These long titles kill me. The full title of the book is Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350-550 AD by Peter Brown. It looks like an interesting book. I considered picking up a review copy from Netgalley, until I saw that it was 806 pages (and over 31 hours on audiobook).
Cardus, which is a really good magazine out of Canada (James KA Smith was just announced as the new editor), as a good review of it if the length of the book does not throw you off.
How did the poor and persecuted church of the early Roman Empire become the wealthy and influential church of the Middle Ages? This is the question retired Princeton historian Peter Brown explores in his survey of wealth and the churches in the transitional period lasting from the proclamation of toleration for Christianity by the emperor Constantine in 313 to the emergence of a post-Roman order in Western Europe in the sixth century. During his career, which has spanned more than four decades, Brown has reshaped the study of late antiquity through several groundbreaking books. For the most part, this, his latest book, lives up to his impressive reputation.
continue reading the rest of the review at the Cardus webite
Related articles
- Through the Eye of a Needle by Peter Brown – review (guardian.co.uk)
