| Title | : | Christendom: The Triumph of a Religion |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 0241215919 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9780241215913 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | Hardcover |
| Number of Pages | : | 360 |
| Publication | : | First published February 6, 2020 |
In exploring how the Christian religion became such a defining feature of the European landscape, and how a small sect of isolated and intensely committed congregations was transformed into a mass movement centrally directed from Rome, Peter Heather shows how Christendom constantly battled against threats both from inside - so-called 'heresies' and other forms of belief. From the crisis that followed the collapse of the Roman empire, which left the religion teetering on the edge of extinction, to the astonishing revolution of the eleventh century onwards in which, using techniques borrowed from Roman law allied with spectacular legal forgery, the Papacy emerged as the head of a vast international corporation, Heather traces Christendom's chameleon-like capacity for self-reinvention.
Christendom's achievement was not, or not only, to define official Christianity, but - from its scholars and its lawyers, to its provincial officials and missionaries in far-flung corners of the continent - to transform it into an institution that wielded effective religious authority across virtually the disparate peoples of medieval Europe. This is its extraordinary story.
Christendom: The Triumph of a Religion Reviews
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In this book by Peter Heather it covers the beginning of Constantines conversion to Christianity and mainly talks about the practices it’s naysayers and ultimately the staying power its had. I appreciate the readable text in the page turning quality to an error that most would find boring Mr. Heather keeps you wanting to turn the pages. We hear about the last pagan emperor Julian his attempt to change back to the old way worshiping the old gods“ a lot from his papers which I found so interesting. This is a very long book but one I highly recommend if this is a subject do you even have just a passing interest in you need to read Christendom by Peter Heather especially if like me you’re curious about the early days of Christianity and times and ancient Rome somethings that always has me wanting to read about. I wish I had the words to tell you essay style all the reasons I found this book so interesting and something worth having brawl as I’ve already reiterated if this sounds like something you’d like then trust me when I say you’d love this book. I know some have criticized Mr. Heather for his non-academic way and telling the story but I think that is what made the story is so worth reading so kudos to Peter Heather for a five star read. I received this book from NetGalley and The publisher but I am leaving this review voluntarily please forgive any mistakes as I am blind and dictate my review.
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Absolutely stunning. This ambitious book writes the big history of late Roman and early to high Medieval Christianity. It takes a wide historical view, so the trends and themes of conversion, idealistic reform, intellectual change and coercion are always foregrounded and never lost in the detail of events.
Peter Heather has always been a remarkable writer but I think this is his masterwork. I particularly love the easy and dry humour that punctuates his account, and his cynical but compassionate take on the way people behave.
Truly, I wish this book had been available to provide this kind of sweeping, intellectually exciting context when I was studying history.
I recommend this to anyone with an interest in medieval history. -
Peter Heater begins his book with the legitimate question of why it is needed. Aren't there already enough overviews of the origins and rise of Christianity, of how this archetypal Western religion came to conquer the Roman Empire?
Yes and no. After the collapse of high modernism in historical science and its fragmentation into small sub-disciplines and specialist areas, we have an almost insurmountable mountain of new historical data, often analysed in extremely sophisticated and careful ways. But these are never assembled into a new grand narrative of the phenomenon. Partly because there is an understandable suspicion of grand narratives, but perhaps above all because there is too much information.
So far, Heater is absolutely right. And then he comes up with perhaps the most innovative motivation that also serves as a question for his book. Namely this. The classic narrative of the growth of Christianity sees it as a relatively closed and irresistible process. But since we have seen Christianity, if not completely disappear from the European map, then at least devalued over the course of two generations, we can no longer take this for granted. Heter's point is that things could very well have gone very differently, and he wants to open up historiography to these other possibilities, but also to the flood of new research that has changed the landscape over the last 50 or so years.
So this is the book's programme statement. How does it go? Well. Instead of taking the tools that recent historiography has given us, Heater falls back on the comfortable archetype that great men make great history. Which is, of course, bullshit. Gone are the contributions that social, cultural, economic and climate historians have made. Or not really. They are still there. But they are secondary, marginal, reduced to something that is not even a partial explanation.
