Taurobolium
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In ancient Rome, taurobolium referred to the sacrifice of a bull, usually in connection with the worship of the Great Mother of the Gods, though not limited to this. Of oriental origin, its first known performance in Italy occurred in 134 AD, at Puteoli, in honor of Venus Caelestis.
The best-known and most vivid description of the taurobolium is given by Prudentius in Peristephanon (x., 1066ff.): the priest of the Mother, clad in a toga worn cinctu Gabino, with golden crown anti fillets on his head, takes his place in a trench covered by a platform of planks pierced with fine holes, on which a bull, magnificent with flowers and gold, is slain. The blood rains through the platform on to the priest below, who receives it on his face, and even on his tongue and palate, and after the baptism presents himself before his fellow-worshippers purified and regenerated, and receives their salutations and reverence.
Recent scholarship has called into question the reliability of Prudentius' description. It is a late account by a Christian who was hostile to paganism, and may have distorted the rite for effect.[1] Earlier inscriptions that mention the rite suggest a less gory and elaborate sacrificial rite. Therefore, Prudentius' description may be based on a late evolution of the taurobolium.[1]
The taurobolium in the 2nd and 3rd centuries was usually performed as a measure for the welfare of the Emperor, Empire, or community, its date frequently being 24 March, the Dies Sanguinis of the annual festival of the Great Mother and Attis. In the late 3rd and the 4th centuries its usual motive was the purification or regeneration of an individual, who was spoken of as renatus in aeternum, reborn for eternity, in consequence of the ceremony (Corp. Insc. Lat. Vi. 510512). When its efficacy was not eternal, its effect was considered to endure for twenty years. It was also performed as the fulfilment of a vow, or by command of the goddess herself, and the privilege was limited to no sex nor class. The place of its performance at Rome was near the site of St Peters, in the excavations of which several altars and inscriptions commemorative of taurobolia were discovered.
Scholarship accepting Prudentius' description have analyzed the taurobolium as probably a sacred drama symbolizing the relations of the Mother and Attis. The descent of the priest into the sacrificial foss symbolized the death of Attis, the withering of the vegetation of Mother Earth; his bath of blood and emergence the restoration of Attis, the rebirth of vegetation. The ceremony may be the spiritualized descent of the primitive oriental practice of drinking or being baptized in the blood of an animal, based upon a belief that the strength of brute creation could be acquired by consumption of its substance or contact with its blood. In spite of the phrase renatus in aeternum, there is no reason to suppose that the ceremony was in any way borrowed from Christianity.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Robert Duthoy, The Taurobolium, Leiden 1969.
[edit] References
- Malloch, D.K. Christ and the Taurobolium - Lord Mithras in the genesis of Christianity, Lochan Press, Scotland. 2006. ISBN 0-9540786-1-6.
- Cumont, Franz. Le Taurobole et le Culte de Bellone, Revue d'histoire et de littrature religieuses, vi., No. 2, 1901.
- Duthoy, Robert. The Taurobolium: Its Evolution and Terminology. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1969.
- Esperandieu, Inscriptions de Lectoure (1892), pp. 94 if.
- Hepding, Hugo. Attis, Seine Mythen und Sein Kult (Giessen, 1903), pp. 168 if., 201
- Showerman, Grant. The Great Mother of the Gods, Bulletin of the University of Wisconsin, No. 43; Philology and Literature Series, vol. i. No. 3 (Madison, 1901).
- Zippel, Festschrift zum Doctorjubilaeum, Ludwig Friedlhnder, 1895, p. 489 f.
This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
