Christendom: The Triumph of a Religion, AD 300-1300

by Peter Heather

In the 4th 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 hold over its population. This was medieval Christendom: a springboard for the great eras of European colonisation and imperialism that followed. But, Peter Heather shows in this compelling new history, there was nothing inevitable about Christendom's rise and eventual 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 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.

Genres: History, Religion, Nonfiction, Christianity, Medieval, European History, Audiobook

752 pages, Paperback

First published February 6, 2020

About the author

Peter Heather is currently Professor of Medieval History at King's College London. He has held appointments at University College London and Yale University and was Fellow and Tutor in Medieval History at Worcester College, Oxford until December 2007.

Reviews

[Mir Bal · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[Beauregard Bottomley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book illustrates how an evolving set of mythological fantasy stories got morphed and reimagined such that they became generally accepted throughout a culture. This book describes the mythmaking from 300 CE to 1200 CE.

I was fascinated at the irrelevance and the marginal influence of the Roman Catholic Church during most of the time studied in this book, and the author does note the three different eras it takes before the Roman Catholic Church’s relevance exceeds their exaggerated self-importance of today.

When the lens of superstition and false beliefs in absurdities get recognized for the nonsense that they really are and the veils of ignorance get removed only then will we be able to move forward past the worshipping of myths. 81% of all white evangelical Christians voted for their MAGA leader and the nonsense gets to continue for a few more years. For now, the trickster Gods (Anansi, Loki, Hermes, Jehovah, Coyote, and Jinn) are in control and are as real as the Christian myths meaning both are fantasies which belong in the land of Narnia. The Leopard ate my face party needed the myths to be true, but for them they’ll be the last face eaten.

Western Civilization from 300 CE to 1200 CE becomes humorous when the Truth becomes myth and the legend is realized for what it really is.

[Andrew Deakin · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Janalyn, the blind reviewer · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Douglas Biggs · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maybe a 3.5. Parts of this book were interesting and parts were a drag. Some of the minutiae about ecumenical councils was boring. My biggest issue was that the author described himself as agnostic at best and so anything spiritual is dismissed as secondary to political or social motivations. There were also times where his theology was pretty spotty. Towards the beginning he has a dismissive aside about how Paul didn’t really write the book of Hebrews and that should undermine the validity of the New Testament, except that no one thinks Paul wrote that book, so it seemed like a pointless dig. The last section, about the creation of the medieval Catholic Church was the most interesting. I also struggled with his use of evidence. It felt like he would describe how Christianity spread through Europe and most of the evidence is benign, but then he would say “but let me dive deep into the worst examples.”

[Sam Worby · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Tim O'Neill · Rating 5 out of 5]

A careful, full and objective analysis of how Christianity came to dominate the west, which gives full attention to political, economic and cultural forces while avoiding placing undue emphasis on any of these. Heather also judiciously acknowledges genuine piety, so also avoids a reductionist or instrumentalist picture that makes these currents purely a function of money and power. He also gives due attention to the (to us) uglier side of medieval Christianity while also debunking or moderating some of the inevitable rhetoric and polemic this has generated, particularly amongs Protestant critics and, more recently, anti-theist activists. And Heather has the occasional wry good humour of an academic with years of experience of getting a chuckle out of bored undergraduates.

A very useful and discerning book that serves both as a broad but suitably detailed overview of centuries of change while also pausing to question some of the accepted orthodoxies in the field. It was good to see Heather detail his (to me) convincing arguments that Constantine did not convert suddenly or even gradually during his early political career but had actually been a Christian since his teens or earlier and what we see is him "coming out" as a Christian in a period when this was not politically expedient. This is a solid counter to those who still try to argue that his conversion was some kind of sham or primarily politically motivated.

[Ben Watson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Long book covering the history of Christianity 300-1300.

It was informative and well structured but was dry and I found it really hard to pay attention and to get through at times. The author clearly had an anti-Christian bias. I’ve read enough history books that bring color and life to seemingly mundane events to not be impressed by something this long and dry. There’s a lot of rich material here that could’ve made this fun and enjoyable read but the author didn’t take that route.

Good supplemental book if you’d like to do a deep dive into pre-reformation Christianity but not a casual read and I suspect there are other books out there which cover this material in a much more engaging way.

[Heath · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a fantastic read! Peter Heather clarifies that he is not a Christian, yet he writes with such charity! It was really very interesting to read the history of my faith from the eyes of an outsider. He missed certain things, but offered insight and perspective that an insider might miss.

I do wish he would have interacted with the work of Charles Taylor in assessing how the view of reality of the time period(s) in question is so much different to our own and the implications this has on how the church operated at the time.

[Edward Habib · Rating 4 out of 5]

8.5/10. Peter Heather's six-hundred-page chronicle of Christianity's rise from a niche cult in the Eastern Mediterranean to center of religious, cultural, and political life across the European continent by the year 1300 is an excellent read for those interested in the rise of one of the world's great religions, the making of the West, and the transition from the Roman world of antiwuity to the high middle ages. There is an incredible amount of detail packed into every chapter. So much so that I worry I will forget some of the fantastic and important points Heather includes. Luckily, Heather does an excellent job re-stating the key points and conclusions at the end of each chapter and structuring the book in three main sections.

