Peter Robert Lamont Brown (born 1935) is Rollins Professor Emeritus of History at Princeton University. His principal contributions to the discipline have been in the field of late antiquity and, in particular, the religious culture of the later Roman Empire and early medieval Europe.
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Peter Brown was born in Dublin, Ireland, to a Scots-Irish Protestant family. He was educated at Aravon School, the oldest preparatory school in Ireland and one of its most distinguished, and then at Shrewsbury School in Shropshire, one of the great "public" schools in England. From 1953 to 1956, he read Modern History at New College, Oxford. His potential was recognized by the award of the Harmsworth Senior Scholarship at Merton College, Oxford, and a seven-year Prize Fellowship at All Souls College, Oxford.[1]
Following his graduation Brown began, but did not complete, a doctoral thesis under the external supervision of Arnaldo Momigliano (at that time Professor of Ancient History at University College London). All Souls College subsequently elected him a Research Fellow in 1963 and a Senior Research Fellow in 1970. The Modern History Faculty of the University of Oxford appointed him a Special Lecturer in 1966 and a Reader (ad hominem) in 1973. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1971. Brown left Oxford to become Professor of Modern History and Head of the Department of History at Royal Holloway College in the University of London (1975-8), and subsequently left Britain to become Professor of Classics and History in the University of California at Berkeley (1978-86) and, since 1986, Philip and Beulah Rollins Professor of History at Princeton University. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1979 and a Resident Member of the American Philosophical Society in 1995.[2] Following his earlier books, he has received some prestigious and substantial research grants, including the MacArthur Fellowship in 1982 and the Distinguished Achievement Award for scholars in the humanities from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in 2001. In 1997, he delivered the Sigmund H Danziger Jr Memorial Lecture at the University of Chicago. In 2003, he delivered the Charles Homer Haskins Lecture ("A Life of Learning") for the American Council of Learned Societies.[3]
Brown has received a large number of honorary degrees. From outside the USA, he has received honorary doctorates from the University of Fribourg, Switzerland (1974), Trinity College Dublin (1990), the University of Pisa (2001), Cambridge (2004), the Central European University in Budapest (2005), Oxford (2006), Kings College London (2008) and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2010). His US honorary doctorates include the University of Chicago (1978), Wesleyan University (1993), Tulane (1994), Columbia University (2001), Harvard University (2002), Southern Methodist University (2004), Yale University (2006), Notre Dame University (2008) and Amherst College (2009). He is an Honorary Fellow of Royal Holloway College, University of London, and of New College, Oxford. He is also a winner of the Heineken Prize for History from the Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (1994), the Ausonius Prize for Ancient History from the University of Trier (1999) and the Premio Anaxilao from the Municipality of Reggio di Calabria (1999). In 2008 he was the co-winner, with Indian historian Romila Thapar, of the prestigious Kluge Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Study of Humanity.[4] He is a Foreign Member of the Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Corresponding Member of the Royal Academy of Letters in Barcelona, an Honorary Fellow of the Italian Association for the Study of Sanctity, Cults and Hagiography, and an Honorary Member of the Royal Irish Academy. He is a Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters in France.
In 2011 Brown was awarded the Balzan Prize for his works on the graeco-roman antiquity.
Brown, who reads at least fifteen languages, established himself at the age of 32 with his biography of Augustine of Hippo. A steady stream of books and articles has since appeared, and currently, Brown is arguably the most prominent historian of late antiquity. Brown has been instrumental in popularizing late antiquity, the figure of the "holy man" and the study of the cult of the saints.
In his book The World of Late Antiquity (1971), he put forward a new interpretation of the period between the third and eighth centuries CE. The traditional interpretation of this period was centered around the idea of decadence from a 'golden age', classical civilization, after the famous work of Edward Gibbon The History Of The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire (1779). On the contrary, Brown proposed to look at this period in positive terms, arguing that Late Antiquity was a period of immense cultural innovation.
Brown was influenced in his early works by the French Annales School, and specifically the figure of Fernand Braudel. Following this school, Brown analyzed culture and religion as social phenomena and as part of a wider context of historical change and transformation. The Annales influence in Brown's work can also be seen in his reliance on anthropology and sociology as interpretative tools for historical analysis. Specifically, Brown received the influence of contemporary Anglo-American anthropology.[5]
His research has been devoted chiefly to religious transformation in the late Roman world. His most celebrated early contribution on this subject concerned the figure of the 'holy man'. According to Brown, the charismatic, Christian ascetics (holy men) were particularly prominent in the late Roman empire and the early Byzantine world as mediators between local communities and the divine. This relationship expressed the importance of patronage in the Roman social system, which was taken over by the Christian ascetics. But more importantly, Brown argues, the rise of the holy man was the result of a deeper religious change that affected not only Christianity but also other religions of the late antique period - namely the needs for a more personal access to the divine.
His views slightly shifted in the eighties. In articles and new editions Brown said that his earlier work, which had deconstructed many of the religious aspects of his field of study, needed to be reassessed. His later work shows a deeper appreciation for the specifically Christian layers of his subjects of study.[6] His book The Body and Society (1988) offered an innovative approach to the study of early Christian practices, showing the influence of Pierre Hadot and Michel Foucault's work on the history of sexuality.
His current research focuses on wealth and poverty in late antiquity, especially in Christian writers.