Robin Whelan, "Serving the Christian State in Late Antiquity" (Cambridge UP, 2026)

Here's a pretty common story that someone might use to explain what happened in the world of Late Antiquity.

In the 4th century, there's this young man, his name is John, and like many ambitious young men, this guy goes on to study rhetoric.

He has some talent, eventually he becomes the star student of probably the most famous rhetoric teacher in the world, a pagan named Libanius.

And John, he could have made it as a court spokesman, he kind of could have made it anywhere.

But he becomes this golden mouth preacher, and eventually he becomes the bishop of Antioch and then of Constantinople.

And a story like that can make it seem like what happened in late antiquity is that a different career path opens for ambitious young men who like the sound of their own voice.

They could have spoken before emperors, but now they're speaking in churches.

And yes, that's true.

One scholar summed up kind of what matters in the transformation of late antiquity by saying that in the year 600, there were about as many monks and nuns as there were soldiers in the year 400.

There were about half a million in each case.

There were about 100,000 priests who were working in the former territories of Rome around the year 600.

There were hundreds of monasteries that made religious life visible.

The transformation of the Roman world on this telling is about the shift from state power to church power.

Now, numbers in antiquity are hard, and even good guesses are still guesses.

But if we want to understand how Christianization happened, what matters isn't just that the church gets big.

It also matters that the government gets staffed by Christians who feel and enforce loyalty to those churches.

There's a story about this unbelievably rich woman named Melania who decides to sell her property and to start an ascetic community, or a few ascetic communities.

Melania, she was so wealthy that her change of heart, it causes a kind of real estate market collapse.

And so, of course, that is a story about Christianization.

But what's really telling about this conversion, this change of heart that causes an economic collapse is that there were Christian tax collectors and Christian governors who were there to maintain some kind of order.

The Christianization here isn't just about the church replacing the state.

It required the state to be filled with Christians, or at least people who understood that the church and its creeds did shape social life.

Maybe they were good Christians.

I'm sure some were.

I'm sure some weren't.

Here's a pretty common story that someone might use to explain what happened in the world of Late Antiquity.

In the 4th century, there's this young man, his name is John, and like many ambitious young men, this guy goes on to study rhetoric.

He has some talent, eventually he becomes the star student of probably the most famous rhetoric teacher in the world, a pagan named Libanius.

And John, he could have made it as a court spokesman, he kind of could have made it anywhere.

But he becomes this golden mouth preacher, and eventually he becomes the bishop of Antioch and then of Constantinople.

And a story like that can make it seem like what happened in late antiquity is that a different career path opens for ambitious young men who like the sound of their own voice.

They could have spoken before emperors, but now they're speaking in churches.

And yes, that's true.

One scholar summed up kind of what matters in the transformation of late antiquity by saying that in the year 600, there were about as many monks and nuns as there were soldiers in the year 400.

There were about half a million in each case.

There were about 100,000 priests who were working in the former territories of Rome around the year 600.

There were hundreds of monasteries that made religious life visible.

The transformation of the Roman world on this telling is about the shift from state power to church power.

Now, numbers in antiquity are hard, and even good guesses are still guesses.

But if we want to understand how Christianization happened, what matters isn't just that the church gets big.

It also matters that the government gets staffed by Christians who feel and enforce loyalty to those churches.

There's a story about this unbelievably rich woman named Melania who decides to sell her property and to start an ascetic community, or a few ascetic communities.

Melania, she was so wealthy that her change of heart, it causes a kind of real estate market collapse.

And so, of course, that is a story about Christianization.

But what's really telling about this conversion, this change of heart that causes an economic collapse is that there were Christian tax collectors and Christian governors who were there to maintain some kind of order.

The Christianization here isn't just about the church replacing the state.

It required the state to be filled with Christians, or at least people who understood that the church and its creeds did shape social life.

Maybe they were good Christians.

I'm sure some were.

I'm sure some weren't.