The reason for this is admittedly good. Heater wants to convey that Christianity did not necessarily grow organically, but that the Roman state apparatus was an ever-present force, and even after fragmentation it was the one that drove Christianisation. From a relatively small and insignificant sect to a world religion. This was done through various forms of incentives created in the loose webs and practices of relations between provincial power and the central state power. Here Heather is at his best, examining how the Roman state was at once an extremely weak state but still managed to drive that kind of cultural degradation. Furthermore, he is brilliant when he describes and depicts how weak the Christian bishops and councils often were in relation to the Roman state. Here he does much to destroy the classical narrative about how Christian dogma developed.
But by focusing so much on state power, he falls into the trap of reducing everything to the emperors, bishops had no power, and although it is useful to show how weak they were in relation to the emperors and although Heater does an admirable job of updating the narrative of church and state, everything that is not the emperors disappears, nothing else has any agency. This is clearly a simplification of the book. But not as great a simplification as Heather makes when she removes all agency from both church and Roman society, not to mention the complex networks that the church itself constituted.
It's a shame, we need an updated overview. But we don't need to go back to a narrative of history based on strong and great men ruling their times. That Peter Brown's now 40-year-old book on the same theme manages to be more up-to-date because it has a broader focus is not a good mark for this volume. But it is still important, because it gives us a deeper and much-needed understanding of the role of the Roman state in antiquity. Especially in the life of the church, but it unfortunately cannot stand on its own. But well worth reading as a complement to something else, such as Peter Brown's The Rise of Western Christendom. Which is still arguably the best book on the subject. Despite the fact that its almost 40 years old. -
UK historian Peter Heather's 2022 book Christendom: The Triumph of a Religion is an informative, bracing and rewarding reappraisal of the rise of Christianity in Europe.
Heather's agenda is clear: he believes that Christianity's development from 300AD until 1300 was primarily a political and cultural evolution, more contingent on events of the time than simply the irresistible rise of a religion blazing truth and conviction.
He notes in his introduction that he is reassessing the rise of Christianity in light of its modern eclipse. More perhaps a setting than an eclipse, given that Christianity is unlikely again to have the dominant cultural power and force it enjoyed at its zenith.
The period covered by Heather is apt, taking us from the time when Christianity was accepted in the Roman Empire, until the beginning of the early modern period when Christianity so dominated Europe that the latter could be termed simply Christendom.
Heather's account begins when Christianity morphs from a minor mystic cult in the Mediterranean into a preferred religion favoured by the Emperor. Opportunistic persecution by the Roman authorities ends, and the marginalised religion is adopted as the state religion by the late 300s. Veneration of the classical deities is actively discouraged.
Why this should have happened is intriguing for a modern reader familiar with more traditional narratives. Heather's account supplants conventional tales of apostolically enthused Christians converting apparently receptive imperial populations. Preaching love thine enemy is not a tactic one would think likely to appeal to Romans benefiting exuberantly from the relatively successful and expansive modus vivendi of conquer and rule.
Heather's contention on conversion is quite the opposite to convention: Christianity did not infiltrate the Roman Empire on its own terms. Rather, it was Romanised for imperial political advantage. Interest in the diverse classical gods and the associated ritualistic animal sacrifices was declining, and the idea of a singular, unifying deity appealed to rulers favouring more centralised control and administration.
Intriguingly, Heather notes that the mother of the Emperor who legitimised Christianity was herself a Christian, and that the sect had become quite popular, almost fashionable, among the wealthy elite of Rome in the late 200s.
The Emperor initially legitimised Christianity in the early 300s. By the end of the century, the Empire had formally adopted Christianity as the state religion.
Thereafter, various state sponsored religious councils developed the doctrine of Christ as fully divine, which melded neatly with the traditional Roman idea that rulers owed their position to the patronage of the gods.
