Ramsay MacMullen (1928–2022)

This study by a Yale historian and classicist at the very end of the 20th century treats the late antique and early medieval periods, with an inquiry into the relationships between Christianity and the prior traditional religions of the greater Mediterranean region. It is fairly brief, with four moderately-sized chapters plus a concluding summary, but it reminded me in style and perspicacity of Keith Thomas' Religion and the Decline of Magic, which sought to characterize "popular beliefs in 16th- and 17th-century England." In many ways, MacMullen charts a reverse course that took place more than a millennium earlier.

He discusses the political and social ascent of Christianity and the tide of anti-intellectualism and anti-rationalism that accompanied it. The new dominance of supernatural thinking demanded continued expressions and mechanisms for celebration, community, and magic that had been developed in the pagan world, but were lacking in Christianity. So there was ultimately an assimilation of pagan forms of practice, leading to survivals even into modern times.

The narrative of assimilation that MacMullen offers makes this book into something like a complement to Hislop's The Two Babylons. Where Hislop's Protestant paranoia guided his interpretation of the pagan features of traditional Christianity (which he read as the pernicious conspiracy of the Roman Church), MacMullen appreciates the basic social and cultural dynamics that made such assimilation necessary and inevitable.

MacMullen emphasizes the qualitative difference between Christianity, a religion prioritizing creed and rooted in texts, and its local and imperial predecessors, anchored in practices and tolerant of varying or absent belief. He cautions against "presentist" bias in the treatment of ancient religions (107), and he welcomes the anthropological perspectives that have made it "common to accept the impossibility of separating magic from religion" (144).

Half of the book is endnotes, opaquely replete with a classicist's pervasive abbreviations, and the body of the text is laden with data that sometimes feel difficult to keep in context and perspective. But the argument is worth following, and represents a sane and realistic take on an important historical change of episteme.… (altro)

Whew! I made it. This is one of the thickest books I've read, thick in terms of academic content and difficulty reading. There are only 140 pages of text here - the rest is footnotes and bibliography. Thoroughly researched doesn't do it justice, but it nevertheless reaches the common conclusion of nearly every book I've read on the subject - the pagan cults, offering no definitive afterlife simply couldn't compete against Christianity, which did. It neglects the top down aspects of the transition, but so do most books on the subject. It's worth the slog, I suppose, but be prepared.… (altro)

The book covers the history of the early Christian fate, and how some key elements of this fate were decided.
It is writte for a large public, so ideal for people like me, who do not want to become specialists in this historical period, but find it interesting enough to read about.
The author clearly knows the subject and the historical period, but is not doing a
Very good job in transferring that knowldege: poor writting style, with complex sentences, abrupt chagres, repearing similar points. But if you can get over that, the book remains informative enough to be interste.

Marc… (altro)