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Heartland’s Tim Benson is joined by Peter Heather, chair of medieval history at King's College, London, to discuss his new book, Christendom: The Triumph of a Religion, AD 300-1300. They chat about how a small sect of isolated and intensely committed congregations became a mass movement centrally directed from Rome, the Church’s chameleonlike capacity for self-reinvention, and how nothing was inevitable about Christianity’s rise and dominance in Europe.
Show Notes:
City Journal: Edward Short – “Fair Triumph, or Foul?”
Literary Review: Costica Bradatan – “Onward Christian Emperors”
New York Times: Paul Elie – “Looking at Early Christianity Through a Different Lens”
Public Discourse: Robert Wilken – “ The History behind the Formation of Christendom”
The Spectator: Eleanor Myerson – “The rocky path to Christian dominance in Europe”
The Telegraph: Peter Stanford – “How 4th-century Christianity radically reinvented itself from a marginal sect to a world power”
Times Literary Supplement: Diarmid MacCulloch – “Kingdom of God”
Washington Examiner: Diane Scharper – “How Christianity Happened”
Creators & Guests
Host
Tim Benson
Ill Literacy, the newest podcast from The Heartland Institute, is helmed by Tim Benson, Senior Policy Analyst for Heartland’s Government Relations team. Benson brings on authors of new book releases on topics including politics, culture, and history on the Ill Literacy podcast. Every episode offers listeners the author’s unique analysis of their own book release. Discussions often shift into debate between authors and Benson when ideological differences arise, creating unique commentary that can’t be found anywhere else.
What is Ill Literacy: Books with Benson?
The Heartland Institute's podcast discussing notable new works with their authors. Hosted by Tim Benson.
Watch the time. It's time to get ill. Yeah. Watch the time. It's time to get ill.
Beastie Boys:So watch the time. It's time to get
Tim Benson:Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Illiteracy Podcast. I'm your host, Tim Benson, a senior policy analyst at the Heartland Institute, Institute, a national free market think tank. So we're in episode I think we're probably in the one forties by now. I never remember the episode numbers. Yeah.
Tim Benson:So we've been around for quite a bit of time now. But for those of you just tuning in for the first time, basically, what we do here in this podcast is, I invite an author on to discuss a book of theirs that's been either newly published or recently published and, you know, on a topic or person or idea or event, etcetera, that we think you guys would, like to hear a conversation about. And then once the podcast is over, hopefully, you go ahead and buy the book yourself and give it a read. So if you like this podcast, please consider giving Illiteracy a 5 star review at Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to the show and also by sharing with your friends as that's the best way to support programming like this. And my guest today is doctor Peter Heather, and doctor Heather is the chair of medieval history at King's College London.
Tim Benson:And his books include The Fall of the Roman Empire, a New History of Rome and the Barbarians, Empires and Barbarians, Migration, Development, and the Birth of Europe, The Restoration of Rome, Barbarian Popes and Imperial Pretenders, Rome Resurgent War and Empire in the Age of Justinian, And with John Rappley, Why Empires Fall, Rome, America, and the Future of the West. And lastly, he is the author of Christendom, the Triumph of of a Religion, AD 300 to 1300, which was published last April by Knopf. And that's the book we will be discussing today. So, doctor Heather, thanks so much for coming on the podcast. I do appreciate it.
Peter Heather:Well, thank you for inviting me. It's it's very good to be with you, and, thank you for the intro.
Tim Benson:Oh, yeah. No problem. No problem. My pleasure. Actually, before we get to the book itself, I maybe just one, personal question, because I should probably ask this more often because everyone's answer is always different.
Tim Benson:But, and it's interesting just to see how people, especially historians, get into that field. So, yeah, basically, what what made you want to be a, a, I guess, a medieval historian or a historian in general? What, you know, was it something you were always enthralled with as a child? I mean, that's pretty much if you get sort of the history bug. I feel like most people that's where they get it.
Tim Benson:Or was it something that, you figured out later on when you're in at, university or, you know, something like that?
Peter Heather:Certainly, it goes back to childhood. My mother was a great buff, actually. So, she insidiously put her values into me. I can see that in retrospect. So I've always been interest but it it wasn't just that.
Peter Heather:I I think that there has to be a kind of, story of continuous creation and reinforcement when it comes to something like this. I I ran into actually a fantastic set of teachers when I was at university, and, the particular area of history that I like, is quite distinctive in the sense that, you know, it doesn't have intense archive coverage and you don't have massive quantities of information. It's not like studying the 19th or 20th you know, those who don't like it so much, I would say. There's a lot more room for the imagination.
Tim Benson:Sure. So, yeah, the book itself, a little bit, seems like a little bit of departure from, in some ways from, your previous works, but, still sort of in your wheelhouse. But, I imagine a book like this, you know, I think it's about 500 and some odd pages of, if I can remember correctly, 500 almost 600 pages of written text and then, obviously, a few 100 pages of of, notes and whatnot. But, so what what what made you wanna write this book? What was the the genesis of it, and and how long did it take you to write it?