The first portion of Christendom chronicles the rise of Christianity in the Roman world and charts how the small, loosely organized group of Jesus's followers came to upend life and faith in the Roman state. Constantine's conversion is presented as an inciting incident that triggered a top-down conversion born out of politically-expedient decision-making on the part of the Roman elite classes who angled for status, access, and proximity to the in-vogue beliefs of the imperial court. Once the land-owning elites had converted and agreed upon a governing Nicaean Creed, the mass-adoption of Christianity by the masses was a fascinating blend of iconoclasm that saw the destruction of the polytheistic pagan traditions of the Greco-Roman world and the Near East, blended with a cultural symbiosis, in which pe-Christian gods, traditions, and practices eventually found their way into the Church.

Part two charts Nicaean Christianity's rocky survival through the mid-first century CE, as the Western Roman Empire crumbled, Islam rose as a formidable competitor and threat that swallowed up the ancestral Christian heritage sites and hubs in the Near East, and the religion itself fought find its footing in the newly-decentralized former Western Roman provinces and the the yet-to-be converted wilds of Anglo Saxon northwestern Europe. Once again, Christianity found away to make its teachings and perks appealing to diverse groups. To the Anglo Saxon kings, Christianity was framed as the religion of warriors and the literacy and written records of the Church offered a new form of immortality for proud rulers.

Finally, Part three explains Christianity's reinforcement and solidification in the early centuries of the second millennium CE. The successes of Charlemagne's Frankish Kingdom and the birth of the Ottonian Holy Roman Empire brought imperial, Christian kingship back to Western Europe for the first time in centuries. As the same time, these powerful, well-resourced kingdoms used their influence to fund and lay the groundwork for a new age of Christian philosophy, learning, and orthodoxy. The papacy itself, through royal patronage, the fortuitous successes of the First Crusade, and the increasing deference given to popes as divinely-annointed rulers with power apart from secular kings all aided the creation of a monolithic Christian super-entity that spread across the European continent, largely able to enforce its canon and dictates through the hiring and promotion of clergy, the establishment of parish churches, bishoprics, and monastic houses that spread Christian values to the local laity, and through no shortage of warfare, inquisitions, and financial threats.

In Christendom, Heather really illustrates that understanding why people believe what they believe is never simple, especially on a societal scale. Religion appeals to a fundamental metaphysical human curiosity, but it is also a compromise; a negotiation between orthodoxy and reforms, the old and the new, the spiritual and the pragmatic.

The biggest downside here is that if the minutiae of theological doctrinal debates and the names and summaries of dozens of individual Roman and medieval notables mean little to you, you may get a bit lost in the walls of text and lengthy chapters. There were some chapters where Heather's focus did not seem to align with the parts of this historical phenomenon that I was interested in spending time on. There is also very little hand-holding here. If you don't already come to this text with a decent understanding of Roman and medieval Europe, and key Biblical events and Christian beliefs then you may struggle. I would definitely suggest picking up a couple more accessible history books about this period before reading Heather's chronicle of Christianity's one-thousand-year journey toward triumph.

[Carter Kalchik · Rating 4 out of 5]

A phenomenal example (or set of many examples over a 1,000 year stretch) of the contingency of history. It was never a foregone conclusion that Christianity would become the default religion across Europe or that the bishop of Rome would become the dominant actor in it.

Heather takes us on a whirlwind tour of places and times to show how a combination of social forces as well as individual choices combined, again and again, to lead to what seemed like the “inexorable” rise of Christianity and “Christendom” as a concept. This may read like “great man” history, but Heather is clear that his goal is not to resurrect that mode of history but instead to push back against a “social forces are *everything* and individual actors play no role” narrative.

The prose is dry, but not overly academic, and Heather very occasionally allows some personality to pop through. Probably not the best primer on Christianity, Christian history, or European history, but if you have a bit of background on any/all, this is a great synthesis and exploration of all three.

[Gijs Limonard · Rating 4 out of 5]

3,5 stars; well intentioned overview, and focused (as far as one can focus a 1000 years worth of history) on the millennium from the 4th to the 14th century BCE, roughly between the fall of the Roman Empire and the European Renaissance in full swing; liked it, but not as much as A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years which delves in more deeply into the heart of the phenomenon; for a more concise discussion be also sure to check out The Story of Christianity: An Illustrated History of 2000 Years of the Christian Faith.

[Patrick Tullis · Rating 3 out of 5]

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.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

It took me a month to work through this scholarly tome, but it was well worth it. Peter Heather is in command of his material as he takes the reader on the story of the evolution of western Christianity in the 1000 years after Constantine. He seeks to explain how a small Jewish sect of true believers in the eastern Mediterranean came by the year 1300 to dominate a landmass running from Iceland to the Balkans and from Iberia to Scandinavia.

My in-depth knowledge of Roman history did not extend much past the reign of Augustus, but Heather’s book introduced me to the post-Constantinian Roman emperors, the Vandals, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, and the Franks, among others in the post-Roman period in the West. This is more than a book about religion.

Those looking for a fast-paced read will be disappointed: Heather’s style can be repetitive, he overuses certain terms such as “elites”, and his sentence structures tend to be quite complex at times.

Notwithstanding, I give this book 5 stars for the marvelous insights the author gives into late Roman and early medieval history, as well as the tortuous evolution of western Christianity and its transformation from a loose collection of revolutionaries to a powerful guardian of the status quo.

