Description
Book SynopsisThis short book by one of France's leading historians deals with a big question: how was it that Christianity, that masterpiece of religious invention, managed, between 300 and 400 AD, to impose itself upon the whole of the Western world? In his erudite and inimitable way, Paul Veyne suggests three possible explanations.
Trade Review"Takes its readers on a fascinating journey through the crucial events ... As Veyne's book vividly made clear throughout, without Constantine's conversion Christianity could have been a mere 'historical parenthesis'."
Kelvingrove Review "A vigorously written interpretative essay about the triumph of Christianity in late antiquity, by a selfprofessed unbeliever. Veyne, always as sensitive to the process of writing history as he is to the study of the past itself, approaches the early history of Christianity as an avant-garde religion. He examines the implications of its appropriation by the state with great energy and in an uncompromising manner."
Rosamond McKitterick
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements vii
1 Constantine: The Saviour of Humanity 1
2 Christianity: A Masterpiece 17
3 The Church: Another Masterpiece 33
4 The Dream of the Milvian Bridge: Constantine’s Faith and his Conversion 46
5 The Motives, Both Major and Minor, for Constantine’s Conversion 58
6 Constantine, the Church’s ‘President’ 73
7 An Ambivalent Century, with an Empire at Once Pagan and Christian 84
8 Christianity Wavers, Then Triumphs 98
9 A Partial and Mixed State Religion: The Fate of the Jews 107
10 Was There an Ideology? 123
11 Does Europe Have Christian Roots? 138
Appendix: Polytheisms and Monolatry in Ancient
Judaism 150
Notes 177
Supplementary Notes 236
Index 242
