Historical Christianity

The history of the Christian religion is best understood through the relationship between Christianity, power and empire. While Christian history begins with the sacred story of the humble life of a man named Jesus, the events that unfold after Jesus launch Christianity from a subversive underground movement to an immensely powerful global religious force shaping ancient empires, global culture and contemporary politics. This lesson will provide a brief overview of historical Christianity.

Objectives:

  • identify people and events significant to Christian history
  • describe the historical relationship between Christian and non-Christian communities
  • explain how significant people and events in Christian history contribute to Christian identity, culture and religious practice.

Jesus and Sacred History

Archaeological evidence on the history of Jesus of Nazareth is scant, yet is it generally agreed that he was born in Palestine around 3 BCE and raised in Judaism in a Aramaic-speaking family. He began public ministry at around the age of 30 as an itinerant, or travelling, teacher who offered prophetic messages related to salvation and a day of judgement referenced in the Hebrew Bible. At approximately 33 years of age, Jesus is arrested and sentenced to death by the Roman prefect in Judea, Pontius Pilate. Christianity as a religious movement gains momentum after the death of Jesus, and the history of early Christianity is intertwined with the history of the Roman empire. To learn more about the life of Jesus and early Rome, watch the History 101 video below.

Christianity and Rome

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Christianity emerged during the ascension of the Roman Empire, and the reign of early imperial leaders who were swift to eliminate opposition through means of execution or genocide. Like Jewish people living in Rome, early Christians were also monotheists who refused to acknowledge, worship or offer sacrifices to Roman gods. Christianity was illegal, and refusal to abide by Roman religious mandates often led to punishment or death. In 250 the Emperor Decius ordered all inhabitants to make required sacrifices or face execution. Seven years later in 257, the Emperor Valerian began mass deportations and execution of Christian clergy, and Diocletian launched a massive execution, known as the ‘Great Persecution,’ in 298. To learn more about early imperial attitudes and punishments toward, read this article.

Constantine

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Roman tides changed under the reign of Constantine in 314, after the emperor claimed to see a chi ro sign of a cross in the sky prior to winning a major battle over the Tiber river. He declared Christianity the official religion of what would become the Holy Roman Empire. Although he lived much of his life as a pagan, he joined the Christian faith on his deathbed, being baptized by Eusebius of Nicomedia in 337. Prior to his conversion however, he played an influential role in the proclamation of the Edict of Milan in 313, which declared religious tolerance for Christianity in the Roman empire. Constantine broke tradition among Roman rulers by refusing to erect a statue of himself. His policies favored Christians; clergy were exempt from taxation and imperial money was used to renovate and enlarge churches. Christians were appointed to upper level positions. The association of Christianity with status and opportunity expanded membership. Through Constantine, Christianity was catapulted from an underground movement to an imperial force.

The Church

One of the earliest depictions of baptism, Catacombs of San Callisto, third century

It took nearly four centuries for Christianity to become an organized religion. Earliest Christian worship took place in private households, and devotional activity was centered on the home and included women and men. Baptism, a symbolic purification ritual comprised of sprinkling water or total immersion in water, signaled entry into the Christian faith and community. From the mid-second century, some houses used for Christian worship were re-modeled into house churches, or domus ecclesiae, to accommodate congregations of up to 75 people, such as the Dura Europos in Syria.

After Christianity moved into the public sphere during the reign of Constantine, the role of women changed as formal male-centered authority structures began to develop. The foundational office was the episcopacy (literally means ‘oversight’), and the twelve disciples who originally followed Jesus became travelling evangelists carrying the news of Jesus’ resurrection and appointing local leaders, or episcopoi, who would later become bishops in the early church. As congregations grew, the episcopoi needed to appoint leaders, or prebyters (elders) to perform rituals and meet the needs of the local community. Over time, presbyters evolved into the modern role of priests as they are understood today. A third position, deacon (from Greek diakonia for ‘service’) supported the work of the bishops and tended to social services in the community. As the three positions developed (bishop, priest and deacon), women were excluded from all except for widow and deaconess. The order of widows responded to the needs of the widowed community, and deaconesses helped prepare female converts for baptisms, tended to the sick and to the Church.

Pro-Christian initiatives by Constantine included the construction of basilicas that not only provided larger spaces for worship, they were also designed to accommodate two rituals with Jewish roots; baptism and the Eucharist, a shared symbolic meal. To learn about basilicas, watch the video below.

