This volume brings together in one compass the Orthodox Churches - the ecumenical patriarchate of Constantinople and the Russian, Armenian, Ethiopian, Egyptian and Syrian Churches. It follows their fortunes from the late Middle Ages until modern times - exactly the period when their history has been most neglected. Inevitably, this emphasises differences in teachings and experience, but it also brings out common threads, most notably the resilience displayed in the face of alien and often hostile political regimes. The central theme is the survival against the odds of Orthodoxy in its many...

This authoritative volume presents the history of Christianity from the eve of the Protestant Reformation to the height of Catholic Reform. It thoroughly examines the impact of the permanent schism on Latin Christendom, the Catholic responses to it, and the influence on the development of the Orthodox churches. The volume covers the history of society, politics, theology, liturgy, religious orders, and art in the lands of Latin Christianity, while expanding the boundaries of inquiry to the relationship between Christianity and non-Christian religions both in Europe and in the non-European...

The twentieth century saw changes as dramatic as any in Christian history. The Churches suffered serious losses, both through persecution and through secularization, in what had been for several centuries their European heartlands, but grew fast in Africa and parts of Asia. This volume provides a comprehensive history of Catholicism, Protestantism and the Independent Churches in all parts of the world in the century when Christianity truly became a global religion. Written by a powerful team of specialists from many different countries, the volume is broad in scope.

During the tumultuous period of world history from 1660 to 1815, three complex movements combined to bring a fundamental cultural reorientation to Europe and North America, and ultimately to the wider world. The Enlightenment transformed views of nature and of the human capacity to master nature. The religious reawakenings brought a revival of heart-felt, experiential Christianity. Finally revolution, the political and social upheavals of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, challenged established ideas of divine-right monarchies and divinely ordained social hierarchies, and...

The key focus of this book is the vitality and dynamism of all aspects of Christian experience from late antiquity to the First Crusade. By putting the institutional and doctrinal history firmly in the context of Christianity s many cultural manifestations and lived formations everywhere from Afghanistan to Iceland, this volume of The Cambridge History of Christianity emphasizes the ever-changing, varied expressions of Christianity at both local and world level. The insights of many disciplines, including gender studies, codicology, archaeology and anthropology, are deployed to offer fresh...