Christianization of Knowledge in Late Antiquity

This insightful work of intellectual history takes as its starting point a question that looms over the entire field of Late Antique studies: "What effect did Christianity have on inhabitants of the Roman empire in the fourth and fifth centuries?" (3) This question has been approached from a number of cultural, political, demographic, and economic perspectives, but Letteney argues that Christianization can be seen not only in shifts in people's beliefs and practices but also in a certain shift in "the structure of meaning-making" itself in the Roman Empire. By this Letteney refers to an increasing tendency of authors to use methods of aggregation, collection, and distillation to produce knowledge in varied realms in the late fourth and early fifth century, a series of methods that he sees as arising from the "lab" of the theological debates of the mid-fourth century. As Christians came increasingly to dominate the Roman elite in the "Theodosian Age," he argues, these methods became the gold standard for elite epistemology itself, as evidenced in compilations of law and the enduring tradition of florilegia.

Over seven chapters, Letteney draws on theological works, secular law, church councils, and manuscript evidence to demonstrate the late antique Christianization of Knowledge. Part I (chs. 2-4) traces the proliferation of the aggregative method proper from the post-apostolic church to Theodosius; Part 2 (chs. 5-8) examines manuscript evidence to trace the impact this method had on the physical form of the codex and on scribal practices up to the ninth century.

There are too many moving parts to the book to give it justice here, so I will mention just a few of its insights that I found especially interesting.

1. Methodological diversity in the early Church. In chapter 2, Letteney demonstrates that there was little consensus among Christian thinkers before the Council of Nicaea (325) on how best to go about proving theological precepts with scripture and/or gleaning theology from texts. There was a fundamental disagreement, in fact, over whether scripture or truth took epistemic priority. Some, such as Tertullian, were skeptical that text could communicate divine truth at all, preferring to refer to scripture as verification of divine knowledge gained through revelation.

2. The big story of the book is the development of aggregation/collection in Christian circles and the adoption of that method in non-theological realms; part 2 also demonstrates how the scribal tools (nomina sacra and nomina vulgaria) developed for these Christian purposes became tools of the trade in scribal practice broadly. Letteney characterizes this as a process of Christianization, even though these methods ceased to carry religious valence once they “escaped” their original theological context. It might seem strange to consider argumentative method an aspect of religious practice, but I think there is much to commend Letteney’s invitation to consider the more subtle habits of thought that religion can inculcate.

3. Finally, I just think it’s interesting that Letteney was able to connect these eminently Christian, Latin developments (however tentatively) to the Palestinian Talmud, which he argues developed similar “rules for deciding” among various authorities.