Alternative views that Christ was full or partly human were rejected vigorously as unacceptable heresies, and the creed of belief adopted at the Council of Nicaea in 325 on Christ's divinity became the core statement of Christian dogma (and remains so today, apparently).
The urban wealthy and the landowners in the Empire found it politically convenient to align with the Emperor's preferred religion.
The fragmentation of the Roman Empire into various smaller, competing germanic warrior kingdoms and fiefdoms after the fall of the Empire in 476 enabled the well established network of Christian bishops in the larger cities to exert greater control and influence. Their advantages included superior administrative skills, and expertise in the substantial and prestigious education, philosophy, and literature of the former Greek and Roman eras.
The leaders of the warrior realms and kingdoms that replaced Rome converted to Christianity relatively quickly. The leaders were often attracted by the prestige and success of the new religion. Once the leaders converted, their populations followed, by force or convenience. The relative success of the first mover warrior tribes and realms that adopted Christianity motivated other realms to follow suit.
The pattern of conversion imposed on populations from above by their rulers began with the Romans, and repeats continually as Christianity advances across Europe.
Heather presents his case in three parts (dare I suggest a trinity?). The first part covers the Romanisation of Christianity from 300 until the fall of the Empire in 476.
The period after the collapse of the Empire lasts until 800. It is a period of considerable consolidation by the Church, and marks the beginning of differences between church and state over their relative powers and authority.
This development is distinctively European. It differs substantially from the Islamic states, China, and other counties, where state and religion remain unitary. The advantages of the unique European model are beyond the scope of Heather's book, but worth keeping in mind for future consideration of the later global success of European expansion.
The third period from 800 until 1300 presents the final triumph of Christianity after the reorganisation that followed the fall of the Roman Empire.
The move towards a more independent and powerful Christian establishment gains momentum in this third period. Charlemagne, the King of the then dominant Frankish realms from 764, sponsored a renaissance of learning and a political program of European unity.
The tussle between the state and the Church for influence, authority, and power is a major theme in this period. Charlemagne has the upper hand initially. Charlemagne is crowned by the Pope in 800 as Emperor of a new papally declared Holy Roman Empire. Heather argues that this was an arrangement engineered primarily by Charlemagne for political advantage.
The Church's influence increased substantially over the next two centuries. By the 1070s, the German ruler of the realms successive to Charlemagne had to beg forgiveness from the Pope after being excommunicated for resisting the church's move to assume the authority to appoint bishops in place of the state.
Christian authorities became adept in this period at asserting separate and substantial property and appointment rights for the Church. They did so by manipulating old Roman law, and forging allegedly authoritative arguments by the renowned early Christian educator Isidore of Seville.
The so-called Investiture Controversy was a major dispute in the 11th and 12th centuries, and was eventually resolved by compromise: church appointments were vested in the Pope, but the individual state rulers retained the right to present the symbols of religious office to the appointees (a political compromise that may evoke a sense of plus ça change in the modern reader).
Heather is at his most modern in his characterisation of the final stage of the triumph of Church authority and power in the 13th century. He presents the Church triumphant as having all the traits of a 20th century one-party state.
Papal corralling of the military resources of the European states in the 11th and 12th centuries connotes the substantial tilt of influence in favour of the Chuch. The Crusades to the Middle East, initially to protect Constantinople from Arab attack, and then later to take Jerusalem from its Islamic holders, provide substantial examples of this new authority and power.
Included in Heather's three-stage account of the development of a monolithic Christianity is a wealth of interesting material on the major developments that occurred between 300 and 1300, and the circumstances that favoured the expansion of the Church.
These events include prohibition of the various initial movements to proclaim a more human Christ, the early conversion of Britain, the later conversions of warrior realms in northern and eastern Europe, the adjustments to dogma that enabled these warrior societies to align with Christianity, the challenges presented by Viking incursions, the confrontations related to the rise of Islam in the Middle East, the differences over beliefs and papal authority that led to the schism between the east and west churches in 1074, and the development of the substantial Inquisition powers that were to become highly significant in the period after 1300.
