The Acts of the Early Church Councils: Production and Character by Thomas Graumann (review)

historical, explanatory framework: it is striking, for example, that Farag does not discuss the collapse of the Roman imperial government in the West during the fifth century. Perhaps this had no impact on church rulings, but it might explain why, for example, bishops in sixth-century Gaul could claim a “right of exchange” (53) over church property that Justinianic law reserved for a Roman emperor. But my main difficulty was with the chapters on regifting of donations in ritual settings. There is no question that a circular pattern of giving was promoted by some Christian authorities, and that episcopal repurposing of lay offerings or church funds was often a delicate matter. But I see no evidence that regifting was generally regarded as “taboo” in late antiquity (148–50). Nor am I at all persuaded by Farag’s interpretation of gift-giving displayed in church apse mosaics. She argues at length that these illustrate not merely donors offering churches to God, but a two-directional gift exchange in which those donors simultaneously “receive the same building back” (118) from God. Besides being not apparent to my sight, the argument seems both strained and improbable, and is not supported by the only contemporary interpretation we have of an apse donor mosaic, Choricius’s First Encomium to Marcian 31 (whose interpretation is not discussed by Farag), which describes such gift-giving as moving only in a single direction, from donor to saint, then to God. Indeed, the motives and ethical problems related to religious regifting in late antiquity were more complex than explored in this book. Farag barely mentions ascetic perspectives (at least, not specifically as such). But writings by or about monks and ascetically minded bishops like John Chrysostom, Rabbula of Edessa, and Caesarius of Arles offer a remarkably coherent set of rationales both for protecting church poor funds and for repurposing offerings to provide for the poor or other religious works. Nonetheless Farag makes a signal contribution by focusing on church buildings themselves, which, as immoveable property and concrete symbols, often posed very particular problems of inalienability, expenditure, and use. Daniel Caner, Indiana University, Bloomington