The Triumph of a Religion

Christendom

'A fascinating story about a religion in a surprisingly precarious position' Dan Jones, Sunday Times 
 
'Superb storytelling ... captivating and profound' Literary Review 
 
'A page-turner' The Spectator 
 
In the fourth century AD, a new faith exploded out of Palestine. Overwhelming the paganism of Rome, and converting the Emperor Constantine in the process, it resoundingly defeated a host of other rivals. Almost a thousand years later, all of Europe was controlled by Christian rulers, and the religion, ingrained within culture and society, exercised a monolithic hold over its population. But, as Peter Heather shows in this compelling history, there was nothing inevitable about Christendom's rise to Europe-wide dominance. 
 
In exploring how the Christian religion became such a defining feature of the European landscape, and how a small sect of isolated congregations was transformed into a mass movement centrally directed from Rome, Heather shows how Christendom constantly battled against both so-called 'heresies' and other forms of belief. From the crisis that followed the collapse of the Roman Empire, which left the religion teetering on the edge of extinction, to the astonishing revolution in which the Papacy emerged as the head of a vast international corporation, Heather traces Christendom's chameleon-like capacity for self-reinvention and willingness to mobilize well-directed force. 
 
Christendom's achievement was not, or not only, to define official Christianity, but - from its scholars and its lawyers, to its provincial officials and missionaries in far-flung corners of the continent - to transform it into an institution that wielded effective religious authority across nearly all of the disparate peoples of medieval Europe. This is its extraordinary story.

Heather's sweeping and engaging history of the making of Christendom over a thousand years is full of reinterpretations and new insights... his approach makes for a startlingly fresh look at a familiar story, a non-triumphalist history of the triumph of Christianity, and his book is all the more powerful for it.

Heather casts his eye across the whole medieval period as he unfolds a fascinating story about a religion in a surprisingly precarious position.

It is more pressing than ever to understand how exactly Christianity came to dominate in Europe. Heather's account cuts through the myth of an innately Christian, culturally monolithic Europe... [and] sheds light on the mechanics of state coercion and intermittent violence which led to the birth of Christendom. It's no light reading - but there's enough drama to make it a page-turner.

A brilliant exercise in disenchantment ... superb storytelling ... Heather more than delivers. While Christendom is fabulously rich in telling detail, Heather is always mindful of the big picture. The book is at once captivating and profound.

One of the many delights of this weighty book is the abundance of little-heard but illuminating and intriguing stories that he weaves into the narrative to show how Christianity endlessly reinvented itself to maintain a winning formula .... the tale of how Christianity, from unlikely beginnings, became one of the great mass-member institutions of the world is expertly and entertainingly told.

A colossal book written by a colossus in the field . . . [The] range of interests makes Heather uniquely qualified to tell a grand story that has often been told before, but seldom with such a sense of freshness and the unexpected . . . To read Christendom from cover to cover (an exercise I would advise, if only to savor its Gibbonian sweep and control of infinitely varied evidence) is to experience the whoosh of a roller coaster as Christianity passes from one form to another against the background of an ever-wider Europe

Peter Heather is Chair of Medieval History at King's College, London. His many books include The Fall of the Roman Empire, Empires and Barbarians: Migration, Development and the Birth of Europe, The Restoration of Rome and, most recently, Rome Resurgent.

In the fourth century AD, a new faith exploded out of Palestine. Overwhelming the paganism of Rome, and converting the Emperor Constantine in the process, it resoundingly defeated a host of other rivals. Almost a thousand years later, all of Europe was controlled by Christian rulers, and the religion, ingrained within culture and society, exercised a monolithic hold over its population. But, as Peter Heather shows in this compelling history, there was nothing inevitable about Christendom's rise to Europe-wide dominance. 
 
In exploring how the Christian religion became such a defining feature of the European landscape, and how a small sect of isolated congregations was transformed into a mass movement centrally directed from Rome, Heather shows how Christendom constantly battled against both so-called 'heresies' and other forms of belief. From the crisis that followed the collapse of the Roman Empire, which left the religion teetering on the edge of extinction, to the astonishing revolution in which the Papacy emerged as the head of a vast international corporation, Heather traces Christendom's chameleon-like capacity for self-reinvention and willingness to mobilize well-directed force. 
 
Christendom's achievement was not, or not only, to define official Christianity, but - from its scholars and its lawyers, to its provincial officials and missionaries in far-flung corners of the continent - to transform it into an institution that wielded effective religious authority across nearly all of the disparate peoples of medieval Europe. This is its extraordinary story.

John Rapley

Peter Heather

A fascinating, informative and deeply thoughtful work.

A useful post-Gibbonian primer in why things went wrong for the Romans - Heather's scholarship shines through its pages ... an interesting polemic.

[A] provocative short book . . . with a novel twist.

Financial Times, 'Best Summer Books of 2023: Economics'

A short, sober (and sobering) account of where we are now and where we might be heading ... lucid and absorbing ... jaw-dropping facts and figures.

This essay has changed my view both of the past and the present ... It’s convincing and relevant to the west today.

Two experienced scholars lucidly engage in contemporary debates about the future of the West and its parallels to the Roman Empire. This is comparative history done right.

David Potter, author of DISRUPTION: WHY THINGS CHANGE

Enlightening ... Heather and Rapley's book is not pessimistic. It does not predict a collapse of the West analogous to the tragic collapse of Rome in the fifth century. On the contrary, it offers a penetrating historical analogy as a tool for reading the present, so that it can help us avoid the political mistakes of the late empire.

Rome, America and the Future of the West

Over the last three centuries, the West rose to dominate the planet. Then, suddenly, around the turn of the millennium, history reversed. Faced with economic stagnation and internal political division, the West has found itself in rapid decline. 
 
This is not the first time the global order has witnessed such a dramatic rise and fall. The Roman Empire followed a similar arc from dizzying power to disintegration - a fact that is more than a strange historical coincidence. In Why Empires Fall, historian Peter Heather and political economist John Rapley use this Roman past to think anew about the contemporary West, its state of crisis, and what paths we could take out of it. 
 
In this exceptional, transformative intervention, Heather and Rapley explore the uncanny parallels - and productive differences - between the two cases, moving beyond the familiar tropes of invading barbarians and civilizational decay to learn new lessons from ancient history. From 399 to 1999, the life cycles of empires, they argue, sow the seeds of their inevitable destruction. The era of western global domination has reached its end - so what comes next?

Why Empires Fall

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Peter Heather

Praise for Why Empires Fall

A fascinating, informative and deeply thoughtful work.

A useful post-Gibbonian primer in why things went wrong for the Romans - Heather's scholarship shines through its pages ... an interesting polemic.

[A] provocative short book . . . with a novel twist.

A fascinating, informative and deeply thoughtful work.

A useful post-Gibbonian primer in why things went wrong for the Romans - Heather's scholarship shines through its pages ... an interesting polemic.

[A] provocative short book . . . with a novel twist.

A fascinating, informative and deeply thoughtful work.

A useful post-Gibbonian primer in why things went wrong for the Romans - Heather's scholarship shines through its pages ... an interesting polemic.

[A] provocative short book . . . with a novel twist.

Books by Peter Heather

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