 In recent years we've seen how the history of archaeology has been shaped by European nationalism, imperialism, and colonialism. Rather than praising the so-called heroes of archaeology's early stages like traditional accounts, these studies have complicated very much our understanding of this period to show how archaeology was not only supported by but also influenced by the military and ideological ventures of which it was such an integral part. In my brief presentation today what I want to do is to add an additional dimension and that is the interaction between archaeological research and Catholicism in the late 19th and early 20th century and in particular I'm interested in the impact of post-enlightenment clericalism on the development of a unique form of archaeological research commonly referred to as Christian archaeology and the implications of this brand of research. I'm not going to be talking about biblical archaeology, I see that as a separate development which was mainly led by Protestant archaeologists. I'm going to be focusing solely on the Catholic dimensions of this process. Although Christian archaeology attracted significant public attention up to the 1940s, it's been marginalized in the fast-changing and largely secular fields of late antique and early medieval archaeology. But for more than 70 years archaeology's role in the revision of the Christian history of Western Europe was a very influential enterprise. Relevant excavations and publications satisfied clerical desire to create an alternative to secular nationalist narratives of the European path. So in my talk I'm going to be covering the conditions under which Christian archaeology arose, its distinctive nature and popular audience and I'll give the example of the amphitheater of Carthage and the challenges it created for archaeological professionalization and finally I'll give a brief case study which is of Camille de la Croix and the Hippogée des Dune in Poitiers. The conditions that led to the rise of Christian archaeology emerged in the aftermath of the French Revolution and in response to the changes that were brought in Western Europe by the revolutions of 1848, the unification of both Italy and Germany and the advent of the Third Republic in France. Faced with these challenges Pope Pius IX, a strong critic of secularism from the 1850s dogmatically pushed back against real and perceived anticlericalism by emphasizing the central role that was played by Rome and supporting selected forms of popular devotion. He believed that the revival of Catholicism would require a restoration of its ancient spaces and archaeology proved very useful as a tool for bridging the gap between the ancient traditions of Catholicism and modern forms of popular devotion. In particular, he sponsored excavations of the catacombs by the lay archaeologist Giovanni Battista de Rossi whose work at the site spanned from 1849 to 1894 and de Rossi's highly successful campaigns highlighted the activities of the Roman martyrs and their devoted followers and revealed archaeology's enormous promise for supporting the papal cause whether through the encouragement of popular devotion or for pedagogical purposes in Catholic schools and churches. Although none could rival his finds in the decades that followed, many sought to emulate de Rossi's discoveries with varying degrees of success and scientific professionalization. By the late 19th century, an influential network of clerics and devout scholars engaged in Christian archaeology stretched from Rome to colonial North Africa and from Belgium to Poland and it's these men who laid the foundation for the study of archaeological, art historical and epigraphical remains of the late anti-Christian West. But what did archaeology look like by the 1870s and 1880s and what made it unique? De Rossi's experience was unusual because he was not a cleric yet relied upon substantial financial backing from the papacy. This scenario was not typical. Let me give you the example of Alfred-Louis de Latra who was a member of the Père Blanc or the White Fathers who excavated a large number of Christian sites and carthage from the 1870s to the early 1930s. His exploration was sponsored in part by the Archbishop of Algiers, Charles Lavigéry, but the majority of requirements, financial requirements, were met by a combination of creative fundraising including the sale of antiquities from the site. As an active missionary, de Latra was drawn to the Roman amphitheater of Carthage. He excavated it in the 1890s and built a chapel on it to the martyrs, Perpetua, Felicity and their companions for use as a pilgrimage station. Here is where we see the intersection between archaeology and popular devotion. The amphitheater quickly in his hands became a living portal between ancient Christianity and modern Christians. The height of this development in 1930 was when thousands of pilgrims flocked to Carthage for the International Eucharistic Congress at which thousands gathered for processions staged in the ancient amphitheater that the White Fathers had reconstructed. Christian archaeology thus formalized the opportunity to reconstruct often imaginatively the places in which ancient martyrs met their mortal ends and in which the earliest Christians worshipped and were buried. Much like the late antique and medieval cult of relics, Christian archaeology identified, claimed and transformed holy places for ritual purposes. However, in contrast to the cult of relics, almost more important for Christian archaeology than the holy remains themselves, which were often already ensconced in reliquaries, were the spaces in which they were housed. Archaeological engagement with these spaces followed by their ritual reoccupation collapsed time between the great persecutions and the anti-clerical movements of, sorry, between the great persecutions and the anti-clerical movements of the 19th century. Unsurprisingly, these sites became successful targets for popular devotion in an era when Marian sightings were at an all-time high. These catacombs, just as the ancient amphitheaters in which Christians met their violent deaths, lent authenticity and weight to modern Christian religious experience and underlined the relevance of ancient events and places to the modern Catholic Church. Although the discovery of Christian remains were frequently overshadowed in secular learned societies borne by the more dominant Romanist-Germanist debates regarding the migration period, clerical scholars' discussion of the Christian origins of Europe were often informed by and composed in reaction to these secular debates. Frustrated by the paucity of ancient sources on early Christianity, intrepid researchers, many of them ultra-montane priests, harnessed archaeology and epigraphy to fill in the gaps of what was known about the earliest Christians in Western Europe and North Africa, and they claimed and employed such sites in turn to enhance