Elisabet Göransson: Studying the “Pelagius and John” collection of Sayings of the Desert Fathers

This paper examines a series of early Christian sarcophagi from the Alyscamps cemetery in Arles, France. Largely overshadowed by the study of early Christian funerary monuments in Rome, Arles and its environs were home to a flourishing necropolis, a city of the dead at the very gate of the city of the living. As the “Rome of Gaul” in the late ancient world, memorial sarcophagi produced in Arles borrowed from the styles and iconographies of Rome. Considering the significance of these Helleno-Roman models, it is remarkable that several sarcophagi also demonstrate iconographic synthesis consistent with regional patristic influences. One common figure on these sarcophagi is the female orans, who reflects the status, aspirational act of imitatio, and the strategic use of memory for women. Nevertheless, the use of the female orans has proven enigmatic, with multiple scholarly interpretations. This paper seeks to clarify our reading of this figure by focusing on two questions: First, how do the narrative, religious, and symbolic contexts represented on the sarcophagi help us interpret the figures themselves? Second, what do these sarcophagi reveal about the religious aspirations and practices of women in late ancient Provincia?