Roman Empire

St. Lawrence (martyred 258) before Emperor Valerianus by Fra Angelico

The Christian gospel came into a Roman Empire which had only recently emerged from a long series of civil wars, and which would experience two more major periods of civil war over the next centuries.^[43] Romans of this era feared civil disorder, giving their highest regard to peace, harmony and order.^[44] Piety equaled loyalty to family, class, city and emperor, and it was demonstrated by loyalty to the practices and rituals of the old religious ways, not by the individual faith of Christianity.^[45]

While Christianity was largely tolerated, some also saw it as a threat to "Romanness" which produced localized persecution by mobs and governors.^[46][47] In 250, Decius made it a capital offence to refuse to make sacrifices to Roman gods resulting in widespread persecution of Christians.^[48][49] Valerian pursued similar policies later that decade. The last and most severe official persecution, the Diocletianic Persecution, took place in 303–311.^[50]

Jews and Gentiles

The Church of Saint Peter near Antioch (modern-day Antakya), the city where the disciples were called "Christians".^[51]

Christianity originated as a sect of apocalyptic Jewish Christians within Second Temple Judaism.^[1][52] While there is evidence supporting the presence of Gentile Christians even in the earliest Christian communities of the New Testament (Acts 10), most early Christians, such as the Ebionites, were actively Jewish.^[52] The earliest Christian community in Jerusalem was led by James the Just, brother of Jesus.^[53][54] According to Acts 9,^[55] they described themselves as "disciples of the Lord" and followers "of the Way", and according to Acts 11,^[56] a settled community of disciples at Antioch were the first to be called "Christians".^[57][58][59]

The Roman province of Judea in the first century AD

From Jerusalem, Christianity spread into the Jewish diaspora communities outside the Palestinian homeland.^{[60][note 4]} Christianity and Judaism gradually grew apart over doctrinal, social and historical differences.^[2]

Asia Minor and Achaea

Asia Minor in the 2nd century AD - general map - Roman provinces under Trajan - bleached - English legend

Map roman cities in Greece-en

Christine Trevett writes in the Cambridge History of Christianity that "Asia Minor and Achaea were nurseries for Christianity."^[79] Christian churches grew in cities with diverse cultures: Athens, Corinth, Ephesus, and Pergamum.^{[79][note 5]} In the second and third centuries, conflicts over Christ's divinity and humanity emerged.^[86] Trevett writes that "There was not just Christian diversity but a proud distinctiveness in Asia Minor. Its catholic leaders stood their ground", so that, by the end of the second century, they were forming 'official' statements of ‘orthodox’ Christian belief seeing apostolic teaching as authoritative.^[87]

Egypt

1865 Spruner Map of the Roman Empire under Diocletian - Geographicus - ImperiumRomanumDiocletian-spruner-1865

There is no archaeological evidence of Christianity in Egypt before the fourth century, however, Birger Pearson writes that the literary evidence is "massive".^{[88][note 6]} Papyrologist Colin Roberts concludes that the earliest Egyptian ‘Christians’ were not a separate community but were instead part of the Jewish community of Alexandria.^{[93][note 7]}

According to Pearson, Egyptian Christianity began in Alexandria "... probably in the first century".^[96] Gnosticism appeared in the second century providing no support for the view that Gnosticism was the earliest form of Christianity in Egypt.^[97] Marcionite Christianity came to Alexandria in the mid-second century.^[98] Alexandrian Christians like Clement and Origen wrote of the church’s core apostolic faith as the same the world over.^[99]

In this early period, Christian religion expanded beyond Alexandria into the interior of Egypt where it was influenced by native Egyptian culture and language. This produced a distinctive Coptic Christianity which is still active in the twenty-first century.^{[100][note 8]}

According to Pearson, "By the end of the third century, the Alexandrian church was at least as influential in the east as the Roman church was in the west".^[101]

Syria and Mesopotamia

Roman Empire - Syria Coele (AD 210)

Christianity in Antioch is mentioned in Paul's epistles written before 60 AD, and scholars generally see Antioch as a primary center of early Christianity.^{[102][note 9]}

The prophet Mani was born in Persian Mesopotamia in 216, and his religion, Manichaeism, was popular in Syria for some centuries.^[105][106]

Christians in this region had little, if any, direct experience with persecution before the fourth century.^[107] By the turn of the fourth century, foundation legends had begun to appear. "Most famous was the legendary correspondence between Jesus and king Abgar Ukkama (‘the Black’) of Edessa" writes Harvey.^[108]

Gaul

Most of what is known of early Christianity in Gaul comes from the Letter of the churches of Vienne and Lyons concerning the persecution of Christians in the seventeenth year of Marcus Aurelius reign.^[109] The letter theologically interprets the detailed suffering and martyrdom of eleven Christians from Vienne and Lyons, although later martyrologies record 49 names.^[110]

Irenaeus, who became bishop of Lyons after the martyrdoms, is the most likely author.^[111] Behr writes that "Irenaeus describes how, in his early youth, he had known Polycarp, the bishop of the church in Smyrna. This connection with Polycarp was important for Irenaeus: he emphasises that Polycarp had been appointed bishop of Smyrna by the apostles themselves and spoke often about his discussion with John and others who had seen the Lord. Irenaeus thus brought with him to Gaul a living connection with the age of the apostles".^[112]

There is nothing more of Christianity in Gaul beyond one inscription until the beginning of the fourth century.^[113]

North Africa

Roman provinces of North Africa

Roman Empire - Africa Proconsularis (125 AD)

The origins of Christianity in North Africa are unknown, but most scholars connect it to the Jewish communities of Carthage.^[114] There were issues of disagreement, but Tertullian and Cyprian both proclaimed the unity of the church.^[115]

Christians were persecuted in Africa intermittently from 180 until 305.^{[116][note 10]} Maureen Tilley in the Cambridge History of Christianity writes that in 253, persecution under Valerian (r. 253–9), aimed specifically at high-ranking clergy, began. "Some clergy were sentenced to the imperial mines (Cypr. Ep. 76–9). During the summer of 256, the higher clergy became subject to the death penalty; upper-class men lost their status and property and, if they persisted in the faith, were also executed. Upper-class women were exiled and their property seized (Cypr. Ep. 80)."^[118] Persecution under Emperors Decius and Valerian created long-lasting problems for the African church when those who had recanted later tried to rejoin the church.^[119]

