This is a landmark work of scholarship on the transformation of the Late Roman world into Medieval Christendom in the West. The period begins with the reign of Constantine and ends with the Carolingian era. The study covers a long period (from about the 4th to the 10th Centuries ACE) during which a distinctive Western Christendom emerges with Byzantium to the East and Islam to the South.
The study commences with the Christianisation of the late Roman Empire. The traditional narrative of the post Roman period tells of the Roman Church playing the role of unifier of the West during the "chaos" of the post-Roman world through Christianising the regions beyond the old limes. Brown however looks beyond the macro-level to examine the emerging of many "micro-Christendom's" which though sharing a common Roman Christianity, go on to develop unique self-contained Christian worlds. These were effectively "mini-Romes", each with its own set of peculiarities and characteristics. These micro-Christendom's include Ireland, Northumbria, regions of Gaul, Italy and Spain. Critical in the process was the role of local holy men and women and saints in bringing the "high" culture of Rome to local communities and adapting them to local conditions. This view of the era stands in contrast to older histories which emphasise the role of macro-policy decisions taken in Rome and Aachen in the Christianisation of Western Europe rather than what happened on the ground at the local level.
Brown also places the development of Western European Christianity within the wider context of the Mediterranean world. He notes that throughout the period, the centre of gravity for Christianity remained in the East, centred on Constantinople in whose cultural orbit the West moved. This for example, is reflected in the self conscious adoption by Charlemagne of Byzantine models when he built his church in the new capital at Aachen. This approach stands in contrast to earlier histories which generally look at the process of change in Western Europe as being driven largely from within without regard to external influences. (The point is brought home in a striking fashion through music if one were to listen to the reconstruction by Ensemble Organum of the Old Roman Chant of the Western Church (ultimately supplanted by the Gregorian Chant) which though sung in Latin appears barely distinguishable in its musical form from the Byzantine Chant).
The narrative ends with the Carolingian period with Charlemagne crowned Holy Roman Emperor, bringing most of Western Europe under the political control of a single rule for the first time since Roman times even if not long lasting. This conventionally is taken to be the definitive break between Later Antiquity and its aftermath - and the Medieval period. This was also a period when Islam acquires hegemony in the Eastern and Southern Mediterranean and Byzantium is pushed back to its Anatolian heartland, leaving the West in the end as dominant in the Christian world.
Brown however does more than set out an interpretation of the period he studies. He touches on some of the key debates that underpin scholarship of the period. The classical view enunciated by Gibbons would hold that Rome fell in a sudden cataclysm that took Europe into the "Dark Ages" - until it gradually pulled itself out of that darkness many centuries later. A later view developing in the 60s and 70s however suggests a gradual decline of Rome that began well before the 5th century and a continuation of Roman life after the fall of the Western Empire over many centuries with a slow transition to the Middle Ages. Brown is perhaps one of the best known exponents of the latter view, for example in "The World of Late Antiquity". An inflection of the gradualist argument is the famous Pirenne thesis which saw a continuity of Roman life in the West well after the end of the last Western Emperor's reign in 476 ACE, exemplified by the uninterrupted trade and religious connections of the West with the Mediterranean World. According to Pirenne, the break with the Roman past came later with the coming of Islam and the rupture of communication with Eastern Christendom by Muslim control of the Mediterranean.
Brown accepts that the Pirenne thesis now needs to be abandoned on account of the evidence provided by archaeology of a serious economic and demographic collapse and a contraction in the scale of life in the Late Roman Empire, bringing to an end the material and political underpinnings of the Roman state by the 5th century ACE. There was no smooth continuity. This appears to reflect a current trend in scholarship that swings the pendulum towards the older view of Gibbons (eg see Ward Perkin's "The Fall of Rome"). However, Brown's argument in favour of a gradual transformation of the Roman world into Medieval Europe over several centuries in this work remains compelling, even if this change occurred against the backdrop of the trauma of the Roman collapse in the West and a reduced and more localised scale of life in Western Europe. As such, his argument may represent a contemporary synthesis of the views emphasising sudden collapse and those in favour of the gradual change thesis.
Brown also addresses the corollary arguments about how "dark" the period really was. On this, he is on firmer ground, painting a picture of innovation and change during the post-Roman age rather than collapse and stagnation. That change involves not just Christianisation but also the development of local identities succeeding the former "Roman" identity. The narrative considers how at a certain point in time, the peoples of Gaul, Britain and Italy forgot that they once had been Romans and instead self-identify both as Christian and also as Britons, Franks, Burgundians and Lombard's - and also as English and Irish (these two peoples never having been Roman in the first place). It was no longer the Christian Empire of Constantine and Theodosius that the successor states looked to for self-identification - but the ancient kingdom of Israel as revealed in the Old Testament. Further, the dark ages may have been a golden age for Europe's peasants freed as they were from the extractive machinery of Roman taxation following the collapse of the Roman polity. Indeed, an important feature of the Carolingian State, that succeeds the post-Roman period was the restoration of generalised taxation of the land across most of Western Europe as the Romans had once done.
This is a work that searches for "l'histoire profonde" or deep history - looking beyond the top layers at the layers underneath overlaying one and another. Indeed, the physical remains of the past speak to the multiple layers of history in a tangible way. Many Christian churches and shrines for example were built on previously pagan sites. In the East, a further layer of Islamic culture may have covered a Christian past and before that a Hellenic past, all of which still continue to peer through the layers and enliven the present. The author cogently makes the point with his description of the use of Neolithic axes and other implements by Medieval Church builders who included them in the stonework, believing that these were magical stones that would ward of lighting (presumably contrary to Christian belief but reflecting older folk traditions). The builders did not realise that these were in fact artefacts created by their own ancestors in the distant past.
Histoire profonde is indeed a hallmark of the Annales school of history that was highly influential in the Francophone tradition of history writing for most of the 20th century. Peter Brown is thought to be one of the few leading historians in the Anglophone tradition who has been influenced by the Annales school. The emphasis of the Annales historians on the detailed study of particular regions bounded by their specific geography, the examination of mentalities or ways of thinking (in contrast to the traditional nineteenth century emphasis on political history) and the study of change over very long periods (the longue duree) are all hallmarks of the study. The Annales perhaps anticipated the contemporary interest in cultural history and Brown in his early embrace of the Annales method was perhaps ahead of his time. This work indeed is a masterpiece of the genre.
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The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, A.D. 200-1000 (Making of Europe)
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