Customer Reviews

The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, A.D. 200-1000, 2nd Edition (The Making of Europe)

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Professor Brown has substantially revised The Rise of Western Christendom, originally published in 1996 as part of the "Making of Europe" series edited by Jacques Le Goff. The result is a much stronger work, which will appeal to scholars of Late Antiquity more than the first edition while still captivating the general reader.

In the second edition Brown continues to treat the localization of Christianity in regions from the North Atlantic to Asia. He describes how Irishmen, Saxons, and others transferred to their homeland relics, styles of art and architecture, and ecclesiastical customs, thus believing that they "had brought to their own region a 'microcosm' which reflected, with satisfactory completeness, the 'macrocosm' of a worldwide Christianity. . . . They strove to cancel out the hiatus between 'center' and 'periphery' by making 'little Romes' available on their home ground" (15). Brown calls the local variations of a broader Christianity "micro-Christendoms." In his characterization of the British Isles, he writes "The religious leaders of every region claimed to possess at home a set of customs and doctrines which were ultimately derived from 'true' centers of Christian learning and practice in a wider world" (359). Through statements like this, Brown tries to erase the model of thinking about Christianity in terms of "center" and "periphery," a theory he borrows from anthropology and religious studies.

Yet, by entitling the work The Rise of Christianity in the West, the author reifies the notion of Christianity as a "western" phenomenon although a significant portion of the book treats the localization and perpetuation of Christianity in non-western regions such as Syria and Persia. In fact, his discussion of the climate of competition among religions in the East is every bit as penetrating as his examination of the West. A more fitting title to this abolition of core-periphery, therefore, might be Micro-Christendoms: Christianity and Diversity from 200-1000.

The first edition received mixed reviews. One historian of Late Antiquity wrote that ". . . the exuberance and delight inherent in his interpretation . . . ought to make this book attractive and influential" (Journal of Theological Studies 48.2 [1997], 671), while another scholar of the period claimed that "its picture is skewed, and its conclusions are not demonstrated" (American Historical Review 102.5 [1997], 1463). With this second edition, Brown will continue to elicit criticism from those believing that he is too theory-oriented at the expense of doing proper "positivist" work. On the other hand, many of the problems which scholars of Late Antiquity pointed out in the first edition focused on the lack of documentation, and it is here, among other places, that the second edition enhances the work. Although the original had no notes, this version has sixty pages detailing the author's sources. The first edition had a seven-page [End Page 139] bibliography with no primary sources; the second contains a forty-four page bibliography, including eleven pages of primary sources.

Another way in which Brown improves the second edition is by adding two new chapters, "Powerhouses of Prayer: Monasticism in Western Europe" and "The Making of Sapiens: Religion and Culture in Continental Europe and in Ireland." He also amends his chapter "Christianity in Asia" and renames it "Christianity in Asia and the Rise of Islam." And he divides the chapter "Christianities of the North: Ireland and Saxon Britain" into two separate chapters, treating local Christianity in each region more fully.

Furthermore, Brown refines the layout of the visual aids and adds to them. The first edition contained four maps at the beginning of the book whereas the second has ten maps placed strategically throughout the body of the text to correspond to the geographical areas under discussion. Likewise, the second edition has chronologies arranged within the narrative to give the reader a point of reference for the persons, places, and events being examined. These additions allow the reader to organize and contextualize the contents, a point which is especially helpful since the book covers such a broad period and has a vast regional scope. Finally, the placement of sub-headings throughout the text strengthens the structure of the second edition. The reader will find the sub-topics easier to configure within the broader thesis.

This book makes a useful text for upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses in religion and history. It is helpful for its survey of Christianity, the questions it raises regarding the relationship of religion to ethnicity and locality, and its notes and bibliography, which point to related studies. At $29.95, the paperback is a reasonable addition to the individual scholar's library.

