>>> Oriens, 3/25/2000 >>>
I'm sure you know Richard Fletcher's book, "The Conversion of Europe"?
<<<
Thank you for the recommendation -- I went looking for this book as a basic
introduction to the period of the European conversion, and eventually found it
in the library (republished as "The Barbarian Conversion") ... but I think it's
not what I'm looking for. Rather than asking what was the situation in Europe,
why were rulers interested in converting, what were they converting from and
what were they converting to, Fletcher seems to pose the question as "gosh,
converting all that territory must have been a huge task -- how ever did those
poor brave missionaries accomplish it?" And from the little bit of the book
that I've gotten through, he seems to answer the question mostly in anecdotes
about individual missions, full of speculation about how things must have seemed
to this or that person and how they must have felt about it, based (it seems to
me) on comparisons to modern religious experience whose relevance I find myself
unwilling to trust him on.
I don't mean to harshly criticize a respected scholar for approaching a problem
with his own biases rather than mine :-) but I find myself wondering whether
Fletcher has any ideological opponents or arch-rivals in the field whose books
might more readily answer the kinds of questions I have ... I do still have the
reading list Dr. Jolly suggested, and will probably next try Peter Brown's "The
Rise of Western Christendom" (anyone have any comments on that book?) and/or
Karen Jolly's own book on elf charms, though from its reviews it looked like I
might want more background before tackling it ...
Thanks again, listmembers,
Jonathan
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