This is a fascinating book about how a small Middle Eastern cult grew to become the one with the most adherents in the world.Heather's proposition is that it was a series of coincidences, and not necessarily an inevitable rise as it seems now.I've never really thought about it this way. Heather starts the book 3 centuries after Jesus Christ was born-in 312 CE, the year of Constantine's momentous conversion.Heather doesn't believe in this dramatic miracle though, his explanation is a lot more mundane.There were Christian slaves all over the Roman EMpire, and he speculates that Helena, Constantine's influential mother, was converted to Christianity, and probably brought up her son in the religion too, but kept is very secret.Constantine possibly waited till he had military superiority, to announce his religion, and by linking it to victory in war, was also giving it power over pagan beliefs.The Roman Empire was far flung and elite landowners were given funds, and patronage, by their goodwill with the Emperor, and a simple way of currying favour was to adopt his favourite imaginary friend, and endow temples to him ( what we would call churches).This would incidentally be a method adopted by the Ottoman EMpire as well, apart from other countries.Existing religions ending up dying out, just from being starved of funds-Egyptian temples for instance, had expensive rituals and required upkeep, which they just didn't get and the religion ultimately died out, without royal patronage.Later Christian scholars wrote of iconoclasm by Christian bishops to demonstrate the power of the religion, but Heather uses extensive contemporaneous records to show that it wasn't widespread, and as common as it was made out to be ( strange that scholars would write of destruction of ancient temples as positive propaganda, but one look at social media handles of certain political parties will show one that even in 2025, iconoclasm of religious sites belonging to faiths deemed 'heretic'' are still greeted with joy). This was a form of Christianity we wouldn't recognise, going to church wasn't normal at all, since the religion was mostly followed by the elite who would worship privately.It was a State religion and not one of the masses, and Augustine of Hippo (writing nearly a century after Constantine's miraculous conversion), wrote of the importance of religious power being derived from the Church, rather than the State because then the religion would not be dependant on State patronage, or changes in State policy.The book also explains how the religion evolved to the form it is now, with one of the earliest attempts at homogenisation being Constantine calling for the COuncil of Nicaea, to use the traditional methods of a classical education to give this creed a structure-to translate, compare multiple versions of a text and then arrive at a consensus through elimination. This was to then be translated back to put together a religious text that would also knit together the Old and New Testaments.
I found it interesting that Heather writes of the region that we would now call MENA originally being the heart of Christianity (obviously, given that was where it started), with Rome being a small outpost for the faithful, which would change only over the years, not even with Constantine's victories. The religion also started spreading through Roman Christian slaves, to Goths as well. The shift of the center of the religion started happening after the Arab conquests, and there's an interesting potted summary of their rise-firstly as saboteurs by both the Roman Empire and the Persians during their decades of constant war, till they amassed enough warfare training in the way their potential enemies would wage war, and weapons, and rose to defeat both those decaying empires.The conversion to Islam happened over a couple of centuries,putting paid to conversion by sword theories,with the existing administrative structures being kept in place,so there were Christians who rose up the ranks in an Islamic Empire.After the Umayyads were defeated by the Abbasids,the ROman style of governing was adopted,with non-Christians having 2nd class status.The scholarship for this looks at family genealogies to see when the names started changing from local names,to Islamic ones,to indicate conversion.Much like the spread of Christianity through the ROman EMpire,the spread of Islam was aided by conversions for economic reasons.The rump Umayyads fled to Cordoba,a client state of the Abbasids,and the language of administration in those territories changed from Greek to Arabic,with more Christians learning the latter,and the translations of Greek texts to Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age,thereby preserving all that knowledge,which would many centuries later catalyse the Renaissance.
