Book Review of Late Antiquity by Peter Brown

It is curious to read such a short work by such a skilled and renowned author as Dr. Peter Brown. Late Antiquity makes up for its brevity in its cogent summary, with a minimum of fuss and examples, of some of the major themes of change that demarcate the Late Antique from the fast-approaching Medieval. Such a feat is difficult to accomplish in seventy-five pages and thirteen footnotes.

The organization of the work is something along the lines of an historical minuet: it is a small dance for two (the author and reader) at a pace characterized by speed and lightness. Throughout Brown manages to stay largely within key. The book, comprised of five chapters, introduces the reader to the social and intellectual culture of the late imperial elite classes. This chapter is followed by a brief glance at the interplay between the individual and the community within Judaism and Christianity during this period. Pivoting off of this topic, the discussion moves to the subject of the urban Christian ecclesiastical structure and the men who for the most part led it. To this point Brown has largely placed before the reader an urban construct contrasting and comparing the social mores, strata, and tensions, between an upper-class late antique Hellenism and a Christianity emerging autochthonous from the lower social orders. The third Chapter, perhaps the best of the book, The Challenge of the Desert, draws attention to the great reorientation of late antique religious expression away from a civic-based ideal and to the paradoxical desert paradises of the spirit as practiced by the anchorite fathers. Brown’s capstone chapter serves to synthesize the late antique reorientation of religion with a late antique reorientation of social and spiritual mores governing the deportment of the human body, sexual behavior, and the institution of marriage that set the metes and bounds of the institution across the East-West expanse of the empire.

Throughout the progress of the book, Brown is careful to highlight and elucidate differences between late antique culture and modern preconceptions. For example, Brown discusses the lack of anonymity inherent to most cities of the period and the commensurate role such social transparency played in generating conformity and public communityⁱ. The point is further drawn home by a brief discussion of the socialized expectations of behaviors that defined relations between the well-born and their social inferiors.ⁱⁱ At the center of these complex social interactions, Brown places the institution of marriage and makes some very perceptive points in this regard: “a profound mutation in the attitude toward the married couple took place during the course of the second century A.D.”ⁱⁱⁱ This mutation, as Brown would have it, is one whereby the frivolous nature of wives and their public comportment and interests during the Julio Claudian and Flavian eras gives way to a more measured and mature expression and expectation of the role of husband and wife as a social pillar of late imperial society.

Along with this point regarding marriage, Brown is careful to place the Pahellenic philosopher, whom he calls at various points a “moral missionary”^iv a “saint of culture”^v, and “a spokesman for the counter-culture of the well-born,”^vi within an elite context, writing “[t]he philosopher never seriously considered addressing the masses”^vii and this sets the discussion on a footing to examine the interplay between one of the truly great transformations of human culture during the late classical period Mediterranean:

What the philosophers presented as further refinement, tentatively added to an ancient and inward-looking morality of the elite, became, in the hands of Christian teachers, the foundation for the construction of a whole new building that embraced all classes in its demands (emphasis added) … The surprisingly rapid democratization of the philosophers’ upper-class counterculture by the leaders of the Christian church is the most profound single revolution of the late classical period. Anyone who reads Christian writings or studies Christian papyri (such as the texts found at Nag Hammadi) must realize that the works of the philosophers, though they may have been largely ignored by the average urban notable, had drifted down, through Christian preaching and Christian speculations, to form a deep sediment of moral notions current among thousands of humble persons” ^viii

This paragraph, one of the more important observations in the book, is quite sweeping in its scope and is a bit lean on the mechanism through which such democratization of what Brown terms “upper-class counterculture”^ix occurs. Here the reader understands this mechanism to be the leaders of the Christian church. Yet, no real evidence is here presented to link the idea of Panhellenic philosophy as an elite system of beliefs and practices that were somehow adopted or adapted by the Christians. Brown presents the Nag Hammadi texts as an example of this democratization, but this comparison is suspect: the Nag Hammadi corpus represents a dead-end in the development of what would become orthodox and Latin Christianity – much of what Christianity borrowed from Hellenic philosophy is not found within the tractates of Nag Hammadi’s codices.^x

The word ‘Christ’ does not appear anywhere in the text, nor does the gospel contain a messianic understanding of Jesus.

The Nag Hammadi Gospel of Thomas, dated to the second century CE, is actually a collection of chresmologia attributed to the figure of Jesus.^xi These sayings or oracles of Jesus contain nothing that is part and parcel to the Christology of Christianity – there is no narrative of crucifixion, resurrection, or last judgment. Nor can it be said that there was much acceptance of the kind of synthesis of Greek thought with the Gnostic spiritualism of the Nag Hammadi corpus by “upper-class counterculture”^xii philosophers: Plotinus and, most especially, his student Porphyry, harshly attacked and condemned Gnostic practices as much as later Christian orthodox leaders did. Brown makes an important point, and it is largely correct; however, something more is in play with respect to the cultural and intellectual currents brewing in late antique popular religion and it is not easily explained away as a harmonious trickle-down of Panhellenic philosophy to the eager masses of the empire.

