Death on Earth, Life in Heaven

The forms of commemoration of the dead in the Christian communities of the Roman empire diVer from pagan traditions in sufficiently crucial and interesting ways to warrant a separate study of them as a conclusion to this book. Like the pagan funerary inscriptions, the epitaphs of Christians offer insights into the belief system, social structures, and forms of expressing the identity of the deceased. Under Theodosius in ad 392, Christianity became the official state religion, and all pagan cults were outlawed. From this time on, and especially after the conversion of the Frankish king Clovis in 496, Christianity rapidly spread in the Gallic and German provinces, and in Germany beyond the empire’s former frontier.

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