Review of Richard Fletcher’s *The Barbarian Conversion*

The Barbarian Conversion: From Paganism to Christianity by Richard Fletcher

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A truly extraordinary book. Working from very patchy and ambiguous documents and archeological remains, Fletcher goes region by region speaking to us of the conversion of Europe to Christianity. We meet noble missionaries and conniving bishops and reckless monks and much more.

The strength of the book is the author’s acceptance of complexity in the reality of conversion. The factors were many (economic, cultural, marital, military, spiritual, philosophical) but he resists the temptation to boil it all down to one simple answer. A must-read for anyone who wants to understand what we are able to know about the conversion of the barbarians and the slow creation of European Christendom.

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