商品簡介
Wood (history, U. of Leeds) is less interested in the actual history of Christian missionaries than in the history of how they were represented and understood by contemporary and later hagiographers and other writers. Acknowledging a profound debt to Brown's The Rise of Western Christendom and Fletcher's The Conversion of Europe , Wood avoids retelling the story of the spread of Christianity through Europe, instead focusing on the changing narratives and understandings of the missionaries, often as told by the missionaries themselves. He concludes that pagans were considered by the hagiographers as the "other," but the view of that "other" changed in relation to whether they were living in territories controlled by Christians or not, with outside pagans remaining a curiosity and neighboring pagans bordering on the terrifying. The psychological responses to that terror included writing, visions, and other coping strategies. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
