Religion and Society in the Age of St. Augustine

Peter Brown, author of the celebrated ‘Augustine of Hippo’, has here gathered together his seminal articles and papers on the rapidly changing world of Saint Augustine. The collection is wide-ranging, dealing with political theory, social history, church history, historiography, theology, history of religions, and social anthropology. Saint Augustine is, of course, the central figure; and in an important introduction Peter Brown explains how the preoccupations of these essays led him to write the prize-winning biography. Brown then goes on to explore the heart of Augustine’s political theory, not only showing how it factors in Augustine’s thought, but also pointing to what is different from and similar to twentieth-century political thought. Peter Brown is the undoubted master of the late antique world and its scholarly exploration, as his many classic books attest. But if he had written only this volume, originally published in 1972 and now reprinted, he would be known as a scholar of the very first rank. The essays here retain tremendous power to instruct and illuminate. –James J. O’Donnell, Georgetown University, author of ‘Augustine: A New Biography’ I salute Mr. Brown’s achievement in bringing Augustine out of the tomb of theological doctrine and setting his mind and emotions working before our eyes. . . . I think Augustine would have been surprised by some of the clinical images in which his thought is presented. . . . But there is nothing clumsy about the modernity in which Mr. Brown clothes his Augustine. His sensitivity is controlled by fidelity to the texts and to events. . . . The connection between external events and the inner world of Augustine’s thought is something that Mr. Brown never obtrudes, and never forgets. –‘The New Statesman’ Peter Brown, born in Dublin, Ireland, has taught in history departments at Oxford, the University of London, the University of California (Berkeley), and Princeton University. His principal concern is the rise of Christianity and the transition from the ancient to the early medieval world. His other books include ‘Augustine of Hippo’, ‘The World of Late Antiquity’, ‘The Body and Society’, and ‘Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire’.