paradigm shifting architectures of closely related imperials

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2005.04.17 11:07
18 April gossip that matters?
the real gossip, however...
Constantine is Helena's second child, although the first and only with Constantius. Yes, Maximian and Helena were together beforehand, with a daughter, Theodora, as the result. In typical fashion, Maximian wanted more, i.e., a son, so he looked for another mate, while Helena and Constantius soon got together. Fortunately, Eutropia and Theodora bonded well, and the "secret" was mostly forgotten except by the inner few adults. Twenty years later the "secret" became even more secret as Constantius married Theodora, but it did ultimately matter that all Constantius' children were closely related to Helena, which also kind of explains why Crispus "got the short end of the stick." Alas, poor Fausta, it was her learning of the secret(s) that led to her suicide.
So who was Maxentius' real father?
Eutropia now says it's Diocletian, but that laugh while she says it still makes you wonder.


2005.04.19 16:30
Privilegium Ottonianum
St. Helena is named in the Roman Martyrology on August 18,...;it is observed universally in the East, but on May 21, with that rather equivocal person, her son Constantine: the Byzantines refer to them as "the holy, illustrious and great emperors, crowned by God and equal with the apostles. --Butler's Lives of the Saints.
I wonder what would happen, if anything, if all Catholics could pray to Constantine as a saint.]
Maybe it just comes down to enjoying the odds of all this.


2005.04.26 18:28
full name of Maria, wife of Honorius
question:
What is the full name of Maria, the first wife of Emperor Honorius? The full name of Maria's younger sister is Aemilia Materna Thermantia, but I haven't been able to find more information on Maria.


2005.05.05 15:27
5 May 1821 Napoleon dies in exile at St. Helena
Helena and Constantine just figured out all the arrangements for Pope John Paul II's first afterlife birthday party. Helena has been arranging the first afterlife birthday party of Popes for centuries now, and Constantine gets involved for all the special parties--he's great when it comes to dealing with the whole irony of such events. In the morning, everyone will 'witness' the Danube flooding event along the present Croatian/Serbian border that coincided with Karol's 4th birthday. (Helena gave birth to Constantine in what is now Serbia, so they both know the territory well; they remember the 1924 Danube flood well too.) In the afternoon, all will visit the post-WWII mass graves at Gakowo. In the evening, everyone will go to Mount St. Helen's to see if there's any white or black smoke.

2005.05.24 15:22
hotrod architecture
Christian churches have a long history, don't they? We don't really know what the Christian church across from the palace at Nicodemia that was burned during the Great Persecution under Diocletian looked like, but we do know the ritual that accompanied the rededication of the church at Tyre, which was also desecrated during the Great Persecution. And then almost immediately following we have the original "Constantinian" basilicas, first the basilica building boom in Rome late 312-326 under the supervision of Helena, then the basilica building boom in the Holy Land, also under the supervision of Helena, [and, believe it or not, the basilica building boom at Treves, today's Trier, Germany, under the supervision of Eutropia and Constantine fits right here in this [his]story too,] and ultimately the building boom of a whole new Christian capital of the Roman Empire at Constantinople under the supervision of Constantine himself.


2005.05.27 09:35
Archinect's Robots
I never knew that the original(?) Fulda Abbey Church was such a close reenactment of the original St. Peter's. And now I'm wondering how much the Catherdral at Speyer reenacts the original "Constantinian" double basilica at Trier. [Treves, today's Trier, was Constantine's imperial capital of choice before Constantinople.] Could it be that Romanesque might just really be "Trieresque"?


2005.05.27 10:33
hotrod architecture
The best example of hotrodding to really modify an existing urban fabric is--
Helena - the city of Rome
Helena - the Holy Land
Constantine - the city of Constantinople
and the really best example of hotrodding is to modify (the engine of) an entire empire.


2005.06.26 13:10
NeoClassical Chili
I sometimes think that others think my interest in "ancient" things is anachronistic, where as, what really interests me is when ancient things reveal how modern things are sometimes not too different, thus broadening but also sharpening the focus upon the present. For example, the multi-culturalism that was virtually the whole essence of the Roman Empire of late-antiquity is hardly even known about today. Rather "Rome" is almost always seen as gladiators, emperors, pristine classical architecture, etc. I would love to know what turn-of-the-fourth-century Treves (today's Trier, Germany) and Nicomedia (today's Izmit, Turkey) (the capitals of Constantine and Diocletian respectively) were really like. Imagine, for example, early fourth-century Treves as a thoroughly bi-lingual city where just as much Greek was spoken as Latin. And I have a suspicion that the original "Constantinian" double basilica at Treves (c. 327, which is today still two large later-built churches joined like Siamese twins) was indeed the touchstone of all subsequent architecture known as Romanesque.
Yes, scholars and historians know about these times and places, but it is definitely not part of what you could call general human knowledge. And the "me and just me" attitude of today doesn't help either. Unfortunately, history, or at least the working of time, does it's own substantial erasing of what once was as well.
ps
I think Tertullian was a lawyer as well.

