History of Christianity

Between 600 and 750, Christianity was in retreat in the Near and Middle East and North Africa, while the Eastern church prospered along the Silk Road, and all of the main trade routes of Central Asia, into Tibet and China, among the Mongols, the Nubian kingdoms, Ethiopia, Caucasian Armenia, and Georgia.

[1][13] The Christian church established incarnation and resurrection as its first doctrines,[14] with baptism and the celebration of the Eucharist meal (Jesus's Last Supper) as its two primary rites and rituals.

[79] 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.

[80][81][82] Gnostic texts challenged the physical nature of Jesus, Montanism suggested that the apostles could be superseded, and Monarchianism emphasized the unity of God over the Trinity.

[103][104][note 2] There was no legislation forcing the conversion of pagans before the Eastern Emperor Justinian I (r. 527–565);[108][109][110] religious violence in Late Antiquity was "mostly restricted to violent rhetoric" and was not otherwise a general phenomenon.

[127] For most of Late Antiquity, the popes – the successors to Saint Peter as bishop of Rome – had limited influence, and did not yet have the power needed to break free of secular interference in church affairs.

[137][138] In Late Antiquity, these communities became associated with the urban holy places in Palestine (which became a center of pilgrimage), Cappadocia, Italy, Gaul, and Roman North Africa.

[139] In the 370s, Basil the Great founded the Basileias, a monastic community in Caesarea (Mazaca) that developed the first health care system for the poor which became the model of public hospitals into the modern day.

[154][155] Gregory the Great (590-604) gained prestige and power for the papacy by leading the response to invasion by the Lombards in 592 and 593, reforming the clergy, standardizing music in worship, sending out missionaries and founding new monasteries.

[230] 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.

[254] It spread into northwestern China, Khotan, Turfan, and south of Lake Balkash in southeastern Kazakhstan, but its growth was halted in 845 by Emperor Wu-Tsung, who favoured Taoism.

[259] Within the tenets of feudalism, the church created a new model of consecrated kingship unknown in the East, and in 800, Clovis' descendant Charlemagne became its recipient when Pope Leo III crowned him emperor.

[274][275][276] Every follower was supposed to have some 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 for the needy, and receive last rites at death.

[341][342] As churches in Egypt, Syria, and Iraq became subject to fervently Islamic militaristic regimes Christians were designated as dhimma, a status that guaranteed their protection but enforced their legal inferiority.

[381] A turning point in Jewish-Christian relations occurred when the Talmud was put "on trial" in 1239 by Pope Gregory IX because of contents that mocked the central figures of Christianity.

[383][382][384] A rhetoric with elaborate stories casting Jews as enemies accused of ritual murder, the blood libel, and desecration of the Christian eucharist host grew among ordinary folk.

[395] The many calamities of the "long fourteenth century" – plague, famine, wars, and social unrest – led European people to believe the end of the world was imminent.

The schism was finally resolved in 1417, with the election of Pope Martin V.[410][411] Throughout the Late Middle Ages, the church faced powerful challenges and vigorous political confrontations.

[412][413] The English scholastic philosopher John Wycliffe (1320–1384) urged the church to again embrace simplicity by giving up its property and wealth, to stop being subservient to secular politics, and to deny papal authority.

[429] The patriarchate became a part of the Ottoman system under Suleiman the Magnificent (1520–1566), [430][428] and by the end of the sixteenth century, widespread desperation and low morale had produced crisis and decline.

[433][205] The Catholic Church became a leading patron of art and architecture, commissioning many works and supporting renowned artists such as Michelangelo, Brunelleschi, Bramante, Raphael, Fra Angelico, Donatello, and Leonardo da Vinci.

[434][435] Although fifteenth-century popes struggled to reestablish papal authority, the Renaissance Papacy transformed Rome by rebuilding St. Peter's Basilica and establishing the city as a prestigious centre of learning.

Isolated from the rest of colonial society and forbidding serfdom and forced labor, Jesuits promoted local skills and technical innovations, working exclusively in the native language to form an "agrarian collective".

[457][note 12] However, there were women who became distinguished leaders of nunneries, exercising the same powers and privileges as their male counterparts, such as Hildegard of Bingen (d. 1179), Elisabeth of Schönau (d. 1164/65), and Marie d'Oignies (d.

[464][462] While the medieval church never officially repudiated Augustine's doctrine of protecting the Jews, defining them as heretical outsiders became increasingly common throughout society during the fifteenth century.

[493] Abuses from absolutist Catholic kings gave rise to a virulent critique of Christianity that first emerged among the more extreme Protestant reformers in the 1680s as an aspect of the Age of Enlightenment.

[536][537][538] The 300-year-old trans-Atlantic slave trade, in which some Christians had participated, had always garnered moral objections: by the eighteenth century, individual Quakers, Methodists, Presbyterians and Baptists began a written campaign against it.

[576][577][578][579][note 14] Christianity has had multiple regional "centers" since its beginnings, and these have produced different indigenous forms, initiatives, and expressions that have all contributed to its global expansion.

[607] In the twentieth century, Christianity faced the challenges of secularism, and the changing moral climate concerning sexual ethics, gender, and exclusivity, leading to a decline in church attendance in the West.

[633] 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.