To bring this point home, Brown’s caption to his photograph of the Arycanda inscription (311-312 CE) reads thus:

In 311-312,, a year before the triumph of Christianity, delegates from one province asked the emperor to make those “atheists,” the Christians, stop violating the rules of piety. To that end, they were to be forbidden from engaging in their execrable practices and ordered to worship the gods. ^xiii

This inscription actually refers to “those atheists”, beginning in line thirteen of the petition as “…long raging mad and to this day maintaining their mania unchanged, should at last be stopped and not trespass against the cult due to the gods, with any sinister novelty of worship;…”^xiv

What the Arycanda describes is not a situation where the democratization of Panhellenic philosophy and Christianity, if indeed it is Christianity that is indicated in the inscription – for this too is subject to reservation – can be said to be in concert with the civic elites. Nor again may we assert that this situation is limited to Lycia, the region where Arycandia is situated.

Eusebius reports a nearly-identical petition made by the citizens of Tyre against a similar cult of purported Christians this same year.^xv These inscriptions do not, on deeper investigation, present a picture of a Christianity “caught in the fixative of a group life consciously structured according to habitual and resilient norms”^xvi, and this epigraphic evidence is early fourth century CE. The Edict of Milan (313 CE) did not immediately result in harmonizing and reconciling Christianity with the elite classes of the empire. While Brown touches on the greater reality – the period of late antiquity witnessed a fundamental and revolutionary change in religious thought and practice across the spectrum of society, the evidence suggests that by the fourth century, this transition was far from complete and far more complex than could be treated in this short work.

Because the Arycandia inscription lacks the first syllable upon which the reconstruction of the lexeme Christian rests, it is equally plausible that the original word was actually Chrestian.

Brown’s treatment of The Shepherd of Hermas also deserves some examination. He writes:

We need look only at the Roman Christian community of around A.D. 120, as it is revealed in the visions collected The Shepherd of Hermas, to see what this should mean. Here was a religious group where everything that a student of religion could have predicted as capable of going wrong in a “Pauline” urban community had indeed gone wrong. Hermas was a prophet obsessed with preserving a single-hearted solidarity among the believers. He wished poignantly for a childlike innocence of guile, of ambition, of double-hearted anxiety among his community.^xvii

This discussion of Hermas, which continues for a page or so, calls to mind some evidence related issues. The Shepherd of Hermas is one of the longest texts ever incorporated into a bible codex. It is found in Codex Sinaiticus and in the churches of the Eastern rite, was held to be canonical into the eighth century CE. However, this juxtaposition of The Shepherd of Hermas with canonical texts seems to have completely colored the lens through which the second century content of Hermas is analyzed by historians.

The Shepherd of Hermas, despite its length, contains no mention of Jesus of Nazareth. Hence, there is no crucifixion, no resurrection, Jesus does not perform a last judgment. In the single case where the nominum sacrum for Christ is written in codex Sinaiticus, a Byzantine scribe edited this one important direct link to the Christian/Chrestian religion out of the text.

One may agree with Brown that The Shepherd of Hermas is an important witness to second century CE religion and morals in the Roman in one sector of the Roman world; however, presenting this text as record of a second century Christian Community “going wrong” in the sense that it was bucking a Pauline rule, is making a bit much of the evidence. It is beyond the scope of this review to discuss the Hermas text in greater detail, but it should be noted that at the time of its composition (mid- to late-second century) the only tradition for a collection of Christian texts into a canon is assigned to Marcion and his collection of texts did not include The Shepherd of Hermas. In this early period it likely stood on its own merits as an authority within its chrestic community – the extent to which it is Christian with a capital C is open for serious debate.

Brown, citing Ortega y Gasset, suggests that Hermas in its purported anomaly as a Christian piece of literature, demonstrates that “[m]uch of the history of the early Christian churches is a history of an urgent search for equilibrium among those whose ideal of single-hearted loyalty to each other and to Christ was constantly eroded by the objective complexity of their own position in Mediterranean society”^xviii But this ignores the basic, sober conclusion derived from weighing the content of The Shepherd of Hermas – it is an anomaly among Christian literature because it is not fundamentally Christian in a canonical sense at all: against the quoted Ortega y Gasset assertion, we may remind ourselves that historians and archaeologists have no idea what represented a social or even religious equilibrium to first and second century Christians. If Hermas is a snapshot of the possible situation in Rome of the period, Christians could be quite comfortable without any of the Christology evident in third and fourth centuries. To conclude, Brown’s suggestion that Hermas represents any aspect of a “Roman Christian community around the year A.D. 120” depends a great deal on a large segment of the readership not having read The Shepherd of Hermas as attested in Sinaiticus.