[Rick Burcik · Rating 4 out of 5]

This history of Christianity is far too long (600 pages) for many readers, but it is still a very good read. Mr. Heather is a very accomplished scholar, but his book (if the targeted readership is the general public) should have been only half as long. In my opinion, the only readers who will be willing to invest the time in reading "Christendom" are historians of religion. Perhaps, two shorter volumes would do the trick.

[O Reads · Rating 4 out of 5]

I heard about this book from an episode of a podcast (Byzantium and Friends) the author did with another scholar, and it happened to come on sale so I finally picked it up.

It was an excellent semi-introduction to the spread of Christianity and the rise of the Roman Catholic church, I was already familiar with many of the events and groups discussed but the book was able make a cohesive 'narrative' in a way that made the steady growth of the church and Catholic Europe during the early and high middle ages make perfect sense. At times it delightfully neared Historical Materialism in the breadth of analysis.

One of the only thins I didn't really like, was the occasional comparisons between an event and a pop-historical understanding of former socialist states. I still don't really understand what he was trying to say with any of that because the comparisons don't make sense even if you don't know the background to some of the events.

Overall though I greatly enjoyed this book and how it approached common narratives of how Christianity grew in it's earliest days to something we would more commonly recognize now, and would highly recommend this book to anyone with any interest in the topic. (It also has a massive bibliography and well annotated notes that will make for some very interesting future reading.)

[Daniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pegasio debió ser un tipo singular. Sólo tenemos una noticia suya, un cameo, en una carta del emperador pagano Juliano que entre 361 y 363 intentó revertir, sin éxito, la cristianización del Imperio romano. Según parece, Pegasio, obispo de Ilios (la antigua Troya) pidió en esos años un puesto en la nueva orden sacerdotal pagana. El emperador garantizaba en su carta que el aspirante era apropiado pues resultaba que lo había conocido en persona hacía unos años durante un viaje. Le sorprendió entonces que aquel obispo cristiano no solo no había destruido los templos a Héctor, Atenea o Aquiles, como le habían contado, sino que observaba con veneración las llamas votivas que aún ardían en ellos.

El tal Pegasio es uno de los personajes favoritos del historiador británico Peter Heather (1960) por cómo ilustra la lenta, tortuosa -y en muchas ocasiones al borde del desastre- expansión del cristianismo entre los siglos IV y XII, desde la icónica conversión de Constantino a las Cruzadas. Un proceso marcado, sobre todo al principio, no por una firme convicción religiosa sino por el oportunismo de unas élites terratenientes a las que les convenía compartir la fe de los emperadores, pero que no estaban dispuestas a abandonar del todo sus previas convicciones paganas.

Heather, autor de libros fundamentales sobre la caída del Imperio romano de Occidente y el empuje de los bárbaros que cambiaron radicalmente la historiografía al respecto, se ocupa ahora también de brindar una imagen completamente inédita y radical del éxito de la fe de los seguidores de Jesús de Nazaret en 'Cristiandad. El triunfo de una religión' (Crítica).

Seguir leyendo la reseña entrevista aquí:

https://www.elmundo.es/papel/historia...

[Dan Walker · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Chris Jaffe · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is what Peter Heather does best: write a 500-ish page history of the first millennium AD/CE (he might be the last academic author left using AD in his title. Huh). It covers the rise of Christianity from when it first became established until the creation of the fully formed Medieval church as we know it.

Some points and ideas he mentioned - from my notes. He argues that Constantine was probably always a Christian, as were his parents. He just became increasingly obvious about it as he made more military success. The Great Persecution didn't seem to have much popular support and may be have been more about politics. Heather argues that 1-2% of people were Christain in 305ish. There's no evidence of the slow/steady rise theory. Evidence of communities indicates small communities, based on the number of bishops and all that. It appears to be only in towns and most were rural. Only a third of towns even had bishops. It was strongest in Africa, Turkey, Egypt, and Syria. Nicea was the first attempt to put a positive theology out there, not just negating deviant ideas. The mdoern Nicene Creed is from 381, not 325. Nicea created a common creed, and adopted the Alexandria version of calculating Easter, and called for a more top-down selection of bishops. Jew-Christian relations were fluid for centuries. The religious tone softened, accepting private welath and all that. Ascetics first rse up and they were put in monastaries.

There was no real attempt to convert rural areas for a long time, except in a few limited areas. The government had taken over temples in Egypt (to get money to fight Persia) in the 3rd century, helping cause a collapse of traditional religion there. THere was mingling of reliigion. Elite written language was divorced from spken, which was becoming more like vernacular. Origen tried to make classical grammarians work with Christianity. Heather compares conversion to 1st century Romanization of conquered areas.

Laws clamping down on paganism: ban sacrfices for fortune telling, ban all sacrifes, ban incense in private devotions, pagans can't serve in the bureacracy. This is the late 300s. Ambrose pushed back on the emporers on the Altar of Victory. He could do this because it was a weak emperor. St. Augustine wrote the City of God, but the emperor was still #1 in the religion. Most of your religious scholars were in the Greek east. Heather aruges that Julian's paganization could've succeeded, had he lived. The religion was stil too tied to the state. By the 380s, there were enough Christian officeholders to begin this new phase of Christenization.

