The History of Christianity: The Early Church to the Reformation

By Jonathan Hill

How did a group of scared peasants from a backwater of the Roman empire – followers of an executed criminal – form the largest religion on the planet?

The story of Christianity, its transformation from an illegal sect to the religion of emperors, kings and presidents, and its spread across the globe, is an endlessly fascinating one. 

The History of Christianity gives readers an overview of these extraordinary 2,000 years. It is a history not only of how Christianity has changed the world, but also of how the world has changed Christianity.

The first half of this volume is arranged mostly chronologically to create a single narrative from the age of exploration to the late twentieth century.

The second half describes the history of the church in the past hundred years or so, with each chapter focusing on a different part of the world. 

Boxed features throughout the volume highlight especially important figures or themes from each of these periods. The History of Christianity:The Age of Exploration to the Modern Day will be welcomed by all those wanting a lively and engaging presentation of the people, events, places, and plain curiosities that have formed the Christian story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lion Scholar
• Release date: Nov 20, 2020
• ISBN: 9781912552511

Jonathan Hill

Jonathan Hill is Lecturer in Philosophy of Religion at the University of Exeter. He holds an MPhil in Theology from Oxford, and a PhD in Philosophy from the National University of Singapore. He is the author of the highly acclaimed The History of Christian Thought (Lion, 2003), What Has Christianity Ever Done for Us? (Lion, 2005), The Big Questions (Lion, 2007), and The New Lion Handbook: The History of Christianity (Lion, 2007).

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Consulting editors

Michelle Brown

Professor Emerita of Medieval Manuscript Studies at the School of Advanced Study, University of London

Mark Noll

Research Professor of History, Regent College

Michael Nai Chiu Poon

Asian Christianity coordinator of the Centre for the Study of Christianity in Asia at Trinity Theological College, Singapore

Lamin Sanneh

Formerly Professor of Missions and World Christianity at Yale Divinity School and Professor of History at Yale University

Graham Tomlin

President of St Mellitus College and Bishop of Kensington

This edition copyright © 2020 Lion Hudson IP Limited

The author and contributors assert the moral right to be identified as the author and contributors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Published by

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ISBN 978 1 9125 5240 5

e-ISBN 978 1 9125 5251 1

First edition 2007

Acknowledgments

Scripture quotations are from The New Revised Standard Version of the Bible copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches in the USA. Used by permission. All Rights Reserved.

All maps and diagrams by Richard Watts of Total Media Services.

Cover image copyright © Chr. Offenberg/Shutterstock

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

CONTENTS

Timeline of Christian History

Introduction

1. Christian Beginnings

The Setting

The Roman Empire

Palestine

Judaism

The First Christians

The Resurrection

Jesus (Peter Walker)

Pentecost

The Christian Community

Divisions and Disagreements

A theology of mission: Paul (Jonathan Hill)

Christian Writings

The Faith of the Christians

Living in the Last Days

Faith in Christ

The ‘New Israel’

Life in the Church

The Christian Rites

Leading the Community

The Spread of Christianity

Church and Synagogue

Christianity in the Empire

Beyond the Empire

2. The Young Church

The Roman Empire

Christianity in the Empire

Becoming a Christian

Leading the Community

The Christian Life

Ignatius of Antioch (Thomas Weinandy)

The Catacombs

The Christian Problem

Hellenistic Culture

Hellenistic Philosophy

Hellenistic Religion

Other Religions in the Empire

The Hellenizing of Christianity

The Decline of Jewish Christianity

Institutions and Rites

Hellenistic Theology

Heresy, Orthodoxy and the Birth of Theology

The New Prophecy

Ebionism

Gnosticism

The Foundation of Orthodoxy

A Christian philosophy: Origen (John McGuckin)

The Role of Scripture

3. Christian Rome

The Conversion of Constantine

Christians in a Christian Empire

The Arian Conflict

Arius

The Council of Nicaea

The Crisis Deepens

Athanasius, Hilary and Gregory of Nazianzus (Andrew Louth)

The Crisis Resolved

The Monks

Antony of Egypt

The Desert Fathers

The Monastic Ideal

New Disputes

Jovinianism

Pelagianism

Augustine (Andrew Knowles)

Schism

The Empire Crumbles

The Christological Controversy

Cyril of Alexandria (Thomas Weinandy)

4. Africa, the Middle East and the Missions East

The Monophysite Movement and the Byzantine Empire

Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (Paul Rorem)

The Monophysites and the Middle Eastern Wars

Monophysitism Outside the Empire

The Armenian Church

Ethiopia

The Nubian Kingdoms

The Church of the East

A Nestorian Church?