Nathan Howard

Peter Brown, professor of History at Princeton University, has written an amazing work. While so many Western Civ courses gloss over the "Dark Ages," the Early Middle Ages are brilliantly illuminated by this book, which offers a panoramic view of early Christianity. It covers over 900 years, from the beginnings of Christainity in the Roman Empire to the conversion of Scandinavia. Brown focuses on the unique forms of Christainity that arose throughout the world, from the Celtic and Northumbrian Christianity centered on the Irish monestary of Iona, to the Nestorian Christianity in the dying Persian Empire. He discusses suscinctly the rise of Islam, and its initial relations with the well established Christian communities of the East. Brown writes with tremendous clarity and grace. Most importantly, he has a keen knack for capturing the spiritual world views of historical figures; the piety and passion of men like Gregory of Tours, the Emperor Justinian and St. Columba come brilliantly to life thanks to Brown's lively yet erudite prose. Invaluable to scholars, laypeople will find it highly readable and thuroughly edifying.

Peter Brown first came to my attention through his scholarship in the study of Augustine, one of my particular interests in the field of church history. His biography of Augustine is considered one of the standards, having been written first in the 1960s, and revised for the turn of the millennium in 2000. This speaks to the length of his career and involvement with the study of church history generally, of which this volume is a wonderful survey.

This book, 'The Rise of Western Christendom', looks at the first 1000 years (the first half of Christian history). Despite its title, it does not focus exclusively on the idea of Christianity as a Western phenomenon. One of the great strengths of this historical survey, as opposed to many of the previous generation, is that it does not stop at the borders of Rome, nor does it take a linear progression approach to the history. Brown preserves the diversity inherent in the original church, showing the growth in Latin and Greek areas, as well as other areas that would arise such as the Antioch/Aleppo area, where Coptic and Syriac were significant languages, and art, architecture, liturgical development and scholarship thrived for centuries as a major centre for Christianity. Brown also discusses 'mirco-Christendoms', pockets both within and outside of the original Roman Imperial borders where Christianity was planted and grew more or less independently of central authority and direction.

To understand the history of Western Europe (of which this volume is part of a series on the topic), one must have a wider perspective than just the goings-on that took place on the European continental mainland. Indeed, from the very first lines, Brown starts with the city of Edessa, located in the ancient Fertile Crescent area, and the ancient capital of Ctesiphon, a city located very near modern-day Baghdad, which ruled a powerful empire that did not include any of the European continent, but which had profound influence over the peoples and empires on the European continent for centuries. Also included in Brown's history are peripheral figures - barbarians, farmers, frontierspeople - who often get overlooked in favour of the royal/imperial lines of history.

Brown looks both at individuals and institutions in his historical development and analysis. Individuals such as Augustine, the Cappadocian Fathers, Patrick, Clovis, Justinian and others are prominent, but the overall development of institutions and communities takes the larger portion of the text. There are major innovations such as monasticism and the rise of central church authorities and structures, and smaller institutions such as community governments. Brown includes the various tales of conversion for the different nations (the deliberations of the Icelanders, for example, versus the more forced conversions of the Norse) as well as the theological and administrative variations and homogenisation in the more central Mediterranean region. Brown also deals with the rise of Islam, the varying ways in which Christian communities and Muslim communities interacted and clashed, sometimes violently, but sometimes coming to mutually beneficial accords.

This is a book for students and scholars, although the general interest reader with a curiosity for church history and how it fits into the larger historical frame will also find this text useful. There are maps scattered throughout the text, as well as charts and tables. The book includes extensive endnotes for the scholar, but reading through the narrative does not depend upon them (saving one from having to flip back and forth endlessly). There is an appendix entitled 'Coordinated Chronological Tables' that traces the history from circa 100 - 1000, showing important events in the East, West, British Isles, and Scandanavia. A 44-page bibliography (one third primary sources, the rest secondary sources) and 27-page index round out the scholarship tools, making this an incredibly useful reference resource.

