Religion and belief · the Roman world

Religion and belief in the Roman world: what do 561 Mithras inscriptions preserve?

The stones preserve names and dedications, not the thoughts of everyone who passed them. Choose a year to see how many of 442 dating ranges include it.

561 selected records · 550 with mapped places

All religion and belief projects ↓

LIST v1.2 · EDCS + EDH

How many date ranges include the year?

50–500 CE

Select a dot to open its record. Locations are those reported; not all mark the exact discovery coordinate. Multiple records can share one place.

range includes yearother dated rangeno range used here

Selected year 200 CE Choose an inscription record

260of 442 dated ranges include the selected year

Heddernheim (Nida) · 51 CE–200 CE · EDCS-11001465

51 to 200

Caute Caelum Deo Invicto Mithrae petram genetricem Senilius Carantinus civis Mediomatricus votum solvit libens laetus merito sive Cracissius Cautopate Oceanum

Excerpt as recorded in the corpus; editorial abbreviations and restorations may appear in the transcription. Heddernheim (Nida) · Germania superior · EDCS-11001465Open the catalogue record ↗

The count includes dated records whose ranges contain the selected year; both endpoints are inclusive. A broad range does not give an exact year. Coordinates reproduce places reported in the corpus and may mark a settlement rather than the exact findspot. The corpus counts selected Latin inscriptions; it does not include every object, Greek texts or every religion in the Roman world.

01 / Trace and testimony

A stone preserves a text, not a crowd

An inscription can record a dedication, a name or a vow. The 561 entries are a selected corpus of Latin texts naming Mithras or his torchbearers. They do not count all worshippers or represent every religious practice in the Empire.

The Magi and Mithras: what 561 stones of Mithras and his torchbearers show, year by year How old is Romanian Christianity? What 379,734 Latin inscriptions show I, Zenovius, set up this gift

02 / Trace and testimony

A date may span two centuries

Catalogues often give a start and end date rather than one year. The instrument counts a record when its date range includes the year you select. Very broad or missing dates are outside the 442 ranges used here; that does not show an object was absent at the time.

Everyone goes to Viscri and Biertan. There are 160 more fortified churches, and at most of them you phone for the key. Wooden churches belong to the hills Tabula Traiana in the Danube Gorge: what it says and how it was lifted 20 metres in 1969

03 / Trace and testimony

A reported place is not always the exact spot

The points reproduce coordinates and places recorded in the corpus. Some catalogues geolocate a town or site rather than the exact spot where a stone was found. The land outline gives geographic context; it shows neither Roman borders nor a route of expansion.

Azizyie mosque, Tulcea: two years on one wall, 1863 and 1865 Abu Simbel: the temples that moved

04 / Trace and testimony

Traditions have their own sources

An ancient inscription and a custom recorded by a modern collector are different kinds of evidence. The collection also includes religious buildings, pilgrimages, calendars and Romanian customs, each with its own place, period and source. Read every project within the limits of what its records preserve.

Romania's Folk Calendar: Mărțișor, Dragobete, and Sânziene A plough, an auger and three saints What Isn’t Done Șumuleu Ciuc: how many kilometres on foot to the Pentecost pilgrimage

Texts, places and practices

Continue through the collection

Choose a calendar, pilgrimage, church or folk custom, then read what its sources establish.

The Magi and Mithras: what 561 stones of Mithras and his torchbearers show, year by year Egeria: a woman's pilgrimage to Jerusalem, Sinai and Edessa, 381–384 Bektashi, between a spiritual centre and a proposed state A plough, an auger and three saints Romania's Folk Calendar: Mărțișor, Dragobete, and Sânziene The chalk-cut churches of Basarabi–Murfatlar, in 3D

Religion and belief · 47 projects

The complete collection

Search titles, descriptions and topic terms, or choose a theme.

