Funerary stele of Licinia Amias on marble, in the National Roman Museum. One of the earliest Christian inscriptions found, it comes from the early 3rd century Vatican necropolis area in Rome. It contains the text ΙΧΘΥϹ ΖΩΝΤΩΝ ("fish of the living"), a predecessor of the Ichthys symbol.
From the ninth century into the twelfth, politicization and Christianization went hand-in-hand in developing East-Central Europe. Byzantine Christianity influenced the church, culture, language, literacy, and literature of the Slavic countries and Russia. During the High Middle Ages, Eastern and Western Christianity had grown far enough apart that differences led to the East–West Schism of 1054. Temporary reunion was not achieved until the year before the fall of Constantinople in 1453. The fall of the Byzantine Empire ended the institutional Christian Church in the East as established under Constantine, though it survived in an altered form.
After World War II, Christianity faced many challenges. Traditional Christianity declined in the West, while new forms developed, and the centre of growth shifted from West to East and from the North to the Global South. In the twenty first century, it is the world's largest religion with more than two billion Christians worldwide.
Jesus saw his identity and mission, and that of his followers, in light of the kingdom of God and the prophetic tradition of Israel.[10] His followers believed God's spirit was incarnated (embodied) in Jesus and that after his crucifixion, he rose from the dead.[2][11] The Christian church established incarnation and resurrection as its first doctrines, with baptism and the celebration of the Eucharist meal (Jesus's Last Supper) as its two primary rituals.[12][13]
The first Christian communities were predominantly Jewish.[14][15] Early Christians first gathered into small groups inside private homes, where the typical setting for worship was the communal meal.[16][17]Presbyters or bishops oversaw the economic requirements of the meal, alongside charitable distributions, and any ceremonial role they took was initially connected to this more prosaic role. Bishops soon began forming a Christian elite.[18][19][20]
The Jews of Alexandria had produced a Greek translation of their Hebrew Bible between the third and first centuries BC which the apostles and early Christians used.[33][34] Christian writings in Koine Greek, including the four gospels (the accounts of Jesus's ministry), letters of Paul, and letters attributed to other early Christian leaders, were written in the first century and had considerable authority even in the formative period.[35][36] The letters of the Apostle Paul sent to the early Christian communities were circulating in collected form by the end of the first century.[37] The codex, the ancestor of modern books, was used by first century Christians, but the Egyptian church likely invented the papyrus codex during the next decades.[38]
At the Council of Jerusalem, (c. 49), the Jerusalem church gathered to address whether the increasing numbers of non-Jews needed to follow Jewish law.[39] The council decided to allow Gentile Christians their form of Christianity and Jews theirs.[40]Jewish Christianity and Gentile Christianity still grew apart. The departure of Christians before the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in 70, alongside the development of Rabbinic Judaism, disagreements about Jewish law, and insurrections against Rome, contributed to their divergence.[41][42] Nevertheless, Jewish Christianity remained influential in Palestine, Syria, and Asia Minor into the second and third centuries.[43][44]
Distribution of Christian congregations in Roman territories during each of the first three centuries AD
Christianity achieved critical mass in the years between 150 and 250, when it grew from fewer than 50,000 adherents to over a million.[25][26] By the third century, it had spread as far as Roman Britain in the West, into North Africa, and into the Balkans in the East.[46][47] A more formal Church structure grew over the second and third centuries AD, but at different times in different locations. Bishops rose in power and influence, beginning to preside over larger areas with multiple churches.[48][18][49]
Early Christianity was open to everyone.[50] Baptism was free, and there were no fees, which made Christianity more affordable than traditional Roman models.[51][52] The religion's inclusivity extended to women, who made up significant numbers of Christianity's earliest members.[53] Women could attain greater freedom through religious activities than Roman customs otherwise permitted.[54][55] Women in the church were prominent in church rolls,[56][57] the Pauline epistles,[58][59] and in early Christian art,[60] while much early anti-Christian criticism was linked to "female initiative" indicating their role in the movement.[54][61][62][note 1]
A key characteristic of early Christianity was its unique type of exclusivity.[67] Believing was the crucial and defining characteristic of membership – believers were separated from the "unbelievers" by a strong social boundary.[68][69][70] This exclusivity gave Christianity the powerful psychological attraction of elitism.[71]
A set of early Christian writings similar to the current New Testament existed by the early third century.[72] The four gospels and the letters of Paul were generally regarded as authoritative, but other writings, such as the Book of Revelation and the epistles to the Hebrews, James, and I John, were assigned different degrees of authority.[73][74][75]Gnostic texts challenged the physical nature of Jesus, Montanism suggested that the apostles could be superseded, and Monarchianism emphasized the unity of God over the Trinity.[76] In the face of such diversity, unity was provided by the shared scriptures, and by the bishops who established common ground.[77][78]
One of the oldest representations of Jesus as the Good Shepherd from the catacombs of Rome, made around 300 AD
There are few early records of early Christian art. The oldest forms emerged in funerary environments c.200.[86][87][88] It typically fused Graeco-Roman style and Christian symbolism: the most common image was Jesus as the good shepherd.[89][90]
The emperor Constantine, a self-declared Christian, issued the 313 Edict of Milan expressing tolerance for all religions.[91] Thereafter, he supported Christianity, giving bishops judicial power, and legally establishing them as equal to polytheistic priests.[92] He devoted personal and public funds to building churches and endowed them with funds for maintenance and support of their clergy.[93] Christian art, literature and church building blossomed under Constantine.[94] There were churches in the majority of Roman cities by the end of the fourth century.[95]
Beginning with Constantine, hostile imperial laws aimed at suppressing sacrifice and magic contributed to one of the most significant changes of this age of change. Blood sacrifice had been a central rite of virtually all religious groups in the pre-Christian Mediterranean, but it disappeared by the end of the fourth century.[96][97] Hostile acts between pagan and Christian occasionally occurred, but religious violence was not a general phenomenon.[98][99][100][note 2] There was no legislation forcing the conversion of pagans before the 500s.[105][106][107] Polytheism remained widespread for centuries, as late as the 800s in Greece.[108][109]
In the fourth century, Augustine of Hippo argued that Jews were not to be killed or forcibly converted, but should be left alone because they preserved the teachings of the Old Testament and were "living witnesses" of the New.[110] This became the church's standard and as a result, most Jews and Christians, excepting those under the Visigoths in Spain, lived relatively peacefully alongside each other into the Middle Ages.[111][112] The theology of supersessionism claimed that Christians had displaced the Jews as God's chosen people;[113] many scholars attribute the emergence of antisemitism to this concept, while others distinguish between them.[114][115]
Constantine and his successors attempted to fit the Church into their political program.[116] The first limitations on a ruler's authority were articulated by church leaders who argued religious authority must be separate from State authority.[117] For most of Late Antiquity, the popes–the successors to Saint Peter as bishop of Rome–had limited influence, but this began to change as eastern patriarchs increasingly looked to the Pope to resolve disagreements.[118][119][120]
Christian monasticism originated before the fourth century in Syria, deriving from the asceticism already intrinsic to Christianity.[121] Monastic communities were associated with the urban holy places in Palestine (which became a center of pilgrimage), Cappadocia, Italy, Gaul, and Roman North Africa.[122] In 358, Basil the Great founded a monastic community in Caesarea that developed the first health care system for the poor which became the model of public hospitals thereafter.[123]