There were alternate non-Nicean versions of Christianity, and Heather aruges they could've survived. Vandals tried to rule North Africa as Romans. The monk who converted the Visigoths wasn't into Nicea. Goths were let into the empire when the empire wasn't officially Nicean, and the Goths din't go along when the empire did, as it was part of a power game between them. Vandals stuck to their version of Christianity. It helped their interna unity. When they have military success - they must be correct. They even persecuted Niceans. Clovis's support for Nicea would be a game changer.

Justinian put the non-Niceans into permanent decline. There's the rise of Islam. Iconoclastic clergy go with the flow. Byzantines see themselves as a Chosen People. Egypt wasn't mostly Muslim for 200 years. By the 600s, documents were in Arabic. This helped make the west the hear of Christianity. Conversion to Islam mirrors Christian conversion.

The church lingers in England. Conversions occurred there, with St. Patrick and the Irish revival. They need to appeal to a violent culture up there. PTSD help for some. Use Old Testament military stories. Divine rule sanctioned imperial authority. Repurpose old temples. Portray Christ as a warrior king. By 700, the elite were largely in line with it. English clergy had more hierarchy than in Ireland. Among the masses, maybe a superficial conversion.

Christianity was more or less localized communities. Gregory the Greg's most militant letters were to local bishops. Popes make big edicts once every 3 years. By the end of the book, it'll be 30 per year. The 500s had the first notable attempt to convert the countryside. It's not just bhshops giving sermons, but there also wasn't enough priests. X-mas was to rival pagan stuff. Endemic mixture of Chrisitan with traditional beliefs occurred.

Dark Ages weren't that dark. A new script was developed in the 8th century, so all older stuff was gotten rid of. LIteracy was often a matter of degree. People who could read usually could only do so aloud. Women education was sometimes more than male education as classical education was in clear decline. The literate often couldn't write. Vulgate wasn't the only Bible. Variations in Creed emerged. It's not too fragmetned bu tno unity of theology as during the old emprie. There's still a link to royal power and religoin. But as the state has changed, so has the religion.

Charlemagne was the big deal of the religion. God crowned him, he believed, not the Pope. 770s: Christianity was only in old Roman areas but by 1000 it was most of Europe. Charlemagne forced the Saxons to convert. There was also voluntary conversion as the religion could aid in state formation. The collapse of the dynasty reversed some conversion, but there was also missionary zeal.

Charlemagne had assembled the top thinkers. Goal: tackle issues of contemperorary Christianity, called the correctio. There is a need to restandardize Latin. The Vulgate's grammar was fixed by Alcuin. There are more cathedrals and more schools. Determine proper prayer methods. Do it at the behest not of the Pope, but of the emperor. Build new churches & make sure clergy carry out reforms (the correctio). Even after the dynasty collapses, church building continues for 2 more centureis. It's not clear how much local preists aware of these reforms, though. Probbaly a graudal adoption but by the 11th century, a widely internatlized acceptance of it by the masses.

The conversion of more European lands helps the Pope's status. The Psudeo-Isadore decree makes an appearance. it's to undercut Charelmagne's reforms, originally. The Pope curtails the power of Ravenna's archbishop - but only because the emperor is OK with it. 872-1012, a third of all Popes die suspiciosly. Clergy reforms focus on simony (buying offices) and priest marraige. No clear king is #1 so rally to the Pope as the head of reform. Kings don't mind because the original reforms were aimed at clergy, not lay powers. Leo XI pushes on these issues hard and asserts his own power, too. Then came Canossa.

The First Crusade helped the Pope's authority hugely. Later Crusades were thus better finances. You also had Batic Crusades. Christendom expanded. There are Iberian Crusades. The East-West Schism happens. Canon law was up beginning with Canossa & the redisovery of the Justinian Code. The emergence of recongized canon law under the Pope occurred. Priests are now officially told to be celibate; not just monks.

The Fourth Lateran Council was a culmination. The sacraments were established. Marriage must be in a church. At least one confession per yar. It led to, eventually, a more intense local piety. Thousands of new churches were built. More monasteries. The Truce of God was created. Education as up with more universities. The first systemized theology was noted. The doctrine of purgatory was annunciated. Churches have more fonts for baptism when born - it's not just something the faraway bishop does . The Vatican moves away from the clergy-fixated reforms of the 11th century, but the clergy are now THEIR guys, so they're cool. Patriarchal authority is increased. New ordres of monks are established, helpig reflect more popular fervor. Francisians and Dominicans are part of this. They are to be obedient to the 4th Lateran Council's iddeas.

The first document excommunication is around 900 AD. By 1208, you get an anti-heresy Crusade. It helps lead to the Inquisition. It was first aimed at simony, but like all else becomes more outwardly directed rather than inwardly directed. It was designed to ENFORCE compliance with the 4th Lateran Council. The Inquisition largely created the image of the Cathars. Not clear what they were really. Oh, and the 4th Lateran Counsil also entrenches Jew-hating. Heather even compares the Inquisition to East Germany's stasi.

A lot of this I got from previous Heather books, but much was new - and very informative.

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

Peter Heather’s Christendom is a very good survey of the the millennium of Catholic domination of the cultural landscape of Europe from the time of Constantine’s conversion in 325 CE up until the late Middle Ages. His central argument is that coercive power led to the outsized influence of the Latin Catholic Church across most of Europe. Political, economic, religious, and social power all played a role in influencing people to convert and come into line with the particular brand of Christianity defined first by the imperial rule of the late Roman Empire and then by the papacy. His argument is generally convincing and gives a unique view of just how a small off shoot cult of Judaism could become one of the world’s major religions and then to fuel much of the colonialism of the last millennium.