Peter Heather:Yeah. There are two answers to how long it took to write, really, and they're both true In that, you know, the history of Christianity is right at the heart of medieval history as, you know, an awful lot of the source material that you have is derives from, Christian writers, Christian authors. So in I've been teaching the history of Christianity all my life, all my adult life as an employed academic. So that, staggeringly now, I hate to think about it, but that's 35 years now. So in one sense, it has taken 35 years to write, and that's a perfectly true answer.
Peter Heather:The the the decision point where I thought, well, I do actually want to write this book is probably more like 10 years ago. So the second answer is 10 years rather than 35, but the the 10 years is sitting on top of the 35.
Tim Benson:Sure.
Peter Heather:Yeah. What made me want to write it is that, I felt very strongly that that the story was not being put together of this period, the 300 to 1300 bit. That there's so much good work out there. You know? It's not true.
Peter Heather:You know? My colleagues, there isn't an idiot amongst them, and there are lots of actually very brilliant people who work on all of this. But they all work on little bits of it. And, what I felt because, I arrange more widely and time in my teaching than probably most people do, I suspect, is that, the the different time periods, so the history of Christianity in the different time periods, wasn't talking to each other. And, actually, what wasn't being said, is this story of of how much Christianity changed over that time period.
Peter Heather:And I think that's the reason it wasn't being pulled together. It was because, people are dealing dealing with one corner, and they're looking at, the it is a bit the current academic zeitgeist to look at a small area in great detail, not
Tim Benson:to
Peter Heather:look at overviews. And I do think that the overview here, had this this bigger story to tell about how much Christianity had changed. The the bit that I'm kind of an expert on is the first third, really. For the other 2 thirds, I was kind of pulling together the expert work by other people to tell the bigger story that I wanted to tell. I wouldn't claim any massive originality in those areas.
Peter Heather:But, the overall story, I thought, was worth was worth, putting together and the the the argument was worth stating clearly. Because people still kind of I mean, even people who know who know better actually, who really do know better, nonetheless, they write in shorthand. They say, Christianity this and Christianity that. And actually, it depends what moment in Christian history you're talking about as to what Christianity actually meant. And that that's really, you know, that was the driving force behind it, the the desire to to make that point crystal clear.
Tim Benson:Yeah. I mean, it's, I mean, I think it's fairly obvious to say that, you know, the Christian religion in the time of Constantine bears very little resemblance or to the Christian religion of, you know, the 1100 1200 just says the Christian religion of the 20 twenties bears resemblance to, you know, the Christian religion of the 1100 to 1200.
Peter Heather:No. It it's a living, breathing thing that's evolved over time, and evolved in extraordinary ways. You know, the Christianity before Constantine's conversion and before this in kind of moment of engagement with, Roman society and culture is a very small scale, movement of very intense, high octane believers. It's, you know, it's there there are bishops, but they're chosen by the the local community. It's much more like, I mean, it's not like Roman Catholic or Anglican Communions now.
Peter Heather:It's much more like a sort of Protestant house set of protestant house churches, really, picking their own pastors, who have very high sort of demands on members in terms of what their behavior should be. They all know each other, and it's very intense. And there are many parts of the empire without any kind of organized Christian community at all. So that, you know, that's one type of religious movement. Whereas, you know, as you say, by the time we get to, say, 1250 or 1300, my my stopping point, then you have got, you know, pretty much everyone from, Iceland to the Balkans or from Scandinavia to the stretch of Gibraltar is, living, breathing Latin Christendom.
Peter Heather:And I'm interested in the the evolution of Latin Christendom towards the end. Mhmm. And the you've got a completely mass movement, and it just can't run with the same kind of intensity or with the same kind of authority structures, or even with the same kind of messages about what it meant to be a good Christian. In a sense, that's what one's looking at changing over time. You know, you can talk about whether there are bishops and archbishops and when the papacy appears and whatever.
Peter Heather:It I in a sense, I'm more interested in how the definitions of what it meant to be a good Christian changed over time.
Tim Benson:Mhmm. Yeah. You're right very early in the book. I mean, it's obvious, one one of the main themes of the book, one of the main threads running through it, that, any account of the origins and evolution of European Christianity is necessarily a story of conversion and, especially what conversion looks like at different periods, what it looks like, you know, in the time of Constantine, what it looks like a few 100 years later,
Peter Heather:the
Tim Benson:time of Clovis and, you know, and etcetera etcetera going on. But, but the story of conversion is central to the book.
Peter Heather:It is. Yes. You you can't do exact figures, but, you know, the the ballpark figure, there can't be more than 1 or 2% Christians in the entire Roman Empire, before constant times conversion. The numbers can't be higher than that. In fact, there's no way you can make them higher than that.
Peter Heather:But by 1300, then, you know, apart from a certain number of, Jewish populations, everyone in Western Europe is, a Christian by 1300, and most of the European landmass has, got a Christian allegiance. So it's about conversion. It has to be, in a sense, about conversion. But conversion has to be unpacked. You know, you because you have, the literature tends to record very intense personal call moments of conversion like Augustine or, you know, it's everyone's got in mind Paul in the act of the apostles.