Search for a project or topic

47 projects

↑ Back to the experience

Sacred places and pilgrimage
Dobrovăț Monastery: how old are the church, wall and tower?
The church of 1503–1504, the 17th-century wall and the tower raised in 1743: three ages in a single courtyard, then a relief model showing what could be seen from the roads around. In Romanian and English.
Sacred places and pilgrimage
Abu Simbel: the temples that moved
In the 1960s, two temples carved into a cliff were cut apart and rebuilt above the rising waters of Lake Nasser. The hill behind them was built too. In Romanian and English.
Sacred places and pilgrimage
Neamț Monastery: what did the monks copy — ten dated books in 143 years?
Ten dated copies made at Neamț between 1436 and 1579, then Paisie’s school: what was copied and when, each book with its year and its proof.
Sacred places and pilgrimage
Șumuleu Ciuc: how many kilometres on foot to the Pentecost pilgrimage
From the western border to the valley that fills each Pentecost run 485.3 km of marked road — 20 days of walking. Type a town name: the page shows the road that remains, section by section.
Inscriptions and texts
The Magi and Mithras: what 561 stones of Mithras and his torchbearers show, year by year
It is said that the Magi were added to the story of Jesus’s birth to win over people who served Mithras. On a map of the Roman world, the Latin stones of Mithras light up in the years they could have been carved: by the year 100 none can be securely dated, and they become numerous only after 150, when the story of the Magi is already written.
Sacred places and pilgrimage
Azizyie mosque, Tulcea: two years on one wall, 1863 and 1865
The Azizyie mosque in Tulcea, Romania, carries two dates: the plaque says 1865, the list says 1863, the scholar gives 1861–1876. A walk along the wall, line by line.
Inscriptions and texts
How old is Romanian Christianity? What 379,734 Latin inscriptions show
The Bulgars, the Poles and Kievan Rus have a year of baptism; the Romanians have words inherited from Latin and the idea that the faith came with Roman soldiers. The Latin inscriptions of the empire are lights on a map that runs from AD 100 to 700. On the Danube nearly all the Christian inscriptions date from after 300, and they name soldiers no more often than the frontier’s other inscriptions do.
Sacred places and pilgrimage
Notre-Dame de Paris: fire, restoration and contested windows
15 April 2019, 18:20: three distinct alarms, the spire down around 19:50, out by 09:50. Then the oaks, the organ's 115 stops, the December 2024 reopening and the 2026 dispute over six intact 1864 windows. In Romanian, English and French.
Sacred places and pilgrimage
Dresden's Frauenkirche: the church, the ruin and a contested rebuilding
Dresden's Frauenkirche became a ruin, a memorial and then a rebuilt church. The chronology of its dated images and decisions — from the morning of 15 February 1945 to the reused stone of 1994 — shows how the meaning of the site changed.
Sacred places and pilgrimage
Văcărești Monastery, on the same map
A princely foundation becomes a prison, then a demolition site: the great church falls in December 1986, the last remains in January 1987. What stays is the abandoned basin and the wetland now protected as a nature park. Slide the monastery plan over the map through 1723/24, 1865, 1984, 1989 and 2016.
Sacred places and pilgrimage
The churches of Bucharest
Between 1977 and 1987 at least 19 places of worship were pulled down in Bucharest, and between 1982 and 1988 seven churches were pushed on rails, most of them to behind blocks of flats.
Sacred places and pilgrimage
The mine waste that buried a village church. Watch it rise, year by year, from space
Geamăna, in Romania's Apuseni Mountains, buried since 1978 by the Roșia Poieni copper mine's tailings pond: 48 Landsat photographs, one a year, and terrain measured from orbit show the valley filling up past the church roof. In Romanian and English.
Sacred places and pilgrimage
Why are Wallachia's oldest monasteries where they are?
Drop three marks on the relief, then the charters place the monasteries attested by 1500, in documentary order. Test five explanations one by one: the passes, the Danube, the prince, Nicodim's network, the forest. In Romanian and English.
Sacred places and pilgrimage
The church Gaudí hung from the ceiling
Gaudí designed the Colònia Güell church upside down, from string and sacks of shot. Hang the weights, turn the model over and walk into the crypt that gravity drew. In Romanian, English, Spanish and Catalan.
Sacred places and pilgrimage
What language do you pray in, when you pray in Romanian?
You pray in Romanian — but the words of prayer hold four strata: Latin, Greek arrived mostly via Slavonic, Slavic, and Hebrew arrived by a double route. Thirteen words with dictionary passports, a collage to hear, and a game to solve.
