Chapter 10: The Worlds of Christendom: Contraction, Expansion and Division
Asian Christianity
- Much depended on the attitudes of local Muslim rulers. On occasion churches were destroyed, villages plundered, fields burned, and Christians forced to wear distinctive clothing
- Nestorian Church had taken roots in China with the approval of the country's Tang dynasty rulers. Both its art and literature articulated the Christian message using Buddhist and Daoist concepts
- The Mongol conquest of China in the thirteenth century offered a brief opportunity for Christianity's renewal, as the religiously tolerant Mongols welcomed Nestorian Christians as well as other faith
- Found themselves on the defensive and declining in the face of an expanding Islam
- Egypt christianity had become the religion of majority by the time of the Muslim conquest
- Ethiopian Christianity developed some of its most distinctive features. Fascination with Judaism and Jerusalem, reflected in a much told story about the visit of the Ethiopian Queen of Sheba to King Solomon
- Diverging histories of the Byzantine Empire and Western Europe took shape
- Byzantine - continuing of Roman Empire
- Byzantine consciously sought to preserve the legacy of Classical-Greco Roman civilization
- Political Authority remained centralized in Constantinople, where the emperor claimed to govern all creation as Gods worldly representative, styling himself the "peer of Apostles" and the "sole ruler of the World"
- Tied the State to the Church - Caesaropapism
- Provided a cultural identity for subjects - they were orthodox, right thinking
- Growing religious divergence reflected the political separation and rivalry between the Byzantine empire and the emerging kingdom of Western Europe
- Beyond political differences were those of language and culture
- Mutual misunderstanding and disdain
- Interacted intensely with neighbors
- Greek Fire- a potent and flammable combination of oil, sulfur, and lime that was launched form bronze tubes
- Economically - was a central player in long distance trade of Eurasia
- Silk industry, luxurious products of Byzantine craftspeople - were in high demand
- developed alphabet based on greek letters
- This cyrillic script made it possible to translate the bible and other religious literature into these languages and greatly aided the process of conversion
- Religion reflected the regions cultural diversity, with the Gods and practices of many peoples much in evidence
- Political and commercial considerations no doubt played a role in Vladimir's decision, and he acquired a sister of the Byzantine emperor as his bride, along with numerous Byzantine priests and advisors
- The western half of the European Christian would followed a rather different path than that go the Byzantine Empire. Form much of the third-wave millennium, it was distinctly on the margins of world history, partly because of its geographic location at the far western end of the Eurasian landmass
- Extensive coastlines, and interior river systems facilitated exchange within Europe, while a moderate climate, plentiful rainfall, and fertile soils enabled a productive agriculture that could support a growing population
- A highly fragmented and decentralized society widely known as feudalism emerged with great local variation
- Women generally were required to weave cloth and make clothing for the lord, while some men labored in the lord's fields
- In return the serf family received a small farm and such protection as the lord could provide
- The increased production associated with this agricultural expansion stimulated a considerable growth in long distance trade, much of which had dried up in the aftermath of the roman collapse
- Sign of accelerating change - growth of territorial states with more effective institutions of government commanding the loyalty, or at least obedience, of their subjects
- Economic growth and urbanization initially offered European women substantial new opportunities
- Women were active in a number of urban professions, such as weaving, brewing, milling grain, midwifery, small scale retailing, laundering, spinning, and prostitution
- In England, women worked as silk weavers, haymakers, tailors, brewers, and leather processors and were entitled to train female apprentices in some of these trades
- The church had long offered some women to an alternative to home, marriage, family, and rural life
- Tightening male control of women took place in Europe as it had in Song Dynasty China at about the same time
- "He was a good provider; he knew how to rake in the money and how to save it" PG 484
- Expansion has been characteristic of virtually every civilization and has taken a variety of forms - territorial conquests, empire building, settlement of new lands, vigorous trading initiatives, and missionary activity
- The crusades had little lasting impact, either politically or religiously
- Europeans fascination with technology and their religious motivation for investigating the world was apparent
- Technological borrowing also was evident in the arts of war
- Europe'e passion for technology was reflected in its culture and ideas as well as in its machines
- Three way struggle for power among kings, warrior aristocrats, and church leaders, all of them from the nobility, enabled urban -based merchants in Europe to achieve an unusual independence from political authority
- The relative weakness of Europe's rulers allowed urban merchants more leeway and, according to some historians, paved the way to a more thorough development of capitalism in later centuries
- Distinctive intellectual tension between claims of human reason and those of faith
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