Peter Brown (historian)
Peter Robert Lamont Brown was born on the 26th of July 1935 in Dublin, Ireland. His family background was Scots-Irish Protestant. Until 1939, he spent winter and spring each year in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. His father worked as a railway engineer based at Khartoum during that time. For the rest of the year, he returned with his mother to Bray, County Wicklow, near Dublin. Following the outbreak of war, Brown and his mother remained in Ireland. His father did not return finally until 1948.
Brown has a stutter yet became noted as an example of a successful public speaker with a speech impediment. Speaking to the Daily Princetonian, he remarked about the influence of the Sudanese connection. He described how a handbook of Sudanese Courtesy Customs sat prominent on his bookshelf after his father returned. A deluxe edition of T.E. Lawrence's The Seven Pillars of Wisdom also rested there. He read both from cover to cover every time he returned home on holiday from school in England.
These influences ensured religion and the exotic were too large to be dismissed out of hand. The power of both had begun to puzzle and intrigue him. The collapse of an enlightened empire might indeed be catastrophic but unlikely to be uninteresting. This early exposure shaped his view that non-European cultures deserved serious historical attention rather than dismissal.
Brown was initially educated at Aravon School in Bray, County Wicklow. It was a distinguished preparatory school where he first studied Latin and French. He then attended Shrewsbury School before entering New College, Oxford. At Shrewsbury, Brown expected to concentrate on sciences. Instead, he first studied Ancient Greek and turned in earnest to history.
He completed his public schooling a year early, returning to Ireland in 1952 when he turned seventeen. That academic year 1952, 1953 served as a hiatus between school and university. During this period, he learned to type at a secretarial school. He received German lessons from an academic at Trinity College Dublin who had been a refugee from Nazi Germany.
In 1953, Brown took up a scholarship to read Modern History at New College. He left in 1956. Most of his degree was devoted to English History in its entirety and the European High Middle Ages from 919 to 1127. In his final academic year, he undertook a Special Subject on The Age of Augustine. This subject profoundly influenced him through the writings of Marrou and Piganiol.
Brown's earliest research articles concerned the Christianization of the senatorial aristocracy of Rome in 1961. They also examined religious dissent and coercion in late Roman North Africa that same year. From there, he turned to Augustine's own views on the state in 1963. His substantial first book became Augustine of Hippo: A Biography published in 1967.
Following completion of Augustine, Brown felt free to take a wider approach to Late Antiquity. He turned particularly toward the Near East and Central Asia. In 1964, A.H.M. Jones's vast magnum opus on The Later Roman Empire appeared. Brown wrote a long review article for the Economic History Review in 1967.
In 1969, Geoffrey Barraclough approached Brown with a view to commissioning a book on late antiquity. Barraclough may have suggested The World of Late Antiquity as a title since it was relatively new to Brown. He had usually been content with late Roman. At this point, Brown engaged increasingly with Henri Pirenne and the French Annales School. Their work combined with his eastward shift prompted him to think of the Mediterranean as truly distinctive.
His most celebrated early paper concerned the figure of the holy man published in 1971. According to Brown, charismatic Christian ascetics were prominent in the late Roman empire and early Byzantine world. They served as mediators between local communities and the divine. This relationship expressed the importance of patronage in the Roman social system taken over by Christian ascetics.
Brown argued that the rise of the holy man resulted from deeper religious change affecting not only Christianity but other religions of the period. It reflected a need for more personal access to the divine. His views shifted slightly in the eighties when he said earlier work needed reassessment. Later work showed deeper appreciation for specifically Christian layers of subjects studied.
This research formed the basis for The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity published in 1981. Janet Nelson noted how Brown took medieval history into fields of cultural history and social psychological history. She stated he was interested in religion not in an old-fashioned ecclesiastical way but what made people think in this manner.
Published in 1988, Peter Brown's The Body and Society became a groundbreaking study of marriage and sexual practices of early Christians. He focused on permanent sexual renunciation including continence, celibacy, and lifelong virginity in Christian circles from the first to fifth centuries A.D. Brown traced early Christians' preoccupations with sexuality and the body in great writers of the period.
The book questioned how theological views on sexuality mirrored relationships between men and women, Roman aristocracy and slaves, and married versus celibate individuals. Brown discussed Tertullian, Valentinus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Constantine, the Desert Fathers, Jerome, Ambrose, and Augustine among others. He considered asceticism and society in the Eastern Empire alongside martyrdom and prophecy.
Through his new introduction, Brown reflected on his work's reception in the scholarly community. The text examined gnostic spiritual guidance, promiscuity among church members, monks and marriage in Egypt, and the ascetic life of women in fourth-century Jerusalem. It also covered the body and society in the early Middle Ages.
Brown's longest book to date is Through the Eye of a Needle published in 2012. It concerns attitudes to philanthropic giving in the Latin West in Late Antiquity. Divided into five parts, core sections focus on two generations between about AD370 and 430. During this span, rich diversity gave way to increasing polarization brought on by debate between Augustine and the Pelagians.
Parts I and IV, V place this study within wider social structures of the fourth, fifth and sixth centuries. His most recent research focuses on wealth and poverty in late antiquity especially in Christian writers. This work secured the R.R. Hawkins Award at the American publishing industry's annual PROSE Awards.
The book won the Jacques Barzun Prize in Cultural History from the American Philosophical Society. It also received the Philip Schaff Prize from the American Society of Church History. These honors recognized his examination of how financial giving shaped the making of Christianity in the West from 350 to 550 AD.
His US honorary doctorates include Harvard University in 2002 and Yale University in 2006. Brown is a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1991. He became an honorary member of the Royal Irish Academy in 2010. In 2015, he was named a foreign member of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei in Italy.
Major prizes include the Heineken Prize for History from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1994. The Ausonius Prize for Ancient History came from the University of Trier in 1999. In 2008, he co-won the Kluge Prize for Lifetime Achievement with Romila Thapar. The prestigious International Balzan Prize for Humanities arrived in 2011.
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Common questions
When and where was Peter Brown historian born?
Peter Robert Lamont Brown was born on the 26th of July 1935 in Dublin, Ireland. His family background was Scots-Irish Protestant.
What early experiences influenced Peter Brown historian's view on non-European cultures?
Brown spent winter and spring each year until 1939 in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan while his father worked as a railway engineer at Khartoum. This exposure to religion and the exotic shaped his view that non-European cultures deserved serious historical attention rather than dismissal.
Which book did Peter Brown historian publish about the holy man figure in 1971?
His most celebrated early paper concerning the figure of the holy man was published in 1971. According to Brown, charismatic Christian ascetics were prominent in the late Roman empire and early Byzantine world as mediators between local communities and the divine.
What awards did Peter Brown historian receive for Through the Eye of a Needle published in 2012?
Through the Eye of a Needle won the R.R. Hawkins Award, the Jacques Barzun Prize in Cultural History, and the Philip Schaff Prize from the American Society of Church History. These honors recognized his examination of how financial giving shaped the making of Christianity in the West from 350 to 550 AD.
When did Peter Brown historian receive honorary doctorates from Harvard University and Yale University?
Brown received an honorary doctorate from Harvard University in 2002 and another from Yale University in 2006. He also became a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences since 1991.