Generally, I think this gives a good balance of theory supported by illustrative stories. However, the narrative is mostly organized around big ideas and not around strict chronology. This would be fine and works in big surveys like this. However, being a lay reader of medieval history, I could have used a bit more stage setting for each of the major periods. At the very least a timeline with major events would have been really useful.

My other critique is that the narrative just sort of Peter’s out at the end. I feel like there should have been a more cohesive summarizing chapter. Instead, the last chapter covers a bit of the coercive history of the church from Council of Lanteran IV in 1225 until the mid 1300’s with large efforts like inquisitors to smaller scale systems like parish visitation by bishops. Then he just concludes this grand narrative with a summary that feels like it could wrap things up more succinctly and separately from these specific examples.

All that said, this is an important contribution to my own understanding of how we ended up living in the world we live in today with so many vestiges of the Catholic Church so much part of the western world’s cultural heritage.

[Vansa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fascinating book about how a small Middle Eastern cult grew to become the one with the most adherents in the world.Heather's proposition is that it was a series of coincidences, and not necessarily an inevitable rise as it seems now.I've never really thought about it this way. Heather starts the book 3 centuries after Jesus Christ was born-in 312 CE, the year of Constantine's momentous conversion.Heather doesn't believe in this dramatic miracle though, his explanation is a lot more mundane.There were Christian slaves all over the Roman EMpire, and he speculates that Helena, Constantine's influential mother, was converted to Christianity, and probably brought up her son in the religion too, but kept is very secret.Constantine possibly waited till he had military superiority, to announce his religion, and by linking it to victory in war, was also giving it power over pagan beliefs.The Roman Empire was far flung and elite landowners were given funds, and patronage, by their goodwill with the Emperor, and a simple way of currying favour was to adopt his favourite imaginary friend, and endow temples to him ( what we would call churches).This would incidentally be a method adopted by the Ottoman EMpire as well, apart from other countries.Existing religions ending up dying out, just from being starved of funds-Egyptian temples for instance, had expensive rituals and required upkeep, which they just didn't get and the religion ultimately died out, without royal patronage.Later Christian scholars wrote of iconoclasm by Christian bishops to demonstrate the power of the religion, but Heather uses extensive contemporaneous records to show that it wasn't widespread, and as common as it was made out to be ( strange that scholars would write of destruction of ancient temples as positive propaganda, but one look at social media handles of certain political parties will show one that even in 2025, iconoclasm of religious sites belonging to faiths deemed 'heretic'' are still greeted with joy). This was a form of Christianity we wouldn't recognise, going to church wasn't normal at all, since the religion was mostly followed by the elite who would worship privately.It was a State religion and not one of the masses, and Augustine of Hippo (writing nearly a century after Constantine's miraculous conversion), wrote of the importance of religious power being derived from the Church, rather than the State because then the religion would not be dependant on State patronage, or changes in State policy.The book also explains how the religion evolved to the form it is now, with one of the earliest attempts at homogenisation being Constantine calling for the COuncil of Nicaea, to use the traditional methods of a classical education to give this creed a structure-to translate, compare multiple versions of a text and then arrive at a consensus through elimination. This was to then be translated back to put together a religious text that would also knit together the Old and New Testaments.
I found it interesting that Heather writes of the region that we would now call MENA originally being the heart of Christianity (obviously, given that was where it started), with Rome being a small outpost for the faithful, which would change only over the years, not even with Constantine's victories. The religion also started spreading through Roman Christian slaves, to Goths as well. The shift of the center of the religion started happening after the Arab conquests, and there's an interesting potted summary of their rise-firstly as saboteurs by both the Roman Empire and the Persians during their decades of constant war, till they amassed enough warfare training in the way their potential enemies would wage war, and weapons, and rose to defeat both those decaying empires.The conversion to Islam happened over a couple of centuries,putting paid to conversion by sword theories,with the existing administrative structures being kept in place,so there were Christians who rose up the ranks in an Islamic Empire.After the Umayyads were defeated by the Abbasids,the ROman style of governing was adopted,with non-Christians having 2nd class status.The scholarship for this looks at family genealogies to see when the names started changing from local names,to Islamic ones,to indicate conversion.Much like the spread of Christianity through the ROman EMpire,the spread of Islam was aided by conversions for economic reasons.The rump Umayyads fled to Cordoba,a client state of the Abbasids,and the language of administration in those territories changed from Greek to Arabic,with more Christians learning the latter,and the translations of Greek texts to Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age,thereby preserving all that knowledge,which would many centuries later catalyse the Renaissance.
Across the Channel,the Roman elite started leaving Britain to fight the Persians,leaving behind a Christian British elite,who recruited mercenaries from nearby Roman vassal states, the Angles and the Saxons,who would know their way of fighting,to keep down rebellions of the local populace.They carried out a coup,that started a period of Anglo-Saxon dominance.Christianity spread through the influence of missionaries,with some rulers converting and the others slowly following,similar to Rome.Why would they want to convert,though?Heather explains the attractions of a religion that promised Heaven to a society nearly permanently at war,but also there attractions to joining a monastery and not being force to fight.The books and the structure of Christianity made a difference,as opposed to an oral traditional religion.The written framework of Christianity,honed by the Greco-Roman tradition of dialectic helped preachers in their proselytisation against local religions of which very little is known in the absence of written records.Christianity also adapted to messages that would resonate with the concerns of the local populace,with the promise of a glorious afterlife for a warrior society,fighting in the name of that religion.Land donated to monasteries was not taxed,so many land-owners donated land to set up monasteries where they would install pliant abbots,and continue to earn from it(which explains plot points in Cadfael).
The next section of the book deals with the progression through the Dark Ages and explains why they were called that-as the ROman Empire disintegrated into several smaller monarchies(practically fiefdoms),there was no longer a need for a centralised bureaucracy and extensive record keeping,which necessitated an educational framework.Smaller splintered entities prospered by providing a fighting force,not educated bureaucrats and the rates of literacy started reducing,as did people looking for education.Conversely,women's literacy increased because they were managing the homestead,accounts,produce and the marketing of it while the menfolk were off in a constant series of battles and skirmishes.Since women were educating children at home,Romance languages got a fillip because those were the languages women knew,not Greek and Latin,and they were the ones educating children.Theological schools till then had been set up with an emphasis on other disciplines along with Bible studies because other disciplines could inform the study of religion by training on arguments on other religions,how to give good sermons and so on,since this was anew religion-very reminiscent of Emperor Ashoka calling the major Buddhist Sangha in Pataliputra to hammer out the structure of that new religion at that time.
Missionaries were advised that to spread the religion among people,it didn't make sense to destroy pagan temples,and to co-opt local festivals and associate them with Christian martyrs,which explains all the moveable feasts,like Easter,since those would have been linked to cycles of climate or weather changes,and not specific dates.Also explains all the variations in Saints Days across Christian countries!To change it into a religion of the people and not just the elites,it was now associated with their concerns-crop failures,children's health and localised with some priests prescribing amulets.The rituals of the religion grew quite slowly-church services every Sunday started only in the 6th Century CE,for instance,because people would otherwise only listen to bishops preach when they happened to visit.Also to make it easier to belong to the religion,it was stripped of ritual and required very little to guarantee membership.Monasteries also required a large labour force and peasants were given perks to convert-apart from coercion in some cases,obviously.
THe adoption of the religion rose and fell in waves across Europe,Scandinavia,for instance,where there was a constant back and forth depending on what the victorious chieftains believed(there's a great Hans Christian Andersen story about this).The next major push for the religion happened when the stewards of the Merovingian kings,the rulers of Clovis,rose up and deposed them,founding the Carolingian Dynasty,soon to be vastly expanded by the great grandson of these rebels-Charlemagne.Like Constantine before him(and Napoleon after),once he had significant military victories,he was crowned by the Pope,in a proto-PR move to confer divine status and consequently,legitimacy.The Church till then was still controlled by rulers,and the last section of the book shows how that was reversed by another empire disintegrating-the Carolingian,with smaller fiefdoms then turning to the Church for military support and protection against invasion by their larger neighbours,till the religion resembles a form we're more familiar with.Masterfully shows you, however,that it really wasn't always this way,and could very easily have gone another way.
The book's very well-written,with humour and lucidity,and because he's covering vast scopes of history and societal change, I appreciate the way chapters are structured,with him stating his case,and what he wants to illuminate in that particular chapter,and again at the end of the chapter,giving you a neat summary.You're able to get all the little details and nuances that go into the greater whole of showing you how Christianity used the existing foundations of empire, and showed the flexibility to adapt-there never has been a single way to be a Christian, despite what some of its most hard core adherents might preach now.

