The Christianization of Ephesus

In the year 100, a Christian in Ephesus worshipped quietly in someone's house while the Artemis processions thundered past. By 450, the temple was a quarry, the processional budget belonged to basilicas, and a church council in this city could command the empire's attention. The Christianization of Ephesus is one of history's great reversals — and almost every stage of it is still visible in stone.

Constantine's hinge

The hinge was imperial. Constantine's embrace of Christianity in the early fourth century turned a persecuted sect into a favored faith, and Ephesus — provincial capital, apostolic city, guardian of John's tomb — converted with the speed of a city that understood patronage. Church building began in earnest: chapels scattered through the streets, small churches rising in the precinct of the old Serapis temple, a shrine over the circular monument called the Grave of Luke, a basilica over the tomb of John on Ayasuluk Hill — modest at first, then, under Justinian, colossal.

The Church as landowner

By the turn of the fifth century the church was the largest landowner in Ephesus. Aristocrats willed it their estates — Basilina, mother of the emperor Julian, left her possessions to the church here — and its bishops moved in the empire's highest circles, not always creditably: bishop Antonios was formally accused in Constantinople around 400 of profiteering and worse. Wealth, in other words, changed sides — with all wealth's usual company. The benefactress Scholastica, rebuilding the city's great baths at her own cost around the same years, shows the nobler face of the same new order.

The end of Artemis

The great temple, already mauled by Gothic raiders in 262, limped on — pagans still honored even its remnants, as Isidore of Pelusium noted with irritation. Tradition credits John Chrysostom, passing through as archbishop of Constantinople around 401, with the demolition of what remained in use. The quarrying that followed was the truest verdict: Artemis's marble went into churches, walls and baths, and columns associated with the temple were even said to travel to Constantinople for the great church of Hagia Sophia. The goddess did not fall in a day; she was recycled over generations.

What the walker sees today

This whole article is walkable. The house-church world survives in the Terrace Houses; the triumphant age in the Church of Mary and the carved crosses of the streets; the imperial climax on Ayasuluk Hill, where John's basilica rose from the very stones of the old order. Ephesus is the rare place where you can watch a civilization change its mind — in marble, over about twelve city blocks.