The Rise of Western Christendom Quotes

“Up to 700 A.D., it was assumed that the Christian family cared for their own dead. The clergy played little role in burial and none whatsoever in the arrangement and decoration of tombs.”
― Peter R.L. Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, A.D. 200-1000

“To be licensed to exist was not necessarily a license to be loved in an increasingly Christian world.”
― Peter R.L. Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, A.D. 200-1000

“Bardaisan’s treatise was appropriately named The Book of the Laws of Countries.”
― Peter R.L. Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, A.D. 200-1000

“Without the tenacity of its gnarled, pre-Christian roots, modern Europe would have lacked the imaginative and intellectual “roughage” provided by an unresolved tension between the sacred and the profane. A Europe which grew only from “Christian roots” would have been a sadly anemic Europe.”
― Peter R.L. Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, A.D. 200-1000

“of the many Christianities of this time. For the entire period from 200 to 1000, Christianity remained predominantly a religion of Asia and of northern Africa. Though well established in parts of the western Mediterranean (and not least in large cities such as Rome and Carthage) Christianity spread slowly throughout the non-Mediterranean West. What we now call a distinctively “European” Christianity was unthinkable in the year 500 A.D. Even the notion of “Europe” itself only took on its modern meaning in around the year 650 A.D. (as we will see at the end of chapter 11). By the year 1000 A.D., what could be called a “European” Christianity had only recently been established, with the conversion of Germany, of parts of Eastern Europe, and of Scandinavia.”
― Peter R.L. Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, A.D. 200-1000

“A great scholar of Gaul and of the “barbarian” side of the Rhine frontier – John Drinkwater – has recently provided a cogent answer. He argues that emperor, military, and civilian populations alike needed the idea of a “barbarian threat” to justify their own existence. The threat of invasion justified high rates of taxation. It justified the splendid palaces and cities ringed with high walls which overlooked the Rhine and the Danube, from the North Sea to the Black Sea. It gave a raison d’être to a powerful and well-paid military class.”
― Peter R.L. Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, A.D. 200-1000