Christianity continued to grow rapidly, both westwards and eastwards:[124][125] In the fourth century the percentage of Christians was as high in the Sasanian Empire as in the Roman Empire.[126] Even as the Huns, Ostrogoths, Visigoths, and Vandals caused havoc in the Roman Empire in the fourth and fifth centuries, many converted to Christianity.[127][128][129][130] Although the religion soon reached as far east as Afghanistan and as far south as Soqotra near the Horn of Africa, Christian institutions in Asia or East Africa never developed the intellectual or socio-political power that the European churches and Byzantium did.[131]
Armenia became the first state to adopt Christianity as its religion in 301. It was followed by others in the Caucasus, such as Albania, and Ethiopia and Eritrea in Africa.[132][133][134] Christianity, a minority faith in Britain since the second century,[135] began to be displaced by Anglo-Saxon paganism in the fifth century;[136] this process began reversing after the Gregorian mission of 597.[137] Missionaries also began to convert the Irish in the early fifth century.[138]
The Church was seen by its supporters as a universal church based on belief.[139][140] Ancient authors identified any practice or doctrine which differed from apostolic tradition as heresy.[141][70][142] The number of laws directed at heresy indicate it was a much higher priority than paganism for Christians of this period.[143][144][note 3] The conflict over Arianism embroiled the entire church, lay and clergy alike, for decades, in arguing whether Jesus' divinity was equal to the Father's.[15][148][149] The First Council of Nicaea in 325 attempted to resolve the controversy with the Nicene Creed.[150][151][152]
Christian scripture was formalized as the New Testament, distinguishing it from the Hebrew Old Testament, by the fourth century.[153][154] Despite agreement on these texts, differences between Eastern and Western churches were becoming evident.[155][156] Latin was used by the west but not the east, where Greek, Syrian, and other languages were used.[157][158][159] The West condemned Roman culture as sinful and resisted state control, whereas the east harmonized with Greek culture and aimed for unanimity between church and state.[160][161][162] There were also tensions surrounding the marriage of clerics, which continued in the east but was forbidden in the west.[163][164] The East advocated for sharing the government of the church between five leaders, arguing that the Patriarchs of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem were equal to the Pope. Rome asserted papal primacy.[140][165][166]
Virgin and Child. Wall painting from the early Roman catacombs, fourth century
Constantine's sponsorship stimulated a proliferation of Christian art and architecture.[173] The basilica, a type of Roman municipal court hall, became the model for Christian architecture.[174] Frescoes, mosaics, statues, and paintings blended classical and Christian styles.[175] Similarly, a hybrid form of poetry written in classical styles with Christian concepts emerged.[176][177][178]
After 476 and the breakup of the Western Roman Empire, there was no center of political power in the European West. The ensuing socio-political fragmentation left the church with responsibility for the folk, strengthening Christianity and contributing to the development of Europe in a distinctively different manner from Christian Byzantium.[181][182] For the next five centuries, Western culture and civilization was preserved and passed on primarily by monks.[183][184][185] In Gaul, the Frankish king Clovis I converted to Catholicism; his kingdom converted over the next centuries after it became the dominant polity in the West in 507.[183][184]
Papal influence rose as competition within the church increasingly led people to Rome to resolve disagreements.[140][186]Pope Gregory I gained prestige and power for the papacy by leading the response to invasion by the Lombards in 592 and 593.[187] The Roman Senate remained influential in church politics until c.500, and their involvement with the papacy combined with administrative changes that brought an increase in wealth, gradually shifted popes from being beneficiaries of patronage to becoming patrons themselves.[188][189][190] The Patriarch in Constantinople claimed "equal precedence" with Rome. In the sixth century, the bishop of Rome asserted papal supremacy though it was influence without legal authority.[140][191][192]
The Eastern Roman Empire continued to have an emperor, a civil government, and a large army. The religious policies of Emperor Justinian I (r.527–565) reflected his conviction that the unity of the Empire presupposed unity of faith: he persecuted pagans and religious minorities and purged government and church bureaucracies of those who disagreed with him.[193][194] He also contributed to cultural development,[195] and integrated Christian concepts with Roman law in his Corpus Juris Civilis which remains the basis of civil law in many modern states.[196][197]
By the early 600s, Christianity was established around the Mediterranean,[198] but between 632 and 750, the Islamic caliphates conquered the Middle East and North Africa.[199][200] Islamic rule devastated Asian urban churches, but the remoteness of Nestorian monasteries better enabled them to survive.[201][202][note 4] War on multiple fronts turned the Eastern Roman Empire into the Byzantine Empire.[204] Germanic Europe largely remained impoverished, politically fragmented and dependent on the church.[183][184]
Monasticism and art
Until the end of this Age, Western culture was preserved and passed on primarily by monks.[185] Monasticism had diversity, yet all monks followed a similar discipline: formalized prayer, memorization of scripture, celibacy, fasting, manual labor, and almsgiving.[205][206][207][note 5] Monasteries became increasingly organized, gradually establishing their own authority as separate from traditional authorities thereby revolutionizing social history.[212][213] Medical practice was highly important, and monasteries were best known for their public hospitals, hospices and their contributions to medicine.[214] The sixth century Rule of Saint Benedict has had long term influence.[215][216][217]
Monasteries served as orphanages and inns for travelers, and provided food for those in need.[218][219][220] They supported literacy, practiced classical arts and crafts, and copied and preserved ancient texts in their scriptoria and libraries.[221][222] Dedicated monks created illustrated texts.[223] From the sixth to the eighth centuries, most schools were connected to monasteries, but methods of teaching an illiterate populace could also include mystery plays, vernacular sermons, saints' lives in epic form, and artwork.[224][225][226]
A page from the Book of Hours (Use of Metz) with a decorated Initial
The East developed an approach to sacred art unknown in the West, adapting ancient portraiture in icons as intercessors between God and men.[227] In the 720s, the Byzantine Emperor Leo banned the pictorial representation of Christ, saints, and biblical scenes, and destroyed much early art. The West condemned Leo's iconoclasm.[228] By the tenth and early eleventh centuries, Byzantine culture began to recover its artistic heritage.[229][230]
Christendom
The Early Middle Ages was the formative period of the "Western Christendom" which emerged at the end of this Age.[231][224] In and around this largely Christian world, barbarian invasion, deportation, and neglect produced large "unchurched" populations for whom Christianity was one religion among many that could be fused with aspects of local paganism.[232][233][234][235] The church of this Age was only indirectly influenced by the Bible.[236]
People from the Balkan peninsula and into the north were exposed to Christianity during Roman occupation, yet it was Saints Cyril and Methodius who brought Byzantine Christianity to Eastern Europe of the ninth to the eleventh centuries that aided kings in creating many States there.[237][238] The two brothers translated the Bible into local language developing the first Slavic written script and the Cyrillic alphabet in the process. This became the educational foundation for all Slavic nations and influenced the spiritual, religious, literary, and cultural development of the entire region for generations.[239][240][241]
In both East and West, a symbiotic relationship existed between church institutions and civil governments connecting Canon law and secular law.[242][243] In the East, Roman law remained the standard. The West was a realm of relatively weak states, endowed aristocracies, and peasant communities that could no longer use law from a past empire to support the church.[244] Instead, the Western church adopted a feudalistic oath of loyalty which became a condition of consecration.[140] This led to a new model of consecrated kingship that was unparallelled in the East.[245]
In 800, Clovis' descendant Charlemagne became its recipient when Pope Leo III crowned him emperor. Charlemagne engaged in a number of reforms which began the Carolingian Renaissance, a period of intellectual and cultural revival which continued under his successors.[246][247][248] The Franks had preserved their Christian kingdom in the West, resisting Arabic inroads into southern France in 732.[249]
