaments construct houses of the church, and fill the whole
earth with houses of prayer, then what has been written appears to have been
written reasonably.’
32
Mohrmann, ‘Les Denominations de l’église’, p. 156; Saxer, ‘Domus eccle-
siae—oikos tes ekklesias’, pp. 171–2.
33
Rufinus explicated his translation techniques in several prefaces to his
translations (e.g. Apologia ad Anastasiam; Praefatio ad Gaudentium to the
Clementine Recognitions), though no prefaces are extant for the homilies on
Exodus. Nor are there any Greek fragments of the original text to compare.
In her study of Rufinus’ translation of Origen’s homilies on Joshua, Annie
Jaubert concluded that Rufinus’ approach to this genre was paraphrastic, freely
substituting literality for sense when appropriate. See Jaubert, Origène:
Homélies sur Josué (Sources chrétiennes, 71; Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1960),
pp. 82 V., and Ronald E. Heine, Origen: Homilies on Genesis and Exodus
(The Fathers of the Church, 71; Washington, DC: Catholic University of
America Press, 1981), pp. 30–9, who noted that ‘except in the those few
places where Rufinus retains the Greek word in his translation, it is not
possible from his translation to ascertain with any confidence Origen’s precise
words’ (p. 39).
34
Rufinus probably began his translation of the homilies just after 403 CE
and probably completed it by 405 CE; the Ecclesiastical History was translated
100 KRISTINA SESSA
used domus ecclesiae to render Eusebius’ phrase o9 ko" t8" 2kklhs0a"
in a passage to be examined below.35 Moreover, by the late fourth
century, the Latin phrase domus ecclesiae had begun to enter the
common vocabulary of Christian writers. Not only do we find
authors using the term to denote the priest’s or bishop’s house,
but we also encounter more spiritualized, metaphorical renderings
of the phrase in the writings of Chromatius of Aquileia and
Gaudentius of Brescia, two bishops who were close friends of
Rufinus.36 Consequently, Origen’s Homily on Exodus 2.2 cannot be

Downloaded from http://jts.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of Guelph on October 22, 2012

used as evidence for a third-century use of domus ecclesiae.
We must turn to the fourth century and to the writings of
Eusebius for our earliest attestations of the phrase.37 Eusebius
seems to have first used it (in Greek of course) in the latter books
of the Ecclesiastical History, and in one passage in his second, short
recension of the Martyrs of Palestine, which he had initially
inserted into book 8 of the Ecclesiastical History but later removed.
Before turning to the passages, a brief note on these texts’
chronology is necessary. While Eusebius may have written the first
seven books of the Ecclesiastical History before 300 CE, he
subjected the work to several major revisions, including the
addition of three more books (8–10) in 313, with the final edition
completed in 325/6.38 The passages that concern us appear at the
very end of book 7, and in books 8 and 9. While it is possible that
Eusebius penned HE 7.30.19 and hence first used our phrase
before 300, it is far more likely that he adopted o9 ko" t8" 2kklhs0a"
as a term for a church building in or even after 313, when he
started to use it with greater frequency. This is also the date
scholars give to Eusebius’ composition of the shorter recension of

c.401–2. See Hammond Bammel, ‘The Last Ten Years of Rufinus’ Life’, pp.
373, 394, 428.
35
Eusebius, HE 7.30.19.
36
For domus ecclesiae as the cleric’s house see below, n. 56. For more
metaphorical interpretations, see Chromatius of Aquileia, Tractatus in
Matthaeum 19.131; Gaudentius of Brescia, Tractatus 2.11 and 4.10–1, both
cited in Saxer, ‘Domus ecclesiae—oikos tes ekklesias’, p. 178, n. 21.
37
Several earlier reference works implicitly made this point by leading their
discussion of the term with the Eusebian evidence. See e.g. Bingham and
Bingham, Origines Ecclesiasticae, p. 340 f. and Cabrol and Leclercq, s.v.
domus ecclesiae in DACL, vol. 3, pt. 2, pp. 1441–3.
38
For the textual history of the Ecclesiastical History, I have followed the
chronology devised by T. D. Barnes, ‘The Editions of Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical
History’, Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 21 (1980), pp. 191–201 and
Constantine and Eusebius (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981),
pp. 128, 277–9.
 DOMUS ECCLESIAE 101
the Martyrs of Palestine.39 (Both texts were subsequently
reworked again, thus providing Eusebius with further opportu-
nities to hone his vocabulary.) Moreover, the phrase appears in the
Demonstratio evangelica and the Life of Constantine, both of which
clearly post-date 313. Finally, let me underscore that the phrase is
always Eusebius’. Contrary to what scholars sometimes claim,
Eusebian references to o9 ko" t8" 2kklhs0a" never appear in material
excerpted from a pre-dating document.40

