The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, A.D. 200-1000by Peter Brown tries to convey “something of the complexity of the process by which Christianity rose to dominance in Western Europe.” With the emergence of Christianity, new and different forms of the religion cropped up across Europe. Brown exposes these differences and delineates between them. He aims to remove the visual images of early Christianity that are deeply embedded in the minds of Europeans and to substitute a more truthful and complex image of European history.Brown’s work includes more than a nod to Western Christianity; it also encompasses the rise of Islam, Roman and barbarian relationships, and biographies and case studies of influential Christian and non-Christian members of society from the beginning of Christianity. The Rise of Western Christendom is the result of Brown’s years of research, and sheds great light on the rise of Christianity in Europe.
Brown advocates that the most striking feature of conventional narratives concerning the end of the Roman empire and the early Middle Ages has been the contention that the history of western Europe has always been characterized by a natural unity. The illusion of the Empire, before the fifth century, was a safe conglomeration of cities while outside the empire, on the frontiers, “roared the wild chaos of barbarism.” The barbarian invasions effectively destroyed the first unity of Europe.Brown is not satisfied by this recollection of European history. He claims that the Catholic Church had created insubstantial but tenacious bonds to recreate a spiritual unity of Europe. Although this spiritual unity would be dominated by the medieval papacy, Brown asserts that there would not be a single, civilized, political community.
To Brown, ancient Christianity constitutes a profound change in the imagination of early Christians. With no difference in doctrine, there was a new view of sin, of atonement, and of the other world. This difference laid the basis for a distinctive notion of the individual person and of his or her fate after death. Ancient Christianity also saw the rise of a distinctive form of monasticism. Monasteries were small, usually self-supporting, and poverty-ridden. Monks and nuns were known for their piety and ascetic way of life. As tonsure developed in the sixth century, monks were separated from normal laity. The growth of oblation ensured that children grew up in monasteries and were immersed in the monastic culture.
Of particular interest is Brown’s depiction of convents and nuns. Together with monasteries, Brown refers to convents as “Powerhouses of Prayer.” They possessed a collective power of prayer, stronger than any one holy person. In addition, monasteries and convents followed the shifts of Christian piety in the world around them. “A woman’s piety could act as a bridge between the new barbarian, military elites of northern Gaul and what had previously been a largely Roman form of religion.”
Began by an erosion of Latin culture in the leisured upper class of the sixth century, ancient Christianity started its downfall. Monasteries became places were Christians could “purge” their sins. Each particular sin had a punishment, or penance, and could be found listed together in handbooks called Penitentials. “The message of the Penitentials was that the Christian life was a high art, a matter of conscious craftsmanship, undertaken by a people brought close to God.”
Simultaneously, Muhammed of Mecca began experiencing visions that would lead to a new world religion known as Islam. Beginning when Muhammed was aged forty years in 610, he claimed his visions were from the same God who had spoken to Moses and Jesus. His visions would go on the form what we know today as the Koran. The distinct message from the Koran is that Christians had erred. Arabians were warned to change their pagan ways.Pagan idols were purged. Almost unexpectedly to Christians, Islam began its sweeping conquest and emerged as a permanent Islamic Empire.
Christians had a lukewarm opinion of Islam. It was viewed as an in-between religion, not pagan, but similar to Christianity and Judaism. Although there was some similarity, Islam was seen as something entirely new. In the North, Christianity was developed in pagan Saxons. They had practiced a confident but experimental paganism. Christianity was viewed as a foreign religion, comparable to actual foreign goods. Christianity was a different sort of exotic commodity. These Saxons were not opposed to Christianity, but had a respect and curiosity of any man’s religion. When faced with the spread of Christianity throughout the ranks of slaves, Frankish kings converted to Christianity. Had they not converted, the kings stood the chance of allowing a foreign religion to penetrate society, thus making one group stronger than themselves. Essentially, the kings pre-empted the competition by adopting Christianity. When the pagan king Ethelbert converted to Christianity, Brown demonstrated how Christianity replaced paganism in every respect. The worship of idols was suppressed. Pagan shrines were not destroyed, but merely converted to become a Christian church.
Brown’s understanding of “Frontiers” begins with the “truly important frontier” that lay between the pagan lands of north and eastern central Europe and a “Frankish” style of society, long identified with Christianity, which stretched from modern northern France into modern Germany. Even into the eighth century, these frontiers were pagan-holdouts to Christianity. Region by region, these frontiers began to close through the establishment of a new, more tightly organized social system along the edges of the Frankish kingdom. Brown credits this closing to the missionary work of monks, including Wynfrith, better known today as Saint Boniface.
I tend to agree with Brown that the pagans were Christianized. He regards the seventh through ninth centuries as a triumph of Christianity and the last great age of myth-making in Europe. Europe, at the beginning of the Middle Ages, had a pagan past, but looked toward a Christian present and future. Pagans may not have converted quickly and without reservation. According to the Nestorian bishop, Mar Shubhhal-Isho`, “barbarian nations need to see a little worldly pomp and show to attract them to make them draw nigh willingly to Christianity.” The barbarian world was penetrated on every level by Roman goods, by Roman styles of living, and Roman ideas. It is no stretch of the imagination to believe that in time, barbarians adopted a Roman religion. Brown says that the barbarian world slowly changed shape under the distant gravitational pull of the huge adjacent mass of the Roman empire and Christianity. The Christianization of the barbarians was no more than the coming together of Romand and non-Romans on the porous middle-ground between two empires. Soon, the phenomenon of “Christianizing” places, buildings, rites, holidays, language, piety, and institutions began to take place all across Western Europe. Brown calls this “a process of enforced adaptation.”
Conclusion
The Rise of Western Christendomultimately narrates the history of the collision of two worlds, pagan and Christian. Brown is able to translate the transformation of Christianity from the third century to the eleventh. The Rise of Western Christendom tells more than the story of Christianity in the west, but goes into great detail on the Christianity of the northern Europe. China and India are also included, not to mention an informative section on the origins and spread of Islam. Overall, Brown meets his target and provides readers with a comprehensive history of Christianity in the early Middle Ages.
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