Peter Brown (historian)

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Peter Robert Lamont Brown (born 1935) is a historian and professor of history.

Contents 1 Life 2 Works 3 Selected bibliography 4 References 5 External links 6 Notes

[edit] Life

He was born in Dublin, Ireland to a Protestant family, and was educated at Shrewsbury School and New College, Oxford. He was a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford where he pursued his graduate studies under the direction of Arnaldo Momigliano.

He has taught at Oxford, the University of London, and UC Berkeley, as well as Princeton University, where he is currently the Philip and Beulah Rollins Professor of History. Brown has received honorary degrees from several academic institutions, among which the University of Chicago, Trinity College (Dublin), Wesleyan University, Columbia University, Harvard University, and Kings College London. In 1982, he was named a MacArthur Fellow. In 2001, he was awarded the Distinguished Achievement Award for scholars in the humanities by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. In 2008, he was the co-winner, with Indian historian Romila Thapar, of the prestigious Kluge Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Study of Humanity.[1].

[edit] Works

Brown, who reads at least fifteen languages, established himself at the age of 32 with his biography of Augustine of Hippo. A steady stream of books and articles has since appeared, and currently, Brown is arguably the most prominent historian of Late Antiquity. Brown has been instrumental in popularizing the historical period of Late Antiquity, the figure of the Holy Man, and study of the cult of saints.

In his work The World of Late Antiquity (1971), he put forward a new interpretation of the period between the third and eighth centuries CE. The traditional interpretation of this period was centered around the idea of decadence from a 'golden age', classical civilization, after the famous work of Edward Gibbon The History Of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire (1779). On the contrary, Brown proposed to look at this period in positive terms, arguing that Late Antiquity was a period of immense cultural innovation.

Brown was influenced in his early works by the French Annales School, and specifically the figure of Fernand Braudel. Following this school, Brown analyzed culture and religion as social phenomena and as part of a wider context of historical change and transformation. The Annales influence in Brown's work can also be seen in his reliance on anthropology and sociology as interpretative tools for historical analysis. Specifically, Brown received the influence of contemporary Anglo-American anthropology.^[1]

His early research was largely devoted to the figure of the 'holy man' and religious transformation in the late-Roman world. According to Brown, the charismatic, Christian ascetics (holy men) were particularly prominent in the late-Roman empire and the early Byzantine world as mediators between local communities and the divine. This relationship expressed the importance of patronage in the Roman social system, which was taken over by the Christian ascetics. But more importantly, Brown argues, the rise of the holy man was the result of a deeper religious change that affected not only Christianity but also other religions of the late antique period - namely the needs for a more personal access to the divine.

His views slightly shifted in the eighties. In articles and new editions Brown said that his earlier work, which had deconstructed many of the religious aspects of his field of study, needed to be reassessed. His later work shows a deeper appreciation for the specifically Christian layers of his subjects of study^{[citation needed]}. His book The Body and Society (1988) offered an innovative approach to the study of early Christian practices, showing the influence of Pierre Hadot and Michel Foucault's work on the history of sexuality.

His current research focuses on wealth and poverty in late antiquity, especially in Christian writers.

[edit] Selected bibliography

• Augustine of Hippo: A Biography (1967/2000) – ISBN 0-520-22757-3
• The World of Late Antiquity: AD 150–750 (1971/1989) – ISBN 0-393-95803-5
• The Making of Late Antiquity (1978) – ISBN 0-674-54321-1
• The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (1981) – ISBN 0-226-07622-9
• Society & the Holy in Late Antiquity (1982) – ISBN 978-0-520-06800-1
• The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (1988) – ISBN 0-231-06101-3
• Power and Persuasion: Towards a Christian Empire (1992)
• Authority and the Sacred: Aspects of the Christianisation of the Roman world (1995) – ISBN 0-521-49904-6
• The Rise of Western Christendom (1996/2003) – ISBN 0-631-22138-7
• Chapters 21 & 22 in The Cambridge Ancient History, Volume XIII, The Late Empire, A.D. 337–425 (1998) – ISBN 0-521-30200-5
• Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire (2002)

[edit] References

• Stanford site about Peter Brown.
• 'A life of Learning' Charles Homer Haskins Lecture for 2003, by Peter Brown
• Bound to Please by Michael Dirda, p. 22-25, W.W, Norton, 2005
• Announcement of Kluge Prize at Princeton University Website

[edit] External links

• Faculty Page at Princeton

[edit] Notes