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As Christianity expanded from the Middle East into Europe and Asia Minor, regional authorities centralized communication by creating five major episcopal areas, or sees; Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem. The five regions also reflected the administrative organization of the Roman Empire. Conflicts emerged between Rome and Constantinople, and this eventually led to a permanent schism between Eastern and Western Christianity. In the East, a secular emperor oversaw secular as well as religious authority within a concept of a sacred society guided by a holy spirit and presided over by an emperor who was viewed as a divine monarch. In the West, a dualism persisted between religious and state affairs. The bishop of Rome evolved into the role of Pope as it is known today. Prior to 1073, the title papae (‘pope’) referred to any bishop until Pope Gregory VII formally prohibited use of the title by anyone other than the bishop of Rome. In time, Rome claimed primary authority in Christianity by claiming that its bishop was the direct successor to Peter, a disciple of Jesus. Tensions between Rome in the West and Constantinople in the East persisted through political as well as spiritual and theological differences.

The Councils

By the end of the second century, the church was developing into an organized institution yet it did not have a clearly defined set of doctrines for a unified belief system. Early attempts included Christology (understanding Jesus) and the creation of ‘Rules of Faith.’ Through several councils, known as synods, the church eventually developed a scriptural canon, a collection of 27 books recognized as sacred, which eventually formed the New Testament. Both East and West traditions recognized the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, the Septuagint, as what would become the Old Testament.

Early leaders in the Christian movement held councils, or synods, to address problems within the increasingly popular religious movement and to establish a common framework. The Council of Nicaea convened by Constantine in 325 produced the first significant agreement related to the nature of Jesus, and the Nicene Creed established that Jesus was of the same substance as God the Father. Yet the Nicene Creed was not unanimous, particularly within the Eastern Church; The Council of Antioch (341) and the Council of Constantinople aimed to reverse the Nicene Creed without success. The Council of Ephaseus (431) addressed a growing theological movement within Christianity called Nestorianism which presented Jesus as having two natures; one human and one divine. The council opposed the two-part representation and responded by naming Jesus’ mother, Mary, as Theotokos, or ‘God Bearer’, to disconnect Jesus from human forms. The Council of Chalcedon in 451 addressed continued disputes over the nature of Jesus by affirming the agreements in the Councils of Nicaea and Ephaseus and adopted a position known as dyophysitism which emphasizes the one-ness of Jesus through the Trinity Doctrine of three in one: Jesus as father, son and holy spirit. The doctrine of the Trinity is one of the most difficult ideas in Christianity, but it’s fundamental because it reconciles the relationship between Jesus and God within a monotheistic framework.

Ecclesiastical Virgins

During the third and fourth centuries, women in wealthy families began establishing spiritual communities for friends and relatives as well as for orphans and poor women. Known as mater familia, the heads of these households led prayers and organized charitable work. In time, these societies withdrew from larger public life and took on a religious consecration that would lead to the modern day convent, or a community bound by religious monastic vows.

Monastic Movements

Through time, many churches became substantial landowners and bishops were influential patrons. Increasing worldliness of the churches role in secular government and and society stimulated an ascetic movement toward monasticism, an ascetic discipline based on a withdrawl from mundane life and toward a devotion to the spiritual world. Monasticism was not unique to Christianity; within Judaism, Essenes and Theraputae also practiced disciplined worship within isolated and exclusive communities. As the Roman Empire began to fall during the seventh and ninth centuries leading into the Middle Ages, Christian monasteries provided social stability and ensured the survival of Christianity into a new Era of fractured and oftentimes warring kingdoms throughout Europe. To learn more about the role of monasteries in Medieval Society and Art, visit the Metropolitan Museum website.

Byzantine Empire

As Rome began to crumble, the Byzantine Empire flourished for more than 1,000 years after Constantine, and Eastern Orthodoxy emerged as a powerful force shaping Christianity in the Mediterranean. Byzantium was referred to as the ‘New Rome,’ and Byzantine art and theology flourished with a vein of devotional practice and mysticism that included meditation, chant, mantras and spiritual discipline. Iconography and portraiture of Jesus and Christian leaders became a distinctive aspect of Byzantine art, and representations of Jesus transitioned from humble shepherd to kingly and divine ruler. These representations launched a heated debate, known as the iconoclastic period, when iconoclasts (‘icon breakers’) opposed depictions of Jesus and compared the representations to idolatry, the worship of idols. The second Council of Nicaea in 787 decided that representations were permissible provided the images were not worshiped.

Byzantine expansion spread eastern Orthodoxy into Eastern Europe, and missionaries proselytized, or promoted conversion, by teaching in local languages rather than Latin or Greek. After the gradual invasion and control of Constantinople by the Islamic Ottoman Empire in 1453, Muslim leaders tolerated the Greek Church as a self-governing community. To learn more about Byzantine Christianity, visit the Metropolitan Museum website.