Eastern Spirituality, from Ephraim the Syrian to Isaac of Nineveh (John Healey)

Missions to the East

Central Asia

The Early Chinese Church

The Mongols and the Yuan Dynasty

The Malabar Church

Nestorians in Indonesia

The Coming of Islam

The Church of the East under Islam

Nubia in the Age of Islam

Ethiopia in the Age of Islam

New Dynasties, New Wars

The Sabbatarian Controversy

5. The Byzantine Empire

Byzantium and the Orthodox Church

Emperors, Churches and Heaven on Earth

The Monasteries

Christ on Earth and Christ in Paint: The Controversies

The Three Chapters

Monotheletism

From Monotheletism to Iconoclasm

The Isaurians

The Female Emperor and the Second Council of Nicaea

The Final Phase

Other Nations, Other Churches

Rome

Avars, Slavs, Bulgars and Magyars

The Filioque (Thomas Graumann)

Missions to Eastern Europe

A Dwindling Empire

New Heresies

New Enemies, New Defeats

The Last Days

Gregory Palamas (Constantine Scouteris)

6. A New Europe

Europe After the Empire

Italy under the Ostrogoths

Spain under the Visigoths

The Franks

Celtic Christianity

The Conversion of Ireland

A Monastic Church

The development of the monasteries (Thomas O’Loughlin)

The Celtic Missions

The Rise of the Papacy

The Bishops of Imperial Rome

The Papacy and the Barbarians

Mission and the Spread of Papal Power

The church in England (Stephen Platten)

Christianity and paganism (Lesley Abrams)

Christianity in the Vice: The Late Dark Ages

Al-Andalus and the Mozarebs

The Carolingians

The Age of Charlemagne

The Carolingian Renaissance

Tradition and innovation in ninth-century theology (Elina Screen)

Hungary: The Eastern Border

The Vikings

7. The High Middle Ages

Medieval Europe

The Emergence of Nations

The Feudal System

Feudalism and the Church

Spirituality, Reform and the Papacy

The Cluniac Movement

Corruption and Reform

Medieval religious life (Justin Clegg)

Carthusians and Cistercians

Innocent III and the Fourth Lateran Council

The Friars

Francis and Clare (Michael Robson)

The World of Faith and Reason

Early Scholasticism

Scholasticism Develops

The Flowering of Scholasticism

Thomas Aquinas (Richard Cross)

Buildings and Beauty

Christendom and Its Neighbours

Relations with the Byzantine Church

The Crusades

The Crusades and Europe

Heresy and Orthodoxy

The Waldensians

The Cathars

The Inquisition (Edward Peters)

The Decline of the Middle Ages

The Avignon Captivity and the Great Schism

Critics and Reformers

8. Russia: The Heir of Byzantium

The Conversion of the Russians

Vladimir and the Links to Byzantium

Christianity Becomes Established

The Third Rome

The Church under the Tatars

Christianizing the Russians (Paul Steeves)

The Threat from the West

The Rise of Moscow

Art, Architecture and Christian Culture

Ivan ‘The Terrible’

Ivan IV, the Hundred Chapters Council and a new state church (Paul Steeves)

Monasticism and Spirituality

The Russian Monasteries

Russian Mysticism

The Holy Fools

Early Modern Russia

The Time of Troubles

The Great Sovereign

Sects and Schismatics

9. The Reformation

The Renaissance

New Economies, New Societies

Back to Basics

Humanism and the cult of the ‘text’ (Kenneth Austin)

Mysticism and Science

The condemnation of Galileo (David Lindberg)

Backlashes

The Renaissance Papacy

The Early Reformation

Martin Luther and the 95 Theses

The New Churches

The Swiss Reformation

The Radical Reformation

The Church of England

The Catholic Response

The Council of Trent

A new spirituality: The Carmelite mystics (Edward Howells)

The Jesuits

The Later Reformation

John Calvin and the Reformed Tradition

The Protestant Rome (Carl Trueman)

Europe Divided

Baptists and Quakers

Witch hunting (Allison Coudert)

The Wars of Religion

Glossary

Contributors

Bibliography

Index

TIMELINE OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY

c. 30 Execution of Jesus of Nazareth.

c. 49 Council of Jerusalem establishes that Christians do not have to be Jewish.

c. 50–c.64 Paul writes letters to different churches.

c. 64 First persecution of Christians, under Nero. Deaths of Peter, Paul, and James the Just.

c. 66–c. 95 Probable dates of the four Gospels.

70 Destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.

c. 90 Council of Jamnia marks break between Christianity and Judaism.

c. 95 Persecution under Domitian.

c. 107 Ignatius of Antioch writes to seven churches.

c. 180 Irenaeus of Lyons writes On the so-called gnosis.

c. 190 Osrhoene becomes the first officially Christian state.

c. 230 Origen of Alexandria writes On first principles.

250 Persecution under Decius.

303–11 Persecution under Diocletian and Galerius.

c. 310s–370s Persecutions in Persia under Shapur II.

313 Edict of Milan legalizes Christianity.

325 Council of Nicaea condemns Arianism.

330 Constantinople founded as the Christian capital of the Roman empire.

c. 330 Pachomius writes the first Rule for a Christian monastery.

381 Council of Constantinople condemns Arianism again.

380s Emperor Theodosius effectively establishes Christianity as the official religion of Rome.

393 A council at Hippo establishes the canon of the Bible.

417 Pope Innocent I condemns Pelagius.

c. 426 Augustine of Hippo completes City of God.

431 Council of Ephesus condemns Nestorius.

c. 433 Patrick lands in Ireland and converts King Laoghaire.

451 Council of Chalcedon condemns Eutyches.

484 Roman synod excommunicates Acacius of Constantinople over the Henoticon, marking the first official break between the two churches.

c. 500 Pseudo-Dionysius writes The mystical theology.

c. 530 Benedict of Nursia writes his Rule.