From the 950s to the 980s, polytheism among the Kievan Rus declined, while many social and economic changes fostered the spread of the new religious ideology known as Christianity.[239] The baptism of Vladimir of Kiev in 989 is the event traditionally associated with the conversion of the Rus'.[250] The new Christian religious structure was imposed by the state's rulers.[251] The Rus' dukes maintained control of the church which was financially dependent upon them.[252][note 6] Monasticism was the dominant form of piety, but Christianity permeated daily life for both peasants and elites who identified themselves as Christian while retaining many pre-Christian practices.[254]
In the latter part of this era, Viking raids and civil disorder destroyed many churches and monasteries, inadvertently bringing about reform and improvement. Patrons competed against each other in rebuilding so that "by the mid-eleventh century, a wealthy, unified, better-organized, better-educated, more spiritually sensitive Latin Church" resulted.[255] There was another rise in papal power in the tenth century when William IX, Duke of Aquitaine, and other powerful lay founders of monasteries, placed their institutions under the protection of the papacy.[256][257][192]
The High Middle Ages saw the formation of several fundamental Christian doctrines: "the meaning of the sacraments, the just price and reward for labour, the terms of Christian marriage, the nature of clerical celibacy and the appropriate lifestyle for priests".[258] Heresy was defined with new precision.[259]Purgatory became an official doctrine. In 1215, confession became required for all.[260][261] The Rosary was created after veneration of Mary, mother of Jesus became a central aspect of the age.[262] Membership in this world began with baptism at birth.[263][264][265] From peasant to pope, every follower had to have a rudimentary knowledge of the Apostles' Creed and the Lord's Prayer, to rest on Sunday and feast days, attend mass, fast at specified times, take communion at Easter, pay various fees, tithes, and alms for the needy, and receive last rites at death.[266][267]
Schism and Crusade
In 1054, the East–West Schism, also known as the "Great Schism", separated the Church into Western Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy. Along with a general lack of charity and respect on both sides, there had long been many cultural and linguistic differences, geographical separation, and geopolitical disagreements.[268][269] However, in 1081, the Byzantine emperor Alexios I Komnenos still asked Pope Urban for help with the Seljuk Turks,[270] and Urban responded (1095) with an appeal to European Christians to "go to the aid of their brethren in the Holy Land".[271][272][273]
Map of First Crusade - Roads of main armies
Urban's message had great popular appeal. Drawing on powerful and prevalent aspects of folk religion, crusading connected pilgrimage, charity, and remission of sin with a willingness to fight.[274][275] It gave ordinary Christians a tangible means of expressing brotherhood with the East and carried a sense of historical responsibility.[276]
The Crusades contributed to the development of national identities in European nations, increased division with the Byzantine and the Islamic East, and produced cultural change.[277] The cult of chivalry of the Christian knight evolved in the late twelfth and early thirteenth century, and became a social and cultural force that influenced art, literature, and philosophy, before declining in the fifteenth century.[278][279] One significant effect of the Crusades was the invention of the indulgence.[280]
Monks, reform and art
Périgueux - Cathédrale Saint-Front 1047 - Romanesque architecture Wells Cathedral, Lady Chapel, Somerset, UK - Gothic architecture
Monasteries had maintained influence in the West by embracing various reforms. Cluniac monasteries became reform's leading centre in the eleventh and early twelfth centuries.[281] Their monasteries used Romanesque architecture to convey a sense of awe and wonder and inspire obedience.[282] The Cistercian movement was a second wave of monastic reform after 1098.[283][284][285]
Byzantine art exerted a powerful influence on Western art in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.[286]Gothic architecture followed in cathedrals and chapels intended to inspire contemplation of the divine.[287][288] The monk Guido of Arezzo created the music staff of lines and spaces and named musical notes making Western music possible.[289]
The cultural and religious dominance of the monasteries began to decline in the mid-eleventh century when secular clergy, who were not members of religious orders, rose in influence.[290] Monastery schools lost influence when Cathedral schools spread,[291] independent schools arose,[292] and Western universities, the first institutions of higher education since the sixth century, formed as self-governing corporations chartered by popes and kings.[293][294][295] Canon and civil law became professionalized, and a new literate elite formed, further displacing the monks as advisors to kings.[296][297] Throughout this period, the clergy and the laity became "more literate, more worldly, and more self-assertive".[298][note 7]
Centralization
Gregorian Reform (1050–1080) began "a new period in church history".[140][302][303][304] The church became a more imposing institution as it consolidated its territory, centralized authority and established a bureaucracy.[305][306][296] State administrations were also centralizing, and competition (and emulation) between church and State created vigorous conflicts as both claimed legal jurisdiction - and the right to collect taxes - from the same populace.[300][307]
Gregory recorded a series of statements asserting that the church must be the higher of the two powers of church and state; the church must no longer be treated as a servant to the state.[257][315][316] Disobedience to the Pope became equated with heresy.[317] The Dictatus Papae of 1075 declared the pope alone could invest bishops.[318] Henry IV rejected the decree. This led to his excommunication, which contributed to a ducal revolt that led to a civil war: the Great Saxon Revolt. Eventually, Henry received absolution. The conflict lasted five decades.[319][320][321] A similar controversy occurred in England.[322]
1150 - 1300
Beginning in the twelfth century, understanding of a monk's calling as contemplative changed into a charge to go out and actively reform the world.[323][324] The papacy recruited and licensed this new type of charismatic preacher whose audience was no longer the people of a parish or a city, but whole regions.[264] Among these was Saint Dominic who went to debate the Cathars and failed to win them over, leading to the creation of the mendicant order of Dominicans.[325]
In 1209, Pope Innocent III and the King of France, Philip Augustus, began a military campaign to eliminate the Albigensian heresy known as Catharism.[326][327] Once begun, the campaign quickly took a political turn.[328] The king's army seized and occupied strategic lands of nobles who had not supported the heretics, but had been in the good graces of the Church. Throughout the campaign, Innocent vacillated, sometimes taking the side favouring crusade, then siding against it and calling for its end.[329] It did not end until 1229 when the region was brought under the rule of the French king, creating southern France, while Catharism continued until 1350.[330][331]
Church and civic rulers supported consistency and order in society and in the church.[332][333] Moral misbehaviour and heresy, by the folk and by clerics, were prosecuted in inquisitorial courts that were composed of both church and civil authorities.[334] The Medieval Inquisition includes the Episcopal Inquisition (1184–1230) and the Papal Inquisition (1230s–1240s); though these courts had no actual joint leadership nor joint organization, the Dominicans were the religious order with the primary responsibility for conducting inquisitions.[335][336][337] Created as needed, these courts were impermanent.[338][339][340] The Medieval Inquisition brought somewhere between 8,000 and 40,000 people to interrogation and sentence, and death sentences were relatively rare.[341] The penalty imposed most often was an act of penance which might include public confession.[342]
Bishops were in charge, but they did not possess absolute power, nor were they universally supported.[343][334] Inquisition became stridently contested both in and outside the Church as public opposition grew and riots against the Dominicans occurred.[338][344][345] The fourth Lateran council (1215) had empowered inquisitors to search out moral and religious "crimes" even when there was no accuser. In theory, this granted them extraordinary powers.[346] In practice, without sufficient local secular support, their task became so overwhelmingly difficult that inquisitors were endangered and some were murdered.[347]
Between 1150 and 1200, a small group of intrepid western monks traveled to formerly Muslim locations in Sicily and Spain seeking the libraries left behind. Among the piles of books, the searchers found the works of Aristotle, Euclid and more.[348] After 476, the complete works of Aristotle had been lost to the West. Finding it led to the Renaissance of the 12th century. It also created conflict for many between faith and reason which was resolved by a revolution in thought called Scholasticism that reconciled them.[349][350][note 9]
Studying astronomy and geometry. Early fifteenth-century painting, France.
