History of Christianity

"Christian history" redirects here. For the magazine, see Christian History.

For a chronological guide, see Timeline of Christianity.

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.

The history of Christianity follows the Christian religion as it developed from its earliest beliefs and practices in the first-century, spread geographically in the Roman Empire and beyond, and became a global religion in the twenty-first century.

Christianity originated with the ministry of Jesus, a Jewish teacher and healer who was crucified and died c. AD 30–33 in Jerusalem in the Roman province of Judea. Afterwards, his followers, a set of apocalyptic Jews, proclaimed him risen from the dead. Christianity began as a Jewish sect and remained so for centuries in some locations, diverging gradually from Judaism over doctrinal, social and historical differences. In spite of the persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire, the faith spread as a grassroots movement that became established by the third-century both in and outside the empire. New Testament texts were written and church government was loosely organized in its first centuries, though the biblical canon did not become official until 382.

Constantine the Great was the first Roman Emperor that converted to Christianity in 313. He issued the Edict of Milan expressing tolerance for all religions. He did not make Christianity the state religion, but he did provide crucial support. Constantine called the first of seven ecumenical councils. Christianity was both defined and transformed in Late Antiquity in what is sometimes called the "golden age" of Patristic Christianity. By the Early Middle Ages, Eastern and Western Christianity had already begun to diverge, while missionary activities spread Christianity across Europe. Monks and nuns played a prominent role in establishing a Christendom that influenced every aspect of medieval life.

From the ninth-century into the twelfth, politicization and Christianization went hand-in-hand in developing the society of East-Central Europe, Slavic countries, the Russian world, language, literacy, and literature. The Byzantine Empire was more prosperous than the Western Roman Empire, and Eastern Orthodoxy was influential in Eastern Europe. Centuries of Islamic aggression and the Crusades negatively impacted Eastern Christianity. 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 put an end to the institutional Christian Church as established under Constantine, though it survived in altered form.

Various catastrophic circumstances, combined with a growing criticism of the Catholic Church in the 1300–1500s, led to the Protestant Reformation and its related reform movements. Reform, and the Catholic Counter-Reformation, were followed by the European wars of religion, the development of modern political concepts of tolerance, and the Age of Enlightenment. Christianity also influenced the New World through its connection to colonialism, its part in the American Revolution, the dissolution of slavery in the west, and the long-term impact of Protestant missions.

In the twenty-first century, traditional Christianity has declined in the West, while new forms have developed and expanded throughout the world. Today, there are more than two billion Christians worldwide and Christianity has become the world's largest, and most widespread religion. Within the last century, the centre of growth has shifted from West to East and from the North to the Global South.

Origins to 312

The first Christian communities began in Judea, a province of the Roman Empire, in the second quarter of the first century. They swiftly spread into the Jewish diaspora, along the trade and travel routes followed by merchants, soldiers, and migrating tribes, moving from fewer than 50,000 adherents to over a million in the hundred years between 150 and 250. Driven by a universalist logic, Christianity has been, from its beginnings, a missionary faith with global aspirations, leading it to become a part of the history of a great many civilizations.

The Oxford and Cambridge Acts of the Apostles – Paul the Apostle's missionary journeys

Jewish Christianity was foundational and remained influential in Palestine, Syria, and Asia Minor into the second and third centuries. Judaism and Christianity diverged over disagreements about Jewish law, Jewish insurrections against Rome which Christians did not support, and the development of Rabbinic Judaism by the Pharisees, the sect which had rejected Jesus while he was alive. The religious, social, and political climate of the area was diverse and often characterized by turmoil. Romans of this era feared civil disorder, giving their highest regard to peace, harmony and order. Piety equalled loyalty to family, class, city and emperor. This was demonstrated through the practices and rituals of the old religious ways.

St. Erasmus flogged in the presence of Emperor Diocletian. Byzantine artwork, from the crypt of the church of Santa Maria in Via Lata in Rome.

Christianity was largely tolerated, but some also saw it as a threat to "Romanness" which produced localized persecution by mobs and governors. The first reference to persecution by a Roman Emperor is under Nero, probably in 64 AD, in the city of Rome. Scholars conjecture that the Apostles Peter and Paul were killed then.

It is well documented that from 250-311, religious sentiment in the Roman Empire rose. In 250, the emperor Decius made it a capital offence to refuse to make sacrifices to Roman gods, resulting in widespread persecution of Christians. Valerian pursued similar policies later that decade. The last and most severe official persecution, the Diocletianic Persecution, took place in 303–311. There was periodic persecution of Christians by Persian Sassanian authorities, and the term "Hellene" became equated with pagan during this period.

Early geographical spread

See also: Christianization of the Roman Empire as diffusion of innovation

Map of the Roman empire with distribution of Christian congregations of the first three centuries displayed for each century

Beginning with less than 1000 people, Christianity had grown to around one hundred small household churches consisting of an average of seventy members each, by the year 100. It achieved critical mass in the hundred years between 150 and 250 when it moved from fewer than 50,000 adherents to over a million. This provided enough adopters for its growth rate to be self-sustaining.

In the first century, Christianity spread into Asia Minor (Athens, Corinth, Ephesus, and Pergamum). Egyptian Christianity probably began in the first-century in Alexandria. As it spread, Coptic Christianity, which survives into the modern era, developed. Christianity in Antioch is mentioned in Paul's epistles.

Early Christianity was in Gaul, North Africa, and the city of Rome. It spread (in its Arian form) in the Germanic world during the latter part of the third-century, and probably reached Roman Britain by the third-century at the latest.

From the earliest days, there was a Christian presence in Edessa (modern Turkey). It developed in Adiabene in the Parthian Empire in Persia (modern Iran). It developed in Georgia by the Black Sea, in Ethiopia, India, Nubia, South Arabia, Soqotra, Central Asia and China. By the sixth-century, there is evidence of Christian communities in Sri Lanka and Tibet.

Early beliefs and practices

Further information: History of Christian theology

1866 wood engraving by Gustave Doré - Crucifixion of Jesus

According to the Gospels, Christianity began with the itinerant preaching and teaching of a deeply pious young Jewish man, Jesus of Nazareth. Virtually all scholars of antiquity accept that Jesus was a historical figure. His followers came to believe Jesus was the Son of God, the Christ, a title in Greek for the Hebrew term mashiach (Messiah) meaning “the anointed one.” Jesus was crucified c. AD 30–33 in Jerusalem, and after his death and burial, his disciples proclaimed they had seen him alive and raised from the dead. Thereafter, he was said to be exalted by God. These became founding doctrines of Christianity. From its beginnings, the church has held baptism and the celebration of the eucharist (the Last Supper) as its two primary rituals.

A folio from Papyrus 46, an early-3rd-century collection of Pauline epistles

Early Christianity's teachings on morality have been cited as a major factor in its growth. In contrast to traditional Roman social stratification, early Christian communities were highly inclusive being open to men and women, rich and poor, slave and free. In groups formed by Paul the Apostle, the role of women was greater than in other religious movements.

Intellectual egalitarianism made philosophy and ethics available to ordinary people and even slaves whom Roman culture deemed incapable of ethical reflection. Romans saw sexual morality as determined by social and political status, power, and social reproduction. Christianity impacted Roman sexuality through its teachings on freewill, divorce, and remarriage.

Christians distributed bread to the hungry, nurtured the sick, and showed the poor great generosity. They redefined family through their approach to death and burial. Gathering those not blood-related into a common burial space, they used the same memorials, and expanded the audience to include the extended Christian community. Christians had no sacrificial cult, and this set them apart from Judaism and the pagan world.

Christianity in its first 300 years was highly exclusive. Believing was the crucial and defining characteristic that set a "high boundary" that strongly excluded non-believers. This has been cited as a crucial factor in maintaining Christian independence in the syncretizing Roman religious culture.

Heresy

The teachers, leaders and philosophers of early Christianity wrote about first-century Judaizers, second century Gnosticism and Marcionism, on into the close of the eighth century using the term "heresy" to define theological error and establish Christian identity.

Church hierarchy

The Church as an institution began its formation quickly and with some flexibility in these early centuries before Constantine and the Council of Nicaea in 325. Christian writings from the first-century mention bishops (or episkopoi), as overseers and presbyters as elders or priests, with deacons as 'servants', sometimes using the terms interchangeably. Gerd Theissen puts forth the view that institutionalization began very early when itinerant preaching first transformed into resident leadership.

The Rylands fragment P52 verso is the oldest existing fragment of New Testament papyrus, including phrases from the 18th chapter of the Gospel of John

New Testament

Main article: Bible

First-century Christian writings in Koine Greek, including Gospels containing accounts of Jesus' ministry, letters of Paul, and letters attributed to other early Christian leaders, had considerable authority even in the formative period. When discussion began about creating a Biblical canon to separate books seen as authoritative from those that were not, there were disputes over whether or not to include some of them. A list of accepted books was established by the Council of Rome in 382, followed by those of Hippo in 393 and Carthage in 397. For Christians, these became the "New Testament", and the Hebrew Scriptures became the "Old Testament".

Spanning two millennia, the Bible has become one of the most influential works ever written, having contributed to the formation of Western law, art, literature, literacy and education.

Late Antiquity to Early Middle Ages (313–600)

In Late Antiquity, Christianity turned the existing network of diverse Christian communities into an organization that mirrored the structure of the Roman Empire. Often referred to as the "golden age" of patristic Christianity, Christians of this era compiled many of Christianity's greatest works as they transformed and defined its art, culture, literature, philosophy and politics, its internal and external relationships, and its theology.

Influence of Constantine

Main article: Religious policies of Constantine the Great

Constantine the Great in Oria (Retouched)

Constantine the Great became emperor in the West, declared himself a Christian, and in 313, just two years after the close of Diocletian's persecution, issued the Edict of Milan expressing tolerance for all religions. The Edict was a pluralist policy, and throughout the Roman Empire of the fourth to sixth centuries, people shifted between a variety of religious groups in a kind of "religious marketplace". Constantine did not make Christianity the official state religion. Law, literature, rituals, and institutions indicate that converting the empire to Christianity was a complex, long-term, slow-paced, and uneven process with no single moment or event to mark when the Roman state might have chosen Christianity as its state religion.

Even so, Constantine took important steps that supported and protected Christianity. He gave bishops judicial power and established equal footing for Christian clergy by granting them the same immunities polytheistic priests had long enjoyed. By intervening in church disputes, he initiated a precedent for ecclesiastical councils. Constantine devoted imperial and public funds to building multiple churches, endowed his churches with wealth and lands, and provided revenue for their clergy and upkeep. By the late fourth-century, there were churches in essentially all Roman cities.

Art, literature and culture

One of the oldest representations of Jesus as the Good Shepherd from the catacombs of Rome, made around 300 AD

Constantine's sponsorship produced an exuberant burst of Christian art and architecture, frescoes, mosaics, and hieroglyphic type drawings, though classicism experienced a short revival under Julian the Apostate and in the Theodosian renaissance (circa 400). While classical and Christian culture coexisted into the seventh century, Christian imagery gradually replaced classical images.

The codex (the ancestor of modern books) was consistently used by Christians long before it was generally adopted in the pagan world which preferred the roll. The codex form, which replaced rolls by the 6th century, was probably imported from Roman Christians who used the parchment codex in the first century. The church in Egypt had most likely invented the papyrus codex by the second century.

Among the many great orators and philosophers of the fourth and fifth centuries, prose was primary. Still, a hybrid form of poetry written in traditional classic forms with Latin style and Christian concepts began to emerge. The Christian innovation of mixing genrés demonstrated the synthesis of Christianity and classic culture that was taking place in the broader culture, while new Christian methods of interpreting and explaining, not simply recording, history began.

In Roman culture the legal record on marriage and family shows no drive toward Christianization, yet Christianity did present a new voice on divorce, the required remarriage of widows, and the established Roman sexual double-standard. Christians continued to attend and teach in Late Antique schools, which remained philosophically pagan, by following the advice of Basil of Caesarea to take what was useful and leave the rest.

Relations with polytheists

Twenty-first century scholarship is largely turning away from the idea of an epic “conflict between pagans and Christians” in Late Antiquity. Still, Constantine did write laws against sacrifice using language that Peter Brown describes as "uniformly vehement" with "frequently horrifying" penalties, evidencing the intent of "terrorizing" the populace into accepting its removal. Sacrifice, a central rite of virtually all religious groups in the pre-Christian Mediterranean, largely disappeared before the end of the fourth-century. Since religious identity was not tied solely to that single practice, traditional cults continued to flourish in some areas, for enough years, that there is no date, or even decade, for scholars to say "when paganism ended".

Christians of the fourth-century believed Constantine's conversion was evidence the Christian God had conquered the polytheist gods in Heaven. This "triumph of Christianity" became the primary Christian narrative in writings of the late antique age in spite of Christians representing only ten to fifteen percent of the empire's population in 313. As a minority, triumph did not, generally, involve an increase in violence aimed at the polytheistic majority.

Constantine's policy toward non-Christians was "toleration with limits", so in general, conflict between these groups was more rhetorical than actual – with a few exceptions. Constantine was vigorous in reclaiming church properties that had previously been confiscated by the government, and he used reclamation to justify the destruction of some Greco-Roman temples such as Aphrodite's temple in Jerusalem. There was no legislation forcing the conversion of pagans until the reign of the Eastern Emperor Justinian I in A.D. 529.

Relations with the Jews

Saint Augustine Portrait

Significant Jewish communities existed throughout the Christian Roman empire. Jews and Christians were both religious minorities, claiming the same inheritance, competing in a direct and sometimes violent clash. In the fourth-century, Augustine of Hippo argued against the persecution of the Jewish people, and a relative peace existed between Jews and Christians until the thirteenth-century. Although anti-Semitic violence erupted occasionally, attacks on Jews by mobs, local leaders and lower-level clergy were carried out without the support of church leaders who generally accepted Augustine's teachings.

Sometime before the fifth-century, the theology of supersessionism emerged, claiming that Christianity had displaced Judaism as God's chosen people. Supersessionism was never official or universally held, but replacement theology has been part of Christian thought through much of history. Many attribute the emergence of antisemitism to this doctrine, while others make a distinction between supersessionism and modern anti-Semitism.

Relations with heretics

See also: Arianism, Nestorian schism, and Monophysitism

Fourth century Christianity was dominated by its many conflicts defining and dealing with heresy and orthodoxy. In the fourth century, the writings of the church fathers and the letters of bishops emerged as sources of authority on orthodoxy and identity, in addition to apostolic authority, and they were often used to identify and condemn heretics in a highly combative manner.

Icon depicting the Emperor Constantine (centre) and the bishops of the First Council of Nicaea (325) holding the Niceno–Constantinopolitan Creed of 381

While there had been earlier disagreements with the Judaizers, the first major heretical disagreement was between Arianism and traditional orthodox trinitarianism over whether Jesus' divinity and the Father's divinity are equal. The First Council of Nicaea (in modern Turkey), called by Constantine in (325), and the First Council of Constantinople called by Theodosius I in 381, produced an affirmation of orthodoxy in the form of the Nicene Creed.

Additional and ongoing theological controversies led the Armenian, Assyrian, and Egyptian churches to withdraw from Nicaean Catholicism, and instead, combine into what is today known as Oriental Orthodoxy, one of three major branches of Eastern Christianity, along with the Church of the East in Persia and Eastern Orthodoxy in Byzantium.

Relation of Church and State

The conversion of Constantine allied a monotheistic religion with a global power, both with ambitions of universality. Roman Empire in late antiquity saw the state as a religious institution with no separation between "secular" and "religious". Monarchy was thought to be the only viable form of government; therefore the chief duty of all ancient monarchs was to gain heavenly favor. However, after the restrictions on Christianity were removed, emperor and bishop began to share responsibility for maintaining relations with the divine. This caused a shift in power dynamics, since "who speaks for God" was significant in Late Antiquity.

Constantine and his successors, attempted to fit the Church into their political program. The church resisted, making a case for a sphere of religious authority separate from state authority. It forms the first clearly articulated limitation on the scope of a ruler’s power, by distinguishing the power of the church from that of the empire, and arguing for the priority of one over the other.

Intersection with the state also boosted the church's authority and wealth. Therefore, for the next 800 years, the western church struggled between recognition of the State as willed by God, and defense of the church's autonomy and spiritual superiority to the world. For many centuries the Eastern church demonstrated more ability to work its way through power issues between church and state (than did its Western counterparts) by proclaiming a unanimity of church and state.

Regional developments (300–600)

Saint Basil the Great. Line engraving.

In Caesarea, monastics developed an unprecedented health care system that allowed the sick to be cared for in a special building at the monastery by those dedicated to their care. This gave the sick benefits which destigmatized illness, transformed health care, and led to the founding of the first public hospital by Basil the Great in Caesarea in 369, which became a model for hospitals thereafter.

Augustine and donatists debating

In North Africa during the reign of Constantine, Donatism, a Christian sect, developed. They refused - sometimes violently - to accept back into the Church those Catholics who had recanted their faith under persecution. After many appeals, the empire responded with force, and in 408 in his Letter 93, Augustine defended the government's action. Augustine's authority on coercion 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".

In Late Antiquity, King Clovis I united the Franks and converted to Catholicism. The conversion of the Irish began in the early fifth-century through missionary activity and without coercion. Christianity had become an established minority faith in some parts of Britain in the second-century. Anglo-Saxon forms of Germanic paganism displaced Christianity in fifth century south-eastern Britain. Irish missionaries went to Iona (563) and converted many Picts. The Gregorian mission in 597 led to the conversion of the first Anglo-Saxon king Æthelberht around 600.

The East, Justinian and pentarchy

Bronze coin with image of Justinian the Great, 6th century

The Church of this age was seen by its supporters as a universal church. Patriarchs in the East first extended papal power and influence beyond Rome as they frequently looked to the bishop of Rome to resolve disagreements for them. Yet, the tendency for East and West to grow apart was also already becoming evident.

The western church spoke Latin, while the East spoke and wrote in at least five languages. Theological differences were becoming pronounced. The manner in which western and eastern churches related to the State differed. In the Roman west, the church condemned Roman culture as sinful, kept itself as separate as possible, and struggled to resist State control. This is in pointed contrast with Eastern Christianity which acclaimed harmony with Greek culture, and whose emperors and Patriarchs upheld unanimity between church and state.