537 Dedication of new cathedral of Hagia Sophia, Constantinople.

553 Second Council of Constantinople condemns the ‘Three Chapters’.

590 Gregory the Great becomes Pope.

627 Emperor Heraclius conquers Ctesiphon and restores the ‘True Cross’ to Jerusalem.

630s Persia, Egypt, Armenia, and Levant conquered by Muslims.

652 Christian Makuria and Muslim Egypt agree the baqt treaty.

664 Synod of Whitby decrees that England will use Roman, not Celtic, rites.

680 Third Council of Constantinople condemns monotheletism.

725 Emperor Leo III begins crackdown on icons.

c. 780 Stele of Xian records the state of the Chinese church.

787 Second Council of Nicaea authorizes use of icons in worship.

c. 800 Book of Kells produced in Ireland.

843 ‘Restoration of orthodoxy’ in Byzantium confirms legitimacy of icons.

845 Emperor Wu-tsang closes Chinese monasteries.

858 Pope Nicholas I condemns Photius of Constantinople, marking the second official break between the two churches.

864 Baptism of Khan Boris I of Bulgaria.

878 Treaty of Wedmore forces Vikings in England to convert to Christianity.

910 Cluniac order founded.

966 Prince Mieszko I of Poland baptized.

988 Prince Vladimir of the Rus baptized.

1051 Kiev-Pechersk Lavra founded in Kiev.

1054 ‘Great Schism’ between Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches.

1075 Pope Gregory VII issues the Papal decree.

1084 Carthusian order founded.

1095 Pope Urban II preaches the First Crusade.

1098 Cistercian order founded.

1099 Crusaders capture Jerusalem.

1128 Knights Templar founded.

1145 Pope Eugenius III preaches the Second Crusade.

1180 Pope Alexander III condemns the Waldensians.

1187 Saladin captures Jerusalem.

1198 Innocent III becomes Pope.

1204 Third Crusade results in sacking of Constantinople and the establishment of a Latin patriarchate.

1210 Francis of Assisi founds the Franciscan order.

1215 Fourth Lateran Council defines Catholic beliefs and practices, including transubstantiation.

1216 Dominic de Gusmán founds the Dominican order.

1242 Montsegur, citadel of the Cathars, destroyed.

1242 Alexander Nevsky defeats the Teutonic Knights at the Battle of Lake Peipus, to keep Russia Orthodox.

1261 Byzantines recapture Constantinople.

1273 Thomas Aquinas leaves his Summa theologiae unfinished.

c. 1280 Kebre Negast compiled in Ethiopia.

1305 Pope Clement V moves the Papacy to Avignon.

1314 Knights Templar suppressed.

1330s–40s Amda Siyon of Ethiopia conquers Ifat and imposes Christianity there.

1338 Gregory Palamas writes Triads in defence of the holy hesychasts.

1368 Fall of the Yuan dynasty brings the Chinese church to an end.

1377 Pope Gregory XI condemns John Wycliffe.

1380s Persecutions under Tamerlane almost destroy the Church of the East.

1387 ‘Great Schism’ begins between the Avignon and Roman Papacies.

1414 Council of Constance resolves ‘Great Schism’, restores Papacy to Rome, and condemns Jan Hus.

1438 Council of Basle (later Ferrara, Florence, and Rome) briefly reunites Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches.

1453 Fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans.

1474 Marsilio Ficino writes Platonic theology.

1483 Spanish Inquisition set up.

1491 Nzinga Nkuvu (João) of Congo is baptized.

1498 Portuguese establish contact with Indian Christians.

1509–43 Mvemba Nzinga (Afonso) establishes Christianity throughout Congo.

1513 Requirement imposed upon Conquistadors in the Americas, requiring that they give a cursory explanation of Christianity to natives.

1517 Martin Luther nails his ‘Ninety-five theses’ to the church door in Wittenberg.

1520 Portuguese establish contact with Ethiopia.

1521 The Diet of Worms condemns Martin Luther.

1534 Act of Supremacy makes King Henry VIII head of the Church of England.

1537 Pope Paul III condemns the enslavement of native Americans.

1540 Ignatius Loyola founds the Society of Jesus.

1542 Francis Xavier arrives in India and begins preaching there.

1545–63 Council of Trent re-affirms Catholic doctrine in the face of Protestantism.

1549 Francis Xavier arrives in Japan and begins preaching there.

1552 Thomas Cranmer publishes the second edition of the Book of common prayer.

1553 Jesuits establish a mission at Luanda, Angola.

1559 John Calvin publishes the definitive edition of Institutes of the Christian religion.

1561 Cathedral of the Intercession of the Virgin on the Moat (known as St Basil’s Cathedral) completed in Moscow.

1565 Augustinian missionaries arrive in the Philippines.

1569 Ukraine is given to Poland and Catholicized.

1571 The ‘Thirty-nine articles’ established as the doctrine of the Church of England.

1577 Teresa of Avila publishes The interior castle.

1583 Matteo Ricci enters China.

1596 Eastern-rite Ukrainian Catholic Church established.

1596 Persecutions of Christians in Japan begun.

1598 King Henry IV of France issues the Edict of Nantes, permitting freedom of worship to the Huguenots.

1599 Synod of Diamper attempts to Catholicize the Malabar Christians in India.

1603 Matteo Ricci completes The true doctrine of the Lord of heaven.

1609 Jesuits gain control of Paraguay and establish the first of the ‘Thirty Missions’.

1611 A team of scholars commissioned by King James I of England produce the Authorized Version of the Bible in English.

1615 New basilica of St Peter’s completed in Rome.

1618 The Synod of Dort condemns Arminianism and defines orthodox Calvinism.

1619 Feodor Romanov is enthroned as Filaret, patriarch of Moscow.

1620 ‘Pilgrim Fathers’ land at Plymouth Rock and establish a Puritan society.

