The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, A.D. 200-1000 (review)

Professor Brown has substantially revised The Rise of Western Christendom, originally published in 1996 as part of the "Making of Europe" series edited by Jacques Le Goff. The result is a much stronger work, which will appeal to scholars of Late Antiquity more than the first edition while still captivating the general reader.

In the second edition Brown continues to treat the localization of Christianity in regions from the North Atlantic to Asia. He describes how Irishmen, Saxons, and others transferred to their homeland relics, styles of art and architecture, and ecclesiastical customs, thus believing that they "had brought to their own region a 'microcosm' which reflected, with satisfactory completeness, the 'macrocosm' of a worldwide Christianity. . . . They strove to cancel out the hiatus between 'center' and 'periphery' by making 'little Romes' available on their home ground" (15). Brown calls the local variations of a broader Christianity "micro-Christendoms." In his characterization of the British Isles, he writes "The religious leaders of every region claimed to possess at home a set of customs and doctrines which were ultimately derived from 'true' centers of Christian learning and practice in a wider world" (359). Through statements like this, Brown tries to erase the model of thinking about Christianity in terms of "center" and "periphery," a theory he borrows from anthropology and religious studies.

Yet, by entitling the work The Rise of Christianity in the West, the author reifies the notion of Christianity as a "western" phenomenon although a significant portion of the book treats the localization and perpetuation of Christianity in non-western regions such as Syria and Persia. In fact, his discussion of the climate of competition among religions in the East is every bit as penetrating as his examination of the West. A more fitting title to this abolition of core-periphery, therefore, might be Micro-Christendoms: Christianity and Diversity from 200-1000.

The first edition received mixed reviews. One historian of Late Antiquity wrote that ". . . the exuberance and delight inherent in his interpretation . . . ought to make this book attractive and influential" (Journal of Theological Studies 48.2 [1997], 671), while another scholar of the period claimed that "its picture is skewed, and its conclusions are not demonstrated" (American Historical Review 102.5 [1997], 1463). With this second edition, Brown will continue to elicit criticism from those believing that he is too theory-oriented at the expense of doing proper "positivist" work. On the other hand, many of the problems which scholars of Late Antiquity pointed out in the first edition focused on the lack of documentation, and it is here, among other places, that the second edition enhances the work. Although the original had no notes, this version has sixty pages detailing the author's sources. The first edition had a seven-page bibliography with no primary sources; the second contains a forty-four page bibliography, including eleven pages of primary sources.

Another way in which Brown improves the second edition is by adding two new chapters, "Powerhouses of Prayer: Monasticism in Western Europe" and "The Making of Sapiens: Religion and Culture in Continental Europe and in Ireland." He also amends his chapter "Christianity in Asia" and renames it "Christianity in Asia and the Rise of Islam." And he divides the chapter "Christianities of the North: Ireland and Saxon Britain" into two separate chapters, treating local Christianity in each region more fully.

Furthermore, Brown refines the layout of the visual aids and adds to them. The first edition contained four maps at the beginning of the book whereas the second has ten maps placed strategically throughout the body of the text to correspond to the geographical areas under discussion. Likewise, the second edition has chronologies arranged within the narrative to give the reader a point of reference for the persons, places, and events being examined...