This volume examines the role of the Christian Church in the formation of western civilization, tracing institutional developments, as well as the religious and intellectual life during the period 400-1600 A.D.
Roland Herbert Bainton, Ph.D. (Yale University; A.B., Whitman College), served forty-two years as Titus Street Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Yale Divinity School. A specialist in Reformation history, he continued writing well into his twenty years of retirement. His most popular book, Here I Stand, sold more than a million copies.
Ordained as a Congregationist minister, he never served as the pastor of a congregation.
Bainton tells the overview competently and in an engaging way. Any book of his I see, I buy. Half of this book is the story, the second half of the book is a selection of primary texts that the reader can use to move between the evidence and the story. Many of these samples from primary literature are in Bainton's own translation.