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A beautifully written personal account of the discovery of late antiquity by one of the world's most influential and distinguished historiansThe end of the ancient world was long regarded by historians as a time of decadence, decline, and fall. In his career-long engagement with this era, the widely acclaimed and pathbreaking historian Peter Brown has shown, however, that the “neglected half-millennium” now known as late antiquity was in fact crucial to the development of modern Europe and the Middle East. In Journeys of the Mind, Brown recounts his life and work, describing his efforts to recapture the spirit of an age. As he and other scholars opened up the history of the classical world in its last centuries to the wider world of Eurasia and northern Africa, they discovered previously overlooked areas of religious and cultural creativity as well as foundational institution-building. A respect for diversity and outreach to the non-European world, relatively recent concerns in other fields, have been a matter of course for decades among the leading scholars of late antiquity.Documenting both his own intellectual development and the emergence of a new and influential field of study, Brown describes his childhood and education in Ireland, his university and academic training in England, and his extensive travels, particularly in the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East. He discusses fruitful interactions with the work of scholars and colleagues that include the British anthropologist Mary Douglas and the French theorist Michel Foucault, and offers fascinating snapshots of such far-flung places as colonial Sudan, midcentury Oxford, and prerevolutionary Iran. With Journeys of the Mind, Brown offers an essential account of the “grand endeavor” to reimagine a decisive historical moment.

Meisterhaft erzählt der preisgekrönte Althistoriker Peter Brown in seinem neuesten Buch vom Niedergang des Römischen Reiches und von den Fundamenten des christlichen Glaubens. Zwischen 250 und 650 n. Chr. vollzog sich ein grundlegender Wandel in der jungen Kirche: Geld begann eine immer größere Rolle zu spielen in den Beziehungen zwischen Gott und den Gläubigen, zwischen den Lebenden und den Toten. Das Streben nach Erlösung und die Angst vor Höllenqualen führte zu immer höheren Ausgaben der Gläubigen für ihr Seelenheil. Kirchen und Klöster, finanziert durch Spenden und Stiftungen, wurden zu steingewordenen Zeugnissen ihres Glaubens. Peter Brown eröffnet überraschende Perspektiven auf das Christentum, auf seine Entstehung und auf die frühen christlichen Vorstellungen vom Jenseits. Ein außergewöhnliches, glänzendes Panorama des Umbruchs von der Antike zum Mittelalter.

A Choice Outstanding Academic Title of the YearA Tablet Book of the YearMarking a departure in our understanding of Christian views of the afterlife from 250 to 650 CE, The Ransom of the Soul explores a revolutionary shift in thinking about the fate of the soul that occurred around the time of Rome's fall. Peter Brown describes how this shift transformed the Church's institutional relationship to money and set the stage for its domination of medieval society in the West.“[An] extraordinary new book…Prodigiously original—an astonishing performance for a historian who has already been so prolific and influential…Peter Brown's subtle and incisive tracking of the role of money in Christian attitudes toward the afterlife not only breaks down traditional geographical and chronological boundaries across more than four centuries. It provides wholly new perspectives on Christianity itself, its evolution, and, above all, its discontinuities. It demonstrates why the Middle Ages, when they finally arrived, were so very different from late antiquity.”—G. W. Bowersock, New York Review of Books“Peter Brown's explorations of the mindsets of late antiquity have been educating us for nearly half a century…Brown shows brilliantly in this book how the future life of Christians beyond the grave was influenced in particular by money.—A. N. Wilson, The Spectator

La ‘forma'di questo saggio di amplissimo respiro cronologico e geografico è determinata dalla convinzione che il ‘Grande Racconto'tradizionale del periodo compreso tra la nascita del cristianesimo nell'impero romano e la conversione del mondo scandinavo, otto secoli più tardi, debba essere ampiamente rivisto. E prima di tutto, per Peter Brown, è necessario mettere l'Europa occidentale sullo sfondo di un mondo più vasto e partire dal fatto che il cristianesimo ‘europeo'rappresenta semplicemente la variante più occidentale di un mondo cristiano amplissimo, il cui baricentro era situato originariamente nel Mediterraneo orientale e nelle grandi capitali dell'impero d'Oriente: sono Costantinopoli, Alessandria, Antiochia, e non Roma, a trovarsi allo snodo di un cristianesimo di portata mondiale. Con la nascita poi dell'islam e la sua conquista del Medio Oriente e del Nordafrica – e per mezzo millennio anche della Spagna meridionale – una barriera si interpose fra il mondo cristiano occidentale e un mondo cristiano più antico, che aveva compreso tanta parte dell'Oriente. Con la conversione delle popolazioni celtiche e germaniche il cristianesimo occidentale fu arricchito di apporti e sottolineature nuove – come la particolare insistenza sui temi del peccato, della morte e del destino dell'anima nell'aldilà – che gli daranno il volto che è a noi più familiare. Nella formazione dell'Europa occidentale il cristianesimo fu dunque decisivo nel creare un patrimonio comune di fede e di simboli culturali, conservando tuttavia ben vive, e anzi alimentandole, le identità locali.

Following the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, the cult of the saints was the dominant form of religion in Christian Europe. In this elegantly written work, Peter Brown explores the role of tombs, shrines, relics, and pilgrimages connected with the sacred bodies of the saints. He shows how men and women living in harsh and sometimes barbaric times relied upon the merciful intercession of the holy dead to obtain justice, forgiveness, and to find new ways to accept their fellows. Challenging the common treatment of the cult as an outbreak of superstition among the lower classes, Brown demonstrates how this form of religiousity engaged the finest minds of the Church and elicited from members of the educated upper classes some of their most splendid achievements in poetry, literature, and the patronage of the arts.'Brown has an international reputation for his fine style, a style he here turns on to illuminate the cult of the saints. Christianity was born without such a cult; it took rise and that rise needs chronicling. Brown has a gift for the memorable phrase and sees what the passersby have often overlooked. An eye-opener on an important but neglected phase of Western development.'—The Christian Century'Brilliantly original and highly sophisticated.... [The Cult of the Saints] is based on great learning in several disciplines, and the story is told with an exceptional appreciation for the broad social context. Students of many aspects of medieval culture, especially popular religion, will want to consult this work.'—Bennett D. Hill, Library Journal