The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, A.D. 200–1000. Peter Brown.

Peter Brown is a Professor at Princeton and has produced one of the great classics outlining true history from the Germanic takeover of the husk called the Western Roman empire, to the rise of Christianity and the creation of the modern world via the syncretic development of the pagan with the Christian.  A religious group, which before 315 AD was persecuted, marginalised and comprised no more than 10% of the Roman population, Christianity post Constantine developed into an ideal and foundation for European culture and eventual global domination.  This established fact is derided by the usual array of post-modernists, Atheists and ‘Enlighteners’ who ignore the very pagan and barbaric aspects of ‘classical’ civilisation.  Without Christianity it is likely we would still be sacrificing humans to wood gods, and living in clans with very little technological advancement in any form discernible from 200 AD.  There is nary a claim to a ‘dark age’ since as Peter Brown records and details, none existed.  Turbulence, change, synthesis, and our own ignorance do not validate ‘darkness’. 

The book is large and covers an enormous geographical area from Iceland to Western China.  I remember watching a video and reading various blogs, with Atheists deriding medieval Christians believing in ‘Prester John’, a Christian King in China who would ally with the European Christians during the Crusades of the 13^th century and help Christian Europe defeat the Muslim Jihad.  Just another example of superstitious Christian ignorance and stupidity, the self-congratulating geniuses will say.  Except there was a Christian Kingdom in Western China, artefacts date it to at least 800 A.D. if not earlier and it lasted many centuries.  This rich state was Nestorian Christian, a sect that deviated from the Orthodox-Chalcedonian Church in matters of Christ’s divinity (given post birth).  It was large and populous for the time, cited close to major trade routes that linked China with Eurasia.  Peter Brown mentions this to his credit.

It is one of the few books I have read covering Medieval history, in which there can be very little disagreement with the author’s treatment of the subject.  Some of the more important aspects of Brown’s engrossing and important work include the following.

Christianity was before 200 AD primarily a North African and Asian religion.  A fact easily lost with our Euro-centric view of history.  This means that the Euro-Christianity which developed owed much to these sources which shaped the particular brand of Christian-Catholicism which emerges by the 7^th century as something rather different than the Eastern Christian sects.

The constant presence of the profane, pagan pre-Christian world and the interaction with Christianity is an unexplored theme.  There was a syncretic relation across Europe between the Roman and pagan, and Christianity.  Christianity did not supplant paganism in most areas, as much as merge with it.

Most of what we know about the pagan pre-Christian world comes from Christian writers who were mainly monks.  Without this library outlining pagan customs, sagas, rituals, beliefs and creation stories, and legends of how gods and demons worked in our material world, we would know very little about pre-Christian Europe and North Africa.

Education in Christianity, including obviously literacy, was highly prized and was developed early in the Church.  This created a class of highly educated, aware, and literate professions within the Church which allowed the development of more complex socio-economic organisations, complex trade, political organisation and governance.  Power and brute strength was post Rome, not enough.  Culture, ethos, morality, common laws, extended trade which benefitted the general masses, and ‘justice’ which was blind to rank, became just as important.  Christianity provided for and filled these needs.

The Muslim Jihad starting in the early 7^th century disrupted and deranged a rich Christian civilisation which stretched from Spain to Western China with pockets of Christian domination existing even in Sassanid Persia.  Trade, the economy, money, materials and resources all were vastly diminished and created a great contraction in both the Eastern and Western Christian states, with the Muslims almost overrunning all of Europe, stopped finally by the Christian Franks at Poitiers near Tours in 732 (Brown says 733) A.D.  Without that victory Christian Europe was probably conquered.

The Roman empire was not a monolithic ‘great classical’ civilisation as expressed by anti-Christian enthusiasts and atheists.  By their own false account Rome ‘fell’, which logically indicates it was not that strong.  It was in effect taken over during a 150 year period, by German mercenaries and military.  When Rome ‘fell’ technological development was static and poor.  In a few centuries post 476 AD Europe was covered in windmills and watermills, heralding an age of mechanisation and improvement.  Greater productivity means greater wealth, and it this economic prowess which generated the funds for advanced military arts and tools, which allowed the Christians to reclaim Spain and for a while the Holy Land and drive the Muslim Jihad back to its core. 

‘Barbarians’ as given to us by Roman propaganda did not really exist, especially along the borders.  There was much contact along the Roman ‘limes’ with non-Roman states, tribes and clans.  Many were highly Romanised long before 476 AD.  It was a porous world and trade and culture were exchanged.  Rome did not own civilisation, any more than non-Romans owned barbarism.

Christianity is not static.  The Christian religion has changed by region, by year, by century since 200 AD.  It continues to do so today (albeit in the wrong and irreligious direction).  It was a dynamic, inclusive, and open religion.  The institutions of Christianity thus developed more slowly than we believe (baptism, the cemetery, rites and prayers).  The Church was not fully formed in any sense, even by the time of Augustine (~400 AD).  It took many more centuries.

The Church post Rome maintained not only Roman law, but also much of the existing pagan law.  Justinian the great Christian emperor of the Greek Romans (early to mid 6^th century), codified Roman law in the Justinian code.  Using this, Christians throughout Europe, over many centuries amended Justinian’s codex to include local ‘pagan’ laws, with clear examples being the Franks, Visigoths and Saxons.

It is little known, that the 7^th century was a watershed.  The Muslim Jihad erupted.  But thankfully for civilisation and our own development, the Christian world had become wealthy and educated.  Architecture was rich and varied.  Libraries at hundreds of monasteries were common.  Monks and writers outside the monastery had the time and patronage to fill volumes on history, religion and science.  Cities were re-energised as trade emerged post the Justinian induced civil war in North Africa and Italy.  Confidence and function were restored to urban centres and their hinterlands.  We see technology being applied using water and wind power, to generate great leaps in efficiency in farming and manufacturing.  The 7^th century is often overlooked, but it sets the foundation for what follows.

There is much more which could be discussed.  But the book needs to be read by anyone interested in how or why Europe developed the way it did and how Christianity allowed Europe to not only survive the implosion of a pagan, brutal, slave centred and corrupted Roman empire, but surpass it in all areas, in all aspects, in everything that matters in the material and spiritual worlds.