Heather is covering an extensive period where academic consensus on cause and effect is much contested. His history and interpretation of Christianity's rise from 300 until 1300 and its significance is relatively novel. The field, as the scholars say, is marked by a plethora of analyses, interpretations, and political perspectives.
But a modern reader living in the largely secular and humanist West, with an interest in the development of Europe and its culture to near global dominance, will find Heather's account of the first millennium attractive and convincing.
Heather is obviously not participating directly in the debate about the reasons for the West's later rise to global dominance and the role of Christianity therein. However, by writing the history of Christianity's development until its pre-Reformation primacy in largely social and political terms, he is implicitly promoting a materialist rather than spiritual explanation for Christianity's extraordinary development and triumph. That will appeal strongly to a modern reader not overtly religious.
Heather's account is authoritative and convincing. The research and reading that inform the book are reputable and scholarly. The text is easy to understand, and the style relatively free of academic density, which facilitates reader engagement.
Heather's substantially materialist interpretation of the reasons for the advance and triumph of early Christianity is an implicit rebuttal of the many alternate explanations. These hints of substantial difference add a frisson of combat and spectacle to the general reader's enjoyment of what for many will be new material.
The Protestant Reformation of the 16th century is more clearly a rational reaction to the triumph of a monolithic Roman Catholicism as presented by Heather. The emblematic power and force of early Christianity can be discerned in subsequent achievements in Europe, including the Renaissance, Enlightenment, the scientific and industrial revolutions, the rise of individualism, and the development of democratic government. Heather's account of early Christianity's material origins makes those later developments more comprehensible. -
This book is a wealth of information and is a great resource for anyone interested in history. I would recommend this book if you find this topic appealing. I have two main criticisms of this book.
First, the presentation of the information is odd. The author writes in an essay style, using these essays to “prove” their thesis. This would typically be fine yet, in this case, it seems to cause the author to ramble. In some cases the author rambles to the point that reader forgets the initial thesis the author is trying to prove. In essence, I would have appreciated a more streamlined version of the book.
Second, it is grammatically hard to follow at times. There seem to be missing commas, other punctuation, and liking verbs/conjunctions that made reading it slightly confusing. The grammar is confusing enough that I thought maybe my copy was misprinted. It could be because I am American, though I read a decent amount of British books. I am also willing to concede that I am a history enthusiast, not classically educated as a historian, so that could also be the issue.
Overall great content and perspective. I am thankful for the knowledge and believe I will revisit parts of this book in the future. -
Mr. Heather attempts to correct triumphalist versions of the conquest of Europe by Christianity with this review of the history of that event. A millennium is a long time span to cover, but I felt like Mr. Heather did well, mixing the historical overview with details at the personal level.
Mr. Heather tries to show what a near thing it was that Nicene Christianity won out over all the other contenders, both inside and outside of Christianity. It was not a historical inevitability. But is anything inevitable? I believe not. My fear is that non-believers will read too much into this thesis and conclude it was pure luck that Nicene Christianity triumphed. I don't think that is Mr. Heather's point at all. In fact, could it not be considered a miracle that Constantine was both a) raised (apparently) by secretly Christian parents and b) vanquished all foes in his rise to the purple? This book makes me think so.
This is because Mr. Heather argues, contra Stark, that Christianity was only a tiny minority of the Roman population by 300 AD - maybe 1-2%. So Constantine was not just a canny politician, hitching his career to the winning chariot, but instead a GENUINE, true-believer CHRISTIAN, whose triumph started Christianity's rise to dominance. This singular event seems like such a long shot coincidence that IMO, it could be called a miracle.
With the imperial court favoring Christianity, the elite landowners, whose children needed to succeed to the imperial bureaucracy, quickly fell in line, driving the growth of the religion.
