ABSTRACT
“Routes et Villes, Villes et Routes.” According to Braudel, this was the first comment from the great Annaliste historian Lucien Febvre on Braudel’s own seminal study of the Mediterranean. 2 As Horden and Purcell note, scholars of the Mediterranean have often taken what they call a “romantic” view of the region’s development by privileging cities and long-distance trade routes as unique features that created the unity of the Mediterranean and its cultures. 3 A similar formula could be used to describe the parallel project of mapping the development of the entity known as Christianity in the Mediterranean world: “Apostles and Dogma, Dogma and Apostles.” Much of early Christian historiography bases its narrative on dogmatic ideas and their dissemination through apostles endowed with intellectual, literary, or charismatic genius. Social cohesion (or its lack) is explained either by assent or dissent to the ideational content of the great (male) missionaries or theologians.