Across the Channel,the Roman elite started leaving Britain to fight the Persians,leaving behind a Christian British elite,who recruited mercenaries from nearby Roman vassal states, the Angles and the Saxons,who would know their way of fighting,to keep down rebellions of the local populace.They carried out a coup,that started a period of Anglo-Saxon dominance.Christianity spread through the influence of missionaries,with some rulers converting and the others slowly following,similar to Rome.Why would they want to convert,though?Heather explains the attractions of a religion that promised Heaven to a society nearly permanently at war,but also there attractions to joining a monastery and not being force to fight.The books and the structure of Christianity made a difference,as opposed to an oral traditional religion.The written framework of Christianity,honed by the Greco-Roman tradition of dialectic helped preachers in their proselytisation against local religions of which very little is known in the absence of written records.Christianity also adapted to messages that would resonate with the concerns of the local populace,with the promise of a glorious afterlife for a warrior society,fighting in the name of that religion.Land donated to monasteries was not taxed,so many land-owners donated land to set up monasteries where they would install pliant abbots,and continue to earn from it(which explains plot points in Cadfael).
The next section of the book deals with the progression through the Dark Ages and explains why they were called that-as the ROman Empire disintegrated into several smaller monarchies(practically fiefdoms),there was no longer a need for a centralised bureaucracy and extensive record keeping,which necessitated an educational framework.Smaller splintered entities prospered by providing a fighting force,not educated bureaucrats and the rates of literacy started reducing,as did people looking for education.Conversely,women's literacy increased because they were managing the homestead,accounts,produce and the marketing of it while the menfolk were off in a constant series of battles and skirmishes.Since women were educating children at home,Romance languages got a fillip because those were the languages women knew,not Greek and Latin,and they were the ones educating children.Theological schools till then had been set up with an emphasis on other disciplines along with Bible studies because other disciplines could inform the study of religion by training on arguments on other religions,how to give good sermons and so on,since this was anew religion-very reminiscent of Emperor Ashoka calling the major Buddhist Sangha in Pataliputra to hammer out the structure of that new religion at that time.
Missionaries were advised that to spread the religion among people,it didn't make sense to destroy pagan temples,and to co-opt local festivals and associate them with Christian martyrs,which explains all the moveable feasts,like Easter,since those would have been linked to cycles of climate or weather changes,and not specific dates.Also explains all the variations in Saints Days across Christian countries!To change it into a religion of the people and not just the elites,it was now associated with their concerns-crop failures,children's health and localised with some priests prescribing amulets.The rituals of the religion grew quite slowly-church services every Sunday started only in the 6th Century CE,for instance,because people would otherwise only listen to bishops preach when they happened to visit.Also to make it easier to belong to the religion,it was stripped of ritual and required very little to guarantee membership.Monasteries also required a large labour force and peasants were given perks to convert-apart from coercion in some cases,obviously.
THe adoption of the religion rose and fell in waves across Europe,Scandinavia,for instance,where there was a constant back and forth depending on what the victorious chieftains believed(there's a great Hans Christian Andersen story about this).The next major push for the religion happened when the stewards of the Merovingian kings,the rulers of Clovis,rose up and deposed them,founding the Carolingian Dynasty,soon to be vastly expanded by the great grandson of these rebels-Charlemagne.Like Constantine before him(and Napoleon after),once he had significant military victories,he was crowned by the Pope,in a proto-PR move to confer divine status and consequently,legitimacy.The Church till then was still controlled by rulers,and the last section of the book shows how that was reversed by another empire disintegrating-the Carolingian,with smaller fiefdoms then turning to the Church for military support and protection against invasion by their larger neighbours,till the religion resembles a form we're more familiar with.Masterfully shows you, however,that it really wasn't always this way,and could very easily have gone another way.
The book's very well-written,with humour and lucidity,and because he's covering vast scopes of history and societal change, I appreciate the way chapters are structured,with him stating his case,and what he wants to illuminate in that particular chapter,and again at the end of the chapter,giving you a neat summary.You're able to get all the little details and nuances that go into the greater whole of showing you how Christianity used the existing foundations of empire, and showed the flexibility to adapt-there never has been a single way to be a Christian, despite what some of its most hard core adherents might preach now.