The rest of the book covers the other events that were major drivers of Christianity's ultimate victory: the faith's ability to translate to violent barbarians after the fall of the Western empire; Charlemagne's furtherance of the faith; and the events (the Crusades, the development of Canon law) that led to the papacy being able to wield the religious and secular power it had always claimed, at the expense of political powers who had always previously ruled the faithful (starting with Constantine calling the council at Nicea. Well, always ruled since the time of Constantine. Previously, it was a disorganized mess, so to speak).
Mr. Heather believes one reason Christianity was able to conquer the barbarians (other than Clovis' politically-motivated conversion to Nicene Christianity) was that its theology was much more developed than pagan beliefs. After all, it had been subjected to at least two centuries of Greek rational thought. Therefore, it made much more sense logically when it came in contact with the pagan beliefs of European barbarians. That was interesting. My question is, why didn't Greek logic get applied to Greek paganism? My understanding is that the great Greek thinkers discarded the ideas of Zeus and the rest of the pantheon and were essentially secular. In other words, Greek logic seems to have destroyed Greek paganism, while in contrast, Christianity benefited from this contact. Again, to me, it still shows the superiority of Christianity.
The very last chapter gives a fascinating view of what happened when the bishop came to town. Seems there would be an audit of the clergy and the laity, and any laxity was duly punished. Women who were unaccountably living with the priest would be tossed out. Peasants who had similar accusations leveled against them were punished (if they showed up) or excommunicated (if they didn't). I'm unclear if there was a formal trial or if the bishop acted on his own, based on what was told to him by the snitches. It was a powerful method of social control. Mr. Heather compares it to the Communist methodologies of the 20th century. IMO he needs not look back so far - the recent COVID pandemic provides plenty of parallels.
But church is always a powerful method of social control - fortunately today it is voluntary.
So read the book. It was long but fascinating. I believe it adds new ideas to the debate. -
An interesting book, but not one for the faint-hearted. 587 pages, not counting notes, that cover the geographic expanse of the Mediterranean world plus northern Europe over a period of more than a thousand years, all in microscopic detail.
The text bounces around in time. First you’re in the ninth century, then the fifth, then the thirteenth. Like drinking from a fire hose – I was ready for some PowerPoint bullets to orient myself.
I would have also liked a formal definition of “Christendom”. “Christendom” is the subject of the book – how a tiny movement in the first century came to dominate Europe in the High Middle Ages – but I don’t remember any clear list of the defining characteristics of Christendom.
Also, when did Christendom start, and when did it end? Of course, you can’t give sharp dates, but other historians take a stab at this sort of thing. For example, the Golden Islamic Age supposedly was from about 750 to 1258. Did Christendom start with Constantine, or with Charlemagne, or the year 1000, or when? Did it end with Luther, or earlier, or later? If we had a list of its defining characteristics, maybe we could do better at saying when it began and ended.
Professor Heather has some interesting, or I guess some would say provocative ideas that stick out from the enormous mass of historical minutiae in the book.
One of Professor Heather’s conjectures is that Constantine faked his conversion. Professor Heather wonders if Constantine was actually a closet Christian who dishonorably hid his faith during Diocletian’s Great Persecution. Then when it was safe to come out, Constantine finally said he was a Christian.
Another surprise for me, was Professor Heather’s calculation that only one to two percent of the population of the Roman Empire in 320 was Christian. That percentage doesn’t seem to be large enough to cause the Christian domination of the Roman bureaucracy that occurred afterwards, but of course Constantine was part of the one or two percent.
Professor Heather expresses amazement at the ability of Christianity to adapt itself to the surrounding culture, whatever that may be, but still be recognizable. This includes the Greco-Roman culture of the Empire, and the warrior culture of post-Roman Europe. While doing this, Christianity wove itself intimately into the surrounding culture, resulting in a symbiosis.
Professor Heather is quite clear, however, that although Christianity changed the surrounding culture, Christianity was changed in return. In particular, in return for support from emperors and kings, the church had to accept a great deal of control by the emperors and kings, from ecclesiastical appointments to religious doctrine.
Throughout most of its history, Heather says, the papacy had limited importance. The papacy was respected because of St. Peter’s memory, but people generally made up their own minds about religious matters.