No Roman "Christian empire" existed, as such, before Byzantine Emperor Justinian I (527–565). Under Justinian, subjects were left without doubt that they lived in a Christian state. Until the time of Justinian, the Byzantine emperors practiced a policy of tolerance toward all religions. Justinian's religious policies reflected his conviction that the unity of the Empire presupposed unity of faith. He persecuted pagans and religious minorities and purged the governmental bureaucracy of those who disagreed with him. He regulated everything in religion, and in law, even interfering in papal elections. Justinian attempted to regulate the church's authority through pentarchy which advocated sharing government of the church between the Patriarchs of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, Jerusalem, and the Pope of Rome. The Pope opposed this idea, advocating instead for the papal supremacy of Rome.

Justinian also integrated Christian ideals with Roman law. The Code of Justinian became an essential part of the Corpus Juris Civilis which remains the basis of civil law in many modern states. Justinian made donations to the church, established foundations, and watched over church property. He supported the rights of bishops, priests and abbots, and monastic life. Justinian rebuilt the Hagia Sophia (which cost 20,000 pounds of gold) and Byzantine culture blossomed during his reign.

Asia

There is no consensus on the origins of Christianity beyond Byzantium in Asia or East Africa. Though it is scattered throughout these areas by the fourth-century, there is little documentation and no complete record. Asian and African Christians did not have access to structures of power, and their institutions developed without state support. Practising the Christian faith in these regions sometimes brought opposition and persecution. Asian Christianity never developed the social, intellectual and political power of Byzantium or the Latin West.

In 301, Armenia became the first country to adopt Christianity as its state religion. In an environment where the religious group was without cultural or political power, the merging of church and state is thought to represent ethnic identity. In the fourth century, Asia Minor, and Georgia forged national identities by adopting Christianity as their state religion, as did Ethiopia and Eritrea. In 314, King Urnayr of Albania adopted Christianity as the state religion.

Early Middle Ages (600–1000)

Painted panel 4: The Apostle's Creed

The Early Middle Ages were characterized by diversity, however, the concept of Christendom was also pervasive and unifying. Medieval writers and ordinary folk used the term to identify themselves, their religious culture, and even their civilization. Membership in Christendom began with baptism at birth. Participants were required to have a rudimentary knowledge of the Apostles' Creed and the Lord's Prayer. From peasant to pope, all were required 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.

Still, religion was not a uniform pious version of Christianity. The church, before the end of the tenth-century, left room for common folk with folk beliefs who held an inherent faith without complete doctrinal understanding.

Throughout this period, a symbiotic relationship existed between ecclesiastical institutions and civil governments. Churches were dependent upon lay rulers, and it was those rulers - not the Pope - who determined who received what ecclesiastical job on their lands.

Monasticism

Main article: Christian monasticism

In 600, there was great diversity in monastic life in both East and West, even though the basic characteristics of monastic spirituality - asceticism, the goal of spiritual perfection, a life of wandering or physical toil, radical poverty, preaching, and prayer - had become established. Monasteries became more and more organized from 600 to 1100. The formation of these organized bodies of believers gradually carved out social spaces with authority separate from political and familial authority, thereby revolutionizing social history. Medical practice was highly important, and medieval monasteries are best known for their contributions to medical care and establishing public hospitals and hospices. For the majority of the faithful in the early Middle Ages of both East and West, the saint was first and foremost the monk.

Papal supremacy

painting by Jacopo Vignali - Saint Gregory the Great - from Walters museum collection

By the time Pope Gregory I succeeded to the papacy in 590, the claim of Rome's supremacy over the rest of the church as stemming from Peter himself was well established in the Roman church's self perception. Gregory held that papal supremacy concerned doctrine and discipline within the church, but large sections of both the Western and Eastern church remained unconvinced they should be submissive to the Roman See.

Political organization of the papacy evolved between the fourth and tenth centuries. The growing presence and involvement of the aristocracy in the papal bureaucracy, an increase in papal land-holdings in the second half of the sixth and into the seventh-century, and changes in their administration that brought an increase in wealth, gradually shifted popes from being beneficiaries of patronage to becoming patrons themselves. The papacy in the eighth and ninth centuries exercised power like that of an aristocrat.

From the ninth to the eleventh-century, western Christendom encompassed a loose federation of churches across the European continent under the spiritual headship of the Pope. However, the Pope had no clearly established authority over those churches, and he gave little general direction. William IX, Duke of Aquitaine, and other powerful lay founders of monasteries, placed their institutions under the protection of the papacy in the tenth-century thereby facilitating a rise in papal power.

Regions (600–1100)

  Spread of Christianity to 325

  Spread of Christianity to AD 600

Christianity in the 600s was well established in the western kingdoms of the Franks in Gaul, and the Visigoths in Iberia, along the Rhine river in what would become Germany, out to the edge of Central Asia, as far as Zerang and Qandahar in modern Afghanistan, and into the Sassanian Persian Empire, with Christian churches concentrated in northern Iraq, the foothills of the Zagros, and in the trading posts of the Persian Gulf. Ethiopia and Himyar (the Hadramawt in modern Yemen) were long-settled civilizations that were literate and even monotheist, and Christians and Jews competed for their conversion. With the rise of Islam, the Nestorian church moved east to China.

Barbarian invasion, deportation, and neglect also produced large “unchurched” populations mixed within, and at the edges of, this largely Christian world. In these scattered spots, Christianity became one religion among many. Its residual aspects often mutated with local types of paganism as it did in Britain and Ireland after Nordic forms of paganism were introduced by Scandinavian settlers. Suppression of paganism is first recorded in England in the mid 7th century.

Hagia Sophia was the religious and spiritual centre of the Eastern Orthodox Church for nearly one thousand years. The Hagia Sophia and the Parthenon were converted into mosques. Violent persecutions of Christians were common and reached their climax in the Armenian, Assyrian, and Greek genocides.

Towards the end of the sixth-century, two main kinds of Christian communities had formed in Syria, Egypt, Persia, and Armenia: urban churches which upheld the Council of Chalcedon (451 CE), and Nestorian churches which came from the desert monasteries. After these regions came under Islamic rule, persecution of non-Muslims was devastating to the Chalcedonian churches in the cities. The monastic background of the Nestorians made their churches more remote, so they often escaped direct attention making them the most able to survive and cultivate new traditions.

The Church of the East during the Middle Ages

In the 720s, the Byzantine Emperor Leo banned the pictorial representation of Christ, saints, and biblical scenes, destroying much early art history. The West condemned Leo's iconoclasm. By the tenth and early eleventh centuries, Byzantine culture began to recover.

Charlemagne began the first Medieval renaissance, the Carolingian Renaissance, a period of intellectual and cultural revival, in the Frankish kingdom in the 800s. In Italy, Gregorian Reform (1050–1080) reached into the church and outward into society setting new standards for marriage and divorce.

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

Byzantine Christianity under emperor Basil I (r. 867–886) was instrumental in forming what would become Eastern Europe. Serbia, Alania (modern Iran), Russia and Armenia were nascient Christian states by the early eleventh-century. Romania, Bulgaria, Poland, Hungary and Croatia soon followed. Saints Cyril and Methodius translated the Bible, 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.

Many cultural, geographical, geopolitical, and linguistic differences between East and West existed for centuries. There were disagreements over whether the Eastern Patriarch could claim a universal jurisdiction in the East to match Rome’s jurisdiction in the West. There were differences in ritual such as the use of unleavened bread in the Eucharist, and differences in points of doctrine such as the Filioque Clause and Nestorianism. There was a general lack of charity and respect on both sides. Eventually, this produced the East–West Schism, also known as the "Great Schism" of 1054, which separated the Church into Western Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy.

Middle Ages (1000–1500)

The Middle Ages can be seen as holding characteristics that led to modern civilization. Medieval society was also unlike modernity in that it was dominated by the presuppositions of religion. Between 1100 and 1500, Christian ideals, inherited folklore, and secular intellectualism overlapped and competed across a wide spectrum of belief.

The church of 1000 - 1300 became a more imposing institution with a more formal theology. The papacy of this period can be characterized by its focus on canon law as Popes from 1159 to 1303 were predominantly lawyers not theologians. While Early Christianity was both inclusive and exclusive with no canon law, in the Middle Ages, canon law became a large and highly complex system of laws which largely omitted those previously established teachings on inclusivity and tolerance.

The educated leaders of the church were advisors and estate managers for the church, kings, and nobles, often acting as judges and negotiating treaties. The clergy, and the laity, became "more literate, more worldly, and more self-assertive" and they did not always agree with the hierarchy. The village parish emerged as one of the fundamental institutions of medieval Europe.

This era produced tremendous religious devotion, reform, and Christian humanism. The church was involved in many conflicts, and it also developed the intellectual revolutions of High Scholasticism and the Renaissance of the 12th century.

New monks, new understanding

See also: History of European universities

The spread of Cistercians from their original sites in Western-Central Europe during the Middle Ages

The Abbey of Cluny became the leading centre of reform in Western monasticism into the early twelfth-century. The Cistercian movement, a second wave of reform after 1098, also became a primary force of technological advancement and its spread in medieval Europe. Between the eleventh and the thirteenth centuries, the church built cathedrals using Gothic architecture which developed innovations (such as flying buttresses) that impacted building techniques thereafter. Technological advancements contributed to economic growth.

Beginning in the twelfth-century, the pastoral Franciscan Order was instituted by the followers of Francis of Assisi. Later, the Dominican Order was begun by St. Dominic. Called Mendicant orders, they represented a significant and impactful change in understanding a monk's calling. Instead of prayer and contemplation, they saw their vocation as a charge to go out and actively reform the world.

Scholasticism, Renaissance and modern science

Studying astronomy and geometry. Early 15th-century painting, France.

Between 1150 and 1200, intrepid monks travelled to formerly Muslim locations in Sicily and Spain. Fleeing Muslims had abandoned their libraries, and among the treasure trove of books, the searchers found the works of Aristotle, Euclid and more. Reconciling Aristotelian logical reasoning with Christian faith created a revolution in thinking called scholasticism, (a departure from Augustinian thinking which had dominated the church for centuries), which successfully elevated reason, reconciled faith, and formed the first chapter of modern free thought.

It led to the writings of Thomas Aquinas which contained ideas that provided the foundation of much modern law and politics. Renaissance also included the revival of the scientific study of natural phenomena. Historians of science see this as the beginning of what led to modern science and the scientific revolution in the West.

Education and universities

A 19th-century depiction of a Passion play

A widespread literate religious culture was slow to develop in Medieval Christianity, though vague notions of its mysteries were common. The means and methods of teaching a mostly illiterate populace included mystery plays (which had developed out of the mass), wall paintings, vernacular sermons and treatises, and saints' lives in epic form.

Rituals, art, literature, and cosmology were shaped by Christian norms but also contained some pre-Christian elements. Christian motifs could function in non-Christian ways, while practices of non-Christian origin became endowed with Christian meaning. In the synthesis of old and new, influence cut both ways, but the cultural dynamic lay with Christianization.

From the 1100's, western universities, the first institutions of higher education since the sixth-century, were formed into self-governing corporations chartered by popes and kings. Bologna, Oxford and Paris were among the earliest (c. 1150). Divided into faculties which specialized in law, medicine, theology or liberal arts, each held quodlibeta (free-for-all) theological debates amongst faculty and students and awarded degrees.

The Church in Confrontation

The church of this era faced tremendous challenges that prompted vigorous political responses. Formed in the dialectic between parishes and universities, the learned and the illiterate, toleration and violent aggression, the Middle Ages also contained observable efforts by both church and civic leaders to define, establish and maintain coherence and order.

With the state

1882 depiction of Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV at the gate of Canossa Castle during the Investiture controversy

The church appointed its bishops and abbots, but it was the nobles who had control over who got "invested" into a paying job. Under Pope Gregory VII (1073-1085), the Roman Catholic Church was determined to end this duality. This produced the Investiture controversy which began in the Holy Roman Empire in 1078. Specifically, the dispute was between the Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV, and Pope Gregory VII, over who had the right to invest a bishop or abbot, but more generally, it was over control of the church and its revenues.

In this controversy, papal supremacy took a political turn. Gregory recorded a series of statements asserting that the church must be the higher of the two powers of church and state, and that the church must no longer be treated as a servant to the state. Disobedience to the Pope became equated with heresy.

The Dictatus Papae declared the pope alone could invest bishops in 1075. 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 of investiture lasted five decades with a disputed outcome. A similar controversy occurred in England.

With Islam

See also: Crusading movement

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)

When Eastern Emperor Alexius I asked for aid from the western Pope Urban II, Urban responded (1095) with an appeal to European Christians to "go to the aid of their brethren in the Holy Land". Urban's message had tremendous popular appeal, and there was much enthusiasm supporting it. It was new and novel and tapped into powerful aspects of folk religion. Voluntary poverty and its renunciation of self-will, along with a longing for the genuine "apostolic life," flourished in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries connecting pilgrimage, charity, remission of sins, and a willingness to fight.

Crusading involved the church in certain paradoxes: Gregorian reform was grounded in distancing spirituality from the secular and the political, while crusade made the church dependent upon financing from aristocrats and kings for the most political of all activities: war.

Crusades led to the development of national identities in European nations, increased division with the East, and produced cultural change. Hotly debated by historians, the single most important contribution of the crusades to Christian history was, possibly, the invention of the indulgence.

In Mesopotamia and Egypt

Between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries, the Christian churches in Egypt, Syria and Iraq became subject to fervently Muslim militaristic regimes. Christians were dhimma. This cultural status guaranteed Christians rights of protection, but discriminated against them through legal inferiority. Various Christian communities adopted different strategies for preserving their identity while accommodating their rulers. Some withdrew from interaction, others converted, while some sought outside help. By the end of the eleventh-century, Christianity was in full retreat in Mesopotamia and inner Iran. Some Christian communities further to the east continued to exist.

With heretics

Main article: Albigensian Crusade

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 also known as Catharism. Once begun, the Albigensian Crusade (1209–1229) quickly took a political turn. 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. It did not end until 1229. The campaign no longer had crusade status. The entire region was brought under the rule of the French king, thereby creating southern France. Catharism continued for another hundred years (until 1350).

In Inquisition

Moral misbehavior and heresy, by the folk and clerics, were prosecuted by inquisitorial courts that were composed of both church and civil authorities. Jointly referred to as the Medieval Inquisition, this includes the Episcopal Inquisition (1184–1230) and the Papal Inquisition (1230s–1240s), though these courts had no actual joint leadership or organization. Created as needed, they were not permanent institutions but were limited to specific times and places. The Medieval Inquisition brought somewhere between 8,000 and 40,000 people to interrogation and sentence. Death sentences were a relatively rare occurrence. The penalty imposed most often by Medieval Inquisitorial courts was an act of penance which could include public confession.

Between 1478 and 1542, the Roman, Spanish and Portuguese inquisitions were created as permanent State controlled bureaucracies. As political institutions, they had a much broader reach than previous inquisitions.

With pagans

Baltic Tribes c 1200

When the Second Crusade was called after Edessa fell, the nobles in Eastern Europe refused to go. 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. (These rulers saw crusade as a tool for territorial expansion, alliance building, and the empowerment of their own church and state.) In 1147, Eugenius' Divina dispensatione gave eastern nobility indulgences for the first of the Baltic wars (1147–1316). The Northern Crusades followed intermittently, with and without papal support, from 1147 to 1316. Priests and clerics developed a pragmatic acceptance of the forced conversions perpetrated by the nobles, despite the continued theological emphasis on voluntary conversion.

With the East

Latin Empire after 1204

For most of its existence, the Byzantine Empire was the largest and most prosperous polity of the Christian world. The wealth and safety of its capitol Constantinople, were seen, even by distant outsiders, as resulting directly from the religious devotion of its inhabitants. After suffering many losses to Islam, the eleventh-century began a period of relative peace and prosperity that lasted until April of 1204, when western crusaders in the Fourth Crusade stormed, captured, and looted Constantinople. It was a severe blow. Byzantine territories were divided among the Crusaders establishing the Latin Empire and the Latin takeover of the Eastern church. By 1261, the Byzantines had recaptured the much weakened and poorer city.

With the Jews

A turning point in Jewish-Christian relations took place in June 1239 when the Talmud was put "on trial", by Gregory IX (1237–1241) in a French court, over contents that mocked the central figures of Christianity. This resulted in Talmudic Judaism being seen as so different from the Bible that old obligations to leave the Jews alone no longer applied. As townfolk gained a measure of political power around 1300, 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. Although subordinate to religious, economic and social themes, racial concepts also reinforced hostility.

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. 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. In 1283, the Archbishop of Canterbury spearheaded a petition demanding restitution of usury and urging the Jewish expulsion in 1290.

Expulsions of Jews in Europe from 1100 to 1600

The medieval Catholic church never advocated the full expulsion of all the Jews from Christendom, nor did the Church ever repudiate Augustine's doctrine of Jewish witness, but new canon law from the Third and Fourth Lateran councils supported discrimination as secular rulers repeatedly confiscated Jewish property and evicted Jews from their lands.

The Spanish inquisition was authorized by the Pope in 1478 in answer to Ferdinand and Isabella's fears that Jewish converts (known as Conversos or Marranos) were spying and conspiring with Muslims to sabotage the new state. Five years later, in October 1483, a papal bull conceded control of the Spanish Inquisition to the Spanish crown. It became the first national, unified and centralized institution of the nascent Spanish state.

Of those condemned by the Inquisition of Valencia before 1530, ninety-two percent were Jews.

Anti-Judaism had become part of the Inquisition in Portugal before the end of the fifteenth-century, and forced conversion led many Jewish converts to India where they suffered as targets of the Goa Inquisition.

Frankfurt's Jews flourished between 1453 and 1613 despite harsh discrimination. They were restricted to one street, subject to strict rules if they wished to leave this territory and forced to wear a yellow patch as a sign of their identity. Within the community they maintained some self-governance. They had their own laws, leaders and a Rabbinical school that functioned as a religious and cultural centre.

