ABSTRACT
Although fears of corpse pollution were not easy to overcome, it seems clear enough that, at least in the ocial teaching of the Church, the status of dead bodies eventually changed. As Antigone Samellas concludes:
Notwithstanding the reservations, objections, and outright refusals that were expressed even among the ranks of the Christians in regard to the orthodox attitude towards the pollution of the dead, the fact remains that by the end of the fourth century the status of the traditional objects of abomination had changed. … e sacralization of death, which, on the one hand, implied the sanctication of the martyrs and their remains and, on the other, the association of synagogues and temples with the impurity of death, led to the institutionalization of new posthumous honours that enhanced the authority of the ascending religious elite of Christian bishops.