1622 Pope Gregory XV creates the Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith.

1633 Emperor Fasilidas expels Jesuits and other Catholic missionaries from Ethiopia.

1639 Japan closes its borders to westerners, driving Christianity underground.

1645 Pope Innocent X bans the Chinese rites.

1649–60 England becomes a Commonwealth, with Puritanism dominant in the church.

1652 Nikon becomes patriarch of Moscow and begins his controversial reforms.

1667 Ukraine is divided between Poland and Russia, bringing the Catholic Enlightenment to Russia.

1672 Thousands of Huguenots are killed in the Bartholomew’s Day massacre in France.

1673 Test Act in England bans non-Anglicans from all establishment posts.

1674 Catholic hierarchy officially established in New France.

1682 The French clergy issue a Declaration of Gallicanism.

1685 King Louis XIV of France revokes the Edict of Nantes.

1688 King James II of England is deposed, partly because of his increasing support of Roman Catholicism.

1721 Tsar Peter the Great of Russia replaces the patriarchate of Moscow with a Holy Synod.

1724 Emperor Yongzeng of China bans Christianity.

1728 William Law publishes A serious call to a devout and holy life.

1730 Matthew Tindal publishes Christianity as old as creation.

1739 John Wesley breaks with the Moravians in Britain and founds what will become the Methodists.

1740 George Whitefield arrives in America and preaches the new revivals.

1742 Pope Benedict XIV confirms the banning of the Chinese rites.

1750 Jesuits expelled from Paraguay.

1754 Methodist missionaries arrive in Antigua and begin the first systematic preaching to West Indian slaves.

1755 The Lisbon earthquake causes many to question the goodness of God.

1764 Voltaire publishes the Philosophical dictionary.

1773 Pope Clement XIV suppresses the Jesuits.

1774–77 Gotthold Lessing publishes fragments by Hermann Reimarus casting doubt on the authenticity of the New Testament.

1786 Virginia passes Thomas Jefferson’s bill guaranteeing complete religious liberty.

1790s Persecutions against Christians begin in Korea.

1792 Colonists from North America arrive in Sierra Leone to establish a new Christian colony there.

1792–94 The National Convention in France attempts to replace Catholicism with Deism.

1796 The London Missionary Society sends the first missionaries to Tahiti.

1799 Friedrich Schleiermacher publishes On religion: speeches to its cultured despisers.

1799 William Carey arrives in Serampore and begins to preach there.

1807 Robert Morrison arrives in China and begins to preach there.

1807 G.W.F. Hegel publishes Phenomenology of spirit.

1809 Napoleon invades the Papal States and forces Pope Pius VII into exile.

1814 Pope Pius VII restores the Jesuits.

1819 Pomare II of Tahiti is baptized.

1820s Mfecane migrations in southern Africa help to spread Christianity into the interior.

1821 Robert Moffat arrives in Kuruman and sets up a mission station.

1830 Friedrich Schleiermacher publishes the second edition of The Christian faith.

1830 Joseph Smith founds the Church of Christ, later the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

1833–41 Publication of Tracts for the times by the leaders of the Oxford Movement.

1835 David Strauss publishes The life of Jesus critically examined.

1835–43 Thousands of Boers head north from Cape Town in the Great Trek, bringing the Reformed faith with them.

1836 Synod at Mavelikara rejects interference by the British in the Malankara Church.

1846 Pius IX becomes Pope.

1847 Rosendo Salvado establishes the monastery of New Norcia in Australia and preaches to the Aborigines.

1850s Persecutions against Christians in Vietnam reach a peak.

1854 Pope Pius IX defines the doctrine of the immaculate conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

1858 Keshab Chandra Sen joins the Brahmo Sabha and pushes for a universal religion combining Jesus’ teachings with those of Hinduism.

1860 An argument about Darwinism, involving Thomas Huxley and Samuel Wilberforce, takes place in Oxford.

1864 Samuel Crowther becomes the first black Anglican bishop.

1865 Bernard Petitjean rediscovers the Kakure Kirishitan of Japan.

1870 First Vatican Council condemns the Syllabus of errors and affirms Papal infallibility.

1871 ‘Old Catholics’ establish their own church, rejecting the First Vatican Council.

1872 Te Kooti establishes the Ringatu church in New Zealand.

1873 The passing of the ‘May Laws’ begins the Kulturkampf in Germany.

1878 Emperor Yohannes IV of Ethiopia calls the Council of Borumeda to establish Christological orthodoxy.

1883 Christianity legalized in Korea.

1889 Christianity legalized in Japan.

1899 Plenary Council for Latin America calls for reforms in the Latin American Catholic Church.

1900 ‘Boxers’ kill many foreigners and Christians in Beijing.

1901 Charles Parham reports manifestations of the Holy Spirit in his Bible study class in Kansas, initiating Pentecostalism.

