The names of gods were sometimes transformed into the names of saints who often had the same provenance and some of the same functions as the gods. Although many of the most notable leaders of Christian thought during the second, third, and fourth centuries were not located in Europe but either in Alexandria (Clement, Origen, Alexander, Athanasius, Cyril) or in Roman North Africa (Tertullian, Cyprian, Augustine) or still in Asia Minor (Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Cyril of Jerusalem, Jerome), most of them had some sort of European connection: Athanasius found asylum in Rome when he was driven out of Alexandria; before Jerome went to Palestine, he had undertaken the translation of the Vulgate at the behest of Pope Damasus, whom he served as secretary; Augustine was brought to Christianity in Europe through the teaching of Ambrose, bishop of Milan. It was only with the rise of Puritanism and its protest against such ambiguity that Reformed patterns of churchmanship and theology began to press for control within Anglicanism. Although it is historically incorrect to interpret the humanism of the Renaissance, whether Italian or Northern, as a rejection of the essential content of Christianity, it did represent an attack on many of its received traditions. To many European nations, Christianity represented western civilization and the basis for Anglo-Saxon morality. However, the date of retrieval is often important. Although the evidence for his having ever actually made such a journey to Spain is tenuous, tradition was quick to attribute one to him. A year later he had the Lithuanian people baptized, although elements of the pagan faith survived past the Middle Ages. What Christians of all denominations found objectionable in much of revolutionary ideology was not only its attack on political regimes with which the institutional church had made its peace, but also its alliance with intellectual and social movements that seemed bent on undermining the Christian faith itself. It was under the reign of Constantine I (306-337) where Christianity became an official religion of the empire. In all of these ways European Christianity was developing in the direction of the forms and structures it was to have when it came to deal with the new populations that arrived in Europe. [15] A number of historians have noted a twentieth-century "global shift" in Christianity, from a religion largely found in Europe and the Americas to one which is found in the Global South and Third World countries. Rulers such as Norways Olaf Tryggvason attempted to impose Christianity on his subjects, only to see them rebel and overthrow him. According to a 2010 study by the Pew Research Center, 76.2% of the European population identified themselves as Christians. National churches pledged their allegiance to the popeand went their own way in polity, liturgy, and religious practice. Latourette, K. S. A History of the Expansion of Christianity. During the ninth century, both the Papacy and the Byzantine church worked towards converting the Bulgarian peoples under their own jurisdiction. The Church seems to have been begun by him around the Bristol Channel area and 150 years later we have names of bishops recorded. Of the many instances in modern European history when secularism and Christianity clashed, the most renowned was probably the Kulturkampf in nineteenth-century Germany, in which the newly united German empire took drastic steps to curb the cultural and political status of the Roman Catholic Church. Therefore, be sure to refer to those guidelines when editing your bibliography or works cited list. . It was also from Christianity in Europe that there came the reminder of what Pope John Paul II called "the common Christian roots of the nations of Europe" and the summons to find in those roots a vision of the continuing relation between Christianity and European culture. Countries With the Most Christians The United States of America 29 Jun. Charlemagne was a medieval emperor who ruled much of Western Europe from 768 to 814. He did not speak a European language, and except for a few Romans, such as Pontius Pilate, he did not meet any Europeans. However, the term often focuses on "non-Western . history of Europe - History of Europe - Late Imperial Christianity, Religion, Empires: Many Roman provincials were Christian higher clergy. ." That persecution did not diminish the power and prestige of the Roman church, which became a significant presence in the city and (especially after the capture of Jerusalem in 70 ce and its consequent decline as the mother city of Christianity) first among the Christian centers of Europeindeed, of the Mediterranean world. "Christianity: Christianity in Western Europe [3], Since at least the legalization of Christianity by the Roman Emperor Constantine in the 4th century, Europe has been an important centre of Christian culture, even though the religion was inherited from the Middle East and important Christian communities have thrived outside Europe such as Oriental Orthodoxy and the Church of the East since the time of Christ. [citation needed] History of Christianity, 16501950. Vidler, Alec. Yes