Brendan’s Reviews > A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years > Status Update
Brendan
is on page 196 of 1016
“Significantly, imperial Christianity came to follow the political division of the empire which had originally been established by its arch-enemy Diocletian, when he split the administration of his empire between east and west…In Europe, that boundary is very largely that existing today between Orthodox and Catholic societies [] Moreover, the Church started using a technical administrative term which Diocletian
— Oct 11, 2026 05:41PM
Like flag
Brendan’s Previous Updates
Brendan
is on page 165 of 1016
“By the late 2nd century, intelligent non-Christians had started to realize the significance of this self-confidence. Christianity was beginning to offer a complete alternative to the culture and assumptions of the Roman establishment, an establishment which had never felt thus threatened by the teeming ancient cults of the provinces, or even by Judaism. Christianity had no national base; it was as open to those
— Oct 11, 2026 11:35AM
Comments Showing 1-4 of 4 (4 new)
date
newest »
newest »
message 1:
by
Brendan
(new)
-
added it
Oct 11, 2026 05:42PM
had adopted for the twelve subdivisions he created in the empire: ‘diocese’. In the Western Latin Church, this has become the term for an area under the control of a bishop.”
reply
|
flag
“The new vocabulary reflected the fact that the role of a bishop had been radically transformed now that he was not the leader of a small intimate gathering which might be scarcely larger than a household… Willy-nilly, but mostly without much protest, bishops were becoming more like official magistrates, because their Church was being embraced by the power of the empire.”
“The idea of a seated bishop presiding over the liturgy but also pronouncing on matters of belief and adjudicating everyday disputes, became so basic to Western Christian ideas of what a bishop represented that the Church also annexed a Latin word for ‘chair,’ cathedra, previously associated with teachers in higher education, and used it for the city church in which the bishop’s principal chair could be found: his cathedral.”
MacCulloch notes that the liturgy and other worship practices of Christians to the present also took recognizable shape around this time, which is immediately subsequent to the adoption of Christianity by Emperor Constantine:“It is remarkably difficult to get a coherent picture of what Christian worship looked like or felt like before the time of Constantine… in general, up to the end of the third century, bishops were free to improvise a form of words around set themes which would be considered appropriate for the great drama of the Eucharist.”