{"product_id":"christendom-the-triumph-of-a-religion-ad-300-1300","title":"Christendom: The Triumph of a Religion, AD 300-1300","description":"\u003cb\u003e\"A colossal book written by a colossus in the field\" (\u003ci\u003eThe New York Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e): A major reinterpretation of the religious superstate that came to define both Europe and Christianity itself, by one of our foremost medieval historians.\u003c\/b\u003e \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eIn the fourth century AD, a new faith grew out of Palestine, overwhelming the paganism of Rome and resoundingly defeating a host of other rival belief systems. Almost a thousand years later, all of Europe was controlled by Christian rulers, and the religion, ingrained within culture and society, exercised a monolithic hold over its population. But how did a small sect of isolated and intensely committed congregations become a mass movement centrally directed from Rome? As Peter Heather shows in this illuminating new history, there was nothing inevitable about Christendom's rise and eventual dominance. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eFrom Constantine the Great's pivotal conversion to Christianity to the crisis that followed the collapse of the Roman empire--which left the religion teetering on the edge of extinction--to the astonishing revolution of the eleventh century and beyond, out of which the Papacy emerged as the head of a vast international corporation, Heather traces Christendom's chameleonlike capacity for self-reinvention, as it not only defined a fledgling religion but transformed it into an institution that wielded effective authority across virtually all of the disparate peoples of medieval Europe. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eAuthoritative, vivid, and filled with new insights, this is an unparalleled history of early Christianity.","brand":"Vintage","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":48104572158141,"sku":"BS-TC0-974100","price":20.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0771\/9767\/2637\/files\/9781101974100-HD.jpg?v=1787006336","url":"https:\/\/boundigo.com\/products\/christendom-the-triumph-of-a-religion-ad-300-1300","provider":"Boundigo Bookstore","version":"1.0","type":"link"}