Downloaded from http://jts.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of Guelph on October 22, 2012

O9 ko" t8" 2kklhs0a" INEUSEBIUS’ ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY
AND THE MARTYRS OF PALESTINE
Ecclesiastical History 7.30.1941
2ll1 g1r mhdam8" 2kst8nai toA

a0lou toA t8" 2kklhs0a" o4kou
q0lonto", basile1" 2nteucqe1"
A2rhlian1" a2si0tata per1 toA
prakt0ou die0lhßen, to0toi" ne8mai
prost0ttwn t1n o9 kon, oA " 5n o3
kat1 t1n 1 Ital0an ka1 t1n
‘Pwma0wn p0lin 2p0skopoi toA
d0gmato" 2pist0lloien. o4tw d8ta 3
prodhlwqe1" 2n1r met1 t8" 2sc0th"
a2sc0nh" 3p1 t8" kosmik8" 2rc8"
2zela0netai t8" 2kklhs0a".
Ecclesiastical History 8.13.1343
6" d1 ka1 m0no" t8n kaq’ 3m8"
2paz0w" t8" 3gemon0a" t1n p0ntat8"
But since Paul refused on any
account to give up possession of
the house of the church, the
emperor Aurelian, on being peti-
tioned, gave an extremely just
decision regarding the matter,
ordering the assignment of the
house to those with whom the
bishops of the doctrine in Italy
and the city of the Romans
should communicate in writing.
Thus, then, was the aforesaid
man driven with the utmost
shame from the church by the
ruler of this world.42
He [Constantius I] indeed was the
only one of our contemporaries

39
Barnes, Constantine and Eusebius, pp. 148–63. Barnes argued that the first,
longer recension of the Martyrs of Palestine was composed in 311.
40
Occasionally White does not make this distinction: thus Eusebius’ invoca-
tion of the phrase o9 ko" t8" 2kklhs0a" in his discussion of the dispute between
Paul of Samosata and the Antiochene Christians is placed in a section dated to
269–70 CE, rather than in a later section on Eusebius, dated to the fourth
century; although to be fair, White noted that the passage reflects Eusebius’
interpretation (The Social Origins of Christian Architecture, pp. 85–7).
41
Eusèbe de Césarée: Histoire ecclésiastique, ed. Gustave Bardy (Sources chré-
tiennes, 41; Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1955), p. 219.
42
English translations of the HE are adapted from Eusebius: The
Ecclesiastical History, trans. J. E. L. Oulton (Loeb Classical Library;
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1932).
43
Eusèbe de Césarée: Histoire ecclésiastique, ed. Gustave Bardy (Sources chré-
tiennes, 55; Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1958), p. 31.
102 KRISTINA SESSA
2rc8" diatel0sa" cr0non ka1 t4lla who passed the whole period of
to8" p8si dezi0taton ka1 his rule in a manner worthy of
e2ergetik0taton parasc1n 3aut1n his high oYce; and in other
toA te kaq’ 3m8n pol0mou mhdam8" respects displayed himself in a
2pikoinwn0sa", 2ll1 ka1 to1" 3p’ most favourable and beneficent
a2t1n qeosebe8" 2blabe8" ka1 light towards all; and he took no
2nephre0stou" ßul0za" ka1 m0te part in the war against us, but
t8n 2kklhsi8n to1" o4kou" kaqel1n even preserved the God-fearing
m0q’ 5 ter0n ti kaq’ 3m8n persons among his subjects from
kainourg0sa". . . 44 injury and harsh treatment;
neither did he pull down the