1901 Uchimura Kanzō founds the Nonchurch movement in Japan.

1902 Gregorio Aglipay founds the Philippine Independent Church.

1903 P.L. Le Roux founds the Zionist Apostolic Church, one of the first AICs.

1907 Great Revival at P’yŏngyang helps spread Christianity in both Korea and China.

1910 World Mission Conference in Edinburgh marks the start of the modern ecumenical movement.

1910–15 The fundamentals are published in the United States, defining the typical doctrines of fundamentalism.

1917 The Russian Orthodox Church restores the patriarchate of Moscow.

1917 New Mexican constitution clamps down on Catholicism.

1918 Tahupotiki Wiremu Ratana has a series of visions, leading to the establishment of the Ratana Church in New Zealand.

1920s–30 Russian Orthodox Church increasingly persecuted.

1926 Pope Pius XI ordains the first six indigenous Chinese bishops of modern times.

1927–29 Cristero Rebellion in Mexico.

1929 Lateran Pacts establish Vatican City as an independent state.

1932–68 Karl Barth publishes Church Dogmatics.

1933 Adolf Hitler agrees a concordat with the Catholic Church, and has the German Protestant churches united into a Nazi-dominated Reich Church.

1934 German Confessing Church founded in opposition to Nazism.

1936 Italians conquer Ethiopia and begin intermittent persecutions of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church.

1936–37 Many Russian Orthodox clerics die in Joseph Stalin’s ‘Great Purge’.

1937 Persecutions begin against Catholic priests in Germany.

1937 Pope Pius XI condemns both communism and Nazism.

1939 Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith decrees that Chinese rites are compatible with Catholicism.

1941 United Church of Christ formed as the only officially recognized Protestant body in Japan.

1943 Joseph Stalin legalizes the Russian Orthodox Church.

1945–47 Communist governments are installed in most eastern European countries, which oppress the churches there to varying degrees.

1948 Establishment of a communist government leads to clampdown on Christianity in North Korea.

1950 Pope Pius XII defines the doctrine of the physical assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.

1950 Chinese Christian Manifesto appears, leading to the establishment of the Three-Self Patriotic Movement.

1954 Establishment of a communist government in North Vietnam leads to many Christians fleeing south.

1955 Trevor Huddleston publishes Naught for your comfort.

1959–64 Nikita Krushchev clamps down on the Russian Orthodox Church.

1962–65 The Second Vatican Council restates Catholicism for the modern age.

1966–69 Cultural Revolution in China sees persecution against Christians and all churches closed.

1971 Gustavo Gutiérrez publishes Theology of liberation.

1978 John Paul II becomes Pope.

1978 Bharat Christian Church created as a federation of Indian churches.

1979 Jerry Falwell forms the Moral Majority, initiating a period of political influence for right-wing Christianity in the United States.

1980 China Christian Council created, as churches are gradually reopened there.

1981 President Anwar Sadat of Egypt briefly outlaws the Coptic Church.

1984 Pope John Paul II performs the first canonization outside Rome, in Seoul.

1985 Institute for Contextual Theology in South Africa issues the Kairos Document.

1989–91 Collapse of communism in most of eastern Europe leads to new freedom for the churches there.

1990 Catholicism legalized in Cambodia.

1992 The Church of England ordains its first female priests.

1994 The ‘Toronto Blessing’ is reported at Toronto Airport Vineyard Christian Fellowship.

2003 Bernard Law resigns as Catholic archbishop of Boston over allegations of covering up paedophilia among the priesthood.

2003 Gene Robinson becomes Episcopalian bishop of New Hampshire in the United States, drawing deep controversy over his active homosexuality.

2005 German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger is elected as the new Pope.

2006 The general synod of the Church of England, led by the archbishop of Canterbury, apologizes for benefiting from slavery up to 1834.

INTRODUCTION

Palestine, c. AD 30: an obscure Jewish preacher, the latest in a line of charismatic religious figures, is executed by the Roman authorities. His followers scatter. The wider world pays no attention whatsoever.

The early twenty-first century: approximately a third of the world’s population – some two billion people – are estimated to be followers of that preacher. Typing his name into the most popular search engine on the Internet brings up well over 100 million hits. More books have been written about him than about any other person in history.

How did a group of scared peasants from a backwater of the Roman empire, followers of an executed criminal, become the largest religion on the planet? The story of Christianity, its transformation from an illegal sect to the religion of emperors, kings and presidents, and its spread across the globe, is an endlessly fascinating one. This book, and its companion volume, The History of Christianity: The Age of Exploration to the Modern World, offers an overview of these extraordinary two thousand years. It is written to be accessible to readers without any background in the subject, but the hope is that it will also contain plenty of interest to those who are already familiar with much of the story.

It is a story not just of how Christianity changed the world, but of how the world changed Christianity. In these pages, we will meet persecuted pacifists, sword-wielding monks, Arabian courtiers, Roman converts, middle-age Crusaders, medieval African kings, nomads of the Mongolian steppes, and many more – Christians one and all. We have aimed to tell not simply what Christians did and where they went during these years, but how Christianity itself adapted to different peoples and cultures – even as Christians sought to remain true to the same message of Jesus, however differently they understood it.

