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The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph & Diversity 200–1000
This book offers a vivid, compelling history of the first thousand years of Christianity. For the second edition, the book has been thoroughly rewritten and expanded. It includes two new chapters, as well as an extensive preface in which the author reflects on the scholarly traditions which have influenced his work and explains his current thinking about the book's themes.
New edition of popular account of the first 1000 years of Christianity.
Thoroughly rewritten, with extensive new preface of author's current thinking.
Includes new maps, substantial bibliography, and numerous chronological tables.
New edition of popular account of the first 1000 years of Christianity.
Thoroughly rewritten, with extensive new preface of author's current thinking.
Includes new maps, substantial bibliography, and numerous chronological tables.
712 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1995
100 people are currently reading
2718 people want to read
About the author
Peter Brown
59 books47 followersPeter Robert Lamont Brown FBA is an Irish historian. He is the Rollins Professor of History Emeritus at Princeton University. Brown is credited with having brought coherence to the field of Late Antiquity, and is often regarded as the inventor of said field. His work has concerned, in particular, the religious culture of the later Roman Empire and early medieval Europe, and the relation between religion and society.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 72 reviews
February 8, 2016
I am a history major studying at the University of Illinois at Springfield. Originally, after graduating with my associates I intended to study classical history dealing with the Greek and Roman civilizations. My first semester at UIS I took a class on Late Antiquity and it this was book and his first one that changed the course of my study. For me, this book is a sort of holy grail that has in a very unique way altered the course of my academic career.
It is important to understand that Brown is considered the father of "Late Antiquity Studies" even though the term was in use before his book in 1971. In his original work Brown made the argument that Rome never fell and assesses this time frame traditionally known as the dark ages as a period of "continuity and transformation." His core arguments are:
1.) it is hard to argue for a fall in 410 A.D. and again in 476 A.D. when the capital of Rome was Constantinople.
2). People living in this period saw no distiniction between themselves and Romans.
3). this period was far more dramatic and dynamic.
In this book Brown tries to tie up some of the loose ends left answered in his small work titled the "World of Late Antiquity" released in 1971.
Brown sees the splitting of the Empire into a tetrachy as the initial change that denotes the shift between antiquity and post-classical society. The Rise of Constantine and Christianity had a profound impact on the culture of Europe. There were harsh realities to consider and Brown acknowledges that some places in the Roman Empire experienced economic involution (although not all places). He still maintains that Roman culture continues and it is gradually changed over the course of about 600 years.
Brown sees that the city of Rome looses its centrality and new centers and peripheries develops.Although there are times that Brown seems inconsistent on this point overall it is a great idea. He also diminishes the role played by barbarian invasions and sees them as less significant than what historians have thought. Many of the Barbarians actually tried to assimilate Latin culture although that was not always effective. He also argues that the kind of wealth changes and portable wealth becomes more important as relics become an important part of Late Antique culture.
Brown believes that the significant shift from one world to another took place in about 700-800 with the rise of Islam and the ascension of Charlemagne. He thinks that the people of this period began to see Rome as a part of the past and look back instead of considering themselves one in the same. It is great to read this as an expansion of his first book "The World of Late Antiquity." For an alternative reading one might consider looking at Bryan Ward Perkins' book "The Fall of Rome and the end of civilization." At least you can see both arguments. This is a great book and one worth reading.
It is important to understand that Brown is considered the father of "Late Antiquity Studies" even though the term was in use before his book in 1971. In his original work Brown made the argument that Rome never fell and assesses this time frame traditionally known as the dark ages as a period of "continuity and transformation." His core arguments are:
1.) it is hard to argue for a fall in 410 A.D. and again in 476 A.D. when the capital of Rome was Constantinople.
2). People living in this period saw no distiniction between themselves and Romans.
3). this period was far more dramatic and dynamic.
In this book Brown tries to tie up some of the loose ends left answered in his small work titled the "World of Late Antiquity" released in 1971.
Brown sees the splitting of the Empire into a tetrachy as the initial change that denotes the shift between antiquity and post-classical society. The Rise of Constantine and Christianity had a profound impact on the culture of Europe. There were harsh realities to consider and Brown acknowledges that some places in the Roman Empire experienced economic involution (although not all places). He still maintains that Roman culture continues and it is gradually changed over the course of about 600 years.
Brown sees that the city of Rome looses its centrality and new centers and peripheries develops.Although there are times that Brown seems inconsistent on this point overall it is a great idea. He also diminishes the role played by barbarian invasions and sees them as less significant than what historians have thought. Many of the Barbarians actually tried to assimilate Latin culture although that was not always effective. He also argues that the kind of wealth changes and portable wealth becomes more important as relics become an important part of Late Antique culture.
Brown believes that the significant shift from one world to another took place in about 700-800 with the rise of Islam and the ascension of Charlemagne. He thinks that the people of this period began to see Rome as a part of the past and look back instead of considering themselves one in the same. It is great to read this as an expansion of his first book "The World of Late Antiquity." For an alternative reading one might consider looking at Bryan Ward Perkins' book "The Fall of Rome and the end of civilization." At least you can see both arguments. This is a great book and one worth reading.
January 27, 2011
Brown's introduction provides a clear synopsis of the historiographic background to his own work: the most influential approaches, scholars, and studies (particularly the theses for European unity by Pirenne and Braudel). All of this leads up to the main underlying thesis of his own project, that in the early Middle Ages, "we are left with a Europe without a center" (13). Instead, following the thread of Christianity through the period, Brown poses the idea that "Christianity was a remarkably universal religion, endowed with common codes which could spring up in many different environments. But, at this particular time, it was not necessarily a unitary, still less a uniform religion" (14). Brown thus emphasizes the ability of Christianity to be "both universal and, at the same time, highly local" (15), all interacting "among a loosely spread constellation of centers" (16). This sense pervades the whole of Brown's study, especially in his proposal of the emergence "micro-Christendoms" (esp. 355-79) that navigate between issues of the paradoxical universality and locality of Christianity.
The force of Brown's evidence is through collecting from the sources data, anecdotes, and snapshot biographies, which act as single pictures compiled to provide an overall mural of the period under discussion. Drawing the narrative thread of his overall story through it all, Brown provides his own analytical synthesis of these images as a kind of commentary to this mural, emphasizing the main trends and developments at work. Furthermore, Brown's narrative also sets these particular stories within the wider realm of medieval religion--not only developments in the West but also Christianity and Islam in the East.
