Late Antiquity is a rough periodization (c. 300-700/800 AD) used by historians and other scholars to describe the interval between high Classical Antiquity and the Middle Ages in Europe and the Mediterranean world - between the decline of the western Roman Empire from the 3rd century AD onward, to the re-forming of the West under Charlemagne, of the Middle East under the Baghdad caliphate, and of Eastern Europe under the Byzantine Empire. The term, used in German history (Spätantike) since the early 20th century , was made famous in part by the writings of Peter Brown. Periodization is the attempt to categorize or divide historical time into discrete named blocks. ... Classical antiquity is a broad and perhaps misleading term for a long period of European, Middle East and North African history, that begins roughly with the earliest recorded Greek poetry of Homer (7th century BC), and continues through the rise of Christianity and the fall of the Western Roman Empire... The Middle Ages formed the middle period in a traditional schematic division of European history into three ages: the classical civilization of Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and modern times, beginning with the Renaissance. ... World map showing location of Europe Europe is geologically and geographically a peninsula, forming the westernmost part of Eurasia. ... The Mediterranean Sea is an intercontinental sea positioned between Europe to the north, Africa to the south and Asia to the east, covering an approximate area of 2. ... The Roman Empire is not the Holy Roman Empire (843-1806). ... (2nd century - 3rd century - 4th century _ other centuries) Events The Sassanid dynasty of Persia launches a war to reconquer lost lands in the Roman east. ... For alternative meanings for The West in the United States, see the U.S. West and American West. ... A Frankish king, like Charlemagne, (center) depicted in the Sacramentary of Charles the Bald (about 870) Charlemagne (c. ... A map showing countries commonly considered to be part of the Middle East The Middle East is a region comprising the lands around the southern and eastern parts of the Mediterranean Sea, a territory that extends from the eastern Mediterranean Sea to the Persian Gulf. ... Eastern Europe is marked in orange Eastern Europe is, by convention, that part of Europe from the Ural and Caucasus mountains in the east to an arbitrarily chosen boundary in the west. ... The Byzantine Empire is the term conventionally used to describe the Greek-speaking Roman Empire during the Middle Ages, centred at its capital in Constantinople. ... Peter Brown is a prominent historian of Late Antiquity. ...

The continuities between imperial Rome and the Early Middle Ages are stressed by writers who wish to emphasise that the seeds of medieval culture were already developing in the Christianized empire, and indeed continued to do so in the Eastern, or "Byzantine" Empire, while Germanic tribes such as the Ostrogoths and Visigoths saw themselves as perpetuating the Roman tradition. While the usage "Late Antiquity" suggests that the social and cultural priorities of Classical Antiquity endured throughout Europe into the Middle Ages, the usage "Early Middle Ages" emphasizes a break with the classical past, and the term "Migrations Period" emphasizes the disruptions in the same period of time. The Byzantine Empire is the term conventionally used to describe the Roman Empire during the Middle Ages, centered at its capital in Constantinople. ... This article deals with the continental Ostrogoths. ... The Visigoths were one of two main branches of the Goths, the Ostrogoths being the other. ... Classical antiquity is a broad and perhaps misleading term for a long period of European, Middle East and North African history, that begins roughly with the earliest recorded Greek poetry of Homer (7th century BC), and continues through the rise of Christianity and the fall of the Western Roman Empire... World map showing location of Europe Europe is geologically and geographically a peninsula, forming the westernmost part of Eurasia. ... The Middle Ages formed the middle period in a traditional schematic division of European history into three ages: the classical civilization of Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and modern times, beginning with the Renaissance. ... The Middle Ages formed the middle period in a traditional schematic division of European history into three ages: the classical civilization of Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and modern times, beginning with the Renaissance. ... The German term Völkerwanderung (lit. ...

Features of Late Antiquity

Religion

If there was a single feature of Late Antiquity that is most important, it is the formation and evolution of the Abrahamic religions Christianity, post-diaspora Judaism, and eventually, marking a decisive end to Late Antiquity wherever it reached, Islam. An Abrahamic religion (also referred to as desert monotheism) is any religion derived from an ancient Semitic tradition attributed to Abraham, a great patriarch described in the Torah, the Bible and the Quran. ... Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as presented in the New Testament writings of his early followers. ... Judaism is the religious culture of the Jewish people. ... Islam   listen? (Arabic: al-islām) the submission to God is a monotheistic faith, one of the Abrahamic religions, and the worlds second largest religion. ...

The rise of Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire, starting with the conversion of Emperor Constantine the Great in 312 clearly marked an end to the Classical world. By the late 4th century the "Christian revolution" had almost completely reversed over a millenium of pagan culture, transforming the Classical Roman world "rustling with the presence of many divine spirits" (Brown, Authority and the Sacred). Constantine. ... Events October 28 - Battle of Milvian Bridge: Constantine defeats Maxentius in the fight to become emperor of Rome. ... Pagan may refer to: A believer in Paganism or Neopaganism. ...

