Download Through the Eye of a Needle: Wealth, the Fall of Rome, and the Making of Christianity in the West, 350-550 AD AudioBook Free
Jesus trained his followers that it's easier for a camel to undergo the eye of the needle than for a abundant man to type in heaven. Yet by nov Rome, the chapel was becoming abundant beyond measure. Through the attention of the Needle is a sweeping intellectual and public background of the vexing problem of riches in Christianity in the waning days and nights of the Roman Empire, written by the world's foremost scholar lately antiquity. Peter Brown examines the rise of the chapel through the lens of money and the obstacles it posed to the institution that espoused the virtue of poverty and called avarice the root of all bad. Drawing on the writings of major Religious thinkers such as Augustine, Ambrose, and Jerome, Brown examines the controversies and changing behaviour toward money induced by the influx of new riches into chapel coffers, and identifies the spectacular functions of divestment by abundant donors and their growing influence within an empire beset with turmoil. He shows how the use of riches for the good care of the poor competed with aged forms of philanthropy deeply rooted in the Roman world, and sheds light on the ordinary people who gave away their profit hopes of treasure in heaven. Through the attention of the Needle troubles the widely organised idea that Christianity's growing riches sapped Rome of its potential to withstand the barbarian invasions, and offers a fresh perspective on the public background of the chapel in later antiquity.
