Queens of a Fallen World

"Intriguing study...It's an eye-opener."

"A masterpiece of the historian’s art. With a rare balance of state-of-the-art erudition and felicitous hypotheses, Kate Cooper has brought the hidden women in Augustine’s early life into the light. Governed throughout by a humane sense of the texture of a distant late Roman society, she captures women’s voices which we would not otherwise have heard."

“An enchanting tour de force of sensitive and probing historical writing. Queens of a Fallen World reveals the traces of forgotten female voices in Augustine’s loves, losses, regrets, and consolations. Cooper’s enquiry into the influence of women on Augustine—whether empress, mother, lover, saint, or slave—enriches his legacy.”
 

“An evocative reconstruction of the bright lives of four women who each made an indelible impact on a towering figure of the early church. St. Augustine may have helped to shape the Christian world—but he, in turn, was shaped by them. Kate Cooper’s wonderful book resuscitates and restores them to their rightful place in Augustine’s legacy.”
 

"What an invigorating book! Cooper asks a haunting question: how different would our world be had this man married either his concubine—who was the loyal mother of his child—or the young heiress he was betrothed to, instead of withdrawing from sexual relationships altogether?"
 

“A bold and imaginative venture into challenging territory. Cooper casts new light onto the women of the ancient world—and one of the founders of Western thought.”
 

“A marvelous achievement. Kate Cooper shines her historian's spotlight on an Augustine so vivid in his Confessions, but so often overlooked: a man who loved and appreciated women...Cooper sketches an evocative landscape of the late Roman world in Milan and North Africa—from its courts to its churches, from military encampments to rural villas, from empresses to the enslaved. Above all, her’s is a world of human beings suffering heartache and loneliness while trying to reconcile the pull of the heart with the lure of ambition.”
 

"Fascinating and well-written, Queens of a Fallen World raises vital questions about the role of women in the founding centuries of Christianity, piecing together a rich backdrop to Augustine’s life that has rarely emerged before. Cooper convinces us that these women can be recovered, and that through his words and thoughts, their lives shaped the future of a fledgling religion. A brilliant new take.”