In addition we see the birth of Christian monasticism in the deserts of Egypt in 4th century, which initially while operating outside the authority of the main Church and secular rulers, would by the 8th century penetrate the Church and become the primary Christian rule within. Monasticism would ultimately be successful, but it was not the only new Christian movement to appear in Late Antiquity, others would also serve to test the faith of the most devout Christians including the Grazers, holy men who ate only grass and chained themselves up like barnyard animals; the Holy Fool movement, in which acting like a fool was considered more divine than folly; and the Stylites movement, where one practitioner lived atop a 50-foot pole for 40-years. Monasticism in Christianity is a family of similar traditions that began to develop early in the history of the Christian Church, modeled upon scriptural examples and ideals, but not mandated as an institution by the Scriptures. ...

Islam appears in the 7th century and the Arab conquests fundamentally changes both the Eastern and Western empires in different ways. See also Pirenne Thesis Islam   listen? (Arabic: al-islām) the submission to God is a monotheistic faith, one of the Abrahamic religions, and the worlds second largest religion. ... Henri Pirenne (December 23, 1862, Verviers - October 25, 1935, Uccle) was a leading Belgian historian. ...

Late Antiquity marks the decline of Roman state religion, circumscribed in degrees by edicts inspired by Christian advisors to 4th century emperors, and a period of dynamic religious experimentation and spirituality with many syncretic sects, some formed centuries earlier, such as Gnosticism or Neoplatonism and the Chaldaean oracles, some novel, such as hermeticism. Syncretism is the attempt to reconcile disparate, even opposing, beliefs and to meld practices of various schools of thought. ... Gnosticism is a blanket term for various mostly mystical religions and sects most prominent in the first few centuries A.D. // General characteristics The word gnosticism comes from the Greek word for knowledge, gnosis (γνῶσις), referring to the idea that there is special esoteric knowledge, a key to transcendent understanding, that... Neoplatonism (also Neo-Platonism) was a school of philosophy beginning in the 3rd century A.D. It was based on the teachings of Plato and Platonists; but it interpreted Plato in many new ways, such that Neoplatonism was quite different from what Plato taught, though not many Neoplatonists would admit... The Chaldean Oracles are a body of literature that consists mainly of Greek commentary on a single mystery_poem that was believed to have originated in Chaldea (Babylon). ... Hermetica refers to a category of popular Late Antique literature purporting to contain secret wisdom, and generally attributed to Hermes Trismegistus. ...

Many of the new religions relied on the emergence of the parchment codex (bound book) over the papyrus volumen (scroll), the former allowing for quicker access to key materials and easier portability than the fragile scroll, thus fueling the rise of synoptic exegesis. Parchment is a material for the pages of a book or codex, made from fine calf skin, sheep skin or goat skin. ... Blank papyrus. ... This article discusses textual hermeneutics. ...

Roman society

The Roman citizen elite in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, under the pressure of taxation and the ruinous cost of presenting spectacular public entertainments in the traditional cursus honorum, had found under the Antonines that security could only be obtained by combining their established roles in the local town with new worldly ones, as servants and representatives of a geographically distant Emperor. After Constantine centralized affairs in Constantinople in the early 4th century, the Late Antique upper class was divided among those who had access to the far-away centralized administration (in concert with the great landowners), and those who did not—though they were well-born and thoroughly educated, a classical education was no longer the path to success, rather it was one of access, privileged and often corruption in the centralized and bureaucratic state. Room at the top of Late Antique society was smaller and more status competitive, the plain toga that had identified all members of the ruling class indifferently was replaced with silk gowns, court vestments and massive jewelry. The cursus honorum (Latin: succession of magistracies) was the sequential order of public offices held by aspiring politicians in both the Roman Republic and the early Empire. ... The Antonines most often referred to were two successive Roman Emperors who ruled between A.D. 138 and 180: Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius, famous for their skilled leadership. ... The latifundia [Latin lātifundium: lātus, spacious + fundus, farm, estate] of Roman history were great landed estates, specialising in agriculture destined for export: grain, olive oil or wine. ...

Within the recently legitimized Christian community of the 4th century, a division could be seen between the laity and a celibate male leadership, who were removed from the traditional Roman motivations of public and private life marked by pride, ambition and kinship solidarity, and who were wholly unlike the married pagan leadership. Unlike later strictures on priestly celibacy, celibacy in Late Antique Christianity tended to take the form of abstinence from sexual relations after marriage, and it came to be the expected norm for urban clergy. Celibate and detached, the upper clergy became an elite equal in prestige, to their admirers, to the traditional prestige of urban notables, the potentes (Brown 1987 p 270). Celibacy may refer either to being unmarried or to sexual abstinence. ...

This period saw the decline of the Western Roman empire into city-states (Rome, Ravenna, Triers, etc) and independent units (Francia, Britannia, Hispania). Concurrently, the continuity of the eastern Roman empire at Constantinople meant that the turning-point for the Greek East, came later, not until Constantinople turned its back on the lost Middle East in the 8th century and looked toward the Balkans. The Roman Empire is the term conventionally used to describe the Ancient Roman polity in the centuries following its reorganization under the leadership of Octavian (better known as Caesar Augustus). ... The Byzantine Empire is the term conventionally used to describe the Greek-speaking Roman Empire during the Middle Ages, centred at its capital in Constantinople. ...

