The paper deals with the origins of the Christian incubation, the phenomenon which is often considered just an adaptation of the pagan method, practiced in Asclepieia and other shrines of the Mediterranean. Recent studies of pagan and Christian incubatory sites, however, have demonstrated that this taking over the gentile practice is usually at best an unproven hypothesis. Certainly this does not lead to denying any pagan influence on the Christian practice, but it justifies asking the question about the Christian background of the late antique incubation. Actually there are several factors which could encourage the custom of sleeping at saints’ graves in order to get a healing or a divinatory answer. First of all, from the very beginnings the Christians shared the belief that dreams revealing the future were possible and there was a tradition of looking for divinatory dreams, attested both in charismatic currents of the 2nd and early 3rd century, and in the period directly preceding the emergence of incubatory sanctuaries of saints in the 5th century. Second, Christians generally believed, in spite of theological problems which it raised, in the possibility of encounters between the dead and the living. Third, such encounters were supposed to occur especially in cemetery basilicas which were quite often burial places for martyrs as well. Fourth, in the 4th century a custom developed of public and private vigils in martyria. Fifth, martyrs were believed to appear in dreams, for diverse purposes, more often than other dead. Sixth, they were supposed both to have power over maladies and to know the answer to questions they were asked. Finally dreams were considered a tolerable, even if suspect and not recommended, method of learning the future and God’s will. If all this does not prove that the Christian incubation developed entirely independently from the pagan custom, it permits to understand why this development was rather easy and acceptable.
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