Christian Initiation in Asia Minor in Late Antiquity
Baptismal Architecture and Literature in Dialog

Late Antiquity (specifically the period between Constantine the Great and Justinian I) and Asia Minor together constitute a unique place and time for research into the architecture and rituals of early Christianity. Baptism is a rite all churches share from those earliest times. The present study investigates this common Christian heritage through a comparison of baptismal spaces in the architecture of representative late antique churches with the rituals described in the patristic literature of the time. Such a comparison will help re-create some dimensions of the rituals of Christian initiation that are taken for granted in the written sources. By relating these two sources, this project both uncovers the architectural shape assumed by the written works and gives a dramatic voice to the often mute archaeological ruins. In this way it provides evidence about why certain ritual actions are described the way they are and, in turn, why certain structures and their placement take the pattern they have in extant archaeological sites. The results of the study, including a photographic data base of church sites, will be made available on the Internet for computer-aided comparative study by other scholars and for teaching in fields such as liturgical studies, art, architecture, and the like. For further information and access to the intranet site in progress, please contact me at ruther@up.edu. An additional value of this project is its method of doing comparative liturgical studies and documenting the validity of results. By developing a computer-aided process for comparing baptismal literature with archaeological sites, the project provides an innovative methodology CAMLSİ at http://lewis.up.edu/the/ruther/camls/index.html for scholars in a variety of related disciplines.

My contribution at the Ancient Studies - New Technology II will present and demonstrate an example of this work in progress.