The Needle's Eye: Wealth and Western Society from the Late Roman Empire to the Early Middle Ages

Alexander Skinner

doi:10.18573/j.2014.10326

Abstract

This review article discusses Peter Brown, Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350-550AD (pp. xxx + 759, 16 col. plates; Princeton University Press; Princeton, NJ, 2012). Following an overall view of the book (I), this essay makes observations about the handling of late Roman social structures (II), about the implications of the geographical emphases of the book (III) and about the implications of the judgments it offers on the chronology of the transition from late antiquity to the early middle ages (IV). This essay also comments on literary methods and their role in Brown’s exposition (V) and offers a concluding reflection on the kind of historical craftsmanship exemplified by the book (VI).

Highlights

JLARC 8 (2014) 68-89 observations so far about late Roman social structures
Written and amply sign-posted, this long book is a pleasure to read. It is marked by a sustained effort to keep late Roman ideas about wealth firmly grounded in the social structures and sheer contingency of the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries
He has put religion and society together but has given us a study yet more fully ‘in the round’. Insofar as they are relevant to his main topic of the giving of wealth, he has sought to intertwine the political, economic and cultural dimensions of the period

Summary

Introduction

JLARC 8 (2014) 68-89 observations so far about late Roman social structures. Secondly, he has put religion and society together but has given us a study yet more fully ‘in the round’.

Results

Conclusion