2005.07.07 15:23
Krautheimer and Johnson
It just never occurred to him [Krautheimer] before that the Mausoleum of Romulus/Circus of Maxentius complex (which reenacts the almost two hundred years earlier Mausoleum of Hadrian/Circus of Hadrian complex) became the paradigm, albeit inverted, for all the Roman Christian "church" architecture immediately after the Basilica Constantiniani (St. John Lateran) and the Basilica San Pietro Vaticano. That aerial shot of the Mausoleum of Constantina (Santa Costanza) adjacent the circus-like dining hall first "basilica" of St. Agnes made it all so clear. If only the circus-like dining hall first "basilica" of Sts. Pietro and Marcellinus adjacent the Mausoleum of Helena were still to be seen from the air. How clever of Eutropia and Helena to invert the pagan 'munus' architecture into Christian 'munus' architecture, and how very clever of Piranesi to secretly hide all this architectural history information within the ever quaestio abstrusa Ichnographia Campus Martius.


2005.07.07 18:21
Krautheimer and Johnson
I wonder if Scott Brown remembers how I told her, at the 14 July 2001 Out of the Ordinary book signing at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, how St. Helena (a native of Drepanum, today's Yalova, Turkey) was the first master architect and planner of Christian architecture. She (Scott Brown) at least said, "That's fascinating." Now I have to tell her how Eutropia, a native Syrian and the mother of Maxentius, was what one could call the brains behind Helena's (and Constantine's) architectural operations.


2005.07.09 15:34
Re: NeoClassical Chili
Krautheimer published an essay, "Mensa-Coemeterium-Martyrium" 1960, where he earnestly speculates about the very real possibility that the early "Constantinian" basilicas (aside from St. John Lateran and St. Peter's Vatican) acted as covered graveyards where funeral banquets were held. He also noted how the shape of these basilicas was circus-like. When I read this essay (early 2005), I immediately though of the connection to the 'munus' ritual as related by Tertullian. And, after finding out more about the Mausoleum of Romulus/Circus of Maxentius complex (also early 2005), the "pieces" quickly fell together, particularly the connection of Eutropia to all this.
The Circus of Maxentius has been an unanswered question in my mind for a few years now, and now I think I know why Piranesi 'secretly' printed two different version of the Ichnographia Campus Martius--the Circus of Maxentius is the 'key' to the inversion of the pagan Roman Circus into the Early Christian 'basilica'.
[Piranesi, in La Anticità Romane II (which predates the Campo Marzio publication by four years or so), delineated a "reconstruction" of the Basilica of St. Agnes--compare this with a present aerial view.]
What led me to Krautheimer's essay above was a footnote in R. Ross Holloway, Constantine and Rome, 2004.

2005.07.17 16:24
The Semiology of God
Only part of the Holy Cross went to Constantinople. Most of it stayed at Jerusalem, specifically at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, and part of it went to Rome and is still within the Helena chapel at Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, and is half of the titilus, the sign on the Cross.


2005.07.17 17:22
The Semiology of God
Helena was buried at Rome a day of two before 3 August 326, subsequent to her death 25 July 326, probably at Naples.
I have spent a good deal of time over the last six years gathering multitudinous data relative to the life of Helena, so single quotations mean very little to me. There are a lot of contradictions within modern Helena scholarship, and it has been exactly the contradictions that I have striven to understand and hopefully ultimately resolve.
One major aspect of the Helena's legend which has eluded modern scholarship is that a law of silence regarding Helena and the Cross was in force when Eusebius wrote of Helena in the Holy Land within his Life of Constantine (337). Ambrose, bishop of Milan, broke the silence regarding Helena and the Cross in his Obit Theodosi, the Obituary of Emperor Theodosius (395). The law of silence regarding Helena and the Cross was suggested immediately after the death of Helena to Constantine by Eutropia, and the reason for this law was so that overall power would stay within the Imperial ranks, rather than go to the Christian priesthood which then had a new sign, the True Cross, to confirm its power.


2005.07.17 18:24
The Semiology of God
18 September 324 - Constantine defeats Licinius at Chrysopolis and in turn becomes sole ruler of the Roman Empire.
8 November 324 - Constantine founds Constantinople
25 July 325 -- the Nicene Creed and conclusion of the Nicene Council, over which Constantine precided. 25 July 325 also marked the beginning of Constantine's 20th year as a Roman Augustus. It is fairly certain that Helena also attended the Nicene Council.
14 September 325 - Helena finds the Holy Cross at Jerusalem.
25 July 326 - the closing ceremonies of Constantine's 20th jubilee year at Rome. The death of Helena and the suicide of Fausta, Constantine's second wife (at Naples and Rome respectively).
3 August 326 - Constantine leaves Rome and never returns.
11 May 330 - dedication of Constantinople.
22 May 336 - death of Constantine at Nicomedia.
During Constantine's 20th jubilee year, his movements throughout the Empire were a gradual moving toward Rome over land--Greece, the Balkens, northern Italy. During the same period, Helena likely moved toward Rome via north Africa, ultimately crossing to Italy from Carthage.


2005.07.26 10:40
abracadabra, faia
Land of Reenactionary Architecturism
two days of silence 2005
death of Flavia Julia Helena Augusta
24-25 July 326


2005.08.14 12:33
the agnostic design of spiritual space
If you'd really like to see "church" architecture change, just imagine religious institutions without tax exemption.
You can thank Constantine for starting the tax exemtion of religious institutions.


2005.08.18 16:06
sacred or profane?
You know, it just might be true to say that Eutropia and Helena were the first women architects of sacred architecture. Eutropia first in the context of Rome where an inversion of the old sacred (Pagan) into the new sacred (Christian) ocurred. And Helena with a creativity of her own in the context of the renewed Holy Land. Eutropia and Helena were very good and close friends.

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