Early Christendom
The early
days of Christendom were also the waning days of the Western Roman Empire. The
migration of Germanic tribes into the Roman Empire was one of a number of
factors weakening Rome. In the 5th century the city of Rome itself
was sacked successively by the Visigoths in 410, the Vandals in 455 and the
Ostrogoths in 476, the last effectively bringing an end to the Western Roman
Empire. The Eastern Roman Empire, with its capital in Constantinople, would
last for another 1000 years.
The fall of
Rome to the Germanic tribes, as consequential as it was, did not bring an end to Christendom, as those
tribes had been Christianized before the 5th century. The Vandals
and Goths were (for a while) Arians rather than Trinitarians.
The geographic
shape of early Christendom was unlike what it would later become. The geography
of Christendom reflected that of the Roman Empire, and was thus largely built
around the Mediterranean Sea. It was a Greek and Latin-speaking culture once
described by Plato as “Frogs around a Pond.” Christendom included Rome, as it
always would, and Constantinople, as it would for 1000 years, but it also
included Antioch in Syria, where the disciples were first called Christians. It
included Alexandria in Egypt, an important city for learning. It included all
of the land of Israel, centered around Jerusalem. It included Hippo in modern
Algeria, where Saint Augustine was born and several important church councils
were held. It included Nicaea in Northwestern Turkey, where perhaps the most
important Christian creed was developed. About 2/3 of early Christendom would
eventually be wiped away by Moslem conquest, but that would not come until the
7th century. Early Christendom did not at first include far northern
Europe. Christianity did not become preponderant in Ireland until the 5th
century, Scotland by the 7th century, Russian in the 9th
century, Poland by the 10th century, and Scandinavia during the 9th
through the 13th.
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