The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason

Charles Freeman has taken an thousand years of ecclesiastical history and formulated a well thought out theory on the impacts of the church on Roman society. For the truly devout, this book may tend to bring to light facts that don't necessarily warm the heart. However, he does relay a strong sense of the times and places all events into their proper context. Freeman has obviously spent painstaking hours in the research and formulation of this book, and in doing so, provides the reader with a vibrant understanding of both the glory and instability of Rome. The Empire itself is shown with all its vulnerabilities, which after "Christianization", seem to waver on the strengths and weaknesses of a developing Christian church. For the unbiased reader, this book is a refreshing insight into an area of Roman history that is commonly overlooked and blindingly waived aside. I recommend this book to any that are interested not only in ancient / medieval history, but in the aspects of ecclesiastical history that seldom are expressed without a slanted sentiment.

I must disagree with the other reviewer in comparing this book to Gibbon. Rather than asserting that Christianity contributed to the end of the Roman empire, Freeman suggests that Christianity may in fact have preserved it well beyond its sell-by date. It is beyond any reasonable historical doubt that the average citizen of medieval Europe was far more restricted in what their society would allow them to believe and indeed to think about - with the penalties for error being corporal on earth and eternal in the fires of hell.It is certainly true that from a technological point of view, invention did continue throughout the middle ages, but free intellectual & scientific progress was certainly stunted by the church's insistence on reliance on scripture as the only valid source of knowledge, supported by an atrophied smattering of classical texts. Ironically of course the church integrated the very same old masters (esp Ptolemy, Galen and Aristotle) that would have espoused a practical and experimentalist scientific tradition completely at odds with the church's view of reality.Freeman, while clearly an admirer of the classical world (most of his other books have that focus), is far from a church-basher, though once you've read the book you mightn't feel like being so kind. Gregory of Tours and Ambrose of Milan, two pivotal figures of the early medieval church, receive treatments that are fairly balanced (though it is clear that any admiration Freeman has for Ambrose are along the same lines as Machiavelli might have had for Stalin).A really excellent book, especially if want a thorough, thought-provoking, erudite but not overly academic treastise on the late Roman/Early medieval period.