Christendom: The Triumph of a Religion

In this sweeping, ambitious history, Heather (The Fall of the Roman Empire), a history professor at King’s College London, surveys 1,000 years of European Christianity in exacting detail. He argues Christianity’s rise wasn’t inevitable, and that instead a complex series of historical accidents, religious innovations, and political maneuvers led to its eventual status as the continent’s dominant religion. Heather chronicles events preceding the “first confessional Christian state” in fourth-century Rome through the 13th-century “climax of European Christianization,” spotlighting how, for instance, the 391 CE destruction of the Serapeum, a pagan temple in Alexandria, signaled a shift from Roman paganism to Christianity at elite levels of society, and how the religious influence of Medieval figures such as Hildegard of Bingen—who experienced visions and founded her own monastic houses—was legitimated by the papacy so that the church might benefit from the grassroots enthusiasm she sparked. A particularly enlightening chapter chronicles the conversion of peoples in northwest Europe and illuminates missionaries’ strategies for cultivating relationships with members of different strata of society, from kings to trade workers. Heather draws on careful scholarship to give due to the nuances of Christianity’s spread, and constructs a narrative that’s packed with specifics yet readable. History buffs should take note. (Apr.)