Resumen de The Ransom of the Soul: Afterlife and Wealth in Early Western Christianity by Peter Brown (review)
In his massive Through the Eye of a Needle (2012), he focused on wealth, particularly its influx into and impact on the Christian experiences and the church in the waning Western empire; the emerging Christian upper-class hoped to lay up treasure in heaven through dramatic renunciation of wealth, care of the poor, and giving to the church. Picking up the theme of treasure in heaven, in this volume Brown explores the effect of wealth on the other world in Western Christianity in 250–650 C.E. Brown is particularly interested in "the manner in which the imagined joining of heaven and earth through money was held to affect the fate of the soul in the afterlife" (ix), informed by his characteristically careful attention to changing social context and religious imagination of the afterlife. According to Chapter Five, the historiographical writings of Gregory of Tours in the late sixth century revealed yet another development in preaching repentance in light of the last judgment.
