300 Ancient Amulets Reveal the Forbidden Magic Hidden Inside the Rise of Early Christianity

Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:

• Research into Roman amulets shows they saturated the Roman world for some 700 years.
• Wearers and believers in the amulets thought they possessed protective powers.
• Bishops threatened excommunication, yet the charms became a tangible piece of Christian faith.

Ancient traditions can prove tricky to let go, and such is the case with the acceptance of amulets throughout the late Roman period, during the rise of early Christianity. In a statement released by Leiden University, Ph.D. candidate Patricia Kret said she studied the Roman tradition of using amulets as protection and how it carried over into early Christianity, even as bishops condemned the practice.

The embracing of amulets came as a sort of magical bubble of protection, where each amulet provided a defense against some malady and was worn or carried by people or set permanently on houses or near fields. “Location is important when it comes to amulets,” Kret said. “The object must be placed in the spot it is intended to protect, heal, or bring supernatural benefits to. It is striking that this core aspect of their use hardly changed when Christianity made its entrance into the Roman Empire.”

As amulet production persisted for some 700 years—from roughly 100 B.C.E. to 600 C.E.—and people kept using them, the practice drew serious official pushback. Kret discovered sermons from bishops imploring people to trust God rather than the amulets, and warning that those who continued to use them would be excommunicated. But while bishops represented the highest rank of early Christian leadership, the rung below them—the priests—apparently kept right on making, and quite possibly selling, the amulets their superiors denounced. “We know they did so frequently,” Kret said of the priests’ role in producing them, “because the amulets often bore quotations from the Bible. In those days, it was often only priests who had access to Bible manuscripts to copy them.”

Ornamentally, the amulets carried over much of their old form even as their owners traded the Roman gods for the Christian God. What changed first was the text. Scripture began replacing the old invocations, and from there the designs themselves slowly followed. “It gradually became more Christian in nature,” Kret said, “just like the shape of the amulet. It takes the form of a cross, for instance, but people still wear it round their necks with the aim of being protected.”

As Christianity spread across the empire, Kret said, the amulet offered believers something new: direct, personal contact with scripture. “It was often the only part of the Bible to which people had access,” she said. “Just like relics, which also emerged during that period, amulets fulfil the need for a tangible Christian faith. It was something Christian that people could take home with them.”

Kret examined about 300 amulets, which told her a great deal about how the objects were made and comparatively little about how they were used. Some, however, left no doubt. “Sometimes the amulet literally states the illness against which it offers protection or specifies the distance in which it is effective,” she said. “That was very useful for my analysis of the relationship between the amulet and the place where it is found.”

Other amulets have lost their inscriptions, though one still intrigued Kret—its top line read “abracadabra,” with the lines below faded away. Elsewhere, she found evidence that amulets were passed down as heirlooms, sometimes across multiple centuries. Her personal favorite was a small metal plate inscribed as a treatment for migraines. “It was found alongside three other amulets in a single grave, but it is much older than the rest,” she said. “Migraines run in families, so perhaps that is why it has been passed down through the generations. It shows that faith in amulets was strong.”