Christendom

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The word Christendom encompasses the Medieval and Renaissance idea of the central place of Christianity in the lives of nations, countries, states, and individuals. The definition of Christendom is a group of people or nations under a Christian set of morals and values. The term Christendom refers to the impact of Christianity on the world. It refers not just to a group of people, but also to territory where Christianity became a vital part of the inhabitants' lives. Christendom in its earlier stages came to refer to Christians united into one body. This unity was very significant because it was a unity of religion, but it was also a political unity creating powerful alliances. Thus the east and west were united in belief in one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. It is a historical term, which designates how Christianity was a unifying force and lent its tenets to be the basis by which nations, countries, and individuals lived during the time of Christendom. It is the time when Christianity regarded itself as the foundation for all civilized society. Christianity came to provide a measure of cultural commonality for the diverse people of Western Eurasia, much as Chinese civilization and Buddhism did for those of East Asia and Islam did for the Middle East and beyond. By 1300, almost all of these societies, from Ireland and England in the west Russia in the East- had embraced in some form the teachings of the Jewish artisan called Jesus. At the same time, that part known as the Byzantine Empire deeply divided. Its easter half, known as the Byzantine Empire or Byzantium, encompassed much of the eastern Mediterranean basin while continuing the traditions of the Greco-Roman world, thought on a smaller scale, until its conquest by the Muslim Ottoman Empire in 1453. Centered on the magnificent city of Constantinople, Byzantium gradually evolved a particular from of Christianity known as Eastern Orthodox. Like the Byzantium, the Latin West ultimately became thoroughly Christian, but it was a gradually process lasting centuries, and its Roman Catholic version of the faith, increasingly centered the pope, had an independence from political authorities that the Eastern Orthodox church did not. Moreover, the Western Church in particular and its society in general were far more rural than Byzantium and certainly had nothing to compare to the splendor of Constantinople. 

The story of Christendom in the era of third wave civilizations is one of contractions and expansions. As religion, Christianity contracted sharply in Asia and Africa even as it expanded in Western Europe and Russia. As a civilization Christianity Byzantium flourish for a time, then gradually contracted and finally disappear. The trajectory of civilization in the West traced an opposite path, at first contracting as the Roman Empire collapsed and later expanding as a new and blended civilization took in Western Europe.



Strayer, Robert. Ways of the World: A Brief Global History. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s. 2009.


https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/9780470670606.wbecc0277

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