Downloaded from http://jts.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of Guelph on October 22, 2012

Ecclesiastical History 9.9a.1145
o6koun 2t0lma ti" t8n 3met0rwn
s0nodon sugkrote8n o2d’ 3aut1n 2n
ßanerJ katast0sasqai, 7ti mhd1
toAt’ 5qelen a2tJ t1 gr0mma, a2t1
m0non t1 2nephr0aston 3m8n
2pitr0pon ßul0ttesqai, o2 m1n
sun0dou" 2pikeleAon poie8sqai o2d’
o4kou" 2kklhsi8n o2kodome8n o2d’
4llo ti t8n 3m8n sun0qwn
diapr0ttesqai.
Martyrs of Palestine 13.146
‘0 Ebdomon 7to" toA kaq’ 3m8n 2g8no"
3n0eto, ka0 pw" 2r0ma t8n kaq’ 3m8"
3sucI t1 2per0ergon e2lhß0twn e2"
5gdo0n te diagenom0nwn 7to", 2mß1
t1 2n
alaist0n: calkoA m0talla
o2k 2l0gh" 3mologht8n sugkek-
rothm0nh" plhq0o" pollI te tI
parrhs0G crwm0nwn, 3" ka1 o4kou"
e2" 2kklhs0a" de0masqai...
houses of the churches nor
employ any new device against
us . . .
None of our people therefore
dared to convene an assembly or
to present himself in public,
because the letter [of Maximinus]
did not even allow this. This alone
it laid down, that we should be
kept from harsh treatment, but it
gave no orders about holding
meetings or erecting houses of
churches or practising any of our
customary acts.
The seventh year of the battle
against us was completed and
gently in a certain way our aVairs
took on a quiet simplicity while
moving into the eighth year. A
great number of confessors col-
lected near the copper mines in
Palestine, who were acting with
much boldness so that they even
built themselves houses to serve
the assemblies.

44
Cf. Eusebius, HE 8.App.4 (Bardy, ibid., p. 42): ka1 3pi0tato" basile1"
Kwnst0nio", 2paz0w" t8" 3gemon0a" t1n 6panta t8" 2rc8" diatel0sa" cr0non
[2ll1] ka1 t5lla to8" p8si dezi0taton ka1 e2ergetik0taton parasc1n 3aut0n, 2t1r
ka1 toA kaq’ 3m8n pol0mou 7zw gen0meno" ka1 to1" 3p’ a2t1n qeosebe8" 2blabe8" ka1
2nephre0stou" diaßud0za" ka1 m0te to1" o4ko" t8n 2kklhsi8n kaqek1n m0q’ 5 ter0n
ti mhd’ 7lw" kaq’ 3m8n 2pikainourg0sa"
45
Ibid. p. 67.
46
Ibid. p. 170.
 DOMUS ECCLESIAE 103
As these passages show, the earliest attestations of our phrase
bear no resemblance to its popular, technical use in the scholar-
ship. In the Ecclesiastical History, Eusebius used o9 ko" t8"
2kklhs0a" to denote the physical church building in its most
generic sense, with no hint that the church bore any special
architectural relationship to a house. In certain cases, he may also
have wanted to underscore the proprietary relationship of the
Christian community to its church building. Thus in HE 7.30.19
we read of the t8" 2kklhs0a" o4kou that belonged to the third-

Downloaded from http://jts.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of Guelph on October 22, 2012