This book, furthermore, does justice to the early Middle Ages on their own terms. As Brown himself observes, "We tend to hurry through the intervening centuries, which stretch between the fall of Rome and the Carolingian empire" (220); and, from this point, we often hurry to the developments of the twelfth-century "renaissance" to reach the Central and High Middle Ages. Brown's study, however, lingers on the moments in between, in order to highlight the fact that "a religious culture does not change only under the impact of dramatic crises. It also changes slowly and surely over the centuries within itself and under its own momentum" (219-20). From the perspective of one who works mainly in the early Middle Ages--particularly with Anglo-Saxon culture up to the eleventh century,* which is thoroughly affected by the previous developments of the end of antiquity and subsequent cultural shifts--this is a refreshing view.
In its conception of the many and diverse ways that Christianity manifested throughout Europe, Brown's book presents a complex and commendable view of early medieval history. This book is well worth the read--for those who are scholars, students, and just generally interested in medieval history.
* My one main quibble with this book is the way Brown handles Old English literary sources. For example, he uses "Caedmon's Hymn" and The Dream of the Rood as representative of all of Old English religious poetry, and mentions no other works. More oddly, he claims that the latter was composed as a poem and was "later carved, in runic script... in around A.D. 700 at Ruthwell" (377)--both a strange assumption and strange for implications of dating the two poems. Furthermore, he simplistically characterizes Beowulf as a nostalgic epic evocative of the pre-Christian Scandinavian world, rather than taking it as a complex poem that encompasses many cultural issues of Anglo-Saxon England. Again, his dating and its implications are simplified: Brown flatly states that "it was probably written down around A.D. 780," and "was a record of events larger than life which had taken place... as far as we can see, around 520" (478)--surely issues that deserve more than a few sentences posed as factual claims! However, in a book of this scope, and for a historian whose main subject is not Anglo-Saxon England, these are not major marks against Brown's work.
The force of Brown's evidence is through collecting from the sources data, anecdotes, and snapshot biographies, which act as single pictures compiled to provide an overall mural of the period under discussion. Drawing the narrative thread of his overall story through it all, Brown provides his own analytical synthesis of these images as a kind of commentary to this mural, emphasizing the main trends and developments at work. Furthermore, Brown's narrative also sets these particular stories within the wider realm of medieval religion--not only developments in the West but also Christianity and Islam in the East.
This book, furthermore, does justice to the early Middle Ages on their own terms. As Brown himself observes, "We tend to hurry through the intervening centuries, which stretch between the fall of Rome and the Carolingian empire" (220); and, from this point, we often hurry to the developments of the twelfth-century "renaissance" to reach the Central and High Middle Ages. Brown's study, however, lingers on the moments in between, in order to highlight the fact that "a religious culture does not change only under the impact of dramatic crises. It also changes slowly and surely over the centuries within itself and under its own momentum" (219-20). From the perspective of one who works mainly in the early Middle Ages--particularly with Anglo-Saxon culture up to the eleventh century,* which is thoroughly affected by the previous developments of the end of antiquity and subsequent cultural shifts--this is a refreshing view.
In its conception of the many and diverse ways that Christianity manifested throughout Europe, Brown's book presents a complex and commendable view of early medieval history. This book is well worth the read--for those who are scholars, students, and just generally interested in medieval history.
* My one main quibble with this book is the way Brown handles Old English literary sources. For example, he uses "Caedmon's Hymn" and The Dream of the Rood as representative of all of Old English religious poetry, and mentions no other works. More oddly, he claims that the latter was composed as a poem and was "later carved, in runic script... in around A.D. 700 at Ruthwell" (377)--both a strange assumption and strange for implications of dating the two poems. Furthermore, he simplistically characterizes Beowulf as a nostalgic epic evocative of the pre-Christian Scandinavian world, rather than taking it as a complex poem that encompasses many cultural issues of Anglo-Saxon England. Again, his dating and its implications are simplified: Brown flatly states that "it was probably written down around A.D. 780," and "was a record of events larger than life which had taken place... as far as we can see, around 520" (478)--surely issues that deserve more than a few sentences posed as factual claims! However, in a book of this scope, and for a historian whose main subject is not Anglo-Saxon England, these are not major marks against Brown's work.
September 21, 2023
After years of intending to read this classic piece of ground-breaking scholarly synthesis, I've finally had the pleasure of finishing this revised tenth anniversary edition. It's a sign of a great book when you find that things you've thought for many years need to be rethought thanks to the convincing arguments presented. It's also great to discover where ideas that I knew were accepted in the field had actually been first presented in this book by Brown. But I think the best sign of a fine book is when you find you're near its end and don't want it to finish. I felt all three with this book.
I don't need to add much to what other readers have already said in their reviews here. Except perhaps to note this revised edition includes an extensive new Introduction, which engages with recent developments in the field in a careful and generous manner. This brings the original 1996 work up to date and is a testament to how greatly Brown contributed to the study of this period and defined the parameters of its study nearly 30 years ago. Given he is now 88 years old, this edition is a fitting coda for the brilliant career of one of our greatest scholars.
I don't need to add much to what other readers have already said in their reviews here. Except perhaps to note this revised edition includes an extensive new Introduction, which engages with recent developments in the field in a careful and generous manner. This brings the original 1996 work up to date and is a testament to how greatly Brown contributed to the study of this period and defined the parameters of its study nearly 30 years ago. Given he is now 88 years old, this edition is a fitting coda for the brilliant career of one of our greatest scholars.
February 7, 2017
Prestige and links with the past counted greatly for such rulers. There were still many pasts from which they could choose. P343
There is a certain symmetry to this excellent book. Its introduction is worth reading in its own right as a mighty survey of recent historical work that has debunked a great deal of what we thought we knew about the end of the Western Roman Empire and its late chapters describe how the myths we have relied on were produced in the interests of an emerging European elite. Perhaps a fulcrum to all this is the Carolingian myth that they were restoring the original Christian Roman Empire of Constantine after a long “Dark Ages” caused by barbarian invasions. In the light of this book, we can only smile at the power of political ideology to make us believe so strongly in the reality of things that never were.
More pragmatically, the book implies that what made the Roman Empire effective was its system of taxation and its exploitation of the labour of its peasant farmers. After centuries in which rulers lost the power to accumulate capital through taxation, Western Christianity in its “Roman” form offered a rediscovery of taxation and peasant exploitation through the medium of tithes. Pagans clearly recognised the connection between conversion (often forced) and the emergence of strong kings, and the example is given of Iceland choosing to adopt Christianity as a way to avoid the violent imposition of a Christian ruler as witnessed in Denmark and Trondheim and hence to protect its uniquely democratic legal system. This incident from the final chapter reiterates findings reviewed in the introduction that the so called “fall of the Roman Empire” brought about a considerable improvement in the lives of many local communities, albeit alongside a collapse of the types of economic activity which would mainly benefit the elites.
