That's a double-ouch for Stephen Greenblatt for both Stephen Greenblatt's identities, Jew and secular humanist, lost with Christianity's continued dominance in the West. Those identities conflict but Greenblatt has maintained both.  Psychic dissonance is the product.  Greenblatt writes as two people: the Jew who suffered as a child from a "cruel," neurotic mother--but who was still "loving"--in the preface and as the husband of a Jewish woman in the concluding acknowledgments. In between he writes as the secular humanist who has immersed himself in Christianity's history, has visited its cathedrals, its libraries--including the Vatican's--who came to identify with Poggio Bracciolini, scribe to a pope. As Greenblatt came both to love and hate his mother he came to love and hate Poggio. He did not come to love Christianity.  Christianity defeated both the Stephen Greenblatts and both Stephen Greenblatts are critical only of Christianity.  Greenblatt's two identities, with Judaism and with ancient Rome's epicureanism, are spared. As he ingratiated himself into Christendom's sanctuaries Greenblatt was the spy whose loyalty was elsewhere, and opposed, and whose identity was concealed.

Both as Jew and as humanist Greenblatt saw himself in this passage from Gustave Flaubert:

"Just when the gods had ceased to be, and the Christ had not yet come, there was a unique moment in history, between Cicero and Marcus Aurelius, when man stood alone."

That is a poignant, even haunting, passage.  And Greenblatt is haunted by it.  Before Christianity and after paganism both Stephen Greenblatts would have been secure.

Was there not another time?  Was there not another unique moment when man stood alone unaddicted to the opiate of the people?

Image:  Janus, ancient Roman god of beginnings and transitions, looking to the future and to history.