"In the 290s", according to Tilley, "the military began to execute soldiers, such as Maximilian of Theveste and Marcellus of Tingis, for refusal to serve after conversion".^[120]

Rome

According to historian George Edmundson, there is an "enormous" amount of both modern scholarship and controversy on the founding of the church in Rome.^[121] It is likely the Christian message arrived in Rome very early.^[122] Edmundson writes that an established Christian church already existed in the city of Rome by 57 AD when Paul arrived there.^[123] Tradition and evidence support Peter as the founder of the church at Rome.^[124]

Markus Vinzent has written that Rome was a melting pot of ideas, and the Christian church there was "fragmented and subject to repeated internal upheavals in the first three centuries [from] controversies imported by immigrants from around the empire".^[125] According to Vinzent, this means Walter Bauer’s thesis that heretical forms of Christianity were brought into line by Rome imposing its authority is not supportable, since a powerful, united, Roman church capable of forcing its will on others did not exist before the eighth century.^{[126][127][128]}

Heresey and orthodoxy

Emerging Christianity embraced some theological, ecclesiological and regional diversity, but ‘insider-outsider’ boundaries were still being determined in this period.^[159] ‘Orthodoxy’ was not the exclusive property of one group, and many of the ideas in Gnostic or New Prophecy/Montanist or Marcionite teachings overlapped traditional views.^[160] Defining ‘orthodoxy,’ therefore, took time.^[161] According to Christine Trevett, this makes it questionable whether orthodoxy and heresy can even be spoken of, before the council of Nicaea, as real categories of thought.^[159]

The earliest writers emphasized the unity of Christianity and 'core beliefs' based on apostolic authority.^{[115][162][163][164]}

Germanic Christianity

The integration of barbarian people into the Roman world of the fourth century transformed both Romans and barbarians. Beginning with the Goths around 369, various Germanic people adopted Christianity, and began to form into the distinct ethnic groups that would become the future nations of Europe.^{[179][180][181]} At least one historian of the time, Orosius, wrote that conversion made the barbarians milder and set limits on their "savagery".^[182] In all cases, Christianization meant "the Germanic conquerors lost their native languages" as these languages became Latinized.^[183]

Visigothic Spain

In 416, the Germanic Visigoths had crossed into Hispania as Roman allies.^[184] An important shift took place in 612 when the Visigothic King Sisebut declared the obligatory conversion of all Jews in Spain, contradicting Pope Gregory who had reiterated the traditional ban against forced conversion of the Jews in 591.^[185] Scholars refer to this shift as a "seismic moment" in Christian history.^[186]

Byzantium

The fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 had little direct impact on the Eastern Roman Empire. Called Byzantine because Constantinople was founded on the site of the ancient city of Byzantium, the East became the Byzantine Empire with an "autocratic government, stable farm economy, Greek intellectual heritage and ... Orthodox Christianity". It had great wealth and economic resources which enabled it to survive until 1453.^[187]

Justinian I and Eastern influence in the West

The extent of the Byzantine Empire under Justinian's uncle Justin I is shown in the darker color. The lighter color shows the conquests of his successor, Justinian I also known as Justinian the Great

A mosaic of Justinian I in the Basilica of San Vitale, Ravenna, Italy

In the sixth century, the Byzantine Emperor Justinian I, attempted to reunite east and west by taking over both territory and the church. From the late seventh to the middle of the eighth century, Popes had to be approved by the Byzantine emperor before they could be installed. This resulted in the Byzantine papacy when eleven of the thirteen men who held the position of Roman Pope were Eastern.^[188] Along with losses to Islam and changes within Christianity itself, this helped put an end to Ancient Christianity transforming it into its eclectic medieval forms.^{[189][190][191][192][193]}

Jews and supersessionism

In the fourth century, Augustine argued that the Jewish people should not be forcibly converted or killed, but that they should be left alone. According to Anna Sapir Abulafia, most scholars agree that Jews and Christians in Latin Christendom lived in relative peace with one another until the thirteenth century.^[194][195] In these earlier centuries, scattered violence toward Jews occasionally took place during riots led by mobs, local leaders, and lower level clergy without the support of church leaders who generally followed Augustine's teachings.^[196][197]

Sometime before the fifth century, the church had taken its universally held traditional interpretation of Revelation 20:4–6 called (Millennialism), (the hope of the thousand-year reign of the Messiah on earth, centered in Jerusalem, ruling with the redeemed Israel), and augmented it with supersessionism (an allegorized version which sees the church as the metaphorical Israel in place of the Jews). Supersessionism has never been an official or a universal doctrine, but has been a part of Christian thought through much of history.^[198][199] Many Jewish writers trace anti-semitism (and its consequences in World War II), to this doctrine.^[200][201]

Pagans

Constantine ruled for 31 years and never outlawed paganism.^[202][203] What he did do, according to Bradbury, was confiscate temple hoards of gold and silver to finance his building projects and establish a stable currency. On a few occasions, he confiscated temple land.^[204] He refused to personally support pagan beliefs while also speaking out against them.^[205] He forbade pagan sacrifices and closed temples that continued to offer them.^[202]

Blood sacrifice was the element of pagan culture most abhorrent to Christians, though Christian emperors often tolerated other pagan practices.^[206][207] Constantine authored several laws that threatened and menaced any who continued to practice sacrifice.^[208][209] Peter Brown notes that the language of the anti-sacrifice laws "was uniformly vehement", and the "penalties they proposed were frequently horrifying", evidencing the intent of terrorizing the populace into acceptance.^[210]

There is no evidence of any of the horrific punishments ever being enacted.^[211] There is no record of anyone being executed for violating religious laws before Tiberius II Constantine at the end of the sixth century (574–582).^[212] Still, sacrifice, a common practice in nearly all nations of the world prior to this, largely disappeared from the cities of the Roman Empire by the mid fourth century.^[206]

