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

A major reinterpretation of the religious superstate that came to define both Europe and Christianity itself, by one of our foremost medieval historians.

In the fourth century AD, a new faith grew out of Palestine, overwhelming the paganism of Rome and resoundingly defeating a host of other rival belief systems. Almost a thousand years later, all of Europe was controlled by Christian rulers, and the religion, ingrained within culture and society, exercised a monolithic hold over its population. But how did a small sect of isolated and intensely committed congregations become a mass movement centrally directed from Rome? As Peter Heather shows in this illuminating new history, there was nothing inevitable about Christendom's rise and eventual dominance.

From Constantine the Great's pivotal conversion to Christianity to the crisis that followed the collapse of the Roman empire--which left the religion teetering on the edge of extinction--to the astonishing revolution of the eleventh century and beyond, out of which the Papacy emerged as the head of a vast international corporation, Heather traces Christendom's chameleonlike capacity for self-reinvention, as it not only defined a fledgling religion but transformed it into an institution that wielded effective authority across virtually all of the disparate peoples of medieval Europe.

Authoritative, vivid, and filled with new insights, this is an unparalleled history of early Christianity.

Author: Peter Heather
Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
Published: 04/04/2023
Pages: 736
Binding Type: Hardcover
Weight: 2.34lbs
Size: 9.49h x 6.49w x 1.89d
ISBN: 9780451494306

Review Citation(s):
Library Journal Prepub Alert 11/01/2022 pg. 14
Publishers Weekly 02/27/2023
Booklist 03/01/2023 pg. 14
Kirkus Reviews 03/01/2023
Library Journal 03/01/2023 pg. 141

About the Author
PETER HEATHER is chair of medieval history at King's College, London. His many books include The Fall of the Roman Empire, Empires and Barbarians, The Restoration of Rome, and, most recently, Rome Resurgent. He lives in London.