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URL: http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.
baj9928.0401.030
The first edition of this work was published in 1995 in the international
series "The Making of Europe," which has developed general themes of
social and cultural history like the cities or the birth of modern science.
Well-known as a brilliant historian of late ancient religion and society,
Peter Brown presents here a remarkable demonstration of the role played
by the Church as institution and by the conversion to Christianity in the
rise of European civilization and in the genesis of the ethnic units that are
the ancestors of the modern nations.
This book is not a mere history of the Church in the West. The area
The second edition was largely revised and it makes use of the most recent
results of historical and archaeological research. Peter Brown's views on
barbarians and ethnicity take into account the new approaches of Walter
Pohl and Patrick Geary, emphasizing that the ethnic identities of the early
medieval peoples were built and not born and that the Christian writers
had a key role in this process. Brown argues that the traditional image of
the barbarians is wrong. The barbarians were open-minded to the
influence of Roman civilization and this explains the early triumph of
Christianization. Another traditional theory disputed in the introduction is
that expressed by Henri Pirenne. Brown considers that the dissolution of
the Mediterranean economic system was not the result of the Arabian
expansion, but a long process dated between the fifth and the sixth
centuries. The Late Ancient world was a world without a true center.
According to Brown, the diversity of several regional centers was in the
same time the main feature of Christianity (9-15). The rest of the book
illustrates in various ways this basic idea. The consequence was that
western Christendom was a "combination of local autonomy with loyalty
to the idea of a wider Christendom" (15).
The innovative features of the new religion are discussed in the second
chapter (54-71). Brown points out that Christianity differed from the
classic religious cults by the absorption of the morality and philosophy.
Another feature of the early Church emphasized by Brown is its economic
dimension. The almsgiving ensured prosperity of the ecclesiastic
institution in a time when the decline of the ancient elites deprived of
donations the heathen sanctuaries. The Church has created a system of
mobilization of wealth, which included all the social categories, because
the Christian communities were themselves constituted by members of all
these categories.
At the same time, the Church of the Eastern Empire was troubled by the
Christological controversy, which is briefly presented by Brown at the end
of the fourth chapter.
The conversion of the countryside left alive the ancient beliefs of the
"populations who had always thought of themselves as being embedded in
the natural world and who had always expected to be able to impinge upon
that world, so as to elicit its generosity and to ward off its perils by means
of rites which reached back, in most parts of Europe, to prehistoric
times" (147). The mission of bishops like Caesarius of Arles was to fight
against these agrarian rites that defined what he called rusticitas.
However, the sacralization of the space (of certain places) was revived in
the Christian manner of the cult of the local saints, as can be seen, for
instance, from the descriptions recorded by Gregory of Tours.
The same chapter presents the place of the ascets of the desert as opposed
to the people of the world, laymen or priests-- a division which was absent
in the West. But countryside was not only the location of these ascets. It
also was the environment that was less affected by the Justinianic plague
of 543. As a consequence, after the middle of the sixth century, many
bishoprics moved in rural areas (in the monasteries), while the towns
began to decline (181-186). This shift to countryside is real, but some
remarks should be added. Brown does not discuss the credibility of the
sources about the disastrous impact of the plague, although some doubts
were expressed in the last years [[2]]. As for the large villages where
Brown "relocates" the bishops (186), the reader would find interesting
remarks in the study of G. Dagron [[3]], who defined these settlements as
a distinct category between towns and villages, with specific economic
features, with a special inner organization and sometimes with a particular
propensity toward heresy.
The following chapter ends the part about the sixth century, with an
overview of the work of Pope Gregory the Great (190-215). For Brown, its
main result was the development of a way of transmission of the Christian
message from bishops to people, through his Regula Pastoralis. On the
other hand, the same period saw the development of the media necessary
for this transmission: the activity of Cassiodorus at Vivarium "made the
culture of a very ancient world available to a less privileged generation,
which could no longer count on having teachers available, in their locality,
to explain difficult texts to them by word of mouth" (197). The written
message of the books and the oral message of the sermons (praedicatio)
were the two ways by which Christianity expanded. Cassiodorus and
Gregory the Great were thus outstanding figures in this process.
In the ninth chapter (219-231), which opens the part dedicated to the
period 600-750, Brown discusses the western monachism, largely different
from the eastern one. He emphasizes that here the monks were not a
separate and sacred caste like in the Orient and that the western holiness
was collective, not individual. The expression "powerhouse of prayer,"
used by Brown, illustrates very well this feature of the western
monasteries, where the observation of the St. Benedict rules ensured the
collective spiritual power.
The new Latin culture evolved in this monastic milieu is presented in the
next chapter (232-247). The main difference between it and the classic
culture was the emphasis put on morality and the result was the making of
the new ideal of man: the sapiens: "a man who had mastered Latin from
books, who had made his own the wisdom of the Bible and of a Christian
inheritance made available in a few, stubbornly valued texts, and who
knew how to deploy this hard-won knowledge in a Latin rhetoric
calculated to communicate the awe and the urgency of such
wisdom" (241). The Latin language kept indeed its place in
communication, but in more simple forms that finally evolved into the
Romance languages. Brown remarks that Latin became a lingua franca
even in the areas that were not Romanized, like Ireland. In the territory of
the former Roman provinces, the victory of Latin in countryside over the
authochtonous languages is seen as a result of the pressure exerted by
landowners and priests, beginning with the fourth century (232). We can
thus consider that Christianization had a role in the achievement of
Romanization, a conclusion that can be also drawn from the study of post-
Roman Dacia.
