At The Marginalia Review (a site worthy of perusal in general), there is a fascinating interview with that vir illustris ac clarissimus, responsible together with a few others for the rise in Anglophone scholarship of the new late antiquity, Peter Brown: Part 1; Part 2.
Among the many interesting topics discussed, Prof. Brown cautions strongly against seeking an intellectual (and one could add spiritual) Shangri-La in the “early church,” whether that phrase indicates the pre-Constantinian or Constantinian church. The search for the idyllic Golden Age is not allowed to the historian.