The medieval papacy gained authority in every domain of life as it gradually came to resemble the monarchies of its day.[356][357] Popes from 1159 to 1303 were predominantly lawyers, not theologians.[358] Canon law became a large and highly complex system of laws that omitted Christianity's earlier principles of inclusivity, and over it all watched an increasingly centralized and proactive church government.[296][196][359][343]
A turning point in Jewish-Christian relations took place in June 1239 when the Talmud was put "on trial" in a French court by Gregory IX (1237–1241) over contents that mocked the central figures of Christianity.[360][361] This resulted in Talmudic Judaism being seen as so different from biblical Judaism that old Augustinian obligations to leave the Jews alone no longer applied.[362] As townfolk gained a measure of political power, they became one of Jewry's greatest enemies, charging Jews with blood libel, deicide, ritual murder, poisoning wells and causing the plague, and various other crimes.[363][364][264] Although subordinate to religious, economic, and social themes, racial concepts also reinforced hostility.[365]
Jews had often acted as financial agents for the lords, providing them loans with interest while being exempt from taxes and other financial laws themselves. This attracted jealousy and resentment.[366]Emicho of Leiningen massacred Jews in Germany in search of supplies, loot, and protection money. The York massacre of 1190 also appears to have had its origins in a conspiracy by local leaders to liquidate their debts along with their creditors.[367]
By the end of the eleventh century, Christianity was in full retreat in Mesopotamia and inner Iran although some Christian communities further to the east continued to exist.[370][371] The Christian churches in Egypt, Syria, and Iraq became subject to fervently Muslim militaristic regimes.[372] Christians were designated dhimma, a cultural status that guaranteed rights of protection but discriminated by enforcing legal inferiority.[202] Various Christian communities adopted different strategies for preserving their identity while accommodating their rulers: some withdrew from interaction, others converted, and others sought outside help.[372] The Middle Ages saw the retreat of Christianity from the Levant, southeastern Europe, parts of the Middle East, and North Africa.[373]
The Christianization of Scandinavia (Sweden, Norway, and Denmark) occurred in two stages.[374] In the first stage, missionaries arrived on their own, without secular support, in the ninth century.[375] Next, a secular ruler would take charge of Christianization in their territory. This stage ended when a defined and organized ecclesiastical network was established.[376] By 1350, Scandinavia was an integral part of Western Christendom.[377]
Baltic Tribes c 1200
When the Second Crusade was called after Edessa fell, the nobles in Eastern Europe refused to go.[378] The Balts, the last major polytheistic population in Europe, had been raiding surrounding countries for several centuries, and subduing them was what mattered most to the Eastern European nobles.[379][note 10] In 1147, Eugenius' Divina dispensatione gave eastern nobility indulgences for the first of the Baltic wars (1147–1316).[378][381][382] The Northern Crusades followed intermittently, with and without papal support, from 1147 to 1316.[383][384][385] Priests and clerics developed a pragmatic acceptance of the forced conversions perpetrated by the nobles, despite the continued theological emphasis on voluntary conversion.[386]
Late Middle Ages and early Renaissance (c. 1300–1520)
Criticism of clergy and the church was an integral part of late medieval life.[393] A serious decline of faith in the clergy and resentment toward them was expressed in heretical movements, internal reform movements, and popular writings, both secular and religious.[394][395] Between 1100 and 1520, clerics were often the ones seeking a more spiritual, less worldly clergy.[396] However, most attempts at reform between 1300 and 1500 failed.[397][398]
17th century depiction of Pope John XXII (1316–1334) (by Giuseppe Franchi) who was referred to as "the banker of Avignon"
Avignon and reform
What had, in previous centuries, been the steady rise of papal power, stopped rising in the fourteenth century.[400] In 1309, Pope Clement V moved to Avignon in southern France in search of relief from Rome's factional politics. The Avignon Papacy consisted of seven popes whose residence there produced unintended consequences: the move away from the "seat of Peter" caused great indignation and diminished the prestige and power of the popes.[401][402]
For the next thirty years the Church had two popes, then in 1409, the Pisan council called for the resignation of both popes, electing a third to replace them. Both Popes refused to resign, leaving the Church with three popes. Five years later, Sigismund the Holy Roman Emperor (1368–1437) pressed Pope John XXIII to call the Council of Constance and depose all three popes. In 1417, the council elected Pope Martin V in their place.[406][407]
Throughout the Late Middle Ages, the church faced powerful challenges and vigorous political confrontations.[408][409]John Wycliffe (1320–1384), an English scholastic philosopher and theologian, also attended the Council of Constance (1414–1418) where he urged the Church to give up its property (which produced much of the Church's wealth), to once again embrace poverty and simplicity, to stop being subservient to the state and its politics, and to deny papal authority.[410][411] He was accused of heresy, convicted, and sentenced to death, but died before implementation.[411][412]
Groups of laymen and non-ordained secular clerics sought a more sincere spiritual life, giving rise to a vernacular religious culture called the new devotion which worked toward a pious society of ordinary non-ordained people.[415] Literature was impacted by Dutch scholar Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536) an outstanding figure of Christian humanism which taught a simplified faith accessible to any Christian.[416]
Jews and women
Expulsion judios-en
While the medieval Catholic church never officially repudiated Augustine's doctrine of Jewish witness, defining Jews as heretics became increasingly common throughout society.[417] Local rulers repeatedly evicted Jews from their lands and confiscated Jewish property.[418][419][420] In 1283, the Archbishop of Canterbury spearheaded a petition demanding restitution of profits gained from usury and urging the Jewish expulsion in 1290.[421][422][note 12]
In medical, theological, and legal views, women in the Middle Ages were considered incapable of moral judgment and authority.[259] Hierarchy between the genders was supported as necessary for society.[417] Women had no access to education within the institutions associated with the church (i.e., cathedral schools and most universities).[259] Where clergy was concerned, the boundary between men and women was absolute. The church often used the participation of women as an additional factor in demonizing a heretical movement.[423] However, there were women who became distinguished leaders of nunneries, exercising the same powers and privileges as their male counterparts. For example, Hildegard of Bingen (d. 1179), Elisabeth of Schönau (d. 1164/65), and Marie d'Oignies (d. 1213) had full autonomy.[259][424][note 13]
The East and Renaissance
In 1439, a reunion agreement between the Eastern and Western churches was made that was not officially published in Constantinople until 1452. It was overthrown the very next year by the Fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453.[427][428] Resettlement compelled many Greek Orthodox Christians to return to Constantinople.[429] Islamic law did not recognize the Patriarch as a "juristic person", nor acknowledge the Orthodox Church as an institution, but it did identify the Orthodox Church with the Greek community, and a concern for stability in society allowed the church to exist.[430][431] Compulsory taxes, higher and higher payments to the sultan, and other financial gifts, corrupted the process of appointing a Patriarch and impoverished Christians.[432][431] Conversion became an attractive solution.[433][note 14]
Between 1478 and 1542, the modern Roman, Spanish, and Portuguese inquisitions were created with a much broader reach than previous inquisitions.[438][439][440]
Until its end in 1834, the Spanish Inquisition was used to consolidate state interests.[438] Authorized by Pope Sixtus IV in 1478, it was begun in answer to Ferdinand and Isabella's stated fears that Jewish converts were conspiring with Muslims to sabotage the new state.[441][442][note 15] At its start, the Inquisition was so severe that the Pope attempted to shut it down. King Ferdinand is said to have threatened the Pope to prevent that from happening.[444][445][446] Five years after its inception, in October 1483, a papal bull conceded control of the Spanish Inquisition to the Spanish crown making it the first national, unified, centralized institution of the nascent Spanish state.[447][446][448][438]
The Portuguese Inquisition was controlled by a state-level board of directors sponsored by the king, who, during this period, was generally more concerned with ethnicity than religion. According to Giuseppe Marcocci, there is a connection between the Portuguese Inquisition's growth and blood purity statutes.[439] Anti-Judaism became part of the Inquisition in Portugal before the end of the fifteenth century and forced conversion led many Jewish converts to Portuguese colonies in India, where they suffered as targets of the Goa Inquisition.[449]
The bureaucratic, intellectual, and academic Roman Inquisition operated to serve the papacy's long-standing political aims in Italy. It is probably best known for its condemnation of Galileo.[450]