[Kumail Akbar · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was the third of Peter Heather’s books that I picked up this year, primarily because I could and because I had already enjoyed two of his other works. But also because it has been some time since I read a book on the history of Christianity, the last one being a mammoth ‘Christianity the first 3000 years’ by Diarmaid MacCulloch and a more fun and interesting ‘Dominion’ by Tom Holland.

Compared to those two works, this one did not seem to offer anything particularly new or interesting. Heather’s work’s key takeaways were that christianity’s triumph was complex, with conversions taking place in different ways in different regions; with politics of a region and its relationship with the new religion being intertwined, and that the faith emerged with several ‘flavors’ so to speak, as it adapted local customs and cultures and myths, leading to the creation of Roman, German, and later Irish and other variants. The narrative is well written, and the book is not excessively long, despite covering the story of a religion which took several centuries to triumph.

Rating 4 of 5, I hold Peter Heather to higher standards and expected a little bit more than what I got here.

[TJ West · Rating 5 out of 5]

This review first appeared on my Substack newsletter, Omnivorous.

Peter Heather’s Christendom: The Triumph of a Religion: 300-1300, is one of those books that’s been sitting on my TBR list for a long time. As I’ve slowly eased myself back into the faith in which I was raised, I’ve also been reading a lot about the history of Christianity and how it has changed and grown over the centuries. Peter Heather has written a truly magisterial volume that sheds some much-needed light on the various forces that allowed the faith to become ever more dominant in Europe until, by 1300, it could truly be said to be one of the dominant forces on the continent.

Heather argues that the key to Christianity’s survival over its first millennium of true dominance was its adaptability. From the moment that Constantine took the faith under his wing and began to take a more active role in its doctrinal controversies, it managed to change to take advantage of the various apparatuses of the Roman state. In that sense, Heather reverses the typical understanding, which tends to see the Roman Empire becoming Christian when, in fact, it might be more accurate to say that Christianity became Roman. This allowed it to become more theologically, institutionally, and doctrinally coherent which, in turn, made it much easier to convert others to the faith.