The Crusades

Guy de Lusignan and Saladin in Battle / Mathew Paris, c.1250
Guy de Lusignan and Saladin in Battle / Mathew Paris, c.1250

After a brief decline leading into the tenth century, political stabilization in Western Europe and the development of commerce and wealth advanced Christianity geographically and politically in the eleventh century, and by 1350 most of Europe had converted, either voluntarily or involuntarily, to Christianity. Power began to shift from Islamic domination to Christian power. In 1095, Pope Urban II declared the first of what would be a series of crusades to reclaim holy sites in Palestinian territory occupied by the Seljik Turks. Military participation was represented as pilgrimage and martyrdom coupled with adventure and profit. Over the course of four centuries, thousands of peasants and nobles ‘took the cross’ to attack and plunder Islamic held territories that had once been sites of co-existence among Muslims, Christians and Jews. This not only changed the relationship between Christianity and Islam, it also fractured the relationship between Western and Eastern churches.

The Inquisition

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Witches on broomsticks, The History of Witches and Wizards, England, 1720,

In the wake of the crusades and the consolidation of Christian power in Europe, the 13th century began with a theological cleansing of Christian views that did not adhere to the official teaching of the Church known as heresy. Into the 12th century, heresy was punished by excommunication, or exclusion from the Christian community. The outcome of the crusades granted Christian access to state power and enforcement. In 1232 Pope Gregory IX appointed papal inquisitors to travel the countryside in search of heretics. Those who did not confess were put on trial by the inquisitor. The Spanish Inquisition specifically targeted Jewish and Muslim converts. the grand inquisitor, Tomas de Torquemada, ordered more than 2,000 executions and is credited with reclaiming Spain in 1492. By 1486, German dominican Heinrich Kraemer published Malleus Maleficarum, ‘Hammer of Witches’ which served as the handbook for Christian witch-hunting in Europe as well as in European colonies.

To learn about the strategies in the Inquisition, listen to the NPR radio interview below.

The Papacy

Increasing Christian power in Europe and European territories generated conflicts among leaders in the Church, particularly between the councils of the Church and the role of the pope; a role that began to transition from communicator within different churches to one of central authority. To learn about the development and influence of papal authority, watch the documentary below.

Saints

In addition to developing a hierarchically arranged system of leadership in the secular world, the Church began developing criteria for sainthood, a canonical list of saints, and a procedure for screening candidates. The first person declared a saint was a German Bishop in 993 and a heavenly senate of saints developed through the centuries. To learn about the process of sainthood, watch the video below by Rome report.

The Protestant Reformation

The accumulation of European wealth during the 14th century generated renewed interests toward the traditions of philosophy, science, and art that had once characterized Greek and Roman societies and a new wave of humanism and critical inquiry. Ideas of self-governance not only opposed aristocracies, they also called to question church authority. Erasmus of Rotterdam was among the first reformers to challenge the Church and what he considered to be abuses of theology. He called for new translations of original sources, and this led the way for a reformation movement in Western Europe led by Margin Luther in Germany, Jean Calvin in France and Ulrich Zwingli in Sweden. With the help of the printing press, this reform movement transformed the Christian landscape of Europe and European colonies. To learn more, watch the National Geographic video below.

The protestant reformation not only led to the proliferation of reformed churches within the Christian community that separated new protestant traditions from the existing catholic tradition, it also stimulated a counter-reformation within the Catholic Church. Watch the documentary below to learn more about the counter-reformation.

European Colonialism

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By the 16th century European empires began to expand outside of Europe to acquire new territories and resources. By the 20th century, nearly 85% of the world had been or currently was under European colonial occupation, and this transformed the global religious landscape. Christianity and European colonialism are were closely associated because Catholicism and Protestantism often served as the “religious arm” for European occupation of land and people. Similar to the ethic of the crusades, colonization was morally packaged as the European duty to save indigenous people by bringing the ‘light’ of salvation. This sentiment was epitomized in Rudyard Kipling’s poem, the White Man’s Burden. Missionaries and priests played a key part in colonial rule in occupied territories by not only providing a divine mandate, but by also working to convince colonized people to embrace occupation. The outcome of Christian colonized is the extermination of diverse indigenous religions and spiritualities and the development of new, syncretic, forms of Christianity.

Christianity in Social and Historical Context

This lesson offered a brief introduction to some people and events that are considered significant in Christian history, and it described some of the historical relationships between Christianity and non-Christian communities and empires, and it also addressed the relatinship between Christianity and empire.

Readings and Resources:

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For Discussion: Research and describe an historically significant person or event in Christian history. 1. Describe the person or event, 2.) explain scholarly evidence of person or event, 3.) Describe how this person or event is significant in Christianity. Include references, and always respond to other student posts in discussion.When you complete the discussion, move on to the Bible lesson.