/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.18333596]

Is there a definitive book about the history of the Church?
Like from the earliest days through the crusades and inquisition and all the other juicy stuff that happened throughout the ages?

[Anonymous No.18333608]

>>18333596
who cares? just make up your own history, religion is all made up anyway .

[Anonymous No.18333625]

>>18333608
Go back

[Anonymous No.18333657]

Church history is an old genre but mostly written by Catholics from an insider perspective that might not interest you. You will probably have to read several books about the different phases of the papacy.

If you are interested in the rise of the crusading medieval papacy, the famous high medieval popes and famous things like the Investiture Controversy and the conflict with Frederick II and so forth, I recommend Robert Bartlett's Making of Europe, and Pirenne's short books on the Middle Ages, like Mohammed & Charlemagne, where he talks about the competing world systems - the Byzantine, the Holy Roman Imperial, the Papal, and the individual national-royal, the latter being the one that eventually won out after the papacy defeated HRE claims to sovereignty over Europe but then was itself eclipsed by France (the Avignon papacy or "Babylonian captivity of the papacy") and other kingdoms refusing papal supremacy in their domains.

Prior to the range covered by those authors (roughly 950-1400) it's a very different church, and after that it's also very different. This period really reflects the church's bid for secular power at its height. After the Babylonian captivity, the Renaissance church had a very different modus vivendi and set of exigencies, there is conciliarism and later Jesuitism and counter-reformation to learn about, etc. But that's not quite the same as the real attempts by the papacy in the high and late middle ages to meddle in secular affairs directly as a political force, nor is it the same as the pre-Carolingian period where it was basically a quiet vassal of the Byzantine emperors. And of course the history of the truly early church is mostly intellectual history.

There are certain continuities however especially if you are interested in the history of the great schisms and rapprochements between the Roman and Byzantine churches.

[Anonymous No.18333973]

The Early Church - Henry Chadwick

[Anonymous No.18334011]

>>18333596
Just read through a biography of popes

[a_poor_sinner !!eiHxl4pZe1i No.18334015]

>>18333596
>Wilken - Christians as the Romans Saw Them
a good intro on the title subject

>the Cappadocian Fathers
Basil the Great, Greg of Nyssa, etc. mostly concerned with early centuries of Christian theology.

>the Didache
letters between the next-to-earliest church fathers, in the generation after the apostles. shows that liturgy and form of the mass is extremely old, very similar to our own if not exactly the same in some ways.

>Euseubius' Ecclesiastical History
available from Loeb Classical Library. just what it sounds like, a history of the church from his day.

crusades and inquisition deserve whole books to themselves. start from the beginning.