Places of Christian worship and their sacralization in Late Antiquity

The author examines how the places of Christian worship, first conceived as houses of prayer increasingly came to be considered as sacred places at the end of Late Antiquity. Recent research on holy places in Palestine has shown how sites of Christian memory have been sacralized. The development of the cult of relics led to a dissociation between sacrality and geographical location, allowing for the transformation of any place of worship into a holy place. The opposition of some Christian theologians did not stop this evolution, but it was not achieved by the end of Late Antiquity.