Eusebius, in his church history, writes that Constantine campaigned against the temples as well as sacrifice, however, there are discrepancies in the evidence.^[213] Temple destruction is attested to in 43 cases in the written sources, but only four have been confirmed by archaeological evidence.^[214]

Trombley and MacMullen explain it is common for discrepancies between ancient literary sources and archaeological evidence to exist.^[215][216] At the sacred oak and spring at Mamre, a site venerated and occupied by Jews, Christians, and pagans alike, the literature says Constantine ordered the burning of the idols, the destruction of the altar, and erection of a church on the spot of the temple.^[217] The archaeology of the site shows that Constantine's church, along with its attendant buildings, occupied a peripheral sector of the precinct leaving the rest unhindered.^{[218][note 13]}

Constantine was vigorous in reclaiming confiscated properties for the church, whenever these issues were brought to his attention, and he used reclamation to justify the destruction of some pagan temples such as Aphrodite's temple in Jerusalem. For the most part, Constantine simply neglected them.^{[221][222][223][note 14]}

According to Peter Brown, Constantine's conversion meant that, as far as paganism was concerned, "everything was done but the sweeping up": except for a few instances, "In most areas, polytheists were not molested", they were simply ignored.^[231][232] Fourth century Christians focused on heresy as the higher priority.^[233][234]

Christianity as a state religion

The first countries to make Christianity their state religion were Armenia (301), Georgia (fourth century), Ethiopia and Eritrea in 325.^{[235][236][237]}

If, and when, the Roman Empire might have officially made Christianity its state religion continues to be debated. Substantial growth in the third and fourth centuries made Christianity the majority religion by the mid-fourth century, and after Constantine until the Fall of Empire, all emperors were Christian except Julian. Christian Emperors wanted the empire to become a Christian empire.^[238]

According to Bart Ehrman biblical scholar, the first Christian emperor "Constantine did not make Christianity the one official and viable religion. He made it a licit religion..."^[239] Of those that followed Constantine, historian Michele Renee Salzman has written that "When the Theodosian Code was published in 438, no emperor had as yet legislated enforced conversion... no emperor was willing to legalize the enforced conversion of pagans until [the Eastern emperor] Justinian in A.D. 529" - 50 years after the Western Empire had been lost to "barbarians".^[240]

In the centuries following his death, Roman Emperor Theodosius I (347–395) was acclaimed, by the Christian literary tradition, as the emperor who destroyed paganism and established Nicene Christianity as the official religion of the empire.^{[note 15]} According to Ramsay MacMullen, Alan Cameron and most twenty-first century scholars, this is a distortion created by orthodox Christian authors as part of their war with the Arians.^{[248][249][250][251]}

R. Malcolm Errington looked for evidence among the reactions to imperial law by Christian and non-Christian historians and commentators who wrote during and following the publication of the Theodosian Code of 438.^[252] Errington writes that they were almost universally unaware of the existence - or any impact - of these laws, "even about rulings such as Cunctos Populos or Episcopis Tradi which in modern times have been stylized into turning points in the history of Christianity".^[253]

Errington concludes that none of the imperial laws made a noticeable contribution to establishing Christian Orthodoxy in the west.^[253] Nor did Theodosius ever see himself, or advertise himself, "as a destroyer of the old cults" writes Mark Hebblewhite in his 2020 biography of Theodosius.^[254][255] Paganism did not end with Theodosius, though it had been gradually declining in popularity since the second century BC.^{[256][257][258]}

First ecumenical councils

Imagined portrait of Arius; detail of a Cretan School icon, c. 1591, depicting the First Council of Nicaea.

During Antiquity, the Eastern church produced multiple doctrinal controversies and the first ecumenical councils were convened to deal with them.^[259]

The first was between Arianism, (which said the divine nature of Jesus was not equal to the Father's), and orthodox trinitarianism which says they are equal. Arianism spread throughout most of the Roman Empire from the fourth century onwards.^[260] The First Council of Nicaea (325) and the First Council of Constantinople (381) resulted in a condemnation of Arian teachings and produced the Nicene Creed.^[260][261]

The Third, Fourth, Fifth and Sixth ecumenical councils are all characterized by attempts to define the human and divine nature of Jesus.^[262] One such attempt created the Nestorian controversy, then schism, then a communion of churches, including the Armenian, Assyrian, and Egyptian churches, resulting in what is today known as Oriental Orthodoxy.^{[263][264][265]}

The Church of the East during the Middle Ages

Triumph

While maintaining an apostolic set of core beliefs, and arguing with those who didn't, Christians of the fourth century also promulgated a universal belief that Constantine's conversion was evidence the Christian God had conquered the pagan gods in Heaven.^[266][267] This "triumph of Christianity" became the primary narrative of the fourth century, even though Christians were still a minority in the population.^{[268][269][270]}

Monasticism and hospitals for the poor

Coptic icon of St. Anthony the Great, father of Christian monasticism and early anchorite. The Coptic inscription reads Ⲡⲓⲛⲓϣϯ Ⲁⲃⲃⲁ Ⲁⲛⲧⲱⲛⲓ ('the Great Father Anthony').

Christian monasticism emerged in the third century, and by the fifth century, was a dominant force in all areas of late antique culture.^{[271][note 16]}

Monastics developed a health care system which allowed the sick to remain within the monastery as a special class afforded special benefits and care.^[277] This destigmatized illness and formed the basis for future public health care. The first public hospital (the Basiliad) was founded by Basil the Great in 369.^[278]

Central figures in the development of monasticism were Basil in the East and, in the West, Benedict, who created the Rule of Saint Benedict, which would become the most common rule throughout the Middle Ages and the starting point for other monastic rules.^[279]

Byzantine Orthodoxy

By the time of Justinian I (527–565), "With a population of over half a million, Constantinople had become overwhelmingly the largest city in the Mediterranean and the Middle East ... the preeminent model for earthly power at its most ebullient, formidable, and God-fearing" writes Peter Brown.^[309]