century Antiochene community, which Paul of Samosata had
irreverently and apparently illegally claimed as his own property
when he was ejected from the episcopacy.47 Likewise in the
Martyrs of Palestine, o4kou" e2" 2kklhs0a" de0masqai simply
represents Eusebius’ attempt to convey the act of building cult
spaces for the Christian communities of Palestine, with the former
articulated as ‘houses’ (o4kou") and the latter as ‘assemblies’
(2kklhs0a"); it does not describe ‘the renovation of oikoi to serve as
churches’.48 Eusebius oVered no qualification of the term’s
meaning, suggesting that his early fourth-century audience was
familiar with it. It may have been a term familiar to the emperors
in 313. In his discussion of Maximinus’ letter on the Christians in
reaction to the so-called Edict of Milan (HE 9.9a.11), Eusebius
noted that the emperor gave no orders regarding the erection of
o4kou" 2kklhsi8n.49 But to be clear, the term does not appear in
Maximinus’ letter or in the wording of our extant copies of the
edict of 313.
Eusebius also used the phrase o9 ko" t8" 2kklhs0a" in the Life of
Constantine (begun c.334) to denote two Christian buildings, one
erected by Helena (VC 3.43.3) and another by Constantine (VC
3.58.3). In the first passage, Eusebius described how Helena
erected both a ‘holy house of the church’ (3er1n o9 kon 2kklhs0a")
and a shrine for prayer (ne0n . . . proseukt0rion) atop the Mount of
Olives.50 The second recounted how Constantine swept away

47
On this incident, see Fergus Millar, ‘Zenobia and Aurelian: The Church,
Local Culture and Political Allegiance in Third-Century Syria’, JRS 61
(1971), pp. 1–17.
48
Thomas, Private Religious Foundations in the Byzantine Empire, p. 11.
49
Eusebius, HE 8.9.9. See also 8.13, where Eusebius praised Constantius I
for not tearing down t8n 2kklhsi8n to1" o4kou".
50
Eusebius, VC 3.43.3, ed. F. Winkelmann, Eusebius Werke, Band 1.1: Über
das Leben des Kaisers Konstantin (Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller;
Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1975), p. 102: p0lin d’ 3 m1n basil0w" m0thr t8" e2"
o2rano1" pore0a" toA t8n 7lwn swt8ro" 2p1 toA t8n 2lai8n 5rou" t1n mn0mhn
2phrm0nai" o2kodom0ai" 2n0 ou, 4nw pr1" ta8" 2krwre0ai" par1 t1n toA pant1"
104 KRISTINA SESSA
vestiges of Aphrodite and sacred prostitution in the Phoenecian
city of Heliopolis by constructing ‘a very large house of the church
for worship’ (o9 kon e2kt0rion 2kklhs0a" m0giston).51 As in the
Ecclesiastical History, we can draw no conclusions about the
architectural form of these o9 koi t8" 2kklhs0a" other than their
being church buildings. The most we can infer is that Eusebius
possibly used the phrase o9 ko" t8" 2kklhs0a" in reference to a
community’s primary place of assembly as opposed to smaller
shrines given his distinction between Helena’s foundations, 3er1n

Downloaded from http://jts.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of Guelph on October 22, 2012

o9 kon 2kklhs0a" and ne0n . . . proseukt0rion.
If Eusebius did not understand the phrase o9 ko" t8" 2kklhs0a" to
connote a special type of church building, one that was a renovated
house, we might ask why he chose a domestic terminology. I
suggest that he was concerned to underline church ownership of
the buildings, and that the phrase ‘house of the church’, however
awkward, potentially did just that. Moreover, at this moment in
the fourth century, Christians had not yet settled upon any
definitive term or set of terms to denote their physical cult
spaces.52 It was not until later in the century that ecclesia/
2kklhs0a—which, of course, had originally referred to the
Christian assembly or community—came to be widely used as
the standard word for a church building.53 Consequently,
Eusebius was searching for a way to articulate the actual spaces
that Christians used for rituals and assembly during the third and

5rou" koruß1n 3er1n o9 kon 2kklhs0a" 2nege0rasa, ne0n te k2ntaAqa proseukt0rion tJ

