Early Christianity and the Transformation of Urban Networks
Jordan Freeman
Synopsis "Early Christianity and the Transformation of Urban Networks"
The history of early Christianity is often told as the story of a religion: the emergence of a new faith from within the diverse world of Second Temple Judaism, its spread across the Roman Empire, its encounters with persecution, and its eventual rise to imperial prominence. Yet Christianity did not develop in a social vacuum. It emerged within one of the most densely interconnected urban civilizations of antiquity and expanded through the channels created by that civilization. Roads, ports, commercial routes, administrative centers, educational institutions, associations, and networks of personal patronage all formed the environment in which Christian communities first appeared and from which they drew much of their dynamism. To understand the remarkable transformation of Christianity between the first and fifth centuries, one must therefore understand the cities through which it moved and the urban networks that shaped its development.This book explores the reciprocal relationship between Christianity and the urban world of the Roman and Late Antique Mediterranean. It proceeds from the proposition that Christianity was not merely disseminated through existing urban structures but that, over time, it fundamentally altered those structures. The relationship was mutually transformative. Cities provided the framework within which Christianity expanded, while Christianity gradually reshaped the social, political, cultural, and physical landscapes of cities themselves. By the end of the fifth century, many urban centers of the Mediterranean world had become recognizably different from their predecessors of the early imperial period. Christian institutions, Christian forms of authority, Christian sacred spaces, and Christian patterns of social organization had become integral features of urban life.
