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.
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.
*Financial Times*
Heather casts his eye across the whole medieval period as he
unfolds a fascinating story about a religion in a surprisingly
precarious position.
*Sunday Times*
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.
*Spectator*
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.
*Literary Review*
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.
*Daily Telegraph*
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
*The New York Review of Books*
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