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Peter Brown The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity, A.D. 200-1000, 2nd edition Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003 Pp. x + 625. $29.95 (paper).
Professor Brown has substantially revised The Rise of Western Christendom, originally published in 1996 as part of the "Making of Europe" series edited by Jacques Le Goff. The result is a much stronger work, which will appeal to scholars of Late Antiquity more than the first edition while still captivating the general reader.
In the second edition Brown continues to treat the localization of Christianity in regions from the North Atlantic to Asia. he describes how Irishmen, Saxons, and others transferred to their homeland relics, styles of art and architecture, and ecclesiastical customs, thus believing that they "had brought to their own region a 'microcosm' which reflected, with satisfactory completeness, the 'macrocosm' of a worldwide Christianity . . . . They strove to cancel out the hiatus between 'center' and 'periphery' by making 'little Homes' available on their home ground" (15). Brown calls the local variations of a broader Christianity "micro-Christendoms." In his characterization of the British Isles, he writes "The religious leaders of every region claimed to possess at home...