The Church in the Early Middle Ages The I.B.Tauris History of the Christian Church

by Evans, G. R.

• ISBN13: 9781845111502
• ISBN10: 1845111508
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-05-15
• Publisher: I. B. Tauris

Summary

The creation of a new history of the Church at the beginning of the third millennium is an ambitious but necessary project. Perhaps nowhere is it needed more than in re-describing the Church's development - its life and its thinking - in the period that followed the end of the 'early Church' in antiquity. The cultural, social and political dominance of Christendom in what we now call " the West," from about 600-1300, made the Christian Church a shaper of the modern world in respects which go far beyond its religious infleunce. Writing with her customary authority, and with a magisterial grasp of the original sources, G R Evans brings this formative era vividly to life both for the student of religious history and general reader. She concentrates as much on the colorful human episodes of the time as on broader institutional and intellectual developments. The result is a compelling and thoroughly modern introduction to devotional and theological thought in the early Middle Ages as well as to ecclesiastical and pastoral life at large. NEW SERIES ANNOUNCEMENT THE I.B.TAURIS HISTORY OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH The Christian Church, first defined as a religion of love, has interacted with Judaism, Islam and other world religions in ways in which there has been as much warfare as charity. Some of the results are seen in the tensions of the modern world, tensions which are proving very hard to resolve - not least because of a lack of awareness of the history behind the thinking which has brought the Church to where it is now. In the light of that lack, a new history of the Christian Church is badly needed. There is much to be said for restoring to the general reader, whether Christian or not, a familiarity with the network of ideas about what the Church 'is' and what it should be 'doing' as a vessel of Christian life and thought. This series aims to be both fresh and traditional. It will be organised so that the boundary-dates between volumes fall in some unexpected places. It will attempt to look at its conventional subject matter from the critical perspective of the early twenty-first century, where the Church has a confusing myriad of faces. It ranges from Vatican strictures on the use of birth control and the indissolubility of marriage, and outspoken German academic theologians who challenge the Churches' authority, to the enthusiasm of black Baptist congregations in the USA joyously affirming a faith with few defining parameters. Behind all these variations is a rich history of thinking, effort and struggle. And within it, at the heart of matters, is the Church . The I.B.Tauris History of the Christian Church seeks to discover that innermost self through the layers of its multiple manifestations over twenty centuries. Forthcoming titles in this series: The Early Church by Morwenna Ludlow, University of Oxford The Early Middle Ages by G. R. Evans, University of Cambridge The Later Middle Ages by Norman P Tanner, Gregorian University Early Modern Christianity by Patrick Provost-Smith, Harvard University The Long Eighteenth Century by David Hempton, Boston University The Nineteenth Century by Frances Knight, University of Wales, Lampeter The Modern Age by Jeremy Morris, University of Cambridge

Author Biography

G. R. Evans is Professor of Medieval Theology and Intellectual History in the University of Cambridge.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. xi
Abbreviations	p. xiii
Map: The Early Medieval Muslim World	p. xiv
Map: Europe and the Holy Land in the Twelfth Century	p. xv
Introduction: Out of the Ancient World	p. xvii
Changing ideas of multiculturalism
The idea of a 'religion' in the Middle Ages
The Medieval History of the Church in Time and Space	p. 1
The Church: time and eternity, space and infinity
Historiography
Spreading the Gospel: The Missionary Centuries	p. 9
What is mission?
Pilgrimage: a gentler journeying and the broadening of horizons
The Church Defines the Outsider	p. 19
A variety of outsiders: the rationalists
Judaism
Islam
Dualisms
Divisions within Christendom
Tolerance and the multicultural society?
Imposing Order	p. 43
The need for order
The three planes of the Church's life
Primacy
Membership
The idea of 'ministry'
Sacraments
Church and state
Church and People	p. 65
The laity in a top-down society
The debasing of lay devotion
Lay preaching
The Church Divided: East and West	p. 83
Many kinds of Christian
Two poles of empire
The Easter controversy
Photius and the Bulgarian question
The Filioque
Schism
Bringing the Outsiders In	p. 97
Interfaith relations
Crusading
Papal propaganda preaching and inquisition
Extreme Lives: The Religious Orders	p. 109
An apostolic life
Eastern monasticism
Western monasticism
Cycles of reform and decay
The religious in the world: canons and friars
The balance of action and contemplation 109
The Church and the Intellectuals	p. 125
From 'culture' to 'learning'
An agreed syllabus of respectable authors
The beginning of theology as an academic study
Disputations and the emergence of a systematic theology
Academics and controversy
Arts to the Glory of God	p. 149
Honour or idolatry?
Aesthetic principle
Music, performance and liturgy as a form of theatre
Patronage
Conclusion	p. 161
Notes	p. 163
Bibliography	p. 183
Index	p. 195
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