Christendom
Read by
Peter Heather
Release:
04/04/2023
Runtime:
23h 48m
Unabridged
Quantity:
Magesterial . . . A bold reinterpretation of faith's nascent days . . . Adequately covering a thousand years of ecclesiastical governance and personal piety demands prodigious scholarship, and Heather answers the call admirably . . . A learned, exhaustive, and spritely account of the religious goings-on wherever Masses were celebrated.
Bob Duffy, Washington Independent Review of Books
'A fascinating story about a religion in a surprisingly precarious position' Dan Jones, Sunday Times
'Superb storytelling ... captivating and profound' Literary Review
'A page-turner' The Spectator
*A major new reinterpretation of Christendom, by one of our foremost medieval historians*
In the fourth century AD, a new faith exploded out of Palestine. Overwhelming the paganism of Rome, and converting the Emperor Constantine in the process, it resoundingly defeated a host of other rivals. Almost a thousand years later, all of Europe was controlled by Christian rulers, and the religion, ingrained within culture and society, exercised a monolithic hold over its population. But, as Peter Heather shows in this compelling new history, there was nothing inevitable about Christendom's rise to Europe-wide dominance.
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 both 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 and beyond in which the Papacy emerged as the head of a vast international corporation, Heather traces Christendom's chameleon-like capacity for self-reinvention and astounding willingness to mobilize well-directed force.
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 nearly all of the disparate peoples of medieval Europe. This is its extraordinary story.
'Sweeping and engaging history ... a non-triumphalist history of the triumph of Christianity, and all the more powerful for it' Financial Times
'Superb storytelling ... captivating and profound' Literary Review
'A page-turner' The Spectator
*A major new reinterpretation of Christendom, by one of our foremost medieval historians*
In the fourth century AD, a new faith exploded out of Palestine. Overwhelming the paganism of Rome, and converting the Emperor Constantine in the process, it resoundingly defeated a host of other rivals. Almost a thousand years later, all of Europe was controlled by Christian rulers, and the religion, ingrained within culture and society, exercised a monolithic hold over its population. But, as Peter Heather shows in this compelling new history, there was nothing inevitable about Christendom's rise to Europe-wide dominance.
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 both 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 and beyond in which the Papacy emerged as the head of a vast international corporation, Heather traces Christendom's chameleon-like capacity for self-reinvention and astounding willingness to mobilize well-directed force.
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 nearly all of the disparate peoples of medieval Europe. This is its extraordinary story.
'Sweeping and engaging history ... a non-triumphalist history of the triumph of Christianity, and all the more powerful for it' Financial Times
Release:
2023-04-04
Runtime:
23h 48m
Format:
audio
Weight:
0.0 lb
Language:
English
ISBN:
9780593664629
Publisher:
Penguin Random House
Praise