Includes bibliographical references (pages 641-717) and index.

Online resource; title from e-book title screen (JSTOR platform, viewed September 16, 2016).

"Jesus taught his followers that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven. Yet by the fall of Rome, the church was becoming rich beyond measure. Through the Eye of a Needle is a sweeping intellectual and social history of the vexing problem of wealth in Christianity in the waning days of the Roman Empire, written by the world's foremost scholar of late antiquity. Peter Brown examines the rise of the church through the lens of money and the challenges it posed to an institution that espoused the virtue of poverty and called avarice the root of all evil. Drawing on the writings of major Christian thinkers such as Augustine, Ambrose, and Jerome, Brown examines the controversies and changing attitudes toward money caused by the influx of new wealth into church coffers, and describes the spectacular acts of divestment by rich donors and their growing influence in an empire beset with crisis. He shows how the use of wealth for the care of the poor competed with older forms of philanthropy deeply rooted in the Roman world, and sheds light on the ordinary people who gave away their money in hopes of treasure in heaven. Through the Eye of a Needle challenges the widely held notion that Christianity's growing wealth sapped Rome of its ability to resist the barbarian invasions, and offers a fresh perspective on the social history of the church in late antiquity."--Publisher's description

Traces the intellectual and social history of wealth in the early Christian church, examining the financial rise of the church and its effects on the waning Roman empire as well as the church's own beliefs on poverty.

pt. 1. Wealth, Christianity, and giving at the end of an ancient world -- pt. 2. An age of affluence -- pt. 3. An age of crisis -- pt. 4. Aftermaths -- pt. 5. Toward another world.

Aurea aetas: Wealth in an age of gold -- Mediocritas: The social profile of the Latin Church, 312-ca. 370 -- Amor civicus: Love of the city: Wealth and its uses in an ancient world -- "Treasure in heaven": Wealth in the Christian church -- Symmachus: Being noble in fourth-century Rome -- Avidus civicae gratiae: greedy for the good favor of the city: Symmachus and the people of Rome ; Ambrose and his people -- "Avarice, the root of all evil": Ambrose and Northern Italy -- Augustine: Spes saeculi: careerism, patronage, and religious bonding, 354-384 -- From Milan to Hippo: Augustine and the making of a religious community, 384-396 -- "The Life in Common of a kind of Divine and Heavenly Republic": Augustine on public and private in a monastic community -- Ista vero saecularia: Those things, indeed, of the world: Ausonius, villas, and the language of wealth -- Ex opulentissimo divite: From being rich as rich can be: Paulinus of Nola and the renunciation of wealth, 389-395 -- Commercium spirituale: The spiritual exchange: Paulinus of Nola and the poetry of wealth, 395-408 -- Propter magnificentiam urbis Romae: By reason of the magnificence of the city of Rome: The Roman rich and their clergy, from Constantine to Damasus, 312-384 -- "To Sing the Lord's Song in a Strange Land": Jerome in Rome, 382-385 -- Between Rome and Jerusalem: Women, patronage, and learning, 385-412 -- "The Eye of a Needle" and "The Treasure of the Soul": Renunciation, nobility, and the Sack of Rome, 405-413 -- Tolle divitem: Take away the rich: the Pelagian criticism of wealth -- Augustine's Africa: People and church -- "Dialogues with the Crowd": The rich, the people, and the city in the sermons of Augustine -- Dimitte nobis debita nostra: Forgive us our sins: Augustine, wealth, and Pelagianism, 411-417 -- "Out of Africa": Wealth, power, and the churches, 415-430 -- "Still at that Time a More Affluent Empire": The crisis of the West in the fifth century -- Among the saints: Marseilles, Arles, and L�erins, 400-440 -- Romana respublica vel iam mortua: With the empire now dead and gone: Salvian and his Gaul, 420-450 -- Ob Italiae securitatem: For the security of Italy: Rome and Italy, ca. 430-ca. 530 -- Patrimonia pauperum: Patrimonies of the poor: Wealth and conflict in the churches of the sixth century -- Servator fidei, patriaeque semper amator: Guardian of the faith, and always lover of (his) homeland: Wealth and piety in the sixth century.

In English.

JSTOR Books at JSTOR Demand Driven Acquisitions (DDA)