Rituals and calendars
Why Romanian weekdays still carry five Roman gods
Luni = Moon, marți = Mars, miercuri = Mercury, joi = Jupiter, vineri = Venus. Why the gods stand scrambled, plus Saturday, Sunday and the 321 law.
Customs and folk belief
John's Fairies: why the June fairies answer to the Baptist's name
From SANCTUS DIES JOHANNIS, Saint John's day, to the Sânziene: the Sân- wheel with four saints (Sânziene, Sânpetru, Sântilie, Sâmedru), the three living senses — feast, flower, fairies — and the night of 23 June with bonfires, wreaths on water and the Drăgaica fair. With the etymology chain, the wheel-walk and quotes from DEX, MDA2, Șăineanu and Scriban.
Customs and folk belief
Rusalii: how roses came to name the Holy Ghost and the fairies
From ROSALIA, the Roman rose-feast on graves, to Rusalii: the debatable Slavic route, the three living senses — feast, fairy, mayfly — and the week between worlds, with the Saturday of the dead, walnut-branch Sunday, the healing călușari (UNESCO 2008) and the water rusalkas. With the ROSALIA→RUSALII etymology chain, the week-walk and quotes from DEX, DER, Șăineanu and Scriban.
Customs and folk belief
Moș Crăciun without parents: two words, zero certain origins
Neither moș nor Crăciun has a known origin: DEX shrugs, and the etymological dictionary lines up 18 suspects and convicts none. A cold-case file with the interactive suspect board, word/status/language-family filters, birth certificates stamped UNKNOWN and quotes from DEX, DER and Scriban.
Customs and folk belief
Bogdaproste or bodaproste? Meaning and origin of the Romanian alms-thanks
Bogdaproste is the thanks said when receiving pomana, memorial alms for the dead, from Bulg. «bog da prosti», «May God forgive»; DOOM3 moved the headword to bodaproste. Meaning, norm, stress, the 1746 attestation, today's Bulgarian formula, and a receipt engine with two scenes — Rome and the pomana.
Customs and folk belief
Every December, we sing a Roman date
Colindă comes from Latin calendae, via Slavic kolenda: a Roman 1 January date, banned by synods for centuries and still sung every December.
Customs and folk belief
How a Serbian village word became your vampire
Strigoi inherits Latin through striga, while vampire is a Slavic word of disputed origin that crossed Europe inside the Austrian reports on the 1725 and 1732 exhumations and through the European press, returning to Romanian as a French and German neologism. A five-chapter map, side-by-side definitions and an eight-quotation quiz.
Customs and folk belief
The Miorița you never learned in school
1792–1969: Alecsandri's 1850 ballad is one version among hundreds. The carol printed in 1859 has no talking sheep, and at Cucueți the hero dies alone and a nun carries him home: three complete texts, side by side.
Sacred places and pilgrimage
Egeria: a woman's pilgrimage to Jerusalem, Sinai and Edessa, 381–384
Egeria, a woman from the far west of the Empire, wrote home to her friends about three years in the Holy Land. The text, found in Arezzo in 1884, on the map.
Sacred places and pilgrimage
Everyone goes to Viscri and Biertan. There are 160 more fortified churches, and at most of them you phone for the key.
A map of Transylvania's 162 fortified churches includes the seven UNESCO villages, heritage class, published opening hours, keyholder contact and damaged buildings.
Rituals and calendars
Releasing the house
The priest sprinkles the house. Then anyone may enter. Marian’s 1892 book on birth, read as the unlocking of the house.
Rituals and calendars
What Isn’t Done
Four thousand folk beliefs printed by the Romanian Academy under the name of an entire people, reconstructed from OCR and scan. One in four is a prohibition, a third of the entries with a locality attribution comes from one village, and six labels are missing from the printed numbering.
Sacred places and pilgrimage
Wooden churches belong to the hills
The Carpathians are usually treated as the border between two building worlds. Wooden churches ignore it: their density rises the same way on both flanks and falls where the hills end.
Sacred places and pilgrimage
Romania's oldest monasteries are not where you would look for them
Seven of the eight monastic sites older than the year 1200 are in the Banat, Crișana and Transylvania. The eighth is in Dobruja. In Moldavia and Wallachia there is not one.
Rituals and calendars
Two in Seven — the public holidays that land on a weekend
Romania writes more public holidays into law than any other EU country, seventeen of them. On average five a year land on a Saturday or a Sunday. Compare twenty-eight national calendars and see what one rule would change.
Sacred places and pilgrimage
Painted Monasteries of Bucovina: 1–2 Day Route, Measured Distances