and no. History of English Christianity. While Christianity was dominant in Europe, questions remained. This included the destruction of the Saxons holy site at Irminsul and the massacre of 4500 Saxon captives at Verden in 782. Thank you for supporting our website! But in the Lutheran churches of Europe, above all in Germany and Scandinavia, these principles, enunciated officially in the Augsburg Confession of 1530, served as the foundation for new developments in many fields of culture. As worked out in the career and thought of John Calvin (15091564), it took sola Scriptura to mean an elimination of those features in worship and Christian culture that could not claim explicit biblical warrant. Whether or not this helped to create a spiritual climate in which modern European capitalism was able to take seed, as Max Weber and other scholars have contended, is still a matter of controversy, but Calvinism certainly did shape attitudes toward work, property, social justice, and public order not only in the Swiss and other non-Lutheran forms of Protestantism on the continent, but far beyond the borders of western Europe (including North America). [23] More recently, Klaus Koschorke and the Munich School of World Christianity has been highlighted for its contribution in understanding the polycentric nature of world Christianity. Chadwick, Owen. Fundamental differences of missionary methodology asserted themselves, most prominently in the Christianization of the Slavs during the ninth and tenth centuries. Also a part of the Reformation in Europe, despite their exclusion from conventional accounts, were the representatives of the several radical reformations. (September 2018) Brothers Cyril and Methodius bring Christianity to the Slavic peoples. Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) and the other Iberian explorers and conquistadores carried the banner of the crusader faith, and also sought profit while saving the souls of the infidels and pagans. Yet before the century that began with Louis XIV on the throne of France had ended, the overthrow of monarchy in France and the proclamation of a new order (even of a new calendar) symbolized the end of secular absolutism, and increasingly the end of Christian hegemony. The church in Gaul is thought by many scholars to have been the source of the earliest Christian missions to the British Isles, which date from the second or third century, when some of the Celtic inhabitants of Britain were converted (hence the usual designation "Celtic church"). The Lutheran chorale, which began with the hymns of Luther himself, flourished from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, producing not only hundreds of new liturgies and hymnals but also the sacred music of Johann Sebastian Bach (16851750). In the aftermath of the invention of nuclear weapons, Christianity in Europejoined then by both Roman Catholicism and Protestantism elsewheretook the lead in the task of rethinking the very notion of just war. Through the reformatory work of John Knox (c. 15141572), it was the Reformed version of Protestantism that prevailed in Scotland. . The Protestant Reformation did not exhaust the imperative sense of reform within the church. 15:24). The only religion recognized in Middle Ages Europe was Christianity and specifically Catholicism. Anabaptism criticized Lutheranism and Calvinism for not having gone far enough in their rejection of traditional Roman Catholic forms, and it pressed for a "believers' church," in which only those who made a public commitment and confession would be members; since that excluded infants, the practice of infant baptism was repudiated. The event with the most far-reaching consequences for the history of European Christianity, indeed for the history of Christianity everywhere, was the conversion of the emperor Constantine and the ensuing transformation of the Roman Empire into a Christian empire. [4], Movements in art and philosophy, such as the Humanist movement of the Renaissance and the Scholastic movement of the High Middle Ages, were motivated by a drive to connect Catholicism with Greek thought imported by Christian pilgrims. The end of the period is variously defined. In formulating the implications of the Reformation principles, the theologians of the Lutheran church constructed systems of Christian doctrine that sometimes rivaled those of the medieval Scholastics for comprehensiveness, if not for philosophical sophistication. With this acceptance came the construction of large public buildings, or churches, to serve the worship needs of Christians. The three largest Christian populations are found in the Americas as well as in Europe. We aim to be the leading content provider about all things medieval. In the Calvinist lands of Europe, therefore, far more than in the Lutheran ones, the Reformation brought about a concerted effort to reshape politics and economics in accordance with this standard. Chapters 3 and 4 cover the early history of the spread of Christianity in eastern Europe from both the West and the East. Over the past 100 years, Christianity has experienced a profound southern shift in its geographical center of