t1" a2t0qi diatrib1" 3lom0nN swt8ri susthsam0nh...
51
Eusebius, VC 3.58.3 (ed. Winkelmann, ibid. p. 111): dein 2p1 t1n toA
kre0ttono" gn8sin. k2ntaAqa d1 t1 7rga 2p8ge to8" l0goi" 2delß0, o9 kon e2kt0rion
2kklhs0a" m0giston ka1 par1 to8sde kataball0meno", 3" t1 m1 2k toA pant0" pw
a28no" 2koI gnwsq1n nAn toAto pr8ton 7rgou tuce8n. ‘There also he supported his
words with matching actions, setting in their midst also a very large church
building for worship, so that what had never yet from the beginning of time
been heard of now became for the first time a fact.’ Trans. by Averil Cameron
and Stuart G. Hall, Eusebius: Life of Constantine (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1999), pp. 146–7. Cameron and Hall captured the material generality of
the term o9 kon... 2kklhs0a" by translating it as ‘church building’.
52
On Eusebius’ struggle to describe ‘holy places’, see P. W. L. Walker, Holy
City, Holy Places? Christian Attitudes to Jerusalem and the Holy Land in the
Fourth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), pp. 70–6.
53
Both Laurin, ‘Le Lieu du culte chrétien’ and Mohrmann, ‘Les
Denominations de l’église’ noted several third-century uses of ecclesia/2kklhs0a
to denote the physical church building, but their respective analyses reveal
variety not standardization at this early juncture; better is the more sober
conclusion of Saxer, ‘Domus ecclesiae—oikos tes ekklesias’, p. 177, that terms
like ecclesia and basilica did not become standard words for church buildings
until after Constantine.
 DOMUS ECCLESIAE 105
early fourth centuries. I suggest that he turned to biblically
inspired ecclesiological models for a suitable language with which
to describe Christianity’s new material presence. Eusebius was
familiar with the rhetorical tradition that posited God as builder
or architect of the ‘house’ that his community of believers
inhabited. In the Demonstratio evangelica, for example, he
responded to 1 Sam. 2:35 (‘I will firmly establish my house, and
he will minister before my anointed one always’) by expanding
upon the image of God as builder, who will erect ‘the house of his

Downloaded from http://jts.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of Guelph on October 22, 2012

church . . . not necessarily any house but the church established in
Christ’s name throughout the whole world . . .’.54 In the light of
this particular ecclesiological discourse’s prominence in pre-
Constantinian thought (alluded to above in our discussion of
Origen), Eusebius undoubtedly saw o9 ko" as an apposite term to
denote the physical buildings used by the Christian assembly
(2kklhs0a) for their worship and prayer.55
Based on Eusebius’ writings, one must conclude that in its
earliest attested use domus ecclesiae/o9 ko" t8" 2kklhs0a" was not a
specific architectural category; nor did it describe a house or
building that had been materially adapted for reuse as a church.
On the contrary, in the first quarter of the fourth century the term
denoted something far more materially generic, a building used by
Christians for worship. In the fifth and sixth centuries it might
also connote the residence of a cleric.56 But in its original use, the
phrase ‘house of the church’ fulfilled two semantic needs. First, it
might denote possession, the fact that a church building was the
property of a particular Christian community, such as in Eusebius’
treatment of Paul of Samosata and Paul’s illicit attempt to possess
the Antiochene o9 ko" t8" 2kklhs0a". Second, since the house was
already a well-established image of the Christian community, it
made sense for Eusebius to use o9 ko" to denote a church building,
even if the church building bore no material relation to any house.
54
Demonstratio evangelica 4.16.46, ed. I. A. Heikel, Eusebius Werke, Band 6:
Die Demonstratio evangelica (Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller, 23;
Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1913), p. 192: t0" d’ 5n oCto" e4h 554 p8" 3 e2seb8" prosi1n
tI 3erourg0G toA XristoA toA qeoA, L t1n t8" 2kklhs0a" o9 kon oA a «soß1"
2rcit0ktwn» ka1 o2kod0mo" a2t1" 3 t8n 7lwn qe1" o2kodom0sein 3piscne8tai, o2d’
4llon o9 kon shma0nwn 5 t1n kaq’ 7lh" t8" o2koum0nh" tJ XristJ 2nomast1 sust8san
2kklhs0an...
55
Thus in his celebratory panegyric of Paulinus and the new basilica at
Tyre, Eusebius referred to the church building as (among other things) an
o9 ko". See HE 10.4.4, 7–8 and 36–45.
56
In the west at least: cf. Possidius, Vita S. Augustini 24.1 and 31.6;
Statuta ecclesia antiqua, can. 2, 63; Gregory of Tours, Historiarum Libri X,
1.44, 4.36; Second Council of Toledo (527 CE), can. 1.
106 KRISTINA SESSA
However we may parse Eusebius’ writings, it is clearly inaccurate
to assert that domus ecclesiae/o9 ko" t8" 2kklhs0a" was a pre-
Constantinian expression or that Christians before the peace
described their cult spaces as renovated houses.