The history of Christianity is such a vast subject that no two-volume set can hope to do justice to its scope and complexity. This volume is intended as a sort of bird’s-eye view of the main contours from the dawn of Christianity to the tumultuous years of the Reformation in the sixteenth century. It is divided into nine chapters, each one describing a different period of Christian history; along the way, text boxes highlight especially important figures or themes. The chapters (and the sections within each chapter) are arranged mostly chronologically, to create a single narrative from the time of Jesus up to the Reformation – although occasionally a more thematic arrangement has been used to clarify matters.

Perhaps inevitably, the history of Christianity in Europe forms the dominant theme for much of the book. It was in Europe that it grew and developed most dramatically, and European-style Christianity proved far more determined and effective at spreading overseas than the versions of Christianity that developed elsewhere. In the past, this fact has sometimes led to Europeans and Americans almost entirely overlooking non-European forms of Christianity, with Asia and Africa depicted as passive receivers of the religion of European or American missionaries, rather than as the homes of ancient, thriving, and independent Christian traditions. In this book, we have aimed to reflect the importance of these non-European traditions while acknowledging the role of Europeans in spreading Christianity – and the role of non-Europeans in creatively interpreting the message that they heard.

The book does not presuppose any prior knowledge of Christian history or theology. There is a glossary to help those unfamiliar with any technical terms that may crop up. There is also a bibliography, with chapter-by-chapter suggestions for further reading for those who wish to delve more deeply into some of the subjects sketched here. It is our hope that this volume will inspire many – whether or not they are Christians themselves – to do exactly that. For while the history of Christianity is by turns violent, inspiring, shocking, tragic, comic, or just plain bizarre, it is certainly never dull.

CHAPTER 1

CHRISTIAN BEGINNINGS

How did Christianity begin? Some of the people we will meet later in this book argued that, because Christianity taught the truths of God, it was as old as time itself. Others insisted that Christianity as we know it was an invention of the emperor Constantine (c. AD 274–337) and had virtually nothing to do with Jesus himself. But, to most historians, Christianity had its origins in the movement started by the surviving disciples of Jesus of Nazareth, a Jewish preacher from Galilee who was executed by the Romans in around AD 30.

The Setting

The Roman Empire

It was a striking fact, and one not lost upon later Christians, that Jesus was born just as the Roman empire was coming into existence. The city of Rome, which had gradually expanded its power across the Italian peninsula and beyond, had until recently been a republic. By the beginning of the first century AD, Rome had defeated its rivals, Carthage and the Greek states, and controlled more or less the entire coastline of the Mediterranean Sea, as well as Gaul, conquered by the brilliant but ruthless Julius Caesar.

The first real Roman emperor was Caesar’s nephew, Octavian, a man at least as remarkable as his famous uncle. Caesar’s murder in 44 BC saw further civil war, which Octavian won – defeating Mark Antony and his lover, Cleopatra, and adding Egypt to the Roman domains in the process. Taking the name Caesar Augustus, he essentially created the government and structures of the Roman empire, although he refused to call himself by any title other than princeps (‘first’). He was careful to maintain the forms of the old republic, with the senate retaining nominal control of the state. But elections to the senate were rigged by Augustus, it was filled with his men, and it concerned itself with his business. Although the senate remained, the emperor ruled. This meant that, under some of Augustus’s more intemperate successors, being a senator could be a very dangerous business.

Augustus reorganized the civil service, issued new laws, commissioned new works of art, endorsed the traditional religion of Rome, and generally set the former republic on a firmly imperial footing. Under Caesar Augustus, the whole of modern-day Spain and France were subdued, as well as the Balkans and North Africa.

The emperor was far more than simply the ‘first’ among equals. In 12 BC, Augustus followed Julius Caesar’s lead in becoming pontifex maximus, the chief priest of the traditional Roman religion: there was thus an official union of state and religion, both of which were personified in the one man, the emperor. Augustus also endorsed the cult of Julius Caesar, which regarded him no longer as a mere man but as a god. Augustus himself was formally deified after his death in AD 14. From then on the emperors were all officially gods, even during their lifetimes. Quite what this actually meant is hard to tell: probably some people genuinely believed their emperor was divine, while others regarded this as simply a patriotic sentiment that did not really mean anything substantial. Sometimes the emperor was believed to be under the influence of a divine spirit who guided his actions: in this case, it was ‘Caesar’s genius’ to which the devout paid homage.

Palestine

The Jews had lived in Palestine, at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea, for many centuries. But it had been a long time since they had been truly independent. In the sixth century BC, they had been conquered and transported by the Babylonians for fifty years in a traumatic period known as the Babylonian exile. Since then they had been dominated by first the Persians (who built a powerful empire to the east) and then the Seleucids, a dynasty founded in the wake of the conquests of the Macedonian general Alexander the Great. They had rebelled against the Seleucids in the second century BC, but in the first century BC they were conquered by the Roman general Pompey. From then on, Palestine was part of the Roman empire.

Most of the country was devoted to agriculture, which was made difficult by its hot and dry weather. In the north, Galilee enjoyed a wetter and milder climate. Here the Jordan flowed into and out of a large lake called the Sea of Galilee, which was the basis for a fishing industry. Most of the people worked the land, either on small farms of their own or as tenant farmers on the property of large landowners.

