Peter Brown (historian)

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Peter Robert Lamont Brown (b. 1935) was born in Dublin, Ireland, to a Protestant family. He is a fellow of All Souls', Oxford. He has taught at Oxford, the University of London, and UC Berkeley, as well as Princeton University, where he is currently the Philip and Beulah Rollins Professor of History. In 1982, Brown was named a MacArthur Fellow. He has been instrumental in popularizing the historical period of Late Antiquity and study of the cult of saints.

Brown, who reads at least fifteen languages, established himself at the unusually young age of 32 with his authoritative biography of Augustine of Hippo. A steady stream of books and articles has since appeared, and Brown is now the most prominent historian of Late Antiquity.

His views shifted in the eighties. In articles and new editions Brown said that his earlier work, which had deconstructed many of the religious aspects of his field of study, needed to be reassessed. His later work shows a deeper appreciation for the specifically Christian layers of his subjects of study: for example, in the preface to the revised edition to Augustine of Hippo.

[edit] Selected bibliography

Augustine of Hippo: A Biography (1967/2000) - ISBN 0-520-22757-3
The World of Late Antiquity: AD 150-750 (1971/1989) - ISBN 0-393-95803-5
The Making of Late Antiquity (1978) - ISBN 0-674-54321-1
The Rise of Western Christendom (1996) - ISBN 0-631-22138-7
The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (1981) - ISBN 0-226-07622-9
The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (1988) - ISBN 0-231-06101-3
Authority and the Sacred: Aspects of the Christianisation of the Roman world (1995) - ISBN 0-521-49904-6
Chapters 21 & 22 in The Cambridge Ancient History, Volume XIII, The Late Empire, A.D. 337-425 (1998) - ISBN 0-521-30200-5