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Now available from Liberty Fund "Christianity and Classical Culture" is considered one of the great works of scholarship published in the last century.
The theme of "Christianity and Classical Culture" is the fundamental change in thought and action that occurred from the reign of Augustus to the time of Augustine. The classical world sought to practice politics and understand the world in purely rational terms, but the difficulties of this program were already evident as Christianity began developing a completely new understanding of the human world. It is from this revolution in ideas that our modern world was forged.
W. H. Auden wrote of an earlier edition in The New Republic: “Since the appearance of the first edition in 1940, I have read this book many times, and my conviction of its importance to the understanding not only of the epoch with which it is concerned, but also of our own, has increased with each rereading.”

"THE theme of this work is the revolution in thought and action which came about through the impact of Christianity upon the Graeco-Roman world. This is a subject of profound importance, but it has not received the attention it deserves, especially perhaps from English-speaking scholars. The reason for this lies partly in the rather special character of the problems involved, partly, however, in the acceptance of a distinction between areas of investigation, which to my mind at least is wholly arbitrary and in no way warranted by the actual course of events. The result is that classical and Christian studies have become dissociated with consequences which are, perhaps, unfortunate for both.
In this work I have ventured to defy the accepted convention and to attempt a transition from the world of Augustus and Vergil to that of Theodosius and Augustine. I am fully aware of my temerity in embarking on such an enterprise. But I have been impelled to undertake it both because of its intrinsic interest and because of the light it throws on subsequent developments of European culture. And I have been emboldened to do so from a sense that, however difficult the
religious and philosophic issues to be encountered, they cannot be neglected by the historian except at the cost of missing what is central to the events of the age.
In a subject so vast and intricate it has been necessary to make a somewhat rigid delimitation of the field. I have, therefore, taken as my starting-point the Augustan Empire, with its claim to 'eternity' as a final and definitive expression of classical order. This is not to suggest that the work of Augustus was in any deep sense novel. On the contrary, it was merely the culmination of an effort begun centuries before in Hellas, the effort to create a world which should be safe for
civilization; and, from this standpoint, such originality as the emperor exhibited was merely one of method. In this sense, however, his settlement may well be accepted as the last and not least impressive undertaking of what we may venture to call 'creative politics'."
C. N. C.
OXFORD, July 1939.

Charles Norris Cochrane

Charles Norris Cochrane (1889–1945) was educated at the University of Toronto and Oxford (Corpus Christi College). He taught at the University of Toronto, then served overseas for Canada in World War I before going back to Oxford for his M.A. in 1919. Returning to Toronto, he became Assistant Professor of Greek and Roman History, then Dean of Residence, and finally full professor and the head of the department of Greek and Roman History.