The Barbarian Conversion: From Paganism to Christianity / Edition 1

by Richard Fletcher

Overview

In a work of splendid scholarship that reflects both a firm mastery of difficult sources and a keen intuition, one of Britain's foremost medievalists tells the story of the Christianization of Europe. It is a very large story, for conversion encompassed much more than religious belief. With it came enormous cultural change: Latin literacy and books, Roman notions of law and property, and the concept of town life, as well as new tastes in food, drink, and dress. Whether from faith or by force, from self-interest or by revelation, conversion had an immense impact that is with us even today. It is Richard Fletcher's achievement in this superb work that he makes that impact both felt and understood.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520218598
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	11/01/1999
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	575
Sales rank:	1,000,247
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Richard Fletcher (1944-2005) was Professor of History at the University of York. Among his books are Moorish Spain (California, 1992).

Editorial Reviews

"An absorbing account of the most important event in the history of Europe: its conversion to Christianity. . . . Fletcher is a stylist not merely in the sense that like Gibbon he is a master of the memorable sentence, but in the historian's task of weaving the particular instance into the web of a compelling narrative."

The Spectator

"It is a magnificent story, the beginning of European Christian culture, and Richard Fletcher tells it with immense learning, keen insight and literary grace."

|Los Angeles Times

"A magnum opus in terms of scope, grandeur, and importance . . . Fletcher's signal achievement is the stylish lucidity with which he illuminates potentially cumbrous material."

Boston Globe

"Fletcher weaves a rich tapestry out of a complex array of materials. He carefully addresses a nonspecialist audience, largely abandoning explanation of the acceptance of Christianity in favor of description of it. Guided by 10 considerations concerning evangelism and conversion, communication and acceptance, he is sensitive to the various ways in which Europe was Christianized and Christianity Europeanized during the course of a thousand years and amid considerable cultural, geographic, and linguistic diversity. . . . His narrative provides essential background for understanding Christianity's shape and cultural impact today, at the end of its second millennium."

Booklist

What impels the leaders of a religion to begin systematically to convert an entire continent? How do they go about doing it? How thorough is the conversion to be? What roles do politics and military conquest play in such religious conversion? How does conversion proceed in society, and how does it change society? Fletcher is well qualified to answer these and many other related questions with respect to the Christianizing of Europe during the Middle Ages. The prize-winning author of Moorish Spain and The Search for El Cid, he teaches at the University of York and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. specializing in medieval Spanish history. Spanning an entire millennium and a whole continent, his new work is dauntingly broad in scope, but his lucid presentation and lively and engaging style will carry even casual readers smoothly along. Recommended for both academic and public libraries.James F. DeRoche, Alexandria, Va.

Library Journal

A pre-eminent medieval historian from the University of York in England, Fletcher offers an elegantly written account of the mysterious process of Europe's conversion to Christianity in the Dark Ages. Piecing together the story from the time of the baptism of Constantine in 337 to the last European conversion<-->that of Jogaila of the Lithuanians in 1388 which made all of Europe nominally Christian<-->and including side forays into counter-conversions to Islam and Judaism, he shows how little of the process was inevitable. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

Booknews

[Fletcher] wrests new perceptions from the evidence with a lively eye and reflects on theoretical problems without encumbering the reader...No book on such an important and demanding subject combines entertainment, information and stimulation more judiciously. -- Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, The New York Times Book Review

Felipe Fernandez-Armesto