The World of Late Antiquity by Peter Brown

In 2008, he won the Kluge Prize of the Library of Congress. He has been the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship (1982), a Guggenheim Fellowship (1989), and the Mellon Foundation’s Distinguished Achievement Award (2001). Professor Brown has received honorary degrees from numerous universities, including the University of Chicago (1978), Trinity College, Dublin (1990), Wesleyan University (1993), Columbia University (2001), Harvard University (2002), and Kings College London (2008). He is the author of a dozen books, including Augustine of Hippo (1967, 2000), The World of Late Antiquity (1971), The Cult of the Saints (1982), The Body and Society (1988), Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire (1992), Authority and the Sacred: Aspects of the Christianization of the Roman World (1995), The Rise of Western Christendom (1996, 2003), and Poverty and Leadership in the Later Roman Empire (2002). Professor Brown’s primary interests are the transition from antiquity to the Middle Ages and the rise of Christianity, and he has pursued them through investigations into such diverse topics as Roman rhetoric, the cult of the saints, the body and sexuality, and wealth and poverty. The book was one of the first in the anglophone world to consider late antiquity as a distinct historical era.1 In 2014, the Folio Society republished an illustrated edition, with an introduction by historian Christopher Kelly. He joined the Princeton faculty in 1986 after teaching at the University of London and the University of California, Berkeley. The World of Late Antiquity is a 1971 book by historian Peter Brown. in history from Oxford University (1956), where he taught until 1975 as a Fellow of All Souls College.

A native of Ireland, Professor Brown earned his B.A. Peter Brown, the Philip and Beulah Rollins Professor of History, is credited with having created the field of study referred to as late antiquity (250-800 A.D.), the period during which Rome fell, the three major monotheistic religions took shape, and Christianity spread across Europe.

The World of Late Antiquity by Peter Brown