Following a series of heavy military reversals against the Muslims, Iconoclasm emerged within the provinces of the Byzantine Empire in the early 8th century. In the 720s, the Byzantine Emperor Leo III the Isaurian banned the pictorial representation of Christ, saints, and biblical scenes. In the Latin West, Pope Gregory III held two synods at Rome and condemned Leo's actions. The iconoclastic movement destroyed much of the Christian Church's early artistic history.^[310]

Western Europe, the Holy Roman Empire, Kievan Rus', and the Byzantine Empire in the Middle Ages (year 1000)

Africa

The kingdom of Axum, in Ethiopia became Christian around 340.^[311] Up to 570, the kingdom of Himyar (in modern Yemen) was Jewish, but the kingdom itself had Christian rulers supported by military power from the highlands of Ethiopia. ^[311]

Slavic Christianities

Throughout central and eastern Europe, the Balkan Peninsula^{[note 18]}, and the area north of the Danube^{[note 19]}, Christianization and political centralization went hand in hand.^[312][313] Local elites wanted to convert because they gained prestige and power through matrimonial alliances and participation in imperial rituals.^{[314][note 20]}

St. Cyril and St. Methodius monument on Mt. Radhošť

Significant missionary activity in this region only took place after Charlemagne defeated the Avar Khaganate.^[315] Two Byzantine brothers, Saints Constantine-Cyril and Methodius, played the key missionary roles in spreading Christianity to Bohemia, Moravia and Slovakia territories beginning in 863.^[316] They spent approximately 40 months in Great Moravia continuously translating texts, teaching students, and developing the first Slavic alphabet while translating the Gospel into the Old Church Slavonic language.^[317][318] Old Church Slavonic became the first literary language of the Slavs and, eventually, the educational foundation for all Slavic nations.^[317]

Law

Canon law of the Catholic Church (Latin: jus canonicum)^[381] was the first modern Western legal system, and is the oldest continuously functioning legal system in the West,^[382] predating European common law and civil law traditions.^[383] Justinian I's reforms had a clear effect on the evolution of jurisprudence, and Leo III's Ecloga influenced the formation of legal institutions in the Slavic world.^[384]

Avignon Papacy and the Western Schism

In 1309, Pope Clement V moved to Avignon in southern France in search of relief from Rome's factional politics.^[386] Seven popes resided there in the Avignon Papacy until 1378.^[390] In 1377 Pope Gregory XI returned to Rome. After his death, the papal conclave met in 1378 in Rome and elected an Italian Urban VI to succeed Gregory.^[386] The French cardinals did not approve. They held a second conclave electing Robert of Geneva instead. This began the Western Schism.^[391][386]

In 1409, the Pisan council saw no resolution and called for the resignation of the two Popes, electing a third to replace them both. They refused, leaving the church with three popes. Five years later, the Holy Roman Emperor called the Council of Constance (1414–1418) which resolved the conflict by electing Pope Martin V to replace the others.^[386]

Palais des Papes; it is one of the largest and most important medieval Gothic buildings in Europe

In 1418, the Papacy consolidated and focused on the pursuit of power.^[354] During this time, elite Italian families used their wealth to secure episcopal offices which led to individuals like Pope Alexander VI and Pope Sixtus IV who were known for ignoring the moral requirements of their position. Pontiffs such as Julius II spent lavishly to pursue personal grievances, private luxuries and public works.^[392]

Medieval Inquisition

The Medieval Inquisition, including the Episcopal Inquisition (1184–1230) and the later Papal Inquisition (1230s–1240s), was a type of criminal court established from around 1184 and run by the Roman Catholic Church, and local secular leaders dealing largely, but not exclusively, with religious issues such as heresy.^[393] Local law delivered the accused to the court, sometimes using torture for interrogation, while religious inquisitors stood by as recording witnesses.^[394]

Inquisition was not a unified institution.^[395][396] Jurisdiction was local, limited, and lack of support and opposition often obstructed it.^[395] Inquisition was contested stridently, in and outside the church. Opponents charged heresy inquisitions with proving the Roman church was "unchristian" and "a destroyer of its gospel legacy, or even the real enemy of Christ".^[397] Many parts of Europe had erratic inquisitions or none at all.^[395]

The Rise of Islam

The Umayyad Mosque was built on the site of a church

The rise of Islam (600 to 1517) unleashed a series of military campaigns that conquered Syria, Mesopotamia, Egypt and Persia by 650, adding North Africa and most of Spain by 740. Only the Franks and Constantinople were able to withstand this medieval juggernaut. Historians Matthews and Platt have written that, "At its height, the Arab Empire stretched from the Indus River and the borders of China in the East, to the Atlantic in the West, and from the Taurus mountains in the North to the Sahara in the South... Islam was the colossus of the Middle Ages".^{[405] [note 23][note 24]}

Crusades

The Kingdom of Jerusalem and the Crusader states with their strongholds in the Holy Land at their height, between the First and the Second Crusade (1135)

After 1071, when the Seljuk Turks closed Christian pilgrimages and defeated the Byzantines at Manzikert, the Emperor Alexius I asked for aid from Pope Urban II. Jaroslav Folda writes in The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades that Urban II responded by calling upon the knights of Christendom at the Council of Clermont on 27 November 1095, to "go to the aid of their brethren in the Holy Land and to liberate the Christian Holy sites from the heathen".^[422]

The First Crusade captured Antioch in 1099 and then Jerusalem. The Second Crusade occurred in 1145 when Edessa was taken by Islamic forces. Jerusalem was held until 1187 and the Third Crusade, after battles between Richard the Lionheart and Saladin. The Fourth Crusade, begun by Innocent III in 1202 was subverted by the Venetians. They funded it then ran out of money, and instructed the crusaders to go to Constantinople and get their money back. Crusaders sacked the city and other parts of Asia Minor, established the Latin Empire of Constantinople in Greece and Asia Minor, and contributed to the downfall of the Byzantine Empire. Five numbered crusades to the Holy Land culminated in the siege of Acre of 1219, essentially ending the Western presence in the Holy Land.^[423]

The crusades led to the development of national identities in the newly forming European nations, increased division with the East, and produced cultural changes from the exchange of medical knowledge, art and architecture, and increased trade.^[424][425]

Investiture controversy

Henry IV, the Holy Roman Emperor at the gate of Canossa Castle in 1077, during the Investiture controversy.

