Smell and the Engineering of Christian Atmospheres in the Theodosian Code: An Olfactory Approach to the Legislation on Public Festival

This chapter considers atmosphere as a site of socio-religious conflict, as it is depicted in the C5thCE Roman lawbook, the Theodosian Code. What it meant to smell a smell was a problematic theme in the emergent christianities of Antiquity, as ritual smoke enacted and rearranged cosmic connections between earthly and divine bodies. The air-borne scents of burning flesh and incense which accompanied the spectacular civic festivals of the Roman calendar became the object of multiple roman laws by early Christian emperors. The question posed, however, centres on the creative representation of these laws by those who edited and compiled these circumstantial laws into a generally applicable codex. These jurists, it is argued, construct a narrative in which the lawgiver and the law itself engineer a sensual atmosphere imbued with religious meaning. As the protagonists of this atmosphere, the law and the lawgiver are represented as non-oppressive agents, guardians of pleasure and keepers of correct divine relations, who replaced the stench of sacrifice with an offering of sweet incense to the new deity.