‘De-namings’ and Erasures: Managing the Past in a Changing World
In April 2023, Trinity College Dublin announced that it would be ‘de-naming’ the Berkeley Library. This decision, the announcement explained, was not taken lightly. It was the result of a petition from the student body, after which submissions were sought from both the public and college community. This was followed by several months of careful research and public consultation, spearheaded by the Trinity’s Legacies Review Working Group. The Anglo-Irish Bishop and Philosopher George Berkeley, it was ruled, had not only contributed to the ideological justification of slavery in his work, but owned, bought, and sold enslaved individuals himself. As a consequence, the implied celebration of his legacy in the library’s name was considered, in the words of Trinity’s Provost, Dr Linda Doyle, ‘in clear conflict with Trinity’s core values.’
Although ‘de-naming’ may be a modern term, Berkeley’s German contemporaries were just inventing a similar concept to describe the curation of the memory of disgraced individuals in the ancient world: ‘damnatio memoriae’. This early modern phrase, first attested in a thesis published in 1689, was used to describe the wide range of Roman ideas and practices, from erasing names from inscriptions, to pulling down or recarving statues, to senatorial decrees banning names and sanctioning remembrance. Literally, it means ‘the condemnation of memory.’
Yet, as scholars have increasingly shown, the obliteration of all evidence of an individual’s existence was rarely the intention in these ancient interventions. As Charles Hedrick points out in his 2000 book, History and Silence, such incompleteness was not just inevitable, it was often the entire point. Letters could be carved out in ways which rendered names still legible; inscriptions might be left on display so that viewers could identify the individual, understand they were no longer honoured but branded with ignominy, and consider why this might be. The same processes can be seen as the College community tackles George Berkeley’s modern legacy. As I write, Trinity’s library remains in a state of limbo until consensus can be reached about its new name. Berkeley’s name has been removed from signage (see Figure 1). Officially, it is currently known as the ‘Former Berkeley Library’, though users of the catalogue are still directed to holdings in the ‘Berkeley Library’. This means that not only does Berkeley’s name still live on in the daily use of his formerly-eponymous building, but the act of de-naming has paradoxically made him and his work better known to contemporary audiences.
Fig 1: The blank signage of the ‘Former Berkeley Library’ today
The themes of erasure and the curation of the past are explored in our new open access book, Erasure in Late Antiquity, published with Trivent Medieval. This collection of essays was co-edited with Kay Boers, of Utrecht University in the Netherlands, Becca Grose, who has just embarked as a fellow on an exciting new research project at St Andrews in Scotland, and Guy Walker, who completed his PhD at Trinity in 2021.
Fig. 2: Three of the editors with Erasure in Late Antiquity
We focused on one aspect of the ancient world: its end. Now referred to as ‘Late Antiquity’, this period begins in the later part of classical antiquity, starting around the third century CE, and continues up to the seventh or eighth centuries, when the ‘Medieval’ period begins. It was a time of enormous cultural and political change, most notably in the Christianisation of people, spaces, institutions, and ideas. As we write in our introduction, it was a world ‘laden with the accumulated material of the past: centuries of customs, rituals, ideas, and exempla; stories, literature, and laws; the literal fabric of Classical cities.’ We set out to explore in a wide variety of late ancient contexts and media the ways in which erasures, along with re-writings, silences, and lacunas, were used by people to rework this past to meet the needs of their present.
One chapter, written by archaeologist Anna Sitz, looks at the selective erasure of the names of pagan gods and goddesses in Christian contexts in Asia Minor. As she demonstrates, the choices of what was removed and what remained tell revealing stories about how communities viewed themselves and their relationship to the pagan past. In this new Christian world, traces of this past were not completely removed, but thoughtfully and carefully managed as ancient stones were reconfigured into late ancient buildings. Ryan Denson, a specialist in the ancient supernatural, looks at how Greco-Roman beliefs in ghosts were challenged by late antique Christian thinkers. As Ryan shows, despite the power of their arguments, such as claiming they were demons rather than deceased humans, the popularity of these ideas was never stamped out, but lived on into the medieval world. Mali Skotheim’s chapter looks at the re-use of funerary inscriptions that were centuries old in the construction of a new courtyard of a church in Ephesus, now modern Turkey. Despite the fact that destroying tombs remained a taboo in Late Antiquity, the builders chose not only to use them as building material, but to face them upwards so they could be seen and read by those who trod on them. Some of the words were carefully chiselled out, whilst others were left to be worn down by feet over time, which Mali argues served an ideological purpose, demonstrating the community’s changed attitude to the pagan past (see Figure 3).
Fig. 3: A partially-erased funerary epitaph from the Church of Mary in Ephesus (photo credit: Mali Skotheim)
These examples illustrate the opportunities ‘erasure’ offers as a way of understanding how we deal with the legacies of the past, both in antiquity and today. The erasure itself, however thorough or incomplete, is only one part of the story. Behind it lie larger questions. Who carried out the erasure? Why now, and on what authority? Does it represent the agreement of a community, or does it reveal divisions? What can it tell us about the shifting values of a society, as well as resistance to change? In the case of the Berkeley library, this de-naming might be understood by future generations as reflecting the consensus of all. However, as the range of submissions from the public and college community show, opinions are still divided.
Erasure in Late Antiquity is free for all to download and read here.
An online book launch is taking place on Friday 20th September at 17:30pm GMT. Please come along to see short presentations from the contributors, and be involved in a wider Q&A discussion on the book’s themes. You can register on eventbrite.
Rebecca Usherwood (she/her) is Assistant Professor in Late Antique and Early Byzantine Studies
in the Department of Classics, Trinity College Dublin.