Zalai Múzeum 11. Kereszténység Pannóniában az első évezredben (Zalaegerszeg, 2002)

Migotti, Branka: Early Christianity in Aquac Iasae

54 Migotti, Branka thex as having been added only in the 2nd half of the 4th century is very convincing. Only, this should be understood not as the first, but rather the second Christian phase of the basilical hall at Aquae lasae. If such a line of reasoning is justified, what we have in Varazdinske Toplice is one of the earliest instances of early Christian architecture in the whole of Pannónia. A further support of the claim for a Constantian church at Aquae lasae should be looked for in its two residual frescoes. Notwithstanding an inadequacy of dating on the grounds of art-historical criteria, these two frescoes still reveal traits of chronological stages. The one in the narthex (Fig. 7) is very clumsily executed. It exhibits features of the so-called red and green style of the 3rd century, which regained popularity again in the Pannonian painting of the 2nd half of the 4th century. It thus fits into the proposed scheme of the "Christianization" of the basilica in the 4th century.

18 Contrarily, the saintly head from the main hall is far more skilfully rendered, showing an air of a classical, or rather, classicizing style (Fig. 6). It can therefore be tentatively ascribed to one of the trends in Constantinian painting, distinguished by a return to the classical values of beauty in portraits.

19 Significantly, Prof. Fabrizio Bisconti of the Pontificio Istituto di Archeológia Cristiana in Rome, a well-known expert on early Christian painting, when shown a published reproduction of the fresco, was inclined to date it to the Justinianic period. In so doing he was not aware of the general archaeological context of the site, namely of the fact that Aquae lasae was destroyed at the end of the 4th century, never to recover again.

20 Such an error with chronology is nevertheless significant in the light of a classicizing stream inherent to Justinianic painting.

21 It can therefore be assumed that the renowned scholar recognized an air of classicizing beauty in the features of the fresco from Aquae lasae, the same quality which led me to date it to the Constantinian period. It should be borne in mind that different level of accuracy in paintings of a certain whole is not inconceivable, as various painters could have been in charge of its accomplishment simultaneously. However, the two frescoes from Aquae lasae belong to different worlds of conception and execution, and are hardly imaginable as pertaining to an architectural unit decorated at one time. A curious opinion that the saintly head depicted on the fresco was John the Evangelist had been proposed by the late Edith B. Thomas in a personal communication to Branka Vikic, who later put it on paper.

22 When introduced with this issue, but unaware that the prophet, and not the apostle, was in question, Professor Bisconti observed that the position of the head, as slightly bent down, could really point to John the Baptist in the act of baptism. In any case, with the remainder of the fresco material fragmented and unpublished, it would be most insecure and unrewarding to conjecture about the nature of the painted scenes from the Iasean basilica. I have already touched shortly on the issue of a possible administrative connection between Aquae lasae and nearby Poetovio, situated at a distance of about 50 kilometres as the crow flies. There are several pros and cons for both an affirmative and a negative answer, but this is not the place to engage in detail with this question. If the alledged administrative appurtenance of Aquae lasae to Poetovio had been a reality in the earlier Roman period, the circumstances certainly changed in late antiquity. After Diocletian's administrative restructuring of the Empire Aquae lasae was registered as a Pannonian settlement, as is proved by the inscription commemorating Constantine's restructuring of the baths damaged in fire (CIL III 4121).

23 Since by that time Poetovio had already been shifted to the province of Noricum, the preservation of the administrative connection between the two settlements is not very likely. 24 On the other hand, if the civitas and bishopric Iovia was really located on the place of present-day Ludbreg, some 14 km northeast of Varazdinske Toplice as the crow flies, Aquae lasae must have belonged to it in terms of ecclesiastical administration. It is even possible to hypothesize that civitas Iovia was established as bishopric exactly in consequence of Poetovio's shift from the province of Pannónia, given that Siscia as the nearest see in Pannónia was probably too far to cover ecclesiastically the whole of the province of Pannónia Savia. These are only hypothetical suggestions, but such that lead to another questionable issue of the Roman and early Christian archaeology of Croatia, namely that of Iovia. 3. Iovia (Ludbreg)

25 In 1999 an international conference with the title "Norico-Pannonian autonomous towns" took place at Brdo near Kranj in Slovenia. Initially, I had thought that Iovia was included on account of its status as a civitas, as recorded in the Jerusalem itinerary (Itinerarium Hierosolymitanum or Burdigalense) in the 1st half of the 4th c.

26 However, in the course of the conference it transpired that the assumed status as a bishopric qualified this town for a topic of the conference. The issue of the bishopric of Iovia has provoked much scholarly dispute, but to no final result.

27 Several points should be emphasized at the start of any such discussion. First of all, the written and epigraphic sources are not such as to justify beyond doubt the existence of this bishopric. Egger's arguments for a bishopric at Iovia were convincing enough to have won the majority of scholars on his side.

28 Nevertheless, the hypothesis that the see of Iovia actually existed and that the bishop Amantius, known from the epitaph of a sarcophagus from the 4th or 5th century found at Beligna near Aquileia, was in fact connected to it, still remain to be finally proven. Second, of the three Pannonian Iovias mentioned in Roman itinieraries, two were on the