The book has several historical threads, but the strongest theme of the book was the role of coercion in the spread of Christianity. Carrots and sticks appear throughout the book. If you wanted to advance in the Roman or Carolingian bureaucracy it would sure help to be Christian. Peasants in Europe might have their rents jacked up if they were not Christian, etc., etc. And just to emphasize his view of the importance of coercion, Professor Heather ends the book with a final summary of the pressures on people to convert to Christianity. Some of these were very mild, but Professor Heather tells you that at the high point of Christendom it often came down to torture and burning at the stake. -
It took me a few weeks to get through this rigorous but fascinating history. It filled a lot of gaps in my knowledge of Europe's middle ages. It shows just how much Christianity changed as it transformed first from a rigorous Jewish sect to the official religion of the late Roman empire, eventually becoming one of the dominant cultural and political institutions of Europe by the high middle ages. Throughout all its dramatic changes, the secret to Christianity's 'triumph' was always its link with the temporal power of warlike Kings and repressive Emperors. It's interesting to read this history too at a time when Christianity has probably less sway in Europe than it has for more than 1000 years. A good choice for those, like me, who have little interest in reading a history of Christianity by a believer. Peter Heather is a very good historian.
"In the end, the fully fledged Christian one-party state of high medieval Europe has to be seen as the culmination, therefore, of a long history of more and less directly forced conversion. Many processes of transformation came together to generate the unified religious mix of ideology and practice that constituted the programmatic piety of the fourth Lateran council, but from the time of Constantine onwards, the Christianization of Europe was closely linked to the exercise of power at every level: imperial, royal, ecclesiastical and, even, in the late medieval parish, of one peasant over another.
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It so happened that I read this book immediately after Judith Herrin’s “Formation of Christendom.” I had long been looking to read about the early days of Christendom and the supposed “Dark Ages.” Herrin’s book is considered a classic, and I picked it up when it was recently re-released by Princeton Classics. Heather’s book, which covers some of the same ground but tacks on an additional 500 years, is brand new (huge thanks to Knopf for an ARC via NetGalley). Heather’s is written with more of a lay audience in mind—it is much more dynamic and, frankly, engaging, while maintaining quite a bit of academic rigor. It is simply more approachable, if only at the cost of leaning too hard toward an easy-going, conversational style, which does occasionally grate (too many things are “crystal clear,” and even more pushes come to shoves). But these are quibbles—it is a terrific, sweeping survey of nearly 1,000 years of Christian history, with a clear explanatory and narrative framework. Herrin’s book, on the other hand, is more measured in tone, much more academic in tenor. And dry. Bone dry. Very nutritious, vitamin-rich, but forbiddingly slow-going at times. On balance, I think Heather’s book is a better introduction to the subject, and I heartily recommend it.
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Peter Heather provides a detailed account of the rise of Christianity from Constantine to the Late Middle Ages.
The Christian, however, will not find themselves fully comfortable with his approach. In the introduction, Heather tells an anecdote about his grandfather in the British army: having declared himself an agnostic he was assigned to clean the latrines while his compatriots attended church parade. He then decided to become an Anglican. This turns out to be Heather’s model of the conversion progress over the centuries - a few true believers but a lot of self interest and bullying by the ruling elites.
The account comes across as plausible, but Heather admits the records are incomplete and he fills the gaps with his assumptions about the conversion model. Heather assumes that the spread of Christianity depended on the existence of church buildings and trained clergy, but these did not exist in the pre-Constantinian era and Heather accepts that the Waldensian heresy survived for centuries without either. Nor is it ever clear why a religion that preached the salvation of the poor had to be imposed on the peasantry by their masters. -
Beginning as a small, fringe religion practiced by an urban minority, Christianity, over the course of a thousand years, grew to become the main religion on the continent of Europe. How and why? Beginning with the conversion of Emperor Constantine in the early fourth century, the author thoroughly details, in an easy, narrative prose, how the religion underwent a series of transformations—three major revolutions—that allowed it to push out rival cults and establish an undeniably dominant status as a state religion on the continent. I learned a lot of interesting information and some of the turning points—events that made Christianity what it is today, some essential to its survival—are absolutely fascinating.
