Publisher's Synopsis
Here Professor Markus is interested in the development of Christianity and the Christian Church during Late Antiquity. The first sections discuss how the Christians saw themselves in relation to contemporary society, and consider their vision of history and its conflicts with current pagan attitudes to the Roman past. Particular attention, arising from the author's work on Augustine, is given to North Africa and to the Donatist question, as an example of the problems of Christian orientation within a newly Christianised Roman Empire. The next section moves on to the later 6th century, the age of Gregory the Great, which marks the end of the world of Late Antiquity. Gregory's pontificate was also a key moment in the development of the papacy, and the last two studies follow up a theme that was of decisive importance in the later history of medieval Europe: the place of the papacy as an institution in the political cosmology of Latin Christendom.