Ruling it all was first the Hasmonean dynasty and then the Herodian one. Palestine was not literally ‘occupied’ by the Romans. On the contrary, their policy was to allow the local king to administer his kingdom as a client ruler. The Romans did not really want to rule Palestine or to tax it to death – indeed, they may even have made a net loss from the place. Their interest was in having a stable and friendly area near the frontier with Persia, Rome’s perennial rival, protecting the more important regions of Egypt and Syria. They wanted to do the minimum required to keep it that way, which meant leaving most local affairs to a local king. From 37 BC to 4 BC this king was Herod the Great, a domineering personality who devoted vast quantities of money and resources to great building projects and the founding of new cities. As a client of Rome, Herod had to pay tribute to the emperor and defer to him on matters of foreign policy, but otherwise he had a largely free hand. After Herod’s death, Caesar Augustus divided Palestine among his sons, who ruled as ‘tetrarchs’ in much the same way as Herod had done. The son who ruled Judea (the southern region of Palestine, containing Jerusalem) proved incompetent. In AD 6 he was removed and the Romans ruled this part of Palestine directly, via an official called the prefect. Being prefect of Judea was a rather thankless job. The Romans regarded this country as an appalling backwater inhabited by insane barbarians with a strange religion, and it was not a desirable place to be. Moreover, the prefect had very few troops – only a few thousand, not nearly enough to police the area properly. He therefore spent most of his time at Caesarea, a Romanized city on the coast, and left the day-to-day running of Judea and Jerusalem to the Jewish high priest, who acted almost as prime minister, setting taxes, dealing with law and order and so on.

Judaism

At the heart of Jewish culture was the Jewish religion, its basic faith perhaps best summed up in the speech that farmers made when dedicating their early crops to God, as laid down in Deuteronomy 26:5–9:

A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous. When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labour on us, we cried to the Lord, the God of our ancestors; the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey.

Deuteronomy is the last book of the Pentateuch, five books also known collectively as the Torah. Probably written at around the time of the Babylonian exile in the sixth century BC, they told the following story. The ‘wandering Aramean’ was Abraham, who left the Sumerian city of Ur (in modern Iraq) for the land of the River Jordan. God made a covenant with him, promising that his descendants would become a great people and live in this land. But his family moved to Egypt, where their descendants did become numerous, becoming ‘Israel’, that is, the Jews. Here they were enslaved; but God rescued them in the great event known as the exodus, described in the second book, of that name. Not only did he lead them out of Egypt and into the Promised Land, Palestine, he also gave them the Law, a large set of regulations about how to worship the one God and how to live together as a society. The Law was summed up in the Ten Commandments which God wrote directly onto tablets of stone and gave to Moses. Although his death is described near the end of Deuteronomy, Jews believed that Moses was the author of all five books. The subsequent history of the Jews was told in other books, which recounted how, under a succession of kings, they either adhered to or fell away from fidelity to the Law and the worship of the one God. God therefore sent a series of prophets to recall Israel to the true religion. These books formed the basis of the Jewish scriptures, although at the time of Jesus there was no ‘official’ view of which books were authoritative and which were not. Some of them would later form part of what Christians would call ‘the Old Testament’.

This, then, is what Jews believed about their history, a history that was intimately tied up with God. The Jews believed they were chosen by God as a special people, and he not only spoke to them through the Law and the Prophets but acted on their behalf at key moments such as the exodus. Bad events, such as the Babylonian exile, might be interpreted as divine displeasure, perhaps resulting from the people’s infidelity. They believed that God had an abiding covenant with them, according to which the land of Palestine was theirs. Their side of the covenant was to keep the Law. As a sign of this covenant, Jews were circumcised, something that set them apart from other people and was regarded as one of their key characteristics – in the New Testament we often find the terms ‘the circumcised’ and ‘the uncircumcised’ to refer to Jews and non-Jews respectively.

Not only was the land of Palestine given to Abraham’s descendants by God, but its capital, Jerusalem, was a holy city. Jerusalem was home to the Temple, one of the most remarkable buildings in antiquity. Originally built on King Solomon’s orders centuries earlier, it was rebuilt and restored by Herod the Great in the first century BC and was absolutely central to Jewish religion. The Pentateuch set out a number of sacrifices and other rituals, which were to be performed at this single, central location. God himself was believed to inhabit its central precinct, the Holy of Holies, and the only person who could enter this was the high priest, and that only once a year. The Temple employed a small army of priests, and all Jews had to pay a special tax to keep it running. Vast sums flowed in and out of the Temple, and some people even used it as a sort of bank to keep their money in. The Temple guards not only protected this wealth but policed the city of Jerusalem. So the Temple was not simply the centre of Jewish religion – it was the centre of political, economic and social life too. The regular festivals that were celebrated throughout the year centred on it. At Passover in particular, tens of thousands of people would pack into Jerusalem, forcing the prefect to move there from Caesarea and borrow troops from Syria to keep the peace. The Temple extended its presence throughout Palestine in the persons of the priests, who worked in Jerusalem part-time and spent the rest of their time back home, working as teachers or judges and essentially running their local areas. These priests came from certain priestly families, making them a special social class as well as a religious one.

There were Jews outside Palestine as well. In fact, by Jesus’ day there were more Jews outside it than inside it. The members of this ‘diaspora’ were obviously more remote from the Temple – though they still had to pay the Temple tax – and so they developed an alternative institution called the synagogue. A synagogue was not a place of worship or sacrifice but one of learning and study. It was used for reading the Pentateuch and giving instruction, as well as for communal prayers and even meals. It seems that many non-Jews – known as Gentiles – also visited synagogues, though of course they were not full members of the community. They were sympathetic to Judaism and interested in learning more about it – for many Gentiles throughout the Roman empire greatly respected the Jewish religion, with its strong monotheism and its impressive moral code. In the first century AD, synagogues also appeared throughout Palestine, as a kind of supplement to the Temple-based cult.

