Customer Reviews

The End of Ancient Christianity

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Markus traces the historic shifts which marked a transformation of the Christian movement, from the popular primitive church of the first centuries, into a great bulwark of the medieval social order. He shows how the Christian community slowly divided into three orders -- of lay people, the all-male clergy, and the celibate monastics. And then the question emerged as to which order ranked highest. At first, the lay people were most important, since they chose and supported all church leaders from among themselves. Later, professional clergymen established themselves as state-backed supervisors over the laity. But by early medieval times it was the celibate monks who emerged as the Christians of highest rank. With their isolation from the world and from sex, the monastics seemed holier than either the local clergy (who were still mainly married), or lay families. In both the West and East, bishops, patriarchs, and popes were increasingly drawn from the ranks of male monks. It was a momentous trend. Markus claims, "The ascetic take-over [roughly in the time of Pope Gregory the Great (590-604)] signals the end of ancient Christianity". (p. 17)

I think Markus does the church a service, helping us distinguish layers of Christian tradition as they were added, and to see how these differed from the original Jesus movement.

-author of Correcting Jesus

Markus' treatment of the culture of early Christianity is fascinating. More than any other scholar I have read, he is adept at showing the broader significance of various parts of Early Christianity.