This study by a Yale historian and classicist at the very end of the 20th century treats the late antique and early medieval periods, with an inquiry into the relationships between Christianity and the prior traditional religions of the greater Mediterranean region. It is fairly brief, with four moderately-sized chapters plus a concluding summary, but it reminded me in style and perspicacity of Keith Thomas' Religion and the Decline of Magic, which sought to characterize "popular beliefs in 16th- and 17th-century England." In many ways, MacMullen charts a reverse course that took place more than a millennium earlier.

He discusses the political and social ascent of Christianity and the tide of anti-intellectualism and anti-rationalism that accompanied it. The new dominance of supernatural thinking demanded continued expressions and mechanisms for celebration, community, and magic that had been developed in the pagan world, but were lacking in Christianity. So there was ultimately an assimilation of pagan forms of practice, leading to survivals even into modern times.

The narrative of assimilation that MacMullen offers makes this book into something like a complement to Hislop's The Two Babylons. Where Hislop's Protestant paranoia guided his interpretation of the pagan features of traditional Christianity (which he read as the pernicious conspiracy of the Roman Church), MacMullen appreciates the basic social and cultural dynamics that made such assimilation necessary and inevitable.

MacMullen emphasizes the qualitative difference between Christianity, a religion prioritizing creed and rooted in texts, and its local and imperial predecessors, anchored in practices and tolerant of varying or absent belief. He cautions against "presentist" bias in the treatment of ancient religions (107), and he welcomes the anthropological perspectives that have made it "common to accept the impossibility of separating magic from religion" (144).

Half of the book is endnotes, opaquely replete with a classicist's pervasive abbreviations, and the body of the text is laden with data that sometimes feel difficult to keep in context and perspective. But the argument is worth following, and represents a sane and realistic take on an important historical change of episteme.

MacMullen's examination of the interactions of Christianity and Paganism in Late Antiquity is a provocative one. He disputes earlier historiography, claiming that polytheistic beliefs and practices lingered in Christianity much longer than previously thought (indeed down to the present day) and that Christian persecutions of polytheists have distorted our understanding of the vitality of polytheism through to the early medieval period. So far, so unexceptionable, and MacMullen's argument is backed up throughout with an impressive level of citation (160 pages of text are accompanied by 80 dense pages of end notes and many more pages of bibliographies). Yet some of his other arguments—that, for instance, the early Christian period was in some ways a more superstitious period than was Classical antiquity—while intriguing and fodder for thought, are not quite so readily supported by his arguments. At times he seems to take his sources a little too much at face value. Was the highly erudite Augustine really such an anti-intellectual, such a Philistine, as he is presented here? Overall an intriguing book, but perhaps an unreliable one. ( )

The glaring problem with this book is the poor organization of the footnotes. If you love history as I do you love good footnotes (or endnotes to be more precise). This book has irrelevant non-primary source footnotes. They are also unconnected to the Bibliography and have indecipherable abbreviations. It is more than annoying since over half the book is comprised of footnotes and notes. The writing could use a little help, too. ( )