Archive Note
Procopius of Gaza (c. 465 to c. 528 CE) was the leading figure of the Gaza school of rhetoric, a late antique center of Christian learning on the eastern Mediterranean coast. He produced biblical commentaries, rhetorical exercises (progymnasmata), and ekphraseis. He is distinct from the better known Procopius of Caesarea, the sixth century military historian of Justinian. In his writings, Procopius documented the practice of Christians in the Holy Land and Anatolia tattooing themselves with the cross and with the name of Christ as voluntary devotional markings. His testimony is significant because it sits chronologically between the Constantine prohibition on facial tattooing of 316 CE, which targeted punitive marking rather than devotional practice, and the fully institutionalized Christian pilgrimage tattooing recorded at Jerusalem from the late fifteenth century onward. Procopius is the principal sixth century textual anchor for the Eastern Christian devotional register that later flows through the Coptic tradition and the Razzouk workshop. The canonical modern synthesis is C. P. Jones,"Stigma: Tattooing and Branding in Graeco Roman Antiquity," Journal of Roman Studies 77 (1987).