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The Barbarian Conversion: From Paganism to Christianity

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Manufacturer: University of California Press
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In a work of splendid scholarship that reflects both a firm mastery of difficult sources and a keen intuition, one of Britain's foremost medievalists tells the story of the Christianization of Europe. It is a very large story, for conversion encompassed much more than religious belief. With it came enormous cultural change: Latin literacy and books, Roman notions of law and property, and the concept of town life, as well as new tastes in food, drink, and dress. Whether from faith or by force, from self-interest or by revelation, conversion had an immense impact that is with us even today. It is Richard Fletcher's achievement in this superb work that he makes that impact both felt and understood.


DESCRIPTION:

Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 274.02
EAN: 9780520218598
ISBN: 0520218590
Label: University of California Press
Manufacturer: University of California Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 575
Publication Date: 1999-11-01
Publisher: University of California Press
Studio: University of California Press


SIMILAR ITEMS:

• Christianity and Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries
• The Cross and The Crescent: The Dramatic Story of the Earliest Encounters Between
• Christianizing the Roman Empire: (A. D. 100-400) (A.D. 100-400)
• A Clear And Present Word: The Clarity of Scripture (New Studies in Biblical Theology)
• Moorish Spain


CUSTOMER REVIEWS:

Customer Rating:
Summary: Too Specialized for a Generalist
Comment: This is a scholarly work from a fantastically informed writer. But it's very narrowly focused, very detailed, and very poorly signposted. I was looking for a general history of the spread of Christianity throughout Europe. But this book is narrowly focused on specific evangelistic missions and ecclesiastical details.

The detail would be way too much for a generalist in any case, but it would have been tolerable if the author were better at signposting his narrative---starting each section or paragraph with an old-fashioned "topic sentence" to tell you what he's going to talk about or what the point of the upcoming plethora of details is. He also doesn't provide enough introductory material on the various ethnic groups or geographic areas before his discussion of them, at least for a lay reader. You're pretty much plopped in media res and have to piece together what you can.

There was enough good information in the book to keep me slogging through it. But the broad picture of European conversion that I was looking for was not there, and the bits of the picture I got were awfully hard fought for. It would be nice to see the author work with a good editor for a condensed (in detail) and revised (in narrative) edition of this book.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Dry bones come mostly to life.
Comment: If you want to know how Europe became Christian (to the extent that it did), I can hardly recommend this book too highly. Fletcher is a judicious historian, a delightful conversationalist, and knows his stuff. I bought this book for background for my research on how Christians in settled civilizations related a new faith to ancient cultures. It was a lucky buy. Fletcher tells the story, and when possible, tells it well. I remember knocking on the door of the art historian two floors up to share some of the illustrations and points that went with them.

Some parts of the book remain a bit dry, though, when the story became repetitive or good sources seemed unavailable. (As Fletcher wryly puts it, "the historian of the dark ages must be thankful for the smallest mercies.") But covering a thousand years of obscurity is not alway merciful to the reader. It's hard to remember all the names, for one thing, and Fletcher sometimes forgets to remind us who is who.

I'm interested in is "fulfillment theology" -- the idea many Christians have had that the Gospel does not simply abolish, but fulfills, the deepest truths in pre-Christian cultures. The Christians Fletcher talks about seem to have been pretty flexible on culture and faith -- less rigid than many colonial missionaries would become -- but did not think about the issue so deeply as an Augustine, an Origin, a Ricci, or a Chesterton. Sometimes faith and culture come together in a daffy ad-hoc mixture: Anglo-Saxon kings once traced their lineages to the god Woden: after conversion, they traced it through Woden back to Adam!