With itself

Portrait of Pope John XXII (1316–1334) (by Giuseppe Franchi) who was referred to as "the banker of Avignon"

In 1309, Pope Clement V moved to Avignon in southern France in search of relief from Rome's factional politics. Seven popes resided there in the Avignon Papacy, but the move away from the "seat of Peter" caused great indignation and cost popes prestige and power. Papal power stopped increasing, while kings continued to substantively gain and consolidate power for themselves.

Pope Gregory XI returned to Rome in 1377. After Gregory's death, the papal conclave met in 1378, in Rome, and elected an Italian Urban VI to succeed Gregory. The French cardinals did not approve, so they held a second conclave electing Robert of Geneva instead, giving the church two popes. This began the Western Schism.

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 (1414–1418) and depose all three popes. In 1417, the council elected Pope Martin V in their place.

With reform

Attitudes and behaviours against the clergy identify the period from around 1100 to 1349 as an era of “anticlerical revolution". In the 1300's, people experienced plague, famine and war. There was social unrest, urban riots, peasant revolts and renegade feudal armies. The many calamities of the "long fourteenth-century" led folk to believe the end of the world was imminent. This sentiment ran throughout society and became intertwined with anticlerical and anti-papal sentiments.

Multiple strands of criticism of the clergy between 1100 and 1520 were voiced by clerics themselves. Such criticism condemned abuses and sought a more spiritual, less worldly, clergy. However, there is a constancy of complaints in the historical record that indicates most attempts at reform between 1300 and 1500 failed.

The combination of catastrophic events, inside and outside the church, undermined its moral authority and constitutional legitimacy opening it to local fights of authority and control. Diarmaid MacCulloch writes that, "Even before Luther, challenges were being posed". Institutional centralization, the spread of Mendicant monks, and the international universities contributed to uniformity while also helping to create doubts, questions and diversity.

Western Church and society

Michelangelo's Pietà (1498–99) in St. Peter's Basilica, Vatican City

During the European Renaissance of the 15th and 16th centuries, the Church became a leading patron of art and architecture, directly commissioning many individual works, and supported many artists such as Michelangelo, Brunelleschi, Bramante, Raphael, Fra Angelico, Donatello, and Leonardo da Vinci.

Catholic monks developed the first forms of Western musical notation leading to the development of classical music and its derivatives, up to and including modern music. Scholars revealed the Donation of Constantine as a forgery.

During the Late Middle Ages, groups of laymen and non-ordained secular clerics sought a more sincere spiritual life. A vernacular religious culture for the laity arose. The new devotion worked toward the ideal of a pious society of ordinary non-ordained people. Inside and outside the church, women were central to these movements.

Byzantium and the Fall of Constantinople

In 1439, a reunion agreement between the Eastern and Western church was made. However, there was popular resistance in the East, so it wasn't until 1452 that the decree of union was officially published in Constantinople. It was overthrown the very next year by the Fall of Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks in 1453.

Compulsory resettlement returned many Greek Orthodox to Constantinople. While Islamic law did not recognize the Patriarch as a "juristic person", nor acknowledge the Orthodox Church as an institution, it did identify the Orthodox Church with the Greek community, and concern for stability allowed it to exist. The monastery at Mt. Athos prospered from the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries. Ottomans were largely tolerant, and wealthy Byzantines who entered monastic life there were allowed to keep some control over their property until 1568.

Leaders of the church were recognized by the Islamic state as administrative agents charged with supervising its Christian subjects and collecting their taxes. Compulsory taxes, higher and higher payments to the sultan in hopes of receiving his appointment to the Patriarchate, and other financial gifts, corrupted the process and impoverished Christians. Conversion became an attractive solution.

The conquest of 1453 had effectively destroyed the Orthodox Church, as an institution of the Christian empire inaugurated by Constantine, sealing off Greek-speaking Orthodoxy from the West for almost a century and a half. However, the spiritual and cultural influence of the Eastern church, Constantinople, and Mount Athos the monastic peninsula continued among Orthodox nations. By the time of Süleyman the Magnificent (1520 – 1566), the patriarchate had become a part of the Ottoman system, and continued to have great influence in the Orthodox world.

Russia

The Baptism of Kievans, by Klavdiy Lebedev

Saint Sophia Cathedral, Kyiv

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. The event associated with the conversion of the Rus' has traditionally been the baptism of Vladimir of Kiev in 989.

The new Christian religious structure was imposed upon the socio-political and economic fabric of the land by the authority of the state's rulers. The Rus' dukes maintained control of the church which was financially dependent upon them. While monasticism was the dominant form of piety, Christianity permeated daily life for both peasants and elites who identified themselves as Christian while keeping many pre-Christian practices.

In a defining moment in 1380, a coalition of Russian polities headed by the Grand Prince Dmitrii of Moscow faced the army of the Golden Horde on Kulikovo Field near the Don River, there defeating the Mongols. This began the fusing of state power and religious mission that eventually transformed the Kievan Rus into the Russian state (1547).

Ivan III of Muscovy adopted the style of the ancient Byzantine imperial court a generation after Constantinople fell to the Turks. 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. Jeremias II (1536 - 1595) was the first Eastern patriarch to visit north-eastern Europe. Ending his visit in Moscow, he founded the Orthodox patriarchate of Russia.

Asia

The sixteenth-century success of Christianity in Japan was followed by one of the greatest persecutions in Christian history. Sixteenth-century missions to China were undertaken primarily by the Jesuits.

Scandinavia

Christianization of Scandinavia (Sweden, Norway and Denmark) occurred in two stages. In the first stage, missionaries arrived on their own without secular support in the ninth-century. Next, a secular ruler would take charge of Christianization in their territory. This stage ended once a defined and organized ecclesiastical network was established. By 1350, Scandinavia was an integral part of Western Christendom.

Reformation and Early modern (1500–1750)

Powerful and pervasive ecclesiastical reform developed from medieval critiques of the church, but the institutional unity of the church was shattered. Church critics of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries had challenged papal authority. Kings and councils asserting their own power had also created challenges to church authority, while vernacular gospels created problems for the church amongst the laity. The new mendicant friars, the university elite and the bureaucratic clerics were central to developing early-modern concepts of power, authority and orthodoxy.

Reformation and response (1517–1700)

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

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.

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 salvation, tradition, the individual, and personal experience in relationship with God. 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.

The three primary traditions to emerge directly from the Reformation were the Lutheran, Reformed, and the Anglican traditions. At the same time, a collection of loosely related groups that included Anabaptists, Spiritualists, and Evangelical Rationalists, began the Radical Reformation in Germany and Switzerland. Beginning in 1519, Huldrych Zwingli spread these teachings in Switzerland leading to the Swiss Reformation.

Counter-reformation

The Roman Catholic Church soon struck back, launching its own Catholic Reformation beginning with Pope Paul III (1534–1549), the first in a series of 10 reforming popes from 1534 to 1605. A list of books detrimental to faith or morals was established, the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, which included the works of Luther, Calvin and other Protestants along with writings condemned as obscene.

The Index Librorum Prohibitorum listed books forbidden by the Catholic Church.

New monastic orders arose including the Jesuits. Resembling a military company in its hierarchy, discipline, and obedience, 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". Jesuits soon became the Church's chief weapon against Protestantism. The Council of Trent (1545–1563) denied each Protestant claim, and laid the foundation of Roman Catholic policies up to the twenty-first century.

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. The Counter-Reformation also created the Uniate church which used Eastern liturgy but recognized Rome.

Religious War

Reforming zeal and Catholic denial spread through much of Europe and became entangled with local politics. The quarreling royal houses, already involved in dynastic disagreements, became polarized into the two religious camps.

Wars ranging from international wars to internal conflicts, began 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). In 1562, France became the centre of religious wars. The involvement of foreign powers made the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) the largest and most disastrous.

The causes of these wars were mixed. Many scholars see them as fought to obtain security and freedom for differing religious confessions, however, most have interpreted these wars as struggles for political independence that coincided with the break up of medieval empires into the modern nation states.

Modern concepts of tolerance

Debate on whether peace required allowing only one faith and punishing heretics, or if ancient opinions defending leniency should be revived, occupied every version of the Christian faith. Since the 1400's, radical Protestants had steadfastly sought toleration for heresy, blasphemy, Catholicism, non-Christian religions, and even atheism. Anglicans and other Christian moderates also wrote and argued for toleration. In the 1690s, following debates that started in the 1640s, a non-Christian third group also advocated for religious toleration. It became necessary to rethink on a political level, all of the State's reasons for persecution.

Over the next two and a half centuries, many 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.

Colonialism

Colonialism opened the door for Christian missionaries who soon followed. Although most missionaries avoided politics, they also generally identified themselves with the indigenous people amongst whom they worked and lived. On the one hand, vocal missionaries challenged colonial oppression and defended human rights, even opposing their own governments in matters of social justice for 500 years. On the other hand, there are an equal number of examples of missionaries cooperating with colonial governments.

Witch trials (c. 1450–1750)

See also: Witch trials in the early modern period

Until the 1300s, the official position of the Roman Catholic Church was that witches did not exist. 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. Records show the belief in magic had remained so widespread among the rural people, it has convinced some historians that Christianization had not been as successful as previously supposed. The main pressure to prosecute witches came from the common people, and trials were mostly civil trials. There is broad agreement that approximately 100,000 people were prosecuted, of which 80% were women, and that 40,000 to 50,000 people were executed between 1561 and 1670.

The Enlightenment

The era of absolutist states followed the breakdown of Christian universalism. Abuses inherent in political absolutism, practiced by kings who were supported by Catholicism, gave rise to a virulent anti-clerical, anti-Catholic, and anti-Christian sentiment that emerged in the 1680s. Critique of Christianity began among the more extreme Protestant reformers who were enraged by fear, tyranny and persecution. Twenty-first century scholars tend to see the relationship between Christianity and the Enlightenment as complex with many regional and national variations.

Revolution and modernity (1750–1945)

The enlightenment had shifted the paradigm, and after 1750, secularization at every level of European society can be observed. Various ground-breaking discoveries led to the Scientific revolution (1600–1750) and an upsurge in skepticism. Virtually everything in western culture was subjected to systematic doubt including religious beliefs. Biblical criticism emerged using scientific historical and literary criteria, and human reason, to understand the Bible. This new approach made study of the Bible secularized, more scholarly, and democratic, as scholars began writing in their native languages making their works available to a larger public.

Church, state and society

During the Age of Revolution, the cultural centre of Christianity shifted to the New World. The American Revolution and its aftermath included legal assurances of religious freedom and a general turn to religious plurality in the new country.

In the decades following the American revolution, France also experienced revolution, and by 1794, radical revolutionaries attempted to violently ‘de-Christianize’ France for the next twenty years. When Napoleon came to power, he acknowledged Catholicism as the majority view and tried to make it dependent upon the state.

The French Revolution resulted in Eastern Orthodox church leaders rejecting Enlightenment ideas as too dangerous to embrace.

Revolution broke the power of the Old World aristocracy, offered hope to the disenfranchised, and enabled the middle class to reap the economic benefits of the Industrial Revolution. Scholars have since identified a positive correlation between the rise of Protestantism and human capital formation, the Protestant work ethic, economic development, and the development of the state system. Max Weber says Protestantism contributed to the development of banking across Northern Europe and gave birth to Capitalism.

Awakenings (1730s–1850s)

Great revivalists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Religious revival, known as the First Great Awakening, swept through the American colonies between the 1730s and the 1770s. Beginning among the Presbyterians, revival quickly spread to Congregationalists (Puritans) and Baptists, creating American Evangelicalism and Wesleyan Methodism. Verbal 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.

In places like Connecticut and Massachusetts, where one denomination received state funding, churches now began to lobby local legislatures to end that inequity by applying the Reformation principle separating church and state. Theological pluralism became the new norm.

The Second Great Awakening (1800–1830s) extolled moral reform as the Christian alternative to armed revolution. These reformers established nation-wide societies, separate from any church, to begin social movements concerning abolition, women's rights, temperance and literacy. Developing nation-wide organizations was pioneering, and many businesses adopted the practice leading to the consolidations and mergers that reshaped the American economy of the nineteenth-century. The second awakening produced the Latter Day Saint movement, the Restoration Movement and the Holiness movement.

American anti-slavery tract, 1853

The Third Great Awakening began from 1857 and was most notable for taking awakening throughout the world, especially in English speaking countries. Restorationists were prevalent in America. They have not described themselves as a reform movement but have, instead, described themselves as restoring the Church to its original form as found in the book of Acts. Restorationism gave rise to the Stone-Campbell Restoration Movement, Adventism, and the Jehovah's Witnesses.

Born into slavery, Sojourner Truth escaped and became an advocate for abolitionism, racial equality, women's rights, and alcohol temperance. Pictured c. 1870

Western Slavery

For over 300 years, many Christians in Europe and North America participated in the Trans-Atlantic slave trade which had begun in the sixteenth century. Moral objections had arisen immediately but had small impact. By the eighteenth-century, the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), followed by Methodists, Presbyterians and Baptists, began to campaign, write, and spread pamphlets against the trade and slavery itself. In the years after the American Revolution, black congregations led by black preachers provided an institutional base for keeping abolitionism alive. By the early nineteenth-century, American Protestants had organized the first anti-slavery societies. Christian reformers in both England and America, African Americans themselves, and the new American republic eventually produced the "gradual but comprehensive abolition of slavery" in the West.

Protestant Missions (1800s–1945)

Protestant missionaries had a significant role in shaping multiple nations, cultures and societies. Their first job 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. These were used to teach in missionary schools resulting in the spread of literacy.

Christian missionaries and colonial empires had separate agendas which were often in direct opposition to each other. Still, missionaries could not help being influenced by nineteenth century scientific theories asserting racial and cultural superiority. On the one hand, the political legacies of colonialism include political instability, violence and ethnic exclusion, which is also linked to civil strife and civil war. On the other hand, Lamin Sanneh writes that many native cultures responded to Protestant missions with "movements of indigenization and cultural liberation" that generated many beneficial long-term effects.

Boarding schools

Preceded by mission schools, the Federal government began a boarding school system in 1819, (before there was a public school system (1869)), for the purposes of education and assimilation of Native Americans. Funded by the federal government, schools were run by Catholics, Quakers, Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians and by the government itself. The majority of native children did not attend boarding school. Of those that did, many did so in response to requests sent by native families to the Federal government, while many others were forcibly taken from their homes. For indigenous populations in Canada and the US, the history of boarding schools shows a continuum of experiences ranging from happiness and refuge to suffering, forced assimilation, mistreatment and abuse. Over time, missionaries came to respect the virtues of native culture, and spoke against national policies.

Twentieth-century

Liberal Christianity, sometimes called liberal theology, is an umbrella term for religious movements within late 18th, 19th and 20th-century Christianity. According to theologian Theo Hobson, liberal Christianity has two traditions. Before the Enlightenment of the eighteenth-century, liberalism was synonymous with Christian Idealism in that it imagined a liberal State with political and cultural liberty.

The second tradition derived from seventeenth-century rationalism's efforts to wean Christianity from its "irrational cultic" roots. Lacking any grounding in Christian "practice, ritual, sacramentalism, church and worship", liberal Christianity lost touch with the fundamental necessity of faith and ritual in maintaining Christianity. This led to liberalism's decline and the birth of fundamentalism.

Fundamentalist Christianity is a movement that arose (mainly within British and American Protestantism) in the late 19th century and early 20th century in reaction to modernism. Before 1919, fundamentalism was loosely organized and undisciplined. In 1925, fundamentalists participated in the Scopes trial, and by 1930, the movement appeared to be dying. Then in the 1930s, Neo-orthodoxy, a theology against liberalism combined with a reevaluation of Reformation teachings, began uniting moderates of both sides. In the 1940s, "new-evangelicalism" established itself as separate from fundamentalism. Today, fundamentalism is less about doctrine than political activism.

Christianity and Nazism

Pope Pius XI

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.

In Poland, Catholic priests were arrested and Polish priests and nuns were executed en masse.

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. A smaller contingent, about a third of German Protestants, formed the Confessing Church which opposed Nazism.

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. Bonhoeffer, a pacifist, was arrested, found guilty in the conspiracy to assassinate Hitler and executed.

Russian Orthodoxy

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 and contributed to antisemitism.

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

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. Some actions against Orthodox priests and believers included torture, being sent to prison camps, labour camps or mental hospitals, and execution.

Historian Scott Kenworthy describes the persecution of the Russian Orthodox church under communism as "unparalleled by any in Christian history". In the first five years after the October Revolution, one journalist reported that 28 bishops and 1,200 priests were executed. Others report that 8,000 people were killed in 1922. The League of Militant Atheists adopted a five year plan in 1932 "aimed at the total eradication of religion by 1937".

Despite oppression and martyrdom under hostile rule, the Orthodox churches 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".

Christianity since 1945

Beginning in the late twentieth-century, the traditional church has been declining in the West. According to a Pew report, "As recently as the early 1990s, about 90% of U.S. adults identified as Christians. But today, about two-thirds of adults are Christians". The Old Order Amish have become the fastest growing sect in the U.S.

Laying on of hands during a service in a neo-charismatic church in Ghana

New forms of religion which embrace the sacred as a deeper understanding of the self began in the late Twentieth-century. This spirituality is private and individualistic, and differs radically from Christian tradition, dogma and ritual. Pentecostalism and charismatic Christianity emphasize inward experience. The Prosperity gospel is an adaptation that began in the twentieth-century's last decades that has become a trans-national movement.

Prosperity ideas have diffused in countries such as Brazil and other parts of South America, Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana and other parts of West Africa, China, India, South Korea, and the Philippines. It has suffered from accusations of financial fraud and sex scandals around the world, but it is critiqued most heavily by Christian evangelicals who question its theology. It is a shift from the Reformation view of biblical authority to the authority of charisma.

In 2000, approximately one quarter of all Christians worldwide were part of Pentecostalism and its associated movements. By 2025, Pentecostals are expected to constitute one-third of the nearly three billion Christians worldwide making it the fastest growing religious movement in global Christianity.

New forms

By using the "kingdom ideals" from Jesus' Sermon on the Mount, the Social Gospel and liberation theology redefined social justice, and focused on the community's sins to expose institutionalized sin and redeem the institutions of society.

Originating in America in 1966, Black theology developed a combined social gospel and liberation theology that mixes 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. Spreading to the United Kingdom, then parts of Africa, confronting apartheid in South Africa, Black theology explains Christianity as liberation for this life not just the next.