The conquest of Constantinople in 1453 by the Ottoman Turks effectively destroyed the Eastern Orthodox Church as an institution inaugurated by Constantine, sealing off Greek-speaking Orthodoxy from the West for almost a century and a half.[451][452] Thereafter, it was without one of its leaders, the Emperor, though it retained a patriarch in a lesser and more limited capacity.[453] By the time of Süleyman the Magnificent (1520–1566), the patriarchate had become a part of the Ottoman system, and continued to influence the Orthodox world.[434][431]
Jeremias II (1536–1595) dominated Eastern Christianity in the second half of the sixteenth century, keeping Constantinople conservative and suspicious of Rome.[454] Jeremias was the first Eastern patriarch to visit north-eastern Europe. Ending his visit in Moscow, he founded the Orthodox Patriarchate of Russia.[454][431]
A generation after Constantinople fell to the Turks, Ivan III of Muscovy adopted the style of the ancient Byzantine imperial court. This gained Ivan support among the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century Rus' elite who saw themselves as the New Israel and Moscow as the new Jerusalem.[455]
Witches
Historians have been unable to pinpoint a single cause of "witch frenzy" in Europe although the Little Ice Age may have been a factor.[456] The official position of the Roman Catholic Church was that witches did not exist, yet in the mid-1400s, a common thought developed at every level of society that witches were both real and malevolent.[457][458] Belief in magic had remained so widespread it has convinced historians that Christianization had not been as universal as previously supposed.[459] Pressure to prosecute witches came from the common people, and trials were mostly civil trials.[460][461] There is broad agreement that approximately 100,000 people were prosecuted, of which 80% were women, and that 40,000 to 50,000 of these were executed between 1561 and 1670.[462][458]
Reformation
Throughout Europe, powerful and pervasive ecclesiastical reform had developed from medieval critiques of the church, but the institutional unity of the church was shattered.[463][464] Though there was no actual schism until 1521, the Protestant Reformation (1517–1648) has been described (since the nineteenth century) as beginning when Martin Luther, a Catholic monk advocating church reform, nailed his Ninety-five Theses to the church door in Wittenberg in 1517.[465]
Luther's theses challenged the church's selling of indulgences, the authority of the Pope, and various teachings of the late medieval Catholic church. This act of defiance and its social, moral, and theological criticisms brought Western Christianity to a new understanding of relationship to God.[466] Edicts handed down by the Diet of Worms condemned Luther and officially banned citizens of the Holy Roman Empire from defending or propagating his ideas.[467][468]
The Roman Catholic Church responded to the Protestant challenge in what is called the Counter-Reformation or Catholic Reformation, spearheaded by a series of 10 reforming popes from 1534 to 1605, beginning with Pope Paul III (1534–1549).[472] The Council of Trent (1545–1563) denied each Protestant claim, and laid the foundation of Roman Catholic policies up to the twenty-first century.[473]
New monastic orders were formed within the church, including the Society of Jesus – also known as the "Jesuits" – who adopted military-style discipline and a vow of loyalty to the Pope, leading them to be called "the shock troops of the papacy". They soon became the Church's chief weapon against Protestantism.[473][note 16]
Quarreling royal houses, already involved in dynastic disagreements, became polarized into the two religious camps.[476]Warfare initially broke out in the Holy Roman Empire with the minor Knights' War in 1522, then intensified in the First Schmalkaldic War (1546–1547) and the Second Schmalkaldic War (1552–1555).[477][478] In 1562, France became the centre of a series of wars.[479] The largest and most disastrous of these wars was the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648).[480]
Scholars disagree about their causes. John Kelsay and James Turner Johnson argue that these were varieties of the just war tradition for liberty and freedom.[481]William T. Cavanaugh identifies the view shared by most historians that the wars were not primarily religious, but were more about state-building, nationalism, and economics.[482][483][479] Historian Barbara Diefendorf argues that religious motives were always mixed with other motives, but the simple fact of Catholics fighting Catholics and Protestants fighting Protestants is not sufficient to prove an absence of religious motives.[484] According to Marxist theorist Henry Heller, there was "a rising tide of commoner hostility to noble oppression and growing perception of collusion between Protestant and Catholic nobles".[485]
Art and enlightenment
St. Peter's Basilica
In the early seventeenth century, Baroque art, characterized by grandeur and opulence, offered the Catholic Church and secular rulers a means of expressing their magnificence and political power.[486] This was a period of turmoil, discovery, and change, and Baroque art reflected the search for stability and order.[487] It originated in Rome and became an international style. The church of St. Peter in Rome, St. Paul's cathedral in London, and the gardens at Versailles are probably the age's premiere examples.[488]
The era of absolutist states followed the breakdown of Christian universalism in Europe.[489] Abuses from political absolutism practised by kings supported by Catholicism gave rise to a virulent anti-clerical, anti-Catholic, and anti-Christian sentiment that emerged in the 1680s as an aspect of the Age of Enlightenment. Critique of Christianity began among the more extreme Protestant reformers enraged by fear, tyranny, and persecution.[490][491] Secularisation spread at every level of European society.[492]
By the 1690s, many secular thinkers rethought on a political level all of the State's reasons for persecution, and they began advocating for religious toleration.[493][494] Protestants had been steadfastly seeking religious toleration for everyone since the 1400s.[495] Thereafter, Anglicans and other Christian moderates had also argued for toleration.[496] Concepts of freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and freedom of thought gradually became established in the West.[497][498][499]
Colonialism, driven by economics and politics, also opened the door for Christian missions in many new regions.[500][501][502] Sixteenth-century missions to China were undertaken primarily by the Jesuits.[503] According to Sheridan Gilley "Catholic Christianity became a global religion through the Spanish and Portuguese colonial empires in the sixteenth century and French missionaries in the seventeenth and eighteenth."[501]
Christian missionaries and colonial empires had separate agendas that were often in direct opposition to each other. Many vocal missionaries challenged colonial oppression, defended human rights, and opposed their own governments in matters of social justice. However, there are an equal number of examples of cooperation with colonial governments.[504][505][506]
The sixteenth-century success of Christianity in Japan was followed by one of the greatest persecutions in Christian history.[503][507] Sheridan Gilley writes that "The cruel martyrdom of Catholics in China, Indochina, Japan and Korea, another heroic missionary country, was connected to local fears of European invasion and conquest, which in some cases were not unjustified."[508]
Late modernity (after 1750)
Urbanization and industrialization created a plethora of new social problems.[509][510] In Europe and North America, both Protestants and Catholics provided massive aid to the poor, supporting family welfare, and providing medicine and education.[511]
Biblical criticism developed, pioneered by Protestants, advocating historicism and rationalism to make study of the Bible more scholarly, secular, and democratic.[517][518][519] It posed particular problems for the literal interpretation of the Bible which had emerged in the 1820s.[520][521][522]
In reaction to rationalism, Pietism grew in Europe and religious revival known as the First Great Awakening, swept through the American colonies between the 1730s and the 1770s.[523][524][525] Beginning among the Presbyterians, revival quickly spread creating American Evangelicalism and Wesleyan Methodism.[526] Verbal battles over the movement raged at both the congregational and denominational levels creating divisions which became 'Parties', which turned political and eventually led to critical support for the American Revolution.[527][528] In 1791, the United States became the first predominantly Christian nation to mandate the separation of church and state. Theological pluralism became the new norm in the new country.[529][530]
France experienced revolution, and by 1794, radical revolutionaries attempted to violently 'de-Christianize' France.[531] For Eastern Orthodox church leaders, de-Christianization meant Enlightenment ideas were too dangerous to embrace.[431]
For over 300 years, there had been Christians in Europe and North America who participated in the Trans-Atlantic slave trade.[535] Moral objections within Christianity had arisen immediately,[536] and by the eighteenth century, individual Quakers, Methodists, Presbyterians and Baptists had begun a written campaign against slavery.[537] Congregations led by black preachers kept abolitionism alive[538] into the early nineteenth century when some American Protestants organized the first anti-slavery societies.[539] According to historian David Eltis, the ideology of abolition ended the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, changing the economic and human history on three continents.[540][541]
