Christendom

November 1, 2022

The Guardian's Ireland correspondent, Carroll chronicles the IRA's attempt to assassinate Margaret Thatcher in October 1984 in There Will Be Fire. Published on Israel's 75th anniversary, two-time National Jewish Book Award winner Gordis's Impossible Takes Longer considers whether Israel's founders achieved their goal of creating a national homeland that would transform Jewish life (60,000-copy first printing). In 1742, a ship landed on Brazil's coast with 30 starving men feted as survivors of the wrecked British warship the Wager--until three months later, when three stragglers on another ship landing in Chile claimed the Wager's men were mutineers; from the No. 1 New York Times best-selling Grann (Killers of the Flower Moon). Chair of medieval history at King's College, London, Heather offers new reasons why Christendom grew from a tiny sect persecuted within foundering fourth-century CE Rome to the religion dominating Europe 1,000 years later. Celebrated Czech novelist Kundera, who has lived in France since 1975, argues that the "small nations" of Europe--e.g., Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Ukraine--are culturally rooted in Europe and under Soviet rule constituted A Kidnapped West (40,000-copy first printing). Following the LJ-starred The Crown in Crisis, which chronicled the Abdication Crisis of 1936, British historian Larman's The Windsors at War moves on to King George VI and the conflict within the Windsor family during World War II as the Duke of Windsor cozied up to Hitler (40,000-copy first printing). From leading South African political commentator Malala, The Plot To Save South Africa covers the 1993 assassination of Nelson Mandela's prot�g� Chris Hani by a white supremacist hoping to ignite a war, even as Mandela had begun power-sharing discussions with President FW de Klerk. Good-bye, Eastern Europe broadly documents the region briefly called Eastern Europe, moving from pre-Christian times through the great empires (Ottoman, Hapsburg, and Russian), the rise of communism and fascism, and the post-Soviet era to Russia's invasion of Ukraine; A Polish-born contributor to the Atlantic, has a PhD in Eastern European history from Berkeley (25,000-copy first printing). Granted special access by Queen Elizabeth II to her parents' letters and diaries and to the papers of close friends and family, Smith, the New York Times best-selling author of Elizabeth the Queen, aims to show how a loving marriage helped George VI and Elizabeth lead a nation through war (50,000-copy first printing). From Simon, a former senior director for Middle Eastern and North African Affairs on the National Security Council, Grand Delusion tracks the four decades of oil-driven U.S. involvement in the Middle East, begun by the Reagan administration and moving through Desert Storm (which he challenges) to the Obama administration's step back. The acclaimed Winchester leaps nimbly from cuneiform writings through Gutenberg to Google and Wikipedia as he examines Knowing What We Know--that is, how we acquire, retain, and pass on information--and how technology's current capability to do those things for us might be threatening our ability to think (100,000-copy first printing).

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February 27, 2023
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.

March 1, 2023
In standard histories of Europe, Roman emperor Constantine's issuance of the Edict of Milan in 313 CE marks the end of government persecution of Christianity and the religion's ultimate triumph. British historian Heather (Rome Resurgent, 2018) finds the church's story much more nuanced. Rather than Christianity dominating imperial Rome, he contends, Roman culture imposed itself on Christianity, using its governance techniques to turn the tiny Jesus Movement into the religion of the European continent. Early church councils applied Roman law and philosophy to their often fractious disputes and used religion as a governing force. Christianity, which had been a somewhat inconsequential urban phenomenon in the Mediterranean part of the Roman empire, grew into a continent-wide force. With Charlemagne's ascent among Northern European tribes, Christian faith became political Christendom. The emperor diminished, only to reappear as the pope. By the thirteenth century, civil penalties could be imposed on anyone deemed heretical by the imperially dominant Roman church. Students of the ancient world will find refreshing new perspectives on post-Roman Empire European history that challenge the received wisdom.

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March 1, 2023

There currently exists an abundance of historical works chronicling the history of Christianity. Authors like Owen and Henry Chadwick, Jaroslav Pelikan, Justo Gonzalez, and Kenneth Latourette immediately come to mind. Heather's (medieval history, King's Coll., London; Rome Resurgent) work differentiates itself in a subtle way: it frames itself as a history of Christendom, which is both a geographical and a political entity, constellated in various ways and at various times around the Roman pope. His chronological period is European history from the conversion of Constantine in the early fourth century to the baptism of a Lithuanian grand duke in 1250, thereby completing Latin Christianity's hold on Europe. His argument is that papal religious authority was relatively weak during this time, with a monolithic Christian culture taking centuries to emerge. Triumphalist Christian claims wither away when one recognizes that centuries of forced conversion by secular authorities better explain the rise of political Christendom. VERDICT Well-researched with extensive footnotes and bibliography. For history buffs who can't get enough of this stuff.--Sandra Collins

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from March 1, 2023
Sweeping exploration of how the Christian Europe of the late Middle Ages came to be. In his latest book, Heather, chair of medieval history at King's College, London, takes readers on a wide-ranging journey through eight centuries and across the length and breadth of Europe (and beyond) to understand the rise of Christendom, which the author defines as "that part of the world where official Christianity exercised a dominant hold on the totality of the population." By the 12th and 13th centuries, this "dominant hold" was certainly in place across the continent, but just how that situation arose over centuries has not always been properly explained by historians. In this fresh, prodigiously researched approach, the author uses relatively newly found sources to delineate the development of these historical progressions. First, Heather acknowledges Christianity's failures in the course of its expansions. Second, he explores the diversity of Christian thought and practice through these years. Finally, he examines the reasons why people made the religious choices that they did. Heather divides the book into three eras: imperial Christianity under the influence of late Rome; post-imperial Christianity, when society reordered itself in the wake of the fall of Rome's influence; and a new imperial Christianity under the Carolingians. Throughout, the author finds ways to turn conventional wisdom on its head--e.g., "At least as important...as the Christianization of the Roman Empire--a traditional topic of historical analysis--was the Romanization of Christianity." Heather introduces a host of little-known characters who played an outsized role in Christianity's spread, including Ulfilas, "the Apostle of the Goths," who crafted a Gothic language translation of the Bible while also diplomatically assisting in the weakening of the western Roman empire. "From the time of Constantine onwards," writes the author in conclusion, "the Christianization of Europe was closely linked to the exercise of power at every level." A worthwhile undertaking for serious students of medieval Europe and/or Christian history.

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