The downfall of Rome in the 5th century and the subsequent disintegration of the entire imperial edifice–including the intellectual and educational architecture that had enabled its early practitioners and thinkers to fashion a religion that had its own coherence and identity. The decline of such learning meant that Christianity had to once again begin to change and transform in order to maintain its relevance and its dominance in the former imperial territories. Very often this entailed incorporating elements of local polities and cultures that seemed, and often were, contradictory to some of the faith’s most central tenets. Christian leaders found a particular challenge in the British Isles, for example, where conditions there made it necessary for theological consistency to take a back seat to political expediency, such that religion would more easily align, and thus persuade, Anglo-Saxon magnates.

The faith received a nice boost when Charlemagne came to the throne and forged the Holy Roman Empire. Yet, for all that he claimed to be working in the Church’s best interests, the truth always remained that what was good for Charlemagne was always at the front of his mind and those of his clerics. Much like Charlemagne, his devoutness went hand in hand with his desire for power and his intention to build an empire, and a religion, in his own image. This new coherence was extremely vital to helping give Christianity the breathing space that it needed in order to once again gain the intellectual coherence it needed, and it certainly helped that it was backed up by the muscle and the military might that Charlemagne and his heirs could command. Not for nothing does Heather refer to this as the second age of Christian empire.

It was only after the fall of the Carolingians that the medieval papacy really began to flex its muscles. It might be exaggerating to say that medieval popes made up their power and authority out of whole cloth, but as Heather astutely reminds us, many of the notable advances in the years following 1000 AD were based in large part on various forgeries or legal fictions. Slowly but surely, medieval popes managed to gather quite a lot of authority to themselves, and the launching of the First Crusade became, as Heather astutely argues, a form of foreign policy, even as it also gave popes yet more power to command others. Combined with the birth of the university, the Crusades were crucial to the solidification of Christendom after the turn of the first millennium.

By the time that the book comes to a close, we’ve come close to the end of the Middle Ages, and the Catholic Church resembles the one that we still know today. Christendom is immensely valuable in that it shows the extent to which doctrine and even church organization–in other words, the things that we often assume remain largely the same throughout time–were in fact quite contingent on a specific set of historical circumstances. Had things turned out somewhat differently, or if different groups of people had come to power at different times, the Catholic Church, and thus European history, might have been very different.

Christendom does make for heavy reading at times. Peter Heather has created a book that is truly sprawling in its depth and breadth of coverage. He not only gives us insight into the wealthy and the powerful–though, as he points out, they did have an outsize role in ensuring that Christianity became the dominant religion of the Roman Empire in its various forms–but also those on the ground. He shuttles relatively easily between the macro and the micro, allowing us to see how various changes took place both from above and from below. To be sure, at times it can be a bit easy to get lost in the weeds, but for the most part Heather brings us back to his conclusions at the end of each chapter, which helps the entire book to feel quite grounded and cohesive.

Don't let that discourage you. I think this volume will be of interest to anyone who wants to gain a richer, deeper, fuller understanding of what it was about Christianity that made it such a useful tool for political and religious leaders in the Middle Ages. Moreover, the book is a useful and powerful reminder that the ascent and dominance of Christianity was never a sure thing. It always relied on some measure of contingency, whether that was the decision of Constantine to extend protection or the rise of Charlemagne. And, as more and more of the Byzantine Empire fell under the sway of various Islamic powers, Christianity gave Europe a means of solidifying its own identity.

Christendom is a remarkable work of history that is a rewarding read. Highly recommended for both students of history and those yearning to understand the history of the Christian faith.

[Santiago Aparicio · Rating 3 out of 5]

No está mal para conocer cómo se construyó eso que llaman cristiandad.
Para mi gusto le sobran páginas y le falta avanzar, al menos, hasta 1400.

[Carl · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[Zack Whitley · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm giving this book five stars as it is an extraordinary achievement. For the most part, it is readable. There are long sentences in this book that will make your head spin with academic words and phrases embedded in embedded clauses. It's a lot!

But it's worth the effort. Heather makes some very interesting points and always supports his work with examples and by explaining why he thinks the way he does. There is a lot of nuance in this book. I learned a lot and was glad I stuck this one out!

Some points that were interesting to me:
-Constantine was probably raised Christian or somewhat Christian, but it was the religion of a tiny minority. Perhaps 1% of Romans were Christian, mostly in the eastern part of the Empire. And mostly among the elite of the Empire.
-After the Empire adopted Christianity as the state religion, the religion grew much more quickly.
-The Nicene Christianity almost lost out to Arian Christianity at least in the west, as the various Germanic tribes were mostly Arian (except, crucially, the Franks).
-Islam rises and cuts off most of the Christian heartlands in Asia and North Africa from Europe, making the religion a truly European one for a time.
-In the west, Christianity lumbers along as a very diverse religion (tailored to the warrior kings - it is unclear how much pagan religion survived and for how long in many places) until Charlemagne and the Carolingians begin the process of building scriptoriums and bringing some unity to the religion. Pope is still very weak if prestigious.
-Northern (mostly French and German) clergy begin the process of building the Pope's strength as the Pope is a neutral party in their disputes and as a means of bringing order to the religion.
-As the Pope becomes a much more powerful figure by the 11th and 12th century, a wave of church building brings the religion to the masses. Christianity is now a deep and sincerely held belief as evidenced by the crusades to the middle east and the Baltic lands.
-As the book ends, Christianity is a thriving religion in Europe. The Pope by now has extraordinary power and exercises it to enforce orthodoxy across western Christendom, including the inquisitions which spread fear and terror in the 13th and 14th century. (Heather compares this, aptly, to the Stasi in East Germany and the other apparatus used by totalitarian rulers in 20th century regimes.)

