The rise of Western Christendom : triumph and diversity, AD 200-1000
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
The rise of Western Christendom : triumph and diversity, AD 200-1000
（The making of Europe）
Blackwell, 1997
- : pbk
Available at 17 libraries
Note
First published 1996
Bibliography: p. [344]-350
Chronologies: p. [351]-356
Includes index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
This is a history of the people, struggles, defeats and victories, ideas and actions that together comprise the history of the first 1000 years of Christianity. It ranges across much of Asia, North Africa and Europe. It both captures the immediacy of decisive moments and explains how by the end of the period Christianity had become the dominant factor in political power and cultural life throughout the region.By establishing itself within the framework of two empires, the Roman and the Persian Sasanian, Christendom inherited from its beginnings their double universalism. The author traces the history of the distinctly Eastern Christendoms, centred first in Byzantium and later spreading to the Balkans and to Russia, and of Western Christendom focused on Rome but with powerfully independent centres in France, Germany, England and Ireland. He recreates the vibrancy of Christian cultures and their claims to be the universal "true" Christianity, and shows how the rise of centralized forms of Christianity were associated with the renewed imperial systems of Byzantium and the Carolingian Empire.
Peter Brown examines the impact of other religious traditions on the development of Christianity. He describes reactions to the explosive rise of Islam, and explains how, especially in North and Eastern Europe, the memories of a pagan past became part of the culture of what was now an officially Christian world. By AD 1000, a distinctive relation between past and present, between profane and sacred, had emerged in Western Christendom, and a civilization that was by then irrevocably different from the Christendoms of the East.
Table of Contents
List of Maps. Preface. Part I: Empire and Aftermath: AD 200-500: 1. 'The Laws of Countries'. 2. Christianity and Empire. 3. Tempora Christiana: Christian Times. 4. Virtutes Sanctorum Strages Gentium: 'Deeds of Saints Slaughter of Nations. '5. On the Frontiers: Noricum, Ireland and Francia. Part II: Divergent Legacies: AD 500-750: 6. Reverentia, Rusticitas: Caesarius of Arles to Gregory of Tours. 7. Bishops, City and Desert: East Rome. 8. Regimen Animarum: Gregory the Great. 9. Medicamenta Paenitentiae: Columbanus. 10. Christianity in Asia. 11. 'The Changing of the Kingdoms': Christians under Islam. 12. Christianities of the North: Ireland and Saxon Britain. 13. Micro-Christendoms. Part III: The End of an Ancient World: AD 750-1000: 14. The Crisis of the Image: The Byzantine Iconoclast Controversy. 15. Closing the Frontier: Frisia and Germany. 16. 'To Rule the Christian People': Charlemagne. 17. In Gear Dagum: 'In Days of Yore' - Northern Christendom and its Past. Selected Bibliography. Chronologies. Notes. Index.
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