Historian of race and religion, Paul Harvey, says that, in 1960s America, "The religious power of the civil rights movement transformed the American conception of race." Then the social power of the religious right responded in the 1970s by recasting evangelical concepts in political terms that included racial separation. In the twenty-first century, the Prosperity Gospel promotes racial reconciliation and has become a powerful force in American religious life.

Feminist theology began in 1960. In the last years of the twentieth-century, the re-examination of old religious texts through diversity, otherness, and difference developed womanist theology of African-American women, the "mujerista" theology of Hispanic women, and insights from Asian feminist theology.

Decolonization

After World War II, Christian missionaries played a transformative role for many colonial societies moving them toward independence through the development of decolonization. In the mid to late 1990s, postcolonial theology emerged globally from multiple sources. It analyzes structures of power and ideology in order to recover what colonialism erased or suppressed in indigenous cultures.

Missions

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 bi-lingual, bi-cultural professionals who focus on evangelism and local development and not on 'civilizing' native people.

Second Vatican Council (1962–1965)

Main article: Second Vatican Council

Pope Francis

On 11 October 1962, Pope John XXIII opened the Second Vatican Council, the 21st ecumenical council of the Catholic Church. The council is perhaps best known for its instructions that the Mass may be celebrated in the vernacular as well as in Latin.

Ecumenism (1964)

Main article: Ecumenism

On 21 November 1964, the Second Vatican Council published Unitatis Redintegratio, stating that Roman Catholic ecumenical goals are to establish full communion amongst all the various Christian churches. Amongst Evangelicals, there is no agreed upon definition, strategy or goal. Different theologies on the nature of the Church have produced some hostility toward the formalism of the World Council of Churches. In the twenty-first century, sentiment is widespread that ecumenism has stalled.

Christianity in the Global South and East

East

By the twentieth-century, the nineteenth-century revolutions that established the Serbian, Greek, Romanian, and Bulgarian nations had changed Orthodoxy from a universal church into a series of national churches that became subordinate to nationalism and the state. Coptic Christianity went from survival as a small minority church to revival in the twentieth-century.

Africa (19th–21st centuries)

Countries by percentage of Protestants, 1938

Christian distribution globally based on PEW research in 2011

Western missionaries began the "largest, most diverse and most vigorous movement of cultural renewal in [the] history" of Africa writes historian Lammin Sanneh. 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 at that time. Population in Africa has continued to grow with the percentage of Christians remaining at about half in 2022. This expansion has been labeled a "fourth great age of Christian expansion".

Asia

Christianity is growing rapidly in China, Korea, and Southeast Asia. A rapid expansion of charismatic Christianity began in the 1980s, leading Asia to rival Latin America in the population of Charismatic and Pentecostal Christians.

Increasing numbers of young people in China are becoming Christians. Council on Foreign Relations data shows a 10% yearly growth in Chinese Christian populations since 1979.

Persecution

Main article: Persecution of Christians in the post–Cold War era

See also: Anti-Christian sentiment

Anti-Christian persecution has become a consistent human rights concern. In 2013, 17 Middle Eastern Muslim majority states reported 28 of the 29 types of religious discrimination against 45 of the 47 religious minorities, including Christianity. Other countries with anti-Christian persecution include but not limited to China, India and Israel.

See also

• Carolingian church
• Catholic Church and Nazi Germany
• Catholic Church and the Age of Discovery
• Celtic Christianity
• Christianization of Europe
• Christianization of Kievan Rus'
• Christianity and Judaism
• Christianity and paganism
• Christianity as the Roman state religion
• Christianity in Asia
• Christianity in Egypt
• Christianity in Syria
• Christianity in late antiquity
• Christianity in the ante-Nicene period
• Christianity in the modern era
• Chronicle of Arbela
• Chronology of early Christian monasticism
• Chronology of Jesus
• Cluniac Reforms
• Criticism of Christianity
• Donation of Pepin
• Dutch Reformed Church
• Early modern period
• English Benedictine Reform
• European colonization of the Americas
• Frankish Papacy
• Germanic Christianity
• Hellenistic Judaism
• Historical background of the New Testament
• Historical Jesus
• Historiography of Christianization of the Roman Empire
• History of Calvinism
• History of Christianity of the Late Modern era
• History of Christian universalism
• History of the Eastern Orthodox Church
• History of Oriental Orthodoxy
• History of Protestantism
• History of the Catholic Church
• History of the Eastern Orthodox Church under the Ottoman Empire
• Late modern period
• Life of Jesus in the New Testament
• Persecution of Christians in Nazi Germany
• Persecution of pagans in the late Roman Empire
• Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust
• Positive Christianity
• Quest for the historical Jesus
• Reconquista
• Religion in the Soviet Union
• Religious policies of Constantius II
• Rise of Christianity during the Fall of Rome
• Role of the Christian Church in civilization
• Second Temple Judaism
• Second Temple Period
• Syriac Christianity
• Timeline of Christian missions
• Timeline of the Roman Catholic Church

