Power & Persuasion Late Antiquity: Towards A Christian Empire

Peter Brown is one of the greatest living historians of the 4th-6th centuries and this book is a fine example of the quality and incisive nature of his insights and writing. In four clear and concise chapters, Brown offers deeply clarifying and engaging examples of how the Roman Empire was "christianized:" not in moving closer to embodying the Way of Jesus Christ, but in shifting power from the old urban elite to the bishops and their clergy. The key theme is the shift from focus on the power of local elites to contain and control imperial governors to the "love of the poor" which expanded and transformed the social understanding of civic identity and its relationship to "the center" of imperial power in Rome. Brown shows clearly how theology and politics are never separate by offering numerous illustrations of how the state of the Roman Empire greatly shaped the power shift he documents and describes so clearly. These lectures are an easy to read foundation for understanding both the Roman world of the 4th-6th centuries and the ways in which that world shaped the christological doctrines that have remained at the heart of the creeds professed by Catholics and Protestants alike to this day.

Peter Brown, professor of History at Princeton University is the father of the field of Late Antiquity and this monograph is yet another invaluable contribution. While most people believe the popular fallacy that the Roman Empire was in a state of decline in the 4th Century, Professor Brown shows us the Roman state at the peak of its power. He discusses what bound the various local elite to the emperor, arguring that a shared sense of education and culture provided a crucial sense of coherency to the Empire. In addition, he discusses the nature of public largess in the late empire, how local nobles maintained their positions as "nourishers of the cities." He chronicles a world undergoing intense change, and the focus of the book is largly how the Christian clergy adopts traditional methods of "power and persuasion" to establish itself as the leading power in cities. Students of Classics tend to ignore the 4th and 5th centuries, brusquely declaring them "medieval" and thus inconsequential to a student of Rome's classical glory. Brown's book brings to life a dynamic and important moment in Roman history, a moment at once rooted in traditional Roman values, yet at the same time caught up in a whirlwind of religious change. As always, Professor Brown writes with a humane and style, making the book a joy to read.