Peter Heather:You know? Yeah. Yep. Yeah. A blinding light on the road to Damascus and Jesus talking to you directly, that's a life changer.
Peter Heather:The life Yeah.
Tim Benson:Yeah.
Peter Heather:Life will never be the same again after a moment like that. But most people don't have conversion experiences quite like that.
Tim Benson:And No.
Peter Heather:Conversion means, much it's a much less intense life changing experience for a lot of people in this period quite clearly.
Tim Benson:Yeah. And, you've touched on this briefly, but, I think this might come as a surprise to people who aren't familiar with the time period, just because they assume, you know, the Roman Catholic Church, you know, Pope is the head of the church, and Pope has always wielded, some great amount of authority. But papal religious authority came actually pretty late to European Christendom. You know, empire emperors and kings exercise much greater actual religious authority, than any pope did for centuries, I mean, in practice, but also in write as well.
Peter Heather:Yes. I think before I started teaching the later medieval bit, I didn't quite realize how late it was. You know? It was very clear that papal authority you know? Because I'm a late Roman historian, so 300 to 600 is sort of my core chronological period, although I range across the first millennium.
Peter Heather:But it it's quite clear in the 300 to 600 that there's no papal authority. No one expects not even popes expect to be in charge of everything. You know? They don't in in that period. But it it it's in fact it's a process between about 10:50 and 12:50 that creates the papacy as we know it as as the effective functioning executive head of the Roman Catholic communion.
Peter Heather:It's an 11th 12th century process, fundamentally. And I don't think I realized how late that was. And, again, I think there's a lot of back projection from that, from people who really ought to know better, who are still kind of unless they think about it very hard, thinking that the pope is bound to be in charge of things and bound to have authority. And they're not really looking at the kind of, the nuts and bolts of it. But if you think about what, you know, what is the what are the signs of having a religion authority?
Peter Heather:How do you tell who's got religious authority? You need to be in the process you need to be in charge of the process of selecting senior personnel of, you don't have to make theological doctrine, but you have to be in charge of the process that makes it. You know, you have to have supreme responsibility for it. You have to be in charge of the process that, the regulations for how this thing is going to operate, both as a administrative structure and also for the people who are going to participate in it. And if you if you run it that way, if you look at those kind of indicators, then you really do see that kings and emperors are possessing of practical religious authority right down to the end of the 1st millennium.
Peter Heather:And then when you look at the theory, you see that actually people thought it was right that they should, for a straightforward reason. The ideological view is that god personally appoints emperors to run the Christian world.
Tim Benson:Right.
Peter Heather:And, you know, if someone ends up as emperor, I mean, particularly in the Roman period, they're running the entirety virtually the entirety of the Christian communion that's inside the Roman Empire. So, when you have an emperor, who's in charge of nearly all Christians, you're it's not unreasonable to think and you have the view that God intervenes very directly in human affairs.
Tim Benson:Mhmm.
Peter Heather:And that's that's the fundamental idea. If you have that idea, then you think that this the God will have made a particular person emperor for a particular reason, that are the right person. So it's kind of natural that they should have the kind of, religious authority. So, you know, all the great ecumenical councils of the 300 to sort of 600 period that decide a lot of the keyed up trial points about the trinity and whatever, They're called by empress, and no one thinks that there's anything wrong with that. That's what should happen.
Peter Heather:And the emperor only calls the council because, I mean, lots of churchmen feed into this process. But they go through the emperor to make it happen.
Tim Benson:Sure. Yeah. Alright. So, again, one of the, maybe the one of the main things you're trying to do with the book is sort of get people to rethink the emergence of of, the Christian religion in Europe. And you write, again, pretty early on in the book, it there's 3, distinct dimensions to explore with this idea of rethinking that.
Tim Benson:And one is, contingency or chance, what that plays and how things turn out. And the second is how different Christianity was at different moments in time, which we touched on a little bit. And then, the third one is, the potential of Europeans, of the European populations through time, to make alternative choices of religious allegiance, that there were, moments where non Nicene Christianity wasn't, wasn't it wasn't clear that that was the way people were gonna go. There was there was nothing, nothing inevitable about, the the sort of total takeover of the European continent, for by Nicene Christianity.
Peter Heather:Yes. That's one of the things that's interested me most to think about in a way, because the the sort of first big, properly scientific accounts that arise of Christianity are being written round about 1900. And at that point, everybody is a Nicene Christian, and actually Nicene Christianity, on especially on the banks of, European colonialism is spreading very widely across the planet. You could perfectly reasonably think that one outcome is that everyone is gonna end up Christian across the planet in the way that they've ended up Christian in Europe. A 100 and something years on from that, we can actually see that that's not the case.
Peter Heather:And, actually, it's more obvious from, I think, from a European perspective than a North American perspective. But Christianity has lost a direct hold on a lot of people. They might still write their Christian on censuses, but they really mean Christian in a very vague cultural terms, not not that they actively go to church.
Tim Benson:You're not practicing. Right?
Peter Heather:No. They're not practicing. And, you know, they don't organize their lives around the great Christian festivals anymore and, you know, all of this. So that immediately tells you that as it were, Christianity can lose the allegiance of people. Has we have visibly seen that happen in the last 100 years.