Sources

Books & periodicals

• Abrams, Lesley (2016). "The conversion of the Danelaw". Vikings and the Danelaw: Select Papers from the Proceedings of the Thirteenth Viking Congress, Nottingham and York, 21-30 August 1997 (reprint ed.). Havertown Oxford: Oxbow Books. pp. 31–44. ISBN 978-1-78570-453-6. JSTOR j.ctt1kw29nj.7.
• Abrams, Lesley (2000). "Conversion and Assimilation". Cultures in contact: Scandinavian settlement in England in the ninth and tenth centuries. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols. ISBN 978-2-503-50978-5.
• Abulafia, Anna Sapir (2002). "Introduction". In Abulafia, Anna Sapir (ed.). Religious Violence Between Christians and Jews: Medieval Roots, Modern Perspectives. UK: Palgrave. pp. xi–xviii. ISBN 978-1-34942-499-3.
• Adams, Robert Merrihew (2021). "Nestorius and Nestorianism". The Monist. 104 (3): 366–375. doi:10.1093/monist/onab005.
• Aguilera-Barchet, Bruno (2015). "Popes vs. Emperors: The Rise and Fall of Papal Power". A History of Western Public Law. Springer. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-11803-1. ISBN 978-3-319-11802-4.
• Agosti, Gianfranco (2015). "Greek poetry". In Johnson, Scott Fitzgerald (ed.). The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity (illustrated reprint ed.). Oxford University Press. pp. 361–404. ISBN 978-0-19-027753-6.
• Aguzzi, Steven D. (2017). Israel, the Church, and Millenarianism: A Way beyond Replacement Theology. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-11190-0.
• Akanji, Israel (2010). "Black Theology". In Irele, Abiola (ed.). The Oxford encyclopedia of African thought. Vol. 1. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-533473-9.
• Albert, Eleanor (2018). "Christianity in China". Council on Foreign Relations. Archived from the original on 7 July 2021. Retrieved 17 October 2023.
• Allen Jr., John L. (2016). The Global War on Christians: Dispatches from the Front Lines of Anti-Christian Persecution. Crown Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-770-43737-4.
• Althoff, Gerd (2019a). "Papal Authority in the High Middle Ages". Rules and Rituals in Medieval Power Games. Brill. pp. 173–188. doi:10.1163/9789004415317_015. ISBN 978-9-00441-531-7. S2CID 211661394.
• Althoff, Gerd (2019b). "Communicating Papal Primacy: the Impact of Gregory VII's Ideas (11th–13th Century)". Rules and Rituals in Medieval Power Games. Brill. pp. 189–202. doi:10.1163/9789004415317_015. ISBN 978-9-00441-531-7. S2CID 211661394.
• Ames, Christine Caldwell (2009). Righteous Persecution: Inquisition, Dominicans, and Christianity in the Middle Ages. University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 978-0-8122-4133-4.
• Anderson, Allan (2006). "The Pentecostal and Charismatic movements". In McLeod, Hugh (ed.). The Cambridge History of Christianity. Vol. 9. Cambridge University Press. pp. 89–106. doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521815000. ISBN 978-1-139-05485-0.
• Anderson, Allan; Tang, Edmund (2005). Asian and Pentecostal: The Charismatic Face of Christianity in Asia. Oxford Centre for Mission Studies. ISBN 978-1-870345-43-9.
• Angold, Michael (2006). "The Russian Church". In Angold, Michael (ed.). The Cambridge History of Christianity Eastern Christianity. Vol. 5. Cambridge University Press. doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521811132.018.
• Ankarloo, Bengt [in Swedish]; Clark, Stuart; Monter, E. William, eds. (2002). Witchcraft and Magic in Europe. Vol. 4: The Period of the Witch Trials. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 978-0-8122-3617-0.
• Antoljak, Stjepan [in Croatian] (1994). Pregled hrvatske povijesti [An Overview of the History of Croatia] (in Croatian) (2. dopunjeno izd ed.). Split: Orbis. ISBN 978-953-6044-01-6.
• Arnold, John H. (2018). "Persecution and Power in Medieval Europe: The Formation of a Persecuting Society, by R. I. Moore". The American Historical Review. 123 (1). Academic OUP. Archived from the original on 3 July 2023. Retrieved 3 July 2023.
• Asprey, Christopher (2008). Murphy, Francesca Aran (ed.). Ecumenism Today: The Universal Church in the 21st Century (first ed.). Routledge. ISBN 978-0-7546-5961-7.
• Aston, Nigel (2006). "Continental Catholic Europe". In Brown, S.; Tackett, T. (eds.). The Cambridge History of Christianity. Vol. 7. Cambridge University Press. pp. 13–32. doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521816052.003. ISBN 978-1-139-05412-6.
• Bachrach, Bernard S. (1977). Early medieval Jewish policy in Western Europe. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 978-0-8166-0814-0.
• Baird, William (1992). History of New Testament Research, Volume One: From Deism to Tübingen. Fortress Press. ISBN 978-1-4514-2017-3.
• Barnett, Victoria (1992). For the Soul of the People: Protestant Protest Against Hitler. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-512118-6. Archived from the original on 27 August 2023. Retrieved 17 August 2023.
• Barnett, S. J. (1999). "Where Was Your Church before Luther? Claims for the Antiquity of Protestantism Examined". Church History. 68 (1): 14–41. doi:10.2307/3170108. JSTOR 3170108. S2CID 154764488.
• Barton, John (1998a). Holy Writings, Sacred Text: The Canon in Early Christianity (reprint ed.). Westminster John Knox Press. ISBN 978-0-664-25778-1.
• Barton, James Levi (1998b). Turkish Atrocities: Statements of American Missionaries on the Destruction of Christian Communities in Ottoman Turkey, 1915–1917. Armenian Genocide Documentation Series. Vol. 2. Gomidas Institute. ISBN 978-1-884630-04-0.
• Barton, Simon (2009). A History of Spain (2nd, rev. ed.). Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-1-137-01347-7. Archived from the original on 27 May 2023. Retrieved 27 May 2023.
• Bauer, Susan Wise (2013). The History of the Renaissance World: From the Rediscovery of Aristotle to the Conquest of Constantinople. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0-393-05976-2.
• Bayliss, Richard (2004). Provincial Cilicia and the Archaeology of Temple Conversion. Oxford: Archaeopress. ISBN 978-1-84171-634-3. Archived from the original on 23 May 2023. Retrieved 17 May 2023.
• Becker, Sascha O.; Pfaff, Steven; Rubin, Jared (2016). "Causes and Consequences of the Protestant Reformation". ESI Working Paper 16–13. ISSN 2572-1496. Archived from the original on 25 June 2023. Retrieved 5 July 2023.
• Behr, John (2006). "Gaul". In Mitchell, M.; Young, F. (eds.). The Cambridge History of Christianity. Vol. 1. Cambridge University Press. pp. 366–379. doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521812399.021.
• Bejczy, István [in Esperanto] (1997). "Tolerantia: A Medieval Concept". Journal of the History of Ideas. 58 (3): 365–84. doi:10.2307/3653905. JSTOR 3653905.
• Bernardini, Paolo; Fiering, Norman (2001). The Jews and the Expansion of Europe to the West, 1450 to 1800. Berghahn Books. ISBN 978-1-57181-430-2.
• Berndt, Guido M. [in German]; Steinacher, Roland (2014). Arianism: Roman Heresy and Barbarian Creed (1st ed.). London & New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-1-4094-4659-0.
• Bokenkotter, Thomas (2007). A Concise History of the Catholic Church (Rev. ed.). New York: Crown Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-307-42348-1.
• Boppart, Timo; Falkinger, Josef; Grossmann, Volker (1 April 2014). "Protestantism and Education: Reading (the Bible) and Other Skills" (PDF). Economic Inquiry. 52 (2): 874–895. doi:10.1111/ecin.12058. ISSN 1465-7295. S2CID 10220106. Archived (PDF) from the original on 7 March 2020.
• Father Arseny, 1893–1973: Priest, Prisoner, Spiritual Father: Being the Narratives Compiled by the Servant of God Alexander Concerning His Spiritual Father. Translated by Vera Bouteneff. St. Vladmir's Seminary Press. 1998. pp. vi–1. ISBN 978-0-88141-180-5. Archived from the original on 27 August 2023. Retrieved 17 August 2023.
• Bradbury, Scott (1995). "Julian's Pagan Revival and the Decline of Blood Sacrifice". Phoenix. 49 (4): 331–356. doi:10.2307/1088885. JSTOR 1088885.
• Bremmer, Jan N. (2020). "2: Priestesses, Pogroms and Persecutions: Religious Violence in Antiquity in a Diachronic Perspective". In Raschle, Christian R.; Dijkstra, Jitse H. F. (eds.). Religious Violence in the Ancient World From Classical Athens to Late Antiquity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-108-84921-0.
• Brink, Stefan (2004). "New Perspectives on the Christianization of Scandinavia and the Organization of the Early Church". Scandinavia and Europe 800-1350: Contact, Conflict, and Coexistence. ISD. pp. 163–175. ISBN 978-2-503-51085-9.
• Brita, Antonella (2020). "Genres of Ethiopian-Eritrean Christian Literature with a Focus on Hagiography". In Kelly, Samantha (ed.). A Companion to Medieval Ethiopia and Eritrea. Brill. pp. 252–281. ISBN 978-90-04-41943-8. Archived from the original on 18 July 2023. Retrieved 18 July 2023.
• Brodman, James (2009). Charity and Religion in Medieval Europe. Catholic University of America Press. ISBN 978-0-8132-1580-8.
• Brown, Alan (2007). "The intellectual debate between Christians and pagans". In Casiday, Augustine; Norris, Frederick W. (eds.). Cambridge History of Christianity. Vol. 2. Cambridge University. pp. 248–278. ISBN 978-1-139-05413-3.
• Brown, Christopher (2006). "Christianity and the campaign against slavery and the slave trade". In Brown, Stewart; Tackett, Timothy (eds.). The Cambridge History of Christianity. Vol. 7. Cambridge University Press. pp. 517–535. doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521816052.028. ISBN 978-1-139-05412-6.
• Brown, P. (1964). "St. Augustine's Attitude to Religious Coercion". Journal of Roman Studies. 54 (1–2): 107–116. doi:10.2307/298656. JSTOR 298656. S2CID 162757247.
• Brown, Peter (1976). "Eastern and western Christendom in late antiquity: a parting of the way". Studies in Church History. 13: 1–24. doi:10.1017/S0424208400006574.
• Brown, Peter (1993). "The Problem of Christianization" (PDF). Proceedings of the British Academy. 84. Oxford University Press: 89–103. Archived from the original (PDF) on 3 March 2022.
• Brown, Peter (1998). "Christianization and religious conflict". In Cameron, Averil; Garnsey, Peter (eds.). The Cambridge Ancient History XIII: The Late Empire, A.D. 337–425. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-30200-5.
• Brown, Peter (1992). Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire. University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 978-0-299-13344-3.
• Brown, Peter (2003). The rise of Western Christendom: triumph and diversity, A.D. 200–1000 (2nd ed.). Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers. ISBN 978-0-631-22137-1.
• Brown, Peter (2008). "Introduction: Christendom, c. 600". In Noble, T.; Smith, J. (eds.). The Cambridge History of Christianity. Vol. 3. Cambridge University Press. pp. 1–18. doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521817752.002. ISBN 978-0-521-81775-2.
• Brown, Raymond E. (2010) [1997]. An Introduction to the New Testament. The Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-14016-3. OCLC 762279536.
• Bryant, James Henry (1866), The mutual influence of Christianity and the Stoic school
• Bukowska, Aneta (2012). "The Origins of Christianity in Poland. Actual Research on the Church Archaeology". Christianisierung Europas: Entstehung, Entwicklung und Konsolidierung im archäologischen Befund. Schnell & Steiner. pp. 449–468.
• Bull, Marcus (2009). "Crusade and conquest". In Rubin, Miri; Simons, Walter (eds.). The Cambridge History of Christianity. Vol. 4. Cambridge University Press. pp. 340–352. doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521811064. ISBN 978-1-139-05602-1.
• Bundy, David (2007). "Early Asian and East African Christianities". In Casiday, Augustine; Norris, Frederick W. (eds.). Cambridge History of Christianity. Cambridge University press. pp. 118–148. doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521812443. ISBN 978-1-139-05413-3.
• Burgess, Stanley M. (2006). "Introduction". In Burgess, Stanley M. (ed.). Encyclopedia of Pentecostal and charismatic Christianity. Religion and Society. New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-96966-6.
• Burnside, Jonathan (2011). God, Justice, and Society: Aspects of Law and Legality in the Bible. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-975921-7.
• Bury, J. B. (2013). History of the Later Roman Empire, Vol. 2: From the Death of Theodosius I to the Death of Justinian. Vol. 2 (reprint ed.). ISBN 9780486143392.
• Bussell, Frederick William [in German] (1910). The Roman Empire: Essays on the Constitutional History from the Accession of Domitian (81 A.D.) to the Retirement of Nicephorus III (1081 A.D.). Longmans, Green. Archived from the original on 3 August 2023. Retrieved 5 August 2023.
• Butler, Cuthbert (1919). Benedictine Monachism: Studies in Benedictine Life and Rule. New York: Longmans, Green and Company. pp. 3–8.
• Cairns, Earle E. (2015). An Endless Line of Splendor: Revivals and Their Leaders from the Great Awakening to the Present. Wipf and Stock Publishers. ISBN 978-1-4982-2340-9.
• Calciu-Dumitreasa, George (May 1983). "Sermons to young people by Father George Calciu-Dumitreasa. Given at the Chapel of the Romanian Orthodox Church Seminary". Word Magazine. Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America. pp. 5–8. Archived from the original on 2 March 2007. Retrieved 11 May 2007 – via Orthodox Research Institute.
• Cameron, Alan (2011). The Last Pagans of Rome. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-974727-6.
• Cameron, Averil (1993). The Later Roman Empire, AD 284–430 (illustrated ed.). Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-51194-1.
• Cameron, Averil (2006b). "Constantine and the 'peace of the church'". In Mitchell, M.; Young, F. (eds.). The Cambridge History of Christianity. Vol. 1. Cambridge University Press. pp. 538–551. doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521812399.032. ISBN 978-1-139-05483-6.
• Cameron, Averil (2015). The Mediterranean world in late Antiquity: AD 395–700. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-136-67306-1.
• Cameron, Averil (2016). "Christian Conversion in Late Antiquity: Some issues". Conversion in Late Antiquity: Christianity, Islam, and Beyond. Routledge. pp. 1–30. ISBN 978-1-4094-5738-1.
• Cameron, Averil (2017). Byzantine Christianity: A Very Brief History. SPCK. ISBN 978-0-281-07614-7.
• Carrington, Philip (1957). The Early Christian Church: Volume 1, The First Christian Church (illustrated, reprint ed.). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-16641-6.
• Casanova, José (1994). Public Religions in the Modern World. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-09535-6.
• Casiday, Augustine; Norris, Frederick W. (2007). "Introduction". In Casiday, Augustine; Norris, Frederick W. (eds.). Cambridge History of Christianity. Vol. 2. Cambridge University. ISBN 978-1-139-05413-3.
• Cassidy, Edward Idris (2005). Ecumenism and Interreligious Dialogue: Unitatis Redintegratio, Nostra Aetate. Paulist Press. ISBN 978-0-8091-4338-2.
• Chamberlin, Eric Russell (1986). The Bad Popes. Dorset Press. ISBN 978-0-88029-116-3.
• Chinnici, Joseph P. (2012). "Ecumenism, Civil Rights, and the Second Vatican Council: The American Experience". U.S. Catholic Historian. 30 (3): 21–49. ISSN 0735-8318. JSTOR 23362900.
• Christiansen, Eric (1997). The Northern Crusades. London: Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-14-026653-5.
• Clark, Gillian (2011). "Augustine and the merciful Barbarians". In Mathisen, Ralph W.; Shanzer, Danuta [in German] (eds.). Romans, Barbarians, and the Transformation of the Roman World: Cultural Interaction and the Creation of Identity in Late Antiquity (illustrated ed.). Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. pp. 1–4. ISBN 978-0-7546-6814-5.
• Clifton, Shane (2012). "Ecumenism from the bottom up: A Pentecostal perspective". Journal of Ecumenical Studies. 47 (4): 576–592.
• Coffey, John (December 1998). "Puritanism and Liberty Revisited: The Case for Toleration in the English Revolution". The Historical Journal. 41 (4): 961–985. doi:10.1017/S0018246X98008103. S2CID 159485109.
• Coffey, John (2014). Persecution and Toleration in Protestant England 1558-1689. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-88442-2.
• Cohan, Sara (2005). "A brief history of the Armenian Genocide" (PDF). Social Education. 69 (6): 333–337. Archived (PDF) from the original on 26 March 2023. Retrieved 18 July 2023.
• Cohen, Jeremy (1 January 1998). "'Slay Them Not': Augustine and the Jews in Modern Scholarship". Medieval Encounters. 4 (1). E.J. Brill: 78–92. doi:10.1163/157006798X00043. Archived from the original on 7 July 2023. Retrieved 6 July 2023.
• Coleman, Simon (2016). "Chapter 12 The Prosperity Gospel: Debating Charisma, Controversy and Capitalism". In Hunt, Stephen J. (ed.). Handbook of global Contemporary Christianity. Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-31078-0.
• Collins, Roger (1998). Charlemagne. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. ISBN 978-0-8020-8218-3.
• Conlin, W. E. (2021). "Ethical Considerations for Treating the Old Order Amish". Ethics & Behavior. 31 (6): 419–432. doi:10.1080/10508422.2020.1805614. PMC 8411892. PMID 34483634.
• Constable, Olivia Remie (2004). Housing the Stranger in the Mediterranean World: Lodging, Trade, and Travel in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-139-44968-7.
• Constable, Giles (1998). The Reformation of the Twelfth Century (illustrated, revised, reprint ed.). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-63871-5.
• Cooper, Michael T. (2005). "Colonialism, neo-colonialism and forgotten missiological lessons". Global Missiology. 2 (2): 1–14.
• Costambeys, Marios (2000). "Property, ideology and the territorial power of the papacy in the early Middle Ages". Early Medieval Europe. 9 (3). doi:10.1111/1468-0254.00075.
• Constantelos, Demetrios J. (1964). "Paganism and the State in the Age of Justinian". The Catholic Historical Review. 50 (3): 372–380. JSTOR 25017472.
• Cowe, S. (2006). "The Armenians in the era of the crusades 1050–1350". In Angold, Michael (ed.). The Cambridge History of Christianity Eastern Christianity. Vol. 5. Cambridge University Press. pp. 404–429. doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521811132.018. ISBN 978-1-139-05408-9.
• Crislip, Andrew Todd (2005). From Monastery to Hospital: Christian Monasticism & the Transformation of Health Care in Late Antiquity. University of Michigan Press. ISBN 978-0-472-11474-0.
• Croix, G. E. M. de Sainte (2006). Whitby, Michael (ed.). Christian Persecution, Martyrdom, and Orthodoxy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-927812-1.
• Croke, Brian (2015). "Historiography". In Johnson, Scott Fitzgerald (ed.). The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity (illustrated reprint ed.). Oxford University Press. pp. 405–436. ISBN 978-0-19-027753-6.
• Cropp, Glynnis M. (2007). "Nero, emperor and tyrant, in the medieval French tradition". Florilegium. 24 (1): 21–36. doi:10.3138/flor.24.006.
• Cross, Richard (2001). "A Recent Contribution on the Distinction between Monophysitism and Chalcedonianism". The Thomist: A Speculative Quarterly Review. 65 (3). Project MUSE: 361–383. doi:10.1353/tho.2001.0001.
• Cunningham, Mary B.; Theokritoff, Elizabeth (2008). The Cambridge Companion to Orthodox Christian Theology. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-86484-8.
• Deane, Jennifer Kolpacoff (2022). A History of Medieval Heresy and Inquisition. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-1-5381-5295-9.
• de Juan, Alexander; Pierskalla, Jan Henryk (2017). "The Comparative Politics of Colonialism and Its Legacies: An Introduction". Politics & Society. 45 (2 Special Issue): 159–172. doi:10.1177/0032329217704434. S2CID 54971921. Archived from the original on 17 August 2023. Retrieved 15 January 2024.
• De Jonge, H. J. (2003). "The New Testament Canon". In Auwers, Jean-Marie; De Jonge, H. J. bibliques de (eds.). The Biblical Canons. Leuven University Press. pp. 309–319. ISBN 978-2-87723-651-5. Archived from the original on 27 August 2023. Retrieved 17 August 2023.
• Deininger, Matthias (2014). Global Pentecostalism: An Inquiry into the Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Anchor Academic Publishing. ISBN 978-3-95489-570-0.
• Den Heijer, Alexandra (2011). Managing the University Campus: Information to Support Real Estate Decisions. Academische Uitgeverij Eburon. ISBN 978-90-5972-487-7.
• Desan, Suzanne (2006). "The French Revolution and religion, 1795–1815". In Brown, Stewart J.; Tackett, Timothy (eds.). The Cambridge History of Christianity. Vol. 7 Enlightenment, Reawakening and Revolution 1660–1815. ISBN 978-1-139-05412-6.
• Dixon, C. Scott (2017). "Luther's Ninety-Five Theses and the Origins of the Reformation Narrative". The English Historical Review. 132 (556). Oxford University Press: 533–569. doi:10.1093/ehr/cex224.
• Dorfmann-Lazarev, Igor (2008). "Beyond empire I: Eastern Christianities from the Persian to the Turkish conquest, 604–1071". In Noble, T.; Smith, J. (eds.). The Cambridge History of Christianity. Vol. 3. Cambridge University Press. pp. 1–18. doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521817752.002. ISBN 978-0-521-81775-2.
• Dowley, Tim (2018). A Short Introduction to the History of Christianity. Fortress Press. ISBN 978-1-5064-4597-7.
• Drake, H. A. (2007). "The church, society and political power". In Casiday, Augustine; Norris, Frederick W. (eds.). Cambridge History of Christianity. Vol. 21. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-139-05413-3.
• Drake, H. A. (1995). "Constantine and Consensus". Church History. 64 (1): 1–15. doi:10.2307/3168653. JSTOR 3168653. S2CID 163129848.
• Dunbabin, Jean (2003). "The Council of Bourges, 1225: a Documentary History". The English Historical Review. 118 (475): 178–179. doi:10.1093/ehr/118.475.178.
• Dunn, Marilyn (2003). The Emergence of Monasticism: From the Desert Fathers to the Early Middle Ages. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-1-4051-0641-2. Archived from the original on 27 August 2023. Retrieved 17 August 2023.
• Dunn, Dennis J. (2016). A History of Orthodox, Islamic, and Western Christian Political Values. Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-3-319-32566-8.
• Dunning, Benjamin H. (2015). "Book review Reviewed Work(s): From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity by Kyle". The Journal of Religion. 95 (3). The University of Chicago Press: 396–98. doi:10.1086/681145.
• Eder, Jeanne; Reyhner, Jon (2017). American Indian Education: A History (2nd ed.). University of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 978-0-8061-5991-1.
• Edmundson, George (2008). The Church in Rome in the First Century: An Examination of Various Controverted Questions Relating to its History, Chronology, Literature and Traditions (reprint ed.). Wipf and Stock. ISBN 978-1-55635-846-3.
• Eichbauer, M.H. (2022). "The Shaping and Reshaping of the Relationship between Church and State from Late Antiquity to the Present: A Historical Perspective through the Lens of Canon Law". Religions. 13 (5): 378. doi:10.3390/rel13050378.
• Eidintas, Alfonsas (2001). President of Lithuania: Prisoner of the Gulag: a Biography of Aleksandras Stulginskis. Genocide and Resistance Research Center of Lithuania. ISBN 978-9986-757-41-2. Archived from the original on 27 August 2023. Retrieved 17 August 2023.
• Engels, Frederick (1978). "The Peasant War in Germany". Collected Works of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. Vol. 10. Lawrence & Wishart. ISBN 978-0-85315-355-9. Archived from the original on 27 August 2023. Retrieved 17 August 2023.
• Esler, Philip Francis (1994). The First Christians in Their Social Worlds Social-scientific Approaches to New Testament Interpretation. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-11122-5.
• Estep, William R. (1986). "Attempts at Reform: Wycliffe and Huss". Renaissance and Reformation. Grand Rapids, Michigan and Cambridge, U.K.: Wm. B. Eerdmans. pp. 58–77. ISBN 978-0-8028-0050-3. Archived from the original on 16 March 2024. Retrieved 11 May 2022.
• Fahlbusch, Erwin; Bromiley, Geoffrey William, eds. (2003). The Encyclopedia of Christianity. Vol. 3. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. ISBN 978-90-04-12654-1.
• Fernandez, James W. (1979). "Africanization, Europeanization, Christianization". History of Religions. 18 (3): 284–292. doi:10.1086/462823. S2CID 162935593. Archived from the original on 15 August 2023. Retrieved 15 November 2023.
• Ferzoco, George (2001). "The Changing face of Tradition: Monastic Education in the Middle Ages". In Ferzoco, George; Muessig, Carolyn (eds.). Medieval Monastic Education. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4411-4340-2.
• Firlej, Dominik (2021–2022). "Why did Polish Kings not go on Crusade in the Levant?" (PDF). The Cupola. 16: 120–135. Archived (PDF) from the original on 26 March 2023. Retrieved 5 July 2023.
• Flannery, John M. (2013). The Mission of the Portuguese Augustinians to Persia and Beyond (1602-1747). BRILL Academic. ISBN 978-90-04-24382-8. Archived from the original on 1 August 2023. Retrieved 23 February 2024.
• Folda, Jaroslav (1995). "7". In Riley-Smith, Jonathan (ed.). The Oxford Illustrated History of the Crusades. OUP. ISBN 978-0-19-820435-0.
• Fonnesberg-Schmidt, Iben (2007). The popes and the Baltic crusades, 1147–1254. Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-15502-2.
• Fonnesberg-Schmidt, Iben (2009). "Pope Honorius III and Mission and Crusades in the Baltic Region". In Murray, Alan V. (ed.). The Clash of Cultures on the Medieval Baltic Frontier. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. pp. 103–122. ISBN 978-0-7546-6483-3.
• Fontaine, Darcie (2016). Decolonizing Christianity: Religion and the End of Empire in France and Algeria. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-107-11817-1.