Voronet, Humor, Moldovita, Sucevita, Arbore: what to see at each, published hours, service times to avoid, and the optimal route with measured driving distances from Gura Humorului or Suceava.
Customs and folk belief
Dracula: Six Places, Myth vs Record
Is Bran worth it? Stoker never visited Romania, and the novel never names Bran. Six places graded by evidence — archive (Targoviste), disputed tradition (Snagov), late materialization (Borgo) — with a visit router.
Customs and folk belief
The Merry Cemetery Decoded: What Săpânța's Painted Crosses Say
Read the Romanian inscriptions on nine painted crosses from Săpânța alongside working Chinese and English translations. Each entry separates what the text says from interpretations the sources cannot confirm.
Rituals and calendars
Romania's Folk Calendar: Mărțișor, Dragobete, and Sânziene
What the red-white March string and the June bathing ban are: six customs, every date sourced; the syncretism box; visitor flags for what you can see and where not to go.
Sacred places and pilgrimage
The saint who lost his greatest battle: Stephen the Great 1457–1504
Vaslui 1475, Valea Albă 1476, Putna 1504. Two battlefields at the same scale and the saint who reigned 47 years.
Sacred places and pilgrimage
Beheaded on his birthday: Constantin Brâncoveanu 1688–1714
Hurezi 1697, Mogoșoaia 1702, the 1714 scaffold. 26 years of building and the fortune that killed him, on one map.
Rituals and calendars
Where did the 13 days go?
1 April old style = 14 April new style. Decree-Law 1053, the 13 days that never existed, a 1900–1925 converter, and the Church that kept its own time until 1924.
Inscriptions and texts
Tabula Traiana in the Danube Gorge: what it says and how it was lifted 20 metres in 1969
Trajan's inscription of AD 100, word by word, and the 260-tonne block lifted 20 metres in 1969 before the Iron Gates lake.
Rituals and calendars
You say Easter. Most of Europe says pascha.
Paște comes from Hebrew pesach, through Aramaic, Greek and Latin; the feast's date survived the Quartodeciman wars and Nicaea, and the hinge is a monk from Dobruja. With a working Easter computer and a quiz.
Inscriptions and texts
I, Zenovius, set up this gift
The Biertan donarium: a 4th-century bronze tablet found in 1775 near Biertan, Romania, inscribed EGO ZENOVIVS VOTVM POSVI. Four Latin words, two of which still live in Romanian.
Customs and folk belief
How the villager became the heathen: paganus, from villager to unbeliever
Romanian păgân (heathen) comes from Latin paganus, 'villager': the DER evidence, the Romance cognates, the two theories of the change of sense, and the Christian layer from Latin.
Sacred places and pilgrimage
The chalk-cut churches of Basarabi–Murfatlar, in 3D
The Basarabi–Murfatlar cave complex in Romania, in its 3D laser scan: slice the chalk block level by level and find three churches carved one beneath another a thousand years ago, their walls full of runes nobody has deciphered.
Inscriptions and texts
When did churches start speaking Romanian?: Câmpulung, 1636
For centuries, the story written on church walls was told in Church Slavonic. In the summer of 1636, on the freshly raised wall of the princely church in Câmpulung, the foundation story was written in Romanian. One of the first Romanian-language inscriptions.
Sacred places and pilgrimage
Bektashi, between a spiritual centre and a proposed state
The Bektashi headquarters in Tirana exists, a diplomatic status was requested, a sovereign state is only proposed: no public act up to 2 October 2026. From Hacıbektaş to Tirana, Sarı Saltuk's tomb at Babadag and the real area: 27 acres, almost 11 hectares.
Sacred places and pilgrimage
The Archangel's Sword
Seven sanctuaries, a geographic legend and a line that can be measured.
Customs and folk belief
A plough, an auger and three saints
The same stars, cut differently.
Sacred places and pilgrimage
The wall that judges
Argeș said: stone and verse. Hunedoara said: stone and story. Voroneț says it differently: the stone tells its days — 26 May, 14 September 1488 — and the wall shows the end: the 1547 Judgment, with zodiac and peoples. Climb it register by register, in 3D, then grade the legends: Daniil, the lost secret, the airplane.

About the collection

This collection brings together relevant projects from the site’s library. Each entry has a title, a description and a link to its available edition. The complete projects carry their sources and evidence limits.

Reviewed 2026-10-16 · Collection as text

Sources

LIST v1.2 · Zenodo, DOI 10.5281/zenodo.10473706
The Latin inscription corpus counted by the source project: 561 selected records, of which 442 have dating ranges no wider than 200 years.
Natural Earth · Admin 0, countries at 1:50m
The continental outline uses Equal Earth centred at 150° east. The map does not show historical borders.
Epigraphic Database Heidelberg
One of the ancient inscription catalogues used to check dates and reported places.