February 15, 2002

'The Making of a Christian Aristocracy: Social and Religious Change in the Western Roman Empire'

By NINA C. AYOUB

Christian Rome wasn't built in a day. For decades after Constantine's conversion in the early fourth century, the empire was dominated by a largely pagan elite. So how did that elite come to embrace the cross? After all, notes Michele Renee Salzman, Nietzsche's "view of Christianity as a 'slave religion' would have been appreciated by many a late Roman aristocrat."

Her new book, The Making of a Christian Aristocracy: Social and Religious Change in the Western Roman Empire (Harvard

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