Catherine Nixey

The traditional view most of us learned in school is that diligent monks copying manuscripts in their monasteries helped to preserve civilization during the Dark Ages. What most of us did not learn is that early Christian zealots, starting in the 4th century, were the barbarians that destroyed so much of the civilization of the ancient world.

Catherine Nixey tells the story of how those early Christian zealots destroyed great works of art and architecture as well as countless manuscripts in ancient libraries. They also shut down the open study of philosophy and terrorized many philosophers. The most interesting chapter in the book tells about Romans that provided a detailed and educated critique of the Christian religion. The book is recommended for the new perspective it provides on early Christian history and the fall of Rome.

The book is very readable even for people not familiar with Roman history or literature. Nixey's writing style is saucy and she goes out of her way to quote the most salacious passages from Roman erotic literature. There are, however, several weaknesses in the book including a considerable number of redundancies and a tendency to jump around in time so it is difficult to put the events she describes in context. Also, because she focuses on just a limitted number of figures, I was not sure how broadly things had spread.… (altro)

Introduced me to the topic of Christian destruction in the ancient world, a topic about which I was woefully underinformed. A lot of good primary and secondary sources were used, providing further reading on the subject if desired. The author was definitely writing a polemic, straying significantly into other eras as the book progresses. On the whole, a lot of good information that is sometimes lessened by the author's own seeming bias against more modern church practices.

Recommended to those interested in the cultural history of the late Roman / early Byzantine empires, the impact of Constantine in the empire, the transition from the ancient to the medieval world, or the influence of the Church in any of those subjects previously mentioned.… (altro)