One of best sections of Late Antiquity is the chapter titled The Challenge of the Desert. It is here, in the deserts of Syria and Egypt, that something of the huge shift in ancient religious attitudes becomes most visible historically and archaeologically. Here again, the phenomenon is largely fourth century and later. Brown’s insights shine very nicely against the presented evidence:

The monastic paradigm drew on the more radical aspects of the pagan philosophic counterculture, most notably on the magnificently asocial lifestyle of the cynics, and on a long Judeo-Christian past. Its originality lay in its dramatic shift of viewpoint. It equated the worked wit a clearly identifiable phenomenon – settled society as it existed in the present – and it viewed that society as transparent to a sense of the true, that is of the “angelic,” ordering of mans’ first estate.^xix

Here, expressed in fourth-century monasticism, is a teleology that both foretells and recalls a spiritual future in the late antique present. The monastery and anchorites exist as a counterpoint to the earthly civitas and serve as the earthly outposts of City of God. As Brown notes, “[i]n the monastic paradigm, the city itself lost its identity as a distinctive cultural and social unit.”^xx The focal point of the civic religion is shifted; the religious instead of looking toward the center of the civic hearth or temple, instead are directed outward toward the desert skirts and sacred desolation of the monk and monastery.

In the closing chapter, Brown skillfully draws the reader from the wellspring of fourth century monasticism and into the experience of marital morality. The discussion of desert monasticism rightly focused on the concept and role of the Fall of Adam on the teleology of emergent orthodox Christianity:

The story of the Fall of mankind, n the persons of Adam and Eve, was held to be a faithful mirror of the soul of the contemporary ascetic, trembling on the brink of commitment to the dire restraints of life “in the world,” and summoning up the resolution to opt for the “angelic” life of the monk. For the cramped world of the Near Eastern villages, as among the dour households of the urban Christians, entry into the world began, in practice, with a parentally arranged marriage for the young couple in their early teens.^xxi

This quote summarizes the main dichotomy between the Christian ideal of withdrawal and celibacy and the institution of marriage with its natural involvement in issues of sex, gender, and power. The new marital morality, perhaps an older one now becoming empire-wide, called for behaviors and comportments of body against the backdrop of original sin and the Fall of Adam which relegated marriage as a state of worldly existence of less spiritual value than the existence chosen by the anchorite. Again Brown illustrates the change in orientation: the kosmikoi turn not to the city, its councils, its temples and oracles, for guidance; rather, the urban well-born turn outward to the desert monastic centers and anchorites for advice^xxii. For Brown, the new doctrine and practices, along with the new orientation of late antique society, resulted in “a new interpretation of the meaning of sex.”^xxiii.

Brown closes both his book and his discussion of the period, late antiquity, with some points on Augustine of Hippo, deemed one of the principal fathers of Latin Christianity albeit with a decidedly Punic flavor. Augustine’s contribution to the emerging society of the early medieval period in Western Europe cannot be overstated; however, Brown’s major point is both interesting and profound. He sees in Augustine’s formulation of Christian practice a merging of the awareness of the weakness of the flesh, so to speak. It is awareness of this weakness, explained and controlled through desert monastic practice that drives the development of social and religious mores among the Christian laity of all social classes.

Late Antiquity is, as noted above, a skillfully written work and has the double advantage of discussing an obscure topic in both an artful and exuberant manner that infects the reader with the author’s enthusiasm for the subject. Brown thesis, the explication of the inversion or turning inside-out of relationships, both civic and marital, on the boundaries of the ancient and medieval worlds arms the student and scholar with a very useful paradigm with which to approach deeper studies of this important period. It is difficult not to aspire to Browns lightness of touch combined with scholarly depth.

Notes

Related posts:

1. Peter Brown and The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity
2. Archaeology of a first-century wizard
3. Mani and Authorship of the Canonical Gospels
4. Private: The Gospels According to Hadrian, Part III: The Aelian Canon and the Main Hand of God
5. Private: An army of divine men and the secret army of Mithras
6. Private: Acts of the Chresmologoi: the Role of Oracles and Chronicles in the Creation of Divine Men
7. Private: Chrestians and the lost history of Classical Antiquity
8. The vacuum of evidence for pre-4th century Christianity
9. Augustus: the Roman Messiah
10. Pliny correspondence with Trajan: Christians or Chrestians?