In the cities the strained economics of Roman over expansion stopped growth. New public building in Late Antiquity came directly or indirectly from the emperors and their representatives, and the privileged supplies of grain and oil, available only to the citizen class, needy or not, was unbroken until the 5th century. But the elite appeared less often in the forums; they withdrew in the cities to an opulent domus but more frequently to the private luxuries of the villa. The basilica of the great man, from Africa to Britannia, functioned in the 4th century as a substitute for the stoas and public basilicas associated with forums and traditional outdoor public life. In the Christianized basilica, the bishop took the chair in the apse reserved in secular structures for the magistrate—or the Emperor himself— as the representative here and now of Christ Pantocrator, the Ruler of All, his characteristic Late Antique icon. A domus was the form of house in ancient Rome and all the cities of the Empire that rich patrician families owned. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Roman villa. ... The Basilica of St. ... Christ Pantocrator in a mosaic at Dafni, Greece The iconic image of Christ Pantocrator (Christ, Ruler of All) was a major image of Christ that eventually developed in the Early Christian Church, and remains a central icon of the Eastern Orthodox Church. ... The Savior Not Made By Hands (1410s, by Andrei Rublev) An icon (from Greek εικων, eikon, image) is an image, picture, or representation; it is a sign or likeness that stands for an object by signifying or representing it, or by analogy, as in semiotics; in computers an icon is a...

In the field of literature, Late Antiquity is known for the declining use of classical Greek and Latin, and the rise of literary cultures in Syriac, Armenian, Arabic, Coptic, vulgar Latin and, in some cases, Romance dialects. It also marks a shift in literary style, with a preference for encyclopedic works in a dense and allusive style, consisting of summaries of earlier works often dressed up in elaborate allegorical garb (e.g. De Nuptiis Mercurii et Philologiae (The Marriage of Mercury and Philology) of Martianus Capella, and the De Arithmetica, De Musica, and Consolatio Philosophiae of Boethius—both later key works in Medieval education). Syriac is an Eastern Aramaic language that was once spoken across much of the Fertile Crescent. ... Arabic can mean: From or related to Arabia From or related to the Arabs The Arabic language; see also Arabic grammar The Arabic alphabet, used for expressing the languages of Arabic, Persian, Malay ( Jawi), Kurdish, Panjabi, Pashto, Sindhi and Urdu, among others. ... Coptic is an adjective referring to the original inhabitants of Egypt, the Copts. ... Vulgar Latin (in Latin, sermo vulgaris) is a blanket term covering the vernacular dialects of the Latin language spoken mostly in the western provinces of the Roman Empire until those dialects, diverging still further, evolved into the early Romance languages — a distinction usually assigned to about the ninth century. ... The Romance languages, also called Romanic languages or New Latin Languages, are a subset of the Italic languages, specifically the descendants of the Latin dialects spoken by the common people in what is known as Latin Europe (Italian/Portuguese/Spanish Europa latina, French Europe latine, Romanian Europa latină) as Vulgar... A dialect (from the Greek word διάλεκτος) is a variety of a language used by people from a particular geographic area. ... Martianus Minneus Felix Capella was a writer of the late Latin period, whose career flourished some time during the 5th century, before the year 439. ... This early printed book has many hand-painted illustrations depicting Lady Philosophy and scenes of daily life in fifteenth-century Ghent (1485) Consolation of Philosophy (Latin: Consolatio Philosophiae) is a philosophical work by Boethius written in about the year 524 AD. It has been described as the single most important... Anicius Manlius Severinus Boëthius (AD 480 - 524 or 525) was a Christian philosopher of the 6th century. ...

References

• Peter Brown, The World of Late Antiquity Ad 150-750, 1989, ISBN 0393958035
• Peter Brown, 1987. "The World of Late Antiquity Ad 150-750" in A History of Private Life: 1. from Pagan Antiquity to Byzantium, Paul Veyne, editor, ISBN 0393958035
• Peter Brown, Authority and the Sacred : Aspects of the Christianisation of the Roman World, Routledge, 1997, ISBN 0521595576
• Peter Brown, The Rise of Western Christendom: Triumph and Diversity 200-1000 AD, Blackwell, 2003, ISBN 0631221387
• Averil Cameron, The Later Roman Empire: Ad 284-430, Harvard University Press, 1993, ISBN 0674511948
• Averil Cameron, The Mediterranean World in Late Antiquity Ad 395-600 (Routledge History of the Ancient World), 1993, ISBN 0415014212
• Averil Cameron et al. (editors), The Cambridge Ancient History, vols. 12-14, Cambridge 1997ff.
• Bertrand Lancon, Rome in Late Antiquity : AD 313 - 604, Routledge, 2001

Peter Robert Lamont Brown (b. ...

External links

• Worlds of Late Antiquity, from the University of Pennsylvania
• Mosaic, source documents and key themes in Late Antiquity.
• The End of the Classical World, source documents from the Internet Medieval Sourcebook