When you want to know anything about the late Roman Empire, read Ramsay MacMullen. This is one of the best biographies of Constantine extant. If you can get a copy buy it.

............ with these genuine texts from the early Christian era. The documents contained within this sourcebook were written primarily by saints, emperors and philosophers and help us clearly envision life during the early Christian period (100-425 C.E.) as it was truly experienced by Christians and Pagans alike. There are texts describing the management of temples and shrines, cults, hymns, religious attitudes, missionizing (non-Christian), and perception by outsiders of Jews, Christians and Gnostics. The most fascinating sources are those pertaining to personal accounts of conversion and various edicts that persecute, at different points in history, Jews, Christians, and Pagans. Also interesting are the sources describing the impact of Constantine's conversion on the spread of Christianity. I highly recommend this sourcebook to anyone interested in early Christianity.

Macmullen and Lane have done a service by presenting a treasure of texts revealing primarily the religious attitudes and experience of non-Christians during the formative years of Christianity. Christians today often assume that the language of faith in the early church was the exclusive domain of Christianity. The authors prove otherwise. The titles of some of the chapters demonstrate the range of experience and language of "pagans." For example: "Magic, Dreams, Astrology, Superstition," "Healing Shrines," "Hymns," "Cult Groups," "Holy Men and Women," and "Hermetism and Gnosticism." The sentiments contained in these texts are mirrored in early Christian churches, naturally, since these attitudes and languages were part of the religious atmosphere breathed by all peoples of the time. The unbiased reader is helped to easily appreciate the cultural and religious kinship between followers of Christ and those of either the Mysteries, philosophy, and mythologizing theologies such as those of the Gnostics.The last six chapters of the book are especially helpful in appreciating the dynamics of conversion and persecution. While I generally do not favor of history-of-religions approach to the study of historical phenomena, I make a strong exception regarding this book. I recommend that the reader use this book as a companion to Keith Hopkins' "A World Full of Gods."

Most readers of religious history are familiar with the pagan roots of Christmas, such as tree candles and the date of the feast itself. In this magnificently researched monograph, MacMullen digs far deeper and finds paganism lurking in the dimmest corners of Christianity. His book focuses on the first millennium, but even today's Christians (especially Catholics) will recognize many of the rituals and beliefs he discusses.

The book is not without controversy. The traditional view has been that, during the century after Constantine's conversion, most of the Roman Empire (and lands beyond) converted to Christianity with wholehearted gusto, and pagan beliefs survived only in remote pockets. Not so, according to the author's overwhelming evidence: paganism had an extremely long half-life. MacMullen also dispenses with the long-held traditional argument that women and slaves converted to Christianity because paganism did not offer them much. (If anything, as he clearly and succinctly shows, the reverse is true.) Furthermore, MacMullen discusses how, beginning in the fourth century, upon subsuming power, Christians dealt with pagans in the traditional (non-Christian) way: they persecuted them with intimidation, torture, forced conversions, and death. Persecutions continued for many centuries, indicating that the underlying pagan culture was indeed very hearty.

The problem with the early Church's aggressive approach is obvious: many converts were not true believers, or they didn't quite understand what they were accepting. In addition, the relatively new Christianity, "a religion of the book" that was strong on doctrine, lacked a distinctive culture or the ability to satisfy everyday needs and desires (whether worldly or supernatural). Still, the Christian elites--the educated or the anointed--placed far more faith in the supernatural (God) than did their pagan predecessors, who viewed the reliance on superstition (gods) as a crutch for the lower, especially rural, classes. This difference ironically gave Christianity an advantage: believers at both ends of the social spectrum, from bishops to peasants, looked to the supernatural for explanations of everyday occurrences, from the weather to illness to death. Thus, many pagan rituals provided the basis for Christian traditions: offerings to the gods became cults of the saints, pagan feasts became Christian festivals, etc. As Jerome acknowledged, in MacMullen's paraphrase: "better, worship of the saints in the pagan manner than none at all."

MacMullen marshals an impressive parade of evidence, both in the text (only 160 pages) and in the notes and bibliography (which occupy only slightly less space). Unlike most scholars, he entirely avoids unfamiliar terminology and spices his treatise with glib comments and wry witticisms--it's been a long time since I've chuckled while reading a scholarly monograph. Unfortunately (alas, like most scholars), MacMullen is just not a very good writer. Perfectly lucid passages alternate with sentences that resemble very rough lecture notes. He has an aversion to direct statement and a fondness for pronouns that will send the most alert reader hunting for an antecedent. A not atypical sentence: "Within tradition, what lacked any supporting scripture or even any conscious reason they might think foolish; but they accepted it as harmless." "They," whose antecedent appears three sentences previous, refers to pagan civic leaders. Even armed with this discovery, most readers will find this sentence difficult, I wager. Other sentences are backwards for no good reason: "But in the ideas and rites just described a large area of new loyalties opened up." And, finally, there are run-on sentences of such length that a lethal dose of caffeine is required to follow the sense from beginning to end. Such idiosyncratic sentence structures might be amusing affectations when used sparingly, but their overuse in this volume is frustrating and unnecessary.

