The Triumph of Christianity Redescribed by Éric Rebillard

The Triumph of Christianity Redescribed by Éric Rebillard

In The Triumph of Christianity Redescribed, Éric Rebillard argues that the appearance of Christian signs and practices in the Roman Empire has long been misunderstood. Rather than marking a rapid wave of conversions or the triumph of belief, the spread of Christian signs reflected a more complex and fluid religious landscape.

Rebillard offers a striking new account of how Christianity took hold, not through adherence to doctrine or formal membership in a church, but through a gradual diffusion of signs and practices. Drawing on cognitive science, anthropology, and theories of religious mobility, he shows how individuals across the ancient Mediterranean experimented with religious symbols: adopting some, abandoning others, and often blending them without concern for consistency. Rebillard maps out a world where religious affiliation was provisional, situational, and rarely exclusive.

The Triumph of Christianity Redescribed challenges the idea that Christianity's rise was a straightforward story of growth, mission, or hegemony. By replacing a triumphalist narrative with one attuned to ambiguity, resilience, and the everyday realities of religious life in late antiquity, Rebillard offers scholars and general readers alike a richer, more accurate account of how Christianity spread—and what that spread actually meant.

Éric Rebillard is Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities, Departments of Classics and History, Cornell University. He is the author of Christians and Their Many Identities in Late Antiquity, North Africa, 200-450 CE.