Charles Freeman

Una obra interesante sobre la historia política y militar, arte y arquitectura, religión y cultura durante la expansión y posterior caída del Imperio Romano. Un texto accesible acompañado de ilustrac

FREEMAN, CHARLESLos griegos de la antigüedad fueron uno de los pueblos más imaginativos de la historia. Inventaron el arte de la política, creando los primeros estados en los que los ciudadanos se go

A compelling and fascinating portrait of the continuing intellectual tradition of Greek writers and thinkers in the Age of Rome In 146 BC Greece yielded to the military might of the Roman Republic sixty years later when Athens and other Greek city states rebelled against Rome the general Lucius Cornelius Sulla destroyed the city of Socrates and Plato laying waste to the famous Academy where Aristotle had studied However the traditions of Greek cultural life would continue to flourish during the centuries of Roman rule that followed in the lives and work of a distinguished array of philosophers doctors scientists geographers travellers and theologians Charles Freeman s accounts of such luminaries as the physician Galen the geographer Ptolemy and the philosopher Plotinus are interwoven with contextual interludes that showcase a sequence of unjustly neglected and richly influential lives Like the author s The Awakening The Children of Athena is a cultural history on an epic scale the story of a rich and vibrant tradition of Greek intellectual inquiry across a period of more than five hundred years from the second century BC to the start of the fifth century AD

In AD 381, Theodosius, emperor of the eastern Roman empire, issued a decree in which all his subjects were required to subscribe to a belief in the Trinity of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. This edict defined Christian orthodoxy and brought to an end a lively and wide-ranging debate about the nature of the Godhead; all other interpretations were now declared heretical. Moreover, for the first time in a thousand years of Greco-Roman civilization free thought was unambiguously suppressed. Yet surprisingly this political revolution, intended to bring inner cohesion to an empire under threat from the outside, has been airbrushed from the historical record. Instead, it has been claimed that the Christian Church had reached a consensus on the Trinity which was promulgated at the Council of Constantinople in AD 381.In this groundbreaking new book, Freeman argues that Theodosiuss edict and the subsequent suppression of paganism not only brought an end to the diversity of religious and philosophical beliefs throughout the empire but created numerous theological problems for the Church, which have remained unsolved. The year AD 381, Freeman concludes, marked a turning point which time forgot.

A monumental and exhilarating history of European thought from the end of Antiquity to the beginning of the Enlightenment500 to 1700 ADtracing the arc of intellectual history as it evolved, setting the stage for the modern era. With more than 140 illustrations; 90 in full-color.Charles Freeman, lauded historical scholar and author of The Closing of the Western Mind (A triumphThe Times [London]), explores the rebirth of Western thought in the centuries that followed the demise of the classical era. As the dominance of Christian teachings gradually subsided over time, a new open-mindedness made way for the ideas of morality and theology, and fueled and formed the backbone of the Western mind of the late Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and beyond.In this wide-ranging history, Freeman follows the immense intellectual development that culminated in the Enlightenment, from political ideology to philosophy and theology, as well as the fine arts and literature. He writes, in vivid detail, of how Europeans progressed from the Christian-minded thinking of Saint Augustine to the more open-minded later scholars, such as Michel de Montaigne, leading to a broader, more humanist way of thinking.He explores how the discovery of America fundamentally altered European conceptions of humanity, religion, and science; how the rise of Protestantism and the Reformation profoundly influenced the tenor of politics and legal systems, with enormous repercussions; and how the radical Christianity of philosophers such as Spinoza affected a rethinking of the concept of religious tolerance that has influenced the modern era ever since.

The conversion of the emperor Constantine to Christianity in 368 AD brought a transformation to Christianity and to western civilization, the effects of which we still feel today. Previously, the Roman empire had absorbed and sustained the Greek intellectual tradition which, in the astronomy of Ptolemy, the medicine of Galen and the philosophy of Plotinus, reached new heights. Constantine turned Rome from the relatively open, tolerant and pluralistic civilisation of the Hellenistic world, towards a culture that was based on the rule of fixed authority. The century after Constantines conversion saw the development of an alliance between church and state which stifled freedom of thought and the tradition of Greek rationalism which was intrinsic to it. The churches enjoyed enormous patronage and exemptions from tax, and in return allowed the emperors to take on the definition and enforcement of an increasingly narrow religious orthodoxy. This book explores how the European mind was closed by the revolution of the fourth century. It looks at the rise of the divine monarch, the struggle as Christianity painfully separated itself from Judaism, the conflict between faith and reason, and the problems in finding any kind of rational basis for Christian theology. In these centuries, a turning-point for Western civilisation, we see the development of Christian anti-Semitism, the origins of the opposition of religion and science and the roots of Christianitys discomfort with sex, issues which haunt the Christian churches to this day. The Closing of the Western Mind is a major work of history. Wide-ranging and ambitious, its central theme is the relationship between the two wellsprings of our civilisation, the Judaeo-Christian and the Greco-Roman, and how the tensions between them have created the culture in which we continue to live, think and believe.