The Investiture controversy was the most significant conflict between secular and religious powers that took place in medieval Europe.^[426] It began as a dispute in the 11th century between the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV and Pope Gregory VII concerning who would appoint bishops (investiture).^[427] Ending lay investiture threatened to undercut the power of the Holy Roman Empire and the ambitions of the European nobility. But allowing lay investiture meant the Pope's authority over his own people was limited.^{[428][note 25]} It took "five decades of excommunications, denunciations and mutual depositions...spanning the reign of two emperors and six popes" to settle the controversy in 1122.^[431]

A similar controversy occurred in England between King Henry I and St. Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, over investiture and episcopal vacancy.^[432] The English dispute was resolved by the Concordat of London (1107).^[431]

Baltic wars

Baltic Tribes c 1200

Danish Bishop Absalon destroys the idol of Slavic god Svantevit at Arkona in a painting by Laurits Tuxen

When the Pope (Blessed) Eugenius III (1145–1153) called for a Second Crusade in response to the fall of Edessa in 1144, Saxon nobles in Eastern Europe refused to go.^[433] From the days of Charlemagne (747–814), the free barbarian people around the Baltic Sea had raided the countries that surrounded them, stealing crucial resources, killing, and enslaving captives.^[434] For the leaders of Eastern European countries that meant subduing the Baltic area was more important to them than going to the Holy land.^[433] In 1147, Eugenius' Divini dispensatione, gave the eastern nobles crusade indulgences for the Baltic area.^{[433][435][436]} The Northern, (or Baltic), Crusades followed, taking place, off and on, with and without papal support, from 1147 to 1316.^{[437][438][439]}

These rulers saw holy war as a tool for territorial expansion, alliance building, and the empowerment of their own young church and state.^[440] According to Fonnesberg-Schmidt, "While the theologians maintained that conversion should be voluntary, there was a widespread pragmatic acceptance of conversion obtained through political pressure or military coercion".^[441] There were often severe consequences for populations that chose to resist.^{[442][443][444]}

Albigensian Crusade

Languedoc_Map_1209

Map of Languedoc on the eve of the Albigensian Crusade

Languedoc in France (1789)

Cathars, also known as Albigensians, were the largest of the heretic groups that began reappearing in the High Middle Ages. They were concentrated in what was then the independent Languedoc region along the Mediterranean coast that, through this crusade, became southern France.

After decades of having called upon secular rulers for aid in dealing with the Cathars and getting no response,^[445] Pope Innocent III and the king of France, Philip Augustus, joined in 1209 in a military campaign that was promulgated as necessary for eliminating the Albigensian heresy.^[446][447] Scholars disagree on whether war was determined more by the Pope or by King Philip and his proxies for his own purposes.^{[448][note 26][note 27]}

By the end of the war 16 years later, the campaign no longer had the status of a crusade. Its fighters were not rewarded with dispensations. The army had seized and occupied the lands of nobles who had not sponsored Cathars, but had been in the good graces of the church, which had been unable to protect them. The result of these seizures was that the entire region came under the rule of the French king and became southern France.^[456]

Catharism continued for another hundred years (until 1350).^[457]

Iberian Reconquista

San Pedro de la Nave, one of the oldest churches in Spain.

Between 711 and 718, the Iberian peninsula had been conquered by Muslims in the Umayyad conquest. ^{[note 28]} The military struggle to reclaim the peninsula from Muslim rule took place for centuries until the Christian Kingdoms reconquered the Moorish states of Al-Ándalus in 1492.^[461]

Depiction of the Battle of Navas de Tolosa by 19th-century painter Francisco de Paula Van Halen.

Isabel and Ferdinand married in 1469, united Spain with themselves as the first king and queen, fought the Muslims in the Reconquista and soon after established the Spanish Inquisition.^[462]

During this time, "New Christians" had begun to appear as a socio-religious designation and legal distinction in the Spanish Empire and the Portuguese Empire.^[461] Most of the history of the "New Christians" refers to the Jewish converts, who were generally known as Conversos or Marranos,^[463] while the Muslim converts were known as Moriscos.^[464]

The Spanish inquisition was originally authorized by the Pope in answer to royal fears that Conversos and Muranos were spying and attempting to sabotage the new state. The initial inquisitors proved so severe that the Pope soon opposed it and unsuccessfully attempted to shut it down.^[465] Ferdinand is said to have pressured the Pope, and in October 1483, a papal bull conceded control of the inquisition to the Spanish crown.^[466] According to Spanish historian José Casanova, the Spanish inquisition became the first truly national, unified and centralized state institution.^[467]

Colonialism

American Discovery Viewed by Native Americans (Thomas Hart Benton, 1922). European discovery and colonization had many, though not exclusively, disastrous effects on the Indigenous peoples of the Americas and their societies.^{[16][17][490][491]}

Following the geographic discoveries of the 1400s and 1500s, increasing population and inflation led the emerging nation-states of Portugal, Spain, and France, the Dutch Republic, and England to explore, conquer, colonize and exploit the newly discovered territories.^[492] While colonialism was economic and political, it also opened the door for Christian missions.^[493][494] According to historical theologian Justo González, colonialism and missions each sometimes aided and sometimes impeded the other.^[495]

Different state actors created colonies that varied widely.^[496] Some colonies had institutions that allowed native populations to reap some benefits. Others became extractive colonies with predatory rule that produced an autocracy with a dismal record.^[497] Persecution, and violence toward local people and their native religions was a frequent aspect of extractive colonies.^{[498][15][16][17]}

Protestant Reformation

Martin Luther initiated the Reformation with his Ninety-five Theses in 1517.

