Christianity and Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries by Ramsay MacMullen (review)

594book reviews practice. For the most part, Petersen assumes that the texts faithfully represent "real" women. Translations of four sets of texts are preceded by an eighteen-page introduction on female monasticism in the first six Christian centuries. The texts selected by Petersen are Gregory of Nyssa's Life ofSaintMacrina; several of the letters of Jerome to and about his ascetic female friends; texts on Melania the Elder and Melania the Younger, including Gerontius' Life of Melania the Younger; and materials pertaining to the life and death of Radegunde by Venantius Fortunatus, the nun Baudonivia, and Gregory of Tours. Peterson uses S. L. Greenslade's translations ofJerome's epp. 107 and 108, and his Introduction to Jerome, from his volume,Early Latin Theology (1956); otherwise, she has translated the materials herself. Each section/subsection is preceded by a short introduction that places the people and events of the text in historical and religious perspective. Ample notes at the conclusion of each section identify characters, literary quotations, and biblical references, and indicate points at which Petersen disagrees with a standard reading of the critical edition of a text. Two virtues of this book deserve particular mention: the translations are for the most part clear and in twentieth-century English (unlike the translations in, for example, The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers series); and entire texts are translated, not just snippets, as is so often the case in anthologies. The volume is marred, however, not just by the usual typographical errors; in this case, whole lines have been omitted, sentences run together, and so forth. No doubt these errors are related to the fact that Petersen died before making the final editorial corrections to her manuscript, and no one, apparently, took responsibility to ensure that the page proofs were correct. Also puzzling is the fact that almost all of these texts have been translated before, most quite recently in various anthologies of writings about and by women in early Christianity. The texts on Radegunde, however, are ones often not included in anthologies pertaining to early Christian women; she is more often discussed in books pertaining to medieval women. The book concludes with "Suggestions for Further Reading." Euzabeth A. Clark Duke University Christianity and Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries. By Ramsay MacMullen . (New Haven:Yale University Press. 1997. Pp. vi, 282. $32.00.) In Christianizing the Roman Empire (1984), Ramsay MacMullen discussed the growth of Christianity and the suppression of paganism through the end of the fourth century, when, as he wrote, "monks and bishops, generals and emperors , had driven the enemy from our field of vision" (p. 119). That, to many readers, seemed a premature end of the story, and MacMullen has now taken the welcome step of extending his field of vision to the end of Late Antiquity. BOOK REVIEWS595 In doing so, he has brought together a wide range of evidence from across the Mediterranean between the fifth and seventh centuries. But by going beyond the fourth century, now accepted as a legitimate area of study by ancient historians , and moving into the vaster territory of Late Antiquity, a field whose complexities have made it arguably "unstudyable" by any single discipline,1 MacMullen has also taken on an exceedingly difficult task, not all of whose pitfalls he has avoided. Christianity and Paganism is a typical product of MacMullen's erudition and style, with 159 pages of text and 114 pages of endnotes and bibliography. The book's argument is usefully displayed in a narrative table of contents (pp. v-vi). Chapter !,"Persecution," describes the efforts of Christian leaders "to extirpate all religious alternatives," and to silence pagan writings and suppress "pagan acts and practices with increasing harshness and machinery of enforcement ." Chapter 2, "The Cost to the Persecuted," describes "the successive layers of paganism which came under threat of destruction,what each had brought to religious life, and what was lost to the extent those layers were destroyed." Chapter 3, "Superstition," uses that term as a master-concept to describe "how best to understand the transition of the classical religious thought-world to the medieval and Byzantine." Chapter 4, "Assimilation," describes "the reception by the church of pagan...