Inscriptions by Christians in Late Antique Rome (3rd-7th centuries): an overview

The focus of the paper is the role of the inscriptions by Christians in Rome in their participation - starting already since the third century - to the transformation processes in using the epigraphic medium in Late Antiquity until the seventh century. Some examples and cases of study of this dossier show a phenomenon of an increasing ‘permeability’ between the different scopes of the inscriptions. The ‘pervasiveness’ of the sacred sphere, first related only to the funerary epigraphs, gradually spread to the equipment of the cultic buildings, where the inscriptions by Christians - essentially by their leaders, as the bishops of Rome are - transform these spaces in the new actual ‘public spaces’ of the Late Antique Urbs Roma.