Conversion seemed to run strongly along aristocratic family lines -- the theme comes up again and again. And while believers often had a very worldly notion of God's blessing, it was interesting to see how the upper classes sacrificed for their faith, as well as gain from it materially or politically. Fletcher shows that conversion was seldom entirely forced, but often was socially motivated. (Princess brides seemed to accomplish almost as much as missionaries.) All in all, a useful resource, and an excellent read.
Customer Rating:
Summary: filling some of the gaps in history
Comment: A lot of this book confirms stuff I already suspected; that Christianity had inherited the Greek-Roman civilization and this was an important tool in converting Germanic and Slavic chiefdoms (in which case the chiefdoms became statehoods); how missionaries targeted the kings who, after conversion, enforced the religion on their people; and that the `pagan threat' of the Vikings wasn't really all that `pagan'.

But I learned more after reading this book; the importance of monasticism in the conversion of the aristocracies under the kings; how converted kings waited a generation or two before destroying the indigenous religions; the importance of pilgrimage to the Christianized Irish and how that took them all over western Europe in their missionary efforts (before that, I was guilty of viewing the Irish church as isolated); how some pagan societies in eastern Europe emerged as statehoods (and thus not as attracted to Greek-Roman civilization as much as earlier converts were) and therefore had to be subdued by merciless crusading forces. Some of these crusades in eastern Europe reminded me of how the Americas was lost to the American Indians during Christendom's expansion across the Atlantic; rather than converting the natives, they were simply driven out of the land which was then colonized by western European Christians.

The downside to this book (tortuous writing about all these monks founding monasteries at boonies-shire and sticks-bury have already been addressed by other viewers) is that it doesn't tell us much about how Christianity affected the slave trade or its evolution into serfdom. I was under the impression that slavery dwindled in Europe after its Christianization but there are passages in this book that suggests that it continued for quite some time well into the middle ages, but he doesn't have much to say on the subject. He does mention Frankish monasteries that banned the murder and torture of slaves but that's about it.

I would also have liked to see more of how the monks who founded missionary monasteries affected the lower class populations but the author addresses this as much as the surviving evidence allows him to, so it's not his fault, but that evidence doesn't tell us much. We do learn though, that some people were bitter because the missionaries destroyed their former rites without giving them new ones (suggesting that religious devotion for the lower classes after their baptism was not a big deal to the religious leaders). There is also some slight evidence that the people did not like the strict abstinence preached and practiced by the religious leaders and were quick to notice any hypocrisy in the observance of these dogmas by these priests, monks, and missionaries.

Perhaps it might not be appropriate for this book, but I would like to have read more about heretical groups like the Albigensians in the chapter that discusses rival monotheisms (one of the rival monotheisms, Islam, was considered a heresy anyway). Perhaps there would be room for this if fewer pages were spent detailing the accounts of various monks founding monasteries.

Don't let these criticisms fool you into thinking that this book is not worth the read. It is very worth it. It doesn't completely close the gap between the modern age and antiquity but it does close a large portion of it. After reading this book, the middle ages will help mankind's timeline appear to flow much more smoothly and won't look so blocky.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Entertaining page-turner
Comment: This is easily one of the most entertaining, and readable, works on this topic I've encountered. Fletcher's style is witty, chatty, and accessible. I couldn't put this book down, and devoured it in 4 days. Every chapter was as good as the last, and I plan on re-reading it soon. His frequent references to prominent historical people and events help you really connect the material with other information about the area, giving you a more complete picture of the people and their times.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Judicious, Large and Instructive
Comment: This book is a compendium of dates, places, facts, and personages bearing on the penetration of Christianity into pagan Europe from Late Antiquity onwards. In scope, the book is large. The author marshalls overwhelming masses of supporting data to make his clearly stated points. In many regards, the methodology harks back to an earlier era of scholarship which in its extreme is represented by "The Golden Bough." Solidly and in a workman like fashion Flechter makes his case. He never overstates his grasp of the subject nor stretches his sources to reach some desired conclusion. This is a highly instructive and necessary book on this topic. It is neither a "be all" or "end all" with regards to the broad areas investigated, however, overlooking or dismissing its scholarship because it is not in a trendy form would be a mistake. This is a major secondary source on its subject matter.

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