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't really know what to make of this book.

On the one hand, his willingness to challenge the scholarly consensus is good, for example, he rejects the standard narrative that Constantine the Great was not a real Christian but only pretended to be one because he found Christianity to be a useful tool for manipulating people. He points out that this makes no sense because, at the time of the battle of Milvan Bridge, Christians made up no more than 5% of the population, and very few powerful or influential people were Christian. Moreover, he argues strongly that Constantine was a Christian long before he became emperor, and might have even been raised Christian.

On the other hand, his analysis is often incredibly cynical, he tends to attribute everything to the desire of the Pope or other Christian leaders to gain power, money, or property. He denies Constantine was motivated by a desire for power, but apparently, he was the only Christian leader who WASN't motivated by this desire.

In addition, his understanding of theology, and the development of theology is very poor. He has a strong tendency to think that the moment that a specific term is used to describe a belief is the moment that the idea was "invented". For example, he says that because Lateran IV was the first time that the "7 Sacraments" were clearly defined, this was the moment when the ideas of. a sacrament was "invented", and none of the Sacraments even existed before this time. Extreme Unction, Confession, and Holy Orders, were all invented out of whole cloth in 1215. And whenever he claims a particular doctrine was "invented" he always says that the reason it was invented was to "control people". I understand that the History of Dogma is a specialized field that requires years of study and that he is far from an expert on the subject so errors are understandable, but what is not understandable is the cynical attribution of everything to the Pope "inventing doctrine " to gain power.

There are times when he comes as angry with an anti-Christian ax to grind, whenever something is ambiguous, he tends to ascribe a malicious motive to the people involved, a little charity would be nice

[Josh Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Christendom is a well written and insightful account of Christianity's growth from a minor cult into the dominant religion of Western world.

As Heather points out in the introduction, historically, most church histories have been written by Christians. For those authors, the spread of Christianity has seemed inevitable. It spread because it was true and God wanted it to spread.

Christendom, by contrast, is told from a non-Christian (though not anti-Christian) perspective. As a result, Heather spends a great deal of time discussing the role of contingency, chance, and self-interest in the conversion of the West.

Self-interest in particular played a larger role in conversion than many Christians today are probably aware. The religion initially spread almost exclusively among the urban elite (who were a tiny percentage of the population), who often embraced it for strategic reasons without necessarily knowing much about the actual substance of what they were signing up for.

One reason that becoming Christian benefited rulers is that (until the Investiture Controversy of the late 11th-12th century) rulers appointed bishops in their land, giving them de facto control over the church and marginalizing it's role as a potential competing power base.

One difficulty facing any writer on the medieval period is that a great deal has been lost. The church had a penchant for burning the writings (and sometimes the adherents) of other religions. So, there are many figures and beliefs that we only learn about from their, often scathing, Christian critics. Heather does his best to work around these constraints - analyzing and sometimes disputing the claims of primary sources. He also acknowledges there are major gaps in the record that simply can't be filled in without additional evidence.

Despite it's enormous scope, the book coheres surprisingly well as a narrative. It's not just 1000 years of one damn thing after another, but a story with some surprising twists and turns. Nonetheless, it may be too detailed for many readers. Heather dedicates a great deal of time to analyzing long forgotten historical controversies and disputes, which are important to the story but could probably be abridged.

[Trey S · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was a truly interesting read about Christianity and it wasn’t really whah I was expecting at all.

I went into this thinking it would be a straight history of Christianity from 300-1300 and while a large part of it was that, I think the book would be properly described as one long essay, which the author says pretty explicitly. He is essentially agnostic and sets out to reexamine how Christianity came to grow so huge and grew the way it did. While mostly impartial and just stating facts, I had some problems but a majority of the book was really fun to read and came from a different angle than I’m used to. It presented a lot of really cool facts that, when looked at through the lens of this book, were essentially new ideas, to me and really new in the sense it’s a new view.

My problems were relatively minor. Some of his claims seemed to not really be backed up by anything, not saying a specific part because it’s a huge book and it’s really not important. But he would say things that made me go “really I don’t think I would take that seriously?” Or “I think this isn’t really right.” Or similar things like that. I actually think that’s good because it’s pretty fun to not agree with everything but still read his arguments. A lot of it was retelling the facts of what happened which I thoroughly enjoyed, it combined a different view with facts and his own viewpoints which I enjoyed.

I should note, the author states that his goal isn’t to convert or change beliefs about the religion as a whole, I think he did a good job at that and my beliefs if anything grew as I learned more but yeah, just to add that.

I recommend this book to people familiar with the history he’s talking about, it’s not super beginner friendly I thought which is fine but perhaps reading more about it first would better prepare you to read this book.

God bless.

4.2/5

[Simon B · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.