Peter Heather:So that, I think, immediately demands that you rethink how it how it won that allegiance in the first place. And I was trying to pursue some of that lines of thought, especially because you can see it happening, in the past in certain places. So that, for instance, in the first chronological phase, the the Roman imperial period, the beating heart of Christianity is actually Turkey, Egypt, Syria, and North Africa. Most of the great Christian intellectuals live and work in in those kind of places, and the most influential thinking comes out of those places. But, of course, those are the areas that get swallowed up by the Islamic caliphates in the the middle of the ball in the sort of 3rd 3rd quarter 3rd 4th quarters of the, first millennium.
Peter Heather:And you see a large scale conversion to Islam amongst elites who previously been Christian. So we don't we can see, as it were, Christianity losing, the allegiance of a lot of people. In fact, where the majority of Christians had previously existed becomes instead heartland of Islam. It's not doesn't happen overnight. It's not sudden, but it does happen.
Peter Heather:So the contingency is there. You if you were thinking about this from a sort of late Roman perspective, the idea that, Northern Europe would become the or Italy upwards as it were, would become the heartland of Christianity would look completely bonkers. You know? It just it wouldn't make any sense. So Yeah.
Peter Heather:There's that contingency has totally shifted the geographical epicenter of of Christianity.
Tim Benson:Before we get
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Tim Benson:Right. Alright. So I guess let's get down to a little bit more of the granular details of the book. So we talked a little about you previously mentioned Constantine and his conversion. Although, I think you said it's it's more of a for Constantine, it's not so much a, well, I mean, yes, it's technically a conversion story, but it's more of a or it seems more of like a like a coming out story more than a conversion story.
Tim Benson:And, but, what does what does Christian what does the Christian community, Christian spirituality, what does that look like right when Constantine comes out of the closet, so to speak, and says, I'm a Christian. What what is what is the Christian community? And you briefly mentioned that, you know, the the heart of the the heart of Christianity at this point is in the Eastern Empire, in the Levant, in Turkey, in North Africa. But what does, the actual Christian community look like, you know, at this time?
Peter Heather:Yeah. Well, there are no specialist churches. People meet in house churches. The one example we've got, it's specially decorated. You know?
Peter Heather:It is a religious place, but it's just a house. So it's a a converted house. Small numbers of people, very intense spirituality. I think the the you might sum it up. They don't expect that many people are going to heaven.
Peter Heather:I think they think that only a very, very few people are going to heaven. Getting to heaven is really difficult. There are arguments about how much, you balance your personal behavior, but your personal behavior is clearly very important. So there are arguments about whether after you've been baptized, a major sin could be forgiven. So I I think probably the a strong line of opinion around 300 AD would be that baptism is a once and forever cleansing.
Peter Heather:And if you strike out again subsequent to that, that's it. You've had it. There was some thinkers were arguing that there was a path back, but it was a long and difficult path back. So you get, categories of penitents, people who have sinned, and it's a multi year process to get readmitted to the community. So I think that's the the kind of world to think of.
Peter Heather:It's a world that is concerned solely with getting, sorry, getting the soul to heaven. Inadvertent pun. That happens. That's right. There's no Christian ceremonies of marriage.
Peter Heather:You know, Christianity doesn't do marriage. Not interested in things of this world. It's about how to get souls to heaven. It's not thinking that many souls will get to heaven, and it's concerned with the ferocity of that battle.
Tim Benson:So when Constantine makes his announcement, it was it seen at the time by the Roman imperial elites that, like, this is a big you know, this is one of those hinge moments in history, or were they just like, oh, okay. Emperor's Christian now. So, all right. Just gotta start picking up on this, I guess. Was it seen at the time as this, you know, this this massive moment in history that's gonna reshape the the, literally, the history of the world?
Peter Heather:I don't think they knew that all his successes for the next 70 or 80 years were going to be Christian. It's a big deal, and you can see, as as you rightly said, I mean, there may be a conversion lurking there, you know, a kind of damascene road type conversion lurking somewhere there in Constantine's biography. But you can see for the that for about a decade, at least, he's slowly breaking it to people and
Tim Benson:getting the
Peter Heather:idea that that he might be Christian. So, you know, he doesn't just bring it on them. And more particularly, he tells them about his, or he makes his Christian allegiance progressively clear after he wins major military victories. And this is this is really important. When Constantine comes to power, originally, there are 6 other emperors in the empire.
Peter Heather:But when he finally and that's in 306. By the time he finally tells everyone unambiguously that he is Christian, and by the way, their pagan religion is superstition and not as good as Christianity in 324. Sure. He has beaten the others of God. He is total complete ruler of the entire Roman world.
Peter Heather:This is where this idea that God chooses emperors becomes so important because, that was the imperial ideology before and after the conversion to Christianity. So you know if you if you have the ideological view, the only conclusion can be is that God is certainly behind Constantine and if if Constantine is a Christian, then that is the right God. We're going in the right direction. So he has this it's like winning a whole series of presidential elections. Mhmm.