Extremely academic tome on the rise of Christianity in the 4th century CE. Wading through this one was difficult, but the research is extremely well done.

This did take me a while to read because it is pretty academic in nature but I did find it interesting and informative! The growth and expansion of the religion of Christianity is fascinating especially in exploring how it overpowered and essentially wiped out so many other belief sets.

Even though this is a subject i'm deeply interested in, it was a little too grad-school-y for my brain haha. absolutely no shade whatsoever, it's a great book i'm sure, i just decided to stop reading it.

Christendom covers the trajectory of Christianity as it takes hold in Europe from 300-1300AD. Starting with Constantine, Heather looks at how and why Christianity spread and its ability to reinvent itself depending on the time and community. Though aimed at the public audience, parts of the book are very academic in tone and having a background knowledge of either the early years of Christianity or general European history will help.

This is a thorough, well written account of the history of Christianity. Heather approaches the story from the ususal angle of going from Constantine's conversion to the Council at Nicea and on. The theological controversies and decisions are well covered but we begin to see the effect or lack thereof a relatively weak governmental infrastructure had on how these decisons were enforced. I have not finished the entire book but wanted to give feedback at some point close to the book's publication date. i plan to continue. In the meantime, thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for giving me the chance to read this interesting book.

Christendom was a major disappointment. I absolutely love church history, and have a pretty deep background in the subject. I thought this title would be right up my alley, but I found it entirely too academic for my taste. I felt like the author could have made his points much more succinctly. But I get the impression that his aim was not so much to entertain or inform as to prove his theses, so I suppose from that standpoint it achieved the author's goals. I sure as heck didn't enjoy it, though - it was a slog.

In this book by Peter Heather it covers the beginning of Constantines conversion to Christianity and mainly talks about the practices it’s naysayers and ultimately the staying power its had. I appreciate the readable text in the page turning quality to an error that most would find boring Mr. Heather keeps you wanting to turn the pages. We hear about the last pagan emperor Julian his attempt to change back to the old way worshiping the old gods“ a lot from his papers which I found so interesting. This is a very long book but one I highly recommend if this is a subject do you even have just a passing interest in you need to read Christendom by Peter Heather especially if like me you’re curious about the early days of Christianity and times and ancient Rome somethings that always has me wanting to read about. I wish I had the words to tell you essay style all the reasons I found this book so interesting and something worth having brawl as I’ve already reiterated if this sounds like something you’d like then trust me when I say you’d love this book. I know some have criticized Mr. Heather for his non-academic way and telling the story but I think that is what made the story is so worth reading so kudos to Peter Heather for a five star read. I received this book from NetGalley and The publisher but I am leaving this review voluntarily please forgive any mistakes as I am blind and dictate my review.

It so happened that I read this book immediately after Judith Herrin’s “Formation of Christendom.” I had long been looking to read about the early days of Christendom and the supposed “Dark Ages.” Herrin’s book is considered a classic, and I picked it up when it was recently re-released by Princeton Classics. Heather’s book, which covers some of the same ground but tacks on an additional 500 years, is brand new (huge thanks to Knopf for an ARC via NetGalley). Heather’s is written with more of a lay audience in mind—it is much more dynamic and, frankly, engaging, while maintaining quite a bit of academic rigor. It is simply more approachable, if only at the cost of leaning too hard toward an easy-going, conversational style, which does occasionally grate (too many things are “crystal clear,” and even more pushes come to shoves). But these are quibbles—it is a terrific, sweeping survey of nearly 1,000 years of Christian history, with a clear explanatory and narrative framework. Herrin’s book, on the other hand, is more measured in tone, much more academic in tenor. And dry. Bone dry. Very nutritious, vitamin-rich, but forbiddingly slow-going at times. On balance, I think Heather’s book is a better introduction to the subject, and I heartily recommend it.

This history of Christianity is far too long (600 pages) for many readers, but it is still a very good read. Mr. Heather is a very accomplished scholar, but his book (if the targeted readership is the general public) should have been only half as long. In my opinion, the only readers who will be willing to invest the time in reading "Christendom" are historians of religion. Perhaps, two shorter volumes would do the trick.

A broad and controversial topic, expertly navigated by Peter Heather. While there may not always be a correct answer in the histories of Christendom (note the use of the word 'histories', as I don't believe there is just one), Heather presents a broad topic with a guided focus that still allows readers to make up their own minds. I would recommend this for enthusiasts of the field, although experts and arm chair historians may still find one or two pieces worth noting.

Histories of early Christianity for a general audience are hard to find, and it's great that Peter Heather, chronicler of the fall of Rome, has written one. This book covers the beginnings of the Church, the many schisms and varieties of belief, and the deepening divide between the Eastern and Western churches. If you are looking for a great history of the early Church, this is it!

The renowned historian Peter Heather covers the beginnings of the legalization of Christianity under Roman rulers. Part One "The Romanization of Christianity" establishes his thesis in a comprehensive panorama that is aimed at the general reading public.