The book makes the interesting point that northern pagans presented Christianity with quite different challenges to those of the ancient Greco-Roman world. Its final chapter describes the role of Christian scribes in setting down all that we know of the Tain, Beowulf, the Icelandic sagas and the oral culture generally of the northern peoples, with the surprising evidence that they preserved pagan myths because their Christian rulers at the time still depended on them for legitimacy. Popular religion typically wove together Christian and pagan features, especially because Christianity failed to address the importance of season and weather in the lives of European peasants away from the Mediterranean.
The conversion of pagans has often been less essential than converting different Christians to a contested orthodoxy. There has always been a contest between the religious requirements of the ruling elite and the religious concerns and priorities of ordinary people. The major theme of this book is its demonstration that there has never been a single, recognizably orthodox Christianity. It is a faith that has been adapted repeatedly and creatively to serve the needs of diverse communities, fragmenting into many competing and often incompatible belief systems. And of course, related to this has been the writing and rewriting of histories to justify each change of direction in the swirling mists of social change.
There is a certain symmetry to this excellent book. Its introduction is worth reading in its own right as a mighty survey of recent historical work that has debunked a great deal of what we thought we knew about the end of the Western Roman Empire and its late chapters describe how the myths we have relied on were produced in the interests of an emerging European elite. Perhaps a fulcrum to all this is the Carolingian myth that they were restoring the original Christian Roman Empire of Constantine after a long “Dark Ages” caused by barbarian invasions. In the light of this book, we can only smile at the power of political ideology to make us believe so strongly in the reality of things that never were.
More pragmatically, the book implies that what made the Roman Empire effective was its system of taxation and its exploitation of the labour of its peasant farmers. After centuries in which rulers lost the power to accumulate capital through taxation, Western Christianity in its “Roman” form offered a rediscovery of taxation and peasant exploitation through the medium of tithes. Pagans clearly recognised the connection between conversion (often forced) and the emergence of strong kings, and the example is given of Iceland choosing to adopt Christianity as a way to avoid the violent imposition of a Christian ruler as witnessed in Denmark and Trondheim and hence to protect its uniquely democratic legal system. This incident from the final chapter reiterates findings reviewed in the introduction that the so called “fall of the Roman Empire” brought about a considerable improvement in the lives of many local communities, albeit alongside a collapse of the types of economic activity which would mainly benefit the elites.
The book makes the interesting point that northern pagans presented Christianity with quite different challenges to those of the ancient Greco-Roman world. Its final chapter describes the role of Christian scribes in setting down all that we know of the Tain, Beowulf, the Icelandic sagas and the oral culture generally of the northern peoples, with the surprising evidence that they preserved pagan myths because their Christian rulers at the time still depended on them for legitimacy. Popular religion typically wove together Christian and pagan features, especially because Christianity failed to address the importance of season and weather in the lives of European peasants away from the Mediterranean.
The conversion of pagans has often been less essential than converting different Christians to a contested orthodoxy. There has always been a contest between the religious requirements of the ruling elite and the religious concerns and priorities of ordinary people. The major theme of this book is its demonstration that there has never been a single, recognizably orthodox Christianity. It is a faith that has been adapted repeatedly and creatively to serve the needs of diverse communities, fragmenting into many competing and often incompatible belief systems. And of course, related to this has been the writing and rewriting of histories to justify each change of direction in the swirling mists of social change.
November 16, 2021
Nicely balanced overview of the rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire and the Christianization of ancient culture. Very detailed with handsome insights, but sometimes unnecessary elaborations. Main default: little synthesis (final chapter is missing).
November 19, 2013
This is a scholarly masterpiece by Peter Brown about the world of Late Antiquity. Very enjoyable reading, very comprehensive and detailed.
Not surprising really, as Peter Brown is (together with Peter Heather) one of the foremost scholars of this particular and fascinating historical period. A must read for anybody who is seriously interested in this period.
Not surprising really, as Peter Brown is (together with Peter Heather) one of the foremost scholars of this particular and fascinating historical period. A must read for anybody who is seriously interested in this period.
November 2, 2018
truly super comprehensive and a great flair for the anecdote
June 22, 2011
Peter Brown’s book The Rise of Western Christendom is an effort to tell the story of how the Pax Romana gave way to the medieval Catholic order in Western Europe. Coming in at around 500 pages, the book is a bit of a beast to read. Brown’s goal is to capture the “complexity” of Europe’s transformation. Complexity is admirable, but it also makes for difficult reading. No single narrative thread ties the book together, and Brown sometimes seems to contradict himself. Still, Brown’s arguments are sound, and the book is generously sprinkled with engaging stories and anecdotes. Brown is careful to use at least one entertaining case study to illustrate each of his major arguments in each chapter.
One of Brown’s major purposes in the book is to set Western Christianity against a wider world, including both Eastern Christianity and the “secular” political and economic history of Western Europe.
Brown spends nearly as much time discussing Christianity in the East as in the West, and to a large degree these are the most interesting and informative chapters in the book. He reminds us that from about 400 to 750 AD, the center of gravity of the Christian world was really Constantinople. Throughout this period, Christians looked to the East Roman Emperor rather than the Roman Pope for protection and guidance on matters of doctrine. This changed only after the initial Islamic conquests, when the East Roman Empire dramatically contracted and became the small, embattled, recognizably “Byzantine” state of the later Middle Ages. This coincided with the rise of the Frankish Empire in the West, which articulated its own unique theology and developed its own unique view of the world. Whereas the Byzantine deity was an immanent being revealing himself through all aspects of the natural world, the Frankish deity was a distant Lawgiver who communicated through Laws, a literal Bible, and a few specially-designated symbols and institutions. Interaction between the two empires was minimal, and they increasingly drifted apart culturally, linguistically, and theologically.
