Authority and the Sacred: Aspects of the Christianisation of the Roman World (review)

In autumn 1993, Peter Brown was invited to deliver a series of lectures at Cambridge University. The revised version of these lectures is now available in a slender volume. The title aptly summarizes the author’s intent; the three essays explore only selected aspects of the process of Christianization in the Roman world. The task of explaining this phenomenon has occupied historians for some time now, and in no small measure Brown’s own contributions have helped spur such research.

In Chapter 1, Brown argues that most Christians subscribed to a triumphalist, Eusebian view of history, popularized by early fifth century historians. Paganism had come to an end at Calvary; Christ resoundingly defeated the demons. Moreover, so long as Christians did not actively engage in pagan ceremonies, they considered themselves uncontaminated by their neighbors’ practices. Brown insists that Christians compartmentalized their lives, just as the cosmos was highly compartmentalized. However, Brown suggests, the disastrous rout at Adrianople shook confidence in a well-ordered world, and Augustine and others discovered the debilitating effects of misdirected habit. In the West, says Brown, Augustine’s somber account of Christianity’s struggle with the pagan past gradually eclipsed the triumphalist view and became the authoritative narrative. Chapter 1 is the most complex and stimulating of the volume, but readers may find Brown’s synthesis somewhat strained. He should mention it was commonplace to view the world as in decline. When Augustine says that recent converts had tarnished the Church by pagan habits, we hear echoes of Cato the Elder and his complaints about foreigners at Rome. Brown also needs to pay attention to Augustine’s program for the renewal of the Catholic Church in Africa. Though framed with the Donatists in mind, his series of councils did much to eradicate paganism as well.

In Chapter 2, Brown explores the limits of religious intolerance in the Theodosian Age. Scholars tend to assume that the emperors set the pace with anti-Jewish and anti-pagan legislation. Brown argues that violent attacks on synagogues and pagan shrines were abnormal and that the age was actually characterized by a tolerance born of upper-class civility and decorum. Paideia had inculcated in the aristocratic classes shared sensibilities about the proper way to conduct themselves and the business of government. What mattered to them was the continued stability of the empire, which they preserved by alternately cajoling and browbeating the masses. In effect, the upper classes wielded more authority in setting the parameters of intolerance than did the church or the state. This chapter provides a welcome change of perspective, though I doubt that the upper classes muted their confessional differences to the degree Brown posits.

With Chapter 3, Brown returns to a subject to which he has devoted considerable attention in earlier studies—the Christian holy man. This essay is quite interesting, for in it he abandons his narrow focus on dramatic acts of patronage within a Christian setting and discovers that the holy man acted as a bridge between the pagan past and the Christian present, as one who mediated for all who sought divine aid. The holy man could negotiate an honorable surrender of the gods and thus ease a people’s transition to Christianity. This essay is an important contribution and shows Brown at his best.

Authority and the Sacred will be a welcome addition to patristic scholars’ libraries. Brown’s command of the sources is, as always, impressive, and his endnotes very useful, though his writing style has become somewhat inflated. The book should be read in tandem with Robert Markus’ The End of Ancient Christianity, which Brown generously credits for inspiring his own work.