In the early 16th century, attempts were made by the Christian theologians Martin Luther and Huldrych Zwingli, along with many others, to reform the Catholic Church. The Reformation is usually considered to have started with the publication of the Ninety-five Theses by Luther in 1517, although there was no schism until the 1521 Diet of Worms. The edicts of the Diet condemned Luther and officially banned citizens of the Holy Roman Empire from defending or propagating his ideas.^[499]

Early protest was against corruptions such as simony (the buying and selling of church offices), the holding of multiple church offices by one person at the same time, episcopal vacancies, and the sale of indulgences. The Protestant position also included the Five solae (sola scriptura, sola fide, sola gratia, solus Christus, soli Deo gloria), the priesthood of all believers, Law and Gospel, and the two kingdoms doctrine.

The three most important traditions to emerge directly from the Reformation were the Lutheran, Reformed, and Anglican traditions, though the latter group identifies as both "Reformed" and "Catholic", and some subgroups reject the classification as "Protestant".^[500]

Radical Reformation

Beginning in Germany and Switzerland in the 16th century, the Radical Reformation was a disorderly collection of loosely related reformation groups that included Anabaptists, Spiritualists, and Evangelical Rationalists.^[501] They opposed the traditional church-state theories of classical Protestantism (Lutherans, Reformed and Elizabethans), were often indifferent to governmental jurisdiction altogether, and supported a full separation from the state. They rejected Luther's key teachings on salvation by faith alone and predestination, along with Catholic transubstantiation. According to historian George Huntston Williams, members of the Radical Reformation are "equally distant from classical Protestantism and Tridentine Catholicism".^[500]

Counter-Reformation

According to Matthews and Platt, the Roman Catholic Church struck back at Protestant Reformation by launching its own three-pronged Counter-Reformation using "a revitalized papacy, new monastic orders, and an effective reforming council [the Council of Trent"].^[502]

Index Librorum Prohibitorum 1

Counter-Reformation began with Pope Paul III (1534 - 1549), the first in a series of 10 reforming popes from 1534-1605.^[502] He convened a council of Roman Catholic clergy from all over Europe, enlisting their support.^[502] In an effort to aid in the reclamation of morality, a committee was established to create a list of books thought to be detrimental to faith or morals. The Index of Forbidden books included the works of Luther, Calvin and other Protestants along with writings condemned as obscene. The list continued to be augmented into the 1960s.^[502]

Monastic reform had not been an influence in the church since the High Middle Ages (1100-1200) until the Counter-Reformation of the late sixteenth century when multiple new monastic orders rose.^[503] Among these were the Jesuits. Resembling a military company more than a monastic order in its hierarchy, discipline, and obedience to its founder, their vow of loyalty to the Pope set them apart from other monastic orders, leading them to be called "the shock troops of the papacy". Matthews and Platt write that the Jesuits soon became the church's chief weapon against Protestantism.^[503]

Monastic reform also led to the development of new, yet orthodox, forms of spirituality, such as that of the Spanish mystics and the French school of spirituality.^[504]

The Council of Trent (1545–1563) initiated by Pope Paul III met in three sessions between 1545 and 1563. The council affirmed tradition as equal to the Bible in authority, upheld monasticism, indulgences, and the worship of relics, with some attempt to prevent the abuses Protestants condemned.^[503] Steps were taken toward clerical reform. The Vulgate was the only Bible, salvation was through faith and works, and the seven sacraments of the Roman church. The power of bishops was expanded and papal control was tightened.^[505] This provided the foundation of Roman Catholic policies up to the present.^[505]

Religious wars (16th, 17th and early 18th centuries)

In the Early modern Era, "religious" wars ranging from international wars to internal conflicts were fought in parts of Europe and England. Many scholars see these wars as at least partly fought to obtain security and freedom for differing religious confessions; however it is also asserted they were fought more for political gain, since national, dynastic, and mercenary interests generally prevailed over religious concerns.^[506][507]

The Reapers of Death, an Allegory of War, from an Engraving of Hans-Sebald Beham(Sixteenth Century).—Collection of M. Amhroise Firmin-Didot. (14781836201)

War began in the Holy Roman Empire with the minor Knights' Revolt in 1522.^[508][509] Warfare intensified in the First Schmalkaldic War (1546-1547) and the Second Schmalkaldic War (1552-1555) after the Catholic Church began the Counter-Reformation.^[510] The rise of Calvinism triggered a second wave of wars.^[510] Seven years after the Peace of Augsburg had established a truce in Germany on the basis of territorialism, France became the centre of religious wars which lasted for 36 years.^[507] The final wave was the Thirty Years War (1618-1648). The involvement of foreign powers made it the largest and most disastrous.^[510]

The causes of these wars are debated.^{[note 30]} Political scientist James Bernard Murphy writes that "Virtually all major [political] theorists ... cite the ‘‘wars of religion’’ to ... demonstrate the dangers that religious belief poses to political order".^[515] However, scholars have largely interpreted these wars as struggles for independence that coincided with the break up of medieval empires into the modern nation states.^[510]

Tolerance

Historian Nicolette Mout writes in The Cambridge History of Christianity that debate on toleration occupied every version of the Christian faith from the Reformation onwards.^[516] Did peace require allowing only one faith and the punishment of heretics? Or should ancient opinions defending leniency, (based on the popular parable of the tares and wheat in Matthew 13:24–30, 36–43), be revived? What was the role of individual conscience?^[516]

This world changing debate was not confined to religion.^[516] Leaders of the modern states of Europe believed, as most people did at the time, that stability necessitated allowing only one faith within their countries. (It seemed apparent to those experiencing religious wars that plurality produced chaos.)^[517] The debate on religious toleration made it necessary to rethink, on a political level, all of the State's reasons for persecution.^[516] Many began arguing in favor of tolerance.^[518]

The Peace of Westphalia (1648) gave the Holy Roman Empire what Mout describes as "a highly durable legal and constitutional foundation for a form of toleration".^[519] Over the next two and a half centuries, many other treaties and political declarations of tolerance followed, until concepts of freedom of religion, freedom of speech and freedom of thought became established in most western countries.^[520][521]

Modern inquisitions

History of the Inquisition divides into two major parts: its Papal creation in the early thirteenth century, and its transformation into permanent secular governmental bureaucracies between 1478 and 1542.^[522]

Historian Helen Rawlings says, "the Spanish Inquisition was different [from earlier inquisitions] in one fundamental respect: it was responsible to the crown rather than the Pope and was used to consolidate state interest.^[523]