Peter Heather:He's won them all. He has total legitimacy, and he breaks the bad news as it were all the difficult or the potentially embarrassing news only after he wins, after the moments of victory and not before afterwards.
Tim Benson:Sure.
Peter Heather:Of course. As all sensible politicians do, even Yes. You said. You know, that's, that's just the way of it. So you you can see from his hesitancy that it's a big deal.
Peter Heather:What actually makes it, irreversible is that all his successors are 1 who only rules for 2 years are then Christian through the rest of the 4th century. And within the kind of it's very much a one party state, a very arthritic one party state. The Roman Empire, it's you know, it's not as efficient as a modern one. But if you want a job in the system and the emperor is Christian, you have to come into line with it. And we see that process slowly unfolding across the rest of the 4th century.
Tim Benson:Yeah. Certainly not a excuse me. It's certainly not a, well, let's put it this way. The elites, this is another current theme in the book, just seem to, whether or not the they convert, you know, they end up doing so in numbers. Because, obviously, like you said, you had to just sort of remain in front of the, you know, the imperial apparatus.
Tim Benson:So they convert, but it doesn't seem, for the most part, that these conversions are entirely wholehearted. You know, it's just like, well, okay. Emperor's Christian now. So, you know, we have to to please the emperor and to maintain our position and our status and our wealth. We are going to have to, you know, go with the flow here, which seems to be something that just happens, whether it's with Islam or, or with the the different Christian doctrinal sort of Yeah.
Tim Benson:Sure. Reference to this.
Peter Heather:Yeah. Like, Henry the 8th's landowners all come
Tim Benson:in line.
Peter Heather:The vast majority of them come into line with his church settlement.
Tim Benson:Yeah. Or maybe even today with maybe you might be reading into this too much, but, it feels like a certain amount of, this, for lack of a better word, the, extremely, woke, sort of ideology that's taken hold in a lot of elites in at least in America. I'm not sure about Europe. It seems to be sort of that thing too. Well, this is the new, this is the new paradigm, so, you know, we have to sort of pledge our allegiance to it.
Tim Benson:But if if it went away, you know, something happened and something changed, I don't feel like, I feel like the elites would be the first to jettison, that sort of belief system they have now. I mean, it seems to be, throughout history, whatever prevailing opinion is, the elites are more likely or more, apt to change with prevailing opinion just because they have the most to lose, by being, sort of, a stance of prevailing opinion.
Peter Heather:It's certainly a problem, you know, and especially in premodern worlds where the basis of any elite status is actually land. You know, you may have a job in the imperial system, but that's to reinforce your landed holdings. You know, there aren't any stocks and shares. There's no other way to make a living. It is this this body of estates, physical real estate that's passed down within the family.
Tim Benson:Right. And you have to protect it.
Peter Heather:Yeah. It's a it's an incredibly vulnerable position actually to be in. You know, you can't you can't diversify. That's not like you diversify. So something that poses a direct threat to the jugular of your family line's control of its property, that's, that's very hard to get around.
Peter Heather:If we look at I mean, if you look at the evidence from the 4th century, you get a chunk of people, who clearly convert with fervor and with intensity. Mhmm. But, of course, most of our sources are transmitted by medieval monks. I mean, that's the transmission system. So there's a bias in the there's a bias in the tradition in the transmission system towards those more intense stories.
Peter Heather:If you are looking for them, then you find actually every shape that you might expect. So very intense at one end of the spectrum, a sort of Lukewarm. Reasonably intense, but not changing too much of your life in the middle. And then you do find I mean, my favorite story is, a guy who we meet as Bishop of Troy, Ilium.
Tim Benson:Yeah. Yeah. This is a funny story.
Peter Heather:Yeah. No. It's I mean, extraordinary. And he later applies for a job. The the one emperor who does go away from Christianity in the 4th century is the emperor Julian between 361 and 363, and Julian tries to create a pagan priesthood that will rival the Christian priesthood and its organization.
Peter Heather:And this guy who was bishop of Ilios then applies for a job happily in Julian's new pagan priesthood. What did he believe? I have absolutely no idea and and nor does anyone else. It's a brief kind of 2 page, mention in history, but, you know, how many people were like him in the 4th century. In other words, it's it's actually being either chief priest of your local, neighborhood or bishop didn't matter, probably like being, you know, head of the round table or the freemasons in your area.
Peter Heather:It's just, another appurtenance of social economic authority, you would expect to be it. So whatever it is, we'll be it.
Tim Benson:Right.
Peter Heather:I imagine something like that.
Tim Benson:Yeah. And then, again, a major question facing these Roman elites was how much of the classical culture and, its justificatory ideologies could they, retain legitimately retain following their conversion as, you know, because this shared culture of antiquity was so, so central to Yeah. Their understanding of what made them elite. So how much of that can they keep? How much of that do they have to jettison now that they're, you know, Christians?
Peter Heather:Yes. Yes. I mean, it's a it's a running theme. It's, you know, it's it's central to their whole understanding of what makes them rational civilized human beings. So, it also is central to the kind of careers they pursue, so it's both ideologically and practically right at the heart of their lifestyles and how they operate.
