The First Thousand Years: A Global History of Christianity

How did a community that was largely invisible in the first two centuries of its existence go on to remake the civilizations it inhabited culturally politically and intellectually? Beginning with the life of Jesus Robert Louis Wilken narrates the dramatic spread and development of Christianity over the first thousand years of its history. Moving through the formation of early institutions practices and beliefs to the transformations of the Roman world after the conversion of Constantine he sheds new light on the subsequent stories of Christianity in the Latin West the Byzantine and Slavic East the Middle East and Central Asia.Through a selected narration of particularly noteworthy persons and events Wilken demonstrates how the coming of Christianity set in motion one of the most profound revolutions the world has known. This is not a story limited to the West; rather Christian communities in Ethiopia Nubia Armenia Georgia Persia Central Asia India