As for the secular history of the West, Brown problematizes the notion of the “barbarian invasions,” attributing the “fall” of Rome instead to a gradual demographic shift from an urban to a rural population (which Brown prefers to call “abatement” rather than “collapse”). He also calls into question the notion advanced by some historians that Western Europe remained in some sense unified after Rome fell, either through religion or commerce. Actually, Christianity was very diverse, the papacy did not yet command the respect of the “barbarian” nations, and international commerce contracted considerably in the absence of Roman government. Instead of a unified Europe with a single center and a uniform Christianity, post-Roman Western Europe was actually a diverse patchwork of regional Christianities, each with their own local power centers. A pan-European Christian order emerged only gradually. These idiosyncratic local Christianities all competed to become the new standard for all of Europe, and each of them made their own distinctive contributions to an emerging, pan-European social order. They increasingly claimed connections to the Holy See at Rome as a way of giving credibility to the claims of their own variants of Christianity to represent an older and wider “catholic” Christian past.
One especially important contribution of Brown’s book is to show how the Christianization of Europe went hand in hand with the consolidation of “secular” power in the hands of kings and emperors. This went both ways: Christianity facilitated centralization of government, and centralization of government facilitated Christianization.
Christianization facilitated centralization in three ways. First of all, Brown argues that Christianity was a religion much better suited to “empire” than paganism. Paganism made sense in a commonwealth of cities such as the ancient Roman republic, when each city had a degree of autonomy and its own distinctive culture. An empire, however, demanded greater uniformity of culture and administration, which an evangelistic, monotheistic religion like Christianity was in a good position to provide. Secondly, Christian dioceses served as ready-made administrative units in newly-conquered territories. Bishops were often political administrators as well as spiritual counselors. Thirdly, it was in Christian monasteries that Latin books and literacy were preserved. Monks therefore played an important role in codifying laws and writing new ethnic “histories” to tie together disparate groups of people that had never previously thought of themselves as a unified nation or ethnic group.
Meanwhile, administrative centralization facilitated Christianization by basically imposing Christianity on peasant populations from above, requiring them to give up their old pagan ways, forcing them to pay tithes to the Church, and requiring baptism in conjunction with a loyalty oath to the king. Kings also made sure that churches were well-rewarded financially for the services they provided in legitimizing the state.
The close interconnection between Christianization and centralized government is basically what is meant by the term “Christendom”. By 1000 AD, Christ and kingdom were so closely allied that they were virtually indistinguishable from each other. The law of Charlemagne’s kingdom was a fusion of local laws and the universal “Christian Law” of the Bible and canons. However, Brown also emphasizes that Christendom even as late as 1000 AD was not some sort of “pure” Roman or patristic Christianity. All over Europe, and especially in the far north, Christianity was shot through with paganism and “unconventional” folk religion. The Norse continued to believe in the old gods, the Icelanders continued to practice infanticide, the Anglo-Saxons continued to recite ancient epic poetry, and visionary folk-prophets continued to crop up all over the place. Furthermore, Christian institutions were often adapted from the old pagan ones. Christian churches were built atop old holy sites, from the wood of sacred trees. Invocations of saints were modeled on invocations of the old gods and spirits. Christian holidays replaced pagan solstices. The penitential system was built on an old Irish concept of the exchange of gifts. To a large degree, the pagan peoples of Europe identified with the warlike, semi-pagan Old Testament nation of Israel rather than the rarefied New Testament Christianity of the apostles.
One of the most persistent themes in Brown’s book is that the concept of a “Dark Age” is a value-laden myth created by the Frankish Carolingian dynasty to emphasize their own cultural superiority. The so-called “Dark Age” was actually a golden age of low taxes and autonomy for the peasants, in contrast to the crushing tax burden placed upon them by the “Carolingian Renaissance”. Furthermore, many of the features of medieval religion that we find unsettling, such as the elaborate systems of taboos, actually had their origins in patristic Christianity. Medieval Christians saw their age as an age of “applied Christianity,” when they merely fine-tuned the Christianity of the Bible and the classical patristic texts and applied it to every aspect of human life on earth. Their goal was to incarnate on Paradise on earth, in their lives and in their grand sacred spaces. Like it or not, it is medieval Christianity rather than patristic Christianity that is “directly ancestral” to our own modern Western Christian worldview. Our obsession with individual sin, repentance, and salvation, for example, comes directly out of medieval Christianity. So does our obsession with reading the Bible literally and historically. By comparison, patristic Christians spent little time worrying about such things. Whether or not these developments were “good” is not for the historian to judge.
One of Brown’s major purposes in the book is to set Western Christianity against a wider world, including both Eastern Christianity and the “secular” political and economic history of Western Europe.
Brown spends nearly as much time discussing Christianity in the East as in the West, and to a large degree these are the most interesting and informative chapters in the book. He reminds us that from about 400 to 750 AD, the center of gravity of the Christian world was really Constantinople. Throughout this period, Christians looked to the East Roman Emperor rather than the Roman Pope for protection and guidance on matters of doctrine. This changed only after the initial Islamic conquests, when the East Roman Empire dramatically contracted and became the small, embattled, recognizably “Byzantine” state of the later Middle Ages. This coincided with the rise of the Frankish Empire in the West, which articulated its own unique theology and developed its own unique view of the world. Whereas the Byzantine deity was an immanent being revealing himself through all aspects of the natural world, the Frankish deity was a distant Lawgiver who communicated through Laws, a literal Bible, and a few specially-designated symbols and institutions. Interaction between the two empires was minimal, and they increasingly drifted apart culturally, linguistically, and theologically.
As for the secular history of the West, Brown problematizes the notion of the “barbarian invasions,” attributing the “fall” of Rome instead to a gradual demographic shift from an urban to a rural population (which Brown prefers to call “abatement” rather than “collapse”). He also calls into question the notion advanced by some historians that Western Europe remained in some sense unified after Rome fell, either through religion or commerce. Actually, Christianity was very diverse, the papacy did not yet command the respect of the “barbarian” nations, and international commerce contracted considerably in the absence of Roman government. Instead of a unified Europe with a single center and a uniform Christianity, post-Roman Western Europe was actually a diverse patchwork of regional Christianities, each with their own local power centers. A pan-European Christian order emerged only gradually. These idiosyncratic local Christianities all competed to become the new standard for all of Europe, and each of them made their own distinctive contributions to an emerging, pan-European social order. They increasingly claimed connections to the Holy See at Rome as a way of giving credibility to the claims of their own variants of Christianity to represent an older and wider “catholic” Christian past.
One especially important contribution of Brown’s book is to show how the Christianization of Europe went hand in hand with the consolidation of “secular” power in the hands of kings and emperors. This went both ways: Christianity facilitated centralization of government, and centralization of government facilitated Christianization.
