Power & Persuasion Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire (Curti Lectures) [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

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.

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.

I recently told a friend that I don't study history so as to avoid repeating it. That is an exercise in futility. I study history so that when it repeats, I can ride along in style.
We live in a time when things are changing, perhaps more than they ever have in the history of man. The times are volatile, and there is no common footing, mutual understanding, the narratives have been destroyed, our leaders no longer even know their history much less understand it. The problems of the third fourth and fifth centuries, the problems of late antiquity have returned.
For that reason Peter Brown's insights into that fateful era are of infinite worth for understanding what is happening today, and perhaps understanding what needs to be done to help things along, to ride it out, to capture influence. The book gives phenomenal insights into the economy of power, what gained a man power, how power was to be wielded, what went in to being a citizen, and what was at stake. Perhaps I betray my own Christian background when I say these things have not changed, perhaps they have morphed a little since then, but people are people. We still need the same things, we want the same things, and our deepest needs and wants are sometimes things we are unaware of. This book allows a person to reflect on the differences and parallels to our own times and society.
As always Peter Brown writes in a fascinating and engaging manner with interesting insight gleaned from what could pass as boring material if you were someone else. In short he understands the paideia of which he writes. In doing so he elucidates late antiquity with daylight of understanding, rectifying false interpretations of history, perhaps correcting myths of understanding. I could not put this book down. Peter Brown shows why a degree in political science is really a degree in history.
For pastors, this book is of incredible value. This is a period of time in which giants of the church and theology took great strides in shaping and forming who we are as Western Christians. It was a time when the church began, perhaps not as innocently as we would like to believe, to wield power. But that power came with a price. As bishops and other church men took over positions of power in the politics of empire, and the Bible came to replace Homer, interpretations of the Bible were given new meaning. When the position of "philosopher", who was to be a buffer and arbitrator, was taken over by priests, monks, and holy men then the ascetic lifestyle of the philosopher came to be their lifestyle. To this day this is reflected in the piety a pastor or priest is supposed to have, a piety not so much derived from scripture, as it is from the philosopher's paideia, the his learning, instruction and manner of life which gave him power in the face of governors and emperors. The idea of being baptized later in life, after you had sown your oats, and were willing to truly take on "true Christianity" as the higher paideia of the philosopher, came about at this time, and is reflected in the life of Gregory Nazianzen. This became a time when becoming a bishop was good reason to divorce your wife, and then to converse with her for the purpose of taking care of family business was reason enough to be deposed. (Pg. 138, ftn 93.) One can see from this how the idea of digamy, and not, bigamy, polygamy or womanizing, comes to form the interpretation of 1 Timothy 3 as justification for this new form of asceticism among the clergy, in a letter meant to speak out against such asceticism!