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Author: Peter R.L. Brown
Quotes of Author: Peter R.L. Brown
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  1. Peter R.L. Brown _ Through the Eye of a Needle:

    Thus, more than ever before, society was divided into two classes: those who became steadily poorer and more destitute, and those who built up their prosperity on the spoils of the ruined Empire-real drones, who lived on the toil and travail of other classes. To
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  2. Peter R.L. Brown _ The Ransom of the Soul

    The friction point of Christian eschatology, and of Christian pastoral care, was the fate of the non valdes-of the non valde mali and the non valde boni: the "not altogether bad" and the "not altogether good." Such persons could be helped by the prayers and offerings of the living, provided that they had "qualified" for such help in this life, by living reasonably good lives:
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  3. Peter R.L. Brown _ The Ransom of the Soul

    We find the same rituals, if with slightly different names: the giving of alms {the mñtnae}, the giving of a Eucharistic oblation {the prosphora}, the celebration of a "love feast" {the agapé: the Greek and Coptic equivalent of the refrigerium}, and the "making of memory" {r̄meue} on behalf of "the one who comes out from the body."51
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  4. Peter R.L. Brown _ Through the Eye of a Needle:

    Before your eyes human bodies … battered with a scourge of lead or broken with cudgels or torn apart with claws or branded in the flames … and you, the upholder of riches and of the sale of offices, recline without a care, resting on thick carpets piled high beneath you … and entertain your guests with the tale of the man whom you have savagely tortured … and lest anyone present … be struck with horror at the story, you go on to claim, in doing this, that you are beholden to the laws.40
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  5. Peter R.L. Brown _ The Rise of Western

    Bardaisan's treatise was appropriately named The Book of the Laws of Countries.
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  6. Peter R.L. Brown _ The Rise of Western

    Without the tenacity of its gnarled, pre-Christian roots, modern Europe would have lacked the imaginative and intellectual "roughage" provided by an unresolved tension between the sacred and the profane. A Europe which grew only from "Christian roots" would have been a sadly anemic Europe.
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  7. Peter R.L. Brown _ The Ransom of the Soul

    This view of Tertullian should not be confused with the tradition of "Christian mortalism" that has survived in some circles up to today. In "Christian mortalism," the soul of the dead person is believed to be unconscious-as good as dead-until awakened again at the Resurrection and the Last Judgment. For Tertullian, the souls of the departed never lapsed into total unconsciousness. Rather, they lived a suspended, interim existence, waiting for the next great act in the drama of God's salvation to begin:
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  8. Peter R.L. Brown _ The Rise of Western

    of the many Christianities of this time. For the entire period from 200 to 1000, Christianity remained predominantly a religion of Asia and of northern Africa. Though well established in parts of the western Mediterranean {and not least in large cities such as Rome and Carthage} Christianity spread slowly throughout the non-Mediterranean West. What we now call a distinctively "European" Christianity was unthinkable in the year 500 A.D. Even the notion of "Europe" itself only took on its modern meaning in around the year 650 A.D. {as we will see at the end of chapter 11}. By the year 1000 A.D., what could be called a "European" Christianity had only recently been established, with the conversion of Germany, of parts of Eastern Europe, and of Scandinavia.
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  9. Peter R.L. Brown _ The Rise of Western

    A great scholar of Gaul and of the "barbarian" side of the Rhine frontier – John Drinkwater – has recently provided a cogent answer. He argues that emperor, military, and civilian populations alike needed the idea of a "barbarian threat" to justify their own existence. The threat of invasion justified high rates of taxation. It justified the splendid palaces and cities ringed with high walls which overlooked the Rhine and the Danube, from the North Sea to the Black Sea. It gave a raison d'être to a powerful and well-paid military class.
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  10. Peter R.L. Brown _ The Ransom of the Soul

    At the same time, radical Pelagian tracts, such as the de divitiis-the relentlessly argued "Treatise on Riches"-had advocated the total renunciation of property by the rich.27 The author of this tract extended his plea for total renunciation to include a consequential denunciation of the existence of wealth in the first place: Tolle divitem et pauperem non invenies {Get rid of the rich and you will find no poor} was one of his many provocative slogans.
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  11. Peter R.L. Brown _ The Rise of Western

    Up to 700 A.D., it was assumed that the Christian family cared for their own dead. The clergy played little role in burial and none whatsoever in the arrangement and decoration of tombs.
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  12. Peter R.L. Brown _ The Rise of Western

    To be licensed to exist was not necessarily a license to be loved in an increasingly Christian world."
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