This book is often used at my seminary for the first half of church history, and is used at many schools (undergraduate and graduate level) for history courses generally. Brown's text is engaging and clear, easy to follow and well developed. It is a pleasure to read in addition to being interesting in material and presentation. Brown's text had both depth and breadth, not sacrificing one aspect for the other, but managing to hold both in good proportion to the other.

Let me say first that I have been a great admirer of Peter Brown for many years. His World of Late Antiquity was a seminal work that inspired a generation of scholars to look past the tired old concepts of the fall of the Roman empire, and his biography of Augustine, recently updated, is magnificent.

It was with some excitement then that I sat down to see what Brown had to say in a work that covers a larger span of time than most of his previous studies. And it was with a sinking heart that I realized, after a few pages, that this one-time master of prose has lost his way.

In his lengthy introduction, Brown seems determined to undermine every preconception we may have about Europe's evolution in late antiquity and the early middle ages. To reinforce his point, he puts quotation marks around a myriad of words and phrases: "Roman", "barbarian", "imperial", "Western." For a page or two this seems like a reasonable way of signalling that these words may not mean what we think they mean. But the trouble is, he never stops: the quotation marks multiply, sometimes occurring a dozen times on a page, and seldom less than once per paragraph. And it becomes impossible to know what he is trying to signify. If he finds words like "Roman" and "barbarian" useful, why doesn't he simply define what he means by them, rather than distancing himself from them? It seems pointless to contrast barbarian and Roman, if you believe that the one is not really barbarian, and the other not really Roman.

And it gets worse. What are we to make of the fact that Irish kings ruled over "plains"? Do the quotation marks signify that the kings called them by that term (or its Gaelic equivalent), or that they were not really plains? Why the quotes around "Carolingian minuscule", not just on introduction but in subsequent references -- was the script not truly Carolingian, or not truly minuscule?

I don't know who should take the most blame here, Brown for repeatedly flagging words as not meaning what we think they mean, without bothering to find alternatives that he feels are more accurate, or his editor for letting him get away with it.

I realize other readers may not be as bothered by this sort of thing as I am, but I found it baffling and, ultimately, offputting. I seldom return a book, and I never thought I would return one of Peter Brown's, but that is what I did in this case.

The book goes beyond the rather narrow sounding scope of the title; Brown nicely covers the changes in politics and economics that fostered (or hindered) the spead of Christianity from Ireland to the Middle East. The subject matter is cogently presented and enjoyable to read, unlike other scholarship of this era where authors tend to prove to the reader how much they know leaving the reader somewhat in the dust. Fascinating (at least to me!) is the number of texts that Brown cites that show the changes in orthodoxy from one century to another in various geographical areas, and how those texts came to be preserved. Conclusions are based on either these texts or archiology, not flights of a priori fantasy that all-too-often formed the basis for earlier works on this period. All in all, a book of great scholarship, but most approachable.

If you think of the period between 400 and 1000 AD as the "Dark Ages", Peter Brown's masterly account of the interactions between the failing Western Roman Empire, the embattled Eastern Roman Empire, and the rising Christian Church will flood the time with light for you. In a sense, the work is a summing-up of Brown's 40-plus years working in this field. That he updated it to take account of recent archaeological finds attests to the flexibility of his thinking. He does a fine job of "listening" hard to the faint echoes that these new finds provide. In the process he makes an entire "dark" period come vibrantly to life.

I read this in conjunction with Peter Heather's The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians. While Heather's style is more informal than Brown's, he is no less of an historian, and his book is not "pop" history. After reading the two books back-to-back, I do not see the period the same way I did before. Brown brings out themes which recur constantly throughout all time periods, not least our own--which to my mind is the very essence of good history writing.

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.