Peter Heather:So, again, you see this kind of range of opinion and whatever, with different responses, total rejections, partial accommodations. I think that in many ways, the the most interesting dimension of that is the the sort of transfer into Christianity of this kind of culture and the way that it read texts, because it was committed to the idea that a set of texts, which had all been written at different moments of time by different people for different reasons, added up to a complete total account of correct culture. And that was actually intimately transferable to the fundamental problem, at the heart of Christianity, which is that the holy texts, the Old and New Testament, are written, at a vast over a vast time range by different people with wildly different agendas, and you have to turn that into a system. There's no system there. You know?
Peter Heather:The reason that there are massive quarrels about how exactly Jesus is God and man is because the Bible doesn't tell you that. It offers you indications that you then have to turn into a system by depending on how you read it. And, actually, what you see in, the late Roman period and beyond is the transfer into Christianity of this kind of reading technology, of thinking about texts, how you turn texts that seem not to be systematic into a system, because that's that is how Christian theology is made. It is taking every potential reference to a particular topic from the Old and New Testament and then thinking about it seriously hard and deciding which of the slightly different, emphases you think is the most important and why. You know?
Peter Heather:And then then, offering reasons as to why that one should be read as the most important phrase and other and other things brought into line with that rather than vice versa. And so you you do see this kind of classical culture, which is all about reading text and all about reading Plato and Aristotle and Virgil and turning it into this great composite whole. Mhmm. Being transferred into Christianity. It's a very, very interesting phenomenon.
Tim Benson:Yeah. On that, on that note too, if you could spend on this a little bit. We generally often hear more about how Christianity changed the Roman Empire, but not so much how the Roman Empire changed Christianity. So, you know so a little bit more about how how did the Roman Empire, other than sort of what we just talked about, and the imperial apparatus, how does that change Christianity?
Peter Heather:Yeah. It changes it in, I think probably 3 major ways. First of all, lots more people become Christian. And I think by, say, 500 AD, nearly everyone inside their own empire is being baptised. And that's not just a small change.
Peter Heather:That then prompts deeper questions about what it means to be a good Christian. Because the kind of behavioral standards that you can demand of a small grouping of very true believers, you can't, demand of everybody because they will not follow that. So, it sets mass conversion sets off a huge debate about what it means to be a good Christian. How many people are going to get to heaven and how are they going to get there? These are big.
Peter Heather:So mass conversion sets off that, issue. It's not resolved in the later Roman period, but it starts. The second revolution is in Christian authority structures. Very quickly, the authority structure of the Christian church starts to echo that of the Roman Empire. So the Roman administrative structure was local cities, provinces, and then regions.
Peter Heather:And we start to get bishops as the head of, local churches, archbishops at the head of provincial churches, and then some regional patriarchs, and that is reflecting the Roman imperial system. We also see the the shift Somewhere between about 35450, local congregations stop being in charge of when bishops, Fellow bishops start to choose bishops. So when there's a when there's a vacancy, the sitting episcopate chooses the person. The local congregation is involved in the process and in the ceremony, but they're not they're not doing the crucial picking as they certainly were in the year 300. Mhmm.
Peter Heather:So we get this altered, authority structure, much more centralized, much more top down. And, of course, with in the later Roman period with the emperor at the heart of it, because he's that special individual chosen by God to run the whole of the Christian world, you know, so he should be in charge of it. And then the the third area is, development in theology, because the changes in, the centralization of this movement and its massive expansion in numbers makes it much more pressing to have a defined set of beliefs and structures. So we get this sequence of major councils from Nicaea onwards that are deciding really big questions. And, you know, Christianity ends the later on period with a a lot of its not all, but a lot of its major doctrinal issues that have been rumbling away for 300 years, it reaches a a kind of resolution of them.
Tim Benson:Mhmm. So you touched on the top downness a little bit, but how much of of the Christianization of Europe, not just in this period, but throughout the period, you know, throughout the millennium covered in your book, how much of that Christianization is top down? You know, how are there any places specifically where, you were where the where the peasantry are ahead of their, of their lords, you know, with, with Christianity? Or is it something that is, you know, the elites fall fall in line with, with Christianity and then it has its downstream effects from that?
Peter Heather:It's I'm trying to think if I know of any place where, a mass of the, peasantry convert first, and I can't think of an example. I mean, what makes Christianity very successful is that it spreads both top down and horizontally. So you can always find some people who have been massively influenced by, the life and example of, either a conscious missionary or a Christian living amongst them. There are plenty of anecdotes about that. But if we're looking about, how sort of formal Christian allegiance of an area changes, then it always starts at royal courts always.
Peter Heather:I mean, I
Tim Benson:Is this just Except
Peter Heather:perhaps except perhaps the very last one in the 14th century, Lithuania is the last place in all of the European landscape to adopt a Christian allegiance. And I think by that stage, maybe it does work the other way around. But, you know, the the spread into Anglo Saxon England or the spread into Slavic territories or into Scandinavia, That's always starting in royal courts and royal court circles.