The Portuguese Inquisition, in close relationship with the church, was also controlled by the crown who established a government board, known as the General Council, to oversee it. The Grand Inquisitor, chosen by the king, was nearly always a member of the royal family.^[524]

T. F. Mayer, historian, writes that "the Roman Inquisition operated to serve the papacy's long standing political aims in Naples, Venice and Florence".^[525] Its activity was primarily bureaucratic. The Roman Inquisition is probably best known for its condemnation of Galileo.^[526]

Science and the Galileo Affair

Galileo before the Holy Office, a 19th-century painting by Joseph-Nicolas Robert-Fleury

The Galileo affair has been considered by many to be a paradigm defining moment in the history of the relationship between religion and science.^{[527][528][529]}

In 1610, Galileo published his Sidereus Nuncius (Starry Messenger), describing observations made with his new telescope that planets moved. Since Aristotle's rediscovery in the 1100s, western scientists along with the Catholic Church, had adopted Aristotle's physics and cosmology with the earth fixed in place.^[530][358] Jeffrey Foss writes that, by Galileo's time the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic view of the universe had itself been fixed in place for centuries and was "fully integrated with Catholic theology".^[531]

As a result, the majority of Galileo's fellow scientists rejected Galileo's assertions that planets moved. Most of them had no telescope, and Galileo had no theory of physics to explain how planets could orbit the sun; according to Aristotelian physics, that was impossible. (That would not be resolved for another hundred years.) Galileo's peers alerted religious authorities to his "errors" and asked them to intervene.^[532]

In response, the church forbade Galileo from teaching it, though it did not forbid discussing it, so long as it was clear it was merely a hypothesis. Instead, Galileo published books and asserted scientific superiority.^[531] He was summoned before the Roman Inquisition twice. First warned, he was next sentenced to house arrest on a charge of "grave suspicion of heresy".^[529]

French historian Louis Châtellier writes in the Cambridge History of Christianity that Galileo's condemnation - since he was a devoted Catholic - caused much consternation and private discussion.^[533] Speculation was about whether the judges were condemning Galileo or the "new science" and anyone who attempted to displace Aristotle. Thus, Châtellier concludes, "...in the mid-seventeenth century the relationship between scientific thinkers and ecclesiastical authorities was marked by reciprocal mistrust".^[534]

Witch trials (c. 1450 – c. 1750)

Until the 1300s, the official position of the Roman Catholic Church was that witches did not exist.^{[535][note 31]} While historians have been unable to pinpoint a single cause of what became known as the "witch frenzy", scholars have noted that, without changing church doctrine, a new but common stream of thought developed at every level of society that witches were both real and malevolent.^[539]

The highest concentration of witch trials occurred in the Holy Roman Empire (southwestern Germany) during the years 1561 to 1670.^[540] Ankarloo and Clark indicate the main pressure to prosecute witches came from the common people, and trials were mostly civil trials.^[541][542] Records from inquisitions show the belief in magic had remained so widespread among the rural people that it has convinced some historians Christianization had not been as successful as previously supposed.^[543] The majority of those brought to trial were not executed, and most of those accused were never brought to trial.^[540] There is broad agreement that approximately 100,000 people were prosecuted, (about 80% women, most over 40), while approximately forty to fifty thousand people were executed between 1561 and 1670.^[540][539]

Reawakenings

A revitalization of religious piety known as the first Great Awakening swept through the American colonies between the 1730s and the 1770s. Both religious and political in nature, it had roots in German Pietism and British Evangelicalism, and was a response to the extreme rationalism of biblical criticism, the anti-Christian tenets of the Age of Enlightenment, and its threat of assimilation by the modern state.^{[561][562][563][564]}

Beginning among the Presbyterians, it quickly spread to Congregationalists (Puritans) and Baptists, creating American Evangelicalism and Wesleyan Methodism.^[565] Battles over the movement and its dramatic style raged at both the congregational and denominational levels. This caused the division of American Protestantism into political 'Parties' for the first time, which eventually led to critical support for the American Revolution.^[566] In places like Connecticut and Massachusetts where one denomination received state funding, churches now began to lobby local legislatures to end that inequity by separating church and state.^[562] Theological pluralism became the new norm.^[567]

The Second Great Awakening (1800–1830s) led to the beginnings of the Mormons, the Restoration Movement and the Holiness movement. Participants united in extolling moral reform as the Christian alternative to armed revolution, and established societies that operated separately from any church to "teach the poor to read, suppress sexual vice and ungodly amusements such as cockfighting and bear-baiting, and to abolish the slave trade".^[568] These were pioneers in developing nationally integrated forms of organization which produced the mergers and business consolidations that reshaped the American economy.^[569] The beginnings of social reform movements concerning the abolition of slavery, women's rights, and temperance have been directly connected to this religious revival.^[570]

The Third Great Awakening began from 1857 and was most notable for taking the movement throughout the world, especially in English speaking countries.^[571]

Restorationism

Restorationism have not described themselves as a reform movement but have, instead, described themselves as restoring the church to its original form found in the book of Acts.^[572][573]

"Restorationism" is frequently used to describe the Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement. The term is also used to describe movements such as Adventism, which originated in the 1830s in the United States during the Second Great Awakening, and the Jehovah's Witnesses, founded in the late 1870s by Charles Taze Russell. The term can also be used to describe the Latter Day Saint movement, also known as Mormons, including the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), the Community of Christ and numerous other Latter Day Saint denominations. ^{[574][575][576][577]}

Campaign against slavery

Mary Anne Rawson (1801–1887) abolitionist with Tract Societies

Historian Christopher Brown has written in the Cambridge History of Christianity that, for four centuries, Christian Europe "had devised and operated a vast transatlantic traffic which had conveyed, as of 1808, more than 8 million African men, women, and children to the Americas and led to the death and enslavement in Africa and the Americas of many millions more. Professed Christians sold, purchased, and worked African slaves everywhere in the new American settlements, from Quebec to Quito... Christianity, then, was as important to the expansion of slavery in the Americas, as it was to its demise."^[578]

example of anti-slavery tract

Moral objections surfaced very soon after the establishment of the trade.^{[note 33]} In the earliest instances, denunciations came from Catholic priests.^{[581][note 34]} In the end, Anglo-American abolitionism, emerging first in the Religious Society of Friends, was a direct product of evangelical revival.^[583]

