With the blend of art and learning that is the hallmark of his work, Peter Brown here examines how the sacred impinged upon the profane during the first Christian millennium.

Peter Brown is Professor of History at Princeton University and author of, among other works, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography and The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity; he is General Editor of the series, The Transformation of the Classical Heritage, published by the University of California Press.

"Characterized by the unflagging beauty of style and the infallible respect for the variety of human experience we now expect from Brown. . . . this is a collection of 13 essays first published between 1971 and 1977. Some are slight . . . several are daring and deeply original; at least two ('The Rise of the Holy Man' and 'Society and the Supernatural') are among the most important articles published in the last decade—articles that both summarize the direction of a field and set it irrevocably on new paths."—Caroline Walker Bynum, Church History

"Peter Brown is a singular scholar who shows a wide, and refreshingly integrative, command of the source. His prose has a lyrical quality too infrequently seen among historians. . . Society and the Holy stands as a testament to nearly a decade of provocative research. Any student of the period should be grateful for such an accessible compilation."—Burnam W. Reynolds, Classical Bulletin

"Peter Brown's fans (no other word seems adequate) will cheer this collection of previously but disparately published pieces (here provided with bibliographical updatings), with their magisterial learning, illuminating insight, and keen collation of the religious and the social."—Harold Remus, Religious Studies Review