The Early Modern Invention of Late Antique Rome

Nicola Denzey Lewis holds the Margo L. Goldsmith Chair in Women's Studies in Religion at Claremont Graduate University. A recipient of research fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Council of Learned Societies, along with additional support from, among other sources, the American Academy of Religion and the International Catacomb Society, she serves on the editorial boards of Gnosis and the Journal of Early Christian Studies. Denzey Lewis also actively works as a public intellectual, having consulted on and appeared in two seasons of CNN's popular series, 'Finding Jesus.' She has also appeared in numerous shows for the History Channel, the National Geographic Channel, and Discovery, along with live news appearances for NBC and CNN and CBC Radio Canada's Religion news show, 'Tapestry.'

• 1. The Reinventio of the Hidden City; 2. Rewiring the Sacred Circuit (Roma Sancta Renovata); 3. Remains to be Seen (or, 'on the Holy Corpse'); 4. Peter's Bones; 5. De Rossi's Deception: Crafting the Crypt of the Popes; 6. Raising Late Antique Jews from the Valley of Dry Bones; 7. Disposing with Depositio (Ad Sanctos); 8. Inventing Christian Rome.

'This book will be of considerable interest not only to scholars of early modern Rome and of the Counter-Reformation, but also to those interested in the history of Christian archaeology. Denzey Lewis's account of the 're-imagineering' of the early Christian city from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries is both compelling and authoritative. I cannot remember when I last read an academic book with such genuine pleasure; since it matched considerable learning across almost two millennia of history with a light and unfailingly stylish touch.' Simon Ditchfield, University of York