Church Consecration

• Sources

Sources

4th Century

• Consecration of the Church in Tyre
  • Eusebius of Caesarea's Panegyric at Tyre - Nicene and Post Nicene Fathers Vol 1 Page 370
    • Eusebius compares Paulinus, bishop of Tyre, to "a new Beseleel, the architect of the divine tabernacle, or Solomon, king of a new and much better Jerusalem, or also a new Zerubabel, who added a much greater glory than the former to the temple of God" (3)
    • "It was long ago permitted us to raise hymns and songs to God, when we learned from hearing the Divine Scriptures read the marvelous signs of God and the benefits conferred upon men by the Lord's wondrous deeds, being taught to say 'O God! we have heard with our ears, our fathers have told us the work which you did in their days, in days of old."
    • Let all say with a loud voice "I was glad for those who said to me, we shall go into the house of the Lord" and "Lord I have loved the beauty of Your house and the place where Your glory dwells"
  • Christian Rhetoric in Eusebius' Panegyric at Tyre - Christine Smith
    • Smith discusses the lack of precedent for Eusebius to give a homily or panegyric at a Church Consecration. Churches had been consecrated before, but were usually just transforming an existing building, or were built to be a church but very simple. This was more of a cathedral.
    • Note 2: She quotes Minucius Felix where Caecilius criticized the Christians for their secrecy on the grounds that "nullas aras habent, templa nulla" - "these have no altars and no temples", this is not accurate. Eusebius himself, for example, contradicts it in his panegyric when he describes the joy and hope which everyone felt at seeing "temples again rising from their foundations to an immense height, and receiving a splendor far greater than that of the old ones which had been destroyed"
    • https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ueboiqneb45r9hvbzvbnq/Smith-ChristianRhetoricEusebius-1989.pdf?rlkey=p4urpq43o18zm2nqcgu1gplnv&dl=0 
• Consecration of the Church of the Resurrection at Jerusalem

6th Century

• Use of Icons to denote Sacred Space
  • Martyn, 2004
    • Correspondence of Pope Gregory of Rome with Januaris, bishop of Sardinia in AD 599
    • "Jews from your city have come here and complained to us that Peter, led over from their superstition to the cult of the Christian faith, on the day after his baptism, that is, on the Sunday of the very Easter festival, gathered certain undisciplined men around him and, in a grievous scandal and without your consent, occupied their synagogue which is in Cagliari; and he installed there an icon of the mother of our Lord and God and a cross to be worshipped, and a white vestment that he had worn when rising up from the font..."
      
      
  • Dilley, Paul. 2010. “Christian Icon Practice in Apocryphal Literature: Consecration and the Conversion of Synagogues into Churches.” Journal of Roman Archaeology 23: 285–302. doi:10.1017/S1047759400002403.
    
    • https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/g0ifny40v0ceu2xm6zvxf/Christian-Icon-Practice-in-Apocryphal-Literature-Consecration-and-Conversion-of-Synagogues-into-Churches.pdf?rlkey=b18l5ugflmei4solbsc0zr3jp&dl=0 
    • Dr. Dilley discusses in his introduction that the above correspondence between Pope Gregory of Rome and Januaris, Bishop of Sardinia is very similar to a story in the Apocryphal Story of Joseph which narrates that Joseph of Arimathea did something similar to a synagogue in Lydda, and Peter the Apostle consecrated that synagogue to be a church, except that the icon of St Mary miraculously emerged.
      
  • Yasin, 2009

9th Century

• Reconsecration of Barsanuphian Churches
  • From Byzantine to Islamic Egypt - Maged S A Mikhail (Deacon Severus)
    • Page 224: Discussion of conversion between Chalcedonian and non-Chalcedonian communions within Egypt and what that meant for acquisition of church properties. "A prominent example of such an acquisition is documented in the biography of Mark II (d. 819 CE) which cites the reconsecration of a formerly Barsanuphian church."
    • Footnote 123: HP I.4:529 (History of the Patriarchs of the Coptic Church of Alexandria ed./trans. B. Evetts Patrologia Orientales 10.5)
  • History of the Patriarchs 1.4
    • "The Barsanuphians of Egypt, mentioned above, when they saw that their chiefs had returned to orthodoxy, and that no foundation remained for their community, wrote to Abba Mark, praying him to visit them and consecrate their churches. And when he read the letters, he rejoiced exceedingly, and left all his work, and went in haste to Misr, and consecrated their churches and monasteries for them, and established liturgies for them according to the ecclesiastical rule, and gave them the Holy Mysteries of the Body and Blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, our God. So there was at Fustat Misr great joy and spiritual gladness." 
    • https://archive.org/details/patrologiaorient10pariuoft/page/415/mode/1up (page 529 of the document/415 on the PDF))