innovations occurring in the Christian faith and rite in the seventh century
(248-266). Ireland and northern France became then the area of a new
form of Christianity, based on the powerful monasteries, patronized by
kings and landowners. Brown remarks that the monasteries replaced the
economic function of the Roman villae, because "they were economic
centers which gathered an entire countryside around them" (254). The
major innovation of the period, a new vision about death, came into being
because the network of monasteries supported the spreading of the
"penitential mentality" introduced by the Rule of Columbanus. Before the
seventh century, the Church was not so involved in the funeral rites, but
after this century Death was Christianized because the clergy defined the
funeral rituals. The fate of the soul after death was no more determined by
the care of the family. "The soul was now thought of as being placed in a
position of peril in the other world. (...) The ancient rituals performed by
the family, such as bringing food and drink to 'nourish' the soul, could not
allay so sharp a peril. Only the Mass could do that" (264). This change led
finally to the notion of Purgatory which became a major difference
between Western and Eastern Christianity. In this way, the seventh
century was a turning point for the religious life. Not only for the reason
presented above, but also because in the same century a new religion
appeared in the East.
The next chapter presents the fate of the Christians under Islamic rule
(295-320). The new religion remained for a while a religion of a
segregated minority of warriors which observed a certain toleration toward
the Christians and Jews. The conversion to Islam of the former Christian
communities was not forceful and it was largely determined by economic
reasons. "Their position within the Islamic state was far better than the
status of non-Christians, Jews and pagans, in the Christian empire" (305).
In these conditions, many Christians kept their faith alive, even when they
were of Arab origin or Arabian-speakers. Brown considers that the
flourishing Caliphate became the milieu of a kind of new hellenism of
Syriac language, based in monasteries and schools. From this milieu came
one of the most important Eastern theologians, St. John Damascene (665-
749), who was of Arab extraction. Moreover, the great Arab conquest
favored the spreading of Christianity toward the Far East. Things changed
after the middle of the eighth century, when the expansion of the Arabian
language contributed to the Islamization of the Christians who remained
under Muslim power.
The adoption of the new religion by the Saxon kings legitimated their
conquest. In these conditions, the mission of Augustine restored with great
success the Church life in Britain, also providing the kingdom with a
written law code. The next step in the evolution of the Christian culture in
Britain was the creation of the English ethnic identity. This was the work
of Bede, for whom gens Anglorum was "a new people, united, if in
nothing else, by their common adherence to Catholic Christianity," like a
new chosen people. So, "Christianity came to create notions of "national"
unity that would (for good or ill) look straight to the present day" (351).
This is one of the major ideas expressed by Brown in this book.
Christian writers.
Brown remarks that the final victory of the iconophiles (843) transformed
the doctrine of the Orthodox Church. The conception about the icons,
founded on the writings of St. John Damascene, was a new one, which has
transformed the cult of the icons into an identifying element of the
orthodoxy. The Church took control over the cult of the icons as a mean to
educate the people.
Iconoclasm and also the way the crisis was treated by the council of 787
disturbed relations with the papacy. In the following two chapters, Brown
examines the consequences of the new orientation of Rome toward the
Frankish kingdom. In chapter eighteen (408-433), he relates the
development of the Frankish church in the eighth century, by the missions
launched beyond the frontier, in Germany and Frisia. The conversion of
the Saxons was a result of the conquest carried out by Charlemagne.
However, the territory was not entirely heathen. What S. Willibrord has
done was, as argues Brown, to fight against the non-canonical practices
encountered in the area of his mission. Christianity existed there for a long
time before, as well as in the Avar area (Christians of Roman origin
survived in Pannonia).
The climax of the military and religious Frankish offensive policy under
Charlemagne is presented in the nineteenth chapter (434-461). One of the
ideas that should be retained is that the so-called "Carolingian
Renaissance" was not a revival of the ancient culture, but a restoration and
a correction of it, made by the removal of the mistakes which appeared
over time. Brown compares this attitude with the iconoclasm, which had a
similar goal and which was too an imperial action. On the other hand, a
major difference between Byzantium and the Carolingian culture was the
plurality of the centers where the latter was created. The Carolingian
monasteries were the centers of the neighboring regions and they were in
competition with one and another. Because this plurality required a
common code of communication, the emperor was preoccupied with
defending the correctness of the Latin language. "Latin was to the
Carolingian clergy what icons were to Byzantines": the mistakes in the
languages signified errors in the faith (rusticitas) (449). In the same
conditions the new minuscule writing style appeared, in order to facilitate
education. In the pastoral field, the same correction of the errors of the
common people can be seen in the activity of St. Agobard of Lyon.
The chapter ends with some considerations that can be taken as the
conclusion of the book. Brown sees Christianization as a process of
moving a religious belief from center to periphery. The pre-Christian cults
were expelled to the periphery when Christianity won. The central
position acquired by Christianity left alive on the margins the pagan and
magic reminiscences. This process continued several older religious
changes that affected Europe since prehistory, because "much of this
history seems to have consisted in pushing to the margins beliefs,
practices, and even social groups, to make room for new, differently
organized and more prestigious conglomerations of power, culture and
religious expertise" (485).
In fact, the subject of this book is how Christianity came to the center all
over Western Europe. Brown has emphasized the diversity of the ways of
conversion and of religious development within the West. This view
distinguishes his book from another reference work, written by Judith
Herrin (The Formation of Christendom), which focused on the increasing
differences between the Latin West as a whole and Byzantium ("the
divergent paths").
NOTES:
[[2]] J. Durliat, La peste du VIe siecle. Pour un nouvel examen des sources
byzantines, in Hommes et richesses dans l'Empire Byzantin (IVe-VIIe
siecles), I, Paris, 1989, 107-119; C. Morrisson, J. P. Sodini, The Sixth-
Century Economy, in A. E. Laiou (ed.), The Economic History of
Byzantium from the Seventh through the Fifteenth Century, Dumbarton
Oaks, 2002, I, 194-195.