Lisa Bailey's monograph, Christianity's Quiet Success, reflects a renewed scholarly interest in the role of pastoral care in the western church. For scholars of late ancient Gaul the work provides much needed context to a topic dominated by consideration of Caesarius of Arles' sermons. Bailey offers a long overdue, full analysis of a multi-authored, anonymous handbook of model sermons (composed in the fifth century and compiled in the early sixth), the “Eusebius Gallicanus” collection. Bailey explains in the introduction how few earlier historians were willing to take on the problematic text, preferring instead to stick to known quantities such as Caesarius and Gregory of Tours. Even those who did concentrate upon the Eusebian collection merely tended to muddy the scholarly waters by arguing over authorship and provenance of particular sermons. Bailey, however, rises above the fray as she conducts an extensive examination of the text's contents, thereby providing broader context and enabling greater accuracy for an understanding of preaching and receiving the Christian message in Gaul.

In chapter one the author addresses the relevance of sermons as historical sources by “illustrating their function, their audience, and the environment in which they were written, heard, and read” (16). Sermons were a principal vehicle for pastoral care through which preachers sought to communicate and persuade audiences. Intended audiences for late ancient sermons were usually laity but also ascetics. Preachers needed to convince audiences of their message and so late antique preaching functioned as a dialogue. Studying sermons reveals how preachers tried to build power and attests to the limitations involved in pursuing that objective.

Chapter two focuses upon the Eusebian text, a source that was popular though the late ancient period and into the high Middle Ages and yet rarely consulted by modern scholars. Bailey explains that the principal cause for the modern neglect was a paralyzing scholarly debate over various problems including the origin of the collection's name, authorship, and provenance. Bailey acknowledges with most scholars the multiple authorship of the text. She plausibly proposes that the compiler drew the sermons from either an episcopal library or archive in southern Gaul, perhaps at Riez. The compiler reworked the sermons to meet his specific pastoral objectives. Bailey urges scholars to move beyond the unsolvable: “Not knowing the authors of the Eubsebian sermons did not prevent medieval preachers and scribes from using them. It should not prevent us either” (38).

By concentrating on the collection's contents Bailey aims to discern the techniques Gallic preachers adopted to administer pastoral care to their congregants. In chapter three, Bailey considers how the Eusebius preachers strove to build and nurture community. One regular practice by which to establish consensus was to use egalitarian imagery. Sermons discouraging individuals from making claims to spiritual supremacy were common to the collection. Mention of social differences is absent from the collection, for to have focused upon such matters would have impeded efforts towards communal unity. The sermons advanced an image of the pastor as first among equals, a figure that was to lead by example and serve his flock rather than behave in an authoritarian fashion. This egalitarian approach differed radically from that found in Caesarius of Arles' sermons. Whereas the aristocratic Caesarius could afford to be authoritarian and combative with his congregants, the Eusebian sermons, “designed as an aid for clergy who lacked the confidence, ability, or resources to compose their own sermons” (58), needed to employ a subtler approach.

Chapter four shows how the compiler of the Eusebian sermons took a cautious approach to explaining the faith. The sermons are devoid of controversial topics. Two rhetorical strategies employed often were the “circle of faith” by which the preacher made recourse to undeniable articles of faith such as God's existence, and the “rhetoric of paradox” in which the pastor insisted that impossibilities were evidence of divinity. Sermons on the creed and virgin birth include such tactics. Explication of scripture was kept simple; the Eusebian sermons do not offer detailed exegesis nor do they cite multiple passages. The matter of faith that received the most attention in the collection was God's justice. Accompanying assertions for the necessity of divine justice were frequent assurances that human agency was needed to ensure salvation.

In chapter five, Bailey examines how the Eusebian pastors addressed the problem of sin. Bailey explains that the preachers exerted an indirect pressure on congregants by asserting that they were responsible for their own fates. Expiation was expected to fit the sin. Most of the sermons addressed expiation of daily sinfulness. Common suggested solutions included prayer, lamentation, fasting and almsgiving. Sermons also addressed expiation by and for the community. The pastors encouraged the congregants to be their own judge and their own doctor. It was necessary that humans work to expiate sin in this lifetime, for there would be no opportunity to do so in the next. Unlike Augustine, the Eusebian preachers asserted that human agency played an important role in salvation. The sermons emphasized the need for congregants to strive continually for virtue. This approach fit with the Eusebian model of subtle leadership in that “the pastor showed his congregants the past, but it was up to them to walk it” (103).

Chapter six focuses upon the ten sermons from the collection intended for monks. Importantly Bailey discerns a similarity of goal and function between the sermons for monks and those addressed to the laity. Both exhibit “the same emphases on harmony, mutuality and consensus” (110). The same model of leadership “from among” rather than “from above” is apparent. One difference is that the preachers strove to cause uneasiness among the monks in order to discourage a sense of ascetic elitism, whereas they tended to afford positive encouragement for the laity. For Bailey the Eusebian sermons reveal no evidence for an ascetic Christianity antagonistic and antithetical to the lay Christian world. Instead the collection demonstrates that, for some preachers in Gaul, monks and laity were Christians who worshipped in different ways but were “to be treated as rough equals” (126).

Immediately following a brief conclusion Bailey provides an epilogue that offers a cursory look at the collection's manuscript tradition. Bailey asserts that Eusebius collection continued to prove useful for preaching and contemplation, its popularity diminishing only from the thirteenth century.

A welcomed aspect of Bailey's book is the author's appeal for scholars to dismiss the dichotomies that characterize much previous scholarship and rather to realize the diversity that actually distinguished late ancient preaching. Most importantly Bailey rejects a still common assumption that a “semi-pelagian controversy” persisted throughout late antique Gaul. She ably dismantles notions that Gallic ecclesiastics such as Caesarius of Arles and the Eusebius compiler wrote from the perspective of belonging to competing camps, Augustinian or anti-Augustinian. She notes for example how Caesarius, generally characterized as a “moderate Augustinian,” lifted passages from several Eusebian sermons, this despite the fact that the latter emphasized the role of human agency towards salvation. For Bailey the need for preachers to find solutions to problems borne of conditions specific to their locales was more profound than theological argument in influencing how they developed the contents of sermons. Bailey succeeds in bringing to light “Christianity's Quiet Success.” Her book undoubtedly will have an immediate and positive impact on studies of the rise of Christianity in late antiquity.