gravity. https://www.encyclopedia.com/environment/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/christianity-christianity-western-europe, Politics and Religion: Politics and Christianity. However, after the end of World War II, as Christian missions ended in many countries, such as North Korea and China, and parts of Asia and Africa shifted due to decolonization and national independence, these aspects of world Christianity were largely lost. However, parts of the country would revert to paganism as the Vikings invaded and established their rule during the ninth and tenth centuries. And as the Christianity of western Europe began to come of age, its family resemblance to Byzantium became less discernible. [13][14] For these individuals, world Christianity was meant to promote the idea of Christian missions and ecumenical unity. Stephen, who is regarded as the national saint of Hungary, made sure that churches were built and those who did not follow Christian practices were punished. Constantine I By the beginning of the fourth century official persecution of Christianity had ended in the Roman Empire, and support for the religion grew even among elites. The monks were to become the principal missionaries to the new populations of Europe as well as the principal transmitters of the cultural heritage, classical as well as Christian, and thus the educators of medieval Europe. Efforts to bring Christianity to Anglo-Saxon England were not as smooth, but during the seventh century Christian missionaries, sent from both Ireland and the Papacy, were able to convert various rulers. That paradox was also at work in other aspects of medieval culture. As a consequence, in the course of the two centuries after Clovis, the Frankish crown became the principal protector of the Roman see, which reciprocated by supporting Frankish political and territorial ambitions. Christianity is the largest religion in Europe. . One of the regions in which the Calvinist Reformation became a major cultural force was the British Isles. From there, it spread throughout the world through missionaries and colonization. Legend has it that. The faith is Europe. Its very quaintness makes its discussions of Christianity especially helpful. Each of these reformations was to shape the history of European Christianity in a distinct way. Encyclopedia of Religion. The Vandal persecution of other Christians was one of the reasons why the Byzantine Empire conquered their territories in the years 533-34. Christianity rapidly moved from being persecuted to being tolerated to being preferred to being established. According to a 2010 study by the Pew Research Center, 76.2% of the European population identified themselves . While missionaries came to bring Christianity to parts of Scandinavia as early as the 8th century, it took a considerably long time before most of the region would abandon the Norse religion. On another level, however, the Crusades are frequently interpreted as a disaster both for Christianity and for Europe, for they not only failed to achieve their goal in Palestine but also proved to be divisive within Christendom itself. Regg, Walter: "Foreword. During the Middle Ages nearly all the lands of Europe converted to Christianity. The spectacle of a schism between two popes, one at Rome and the other at Avignon, seemed to prove that the medieval tradition of reform, as enunciated in the eleventh century by Gregory VII, was inadequate to the crisis of the fifteenth century. Mt. The oldest state-built church in the world, Etchmiadzin Cathedral, was built between AD 301303. In this short guide, we take a look at how various lands adopted Christianity, including by means of missionary efforts, politics and warfare. Christianity in the Middle Ages covers the history of Christianity from the fall of the Western Roman Empire ( c. 476 ). [2] It started with the ministry of Jesus, who proclaimed the coming of the Kingdom of God. New York, 1956. 16:1819) not only the forgiveness of sins but also political office, the papacy repeatedly came into conflict with the civil power, which often made use of the territorial church in its own land as an instrument of power politics. "[5] It also includes Indigenous or diasporic forms of Christianity in the Caribbean,[6] South America,[6] Western Europe,[7] and North America. [34], Although the Protestant reformation was a religious movement, it also had a strong impact on all other aspects of European life: marriage and family, education, the humanities and sciences, the political and social order, the economy, and the arts. Philosophically that belief has expressed itself in the construction of rational systems of thought and of conduct that attacked or simply ignored the claims of supernatural grace and revelation. Christianity is the largest religion in Europe. During that century, a series of church councils (Pisa, 1409; Constance, 14141417; Basel-Ferrara-Florence, 14311445) sought to achieve reform by legislating changes in church life, reestablishing (unsuccessfully) ties to the Eastern churches, formulating orthodox doctrine on various issues, such as purgatory, that had not been set down before, and clarifying