Journal of Religion and Violence

Volume 9, Issue 2/3, 2021

The Destruction of the Serapeum in 391
Religious Violence and Intolerance in an Imperial Age

This article reconsiders the destruction of the Serapeum in Alexandria by Christian militants in 391 within the context of Christianization in the late fourth century. The attack on the Serapeum was a deliberately staged, high-profile act of religious violence designed to demonstrate to the wider imperial community that the Roman state was no longer interested in protecting targeted cult sites from Christian militants, and that the perpetrators of such violence would suffer no negative consequences for their actions. The Serapeum, dedicated to the worship of the gods Serapis and Isis, was traditionally associated with the Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt and with the pharaonic and later Roman Imperial cult. The destruction of this religious and cultural complex by a Christian mob, acting under the direction of the local bishop Theophilus, was a deliberate act of vandalism intended to demonstrate the greater power of the Christian God over his spiritual competitors. In addition, the destruction of this famous sanctuary was undertaken with the approval of the reigning emperor, signaling a change in the locus of sacral authority in the Roman world as Roman emperors were now abandoning traditional pharaonic and Hellenistic models of divine kingship by ceding spiritual authority to Christian bishops.