• Fousek, Jan; Kaše, Vojtěch; Mertel, Adam; Výtvarová, Eva; Chalupa, Aleš (26 December 2018). "Spatial constraints on the diffusion of religious innovations: The case of early Christianity in the Roman Empire". PLOS One. 13 (12): e0208744. Bibcode:2018PLoSO..1308744F. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0208744. PMC 6306252. PMID 30586375.
• Fox, Jonathan (2013). "Religious discrimination against religious minorities in Middle Eastern Muslim states". Civil Wars. 15 (4): 454–470. doi:10.1080/13698249.2013.853413. S2CID 144353518. Archived from the original on 15 November 2023. Retrieved 15 November 2023.
• Fox, Robin Lane (1987). Pagans and Christians. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 978-0-394-55495-2.
• Fousek, Jan; Kaše, Vojtěch; Mertel, Adam; Výtvarová, Eva; Chalupa, Aleš (26 December 2018). "Spatial constraints on the diffusion of religious innovations: The case of early Christianity in the Roman Empire". PLOS One. 13 (12): e0208744. Bibcode:2018PLoSO..1308744F. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0208744. PMC 6306252. PMID 30586375.
• Franck, Thomas M. (1997). "Is Personal Freedom a Western Value?". American Journal of International Law. 91 (4): 593–627. doi:10.2307/2998096. JSTOR 2998096. S2CID 144328175.
• Frassetto, Michael (2007). Heretic Lives: Medieval Heresy from Bogomil and the Cathars to Wyclif and Hus. London: Profile Books. pp. 7–198. ISBN 978-1-86197-744-1. OCLC 666953429.
• Frend, W.H.C. (2020). The Donatist Church. Wipf and Stock. ISBN 978-1-5326-9755-5.
• Freston, Paul (2008). "The Changing Face of Christian Proselytization: New Actors from the Global South". In Hackett, Rosalind I. J. (ed.). Proselytization Revisited: Rights Talk, Free Markets, and Culture Wars (1st ed.). New York & London: Routledge. pp. 109–138. ISBN 978-1-84553-228-4. LCCN 2007046731. Archived from the original on 16 March 2024. Retrieved 16 February 2022.
• Fulton, Rachel (2009). "Mary". In Rubin, M.; Simons, W. (eds.). The Cambridge History of Christianity. Vol. 4. Cambridge University Press. pp. 283–296. doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521811064.020. ISBN 978-1-139-05602-1.
• Gaddis, Michael (2005). There Is No Crime for Those Who Have Christ: Religious Violence in the Christian Roman Empire. Berkeley, Los Angeles, & London: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-24104-6.
• Garrett, William R (1987). "Religion, Law, and the Human Condition". Sociological Analysis. 47. OUP: 1–34. doi:10.2307/3711649. JSTOR 3711649.
• Gasper, Louis (2020). The Fundamentalist Movement (reprint ed.). Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. ISBN 978-3-11-231758-7.
• Gerberding, R.; Moran Cruz, J. H. (2004). Medieval Worlds. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company. ISBN 978-0-395-56087-7.
• Gerdmar, Anders (2009). Roots of Theological Anti-Semitism German Biblical Interpretation and the Jews, from Herder and Semler to Kittel and Bultmann. Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-16851-0.
• Gilley, Sheridan (2006). The Cambridge History of Christianity. Vol. 8, World Christianities c. 1815 – c. 1914. Brian Stanley. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-81456-0.
• Given, James Buchanan (2001). Inquisition and Medieval Society: Power, Discipline, and Resistance in Languedoc (illustrated ed.). Cornell University Press. ISBN 978-0-8014-8759-0.
• Gonzalez, Justo L. (2010b). The Story of Christianity. Vol. 2: The Reformation to the Present Day. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-185589-4. Archived from the original on 7 July 2023. Retrieved 7 July 2023.
• Goodman, Martin (2007). "Identity and Authority in Ancient Judaism". Judaism in the Roman World: Collected Essays. Brill Publishers. ISBN 978-90-04-15309-7.
• Green, Clifford (January 2015). "Peace Ethic or "Pacifism"?: An Assessment of Bonhoeffer the Assassin?". Modern Theology. 31 (1): 201–208. doi:10.1111/moth.12144.
• Gregory, Timothy E. (2011). A History of Byzantium (2, annotated ed.). John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-1-4443-5997-8.
• Grzymała-Busse, Anna M. (2023). Sacred Foundations: The Religious and Medieval Roots of the European State (illustrated ed.). Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-24513-3.
• Haas, Christopher (2002). Alexandria in Late Antiquity Topography and Social Conflict. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 978-0-8018-7033-0.
• Haberkern, Phillip N. (2016). Patron Saint and Prophet: Jan Hus in the Bohemian and German Reformations. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-028074-1.
• Haight, Roger D. (2004). Christian Community in History. Vol. 1: Historical Ecclesiology. New York: The Continuum International Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-8264-1630-8.
• Hall, John R.; Battani, Marshall; Neitz, Mary Jo (2004). Sociology On Culture. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1-134-45237-8.
• Hall, Stuart (2007). "Institutions in the pre-Constantinian ecclēsia". In Casiday, Augustine; Norris, Frederick W. (eds.). Cambridge History of Christianity. Vol. 2. Cambridge University. pp. 413–433. ISBN 978-1-139-05413-3.
• Hanson, Paul D. (2003) [1989]. "The Matrix of Apocalyptic". In Davies, W. D.; Finkelstein, Louis (eds.). The Cambridge History of Judaism. Vol. 2: The Hellenistic Age. Cambridge aNew York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 524–533. ISBN 978-0-521-21929-7. OCLC 872998103. Archived from the original on 16 March 2024. Retrieved 15 February 2022.
• Harnett, Benjamin (2017). "The Diffusion of the Codex". Classical Antiquity. 36 (2). University of California Press: 183–235. doi:10.1525/ca.2017.36.2.183. JSTOR 26362608.
• Harney, Lorcan (2017). "Christianising Pagan Worlds in Conversion-Era Ireland: Archaeological Evidence for the Origins of Irish Ecclesiastical Sites". Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy: Archaeology, Culture, History, Literature. 117C: 103–130. doi:10.3318/priac.2017.117.07. JSTOR 10.3318/priac.2017.117.07.
• Harper, Kyle [in Russian] (2013). From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality in Late Antiquity. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-07277-0.
• Harper, Kyle (2015). "Marriage and Family". In Johnson, Scott Fitzgerald (ed.). The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity (illustrated reprint ed.). Oxford University Press. pp. 667–714. ISBN 978-0-19-027753-6.
• Harris, Harriet A. (1998). Fundamentalism and Evangelicals (illustrated, reprint ed.). Clarendon Press. ISBN 978-0-19-826960-1.
• Harris, Jonathan (2014). Byzantium and the Crusades. Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-1-78093-736-6.
• Harvey, Paul (2016). Christianity and Race in the American South A History. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-41549-9.
• Harvey, Susan Ashbrook (2006). "Syria and Mesopotamia". In Mitchell, M.; Young, F. (eds.). The Cambridge History of Christianity. Vol. 1. Cambridge University Press. pp. 351–365. doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521812399.021. ISBN 978-0-521-81239-9.
• Haskins, Charles Homer (1971). Renaissance of the Twelfth Century (revised ed.). Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-76075-2.
• Hastings, Ed (2000). "Law". In Hastings, Adrian; Mason, Alistair; Pyper, Hugh S. (eds.). The Oxford Companion to Christian Thought. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-860024-4.
• Heather, Peter (2007). The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians (illustrated, reprint ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780195325416.
• Heimert, Alan (2006). Religion and the American Mind: From the Great Awakening to the Revolution (reprint ed.). Wipf and Stock. ISBN 978-1-59752-614-2.
• Heller, Henry (1996). "Putting History Back into the Religious Wars: A Reply to Mack P. Holt". French Historical Studies. 19 (3): 853–861. doi:10.2307/286649. JSTOR 286649.
• Hellerman, Joseph H. (2009). When the Church Was a Family: Recapturing Jesus' Vision for Authentic Christian Community. Nashville: B&H Publishing Group. ISBN 978-1-4336-6843-2.
• Helvétius, Anne-Marie; Kaplan, Michel (2008). "Asceticism and its institutions". In Noble, Thomas F. X.; Smith, Julia M. H. (eds.). Cambridge History of Christianity. Cambridge University. ISBN 978-1-139-05422-5.
• Herrin, Judith (2009). "Book Burning as purification". In Rousseau, Philip; Papoutsakis, Emmanuel (eds.). Transformations of Late Antiquity: Essays for Peter Brown, Volume 2 (illustrated, reprint ed.). Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. ISBN 9780754665533.
• Higham, Nicholas John; Ryan, Martin J. (2013). The Anglo-Saxon world. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-12534-4.
• Hilkert, Mary Catherine (1995). "Feminist theology: a review of literature". Theological Studies. 56 (2): 327–341. doi:10.1177/004056399505600206. S2CID 171166197.
• Hobson, Theo (2013). Reinventing Liberal Christianity. Eerdmans. ISBN 978-0-8028-6840-4.
• Holmes, J. Derek (1981). The Papacy in the Modern World, 1914–1978. Crossroad. ISBN 978-0-8245-0047-4. Archived from the original on 27 August 2023. Retrieved 17 August 2023.
• Hopkins, Keith (1998). "Christian Number and Its Implications". Journal of Early Christian Studies. 6 (2): 185–226. doi:10.1353/earl.1998.0035. S2CID 170769034.
• Horrell, David (1997). "Leadership Patterns and the Development of Ideology in Early Christianity". Sociology of Religion. 58 (4): 323–341. doi:10.2307/3711919. ISSN 1069-4404. JSTOR 3711919.
• Houtman, Dick; Aupers, Stef (2007). "The Spiritual Turn and the Decline of Tradition:The Spread of Post-Christian Spirituality in 14 Western Countries, 1981–2000". Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. 46 (3): 287–434. doi:10.1111/j.1468-5906.2007.00360.x.
• Humfress, Caroline (2013). "5: Laws' Empire: Roman Universalism and Legal Practice". New Frontiers: Law and Society in the Roman World. Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 978-0-7486-6817-5.
• Hunter, Dard (1978) [1st. pub. Alfred A. Knopf:1947]. Papermaking: The History and Technique of an Ancient Craft. New York: Dover Publications. ISBN 978-0-486-23619-3.
• Hunyadi, Zsolt; Laszlovszky, József [in Hungarian] (2001). The Crusades and the Military Orders: Expanding the Frontiers of Medieval Latin Christianity. Budapest: Central European University Press. ISBN 978-963-9241-42-8.
• Inglebert, Hervé (2015). "introduction". In Johnson, Scott Fitzgerald (ed.). The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity (illustrated reprint ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-027753-6.
• Isichei, Elizabeth (1995). A history of Christianity in Africa: From antiquity to the present. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. ISBN 978-0-8028-0843-1.
• Ivanič, Peter (2016). "The origins of Christianity in the territory of Czech and Slovak republics within the contexts of written sources". European Journal of Science and Theology. 12 (6): 123–130. Archived from the original on 6 June 2023. Retrieved 9 June 2023.
• Jacob, Margaret (2006). "The Enlightenment critique of Christianity". In S. J. Brown; T. Tackett (eds.). The Cambridge History of Christianity: Volume 7: Enlightenment, Reawakening and Revolution 1660–1815. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 265–282. ISBN 978-0-521-81605-2.
• Jacoby, David (1999). "The Latin empire of Constantinople and the Frankish states in Greece". The New Cambridge Medieval History. Vol. 5. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-139-05573-4.
• Jenkins, Philip (2011). "The Rise of the New Christianity". The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 101–133. ISBN 978-0-19-976746-5. LCCN 2010046058. Archived from the original on 16 March 2024. Retrieved 16 February 2022.
• Jenkins, Philip (2008). The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia — and How It Died. HarperCollins. pp. 14–15.
• Jestice, Phyllis G. (1997). Wayward Monks and the Religious Revolution of the Eleventh Century. Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-10722-9.
• Johnson, Scott Fitzgerald (2015). The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-027753-6.
• Jones, David Ceri; White, Eryn Mant (2012). The Elect Methodists: Calvinistic Methodism in England and Wales, 1735–1811. University of Wales Press. ISBN 978-0-7083-2502-5.
• Judge, E.A. (2010). Alanna Nobbs (ed.). Jerusalem and Athens: Cultural Transformation in Late Antiquity. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck. ISBN 978-3-16-150572-0. Archived from the original on 26 March 2023. Retrieved 4 August 2023.
• Kahlos, Maijastina (2019). Religious Dissent in Late Antiquity, 350–450. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-006725-0. Archived from the original on 16 March 2024. Retrieved 4 August 2023.
• Kaldellis, Anthony (2012). Procopius of Caesarea: Tyranny, History, and Philosophy at the End of Antiquity. University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 9780812202410.
• Kamen, Henry (1981). "500 Years of The Spanish Inquisition". History Today. 31 (2).
• Kamen, Henry (2014). The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision (unabridged ed.). Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-18051-0.
• Kaplan, Benjamin J. (2009). Divided by Faith Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe. Harvard University Press. p. 191. ISBN 978-0-674-03930-8.
• Kelly, Joseph Francis (2009). The Ecumenical Councils of the Catholic Church: A History. Liturgical Press. ISBN 978-0-8146-5376-0. Archived from the original on 27 August 2023. Retrieved 17 August 2023.
• Kenworthy, Scott M. (2008). "Beyond Schism: Restoring Eastern Orthodoxy to the History of Christianity". Reviews in Religion and Theology. 15 (2): 171–178. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9418.2007.00377_1.x.
• Kienzle, Beverly Mayne (2001). Cistercians, Heresy, and Crusade in Occitania, 1145–1229: Preaching in the Lord's Vineyard. UK: Boydell Press. ISBN 978-1-903153-00-0.
• Kienzle, Beverly Mayne (2009). "Religious poverty and the search for perfection". In Rubin, Miri; Simons, Walter (eds.). The Cambridge History of Christianity. Vol. 4. Cambridge University Press. pp. 39–53. doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521811064. ISBN 978-1-139-05602-1.
• Kim, Lloyd (2006). Polemic in the Book of Hebrews: Anti-Judaism, Anti-Semitism, Supersessionism?. Wipf and Stock Publishers. ISBN 978-1-498-27636-8.
• King, Ursula (2001). Christian Mystics: Their Lives and Legacies Throughout the Ages. Paulist Press. ISBN 978-1-58768-012-0.
• Kirby, David P. (2000). The earliest English kings (Revised ed.). London: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-24211-0.
• Kitromilides, Paschalis (2006). "Orthodoxy and the west: Reformation to Enlightenment". In Angold, Michael (ed.). The Cambridge History of Christianity. Cambridge University Press. pp. 187–209. doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521811132.009. ISBN 978-1-139-05408-9.
• Klier, John Doyle; Lambroza, Shlomo (2004). Pogroms: Anti-Jewish Violence in Modern Russian History. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-52851-1. Archived from the original on 16 March 2024. Retrieved 17 August 2023.
• Koenig, Harold G. (2009). Religion and Spirituality in Psychiatry. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-88952-0.
• Kolbaba, Tia M. (2008). "Latin and Greek Christians". In Noble, Thomas F. X.; Smith, Julia M. H. (eds.). Cambridge History of Christianity. Vol. 3. Cambridge University. pp. 213–229. ISBN 978-1-139-05422-5.
• Köstenberger, Andreas J.; Kellum, Leonard Scott; Quarles, Charles Leland (2009). The Cradle, the Cross, and the Crown: An Introduction to the New Testament. B&H Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-8054-4365-3. Archived from the original on 16 March 2024. Retrieved 17 August 2023.
• Kostick, Conor (2010). "Introduction". In Kostick, Conor (ed.). The Crusades and the Near East: Cultural Histories. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-136-90247-5. Archived from the original on 23 September 2023. Retrieved 17 August 2023.
• Kwiatkowska, Theresa (2010). "The Light Was Retreating Before Darkness: tales of the Witchhunt and Climate change". Medievalia (42). Mexico city: Ciudad Universitaria: 30–37. Archived from the original on 12 July 2023. Retrieved 14 July 2023.
• Lacopo, Frank P. (2016). "Medieval Europe and the Culture of Contempt in the Age of the Lateran Councils". Grand Valley Journal of History. 4 (2).
• Lavan, Luke; Mulryan, Michael (2011). "Preliminary Material". In Lavan, Luke; Mulryan, Michael (eds.). The Archaeology of Late Antique 'Paganism'. Leiden: Brill. doi:10.1163/ej.9789004192379.i-643. ISBN 978-90-04-19237-9. Archived from the original on 16 March 2024. Retrieved 4 August 2023.
• Law, David R. (2012). The Historical-Critical Method: A Guide for the Perplexed. T&T Clark. ISBN 978-0-56740-012-3.
• Law, Stephen (2011). "Evidence, Miracles, and the Existence of Jesus". Faith and Philosophy. 28 (2): 129. doi:10.5840/faithphil20112821. Archived from the original on 29 July 2021. Retrieved 18 May 2023.
• Lazzarini, Isabella; Blanning, T. C. W., eds. (2021). The Later Middle Ages. OUP. ISBN 978-0-19-873164-1.
• LeGoff, Jacques (2000). Medieval Civilization 400–1500. Translated by Julia Barrow (Reprint ed.). Blackwell Publishers Ltd. ISBN 978-0-7607-1652-6.
• Leithart, Peter J. (2010). Defending Constantine The Twilight of an Empire and the Dawn of Christendom. InterVarsity Press. ISBN 978-0-8308-2722-0.
• Leone, Anna (2013). The End of the Pagan City: Religion, Economy, and Urbanism in Late Antique North Africa (illustrated ed.). OUP. ISBN 978-0-19-957092-8.
• Levack, Brian P. (2013). "Introduction". In Levack, Brian P. (ed.). The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America. OUP. pp. 1–10. ISBN 978-0-19-957816-0.
• Lieu, Judith M. (1999). "The 'Attraction of Women' in/to Early Judaism and Christianity: Gender and the Politics of Conversion". Journal for the Study of the New Testament. 21 (72): 5–22. doi:10.1177/0142064X9902107202. S2CID 144475695. Archived from the original on 20 October 2022. Retrieved 15 July 2023.
• Lieu, Samuel N. C. (2007). "Christianity and Manichaeism". In Casiday, Augustine; Norris, Frederick W. (eds.). Cambridge History of Christianity. Vol. 2. Cambridge University. pp. 279–295. ISBN 978-1-139-05413-3.
• Lindberg, David C.; Numbers, Ronald L. (1986). "Introduction". In Lindberg, David C.; Numbers, Ronald L. (eds.). God & Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter Between Christianity and Science. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-05538-4.
• Löhr, Winrich (2007). "Western Christianities". In Casiday, Augustine; Norris, Frederick W. (eds.). Cambridge History of Christianity. Vol. 2. Cambridge University. pp. 7–51. ISBN 978-1-139-05413-3.
• Longwell, Horace Craig (1928). "The Significance of Scholasticism". The Philosophical Review. 37 (3): 210–25. doi:10.2307/2179428. JSTOR 2179428. Retrieved 28 August 2024.
• Louth, Andrew (2008). "The emergence of Byzantine Orthodoxy, 600–1095". In Noble, Thomas F. X.; Smith, Julia M. H. (eds.). Cambridge History of Christianity. Vol. Early Medieval Christianities, c.600–c.1100. ISBN 978-1-139-05422-5.
• Lyman, J. Rebecca (2007). "Heresiology: The invention of 'heresy' and 'schism'". In Augustine Casiday; Frederick W. Norris (eds.). The Cambridge History of Christianity. Vol. 2, Constantine to C.600. Cambridge University Press. pp. 296–314.
• MacCulloch, Diarmaid (2004). The Reformation: A History. Viking. ISBN 978-0-670-03296-9. Archived from the original on 12 August 2023. Retrieved 17 August 2023.
• MacCulloch, Diarmaid (2009). A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years. London: Allen Lane. ISBN 978-0-7139-9869-6.
• Macdonald, Stuart (2015). "The Changed (and Changing) Face of Church History". Toronto Journal of Theology. 31 (1): 29–42. doi:10.3138/tjt.30.suppl_1.29.
• Mannion, Gerard; Mudge, Lewis Seymour (2008). The Routledge Companion to the Christian Church. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-37420-0.
• Marabello, Thomas Quinn (2021). "The 500th Anniversary of the Swiss Reformation: How Zwingli changed and continues to impact Switzerland today". Swiss American Historical Society Review. 57 (1): 3. Archived from the original on 7 December 2023. Retrieved 7 December 2023.
• Marcocci, Giuseppe (2013). Paiva, José Pedro [in Portuguese] (ed.). "From start to finish: the history of the Portuguese Inquisition revisited". História da Inquisição Portuguesa (1536–1821). 20. Lisboa: Esfera dos Livros. Archived from the original on 7 July 2020. Retrieved 14 July 2023.
• Marcus, Joel (2006). "Jewish Christianity". In Mitchell, Margaret M.; Young, Francis M. (eds.). Cambridge History of Christianity. Vol. 1. Cambridge University Press. pp. 85–102. ISBN 978-1-139-05483-6.
• Marty, Martin (2006). "The American Revolution and religion, 1765–1815". In Brown, Stewart; Tackett, Timothy (eds.). The Cambridge History of Christianity. Vol. 7. Cambridge University Press. pp. 495–516. doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521816052.027. ISBN 978-1-139-05412-6.
• Marvin, Laurence W. (2008). The Occitan War: A Military and Political History of the Albigensian Crusade, 1209–1218. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-139-47014-8.
• Masters, Ryan K.; Young, Michael P. (2022). "The Power of Religious Activism in Tocqueville's America: The Second Great Awakening and the Rise of Temperance and Abolitionism in New York State". Social Science History. 46 (3): 473–504. doi:10.1017/ssh.2022.6. S2CID 247830382.
• Mathew, Arnold Harris (2018). The Life and Times of Rodrigo Borgia, Pope Alexander VI (Reprinted ed.). Creative Media Partners, LLC. ISBN 978-0-342-68601-8. Archived from the original on 11 July 2023. Retrieved 11 July 2023.
• Matthews, Roy T.; Platt, F. DeWitt (1992). The Western Humanities. Mayfield Publishing Co. ISBN 978-0-87484-785-7.
• Matter, Ann E. (2008). "Orthodoxy and deviance". In Noble, T.; Smith, J. (eds.). The Cambridge History of Christianity. Vol. 3. Cambridge University Press. pp. 510–530. doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521817752.002. ISBN 978-0-521-81775-2.
• Mayer, T. F. (2014). The Roman Inquisition on the Stage of Italy, c. 1590–1640. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 978-0-8122-4573-8.
• Maxwell, Jaclyn (2015). "Paganism and Christianization". In Johnson, Scott Fitzgerald (ed.). The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity (illustrated reprint ed.). Oxford University Press. pp. 849–875. ISBN 978-0-19-027753-6.
• McGill, Scott (2015). "Latin poetry". In Johnson, Scott Fitzgerald (ed.). The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity (illustrated reprint ed.). Oxford University Press. pp. 335–360. ISBN 978-0-19-027753-6.
• McLoughlin, William Gerald (1984). Cherokees and Missionaries, 1789–1839. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-03075-4.
• Meaney, Audrey L. (January 2004). "'And we forbeodað eornostlice ælcne hæðenscipe': Wulfstan and Late Anglo-Saxon and Norse 'Heathenism'". Wulfstan, Archbishop of York. Studies in the Early Middle Ages. 10. Brepols Publishers: 461–500. doi:10.1484/m.sem-eb.3.3720. ISBN 978-2-503-52224-1.
• Meeks, Wayne A. (2003). The First Urban Christians (second ed.). Yale University. ISBN 978-0-300-09861-7.
• Meyendorff, John [in Russian] (1979). Byzantine Theology: Historical Trends and Doctrinal Themes (illustrated, reprint, revised ed.). Fordham University Press. ISBN 978-0-8232-0967-5.
• Meyer, William J. (2010). Metaphysics and the Future of Theology The Voice of Theology in Public Life. Wipf and Stock Publishers. ISBN 978-1-63087-805-4.
• Micheau, Françoise (2006). "Eastern Christianities (eleventh to fourteenth century): Copts, Melkites, Nestorians and Jacobites". In Angold, Michael (ed.). The Cambridge History of Christianity Eastern Christianity. Vol. 5. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-139-05408-9.
• Mintz, Steven (1995). Moralists and Modernizers: America's Pre-Civil War Reformers. JHU Press. ISBN 978-0-8018-5081-3.
• Moore, R. I. (2007). The Formation of a Persecuting Society (second ed.). Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4051-2964-0.
• Moravcsik, Gyula (December 1947). "The Role of the Byzantine Church in Medieval Hungary". American Slavic and East European Review. 6 (3/4): 134–151. doi:10.2307/2491705. JSTOR 2491705.
• Morris, Benny; Ze'evi, Dror (2019). The Thirty-Year Genocide: Turkey's Destruction of Its Christian Minorities, 1894–1924. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-24008-7.
• Moss, Candida (2012). "Current Trends in the Study of Early Christian Martyrdom". Bulletin for the Study of Religion. 41 (3): 22–29. doi:10.1558/bsor.v41i3.22. Archived from the original on 25 February 2014.
• Mout, Nicolette [in Dutch] (2007). "Peace without concord: Religious toleration in theory and practice". In Hsia, R. (ed.). The Cambridge History of Christianity. Vol. 6. Cambridge University Press. pp. 225–243. doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521811620.014. ISBN 978-1-139-05484-3.
• Muir, Steven C. (2006). "10: "Look how they love one another" Early Christian and Pagan Care for the sick and other charity". Religious Rivalries in the Early Roman Empire and the Rise of Christianity. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press. ISBN 978-0-88920-536-9.
• Mundy, John H. (2000). Europe in the High Middle Ages 1150–1300 (third ed.). Columbia University. ISBN 978-0-582-36987-0.
• Munro, John H. (2018). "Patterns of Trade, Money and Credit". In Oberman, Heiko; Brady, Thomas A.; Tracy, James D. (eds.). Handbook of European History 1400-1600: Late Middle Ages, Renaissance and Reformation. Vol. I: Structures and Assertions. Brill. pp. 147–196. ISBN 978-90-04-39165-9.
• Murphy, James Bernard (2014b). "Religious Violence: Myth or Reality? A Symposium on William T. Cavanaugh's The Myth of Religious Violence". Political Theology. 15 (6): 479–485. doi:10.1179/1462317X14Z.00000000093. S2CID 147458599. Archived from the original on 17 July 2023. Retrieved 18 July 2023.
