The Closing of the Western Mind: The Rise of Faith and the Fall of Reason

By Charles Freeman

Book Overview

A radical and powerful reappraisal of the impact of Constantine's adoption of Christianity on the later Roman world, and on the subsequent development both of Christianity and of Western civilization.... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 140004085X
• ISBN13: 9781400040858
• Release Date: October 2003
• Publisher: Knopf
• Length: 432 Pages
• Weight: 1.82 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.2" x 1.6" x 6.3"

Customer Reviews

Not just rehashed Gibbon

I must disagree with the other reviewer in comparing this book to Gibbon. Rather than asserting that Christianity contributed to the end of the Roman empire, Freeman suggests that Christianity may in fact have preserved it well beyond its sell-by date. It is beyond any reasonable historical doubt that the average citizen of medieval Europe was far more restricted in what their society would allow them to believe and indeed to think about - with the penalties for error being corporal on earth and eternal in the fires of hell.It is certainly true that from a technological point of view, invention did continue throughout the middle ages, but free intellectual & scientific progress was certainly stunted by the church's insistence on reliance on scripture as the only valid source of knowledge, supported by an atrophied smattering of classical texts. Ironically of course the church integrated the very same old masters (esp Ptolemy, Galen and Aristotle) that would have espoused a practical and experimentalist scientific tradition completely at odds with the church's view of reality.Freeman, while clearly an admirer of the classical world (most of his other books have that focus), is far from a church-basher, though once you've read the book you mightn't feel like being so kind. Gregory of Tours and Ambrose of Milan, two pivotal figures of the early medieval church, receive treatments that are fairly balanced (though it is clear that any admiration Freeman has for Ambrose are along the same lines as Machiavelli might have had for Stalin).A really excellent book, especially if want a thorough, thought-provoking, erudite but not overly academic treastise on the late Roman/Early medieval period.