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Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire

de Peter Brown

MembresRessenyesPopularitatValoració mitjanaMencions
1792151,145 (3.61)2
Peter Brown, a known authority on Mediterranean civilisation in late antiquity, traces the growing power of early Christian bishops as they wrested influence from the philosophers who had traditionally advised the rulers of Graeco-Roman society. In the new ""Christian empire"", the ancient bonds of citizen to citizen and of each city to its benefactors were replaced by a common loyalty to a distant, Christian autocrat. This transformation of the Roman Empire from an ancient to a medieval society, Brown argues, is among the most far-reaching consequences of the rise of Christianity. In the last centuries of the Roman Empire, the power of the emperors depended on collaboration with the local elites. The shared ideals of Graeco-Roman culture (""paideia""), which were inculcated among the elite by their education, acted as unwritten constitution. The philosophers, as representives of this cultural tradition and as critics and advisors of the powerful, upheld the ideals of just rule and prevented the abuses of power. Between the conversion of Emperor Constantine to Christianity in 312 and the reign of Theodosius (379-395), however, both Christian bishops and uneducated monks emerged as competitors to the traditional educated elites. Claiming as Christians to be the ""true philosophers"", they asserted their own role in swaying the emperors to mercy and just rule. Brown shows how charity to the urban poor gave bishops such as Saint Ambrose a novel power base - the restless lower classes of the empire. The lines of power that led from local society to the imperial court increasingly fell into the hands of the church, as clerics exercised their power to ensure the peace in cities, secure amnesties, and convey to the emperor the wishes of his subjects. Brown also points out how churchmen expressed their new local power through violence against rivals: Jewish synagogues and Roman Temples were destroyed, and Hypatia, one of the few women with a public role as a philosopher, was lynched in Alexandria. Brown demonstrates how Christian teaching provided a model for a more autocratic, hierarchial empire: the ancient ideals of democracy and citizenship gave way to the image of a glorious ruler showing mercy to his lowly and grateful subjects. Drawing upon a wealth of material - newly discovered letters and sermons of Saint Augustine, archaeological evidence, manuscripts in Coptic and Syriac - he provides a portrait of a turbulent and fascinating era.… (més)
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I enjoyed Brown’s dense prose, and this is both engagingly written as well as packed with interesting information and references. The main focus of this book is on the continuation of paideia among the aristocratic elite, and the transference of the practice of parrhésia from the philosophers to the bishops as the Roman Empire became Christianized – the book deals mainly with the eastern provinces however. While Brown makes repeated references and comparisons with the decorum found in connection with the autocracy of 17th century France, there’s only little mention of, or comparisons made, with the paideia of the early Greek city states, or the Graeco-Roman world in general, in the centuries leading up to the period of late antiquity discussed in this book – except, indirectly, when briefly discussing (the image of) earlier philosophers in the subchapter about parrhésia. Brown also mentions only as an aside that parrhésia was never simply the exclusive domain of philosophers, without getting much further into that. Also, the way Brown presents it, you could easily get the impression that the Christian bishops were the first to ever give any attention to the existence of the noncitizen, and, as well, that this had never been used as a political argument before. However, he does show how increased immigration and urbanization lead to an upsurge of the noncitizen class in the East Roman cities, making it a more pressing social issue, along with that of underemployment, and how the bishops became "Controllers of the Crowds" (p. 103) and developed this argument (on behalf of the masses of noncitizens and abject poor; noncitizens were not necessarily poor) into a stance of moral authority, as representatives of the general populace, because "before the emperor, as before God, all subjects were poor" (p. 154).– Make no mistake about it; perhaps complementing the title of his book, Brown aims to persuade, and he generally manages well with that within the narrow focus of this study – yet, just because of its narrowness, it appears to some degree incomplete. Still, within its own limit, this is a noteworthy and compelling analysis.




This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. ( )
  saltr | Feb 15, 2023 |
This is a professional book written by a competent historian, but I didn't really like his style of presentation. He constantly brings up specific cases to exemplify different things, but he doesn't put these examples into any sort of broader context. The general argument is hidden somewhere between the lines. Maybe it's a matter of taste, but in my opinion history books which contain no semblance of a theoretical framework lack a vital ingredient.
  thcson | Aug 27, 2011 |
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Peter Brown, a known authority on Mediterranean civilisation in late antiquity, traces the growing power of early Christian bishops as they wrested influence from the philosophers who had traditionally advised the rulers of Graeco-Roman society. In the new ""Christian empire"", the ancient bonds of citizen to citizen and of each city to its benefactors were replaced by a common loyalty to a distant, Christian autocrat. This transformation of the Roman Empire from an ancient to a medieval society, Brown argues, is among the most far-reaching consequences of the rise of Christianity. In the last centuries of the Roman Empire, the power of the emperors depended on collaboration with the local elites. The shared ideals of Graeco-Roman culture (""paideia""), which were inculcated among the elite by their education, acted as unwritten constitution. The philosophers, as representives of this cultural tradition and as critics and advisors of the powerful, upheld the ideals of just rule and prevented the abuses of power. Between the conversion of Emperor Constantine to Christianity in 312 and the reign of Theodosius (379-395), however, both Christian bishops and uneducated monks emerged as competitors to the traditional educated elites. Claiming as Christians to be the ""true philosophers"", they asserted their own role in swaying the emperors to mercy and just rule. Brown shows how charity to the urban poor gave bishops such as Saint Ambrose a novel power base - the restless lower classes of the empire. The lines of power that led from local society to the imperial court increasingly fell into the hands of the church, as clerics exercised their power to ensure the peace in cities, secure amnesties, and convey to the emperor the wishes of his subjects. Brown also points out how churchmen expressed their new local power through violence against rivals: Jewish synagogues and Roman Temples were destroyed, and Hypatia, one of the few women with a public role as a philosopher, was lynched in Alexandria. Brown demonstrates how Christian teaching provided a model for a more autocratic, hierarchial empire: the ancient ideals of democracy and citizenship gave way to the image of a glorious ruler showing mercy to his lowly and grateful subjects. Drawing upon a wealth of material - newly discovered letters and sermons of Saint Augustine, archaeological evidence, manuscripts in Coptic and Syriac - he provides a portrait of a turbulent and fascinating era.

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