• Nelson, Janet L. (1 January 1996). The Frankish World, 750–900. A&C Black. ISBN 978-1-85285-105-7. Archived from the original on 27 August 2023. Retrieved 17 August 2023.
• Nicholson, Graham (1960). "The Understanding of Papal Supremacy as revealed in the Letters of Pope Gregory the Great". Theological Studies. 11: 25–51.
• Noll, Mark A. (1997). Turning Points: Decisive Moments in the History of Christianity. Baker Books. ISBN 978-0-8010-5778-6. Archived from the original on 27 August 2023. Retrieved 17 August 2023.
• Noll, Mark A. (2001). The Old Religion in a New World: The History of North American Christianity. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4674-3165-1.
• O'Collins, Gerald (2014). The Second Vatican Council: Message and Meaning (reprint ed.). Liturgical Press. ISBN 978-0-8146-8336-1.
• Olson, Roger E. (1999). The Story of Christian Theology: Twenty Centuries of Tradition and Reform. Downer's Grove, In.: InterVarsity Press. p. 172. ISBN 978-0-8308-1505-0.
• Onnekink, David (2016). War and Religion after Westphalia, 1648–1713 (reprint ed.). Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-00052-5.
• Palmer-Fernandes, Gabriel (1991). "Modern christian ethics". In Carman, John; Jürgensmeyer, Mark; Darrow, William (eds.). A Bibliographic Guide to the Comparative Study of Ethics. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-34448-7.
• Papaconstantinou, Arietta (2016). "Introduction". Conversion in Late Antiquity: Christianity, Islam, and Beyond. Routledge. pp. xv–xxxvii. ISBN 978-1-4094-5738-1.
• Patterson, Annabel (1997). Early modern liberalism (illustrated ed.). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-59260-4.
• Pearson, Birger A. (2006). "Egypt". In Mitchell, M.; Young, F. (eds.). The Cambridge History of Christianity: Origins to Constantine. Vol. 1. Cambridge University Press. pp. 330–350. doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521812399.020. ISBN 978-1-139-05483-6.
• Pennington, K. (2007). "The growth of church law". In Casiday, Augustine; Norris, Frederick W (eds.). The Cambridge History of Christianity. Cambridge University Press. pp. 386–402. ISBN 9781139054133.
• Peters, Edward, ed. (1980). Heresy and Authority in Medieval Europe. Pittsburgh: University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN 978-0-8122-1103-0.
• Phipps, W. E. (1988). "The origin of hospices/hospitals". Death Studies. 12 (2): 91–99url= https://doi.org/10.1080/07481188808252226. doi:10.1080/07481188808252226. PMID 10302347.
• Pintarić, Damir (16 November 2014). "Ecumenism – yes and/or no?". Kairos: Evangelical Journal of Theology. 8 (2): 175–186. ISSN 1846-4599. Archived from the original on 6 August 2023. Retrieved 6 August 2023.
• Pipes, Richard (1995). Russia Under the Bolshevik Regime. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-679-76184-6. Archived from the original on 27 August 2023. Retrieved 17 August 2023.
• Piron, Sylvain [in French] (2006). "Franciscan Quodlibeta in Southern Studia and at Paris, 1280–1300". In Schabel, Christopher (ed.). Theological Quodlibeta in the Middle Ages. Brill. pp. 403–438. ISBN 978-90-04-12333-5. Archived from the original on 27 August 2023. Retrieved 17 August 2023.
• Pluskowski, Aleks (2011). "The Archaeology of Paganism". In Helena Hamerow; David A. Hinton; Sally Crawford (eds.). The Oxford Handbook of Anglo-Saxon Archaeology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 764–778. ISBN 978-0-19-921214-9.
• Pohl, Walter; Wood, Ian (2015). "Introduction". In Gantner, Clemens; McKitterick, Rosamond; Meeder, Sven (eds.). The Resources of the Past in Early Medieval Europe (illustrated ed.). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-107-09171-9.
• Ponce Herrero, Gabino; Martí Ciriquián, Pablo (2019). "El complejo urbano transfronterizo Melilla-Nador" (PDF). Investigaciones Geográficas (72). Alicante: San Vicente del Raspeig: 101–124. doi:10.14198/INGEO2019.72.05. hdl:10045/99969. ISSN 1989-9890. S2CID 213966829. Archived (PDF) from the original on 19 December 2022. Retrieved 26 June 2023.
• Pop, Ioan-Aurel (2009). "Romania and Romanians in Europe: A Historical Perspective". In Boari, Vasile; Gherghina, Sergiu (eds.). Weighting Differences: Romanian Identity in the Wider European Context. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4438-1215-3.
• Poppe, Andrzej (1991). "Christianity and Ideological change in Kievan Rus': The First Hundred Years". Canadian-American Slavic Studies. 25 (1–4): 3–26. doi:10.1163/221023991X00038.
• Porter, Stanley E. (2011). "Early Apocryphal Non-Gospel Literature and the New Testament Text" (PDF). Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism. 8: 192–198. Archived (PDF) from the original on 9 October 2022. Retrieved 5 August 2023.
• Praet, Danny (1992). "Explaining the Christianization of the Roman Empire. Older theories and recent developments". Sacris Erudiri. Jaarboek voor Godsdienstgeschiedenis. A Journal on the Inheritance of Early and Medieval Christianity. 23: 5–119.
• Radić, Radmilla (2010). "11:Serbian Christianity". In Parry, Ken (ed.). The Blackwell Companion to Eastern Christianity. Wiley. ISBN 978-1-4443-3361-9.
• Rahner, Hugo (2013). Church and State in Early Christianity. Ignatius Press. ISBN 978-1-68149-099-1.
• Rankin, David Ivan (2016). From Clement to Origen: The Social and Historical Context of the Church Fathers (reprint ed.). Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-13243-1.
• Rapp, Stephen H. Jr (2007). "Chapter 7 – Georgian Christianity". In Parry, Ken (ed.). The Blackwell Companion to Eastern Christianity. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-1-4443-3361-9.
• Rappaport, Helen (13 December 1999). Joseph Stalin: A Biographical Companion. ABC-Clio. ISBN 978-1-57607-084-0. Archived from the original on 27 August 2023. Retrieved 17 August 2023.
• Rauschenbusch, Walter (1917). Theology for the Social Gospel. Macmillan and Company. LCCN 17031090. OCLC 1085604908.
• Rawlings, Helen (2006). The Spanish Inquisition. Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishing. ISBN 978-0-631-20599-9.
• Rives, J. B. (1999). "The Decree of Decius and the Religion of Empire". The Journal of Roman Studies. 89: 135–154. doi:10.2307/300738. JSTOR 300738. S2CID 159942854.
• Robbins, Joel (October 2004). Brenneis, Don; Strier, Karen B. (eds.). "The Globalization of Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity". Annual Review of Anthropology. 33: 117–143. doi:10.1146/annurev.anthro.32.061002.093421. ISSN 1545-4290. JSTOR 25064848. S2CID 145722188.
• Robert, Dana L. (April 2000). Hastings, Thomas J. (ed.). "Shifting Southward: Global Christianity Since 1945" (PDF). International Bulletin of Missionary Research. 24 (2). Sage Publications on behalf of the Overseas Ministries Study Center: 50–58. doi:10.1177/239693930002400201. ISSN 0272-6122. S2CID 152096915. Archived (PDF) from the original on 30 January 2022.
• Robert, Dana L. (2009). Christian Mission: How Christianity Became a World Religion (illustrated ed.). John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-0-631-23619-1.
• Roberts, C. H (1949). "The Christian Book and the Greek Papyri". The Journal of Theological Studies. 50 (199/200): 155–68. doi:10.1093/jts/os-L.2.155. JSTOR 23954151.
• Robinson, Thomas A. (1988). The Bauer Thesis Examined: The Geography of Heresy in the Early Christian Church. Studies in the Bible & Early Christianity. Vol. 11. E. Mellen Press. ISBN 978-0-889-46611-1.
• Robinson, W. Stitt (May 1952). "Indian Education and Missions in Colonial Virginia". The Journal of Southern History. 18 (2): 152–168. doi:10.2307/2954270. JSTOR 2954270.
• Rose, E. M. (2015). The Murder of William of Norwich : The Origins of the Blood Libel in Medieval Europe. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-021962-8.
• Rosenblatt, Helena (2006). "The Christian Enlightenment". In Brown, S.; Tackett, T. (eds.). The Cambridge History of Christianity. Vol. 7. Cambridge University Press. pp. 283–301. doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521816052.017. ISBN 978-1-139-05412-6.
• Rosenthal, Judah M. (1956). "The Talmud on Trial: The Disputation at Paris in the Year 1240". The Jewish Quarterly Review. 47 (1). JSTOR: 58–76. doi:10.2307/1453186. JSTOR 1453186.
• Rossino, Alexander B. (2003). Hitler Strikes Poland: Blitzkrieg, Ideology, and Atrocity (illustrated, revised ed.). University Press of Kansas. ISBN 978-0-7006-1392-2.
• Roth, Norman (January 1994). "Bishops and Jews in the Middle Ages". The Catholic Historical Review. 80 (1). Catholic University of America Press: 1–17. JSTOR 25024201.
• Royalty, Robert M. (2013). The Origin of Heresy: A History of Discourse in Second Temple Judaism and Early Christianity. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-53694-3.
• Rubenson, Samuel (2007). "Asceticism and monasticism, I: Eastern". In Casiday, Augustine; Norris, Frederick W. (eds.). Cambridge History of Christianity. Cambridge University Press. pp. 637–668. doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521812443.029. ISBN 978-1-139-05413-3.
• Rubin, Miri; Simons, Walter (2009). "Introduction". In Rubin, Miri; Simons, Walter (eds.). Cambridge History of Christianity. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-139-05602-1.
• Rüegg, Walter [in German] (1992). "Foreword. The University as a European Institution". In de Ridder-Symoens, Hilde (ed.). A History of the University in Europe: Volume 1, Universities in the Middle Ages. Cambridge University Press. pp. xix–xx. ISBN 978-0-521-54113-8. Archived from the original on 27 October 2023. Retrieved 17 August 2023.
• Rummel, Eric O. (2006). "The Albigensian Crusade: A Historiographical Essay" (PDF). Perspectives on History. XXI: 45–57. Archived (PDF) from the original on 24 February 2024. Retrieved 11 July 2023.
• Sabo, Theodore (2018). From Monophysitism to Nestorianism: AD 431–681. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. ISBN 978-1-5275-0959-7.
• Sághy, Marianne; Schoolman, Edward M. (2017). Pagans and Christians in the Late Roman Empire: New Evidence, New Approaches (4th–8th centuries). Central European University Press. ISBN 978-963-386-256-8.
• Salzman, Michele Renee (1993). "The Evidence for the Conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity in Book 16 of the 'Theodosian Code". Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte. 42 (3). Franz Steiner Verlag: 362–378. JSTOR 4436297.
• Salzman, Michele Renee (2006). "Rethinking Pagan-Christian Violence". In Drake, H.A. (ed.). Violence in Late Antiquity: Perceptions and Practices. Aldershot: Ashgate. pp. 265–286. ISBN 978-0-7546-5498-8. Archived from the original on 26 March 2023. Retrieved 27 January 2024.
• Sanmark, Alexandra (2004). Power and Conversion. A Comparative Study of Christianization in Scandinavia. The University of Uppsala. ISBN 978-91-506-1739-9.
• Sanneh, Lamin O. (2007). Disciples of all nations: Pillars of world Christianity. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-1980-4084-2.
• Sanneh, Lamin O. (2016). "Bible Translation, Culture, and Religion". In Sanneh, Lamin; McClymond, Michael (eds.). The Wiley Blackwell Companion to World Christianity. John Wiley & Sons. pp. 263–281. ISBN 978-1-118-55604-7.
• Schacter, Jacob J. (2011). Carlebach, Elisheva; Schacter, Jacob J. (eds.). New Perspectives on Jewish-Christian Relations: In Honor of David Berger. Netherlands: Brill. ISBN 978-9-00422-118-5.
• Schaff, Philip (1953). History of the Christian Church. Vol. IV: Mediaeval Christianity. A.D. 590–1073. CCEL. pp. 161–162. ISBN 978-1-61025-043-6. Archived from the original on 17 January 2023. Retrieved 9 June 2023.
• Schäferdiek, Knut [in German] (2007). "Germanic and Celtic Christianities". In Casiday, Augustine; Norris, Frederick W. (eds.). Cambridge History of Christianity. Cambridge University press. pp. 52–69. doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521812443. ISBN 978-1-139-05413-3.
• Schaltegger, Christoph A.; Torgler, Benno (1 May 2010). "Work ethic, Protestantism, and human capital" (PDF). Economics Letters. 107 (2): 99–101. doi:10.1016/j.econlet.2009.12.037. Archived (PDF) from the original on 22 May 2023.
• Seagrave, S. Adam (2009). "Cicero, Aquinas, and Contemporary Issues in Natural Law Theory". The Review of Metaphysics. 62 (3): 491–523. JSTOR 40387823.
• Shatzmiller, Joseph (1974). "Review of 'Medieval Jewry in Northern France: A Political and Social History', by Robert Chazan". Jewish Social Studies. 36 (3): 339. Retrieved 4 June 2020.
• Shoemaker, Stephen J. (2016). Mary in Early Christian Faith and Devotion. Yale University Press. p. 21. ISBN 978-0-300-21953-1.
• Schott, Jeremy M. (2008). Christianity, Empire, and the Making of Religion in Late Antiquity. Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press. ISBN 978-0-8122-4092-4.
• Schumpeter, Joseph (1954). History of Economic Analysis. London: Allen & Unwin. ISBN 978-0-415-10888-1.
• Schwartz, Seth (9 February 2009). Imperialism and Jewish Society: 200 B.C.E. to 640 C.E. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-1-4008-2485-4. Archived from the original on 19 December 2023. Retrieved 27 December 2020.
• Sedlar, Jean W. (1995). "King Saint Stephen of Hungary. By György Györffy. Trans. Peter Doherty". Slavic Review. 54 (4): 1119–1120. doi:10.2307/2501480. JSTOR 2501480. S2CID 165113730.
• Segovia, Fernando F.; Moore, Stephen D. (2007). "Introduction". In Segovia, Fernando F.; Moore, Stephen D. (eds.). Postcolonial Biblical Criticism: Interdisciplinary Intersections (reprint, revised ed.). A&C Black. ISBN 978-0-567-04530-0.
• Shahar, Shulamith (2003). The Fourth Estate A History of Women in the Middle Ages. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1-134-39420-3.
• Sharpe, Richard (1995). Life of St Columba. Penguin Classics. ISBN 978-0-140-44462-9.
• Shepard, J. (2006). "The Byzantine Commonwealth 1000–1550". In Angold, Michael (ed.). The Cambridge History of Christianity Eastern Christianity. Vol. 5. Cambridge University Press. pp. 1–52. doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521811132.002. ISBN 978-1-139-05408-9.
• Shlikhta, Natalia [in Ukrainian] (September 2004). "'Greek Catholic'–'Orthodox'–'Soviet': a symbiosis or a conflict of identitites?" (PDF). Religion, State and Society. 32 (3): 261–273. doi:10.1080/0963749042000252214. S2CID 144374454. Archived (PDF) from the original on 6 August 2023. Retrieved 6 August 2023.
• Skiles, William S. (2017). "Protests from the Pulpit: The Confessing Church and the Sermons of World War II". Sermon Studies. 1 (1): 1–23. ISSN 2689-5625. Archived from the original on 31 October 2023. Retrieved 6 August 2023.
• Smith, Geoffrey S. (2014a). Guilt by Association: Heresy Catalogues in Early Christianity. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-938679-6.
• Smith, John Howard (2014b). The First Great Awakening: Redefining Religion in British America, 1725–1775 (reprint ed.). Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-1-61147-715-3.
• Southern, Patricia (2015). The Roman Empire from Severus to Constantine (second, revised ed.). Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-49694-6.
• Southern, Sir Richard (2016). The Penguin History of the Church: Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages (reprint ed.). Penguin. ISBN 978-0-14-196873-5.
• Spater, Jeremy; Tranvik, Isak (1 November 2019). "The Protestant Ethic Reexamined: Calvinism and Industrialization". Comparative Political Studies. 52 (13–14): 1963–1994. doi:10.1177/0010414019830721. ISSN 0010-4140. S2CID 204438351.
• Stark, Rodney (1996). The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-02749-4.
• Štefan, Ivo (2022). "6". In Curta, Florin (ed.). The Routledge Handbook of East, Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages, 500–1300. Routledge. pp. 101–120. ISBN 978-0-367-22655-8.
• Stroumsa, Guy (2007). "Religious dynamics between Christians and Jews in late antiquity (312–640)". In Casiday, Augustine; Norris, Frederick W. (eds.). Cambridge History of Christianity. Cambridge University press. pp. 149–172. doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521812443. ISBN 978-1-139-05413-3.
• Strout, Shawn (2016). "Jesus' Table Fellowship, Baptism, and the Eucharist". Anglican Theological Review. 98 (3). Sage Publications: 479–494. doi:10.1177/000332861609800303.
• Sullivan, Francis Alfred (2001). From Apostles to Bishops: The Development of the Episcopacy in the Early Church. Paulist Press. ISBN 978-0-8091-0534-2.
• Swanson, Robert (2021). "Medieval Anticlericalism: Terms and Conditions". History of Religions. 61 (1). The University of Chicago Press: 1–135. doi:10.1086/714917. S2CID 237618411.
• Táíwò, Olúfémi (2010). How Colonialism Preempted Modernity in Africa. Bloomington, Indiana: University of Indiana Press. ISBN 978-0-253-35374-0.
• Tapie, Matthew (2017). "Christ, Torah, and the Faithfulness of God: The Concept of Supersessionism in "The Gifts and the Calling"". Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations. 12 (1). doi:10.6017/scjr.v12i1.9802.
• Tarver, Micheal; Slape, Emily (2016). "Christianos Nuevos". In Tarver, Micheal; Slape, Emily (eds.). The Spanish Empire: A Historical Encyclopedia. Vol. 1. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-Clio. pp. 210–212. ISBN 978-1-4408-4570-3. Archived from the original on 16 March 2024. Retrieved 11 July 2023.
• Taylor, Justin (1994). "Why were the disciples first called 'Christians' at Antioch? (Acts 11, 26)". Revue Biblique. 101 (1): 75–94. JSTOR 44089176.
• Taylor, Molly E. (2021). "Eschatology and Exile: The Crisis of the Fourteenth Century". Bishop Street: Student Journal of Theological Studies. 109.
• Thomas, Charles (1997). "Evidence for Christianity in Roman Britain. The Small Finds. By CF Mawer. BAR British Series 243. Tempus Reparatum, Oxford, 1995. Pp. vi+ 178, illus. ISBN 0-8605-4789-2". Britannia. 28: 506–507. doi:10.2307/526801. JSTOR 526801. S2CID 191997942.
• Thompson, James Westfall (2016). "The Papacy and the War of investiture". History of the Middle Ages 300–1500. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1-317-21700-8.
• Tilley, Maureen (2006). "North Africa". In Mitchell, M.; Young, F. (eds.). The Cambridge History of Christianity. Vol. 1. Cambridge University Press. pp. 380–396. doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521812399.021.
• Trebilco, Paul Raymond (2017). Outsider Designations and Boundary Construction in the New Testament: Early Christian Communities and the Formation of Group Identity. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-108-31132-8.
• Trevett, Christine (2006). "Asia Minor and Achaea". In Mitchell, M.; Young, F. (eds.). The Cambridge History of Christianity. Vol. 1. pp. 314–329. doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521812399.019. ISBN 978-1-139-05483-6.
• Trombley, Frank R. (2001). Hellenic Religion and Christianization c. 370–529 (2nd ed.). Leiden: Brill. ISBN 978-0-391-04121-9. Archived from the original on 16 March 2024. Retrieved 4 August 2023.
• Trombley, Frank (2007). "Christianity and paganism, II: Asia Minor". In Casiday, Augustine; Norris, Frederick W. (eds.). Cambridge History of Christianity. Cambridge University press. pp. 189–209. doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521812443. ISBN 978-1-139-05413-3.
• Truran, Margaret (2000). "Benedictine Thought". In Hastings, Adrian; Mason, Alistair; Pyper, Hugh S. (eds.). The Oxford Companion to Christian Thought. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-860024-4.
• Tyerman, Christopher (1992). "Who went on Crusades to the Holy Land?". In Ḳedar, B. Z. (ed.). The Horns of Hattin Proceedings of the 2nd Conference of the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East, Jerusalem and Haifa, 2-6 July, 1987. University of Michigan. pp. 13–26.
• Ullmann, Walter (2005). A Short History of the Papacy in the Middle Ages (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-203-34952-6.
• Religious Persecution in the Soviet Union. United States Congress House Committee on Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe and the Middle East. 1985. p. 129. OCLC 09342826.
• Vaage, Leif E. (2006). Religious Rivalries in the Early Roman Empire and the Rise of Christianity. Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press. ISBN 978-0-88920-536-9.
• Van Engen, John (1986). "The Christian Middle Ages as an Historiographical Problem". The American Historical Review. 91 (3): 519–52. doi:10.2307/1869130. JSTOR 1869130.
• Van Engen, John H. (2008). "Conclusion: Christendom, c. 1100". In Noble, TFX; Smith, JMH (eds.). The Cambridge History of Christianity. Vol. 3. Cambridge University Press. pp. 625–643. ISBN 978-1-139-05422-5.
• Van Engen, John (2018). "The Church in the Fifteenth Century". In Oberman, Heiko; Brady, Thomas A.; Tracy, James D. (eds.). Handbook of European History 1400-1600: Late Middle Ages, Renaissance and Reformation. Vol. I: Structures and Assertions. Brill. pp. 305–330. ISBN 978-90-04-39165-9.
• Vaughn, Sally N. (1980). "St Anselm and the English investiture controversy reconsidered". Journal of Medieval History. 6 (1): 61–86. doi:10.1016/0304-4181(80)90028-7.
• Verger, Jacques [in French] (1995). "The Universities and Scholasticism". In McKitterick, Rosamond; Abulafia, David (eds.). The New Cambridge Medieval History. Vol. 5, c.1198–c.1300. Cambridge University Press. pp. 256–276. ISBN 978-0-521-36289-4. Archived from the original on 16 March 2024. Retrieved 31 March 2022.
• Vinzent, Markus (2006). "Rome". In Mitchell, M.; Young, F. (eds.). The Cambridge History of Christianity. Vol. 2. Cambridge University Press. pp. 397–412. doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521812399.024. ISBN 978-1-139-05483-6.
• Vlach, Michael J. (2010). Has the Church Replaced Israel? A Theological Evaluation. B&H Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-8054-4972-3.
• Vlasto, A. P. (1970). The entry of the Slavs into Christendom: an introduction to the medieval. CUP Archive. ISBN 978-0-521-07459-9. Retrieved 12 January 2012.
• Walters, Philip (10 November 2005). "A survey of Soviet religious policy". In Ramet, Sabrina (ed.). Religious Policy in the Soviet Union. Cambridge University Press. pp. 3–30. ISBN 978-0-521-41643-6.
• Ward, W. (2006). "Evangelical awakenings in the North Atlantic world". In Brown, Stewart; Tackett, Timothy (eds.). The Cambridge History of Christianity. Vol. 7. Cambridge University Press. pp. 329–347. doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521816052.019. ISBN 978-1-139-05412-6.
• Watts, Edward (2015). "Education: Speaking, Thinking and Socializing". In Johnson, Scott Fitzgerald (ed.). The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity (illustrated reprint ed.). Oxford University Press. pp. 467–486. ISBN 978-0-19-027753-6.
• Weber, Max; Kalberg, Stephen (2012) [First published 1905]. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-57958-338-5.
• Weitzmann, Kurt (1979). Weitzmann, Kurt (ed.). Age of Spirituality: Late Antique and Early Christian Art, Third to Seventh Century (illustrated ed.). Metropolitan Museum of Art. ISBN 978-0-87099-179-0.
• Whalen, Brett Edward (2015). "The Papacy". In Swanson, R. N. (ed.). The Routledge History of Medieval Christianity: 1050-1500 (illustrated ed.). Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-66014-3.
• White, Lynn Townsend (1978). Medieval Religion and Technology: Collected Essays (illustrated ed.). University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-03566-9.
• Wiemer, Hans-Ulrich [in German] (1994). "Libanius on Constantine". The Classical Quarterly. 44 (2): 511–524. doi:10.1017/S0009838800043962. JSTOR 639654. S2CID 170876695.
• Wilken, Robert Louis (2013). The First Thousand Years: A Global History of Christianity. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-11884-1. JSTOR j.ctt32bd7m.5. LCCN 2012021755. S2CID 160590164. Archived from the original on 5 November 2022. Retrieved 8 May 2021.
• Wilkins, Steve (2017). Christian Ethics: Four Views. IVP Academic. ISBN 978-0-8308-4023-6.
• Williams, George Huntston (1995). The Radical Reformation (Third ed.). Penn State Press. ISBN 978-0-271-09134-1.
• Witte, John Jr. (1997). From Sacrament to Contract Marriage, Religion, and Law in the Western Tradition. Westminster John Knox Press. ISBN 978-0-664-25543-5.
• Wogaman, J. Philip (2011). Christian Ethics A Historical Introduction. Westminster John Knox Press. ISBN 978-0-664-23409-6.
• Wood, Cindy (2016). Studying Late Medieval History A Thematic Approach. Taylor & Francis. ISBN 978-1-317-21120-4.
• Woods, Thomas Jr.; Canizares, Antonio (2012). How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization. Regnery Publishing. ISBN 978-1-59698-328-1. Archived from the original on 15 March 2023. Retrieved 17 August 2023.
• Wylen, Stephen M. (1995). The Jews in the Time of Jesus: An Introduction. Paulist Press. ISBN 978-0-8091-3610-0.
• Yasin, Ann Marie (2005). "Funerary Monuments and Collective Identity: From Roman Family to Christian Community". The Art Bulletin. 87 (3): 433–457. doi:10.1080/00043079.2005.10786254. S2CID 162331640. Archived from the original on 20 November 2022. Retrieved 15 July 2023.
• Young, Frances M. (2006). "Prelude: Jesus Christ, foundation of Christianity". In Mitchell, M.; Young, F. (eds.). The Cambridge History of Christianity. Vol. 1. Cambridge University Press. pp. 1–34. doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521812399.002. ISBN 978-1-139-05483-6.
• Zachariadou, Elizabeth (2006). "The Great Church in captivity 1453–1586". In Angold, Michael (ed.). The Cambridge History of Christianity. Vol. 5. Cambridge University Press. pp. 169–186. doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521811132.009. ISBN 978-1-139-05408-9.
• Zagorin, Perez (2003). How the Idea of Religious Toleration Came to the West (illustrated, reprint ed.). Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-09270-6.
• Zurlo, Gina A. (2020). "1 A Demographic Profile of Christianity in East and Southeast Asia". In Ross, Kenneth R.; Alvarez, Francis D.; Johnson, Todd M. (eds.). Christianity in East and Southeast Asia (illustrated ed.). Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 978-1-4744-5162-8.