It's too bad that MacMullen isn't kinder to his readers. Although the book is certainly meant for a scholarly audience, it contains little material that wouldn't be within reach of interested readers outside the academy. (Even professional historians must tire of such sloppiness.) Nevertheless, if you're willing to slog through tortuous prose, you'll find treasures on every page.

Concise, elegant, massively documented and beautifully endnoted, Ramsay MacMullen's book is a devastating account of the rise of Christianity and the destruction of Paganism. With 85 pages of notes to 159 pages of text, with widespread use of primary sources, archeological evidence and the secondary literature, MacMullen's book is an exhaustive update of Gibbon for the present day. The book consists of four chapters, those being Christian Persecution, the losses of the Pagans, the rise of superstition and the assimilation of pagan elements into Christian practice. I think Stalin would find it grimly amusing reading, since it suggests that whatever success Christianity achieved was by fanaticism and violence. We start off with an account of how Christians systematically suppressed non-Christian works, as well as the "heretics" amongst themselves. We hear Eusebius, the first great Church historian, announce that it is not the duty to tell the whole truth but only what is of profit. Students of the Russian Revolution will remember the gruesome story of the child who informed on his "kulak" parents, was murdered by his relatives, and became the hero of a gruesome cult. In this book we hear how the emperor Justinian was moved to raptures on hearing of how a Jewish boy convert survived being thrown into a furnace by his father. Justinian learned how angels prevented the boy from being burned, and then he had the father crucified.

Persecution: MacMullen challenges those who argues that Christianity was an improvement for women and slaves. Women did play some role in leading Pagan cults, none at all in Christianity, and he tells how while a pagan governor demanded the compensation for the family of a murdered prostitute, Saint Jerome supported beheading for extramarital fornication. He discusses how exorcisms, resurrections, and healings played a greater role in conversions than sermons or reasoned argument. He discusses the increasingly bloodthirsty demands of bishops, monks and imperial decrees as well as pointing out the weaknesses of the bureaucratic machinery.

Cost to the Persecuted: MacMullen notes how Constantine still claimed a sort of divine status for himself and his father. He discusses the joyous pagan festivals, including feasts, dancing, poetry orations and their long presistence despite the opposition of the bishops (Augustine tried to argue that giving friends presents was wicked). MacMullen also gives accounts of pagans who thought idols had actual magical powers. He discusses the destruction of pagan temples and shrines, as well as the cutting down of sacred trees.

Superstition: MacMullen discusses the shifiting attitude from the rational world view of Pliny, Seneca and Plotinus and the increase in credulity throughout the third and fourth centuries. MacMullen argues that this was a result of changes in the elite as more vulgar and less literate people increased their predominance. Whatever the merits of this thesis, MacMullen points our the contempt prominent Christians such as Tertullian, Augustine, Lactantius, Ambrose and John Chrysostom had for ancient philosophy. They denounced Plato and Aristotle by name, and mocked the idea of skeptical study and the scientific attitude. Nor did they stop there. They told stories about appartitions over the battlefield, miraculous cures, the everpresent existence of demons, people raised to life by Christians, and dragons turned to dust by the sign of the cross.

Assimilation: Here I have some slight disagreement with MacMullen's account. The fact that some pagan practices continued into Christianity does not mean that they are pagan survivals. People who put pennies on the deceased's eyes do not literally believe that Charon will ferry their soul across the Styx, anymore than people concerned about 13 are remembering Judas Iscariot's presence at the last supper. A practice may continue long after any of Paganism's original ideological content has vanished. One should look at Ronald Hotton's books on the ritual year and witchcraft to understand more. Nevertheless MacMullen provides much information about the assimilation of dancing, festival meals for the dead, and the growth about the cult of martyrs. He tells how angels and martyrs took the place of minor deities who heard the wishes that would have been apparently too petty to relate to God. Christianity also assimilated practices like valorizing the dust around certain shrines and the plants that grew there, as well as amulets and ankhs used to ward off disasters, while images of Jesus and other Christian figures spread throughout the world. "The triumph of the church was not one of obliteration but of widening embrace and assimilation," concludes MacMullen, and it is the weakness of Christian efforts which mitigates an otherwise brutal history.

Continues the story of MacMullens' "Christianizing the Roman Empire" with a solid scholarly look at the reasons Pagans converted to Christianity in the period after Christianity took over the central government of the Roman Empire. 

Christian Roman Emperors outlawed Pagan ceremonies, taxed Pagan temples, and gave Christian Romans preferences in official advancement. By the end of this period everyone was Christian and the Empire was gone. 

By a famous Yale historian, an essential text for serious students. Highly recommended. And like everything MacMullen writes, it is hard to read.