Christianization facilitated centralization in three ways. First of all, Brown argues that Christianity was a religion much better suited to “empire” than paganism. Paganism made sense in a commonwealth of cities such as the ancient Roman republic, when each city had a degree of autonomy and its own distinctive culture. An empire, however, demanded greater uniformity of culture and administration, which an evangelistic, monotheistic religion like Christianity was in a good position to provide. Secondly, Christian dioceses served as ready-made administrative units in newly-conquered territories. Bishops were often political administrators as well as spiritual counselors. Thirdly, it was in Christian monasteries that Latin books and literacy were preserved. Monks therefore played an important role in codifying laws and writing new ethnic “histories” to tie together disparate groups of people that had never previously thought of themselves as a unified nation or ethnic group.
Meanwhile, administrative centralization facilitated Christianization by basically imposing Christianity on peasant populations from above, requiring them to give up their old pagan ways, forcing them to pay tithes to the Church, and requiring baptism in conjunction with a loyalty oath to the king. Kings also made sure that churches were well-rewarded financially for the services they provided in legitimizing the state.
The close interconnection between Christianization and centralized government is basically what is meant by the term “Christendom”. By 1000 AD, Christ and kingdom were so closely allied that they were virtually indistinguishable from each other. The law of Charlemagne’s kingdom was a fusion of local laws and the universal “Christian Law” of the Bible and canons. However, Brown also emphasizes that Christendom even as late as 1000 AD was not some sort of “pure” Roman or patristic Christianity. All over Europe, and especially in the far north, Christianity was shot through with paganism and “unconventional” folk religion. The Norse continued to believe in the old gods, the Icelanders continued to practice infanticide, the Anglo-Saxons continued to recite ancient epic poetry, and visionary folk-prophets continued to crop up all over the place. Furthermore, Christian institutions were often adapted from the old pagan ones. Christian churches were built atop old holy sites, from the wood of sacred trees. Invocations of saints were modeled on invocations of the old gods and spirits. Christian holidays replaced pagan solstices. The penitential system was built on an old Irish concept of the exchange of gifts. To a large degree, the pagan peoples of Europe identified with the warlike, semi-pagan Old Testament nation of Israel rather than the rarefied New Testament Christianity of the apostles.
One of the most persistent themes in Brown’s book is that the concept of a “Dark Age” is a value-laden myth created by the Frankish Carolingian dynasty to emphasize their own cultural superiority. The so-called “Dark Age” was actually a golden age of low taxes and autonomy for the peasants, in contrast to the crushing tax burden placed upon them by the “Carolingian Renaissance”. Furthermore, many of the features of medieval religion that we find unsettling, such as the elaborate systems of taboos, actually had their origins in patristic Christianity. Medieval Christians saw their age as an age of “applied Christianity,” when they merely fine-tuned the Christianity of the Bible and the classical patristic texts and applied it to every aspect of human life on earth. Their goal was to incarnate on Paradise on earth, in their lives and in their grand sacred spaces. Like it or not, it is medieval Christianity rather than patristic Christianity that is “directly ancestral” to our own modern Western Christian worldview. Our obsession with individual sin, repentance, and salvation, for example, comes directly out of medieval Christianity. So does our obsession with reading the Bible literally and historically. By comparison, patristic Christians spent little time worrying about such things. Whether or not these developments were “good” is not for the historian to judge.
December 25, 2007
Hands down the best History book I have ever read; definitely the best read for a comprehensive look at post-Roman "late antiquity".
The preeminent English language scholar of the world after Rome, Peter Brown makes history interesting again by illuminating large periods of time and significant historical and religious figures that have been traditionally overlooked by historians, while at the same time discarding the esoteric writing styles that have made history overly cumbersome in the past.
The preeminent English language scholar of the world after Rome, Peter Brown makes history interesting again by illuminating large periods of time and significant historical and religious figures that have been traditionally overlooked by historians, while at the same time discarding the esoteric writing styles that have made history overly cumbersome in the past.
November 9, 2020
I think Peter Brown surely is the most enjoyable scholar to read, regardless of one’s agreement or disagreements with his conclusions. A magnificent book, truly deserving of the thousands upon thousands of citations it receives in others’ academic writing. I enjoyed the last chapter: ‘In gear dagum “In Days of Yore”: Northern Christendom and its Past’ to be the most enjoyable and without a doubt (for me!) the most thought provoking chapter of the whole book. Also worth mentioning: in the entire book, Brown singles out one book for criticism by name (albeit indirectly): Thomas Cahill’s “How the Irish Saved Civilization”. When I was a 17 year old undergraduate meeting with my advisor, who was also the first medievalist I had ever met outside of books, he cautioned me against Cahill’s book. It was a humorous moment for me ten years later to see the same book mentioned.
July 21, 2023
Excellent, excellent work. Disagreed with a few things here or there (not surprising given that it’s a church history by a secular author) and his polemics against the catastrophists are hit-and-miss. Some land really well and are persuasive to me, but some come off as special pleading.
Read
October 18, 2025I guess it makes a good source to "challenge the narrative", but within the framework of the humanism and secularism it works with it just doesn't really get you that far.
Okay, so it was just a bunch of monks arguing about stuff that doesn't matter? The economic decay was real and recorded.
I really hoped, he'd get into *why* this became the narrative in the first place, and work his way backward. But given that he treats religion as nothing more than social and political tool of the elites to gain power, I am not surprised he achieves little more than reducing theological disputes into their sociological side-effects.
I think I'm done reading secular academics about religious history.
Okay, so it was just a bunch of monks arguing about stuff that doesn't matter? The economic decay was real and recorded.
I really hoped, he'd get into *why* this became the narrative in the first place, and work his way backward. But given that he treats religion as nothing more than social and political tool of the elites to gain power, I am not surprised he achieves little more than reducing theological disputes into their sociological side-effects.
I think I'm done reading secular academics about religious history.
April 8, 2024
Brown argues Europe didn’t fall into a barbarous dark age so much as lose its center. Diverse micro-Christendoms then arose from local cultures.
May 2, 2019
Right. The diversity of being killed for not being a Christian.
And the Triumph in the sense that they would kill anyone, young and old. Else, they were not much different from dogs and cats, because their prophet never said anything about basic hygiene. Quite ironic given that He is sold as the creator of both seen and unseen.
And the Triumph in the sense that they would kill anyone, young and old. Else, they were not much different from dogs and cats, because their prophet never said anything about basic hygiene. Quite ironic given that He is sold as the creator of both seen and unseen.
August 12, 2018
* I read the earlier edition.