Encyclopedia & web sources

• "Why the Chinese government is targeting young Christians in its latest crackdown". America magazine. 14 May 2018. Archived from the original on 20 July 2021. Retrieved 17 October 2023.
• "pentarchy". Encyclopedia Britannica. Britannica. 2016. Retrieved 4 May 2024.
• Fahmy, Dalia (2022). "How U.S. religious composition has changed in recent decades". Modeling the Future of America in American Religion. PEW. Retrieved 27 May 2024.
• Halsall, Paul (2021) [1996]. "Medieval Sourcebook: Iconoclastic Council, 754 – Epitome of the definition of the iconoclastic Conciliabulum, held in Constantinople, A.D. 754". Internet History Sourcebooks Project. New York: Fordham University Center for Medieval Studies at the Fordham University. Archived from the original on 21 March 2022. Retrieved 11 April 2022.
• Herlihy, David (6 June 2023). "The emergence of modern Europe, 1500–1648/Aspects of early modern society". Britannica. Archived from the original on 18 July 2023. Retrieved 30 July 2023.
• Heyrman, Christine Leigh (n.d.). "The First Great Awakening". Teacher Serve Divining America Religion in America. National Humanities Center. Archived from the original on 3 August 2023. Retrieved 19 July 2023.
• Hudson, Miles (22 May 2023). "Fall of Constantinople". Encyclopædia Britannica. Archived from the original on 25 June 2023. Retrieved 3 August 2023.
• Hughes, Richard T. (2004). "Restoration, Historical Models of". In Foster, Douglas A.; Dunnavant, Anthony L. (eds.). The Encyclopedia of the Stone-Campbell Movement. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. pp. 635–638. ISBN 978-0-8028-3898-8.
• Jan Pelikan, Jaroslav (13 August 2022). Christianity. Encyclopædia Britannica. Archived from the original on 1 November 2014. Retrieved 27 October 2023.
• Kampling, Rainer (2005). "Deicide". In Levy, Richard S. (ed.). Antisemitism An Encyclopedia of Prejudice and Persecution. Oxford, England: ABC-CLIO. ISBN 978-1-85109-439-4.
• Lorenzetti, Jennifer (19 January 2023). "Filioque History & Controversy What is the Filioque Clause?". Study.com. Archived from the original on 21 June 2023. Retrieved 21 June 2023.
• Monter, William (2023). "Witch Trials, Europe". Encyclopedia of Sex and Gender: Culture Society History. Archived from the original on 14 July 2023. Retrieved 14 July 2023 – via Encyclopedia.com.
• Noll, Mark (2009). "Science, Religion, and A.D. White: Seeking Peace in the "Warfare Between Science and Theology"" (PDF). The Biologos Foundation. Archived from the original (PDF) on 22 March 2015. Retrieved 14 January 2015.
• Nowell, Charles E.; Magdoff, Harry; Webster, Richard A. (13 November 2022). "Western colonialism". Western colonialism | Definition, History, Examples, & Effects | Britannica. Encyclopedia Britannica. Archived from the original on 20 November 2018. Retrieved 15 January 2023.
• O'Connell, Erin (12 April 2006). "The New Face of Global Christianity: The Emergence of 'Progressive Pentecostalism'". Pew Research Center religion. Pew Research Center. Archived from the original on 4 April 2023. Retrieved 30 July 2023.
• Ostling, Richard (24 June 2001). "Cross meets Kremlin". Time. Archived from the original on 13 August 2007.
• Parker, N. Geoffrey (2023). "The emergence of modern Europe, 1500–1648". The Wars of Religion. Britannica. Archived from the original on 18 July 2023. Retrieved 17 July 2023.
• "Global Christianity – A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World's Christian Population". Pew Research Center religion. 19 December 2011. Archived from the original on 30 July 2013. Retrieved 3 August 2023.
• "Religion in Africa 2022". Find Easy population & more. 26 October 2022. Archived from the original on 26 March 2023. Retrieved 4 February 2023.
• "Understanding the rapid rise of Charismatic Christianity in Southeast Asia". cmp.smu.edu.sg. Singapore Management University. 27 October 2017. Archived from the original on 29 January 2021. Retrieved 10 December 2023.
• Sullivan, Patricia (26 November 2006). "Anti-Communist Priest Gheorghe Calciu-Dumitreasa". The Washington Post. p. C09. Archived from the original on 3 February 2020. Retrieved 29 August 2017.
• "The German churches and the Nazi state". Holocaust Encyclopedia. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Archived from the original on 29 July 2018. Retrieved 24 July 2023.
• Valkenburgh, Sarah (1994). "A Dramatic Revival: The first great awakening in Connecticut" (PDF). schoolinfosystem.org. The Concord Review. Archived (PDF) from the original on 19 July 2023. Retrieved 19 July 2023.

External links

The following links give an overview of the history of Christianity:

• Historical Christianity: The Ancient Communal Faith: Print, ebook, and audiobook
• Diarmaid MacCulloch (2010). A History of Christianity (Television production). BBC Four. Retrieved 7 April 2022.
• History of Christianity Reading Room: Archived 28 August 2019 at the Wayback Machine Extensive online resources for the study of global church history (Tyndale Seminary).
• Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Christianity in History
• Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Church as an Institution
• Sketches of Church History From AD 33 to the Reformation by Rev. J. C Robertson, M.A., Canon of Canterbury
• "Church History" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 6 (11th ed.). 1911. pp. 330–45.
• A History of Christianity in 15 Objects online series in association with Faculty of Theology, Uni. of Oxford from September 2011

The following links provide quantitative data related to Christianity and other major religions, including rates of adherence at different points in time:

• American Religion Data Archive
• Historical Christianity, A timeline with references to the descendants of the early church.
• Reformation Timeline, A short timeline of the Protestant Reformation.
• Fourth-Century Christianity