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Religion in Graeco-Roman times differed from religion in modern times. In the early Roman Empire religion was polytheistic and local. It was not focused on the individual but was focused on the good of the city: it was a civic religion in which ritual was the main form of worship.
The advent of the Early Middle Ages was a gradual and often localised process whereby, in the West, rural areas became power centres whilst urban areas declined. With the Muslim invasions of the seventh century, the Western (Latin) and Eastern (Greek) areas of Christianity began to take on distinctive shapes.
Christianity then rapidly grew in the 4th century - Rodney Stark estimated that Christians accounted for 56.5% of the Roman population by 350. [27] According to Will Durant, the Christian Church prevailed over paganism because it offered a much more attractive doctrine and because the church leaders addressed human needs better than their ...
The traditional social stratification of the Occident in the 15th century. Church and state in medieval Europe was the relationship between the Catholic Church and the various monarchies and other states in Europe during the Middle Ages (between the end of Roman authority in the West in the fifth century to their end in the East in the fifteenth century and the beginning of the [Modern era]]).
Christianity in the High Middle Ages had a lasting impact on politics and law through the newly established universities. Canon law emerged from theology and developed independently there. [109]: 255 By the 1200s, both civil and canon law had become a major aspect of ecclesiastical culture, dominating Christian thought.
Although condemned for heresy in 1140, he joined a republican revolt that drove the pope and his cardinals out of Rome in 1145. Rome was plagued by endemic power struggles. Pope Eugene III had to resort to force, and thus to Emperor Frederick Barbarossa. At Konstanz in 1153, the two men signed an agreement. In exchange for the Pope's reconquest ...
In the middle of the second century, the Christian communities of Rome, for example, were divided between followers of Marcion, Montanism, and the gnostic teachings of Valentinus. Many groups were dualistic, maintaining that reality was composed into two radically opposing parts: matter, usually seen as evil, and spirit, seen as good.
[34] [35] [36] Classics professor Seth Schwartz asserts that the number of Christians at the end of the third century indicate Christianity's success predated Constantine. [37] Social scientist Edwin A. Judge has written a detailed study showing a fully organized church system existed before Constantine and the Council of Nicaea.