In three magisterial essays, Peter Brown, one of the world's foremost scholars of the society and culture of late antiquity, explores the emergence in late Roman society of "the poor" as a distinct social class, one for which the Christian church claimed a special responsibility. It is the story of how a society came to see itself as responsible for the care of a particular class of people -- a class that had not previously been cared for -- and of who benefited from that shift in interests. In his characteristically elegant and lucid prose, Brown seeks to recover the pre-Christian status of poor people, the actual nature of the relations between the Christian church and the poor, and the true motivations -- sometimes sincere, sometimes self-serving -- behind Christian rhetoric of love for the poor. He draws not only on the standard Greek and Latin sources for the later Roman Empire, but also on Jewish sources to document the interactions between Middle Eastern provincial societies and classical Roman traditions. Brown gracefully illuminates a crucial transition from classical to Christian culture: the emergence of a new understanding of what society -- and the Church -- owes to the poor that continues to resonate.
Les mer
A preeminent classical scholar on the emergence of one of our most familiar social divisions.

Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9781584651468
Publisert
2001-12-01
Utgiver
Vendor
Brandeis University Press
Høyde
216 mm
Bredde
140 mm
Aldersnivå
G, 01
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Heftet
Antall sider
176

Forfatter

Biographical note

Peter Brown is a Bath-based artist, an all-weather painter of street scenes and city landscapes. Known for working directly from his subject, he is more affectionately known as 'Pete the Street'. Pete was born in Reading in 1967. Painting from an early age, he studied Art at Bath College of Higher Education and Manchester Polytechnic. In 1995 he returned to Bath where he started his practice of working from life in the city. Since then he has had 7 solo exhibitions at the Victoria Art Gallery in Bath, and a total of 12 in London with Messum’s and WH Patterson, as well as featuring in numerous group exhibitions. Obsessed with city life, Pete has painted in London, Bath, Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Paris, Barcelona, Toronto, Udaipur and Varanasi in India. In 2006, he became the first artist in residence at the Savoy Hotel, London and in 2008 was awarded the Prince of Wales award for portrait drawing. He is a member of the New English Art Club, The Royal Society of Portrait Painters, The Royal Institute of Oil Painters, The Pastel Society and an honorary member of the Royal Society of British Artists. With his determination to work only directly from the subject, Peter is widely acclaimed as one of the best plein-air painters practising in this country today and his sell-out exhibitions are a tribute to that. Pete’s work can be found in numerous private and public collections around the world. He is represented internationally by Messum’s, London. He lives in Bath with his wife Lisa and five children Ollie, Toby, Hattie, Ella and Ned.