Ramsey MacMullen has much to offer contemporary scholarship on the much-discussed and always open-ended problem of Christianization in the Roman Empire. MacMullen systematically renders an insightful overview of the different transitions in the process of Christianization as follows: first the period from New Testament evangelism (as found in the Epistles and the Acts) to Constantine's conversion, and the period following after the emperor's conversion all the way to AD 407. MacMullen does not discount the more customary viewpoints held by scholars such as Edward Gibbon and J.B. Bury, or, for that matter, traditional ecclesiastical interpretation as well; he does add to them though; and this is his most remarkable feat. He manages to maintain a balance between the secular and the ecclesiastical, in turn offering food-for-thought for all readers. Ramsey MacMullen's work deserves praise and possible precedence even over the renowned scholar Peter Brown's works, which bear a similarity to R.M.'s but lack the same objectivity. While his style of prose is a bit unseasonable and skewed at times, the work, overall, will undoubtedly come as a relief and reward to anyone yet to be familiar with it.

I am delighted with this book because it presents the facts
about early christianity without going into a diatribe in
some particular direction. This is a book about the documented
history of christianity -- not pro christian dogma and not
anti-christian diatribe. While documentation is not the end
of every possible controversy (in fact the book brings up new
questions) it is at least helpful to know what information can
in fact be found -- and to know what is not to be found.

Many of the reviews below are excellent, so this will be short. Throughout, the book bases its arguments solely on evidence of which there is a paucity for this time period. MacMullens strength however is beyond the examination of the evidence. He appears to set aside any attempt to spiritualize this time period or romanticize the practice of Xianity therein. Some his statements are surprising (e.g., that ater Paul, there is virtually no evidence of itinerant evangelism explicitly aimed at UNbelievers/ NONchristians), and most of these are arguments from silence though very probable in light of other evidence. Overall, this work is thorough, concise, and respectable. It achieves an examination of the early Christian faith as history while repudiating any attempts to use the primitive faith as a modern pulpit from which to preach. The book is quite concise, but its contents are so pithy as to prove to be an inspiration and guide for much further investigation.

This is the first book I have read on this subject, so I am unable to really critize this book. Macmullen seems to take a marxist/hegelian view of historical conflicts, arguing that the fall of the empire is due to economic reason, namely privatization, liberalism and the ensuing conflict between the "Haves" (the rich, or potentiores or possessores or potentes in latin) and the "have-nots", the poor. He concludes by saying that we should learn from history and the fate of private enterprise. I do not know if Macmullen is a marxist, but I was surprized that he ignored the theory I was familiar with, that the decline of Rome came for the breakdown of moral values such as family values and sexual morals. I had also heard about the theories concerning the role of military chaos.

Contents:
1. Choosing a Theme
2. Power Effective
3. Power for Sale
4. The Price of Privatizing Government.

If you want a pleasant fantasy about Rome's decline, influenced by Tacitus's writings from another period entirely, read Gibbon. If you want to read a standard version that rehashes much of the myth of decline and fall, read Grant. If you want to get a handle on the the conditions of the later Roman Empire, read Ramsay MacMullen.

MacMullen is one of the leading scholars on economic and social history of the ancient world. But this book shares a common flaw: not enough details and support for the statements made. The conclusions are intriguing but often I was left wondering how everything fit together so neatly; sometimes I couldn't figure it out, on other occassions I had to say "no, don't agree with that interpretation." Is worth reading for the scholars out there.

Ramsay MacMullen's recent book is a copiously documented work which aside from contemporary sources, uses scholarly literature in German, French, Italian and Spanish. It examines the "Romanization" of the Empire in the age of Augustus and it concentrates on the East, Africa, Spain and Gaul. The evidence of romanization is largely architectural and so we read accounts of the diffusion of surveys, structures, the use of marble, coliseums, baths, and food markets. We hear about the use of gladiator games, the spread of roman frescos, clothes and sculpture as well as the spread of Roman wine instead of continental beer. We learn about bridge building and road building, and the spread of viniculture. We learn that the Romans introduced the domestic cat to Gaul. There is an amusing passage about the cult of the Emperor. People know that August was named after the first Emperor. But in Cyprus, all twelve months were named after the Emperor and his family, and Egypt went so far as not only to celebrate September 23, his birthday, but also the 23rd of every month.

But what if you are not interested in the diffusion of Roman architecture? Then this book is probably not going to be as interesting or helpful. MacMullen himself admits that though he can show the spread of viniculture, he can tell us little about the social context, such as whether it was based on slavery. The evidence, by necessity, is overwhelmingly architectural, so what the overwhelming majority of the population thought about these changes isn't clear. MacMullen emphasizes that these changes were not the result of an oppressive Roman ideology but were accepted by the local elites because they found the new houses, new baths and new frescoes, useful and attractive. There is probably some truth to this. But for those who are not interested in the diffusion of Roman architecture, it is not clear why they should especially care about this book. It does not possess the inherent interest of MacMullen's previous books about Christianity and Paganism.