modern Catholic devotion. Despite the enthusiasm for the genre of archaeology in some circles, Christian archaeology, especially of a more extreme form, led to deep disagreements among contemporary scholars about how to define scientific objectivity. Although de Rossi was regarded by contemporaries as a consummate scientist and professional, while at the same time he avoided the sensorious arm of the papal index, the work of many of his successors, the Christian historians, epigraphers and archaeologists he inspired through his correspondence and publications, challenged the limits of what lay contemporaries considered to be legitimate scientific scholarship and the appropriate use of finds. While some of the discoveries in question might be recognized as spectacular in and of their own right, lay contemporaries were very critical of clerical scholars for their optimistic interpretations and for identifying personally with the exemplary faith and achievements of the early Christian communities that existed around the late Roman Mediterranean. The consequence was a growing chasm between secular academic circles and clerical and devout scholars. While some of this concern owed to the broader anti-clerical sentiment at the root of the criticism of Christian archaeology was its practitioners embrace a faith-based inspiration. Although openness to the possibility of divine intervention in archaeological discoveries was not a claim made by most clerical archaeologists, this genre of research was viewed as highly problematic for a discipline that sought legitimacy as a modern science. Whereas in the late 1860s the work of clerical archaeologists had been well integrated with that of lay scholars especially in learned societies, their research now steadily moved to parallel but distinct organizations and publications that were focused on Christian history and archaeology. However, I should note that these divisions were not absolute and some scholars included Christian archaeology as one facet of a more diverse career or they were prepared to take more critical stance towards some of the more imaginative interpretations of the sites they excavated. In the 1870s and 1880s religious factors nonetheless became a more significant factor in the polemical battles that emerged around the interpretation of individual archaeological sites. So for the last bit of my paper I'll be speaking about Père de Lacroix. He was a Belgian Jesuit who moved to Poitiers in 1864 and he illustrates the first-hand experience of a scholar faced with the growing pains of professional archaeology as he sought to keep foot in both Christian archaeology as well as lay archaeology in an increasingly divided field. De Lacroix took up employment in Poitiers in 1864 as a music teacher at the Collège Saint-Joseph. He became an active member of the Société des Antiquaires de l'Ouest in the 1870s and attracted a claim in the region for his excavations of the Roman baths in Poitiers. In addition to in 1877 his identification of a chapel connected to the 4th century Bishop Hilary of Poitiers which was a favorite of the Bishop of Poitiers Monsignor P. In 1879 at a site on the heights surrounding the city then occupied by the military De Lacroix discovered a mausoleum or what he alleged was a martyrium which contained the remains of 72 previously unknown Poitiers and martyrs. De Lacroix published the Hippogé de Dune in a privately financed monograph in 1883 his claim to the local origins of the martyrs offered proof for those who believed in the southwest of France its ancient Christian origins. It's important to recognize that De Lacroix's case for the Hippogé de Dune fit with the view of some contemporary ultra-montain clerics that the southwest of France had been proselytized by Saint Martial and his 72 companions in the first century a claim which was later shown to be the product of an 11th century forgery. De Lacroix's analysis of the Hippogé de Dune which relied in part on the apostolic conversion of Gaulle filled in large gaps in the existing historical sources as to the early Christian origins of Poitiers. The history of Poitiers now rivaled that of Lyon the city in France with the strongest evidence of having been affected by the great persecutions. I should note too that the timing of De Lacroix's claims were also made just after the 1880 decree which banished the Jesuit order from France including De Lacroix who then lost his official abode in Poitiers. The suffering of late anti-Christians in Gaulle may not have seemed so distanced from his own trials. Although De Lacroix had defenders in high places some scholars including clerics questioned the historicity of his claims regarding the Hippogé de Dune. One example is Louis Duchen, director of the Occult Francaise de Rome who suggested the greater likelihood that the Hippogé was a memoria rather than a martyrium. The site in his estimation contained relics procured in Rome rather than local martyrs, a conclusion that earned him the enmity of a number of fiercely ultra-montane clerics in both the southwest of France and in Rome who were already enraged with his dismissal of their claims that Saint-Marcial had brought Christianity to Gaulle in the first century. There were also lay scholars like the epigrapher Edmond Leblanc who questioned the reliability of De Lacroix's work given his refusal to broker compromise when faced with the mounting consensus that the Hippogé was not a martyrium. Some contemporaries argued that his faith-based approach precluded meaningful engagement with professional research. Per de Lacroix, who often stated that his work was led by the grace of God, found himself increasingly shut out of secular academic circles. In conclusion, although clerical archaeologists such as De Lacroix and De Lacroix attracted envy for their spectacular finds, they were simultaneously criticized by secularists for subordinating their evidence to preordained conclusions and subjecting the ancient monuments they found to unconventional uses. They experienced that criticism in turn as paralleling the persecution faced by the early Christians they studied, a view that made them less willing to concede to European secular nationalism and to views of the Roman world in that time. Because the narratives they constructed from archaeological evidence did not adhere to scholarly standards of proof then being established in archaeology, they created an alternative scholarly network of like-minded Christian archaeologists that allowed them to avoid deferring exclusively to powerful lay patrons who operated in metropolitan centers. Rather than promoting nationalism in their respective countries, these devout internationalists searched for material evidence of the early flourishing of Christianity and they laid the groundwork for an alternative history of Europe, one in which Christian faith rather than nationalism represented the governing principle. Thank you.