August 5, 2025
Very good book: a fuller explanation of the ideas in World of Late Antiquity. To over-simplify: Brown's thesis is that Europe after the fall of the Western Roman empire, though lacking the unity a vast empire provided, was nevertheless still connected by a vast Christian church, which held onto the influence it had wielded in the Christian Roman world, facilitating the exchange of knowledge between cultures and kingdoms while doing its best to impose a unifying doctrine on them. Brown traces the rise of Christian institutions and the development of Christian thought in this period, and, though he leans on primary sources and archeology to support his claims, this remains a very philosophical treatment of history, more interested in trying to examine and reconstruct late antique thought rather than, say, late antique economics. It's an approach that I think works for a period of time as vast and as maligned in popular and historical consciousness as this one.
I like nonfiction that tries to tackle big questions head-on, and here I found a lot of answers, or at least clarifications, of questions I had as someone very interested in Roman history but with a shaky grasp of medieval history. How could a continent full of diverse religious traditions be overrun by a single, viciously exclusive, one? How did Western Europeans after 500 conceptualize the collapse of Rome in the West? How was the Eastern Empire viewed by the western world? How did Christian Europe reckon with its pagan past? Anyone interested in these questions will find satisfactory answers here.
I like nonfiction that tries to tackle big questions head-on, and here I found a lot of answers, or at least clarifications, of questions I had as someone very interested in Roman history but with a shaky grasp of medieval history. How could a continent full of diverse religious traditions be overrun by a single, viciously exclusive, one? How did Western Europeans after 500 conceptualize the collapse of Rome in the West? How was the Eastern Empire viewed by the western world? How did Christian Europe reckon with its pagan past? Anyone interested in these questions will find satisfactory answers here.
January 28, 2023
Esse livro me custou 15 meses e 4 leituras paralelas pra melhorar o entendimento do seu conteúdo. A culpa não é toda dele, é muito mais do azar de ter caído no meu período menos produtivo de leitura dos últimos anos. Muito conteúdo é comprimido em 500 páginas, e isso pode tornar a leitura maçante para um leitor sem ritmo como eu fui ao longo dessa leitura, mas no fundo, essa capacidade de síntese é um dos maiores méritos de Peter Brown.
Esse é o quarto livro dele, e possivelmente o que mais me ensinou. É incrível o ponto ótimo entre um livro da história medieval e um livro puramente sobre a Igreja e a Cristandade que Brown encontra. O leitor se sente ao mesmo tempo contemplado no interesse específico da história da igreja, que é o objetivo explícito do livro, e também muito bem informado sobre os eventos históricos que a pautam.
Holística por excelência, essa obra dá o panorama do espalhamento da igreja com o correto respeito aos méritos da Idade Média, sempre tão menosprezada enquanto fenômeno cultural e histórico. Também tem sempre em vista o ponto de vista cristão de cada peculiaridade, fazendo sua análise parecer sempre equilibrada entre o escrutínio externo e a prepotência endógena da própria igreja ao discutir cada tema exposto ao longo desse livro.
Em resumo, excelente livro para o aprendizado sobre a igreja primitiva ocidental, muito embora várias vezes denso e complexo.
Esse é o quarto livro dele, e possivelmente o que mais me ensinou. É incrível o ponto ótimo entre um livro da história medieval e um livro puramente sobre a Igreja e a Cristandade que Brown encontra. O leitor se sente ao mesmo tempo contemplado no interesse específico da história da igreja, que é o objetivo explícito do livro, e também muito bem informado sobre os eventos históricos que a pautam.
Holística por excelência, essa obra dá o panorama do espalhamento da igreja com o correto respeito aos méritos da Idade Média, sempre tão menosprezada enquanto fenômeno cultural e histórico. Também tem sempre em vista o ponto de vista cristão de cada peculiaridade, fazendo sua análise parecer sempre equilibrada entre o escrutínio externo e a prepotência endógena da própria igreja ao discutir cada tema exposto ao longo desse livro.
Em resumo, excelente livro para o aprendizado sobre a igreja primitiva ocidental, muito embora várias vezes denso e complexo.
February 22, 2025
This book should be titled The Rise of Roman Catholicism. The author mentions only briefly that most areas of what is now Germany, Uk, Ireland France, Spain practiced a syncretic Christianity that coexisted with paganism. But local elites wanting to give themselves more legitimacy and authority converted to a very specific type of Roman Christianity that refused to allow paganism in public life at all. This creating a “truly” Christian Europe
February 4, 2020
As in his magisterial biography of Augustine, Brown here traces the development of "late antiquity" through the generous use of colorful anecdotes drawn from primary sources, arguing, broadly speaking, for a diversity of "micro-Christendoms" flowering across early medieval Europe in the aftermath of the Roman Empire, with particular focus on the interaction between emerging Christianity and the pagan past of each subculture. Also echoing his work on Augustine, Brown here paints vivid portraits of the social, political, and even religious worlds that form his subject matter as they come under the influence (or domination) of Christian society, yet with only the most cursory attention to the contours of Christian theology itself. The total absence of citations of sources, quite limited bibliography, and lack of a full overarching narrative (or at least some concluding synthesis of the wide-ranging individual accounts) may likewise prove frustrating to serious students.
September 27, 2011
Great book. Read B. Hawk's review for a detailed analyses. I liked Brown's metaphor of Europe as a network of largely independent nodes (any one of which could fail without breaking the whole), instead of a center (Rome) with concentric rings. If you don't like complex ideas without a central unifying thread, then the early Middle Ages are not for you. As Brown and others point out, this was a time of localization and independent pathways. See Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean, 400-800 for a good companion book, covering economic and social issues.
March 17, 2013
Fantastic religious and cultural history of the first millennium A.D. Brown helps to illuminate both the unity of Christendom and its considerable diversity.
December 7, 2013
Brown remains the best writer in my view on these questions. Long book but rewards the time spent.
November 26, 2023
Brown is always amazing at synthesizing and smoothly moving back and forth between the historian's and the historical agents' perspective.
May 18, 2025
Peter Brown’s The Rise of Western Christendom is a scholarly odyssey through the murky waters of late antiquity and early medieval Europe, and while it often reads like an Indiana Jones expedition through dusty monasteries and forgotten bishoprics, it’s thankfully armed with footnotes instead of a whip. Brown, a master of subtle connections and cultural nuance, takes us from the twilight of Rome to the dawning glow of Latin Christendom, charting Christianity’s improbable spread into the foggy margins of what we now call the West.