However, Judaism was far from being a monolithic religion, identical everywhere you went. There were many variations on the same theme, even within Palestine, and the religion developed enormously (as we shall see) throughout the first century AD. Rather than thinking of Christianity as peeling off, as it were, from a static ‘Judaism’, we should think of Judaism as redefining itself quite radically throughout the first century, a process that produced (among other things) Christianity.

Many Jews, to varying degrees, hoped for a great divine intervention. Although they were mostly not governed by Rome directly, they still regarded themselves as living under the rule of a foreign, non-Jewish force. Many thus hoped that God would intervene and deliver them from these foreigners, just as, they believed, God had intervened in history many times before to deliver his people. Some Jews went further than this: they hoped not simply for a political miracle but for the coming ‘kingdom of God’, a really decisive and ultimate intervention on God’s part. The worldly order would be swept away and God would rule the world directly. Most Jews probably believed this would happen at some distant time in the future; some were particularly keen to see it happen soon.

Related to this was ‘messianism’, the hope that God would raise up some great human leader to usher in the kingdom. The word ‘messiah’ means ‘anointed one’ and appears relatively rarely in the Old Testament; it referred to this kind of special leader. Other figures appear in some writings in association with the coming of the kingdom: one was the mysterious ‘Son of Man’ in the book of Daniel. Different groups believed different things about these leaders of the end times. Some anticipated a ‘Son of Man’ and some the ‘messiah’; sometimes he was understood in priestly terms and sometimes he was more of a warrior or king. The Dead Sea Scrolls talked about two messiahs, one a priest and one a king, accompanying the coming kingdom of God.

In addition to this, there were a number of different parties within Judaism. We have already seen the role that the priests played in Jerusalem and elsewhere: they were the ‘official’ leaders of Judaism and acted as general teachers and experts. They were rivalled by a group called the Pharisees, who were mostly laymen. Like the priests (and a few Pharisees were priests), they specialized in studying the Law and applying it to everyday life. To help with this they had evolved a large body of traditions. For example, the Law forbade work on the Sabbath, the seventh day of the week: the Pharisees therefore set out what they thought counted as ‘work’ to explain the rule more clearly. Different schools of thought competed within Pharisaism over how severe or liberal the interpretations should be. These elucidations were developed for their own use and were not intended to be normative for anyone else, since the Pharisees had no formal authority over others. However, the Pharisees were extremely popular, since most people respected their attempt to think through the Law and apply it to everyday life.

The priests and the Pharisees were the most important groups that Jesus and the first Christians alike had to contend with. In addition, there were others, such as the Sadducees, who denied that the dead would ever rise again (the Pharisees believed that the resurrection of all people would be one of the signs of the end of the world). There were also the Essenes, who like the Pharisees were an unofficial party of both priests and laymen who studied and interpreted the Law. However, the Essenes generally interpreted the Law in a much more severe way than the Pharisees, extending its rules where possible. They also formed communities, the most famous of which was that at Qumran near the Dead Sea. This was a sort of monastery of those who wished to dedicate their lives to following the Law as perfectly as possible, and who also believed that the coming of the kingdom of God was imminent. They regarded themselves as the only really faithful Jews, and had nothing to do with the Temple because they thought that the current priests defiled it. This group was associated with the Dead Sea Scrolls, a large collection of religious texts discovered dramatically in a cave near Qumran in 1947. These scrolls have taught scholars an enormous amount about apocalyptic Judaism in the first century AD, although it is unlikely that anything in them has any direct bearing upon either Jesus or Christianity.

The First Christians

In around AD 30, Jesus of Nazareth, a preacher from Galilee with a reputation for miracle-working, was executed on the outskirts of Jerusalem. He had made a nuisance of himself, causing a disturbance in the Temple. The high priest could not tolerate this, as it happened during Passover, when vast numbers of pilgrims were in Jerusalem and tempers were high. He had therefore been arrested by the guards of the high priest and condemned to death. This order had been ratified by the Roman prefect, Pontius Pilate, since the high priest did not have the power to order an execution. Jesus therefore suffered the Roman punishment of crucifixion, and he died relatively quickly. This, and almost everything else we know about Jesus, is described in the four ‘Gospels’, books describing what Jesus did which were written by the Christians later, and which are known as ‘Matthew’, ‘Mark’, ‘Luke’ and ‘John’ since these are the figures traditionally thought to have written them.

Jesus had a number of disciples, pre-eminent among whom was an inner circle called ‘the twelve’, who accompanied him during his ministry in Galilee and on his fateful trip to Jerusalem. The sources disagree over their names, which may mean that there were actually more than twelve of them. The number twelve was highly significant to Jews, since it brought to mind the twelve tribes which had once made up the nation of Israel, so it is possible that Jesus talked about ‘the twelve’ in a symbolic sense even while their number fluctuated. During Jesus’ trial and execution, most of

Reviews for The History of Christianity

[krista.rutherford · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I learned a lot from this book! I want to read it again! It is easy to understand, and the pictures are awesome.