Peter Brown | The New York Review of Books

A Past in All Its Fullness

“From ancient Greece onward historians have stood out against public opinion by offering more truthful versions of what really happened than what was passed on by rumor, prejudice, and popular excitement. This was never popular.”

June 1, 2024

The Workings of the Spirit

A new history of Christianity traces its transformation over a thousand years from an enormous diversity of beliefs and practices to Catholic uniformity.

Christendom: The Triumph of a Religion, AD 300–1300

by Peter Heather

June 6, 2024 issue

Charged Wonders

An exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art aims to give voice and density to the Christian cultures in Africa with which Byzantium interacted over the many centuries of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages.

Africa and Byzantium

an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, November 19, 2023–March 3, 2024; and the Cleveland Museum of Art, April 14–July 21, 2024

February 8, 2024 issue

The Other Rome

Four new books challenge the Eurocentric perspective that has left the eastern half of the empire on the margins of standard historical narratives.

New Rome: The Empire in the East

by Paul Stephenson

The Rich and the Pure: Philanthropy and the Making of Christian Society in Early Byzantium

by Daniel Caner

The Last Great War of Antiquity

by James Howard-Johnston

The Formation of Christendom

by Judith Herrin, with a new preface by the author

February 10, 2022 issue

The Glories of Aksum

Recent studies of medieval Ethiopia are a timely reminder of a Christianity wider than Europe.

Medieval Ethiopian Kingship, Craft, and Diplomacy with Latin Europe

by Verena Krebs

A Companion to Medieval Ethiopia and Eritrea

edited by Samantha Kelly

A Contextual Reading of Ethiopian Crosses Through Form and Ritual: Kaleidoscopes of Meaning

by Maria Evangelatou

October 7, 2021 issue

Letter

J.G.A. Pocock

Gibbon & Ethiopia

December 2, 2021 issue

No Barbarians Necessary

The Tragedy of Empire: From Constantine to the Destruction of Roman Italy

by Michael Kulikowski

Escape from Rome: The Failure of Empire and the Road to Prosperity

by Walter Scheidel

King and Emperor: A New Life of Charlemagne

by Janet L. Nelson

September 24, 2020 issue

Cities That Touched Heaven

The World Between Empires: Art and Identity in the Ancient Middle East

an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, March 18–June 23, 2019

The Iranian Expanse: Transforming Royal Identity Through Architecture, Landscape, and the Built Environment, 550 BCE–642 CE

by Matthew P. Canepa

The Last Pagan Emperor: Julian the Apostate and the War Against Christianity

by H.C. Teitler

June 6, 2019 issue

Between Two Empires

The story of Armenia: an Eastern Christian society that was creative, enduring, and, at many times, gloriously idiosyncratic

Armenia!

an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, September 22, 2018–January 13, 2019

Armenia: Art, Religion, and Trade in the Middle Ages

Catalog of the exhibition edited by Helen C. Evans

January 17, 2019 issue

A World Winking with Messages

The Eerdmans Encyclopedia of Early Christian Art and Archaeology

edited by Paul Corby Finney

Hagia Sophia and the Byzantine Aesthetic Experience

by Nadine Schibille

December 20, 2018 issue

Dialogue With God

What is the correct reaction when we open the ‘Confessions’? It should, perhaps, be one of acute embarrassment.

Confessions

by Augustine, translated from the Latin by Sarah Ruden

October 26, 2017 issue

At the Center of a Roiling World

The Crucible of Islam

by G.W. Bowersock

The Garima Gospels: Early Illuminated Gospel Books from Ethiopia

by Judith S. McKenzie and Francis Watson

The Red Monastery Church: Beauty and Asceticism in Upper Egypt

edited by Elizabeth S. Bolman

May 11, 2017 issue

Remembering Bob Silvers

On the late editor of The New York Review

March 21, 2017

Recapturing Jerusalem at the Met

Jerusalem, 1000–1400: Every People Under Heaven

an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, September 26, 2016–January 8, 2017

December 8, 2016 issue

Splendors of the Seljuqs in New York

Court and Cosmos: The Great Age of the Seljuqs

an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, April 27–July 24, 2016

August 18, 2016 issue

The Glow of Byzantium

Saints and Sacred Matter: The Cult of Relics in Byzantium and Beyond

edited by Cynthia Hahn and Holger A. Klein

Allegories of the Iliad

by John Tzetzes, translated from the Greek by Adam J. Goldwyn and Dimitra Kokkini

The Lost World of Byzantium

by Jonathan Harris

Imagining the Byzantine Past: The Perception of History in the Illustrated Manuscripts of Skylitzes and Manasses

by Elena N. Boeck

July 14, 2016 issue

Empress Theodora, Who Transformed the World

Theodora: Actress, Empress, Saint

by David Potter

November 19, 2015 issue

The Purple Stone of Emperors

Porphyry: Red Imperial Porphyry: Power and Religion

by Dario Del Bufalo, translated from the Italian by David Graham and Lara Cox

Porphyre: La Pierre Pourpre des Ptolémées à Bonaparte [Porphyry: The Purple Stone from the Ptolemies to Bonaparte]

by Philippe Malgouyres and Clément Blanc-Riehl

Byzantine Matters

by Averil Cameron

Dialoguing in Late Antiquity

by Averil Cameron

December 18, 2014 issue

Rome: Sex & Freedom

Antiquity is always stranger than we think

From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity

by Kyle Harper

December 19, 2013 issue

Recovering Submerged Worlds

G.W. Bowersock’s ‘Empires in Collision in Late Antiquity’ and Patricia Crone’s ‘The Nativist Prophets of Early Islamic Iran’

The Throne of Adulis: Red Sea Wars on the Eve of Islam

by G.W. Bowersock

Empires in Collision in Late Antiquity

by G.W. Bowersock

The Nativist Prophets of Early Islamic Iran: Rural Revolt and Local Zoroastrianism

by Patricia Crone

July 11, 2013 issue

The Risks of Being Christian

Sin: The Early History of an Idea

by Paula Fredriksen

Heaven’s Purge: Purgatory in Late Antiquity

by Isabel Moreira

December 20, 2012 issue