This book is wide ranging, well-written, and full of vivid detail. One of the most important aims of this book is to situate the history of the end of the Roman Empire in the west in its broader context and to trace how Christianity, particularly western Christianity, arose out of that wider context. It is a triumph in aiming at understanding how the people of a period viewed themselves. The views the Romans had of themselves in, say, 500 AD is an important grounding for the student who has been taught that civilization had ended by the last decade of the fifth century. This is too short a space to review the book properly, but I will add a more personal note to encourage the prospective reader: this book is a joy to read; Brown has a fine and distinctive style that mixes the concrete and the universal in a way few historians can. This is a history of ideas, more than anything, and the student of ideas will find the book worth its weight in gold.

It goes without saying that one can disagree with Brown on various points, but his achievement stands, criticism aside. I, for one, find that he emphasizes the growing Christian culture at the time to the expense of a realistic appraisal of the state of society after the last western emperor was deposed. One might read this book in conjunction with Ward-Perkins' THE FALL OF ROME, which provides a detailed archaeological perspective.

This is a landmark work of scholarship on the transformation of the Late Roman world into Medieval Christendom in the West. The period begins with the reign of Constantine and ends with the Carolingian era. The study covers a long period (from about the 4th to the 10th Centuries ACE) during which a distinctive Western Christendom emerges with Byzantium to the East and Islam to the South.

The study commences with the Christianisation of the late Roman Empire before and then under Constantine and his successors. The traditional narrative of the post Roman period tells of the role of the Roman Church playing the role of unifier of the West during the "chaos" of the post-Roman world through Christianising the regions beyond the old limes. Brown however looks beyond the macro-level to examine the emerging of many "micro-Christendom's" which though sharing a common Roman Christianity, go on to develop unique self-contained Christian worlds. These were effectively "mini-Romes", each with its own set of peculiarities and characteristics. These micro-Christendom's include Ireland, Northumbria, regions of Gaul, Italy and Spain. Critical in the process was the role of local holy men and women and saints in bringing the "high" culture of Rome to local communities and adapting them to local conditions. This view of the era stands in contrast to older histories which emphasise the role of macro-policy decisions taken in Rome and Aachen in the Christianisation of Western Europe rather than what happened on the ground at the local level.

Brown also places the development of Western European Christianity within the wider context of the Mediterranean world. He notes that throughout the period, the centre of gravity for Christianity remained in the East, centred on Constantinople in whose cultural orbit the West moved. This for example, is reflected in the self conscious adoption by Charlemagne of Byzantine models when he built his church in the new capital at Aachen. This approach stands in contrast to earlier histories which generally look at the process of change in Western Europe as being driven largely from within without regard to external influences. (The point is brought home in a striking fashion through music if one were to listen to the reconstruction by Ensemble Organum of the Old Roman Chant of the Western Church (ultimately supplanted by the Gregorian Chant) which though sung in Latin appears barely distinguishable in its musical form from the Byzantine Chant).

The narrative ends with the Carolingian period with Charlemagne crowned Holy Roman Emperor, bringing most of Western Europe under the political control of a single rule for the first time since Roman times even if not long lasting. This conventionally is taken to be the definitive break between Later Antiquity and its aftermath - and the Medieval period. This was also a period when Islam acquires hegemony in the Eastern and Southern Mediterranean and Byzantium is pushed back to its Anatolian heartland, leaving the West in the end as dominant in the Christian world.

Brown however does more than set out an interpretation of the period he studies. He touches on some of the key debates that underpin scholarship of the period. The classical view enunciated by Gibbons would hold that Rome fell in a sudden cataclysm that took Europe into the "Dark Ages" - until it gradually pulled itself out of that darkness many centuries later. A later view developing in the 60s and 70s however suggests a gradual decline of Rome that began well before the 5th century and a continuation of Roman life after the fall of the Western Empire over many centuries with a slow transition to the Middle Ages. Brown is perhaps one of the best known exponents of the latter view, for example in "The World of Late Antiquity". An inflection of the gradualist argument is the famous Pirenne thesis which saw a continuity of Roman life in the West well after the end of the last Western Emperor's reign in 476 ACE, exemplified by the uninterrupted trade and religious connections of the West with the Mediterranean World. According to Pirenne, the break with the Roman past came later with the coming of Islam and the rupture of communication with Eastern Christendom by Muslim control of the Mediterranean.

Brown argues that the Pirenne thesis now needs to be abandoned on account of the evidence provided by archaeology of a serious economic and demographic collapse and a contraction in the scale of life in the Late Roman Empire, bringing to an end the material and political underpinnings of the Roman state by the 5th century ACE. There was no smooth continuity. This appears to reflect a current trend in scholarship that swings the pendulum towards the older view of Gibbons (eg see Ward Perkin's "The Fall of Rome"). However, Brown's argument in favour of a gradual transformation of the Roman world into Medieval Europe over several centuries in this work remains compelling, even if this change occurred against the backdrop of the trauma of the Roman collapse in the West and a reduced and more localised scale of life in Western Europe. As such, his argument may represent a contemporary synthesis of the views emphasising sudden collapse and those in favour of the gradual change thesis.

Brown also addresses the corollary arguments about how "dark" the period really was. On this, he is on firmer ground, painting a picture of innovation and change during the post-Roman age rather than collapse and stagnation. That change involves not just Christianisation but also the development of local identities succeeding the former "Roman" identity. The narrative considers how at a certain point in time, the peoples of Gaul, Britain and Italy forgot that they once had been Romans and instead self-identify both as Christian and also as Britons, Franks, Burgundians and Lombard's - and also as English and Irish (these two peoples never having been Roman in the first place). It was no longer the Christian Empire of Constantine and Theodosius that the successor states looked to for self-identification - but the ancient kingdom of Israel as revealed in the Old Testament. Further, the dark ages may have been a golden age for Europe's peasants freed as they were from the extractive machinery of Roman taxation following the collapse of the Roman polity. Indeed, an important feature of the Carolingian State, that succeeds the post-Roman period was the restoration of generalised taxation of the land across most of Western Europe as the Romans had once done.

This is a work that searches for "l'histoire profonde" or deep history - looking beyond the top layers at the layers underneath overlaying one and another. Many Christian churches and shrines for example were built on previously pagan sites. In the East, a further layer of Islamic culture may have covered a Christian past and before that a Hellenic past, all of which still continue to peer through the layers and enliven the present. The author cogently makes the point with his description of the use of Neolithic axes and other implements by Medieval Church builders who included them in the stonework, believing that these were magical stones that would ward of lighting (presumably contrary to Christian belief but reflecting older folk traditions). The builders did not realise that these were in fact artefacts created by their own ancestors in the distant past.

Histoire profonde is indeed a hallmark of the Annales school of history that was highly influential in the Francophone tradition of history writing for most of the 20th century. Peter Brown is thought to be one of the few leading historians in the Anglophone tradition who has been influenced by the Annales school. The emphasis of the Annales historians on the detailed study of particular regions bounded by their specific geography, the examination of mentalities or ways of thinking (in contrast to the traditional nineteenth century emphasis on political history) and the study of change over very long periods (the longue duree) are all hallmarks of the study. The Annales perhaps anticipated the contemporary interest in cultural history and Brown in his early embrace of the Annales method was perhaps ahead of his time. This work indeed is a masterpiece of the genre.

This is a great work that traces the development and movement of Christianity into Europe. A religion that started out in the middle east had, by the end of the work, come to be dominant more in northern Europe than in the middle east itself.

Brown is a very good writer and is able to very eloquently trace out the forces and personalities of the period as well as the theleologic discussions that often divided Byzantine and Latin interpretations of the religion.

While not an introductory work, any reader can benefit from reading this book. At best it will stimulate further interest in the period and reading other authors. At worst, the reader may require some maps and a copy of, "Who's Who in the Middle Ages"