Tim Benson:Now is this, could this just be something that we don't quite see because there's no, written record of it? Because, again, most of the population of the of Europe is, you know, illiterate, so they're not writing down any testimonies or, you know, keeping a diary or anything like that. Could it just be, that we that that's what we think just because what we can see from the written record, or, do you think that's still even independent of, not having, you know, the voices of the the common people of of the middle ages that, that it's still more of a top down phenomenon?
Peter Heather:I think I think the question is a very fair one. And I think, there's certainly, you know, a story about the bias of the transmission system of late Roman elite conversion. There's also a bias in the in the transmission system for accounts of conversion, which are all generated around royal court. So I I think I think we're certainly underestimating the horizontal spread of Christianity. Mhmm.
Peter Heather:Although, there would be an inbuilt tendency to do that. And I do think what makes Christianity so effective is the combination of top down and horizontal, actually, in practice. So I you know, you get occasional glimpses. So there's a a missionary to, the first missionary who's sent top down to Scandinavia in the 9th century, that mission is overturned when the diplomatic conditions that allowed him to go break down. But it leaves behind small Christian communities in Scandinavia in particular.
Peter Heather:We're talking about an area of Sweden, an important trading town. There's a there's a a small community of Christians there who continue to live as Christians. And I think you would if we had the full story, you'd find a lot of pockets like that, and the existence of those pockets is probably very crucial to the process as well. On the other hand, the the great shifts of allegiance do, operate out of royal courts. And also the processes of subsequent Christianization are pretty well documented, and they're and they're top down.
Peter Heather:So it doesn't suggest that, as it were, the royal courts have come at the end and everybody's already Christian. The subsequent process of, spreading Christianity, a more lively form of Christianity, more intense form of Christian piety through large scale populations, that is also top down. And that that leaves me reasonably comfortable that the the surviving, sources are not massively misrepresenting the the conversion process. Yeah. Gotcha.
Tim Benson:Alright. Just a couple more questions before we wrap it up. I know you have to go. Again, there's so much stuff. But, maybe talk a little about the the rise of Islam a little bit.
Tim Benson:And she's written the book. The the Europeanness of Christianity is an after effect of Islam sweeping through the Mediterranean literal, that was Christianity's original heartland. If, if there were no Islam or if Islam is, you know, beat back on the you know, at the Arabian Peninsula, what Christianity looks like now could be, completely, completely different.
Peter Heather:Yes. It's such an interesting one that, the the great, church councils, are all held in the Eastern Empire. These ones that are are deciding, you know, the nature of the relationship between God the father and God the son and then God the holy spirit. All of that is being, the debate is is largely being conducted by churchmen from Syria and Egypt and Turkey, a little contribution from North Africa, half of one contribution from Rome, but that's it. Otherwise, you know, what we know of as Europeans are not contributing to these debates.
Peter Heather:They go along to the council sometimes and they vote, but but all of that energy and and all the writing you know, church councils don't sit in a vacuum. There's gotta be, I don't know, tens of thousands of pages of writing on a topic before you get to the council and, you know, the actual decision happening. The vast majority of that is happening in Greek, and it's being written by Greek speakers in the the southern Mediterranean. Again, a a not bad contribution from North Africa. Latin speaking North Africans like Augustine ship in occasionally, but but most of that energy, it's all central and and and southern, sorry, southern and eastern shores of the, of the Mediterranean.
Peter Heather:So when Islam, takes over that so and it does like, this happens in the blink of an eye essentially between 637 100 AD. In in 6 90, that's when Carthage falls to Islamic conquest in the 6 nineties and, Egypt, Syria, Palestine, large parts of Turkey, they've already been swallowed up and had been Islamic for 40, 50 years by then. Community in half in a sense. And you see a slow but steady trajectory towards Islamization amongst the southern and eastern Mediterranean elites. Again, it's not a very sudden process.
Peter Heather:But, in Egypt, for instance, the Egypt is conquered in about 6 50 AD. By 7 50, Christian elites are disappearing from prominence in the in Egyptian society. So, you know, it's that kind of 100 year period and, round about 700, the administrative structure of the Islamic world switches into Arabic. So, you know, you get this form of a new cultural edifice. A lot of classical input into that emerging, Arab classical Arab edifice.
Peter Heather:I mean, that's one some of the most exciting work done over the last 20, 30 years has been realizing how much classical Greek and Latin cultural traditions helped shape the emerging, Arab Islamic world. I mean, it's quite astonishing, actually. That's, that's a very exciting shift. So it a lot of the cultural, structures are very similar. They're being done in Arabic.
Peter Heather:They're not being done in Greek and Latin, but they are actually very similar. So but that's, again, part of this kind of
Tim Benson:And when you say, when you say, Christian elites are disappearing, you don't mean that, you know, they're getting their heads cut off or whatever for being No. You mean they're they're converting to to Islam. Right. Right.
Peter Heather:Yeah. You you could see, I mean, there there are a few stories preserved of those who don't convert, who lose their jobs and have to go off and they become well, they become confessors. Confessors are people who stand up for their faith. They're not killed. They're not martyrs, but they lose their job.
Peter Heather:So there's a a string of confessor stories, one martyr movement in Islamic Spain, for instance. But that's very limited. It doesn't normally happen. You're being faced with a choice between converting or losing your job, and quite clearly, the majority prefer to keep their jobs and keep their elite status. Yeah.