the relation between the authority of the pope and the authority of the council. And the authority for knowing this promise and being assured of this grace was not the voice of the church, but the word of God in the Bible. Baltimore, 1961. To be consistent, many of the Anabaptists, notably the Mennonites, likewise disavowed the Constantinian union between church and state, and some of them even repudiated the definition of "just war" and hence the theory that Christians could wield the sword. After the Magyars invaded and conquered the Carpathian Basin at the end of the 9th century, efforts were made to convert them, with mild success. All of these were symptomatic of the growing alienationor, to put the matter more positively, of the growing self-awareness of western Europe as a Christian civilization in its own right rather than a Byzantine outpost. Enlightenment science, and above all the philosophy that both underlay much of the science and was based upon it, seemed increasingly to make the Christian doctrine of creation irrelevant. The reasons for their persecution vary. The clergy, who in medieval Europe had been tried in their own courts even for offenses against the political order (the issue on which Becket had clashed with the English crown) lost their special legal standing. The first major Christian writer, Coptic Church Here again, the relation between universal and particulara Latin literature, which is European, versus the several vernacular literatures, which are nationalmanifests the ambivalence of the Christian role in what the medieval historian Robert S. Lopez has called "the birth of Europe.". The Teutonic Order was able to carve out a state for themselves in parts of the Baltic region, but the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was unconquered and becoming an important regional power. The future of Christian Europe belonged to such an alliance, in which all the Germanic, Celtic, and western Slavic tribes would eventually share. Armenia was the first state in the world to adopt Christianity as its state religion in AD 301. [4] Until the Age of Enlightenment,[19] Christian culture guided the course of philosophy, literature, art, music and science. Crusades; Enlightenment, The; Humanism; Modernism, article on Christian Modernism; Monasticism, article on Christian Monasticism; New Religious Movements, article on New Religious Movements in Europe; Papacy; Reformation; Scholasticism. In every country of Europe, therefore, Luther's activity evoked not only a defense of Roman Catholic doctrine and order but also a call for greater dedication to the cause of reform. While Constantine himself did not become a Christian until he was on his deathbed, he supported the Church financially and oversaw its administration, even judging which religious beliefs were to be followed. The Roman Empire officially adopted Christianity in AD 380. This trend of irreligion and secularism has become more popular in recent centuries. Even the Bulgarian language would serve as the official liturgy for this church. An interesting contrast to the viewpoint set forth by other volumes in this bibliography. Even more dramatic and far-reaching in their implications were the deepening differences between East and West. The Carolingian Emperor Charlemagne led a series of campaigns against the Saxons, a Germanic tribe, in order to pressure them to convert to Christianity. Medieval Europe: The spread of Christianity The church became dominant in Europe following the fall of the Roman Empire. In part to compensate for the losses of European territory to Protestantism, the Jesuits and other religious orders undertook an intensification of missionary activity in the New World, as well as in Asia. In keeping with the humanistic motto "Back to the sources!" It was in recognition of this role that Benedict has been designated "patron saint of Europe.". Nichols, James. Claiming the right to "bind" and "loose" (cf. The Work of Veli-Matti Krkkinen as a Case Study of Contemporary Trajectories", "Editorial: The COVID-19 Pandemic and World Christianity", Fundamentalist Christianity: From the American Margins to the Global Stage, Chinese Christianity: A Global-Local Perspective, Christian Social Engagement in a Globalising Age, Trends in Global Catholicism: The Refractions and Transformations of a World Church, The Emergence, Development, and Pluralisation of Global Pentecostalism, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=World_Christianity&oldid=1154184684, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 4.0, This page was last edited on 10 May 2023, at 20:08. Above all, it was the work of Benedict of Nursia (c. 480c. [12] The term would likewise be used by the American historian and Baptist missionary Kenneth Scott Latourette, Professor of the History of Christianity at Yale Divinity School, to speak of the "World Christian Fellowship" and "World Christian Community". Origins Christianity "emerged as a sect of Judaism in Roman Palestine" [1] in the syncretistic Hellenistic world of the first century AD, which was dominated by Roman law and Greek culture.
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