Christendom, Volume 1 of 2

by Roland H. Bainton

Vol I, from the birth of Christ to the reformation
I Backgrounds of Christianity
II The ministry of Christ and the emergence of the church
III Christ against Caesar
IV The Christian Roman empire
V The conversion of the barbarians
VI The quest for order
VII Medieval Christendom
VIII The decline of the papacy
selected bibliography
index

Genres: History, Church History, Nonfiction, Religion

274 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1964

About the author

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.

Reviews

[Amy · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ok, first the good points about the first volume of Christendom: It was readable (which surprised me), the first portion of the book was interesting to me, and I learned several things.

Now, the less than good points: Although I learned several things, the main thing that's going to stick in my mind is that the word "czar" is a corruption of the word "ceasar." I doubt that this is the main thing the author wanted his readers to come away with. I think there are two main reasons why very little from this book is going to stick for me. First of all, the author assumes, I think, that his readers will have a solid understanding of the history of Europe during the time period that this book covers. I am not one of those people. I felt fairly comfortable when the author was discussing the early days of Christianity, but as soon as Rome fell, he lost me. There is just not enough skeleton to my knowledge of this time frame to make what the author was trying to do (show me how Christianity influenced Western Europe) to make his effort successful in my case. It's not enough, for instance, to know that Charlemagne, or Innocent III, or Justinian existed. The author expected his reader to know who these people were and why they were significant, because he was not going to fill in those details for you.

Secondly, because the author assumes a certain level of pre-existing knowledge on the part of his reader, his examples are sometimes, well, thin. I was very struck by this when he was discussing Heloise and Abelard in his section about how Christianity and the idea of romantic love interacted with each other. The author holds up Heloise and Abelard as an example of the point he was trying to illustrate, and then says, in essence, "well, we all know what happened to them, so there's no need to discuss it here." Trust me, we don't all know what happened to them, so this example, which may have been perfect, now falls completely flat and illustrates nothing.

All in all, I'd probably give this first volume of Christendom 2.5 stars. I got some things out of it, and it was readable, but it's just not going to stick for me. Something I read *may* come back to me the next time I watch a related show on TV, but I'm most likely to forget most of this book within a month, and I'm not too likely to check out volume II.

[Erik Graff · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Medieval and Reformation Church History professor at Union Theological Seminary, David Lotz, had us read some Bainton for class. I was impressed. Not having known much, Bainton made learning about the period a sheer pleasure. Reading him was like reading a very good novel.

Years later, I finally got around to picking up Bainton's two volume history of Christendom, the book being a revised verion of his Heritage history of Christianity. Again, it was a pleasant read, but not so impressive as now the material was pretty familiar.