Peter Brown, a known authority on Mediterranean civilisation in
late antiquity, traces the growing power of early Christian bishops
as they wrested influence from the philosophers who had
traditionally advised the rulers of Graeco-Roman society. In the
new ""Christian empire"", the ancient bonds of citizen to citizen
and of each city to its benefactors were replaced by a common
loyalty to a distant, Christian autocrat. This transformation of
the Roman Empire from an ancient to a medieval society, Brown
argues, is among the most far-reaching consequences of the rise of
Christianity. In the last centuries of the Roman Empire, the power
of the emperors depended on collaboration with the local elites.
The shared ideals of Graeco-Roman culture (""paideia""), which were
inculcated among the elite by their education, acted as unwritten
constitution. The philosophers, as representives of this cultural
tradition and as critics and advisors of the powerful, upheld the
ideals of just rule and prevented the abuses of power. Between the
conversion of Emperor Constantine to Christianity in 312 and the
reign of Theodosius (379-395), however, both Christian bishops and
uneducated monks emerged as competitors to the traditional educated
elites. Claiming as Christians to be the ""true philosophers"",
they asserted their own role in swaying the emperors to mercy and
just rule. Brown shows how charity to the urban poor gave bishops
such as Saint Ambrose a novel power base - the restless lower
classes of the empire. The lines of power that led from local
society to the imperial court increasingly fell into the hands of
the church, as clerics exercised their power to ensure the peace in
cities, secure amnesties, and convey to the emperor the wishes of
his subjects. Brown also points out how churchmen expressed their
new local power through violence against rivals: Jewish synagogues
and Roman Temples were destroyed, and Hypatia, one of the few women
with a public role as a philosopher, was lynched in Alexandria.
Brown demonstrates how Christian teaching provided a model for a
more autocratic, hierarchial empire: the ancient ideals of
democracy and citizenship gave way to the image of a glorious ruler
showing mercy to his lowly and grateful subjects. Drawing upon a
wealth of material - newly discovered letters and sermons of Saint
Augustine, archaeological evidence, manuscripts in Coptic and
Syriac - he provides a portrait of a turbulent and fascinating era.
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