Nathan J. Ristuccia. Christianization and Commonwealth in Early Medieval Europe

Certainly one of the great questions of Western history centers on the Christianization of the Roman Empire, but we face many obstacles in understanding the developments and changes that led to the gradual replacement of the old religions with Christianity. Nathan J. Ristuccia, in Christianization and Commonwealth in Early Medieval Europe: A Ritual Interpretation, offers us a new approach. Arguing that antiquity and the early Middle Ages were periods “before religion”—that is, before our modern, Reformation-based construct regarding the nature of religion—he offers a model of Christianization “that does not presume fixed systems of belief and practices” (10). In an introduction, five chapters, and a gripping conclusion, Ristuccia uses the example of Rogationtide to explore the processes and consequences of this model. The original Rogation ceremony was linked to a series of crises (everything from barbarian raiders, to fracturing identities and social stress, to agricultural emergencies) that faced Mamertus,...

Ancient history · Archaeology · Barbarian · Ceremony · Christianity · Christianization · Commonwealth · Empire · Interpretation (philosophy) · Roman Empire · Classics · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Medieval Literature and History · Philosophy · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies