The chief difficulty of combining social with intellectual history is not the lack of ideas among regular people, but the lack of sources that survive to tell us about these ideas. Surely all communities have consisted of ordinary individuals with their own theories about cosmology and morality, but few have left written records of their thoughts. The ideal historical sources for social history almost never survive, at least not from pre-modern eras. We would like to have daily journals of late antique Christians who jotted down their responses to sermons, as well as statistical surveys allowing us to chart the demographics of the congregations and to poll their reactions. Given what we are left with, however, texts written by elites who came into contact with the general population are extremely valuable sources for learning about the world-views and experiences of ordinary people. The late fourth and fifth centuries – the Golden Age of Christian preaching – have left us with an abundance of such texts that provide insight into the changes of this period.

One of the most fascinating aspects of Late Antiquity is the prominence of theological debates. Public discussions and fights over such “intellectual” concerns point to the obvious fact that all people think about the nature of the world and the fate of their souls. In addition to theological controversies, quieter debates took place in Christian communities over the definition of orthodox behavior.