Protestant missionaries of the nineteenth century had a significant role in shaping multiple nations, cultures, and societies.[508][544][545] Women made major contributions.[511] A missionary's first task was to get to know the indigenous people and work with them to translate the Bible into their local language. Approximately 90% were completed. The process also generated a written grammar, a lexicon of native traditions, and a dictionary of the local language.[546] These were used to teach in missionary schools resulting in the spread of literacy and indigenization.[547][548][549] According to historian Lamin Sanneh, Protestant missionaries thus stimulated the "largest, most diverse and most vigorous movement of cultural renewal in history" in Africa.[550][506][551]
Liberal Christians embraced seventeenth-century rationalism, but also disregarded the necessity of faith and ritual in maintaining Christianity, leading to liberalism's decline and the birth of fundamentalism.[521]Fundamentalist Christianity arose in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century as a reaction against modern rationalism.[522]
The Roman Catholic Church became increasingly centralized, conservative, and focused on loyalty to the Pope.[519] In 1925, Protestant fundamentalism participated in the Scopes trial, however, by 1930, the movement appeared to be dying.[552][553] Later in the 1930s, Neo-orthodoxy, a theology against liberalism with a reevaluation of Reformation teachings, began uniting moderates of both sides.[554] In the 1940s, "new-evangelicalism" established itself as separate from fundamentalism.[555]
Russia
In Russia, the Church reform of Peter I in the early eighteenth century had placed the Orthodox authorities under the control of the tsar. An ober-procurator appointed by the tsar ran the committee that governed the Church after 1721 until 1918: the Most Holy Synod. The Church became involved in the various campaigns of russification and contributed to antisemitism.[556][557]
By the early twentieth century, the influence of anticlerical socialism and communism weakened Christianity in many locations.[559] The Bolsheviks and other Russian revolutionaries saw the Church, like the tsarist state, as an enemy of the people. Criticism of atheism was strictly forbidden and sometimes led to imprisonment.[560][561] Some actions against Orthodox priests and believers included torture, being sent to prison camps, labour camps or mental hospitals, and execution.[562][563]
Historian Scott Kenworthy describes the persecution of the Russian Orthodox Church under communism as "unparalleled by any in Christian history".[564] In the first five years after the October Revolution, one journalist reported that 28 bishops and 1,200 priests were executed.[565] Others report that 8,000 people were killed in 1922.[566] The League of Militant Atheists adopted a five-year plan in 1932 "aimed at the total eradication of religion by 1937".[567]
Despite oppression and martyrdom under hostile rule, the Russian Orthodox Church of the twentieth century continued to contribute to theology, spirituality, liturgy, music, and art. Kenworthy adds that "Important movements within the church have been the revival of a Eucharistic ecclesiology, of traditional iconography, of monastic life and spiritual traditions such as Hesychasm, and the rediscovery of the Greek Church Fathers".[568]
In the early twentieth century, European states were advocating the separation of church and state, while also establishing authoritarian governments and state-supported churches. Such consanguinity would, after 1945, implicate the church in abuses of power.[569]
Pope Pius XI declared in Mit brennender Sorge (English: "With rising anxiety") that fascist governments had hidden "pagan intentions" and expressed the irreconcilability of the Catholic position with totalitarian fascist state worship which placed the nation above God, fundamental human rights, and dignity.[570]
Most leaders and members of the largest Protestant church in Germany, the German Evangelical Church, which had a long tradition of nationalism and support of the state, supported the Nazis when they came to power.[572] A smaller contingent, about a third of German Protestants, formed the Confessing Church which opposed Nazism.[note 17]
Nazis interfered in The Confessing Church's affairs, harassed its members, executed mass arrests, and targeted well-known pastors like Martin Niemöller and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.[574][575][note 18] Bonhoeffer, a pacifist, was arrested, found guilty in the conspiracy to assassinate Adolf Hitler, and executed.[577]
Christian distribution globally based on PEW research in 2011
Before 1945, about a third of the people in the world were Christians, and about 80% of them lived in Europe, Russia, and the Americas.[579] By 2000, the percentage of Christians in the West dropped to around 40 percent, while the proportion living in Asia and Africa rose to 32 percent.[579] In the first quarter of the twenty-first century, most Christians live outside North America and Western Europe. White Christians are a global minority, and slightly over half of worldwide Christians are female.[580][581] It is the world's largest religion with roughly 2.4 billion followers constituting around 31.2% of the world's population.[501][529][582][note 19]
In 2000, approximately one-quarter of all Christians worldwide were part of Pentecostalism and its associated movements.[597] By 2025, Pentecostals are expected to constitute one-third of the nearly three billion Christians worldwide making it the largest branch of Protestantism and the fastest-growing religious movement in worldwide Christianity.[598][599]
Traditional Christianity faced multiple challenges in the twentieth century leading to a decline in church attendance in the West.[600][601][602] The challenges of secularism, and the changing moral climate concerning sexual ethics, gender, and exclusivity produced a demand for greater individual freedom. "New Age" spirituality formed. It is private, individualistic, embraces the sacred as a deeper understanding of the self, and differs radically from Christian tradition.[600][603][604] Hugh McLeod writes that political criticisms concerning power have had an even wider impact.[605]
Highly authoritarian and totalitarian governments have brought about crises and decline in many areas.[606][506][607] The world's first Marxist super-power, and other communist governments, pursued anti-religious policies.[569] In 2013, 17 Muslim majority states reported discrimination against religious minorities, including Christianity.[608] Anti-Christian persecution has become a consistent human rights concern.[609]
Commonality and unity between Protestants and Catholics made little progress until 11 October 1962, when Pope John XXIII opened the Second Vatican Council.[610][611] Roman Catholic ecumenical goals are to establish full communion amongst all the various Christian churches, however there is no agreement amongst evangelicals.[612][613][614] Since then, the ecumenical movement has stalled, however there is also a trend at the local level toward discussion, pulpit exchanges, and shared social action.[615][611] In Hugh MacLeod's view, "A liberal Catholic is likely to have a lot in common with a liberal Methodist," and the influence of the internet will probably increase this unofficial ecumenism.[616]
Theological revolution
The multiple wars of the twentieth century brought questions of theodicy to the forefront.[617] For the first time since the pre-Constantinian era, Christian pacifism became an alternative to war.[605]
Nineteenth-century revolutions had established Orthodoxy in the Serbian, Greek, Romanian, and Bulgarian nations. In the twentieth century, these changed from universal churches into national churches that became subordinate to nationalism and the state.[431]
Black theology combined Christianity with questions of civil rights, aspects of the Black Power movement, and responses to black Muslims claiming Christianity was a "White man's" religion. It spread to the United Kingdom, parts of Africa, and confronted apartheid in South Africa.[622][623]
Ethics and identity politics have forced many to realize supersessionism can underlie hatred, ethnocentrism, and racism. Supersessionist texts are increasingly challenged in the twenty first century.[627]
After World War II, Christian missionaries played a transformative role in many colonial societies, moving them toward independence through decolonization.[628][629]
In the mid to late 1990s, postcolonial theology emerged globally from multiple sources.[630] It analyzes structures of power and ideology to recover what colonialism erased or suppressed in indigenous cultures.[631]
The missionary movement of the twenty-first century has transformed into a multi-cultural, multi-faceted global network of NGO's, short-term amateur volunteers, and traditional long-term bilingual, bicultural professionals who focus on evangelism and local development and not on 'civilizing' native people.[632][633]
↑ Monasticism was one area of antique life that gave women who practiced charismatic asceticism some control over their destinies.[63] Ross Kraemer theorizes that the ascetic life was attractive to large numbers of women.[64] It offered an escape from marriage and motherhood and offered an intellectual life with access to social and economic power that would otherwise have eluded them.[65][66][63]
