Synopses & Reviews
This book examines the way in which Christianity spread throughout the known world in the Middle Ages and also explores the great variety of forms which it took. It spans the centuries from A.D. 312, when Constantine the Great ended the persecution of the Church, to 1500, when European overseas expansion inaugurated a period of Western religious dominance. In the medieval centuries Christianity spread throughout Western Europe and was taken by the Vikings to Iceland and Greenland and even perhaps the north American mainland. From the Holy City of Byzantium, Orthodox Christianity spread northwards into Bulgaria, Serbia and Russia. In North Africa there were large Christian communities living under Muslim rule, while in the Sudan and Ethiopia there were independent Christian kingdoms. The Christians of South India claimed to have been converted by the Apostle Thomas, while Christians from Persia evangelized nomadic tribes in central Asia living along the silk road leading to China.
This book is essential reading for both the general reader and the specialist scholar and is unusual in describing the religious experience of the Christian churches of East and West during the medieval centuries in a single volume.
Synopsis
This new study is a fascinating account of the whole Christian world, East and West, AD 312-1500 and includes popular subjects such as Byzantium, Crusades, church art and architecture.
Beautifully illustrated in color and black and white, it has been written by a respected author with an international reputation in this field.
Synopsis
Details the rise of Catholic Christianity and its spread through Europe, Africa and Asia, beginning with the fourth century.