Softback. Black cover with white title and church interior image on the front board.

F.B.A. provides an in-depth photographic presentation of this item to stimulate your feeling and touch. More traditional book descriptions are immediately available

A most enjoyable book which answers many simple but overlooked questions

This study is concerned with one, central historical problem: the nature of the changes that transformed the intellectual and spiritual horizons of the Christian world from its establishment in the fourth century to the end of the sixth. Why, for example, were the assumptions, attitudes, and traditions of Gregory the Great so markedly different from those of Augustine? The End of Ancient Christianity examines how Christians, who had formerly constituted a threatened and beleaguered minority, came to define their identity in a changed context of religious respectability in which their faith had become a source of privilege, prestige, and power. Professor Markus reassesses the cult of the martyrs and the creation of schemes of sacred time and sacred space, and analyses the appeal of asceticism and its impact on the Church at large. These changes form part of a fundamental transition, perhaps best described as the shift from “Ancient” toward “Medieval” forms of Christianity, from an older and more diverse secular culture towards a religious culture with a firm Biblical basis.