↑ As Jan N. Bremmer writes, "religious violence in Late Antiquity is mostly restricted to violent rhetoric".[101] Popular support for the polytheistic religions had been declining since the second century BC and continued to decline throughout Late Antiquity. This is likely a result of economic factors: the decline of urbanism and prosperity during the economic crisis of the third century; further economic disruption occurred during the chaotic migrations of Germanic peoples in the fourth and fifth centuries. Such disruption made fewer public funds and private donations available to support expensive pagan festivals and temples.[102][103][104]
↑ In North Africa during the reign of Constantine, Donatism formed as a schism. Donatists refused – sometimes violently – to accept back into the Church those who had handed over sacred texts during Diocletian's persecution. After many appeals, the empire responded with force.[145] In 408 in his Letter 93, Augustine defended the government's action.[145][146] Augustine's authority on the use of coercion for conversion was undisputed for over a millennium in Western Christianity, and according to Peter Brown, "it provided the theological foundation for the justification of medieval persecution".[147]
↑ Intense missionary activity between the fifth and eighth centuries led to eastern Iran, Arabia, central Asia, parts of China, and the coasts of India and Indonesia adopting Nestorian Christianity. Coptic missionaries spread the Nestorian faith up the Nile through Upper Egypt to Nubia, Eritrea, and Ethiopia.[203]
↑ The early Middle Ages was an age of uncertainty, and the role of relics and "holy men" able to provide special access to the divine became increasingly important.[208][209] Donations for the dead to receive prayers (with that special access) for salvation after death provided an ongoing source of wealth.[210][211]
↑ The prince appointed the clergy to positions in government service, satisfied their material needs, determined who would fill the higher ecclesiastical positions, and directed the synods of bishops in the Kievan metropolitanate.[253]
↑ The parish emerged as one of the fundamental institutions of medieval Europe.[258][299][298] After the eleventh century, education began at home then continued in the parish of one's birth instead of in the monastery.[300][301] The parish priest (secular clergy) celebrated the liturgy, visited the sick, instructed the young, gave aid to the poor, ministered to the dying, and monitored and maintained his parish's income from land, livestock, rents and tithes.[300]
↑ Bishoprics were lifetime appointments, so a king could better control their powers and the revenues they collected than those of hereditary noblemen. He could place an aspirant of his choice, or leave the post vacant and collect the revenues himself (theoretically in trust for a future bishop), or he could bestow a bishopric to compensate a helpful noble. For the church, ending this practice would support independence from the state, encourage reform, and provide better pastoral care. For the civil authorities, ending lay investiture meant the power of the Holy Roman Emperor and the European nobility would be reduced.[312][159][313][314]
↑ Scholasticism was a departure from the Augustinian thinking that had dominated the church for centuries. The writings of Thomas Aquinas are considered the height of Scholastic thought. His reconciliation of reason, law, politics, and faith provided the foundation for much modern theology and law.[247][351][352]
↑ These rulers saw crusade as a tool for territorial expansion, alliance building, and the empowerment of their own nascent church and state.[380]
↑ Some claimed the clergy did little to help the suffering, although the high mortality rate amongst clerics indicates many continued to care for the sick.[391] Other medieval folk claimed it was the "corrupted" and "vice-ridden" clergy that had caused the many calamities they believed were punishments from God.[391] While there is scholarly disagreement over using "anticlericalism" to describe the pre-Reformation Middle Ages, the term is generally used by scholars.[392]
↑ Frankfurt's Jews flourished between 1453 and 1613 despite harsh discrimination. They were restricted to one street and were subject to strict rules if they wished to leave, but they were allowed to maintain some self-governance. They had their own laws, leaders, and a well-known Rabbinical school that also functioned as a religious and cultural centre.[419]
↑ Wives and daughters had long been essential in the family workshop, but outside work opportunities for women tightened in the late Middle Ages. Female labour was restricted by guilds that were "patriarchal, hierarchical, and elitist".[425] Within this framework, there was variation. A minority of women took advantage of loopholes, achieving independent guild status exercising their privileges in the same ways men did.[426][424]
↑ The oldest Ottoman document lists 57 bishoprics in Constantinople of 1483. By 1525, bishoprics had decreased to fifty, and only forty are recorded from 1641–1651.[434][431]
↑ Of those condemned by the Inquisition of Valencia before 1530, ninety-two percent were Jews.[443]
↑ In a study of sermon content, William Skiles says "Confessing Church pastors opposed the Nazi regime on three fronts... first, they expressed harsh criticism of Nazi persecution of Christians and the German churches; second, they condemned National Socialism as a false ideology that worships false gods; and third, they challenged Nazi anti-Semitic ideology by supporting Jews as the chosen people of God and Judaism as a historic foundation of Christianity".[573]
↑ By October 1944, 45% of all pastors and 98% of non-ordained vicars and candidates had been drafted into military service; 117 German pastors of Jewish descent served at this time, and yet at least 43% fled Nazi Germany because it became impossible for them to continue in their ministries.[576]
↑ After the collapse of communism, Christianity grew and expanded in Eastern Europe and Russia while at the same time, it spread in Africa and Asia, shifting Christianity's population center east and south.[501][583] In 1900, under colonial rule, there were just under 9 million Christians in Africa. By 1960, and the end of colonialism, there were about 60 million. By 2005, African Christians had increased to 393 million, about half of the continent's total population.[546] Population in Africa has continued to grow with the percentage of Christians remaining at about half in 2022.[578] This expansion has been labeled a "fourth great age of Christian expansion".[584] Examples include Simon Kimbangu's movement, the Kimbanguist church, which had a radical reputation in its early days in the Congo, was suppressed for forty years, and has now become the largest independent church in Africa with upwards of 3 million members.[585] In 2019, 65% of Melillans in Northern Africa across from Spain identified themselves as Roman Catholic.[586] In the early twenty-first century, Kenya has the largest yearly meeting of Quakers outside the United States. In Uganda, more Anglicans attend church than do so in England. Ahafo, Ghana is recognized as more vigorously Christian than any place in the United Kingdom.[587] There is revival in East Africa, and vigorous women's movements called Rukwadzano in Zimbabwe and Manyano in South Africa. The Apostles of John Maranke, which began in Rhodesia, now have branches in seven countries.[588]Christianity has grown rapidly in China and the rest of Southeast Asia, especially Korea, where it grew faster after colonialism ended.[589][590][591] A rapid expansion of charismatic Christianity began in the 1980s, leading Asia to rival Latin America in the population of Charismatic and Pentecostal Christians.[592][593] The Council on Foreign Relations data shows a 10% yearly growth in Chinese Christian populations since 1979. Increasingly, this includes young people more than any other group.[594][595][596]
Related Research Articles
Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion, professing that Jesus was raised from the dead and is the Son of God, whose coming as the Messiah (Christ) was prophesied in the Hebrew Bible and chronicled in the New Testament. It is the world's largest and most widespread religion with over 2.38 billion followers, comprising around 31.2% of the world population. Its adherents, known as Christians, are estimated to make up a majority of the population in 157 countries and territories.
The terms Christendom or Christian world commonly refer to the global Christian community, Christian states, Christian-majority countries or countries in which Christianity is dominant or prevails.
The persecution of Christians can be historically traced from the first century of the Christian era to the present day. Christian missionaries and converts to Christianity have both been targeted for persecution, sometimes to the point of being martyred for their faith, ever since the emergence of Christianity.
The relationship between religion and science involves discussions that interconnect the study of the natural world, history, philosophy, and theology. Even though the ancient and medieval worlds did not have conceptions resembling the modern understandings of "science" or of "religion", certain elements of modern ideas on the subject recur throughout history. The pair-structured phrases "religion and science" and "science and religion" first emerged in the literature during the 19th century. This coincided with the refining of "science" and of "religion" as distinct concepts in the preceding few centuries—partly due to professionalization of the sciences, the Protestant Reformation, colonization, and globalization. Since then the relationship between science and religion has been characterized in terms of "conflict", "harmony", "complexity", and "mutual independence", among others.