DURA-EUROPOS AND THE MATERIAL EVIDENCE

Although there are no textual witnesses for the ante-pacem
origins of the domus ecclesiae, there is some celebrated archae-
ological evidence. No discussion of the domus ecclesiae is complete

Downloaded from http://jts.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of Guelph on October 22, 2012

without reference to the complex of domestic structures at Dura-
Europos, which their third-century Christian owners had physi-
cally converted into an elaborate ritual centre.57 In no way do I
wish to diminish the historical significance of the converted house
church at Dura-Europos, for it is among our most important pre-
Constantinian evidence for the material conditions of Christian
worship, at least as it was experienced in one small frontier town in
Syria.
Indeed what is troublesome about Dura-Europos is the fact that
it is increasingly looking like a unicum in the archaeological
record.58 Since the early twentieth century, scholars had often
looked to the city of Rome as the other great source of material
evidence for pre-Constantinian domus ecclesiae. To an extent, this
view of Rome was created by Kirsch’s study of Rome’s ‘Häuser
der Kirche’, which he believed were visible in the substructures of
several Roman tituli, notably S. Clemente and SS. Giovanni e
Paolo.59 While Kirsch’s thesis remains influential—it has been
cited authoritatively as recently as 200360—it was largely
dismantled in two often overlooked studies published in 1978 by
B. M. Apollonj-Ghetti and Charles Pietri.61 In separate essays,
57
For a summary of the archaeological evidence at Dura-Europos, see
White, The Social Origins of Christian Architecture, pp. 123–51
58
Among others, Osiek (‘Archaeological and Architectural Issues’, p. 97) has
noted Dura-Europos’s unique status in the present archaeological record.
59
René Vielliard, Recherches sur les origines de la Rome chrétienne (Mâcon:
Protat frères, 1941) has also been influential.
60
Snyder, Ante Pacem, pp. 137–51 and Peter Lampe, From Paul to
Valentinus: Christians at Rome in the First Two Centuries, trans. Michael
Steinhauser (Minneapolis, MN: 2003; first published in German in 1989,
with the translated edition updated by the author), pp. 19–23. White, The
Social Origins of Christian Architecture, at pp. 222, 230, and 236 also cited
Kirsch authoritatively.
61
B. M. Apollonj-Ghetti, ‘Problemi relativi alle origini dell’architettura
paleocristiana’, Atti del IX Congresso internazionale di archeologia cristiana,
Roma 21–27 settembre 1975 (Rome, 1978), pp. 491–511 and Charles Pietri,
‘Recherches sur les domus ecclesiae’, REA 24 (1978), pp. 3–21.
 DOMUS ECCLESIAE 107
Apollonj-Ghetti and Pietri demonstrated that Rome presented no
material evidence for any pre-Constantinian house church or, for
that matter, for what Kirsch termed ‘die Häuser der Kirche’. As
they have shown, there is no solid archaeological evidence that the
domestic structures beneath the post-Constantinian church of S.
Clemente, for example, were ever owned by Christians, let alone
renovated for their worship, as many have claimed and still
claim.62 Any argument for Christian presence at this site before
the construction of the basilica in the late fourth or early fifth

Downloaded from http://jts.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of Guelph on October 22, 2012

century is entirely speculative, as most archaeologists in fact
admit.63
Similarly we must also remove from our list of possible ante-
pacem Christian cult buildings the so-called domus ecclesiae
beneath the modern church of SS. Giovanni e Paolo. Scholars
have long identified certain renovated and redecorated rooms
underneath the late antique basilica as a third-century domus
ecclesiae.64 But Apollonj-Ghetti cast grave doubt on this thesis in
1978.65 More recently Beat Brenk has shown that this alleged
domus ecclesiae was actually part of a private mansion, built in the
late third or early fourth century, whose subsequent fourth century
Christian owners constructed a tiny oratory inside the house for
their own use.66 Not only is there no evidence to connect these
owners to Pammachius, who at the very end of the fourth century
erected the basilica overlying the domus; but there is also no

