Communities of the Blessed: Social Environment and Religious Change in Northern Italy, A.D. 200-400 (review)

Mark Humphries. Communities of the Blessed: Social Environment and Religious Change in Northern Italy, A.D. 200-400. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Pp. xv + 258. $70.00.

The first of a projected two-volume study of north Italian Christianity, this scholarly work constitutes a revised version of a St. Andrews doctoral dissertation written between 1993 and 1996. Humphries's purpose in writing the book is to challenge the use of the conventional models that scholars have devised in the past to examine the history of social change in northern Italy. Instead of relying on ecclesiastical narratives to reconstruct the origins and development of Christianity in this region, Humphries concentrates on what he terms "the north Italian human environment" (1). This emphasis enables him to demonstrate the inability of the traditional sources to provide reliable information on the changes that took place in northern Italy between a.d. 200-400.

For philosophers and theologians accustomed to the conceptual study of early Christianity, Humphries's book is a welcome reminder of the importance of establishing the historical reliability of the actual events that occurred and of gaining a better understanding of the manner in which Christianity spread throughout the Roman empire. Humphries' attention to detail is meticulous, and this aids his efforts to show that historical analysis must take into account the rearrangement of the past by interpreters with vested interests, no matter how laudable their intentions may be. By evaluating ecclesiastical narratives alongside evidence drawn from literary, archeological, and epigraphical sources, Humphries succeeds in presenting a fascinating sketch of the geographical environment and the social setting in which Christianity emerged in northern Italy.

Humphries divides his book into two parts. The first part focuses on the regional dynamics of northern Italy and the social matrices in which Christianity developed. The amorphous nature of territorial boundaries during this period requires an account of both inward- and outward-looking factors in determining what constitutes a region. In this respect, the web of internal social, cultural, and economic relations are as integral to Humphries's understanding of the growth of Christianity in northern Italy as are the external pressures that sometimes affected those relations.

The particular human environment in which Christianity spread correlates with the physical landscape of northern Italy. Sandwiched between the Alps to the north and the Apennines to the south, the natural environment provided the impetus for communication. Both tangibly, through the construction of roads and settlements, and intangibly, through the development of social, cultural, and economic networks, Roman genius and Christian adaptation produced an intricate web of human relationships conducive to the dissemination of Christian ideas. The examination of these relationships, not the conventional views based on the medieval reconstruction of events tied to episcopal lists of succession and conciliar subscriptions, provides the most reliable means of determining how Christianity penetrated northern Italy.

In part 2, Humphries expands the scope of these concerns in two significant ways. First, he describes the pivotal role that the church as a social institution played in the interaction between local communities in northern Italy and the imperial government in the period between Constantine and Theodosius. Concomitantly, he demonstrates the manner in which the bishop's exercise of authority in local communties reflected the development of informal episcopal hierarchies. Second, Humphries considers the extent to which northern Italy succumbed to Christian influence by the end of the fourth century. Contrary to the traditional view, the evidence suggests that Christianity advanced in an anonymous, piecemeal fashion rather than as a result of planned apostolic missions. Furthermore, its diffusion throughout the region was by no means complete in Theodosius' day owing to the continued vitality of pagan and Jewish religions.

In this illuminating volume Humphries argues compellingly that our knowledge of the origins of Christianity is more sketchy than previously imagined. By broadening the evidential...