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A look and reevaluation of how Christianity developed and grew into the papel state of the 14th century.
He makes his arguments and then backs them up with evidence that often has been overlooked by earlier historians. -
Another great book by Peter Heather.
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Given that the modern writing of history is supposed to have begun with Leopold von Ranke's study of the papacy, it's fair to say that Church history is a rather well-ploughed field and one which can attract in equal measure devout apologists and iconoclasts. Christendom initially threatens to be the latter, and whilst never coming close to the former, does end up giving a reasonably well-balanced view of the 1000 years following on from Constantine.
Heather's introductory anti-confession of not being a believer and therefore being an outsider raised suspicions of this being a Catherine Nixey-style hatchet job (I have no idea whether Judith Herrin is, or is not, a Christian but she has written an excellent body of work on Byzantium without seeing the need to tell us). Likewise the somewhat straw men of pious historians seeing the inevitable rise of Christianity (those he cites in his notes are 100 years or more older) seems designed to create controversy where little exists.
Thankfully the course of the book doesn't take us in this direction. I don't think I could have managed the 600 pages if it did. I do have some doubts about the level of speculation concerning Constantine's conversion (or not). The suggestion that the Great Persecution of the late third century may have been prompted by Diocletian seeking to discredit Constantine's secretly Christian father, and that Constantine was a cradle Christian who manufactured a later conversion so as not to have been seen as a backslider is interesting but built on few solid facts. Heather's direct assault on Rodney Stark's thesis of consistent Christian conversion at 4% per annum is more to the point - especially as Stark's work is frequently cited in Christian missiology. The obvious fact that 90% of the empire was rural and therefore very difficult to evangelise in this way puts quite hole in that argument.
More broadly Heather argues that the expansion of Christianity was particularly driven by elites who would place their belief wherever their personal interest lay, and that ultimately the conversion of Europe a mixture of genuine faith, violent compulsion and economic self-interest. Nothing particularly new here, I think. What was interesting was his argument that significant stages in this conversion came after particular military victories - by Constantine, Charlemagne and the First Crusade. Military victory is a good argument of the bias of God to your cause and at least quells dissent. Each of the victories strengthened (respectively) the Roman state, the Carolingian Empire and the Papacy, the last ultimately leading to the power of the pope over Henry IV at Canossa and, 150 years later, the fourth Lateran Council which defined much of what we would now consider to be medieval Catholicism.
The history of the Church is rarely pleasant reading, and the history of Church and Empire even less so. Heather finishes his account with a final chapter on the brutality of the Cathar crusade and the persecution of the Jews (although his reminding us of similar 20th century crimes does point to this not being a uniquely religious problem). This is not a comprehensive history of the Church and there are omissions - Benedictine monasteries are frequently mentioned but there is no account of the life of Benedict of Nursia, for instance. Similarly Byzantium features but not quite to the extent that might be expected - this is essentially a Catholic Christendom story.
I particularly enjoyed the chapters on the growth of Christian learning and the parish. I hadn't heard the argument before that the landscape of the eastern Mediterranean (pockets of rich arable land surrounded by scrub) meant that single bishops in well-defined cities could operate in a way that was impossible in the terrain of Western Europe, hence the need for delegating preaching and sacramental ministry to priests. And I appreciated the odd flashes of humour. The idea of Ølygyrr Hrappson sailing off to Iceland with an IKEA-style flatpack church in his boat is one that will stay with me. -
A broad and controversial topic, expertly navigated by Peter Heather. While there may not always be a correct answer in the histories of Christendom (note the use of the word 'histories', as I don't believe there is just one), Heather presents a broad topic with a guided focus that still allows readers to make up their own minds. I would recommend this for enthusiasts of the field, although experts and arm chair historians may still find one or two pieces worth noting.