One of the book’s great triumphs is its ability to rethink familiar narratives. Brown doesn’t just rehash the “fall of Rome” like a tired professor on autopilot; he reimagines it, suggesting transformation rather than collapse. His treatment of religious life beyond the traditional centers (like Ireland or what is now Poland) is refreshingly panoramic. Brown insists that Christianity wasn’t just dragged westward kicking and screaming; it was reshaped, reinterpreted, and often cheerfully adopted by people we usually imagine as grunting in furs, painting themselves in blue woad, and rampaging through "real civilization".
That said, this isn’t a book for the faint of heart. Nor is it for those short of coffee. At times, Brown’s density of detail feels like being smothered by a particularly heavy woolen tunic woven from ecclesiastical trivia. He often plunges so deeply into a particular bishop’s diary or the sociological implications of relic worship that you may forget what century you’re in. And while the book is frequently illuminating, it sometimes reads like it was written for an elite seminar of Peter Browns, by Peter Brown. Readers without a theological or historical background might find themselves drowning Latin phrases before they can even locate Aachen, Arles, or Autun on the map.
Still, there’s a sly charm to Brown’s narrative voice. He has a tweedy enthusiasm that occasionally borders on the delightfully eccentric. He seems to genuinely love the obscure corners of history, and his joy is infectious, even if it comes wrapped in 712 pages of intricate ecclesiastical development. The Rise of Western Christendom would only be considered beach reading if your beach happens to be next to a monastery. However, it’s a tour de force for anyone willing to wander through the long, winding corridors of early medieval thought with the occasional detour into the life of a hermit saint for good measure.
One of the book’s great triumphs is its ability to rethink familiar narratives. Brown doesn’t just rehash the “fall of Rome” like a tired professor on autopilot; he reimagines it, suggesting transformation rather than collapse. His treatment of religious life beyond the traditional centers (like Ireland or what is now Poland) is refreshingly panoramic. Brown insists that Christianity wasn’t just dragged westward kicking and screaming; it was reshaped, reinterpreted, and often cheerfully adopted by people we usually imagine as grunting in furs, painting themselves in blue woad, and rampaging through "real civilization".
That said, this isn’t a book for the faint of heart. Nor is it for those short of coffee. At times, Brown’s density of detail feels like being smothered by a particularly heavy woolen tunic woven from ecclesiastical trivia. He often plunges so deeply into a particular bishop’s diary or the sociological implications of relic worship that you may forget what century you’re in. And while the book is frequently illuminating, it sometimes reads like it was written for an elite seminar of Peter Browns, by Peter Brown. Readers without a theological or historical background might find themselves drowning Latin phrases before they can even locate Aachen, Arles, or Autun on the map.
Still, there’s a sly charm to Brown’s narrative voice. He has a tweedy enthusiasm that occasionally borders on the delightfully eccentric. He seems to genuinely love the obscure corners of history, and his joy is infectious, even if it comes wrapped in 712 pages of intricate ecclesiastical development. The Rise of Western Christendom would only be considered beach reading if your beach happens to be next to a monastery. However, it’s a tour de force for anyone willing to wander through the long, winding corridors of early medieval thought with the occasional detour into the life of a hermit saint for good measure.
December 10, 2025
I’m honestly not sure how this book made it onto my reading list. While I enjoy history—usually via podcasts—this book is clearly designed for history majors or graduate students, not for the casual reader. So, take my impressions with a grain of salt: this is a review from a layperson’s perspective.
The biggest hurdle is that Brown assumes you already know the history of the late Roman Empire and the so-called "Dark Ages" inside and out. He skips over major events or mentions them only in passing, jumping back and forth in time. I later learned that Peter Brown is essentially the father of the concept of "Late Antiquity," shifting the academic view from "decline" to "transformation." That explains a lot: he isn't just recounting history here; he is engaging in a high-level argument with other historians (not with me).
However, the parts I could grasp were fascinating. The book does an excellent job explaining how diverse Christian practices actually were. There was no single authority directing its evolution; instead, you see distinct, localized versions of the faith developing independently and coming into conflict with each other. It becomes clear that we easily could have ended up with a very different version of Christianity than we did (we actually got two - compare Catholic to Orthodox church). Brown also illuminates the two-way street of history: he shows not only how geopolitical changes impacted Christianity, but how the religion itself shaped the political landscape.
But getting to those insights was a struggle. The writing style is dry, dense, and often clunky. Even when Brown tries to spice things up with imagery or "flowery" language, it often falls flat or just feels imprecise. For instance, he writes that Europe was "crisscrossed by Christian monasteries"—a phrasing that makes no geometric sense unless he meant travel routes (which the text didn't support). "Studded" would have been the obvious, clear choice.
So, a word of warning: do not pick this up expecting a flowing narrative or an easy read. It is a highly informative book, but unless you have a solid background in the era, diving in is a risk.
The biggest hurdle is that Brown assumes you already know the history of the late Roman Empire and the so-called "Dark Ages" inside and out. He skips over major events or mentions them only in passing, jumping back and forth in time. I later learned that Peter Brown is essentially the father of the concept of "Late Antiquity," shifting the academic view from "decline" to "transformation." That explains a lot: he isn't just recounting history here; he is engaging in a high-level argument with other historians (not with me).
However, the parts I could grasp were fascinating. The book does an excellent job explaining how diverse Christian practices actually were. There was no single authority directing its evolution; instead, you see distinct, localized versions of the faith developing independently and coming into conflict with each other. It becomes clear that we easily could have ended up with a very different version of Christianity than we did (we actually got two - compare Catholic to Orthodox church). Brown also illuminates the two-way street of history: he shows not only how geopolitical changes impacted Christianity, but how the religion itself shaped the political landscape.
But getting to those insights was a struggle. The writing style is dry, dense, and often clunky. Even when Brown tries to spice things up with imagery or "flowery" language, it often falls flat or just feels imprecise. For instance, he writes that Europe was "crisscrossed by Christian monasteries"—a phrasing that makes no geometric sense unless he meant travel routes (which the text didn't support). "Studded" would have been the obvious, clear choice.
So, a word of warning: do not pick this up expecting a flowing narrative or an easy read. It is a highly informative book, but unless you have a solid background in the era, diving in is a risk.
July 26, 2021
I recommend any book by Peter Brown for an authoritative perspective on the development of Christian history. This book is lengthy and at times a slow read. But it is interesting all the way through. The final chapter talks about thunderstones and monsters amid the spread of Christian faith to the Vikings and the people of Iceland.
