Those (of us) historians who chronicle events and monitor trends in the zone where forms of Christianity intersect with the public order regularly frame them under the category “Church and State.” Doing so reflects the influence of the Emperor Constantine (306–373), theologian and preacher Saint Augustine, and events after 312 CE, when the church began to become “established” in the late Roman Empire.

Those (of us) who read widely and deeply in the writings of historians who deal with the matters just mentioned, for decades have turned first to Princeton professor Peter Brown, universally recognized as the master in the field. Those (of us) whose specialty calls for a focus on other chronological periods than early Christianity, especially in the West, which means the Roman Empire, do not have to strain for relevance when we revisit the past through Brown's agency. What he writes regularly throws light on events in the political and ecclesiastical spheres and, in the present case, we can add, in the economic and cultural spheres. Brown, of course, has always been attentive to these, but Through the Eye of a Needle, his newest work, magisterially bids fair to lift the study of the economic sphere to a new height and to challenge the lofty place the political has held.

Brown writes well and often on decisive events, but as he deals with the realm of wealth in late Rome he does not look for a single turning point from old to new. To take a climatic metaphor to illuminate this: he does not speak of an economic earthquake but of glacial shifts which leave a revised landscape whose moraine only gradually takes shape. Most historians regard Constantine's vision and influence stress on “establishment” of Christianity through conquest and legal administration, though it must be said that Brown has always treated the Constantinian changes as complex and gradual. Now he treats the period 350–550 with such thoroughness that we can assess the relevance of economics, which he treats concretely by speaking of “wealth,” just as most have long treated 312 in the political and governmental realms.

Brown succeeds in his ambitious venture by choosing a large canvas and displaying his eye for detail. Of course, he must pay attention to emperors, popes, and archbishops, but in this work his eye is more on bishops-as-pastors, not as imperial agents but as ministers to flocks, whether in Carthage or Trier, or from Spain to Syria. Naturally, giants like Augustine, Jerome, Ambrose and the rest merit and deserve attention, but here they appear less decisively as theological and pastoral theologians in church councils and affairs of state. For most, preaching was their great instrument. The earlier and standard focus on Constantine had meant observing the shift from Christians seen as legally marginal or even persecuted, to their becoming legally privileged and eventually the dominant cohort. Here Brown succeeds in telling a convincing story of how across the empire Christians, whose biblical texts and traditions had taught them to be humble and suspicious of riches, now came zealously to seek wealth, often to gain it, and to see their values turned topsy-turvy.

The new ethos and ethic which developed between 350 and 550 CE led Christians to have to find ways to justify the change and still do justice to Jesus, who was poor, a friend of the poor, and powerless. Power, authority and privilege became the new goals. The wealth spoken of in Brown's title often came from land ownership, and believers showed it off by investing in the building of basilicas and churches across Western Europe and in North Africa. Some of their achievement, in Brown's reading, led them to flaunt wealth. At the same time, many others among them took on the burden of sharing it by serving the poor.

Many of the new church buildings were ostentatious, bringing glory to those who built them, but many of those wealthy Christians whom Brown quotes found ways to please God, and to do so to their, if not their God's, satisfaction. To participate in this “transvaluation of values” did not mean that these people were ancient ideological analogues to Marxists. Nor did the celebration of wealth lead them to voice the self-centered satisfaction of private doctrines like Any Rand, who in our time set out to free the selfish rich from their bad consciences. Brown is not a cynic about every aspect of the changes. He quotes and points to enough saintly souls who were conscientiously concerned about what their wealth meant for their souls and for the mission of the church as it dealt with poverty. He portrays at some length some very wealthy Christians, but finds that most of them were not that, nor poor, but comfortably “middling” in their fortune and reasoning.

Any review that must deal with a rich account like Brown's has to do some injustice to its genre. The reviewer generalizes, just as the author had to, but Brown does so with finesse. Every informed reader of his earlier work and this long new one can recognize that much of his allure results from his ability to notice small evidences which turn out to be revelatory. Accepting the assignment of reviewing books like this one means being delightfully condemned to many days of slow reading. Slow not because the author's prose style is plodding or obscure; just the opposite. It is elegant and, in every positive sense of the word, fascinating. Brown's ability to notice shows up particularly when the author focuses on mosaics, symbols, practices, and texts once regarded as having been marginal to the larger Christian story.

Brown characteristically focuses on some comparatively obscure characters. Take Quintus Aurelius Symmachus, for example, as the author devotes many pages to him. A glance at Symmachusian topics in the index tantalizes: references to amator patriae, avarice, coyness on wealth, estates, games, Vestal Virgins, villas, and scores more. Reading the account devoted to just one figure like Symmachus is likely to lead many newcomers to the field to be shocked, to undergo a need to re-envision Christianity in ancient times, and to tempt them to read other portraits Brown subtly summons to help him make his points and inspire further inquiry.

Edward Gibbon could frighten off lesser historians with his classic Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, but Brown will convince readers to take new looks at most features of “decline” and transitions. Instead of a “fall” we read of the breaking up of the empire as a whole into disparate regions, whose leaders and ordinary people had to come up with regional and local strategies. Giving for and to the poor was a most widespread response. Adam Smith could write The Wealth of Nations and alter economic thinking. Peter Brown, titling his work after a line from a parable of Jesus about how hard it was for a rich man to enter the kingdom—like being a camel trying to go through the eye of a needle—shows how Christians through two decisive centuries strained and squirmed and wriggled when dealing with riches. We can understand afresh the consequences of their various resolutions many centuries later, with thanks to Brown for having provided guidance.