Abolitionist Anna Murray Douglass and wife of Frederick Douglass c. 1860

Several opponents of slavery, such as the Methodist leader John Wesley, used pamphlets to make a detailed case against the Atlantic slave trade. The Quakers helped guide these tracts into print, often subsidizing their publication and distribution. Friends organized the first anti-slavery societies in Britain and in the new United States.^[584] The moral reform of the Second Great Awakening was aided largely by American revivalists such as Timothy Dwight, Lyman Beecher and Charles Finney, who was influenced by Wesleyan theology.^[585][586]

The first black abolitionists were Calvinist theologians who denied that being black was the Mark of Cain, or that African blacks suffered from the Curse of Ham, and found no justification for slavery in the Bible.^[587] In the years after the American Revolution, black congregations sprang up around the English speaking world led by black preachers who brought revival, promoted communal and cultural autonomy, and provided the institutional base for promoting abolitionism. According to Brown, "It was in the black churches, ... that the case for immediate emancipation was sustained in the United States between 1790 and 1830".^[588]

Unlike the Puritan settlers, blacks could not think of themselves as entering a new Eden. Instead, they were arising like Lazarus, from deprivation and despair to reclaim their rightful heritage. In this interpretive framework, what lay ahead for men and women of African descent was a new Exodus, an escape from bondage, the day of jubilee when all wrongs would be redressed and blacks, as latter day Hebrews, would enjoy divine protection. This was the radical potential invoked by black ministers from the pulpit in the last years of the British and American slave trades".^[589]

Brown writes that abolitionism did not flourish in the societies of absolutist states.^[590] It was the Protestant revivalists who followed the Quaker example, and the new American republic that led to the "gradual but comprehensive abolition of slavery".^[591]

American colonialism

The beginning of American Protestant missions abroad followed the sailing of William Carey from England to India in 1793 after the Great awakening. At the same time, a great effort was also made to evangelize America.^[592] Missionaries played a crucial role in the acculturation of the American Indians.^{[593][594][595]}

The history of boarding schools for the indigenous populations in Canada and the US is mixed. While the majority of native children did not attend boarding school at all, of those that did, recent studies indicate a few found happiness and refuge while many others found suffering, forced assimilation, and abuse.^[596]

Over time, many missionaries came to respect the virtues of native culture. "After 1828, most missionaries found it difficult to defend the policies of their government" writes McLoughlin.^[593]

Capitalism and banking

Protestantism promoted economic growth and entrepreneurship, especially in the period after the Scientific and the Industrial Revolution.^[597][598] Scholars have identified a positive correlation between the rise of Protestantism and human capital formation,^[599] work ethic,^[600] economic development,^[601] and the development of the state system.^[602]

Max Weber in his book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904–1905) asserted that Protestant ethics and values along with the Calvinist doctrine of asceticism and predestination gave birth to capitalism.^[603][604] Weber says this contributed to economic growth and the development of banking across Northern Europe.^[605][606]

It is one of the most influential and cited books in sociology, yet its thesis has been controversial since its release. In opposition to Weber, historians such as Fernand Braudel and Hugh Trevor-Roper assert that capitalism developed in pre-Reformation Catholic communities. Joseph Schumpeter, an economist of the twentieth century, has referred to the Scholastics as "they who come nearer than does any other group to having been the 'founders' of scientific economics".^[607]

Under Nazism

Pope Pius XI

Pope Pius XI declared – Mit brennender Sorge – 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.^[608]

Catholic priests were executed in concentration camps alongside Jews; 2,600 Catholic priests were imprisoned in Dachau, and 2,000 of them were executed (cf. Priesterblock). A further 2,700 Polish priests were executed (a quarter of all Polish priests), and 5,350 Polish nuns were either displaced, imprisoned, or executed.^[609] Many Catholic laymen and clergy played notable roles in sheltering Jews during the Holocaust, including Pope Pius XII. The head rabbi of Rome became a Catholic in 1945 and, in honour of the actions the pope undertook to save Jewish lives, he took the name Eugenio (the pope's first name).^[610]

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.^[611][612] A smaller contingent, about a third of German Protestants, formed the Confessing Church which opposed Nazism. 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".^[613]

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.^{[614][615][note 35]} Bonhoeffer, a pacifist, was arrested, found guilty in the conspiracy to assassinate Hitler and executed.^[617]

Russian Orthodoxy

Churches of the Moscow Kremlin, as seen from the Balchug

The Russian Orthodox Church held a privileged position in the Russian Empire, expressed in the motto of the late empire from 1833: Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Populism. Nevertheless, the Church reform of Peter I in the early 18th century had placed the Orthodox authorities under the control of the tsar. An ober-procurator appointed by the tsar ran the committee which governed the Church between 1721 and 1918: the Most Holy Synod. The Church became involved in the various campaigns of russification,^[618] and was accused of involvement in Russian antisemitism,^[619] despite the lack of an official position on Judaism as such.^[620]

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.^{[621][622][623]} Some actions against Orthodox priests and believers included torture, being sent to prison camps, labour camps or mental hospitals, as well as execution.^[624][625]

Demolition of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow on the orders of Joseph Stalin, 5 December 1931, consistent with the doctrine of state atheism in the USSR.^[626]

In the first five years after the Bolshevik revolution, one journalist reported 28 bishops and 1,200 priests were executed.^[627] This included people like the Grand Duchess Elizabeth Fyodorovna who was at this point a monastic.^{[note 36]} Recently released evidence indicates over 8,000 were killed in 1922 during the conflict over church valuables.^[628] More than 100,000 Russian clergymen were executed between 1937 and 1941.^[629]

Under the state atheism of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc, Christians of many denominations experienced persecution, with many churches and monasteries being destroyed, as well as clergy being executed.^{[note 37][note 38][note 39]}