Christianization is a term for the specific type of change that occurs when someone or something has been or is being converted to Christianity. Christianization has, for the most part, spread through missions by individual conversions, but has also, in some instances, been the result of violence by individuals and groups such as governments and militaries. Christianization is also the term used to designate the conversion of previously non-Christian practices, spaces and places to Christian uses and names. In a third manner, the term has been used to describe the changes that naturally emerge in a nation when sufficient numbers of individuals convert, or when secular leaders require those changes. Christianization of a nation is an ongoing process.
The conflict thesis is a historiographical approach in the history of science that originated in the 19th century with John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White. It maintains that there is an intrinsic intellectual conflict between religion and science, and that it inevitably leads to hostility. The consensus among historians of science is that the thesis has long been discredited, which explains the rejection of the thesis by contemporary scholars. Into the 21st century, historians of science widely accept a complexity thesis.
The history of Christian thought has included concepts of both inclusivity and exclusivity from its beginnings, that have been understood and applied differently in different ages, and have led to practices of both persecution and toleration. Early Christian thought established Christian identity, defined heresy, separated itself from polytheism and Judaism and developed the theological conviction called supersessionism. In the centuries after Christianity became the official religion of Rome, some scholars say Christianity became a persecuting religion. Others say the change to Christian leadership did not cause a persecution of pagans, and that what little violence occurred was primarily directed at non-orthodox Christians.
The growth of Early Christianity from its obscure origin c. AD 40, with fewer than 1,000 followers, to being the majority religion of the entire Roman Empire by AD 400, has been examined through a wide variety of historiographical approaches.
Christianity is the predominant religion in Europe. Christianity has been practiced in Europe since the first century, and a number of the Pauline Epistles were addressed to Christians living in Greece, as well as other parts of the Roman Empire.
Paganism is commonly used to refer to various religions that existed during Antiquity and the Middle Ages, such as the Greco-Roman religions of the Roman Empire, including the Roman imperial cult, the various mystery religions, religious philosophies such as Neoplatonism and Gnosticism, and more localized ethnic religions practiced both inside and outside the empire. During the Middle Ages, the term was also adapted to refer to religions practiced outside the former Roman Empire, such as Germanic paganism, Egyptian paganism and Baltic paganism.
Political theology is a term which has been used in discussion of the ways in which theological concepts or ways of thinking relate to politics. The term is often used to denote religious thought about political principled questions. Scholars such as Carl Schmitt, a prominent Nazi jurist and political theorist, who wrote extensively on how to effectively wield political power, used it to denote religious concepts that were secularized and thus became key political concepts. It has often been affiliated with Christianity, but since the 21st century, it has more recently been discussed with relation to other religions.
The Abrahamic religions are a grouping of several religions that revere Abraham in their scripture, with the three largest and most influential being Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The religions share doctrinal, historical, and geographic overlap that naturally contrasts them with the Dharmic religions of India, Iranian religions, or traditions such as Chinese folk religion.
Christianity has been intricately intertwined with the history and formation of Western society. Throughout its long history, the Church has been a major source of social services like schooling and medical care; an inspiration for art, culture and philosophy; and an influential player in politics and religion. In various ways it has sought to affect Western attitudes towards vice and virtue in diverse fields. Festivals like Easter and Christmas are marked as public holidays; the Gregorian Calendar has been adopted internationally as the civil calendar; and the calendar itself is measured from an estimation of the date of Jesus's birth.
The history of the Catholic Church is the formation, events, and historical development of the Catholic Church through time.
Christians have had diverse attitudes towards violence and nonviolence over time. Both currently and historically, there have been four attitudes towards violence and war and four resulting practices of them within Christianity: non-resistance, Christian pacifism, just war, and preventive war. In the Roman Empire, the early church adopted a nonviolent stance when it came to war because the imitation of Jesus's sacrificial life was preferable to it. The concept of "Just War", the belief that limited uses of war were acceptable, originated in the writings of earlier non-Christian Roman and Greek thinkers such as Cicero and Plato. Later, this theory was adopted by Christian thinkers such as St Augustine, who like other Christians, borrowed much of the just war concept from Roman law and the works of Roman writers like Cicero. Even though "Just War" concept was widely accepted early on, warfare was not regarded as a virtuous activity and expressing concern for the salvation of those who killed enemies in battle, regardless of the cause for which they fought, was common. Concepts such as "Holy war", whereby fighting itself might be considered a penitential and spiritually meritorious act, did not emerge before the 11th century.
In the year before the First Council of Constantinople in 381, Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire when Theodosius I, emperor of the East, Gratian, emperor of the West, and Gratian's junior co-ruler Valentinian II issued the Edict of Thessalonica in 380, which recognized the catholic orthodoxy of Nicene Christians as the Roman Empire's state religion. Historians refer to the Nicene church associated with emperors in a variety of ways: as the catholic church, the orthodox church, the imperial church, the Roman church, or the Byzantine church, although some of those terms are also used for wider communions extending outside the Roman Empire. The Eastern Orthodox Church, Oriental Orthodoxy, and the Catholic Church all claim to stand in continuity from the Nicene church to which Theodosius granted recognition.
Christian culture generally includes all the cultural practices which have developed around the religion of Christianity. There are variations in the application of Christian beliefs in different cultures and traditions.
Most scientific and technical innovations prior to the Scientific Revolution were achieved by societies organized by religious traditions. Ancient Christian scholars pioneered individual elements of the scientific method. Historically, Christianity has been and still is a patron of sciences. It has been prolific in the foundation of schools, universities and hospitals, and many Christian clergy have been active in the sciences and have made significant contributions to the development of science.
The Carolingian Cross is but one variation in the vast historical imagery of Christian symbolic representations of the Crucifixion of Jesus, going back to at least the ninth century. All crosses and Christian symbols have an inherent meaning arising from a multitude of sources and distinct features that set them apart from other religions. From both a design aspect and a theological perspective, the Carolingian Cross consists of a mixture of Christian and pre-Christian concepts built over a long history of cultural adaptation, religious iconography, liturgical practices and theological premises. German graphic designer Rudolf Koch in 1932 published a collection of 158 plates of drawings of Christian symbols. Under the heading of "Cross", this includes twelve drawings of Christian cross variants. One of these, the "Carolingian Cross" shows a cross of four triquetras.
Christianization of the Roman Empire as diffusion of innovation looks at religious change in the Roman Empire's first three centuries through the lens of diffusion of innovations, a sociological theory popularized by Everett Rogers in 1962. Diffusion of innovation is a process of communication that takes place over time, among those within a social system, that explains how, why, and when new ideas spread. In this theory, an innovation's success or failure is dependent upon the characteristics of the innovation itself, the adopters, what communication channels are used, time, and the social system in which it all happens.
↑ Cameron 2006b, p.545: "In one of the most momentous precedents of his reign, during Constantine's twentieth-anniversary celebrations in 325, some 250 bishops assembled at Nicaea in the emperor's presence and at his order to settle difficult issues of contention across the empire about the date of Easter, episcopal succession and Christology. Constantine made a point of deferring to the bishops. He did not preside himself and only took his seat when they did, but it was the emperor who had summoned the council, and the sanctions that followed for the small number of dissenters including Arius were also imposed by him."
↑ Den Heijer 2011, p.65: "Many of the medieval universities in Western Europe were born under the aegis of the Catholic Church, usually as cathedral schools or by papal bull as Studia Generali"
↑ America magazine 2018: "A study of the religious lives of university students in Beijing published in a mainland Chinese academic journal Science and Atheism in 2013 showed Christianity to be the religion that interested students most and was the most active on campuses."
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![Funerary stele of Licinia Amias on marble, in the National Roman Museum. One of the earliest Christian inscriptions found, it comes from the early 3rd century Vatican necropolis area in Rome. It contains the text IKhThU[?] ZONTON
("fish of the living"), a predecessor of the Ichthys symbol. Stele Licinia Amias Terme 67646.jpg](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/24/Stele_Licinia_Amias_Terme_67646.jpg/260px-Stele_Licinia_Amias_Terme_67646.jpg)