The penultimate chapter briefly re-assesses the Carolingian Renaissance as a "correctio" and, rather than a rebirth of culture spurred on by platonic philosophy, a course correction from paganism to Christian faith.
There is a great amount to learn in this book and I look forward to picking up another book by Peter Brown soon after I take a breather. Other books to read as supplements include Judith Herrin's books on Byzantine history and, in particular, on Ravenna, Steven Runciman's books on Byzantine history, John Julius Norwich's books on Byzantine, Venetian, Mediterranean, and Western European histories. I look forward to reading Marshall G.S. Hodgson's volumes, "The Venture of Islam", to learn more about the later rise of the Abbasid Empire in the east and the spread of Islam, its mix with Orthodox Christianity in the Levant, and its challenges to Roman Christianity in the west.
If you want a broad survey of Christian history, I recommend reading Philip Schaff's "History of the Christian Church" and then deep dive into Peter Brown books, which are highly specific in certain subjects.
The penultimate chapter briefly re-assesses the Carolingian Renaissance as a "correctio" and, rather than a rebirth of culture spurred on by platonic philosophy, a course correction from paganism to Christian faith.
There is a great amount to learn in this book and I look forward to picking up another book by Peter Brown soon after I take a breather. Other books to read as supplements include Judith Herrin's books on Byzantine history and, in particular, on Ravenna, Steven Runciman's books on Byzantine history, John Julius Norwich's books on Byzantine, Venetian, Mediterranean, and Western European histories. I look forward to reading Marshall G.S. Hodgson's volumes, "The Venture of Islam", to learn more about the later rise of the Abbasid Empire in the east and the spread of Islam, its mix with Orthodox Christianity in the Levant, and its challenges to Roman Christianity in the west.
If you want a broad survey of Christian history, I recommend reading Philip Schaff's "History of the Christian Church" and then deep dive into Peter Brown books, which are highly specific in certain subjects.
December 2, 2024
There's this Father John Misty lyric I keep thinking about with the release of his new album,
"After a millennia of good times/ God said, 'Hey now, let's have a dream/ Where we raise the stakes a little/ Come on, let's make things interesting/ Parachute into the Anthropocene/ An amnesiac, a himbo ken doll/ I guess time does makes fools of us all'"
I don't know why but I hear it and just kinda go hell yeah.
This sorta made me understand why this stuck with me. I love looking into Christianity, it feels so detached to me and so connected to the world that I kinda have been guided to learn about it. I've joked about going to seminary across from campus but won't only cause it's Methodist and I consider myself Episcopalian through the process of elimination. Brown knows how to tell a story and make theology move in a literary sense as war is to the masses. However, I am special and hate war writing so suck it. Anyway, yea, it's great and I learned a lot, especially about Augustine and English Christianity which I'll always welcome. Just a good history book.
Don't ask the love you dare for a prediction wherein the lovers of tomorrow are involved, I guess time just makes fools of us all.
"After a millennia of good times/ God said, 'Hey now, let's have a dream/ Where we raise the stakes a little/ Come on, let's make things interesting/ Parachute into the Anthropocene/ An amnesiac, a himbo ken doll/ I guess time does makes fools of us all'"
I don't know why but I hear it and just kinda go hell yeah.
This sorta made me understand why this stuck with me. I love looking into Christianity, it feels so detached to me and so connected to the world that I kinda have been guided to learn about it. I've joked about going to seminary across from campus but won't only cause it's Methodist and I consider myself Episcopalian through the process of elimination. Brown knows how to tell a story and make theology move in a literary sense as war is to the masses. However, I am special and hate war writing so suck it. Anyway, yea, it's great and I learned a lot, especially about Augustine and English Christianity which I'll always welcome. Just a good history book.
Don't ask the love you dare for a prediction wherein the lovers of tomorrow are involved, I guess time just makes fools of us all.
December 28, 2021
Peter Brown writes with great enthusiasm and unbelievable lucidity about the complexities of the history of Christianity in Europe in the second half of the first century. The details are so intricate that a non-historian reader may find them difficult to absorb in one reading or without taking notes. Yet the overall impression is still clear to the casual reader. Christianity was not just the result of missionary entrepreneurship nor of the imposition of invaders. It was a combination of many factors brought about by a desire for order. Academic knowledge and superstitious beliefs rooted in the pagan past played a strong part in permeating a strong desire for a new calibration. Brown does a good job of bringing together various factors, in great detail, that contributed to the spread of Christianity from an obscure Middle Eastern sect to a widespread unifying catalyst that reached the northernmost parts of Europe bringing about relative homogeneity to a widely diverse continent
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 29, 2024
This is a book to take slowly, as its ambition and erudition are so vast that they are best enjoyed in concentrated, but well-paused reading sessions. Brown is one of the most evocative and creative historians I know. Quite aside from his mastery of his material, you will live for those quick sketches of characters or situations that suddenly bring the world of late antiquity Europe and the Mediterranean to life. He has given me a fresh look at the late Roman Empire, the Byzantines, the rise of Islam, the Barbarian kingdoms, the Franks, and Celtic Christianity .
If there is one (mild) criticism that I might offer is that the book feels more like a sewn-together set of short studies of individual regions and themes rather than a narrative whole. That said, the introductory essay does an excellent job of bringing the whole picture together.
If there is one (mild) criticism that I might offer is that the book feels more like a sewn-together set of short studies of individual regions and themes rather than a narrative whole. That said, the introductory essay does an excellent job of bringing the whole picture together.
November 4, 2023
Peter Brown is arguably the most influential scholar in the field of Christian history. This piece is revolutionary, huge, and prolific. Most importantly, the global approach is *so* needed for European/Western Christian students/scholars.
The work, however, it can still fall into those older approaches/issues here and there. For example, there is an entire section about why "Dark Ages" is a bad term (yay!) and why pairing terms like "barbarian" with "archaic" has been improperly used in contrast to the "true" and "enlightened" religious traditions categorized within Roman Urbanism. Then, sadly, the rest of the book goes on to refer to the Early Middle Ages as the "Dark Ages" - ugh.
The work, however, it can still fall into those older approaches/issues here and there. For example, there is an entire section about why "Dark Ages" is a bad term (yay!) and why pairing terms like "barbarian" with "archaic" has been improperly used in contrast to the "true" and "enlightened" religious traditions categorized within Roman Urbanism. Then, sadly, the rest of the book goes on to refer to the Early Middle Ages as the "Dark Ages" - ugh.
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