62
As in White, Building God’s House, p. 114 and The Social Origins of
Christian Architecture, pp. 219–28. White reprised Krautheimer’s argument
from CBCR, vol. 1, pp. 117–36, who suggested that a third-century renovated
hall-like structure, created in what may have been the ground floor of an
insula, was built to serve as a ritual space for its Christian owners.
63
Krautheimer admitted the speculative nature of this hypothesis: ‘It would
be very tempting to consider the large hall at the ground floor of the III
century edifice as the room where the Christian community met.
Unfortunately, however, it seems for the moment impossible to prove the
hypothesis of the origins of the edifice’ (CBCR, vol. 1, p. 135). See too
Federico Guidobaldi, San Clemente: gli edifici romani, la basilica paleocristiana
e le fosi altomedievali (Rome: Apud Clementem, 1992), pp. 119–22, whose use
of the conditional tense (in Italian) underlines the speculative nature of his
hypothesis regarding a Christian presence at S. Clemente before the construc-
tion of the basilica.
64
G. Di San Stanislao, La casa celimontana dei SS. Martiri Giovanni e
Paolo (Rome, 1894) and La memoria dei SS. Giovanni (Rome, 1907) and
Krautheimer, CBCR, vol. 1, pp. 267–303 and ECBA, pp. 8–9.
65
Apollonj-Ghetti, ‘Problemi relativi’, pp. 493–502.
66
Beat Brenk, ‘Microstoria sotto la chiesa dei SS. Giovanni e Paolo: La
cristianizzazione di una casa privata’, Rivista dell’Istituto Nazionale di
Archeologia e Storia dell’Arte 18 (1995), pp. 169–205.
108 KRISTINA SESSA
archaeological basis on which to conflate the use of the two
structures beyond the unavoidable overlap of old and new that was
common in a dense city like Rome.67 Without the Roman
evidence, which we must exclude, Dura-Europos constitutes our
only attested pre-Constantinian example of what scholars call a
domus ecclesiae.68

CONCLUSION
The purpose of this essay has not been to dispute the well-

Downloaded from http://jts.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of Guelph on October 22, 2012

documented fact that Christians in the first three centuries met and
worshipped in private houses. Nor does it argue that they never
physically altered these houses for ritual use. Rather its purpose
has been to disabuse certain widespread scholarly assumptions
about an allegedly ante-pacem term and the architectural phenom-
enon it is thought to connote. While early Christians unquestion-
ably worshipped in houses, some of which they may have adapted
for ritual use (with furniture probably playing a key role), they did
not call their cult places domus ecclesiae or describe them as
transformed domestic spaces in the material sense. Given the fact
that 313 CE is a minimum terminus post quem for the literary use of
the term and that the context of its earliest attested appearance
suggests a generic meaning, a term employed to denote a ‘church
building’ and not a house-turned-church, I would suggest that we
abandon our use of domus ecclesiae altogether in relation to the pre-
Constantinian world. Finally, since virtually all archaeological
examples of houses (or buildings) physically adapted for reuse as
Christian churches date to the fourth century at the earliest,
scholars are better served by looking to the post-Constantinian
period for a clearer and more nuanced understanding of how late
ancient Christians built and experienced the religious transforma-
tion of domestic space and community.
KRISTINA SESSA
Ohio State University
sessa.3@osu.edu

67
Moreover, archaeologists emphasize that the reuse of existing structures
was commonplace in late antiquity. Consequently, we might want also to
rethink our emphasis on the domestic ‘origins’ of the church at Dura-
Europos. As Apollonj-Ghetti pointed out (‘Problemi relativi’, p. 504), the
Christians of Dura probably renovated what was available.
68
I pass over Krautheimer’s (and White’s) arguments in this vein for the
Roman churches of S. Crisogono and S. Martino ai Monti, but they are
similarly unsubstantiated.