Tim Benson:Sure.
Peter Heather:And that just leaves Latin, Western, Christendom by itself. The Greek East is gone. You know? What do we need to do?
Tim Benson:So I guess we should, maybe touch on this before we go. And, on the rise the evolution and the rise of the papacy to dominance. How does how does Rome become most well, obviously, it helps that the whole Eastern Empire is, you know, taken off the chessboard.
Peter Heather:Yes.
Tim Benson:But, but how does Rome become and the papacy become supreme over time?
Peter Heather:I think this is the to me, because I don't know the late medieval stuff so well, to me, this is one of the most interesting things, that it's not a cunning plan hatched out of Rome. It's not a kind of power grab from Rome. Yeah.
Tim Benson:They've sort of given it.
Peter Heather:Yeah. They've given it because churchmen across Northern Europe need a centralized authority structure, and they need it because so much of Europe has become Christian that there isn't a single king or emperor who's running the whole Christian world anymore. So for instance, when Charlemagne is crowned, emperor on Christmas Day 800, he's running all of Western Christendom except for Britain, and Britain is such a tiny small place. No one gives a damn. You know?
Peter Heather:No one cares about that. Charlemagne looks like he's running all of Christendom, and he is effectively running all of Christendom. So when Charlemagne holds council, everybody comes all the bishops are there, you know, we're back in the late Roman world with emperors calling councils and everybody turning up. You know, that's fine. But by 1100 AD, we've converted Scandinavia.
Peter Heather:We've converted much of Central Europe, you know, Poland. We converted as far as Russia. Just all of this European landscape is now run by Christian kings. And, the there are still emperors, but they only run Germany and Italy. That's the thing about the holy Roman emperors.
Peter Heather:It's really quite a small enterprise in the sort of pan European text. And, you know, kings and emperors won't let their bishops go to anyone else's councils. So there is no one who is capable of exercising a Pan Latin Christendom, structural authority. There isn't one that exists. And it it's actually Northern churchmen reforming the papacy to turn it into the authority structure that they need because there are big things that need sorting out.
Peter Heather:I mean, the other thing I love is that it's only in the 12th century that we finally sort out how many people are gonna go to heaven and how they're gonna get there, the whole purgatory
Tim Benson:Right.
Peter Heather:Sacraments thing. But that's so late. It's so late. It's I mean, it's a brilliant solution. Most people will get to heaven, but it's gonna be hard.
Peter Heather:Yeah.
Tim Benson:You got you got you got to take a number and,
Peter Heather:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Tim Benson:Do a couple of eons.
Peter Heather:Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. But that's extraordinarily late. If, you know, that's at the heart of Christianity.
Peter Heather:It's, you know, those kind of issues. But that's that that's coming in the same era. We need an authority structure to validate that answer as the right answer, which the papacy eventually does. So Northern European church would create the papacy, not people desperate for power in Rome. It's not the way it works.
Peter Heather:And it's because imperial or royal authority will no longer work but do the job. You can't get it to make.
Tim Benson:Mhmm. Alright. Well, you know, I had so much so much we didn't get into with the schism and I mean, more on Charlemagne and the Crusades and just sort of how weird Christianity was in Britain and Ireland compared to the continent and all that stuff. But, that'll be that'll have to wait for I mean, people will have to read the book to get into that. But, just before we go, sort of the the exit question I ask everybody that comes in the, comes on the podcast.
Tim Benson:And that is, you know, what would you like the audience to get out of this book? Or, you know, what's the one thing you'd want a reader taking away from it having read it having read it?
Peter Heather:I think the one thing can I have 2? Just
Tim Benson:Yeah. 2. Go ahead.
Peter Heather:2. 1 is that it's never enough to say Christianity. You've always got to unpack it. I mean, requiring people to do, because that has changed so much in different eras that you need to to say which Christianity which Christianity are you talking about? So that's that's the sort of one dimension.
Peter Heather:The other one is to think about how much religious change there's been actually over time. And the the same people have been classical pagans and then Christians and then Muslims and then maybe Christians again at different points. And that actually, to use the matter of religion, which is about actually getting souls into heaven. To use this as a kind of, political battle cry is perhaps wrong. I mean, that that's my opinion very much so, but, this is religion isn't is far too important to be turned into kind of a political rallying cry of one kind or another.
Peter Heather:And all of our families will be full of people who've been different religions over time. And maybe the same person who's been different religion if they were caught in one of these moments of change. So that's that's the other thought I would offer.
Tim Benson:Alright. Great. Well, before we go, is there anything else, you wanna plug while you're here? Anything you're working on? Any, anything like that?
Tim Benson:Social media? Anything?
Peter Heather:No. No. I, I'm, at the age of 63, I don't do very much social media. I spend all my time writing books. I don't have enough time for it.
Peter Heather:Alright.
Tim Benson:Do you have any, anything you're working on? Right? You're
Peter Heather:yes. I've I've got a new project on Vikings, which I'm very excited about, which will have a bit of will have a bit of Christianity in it, but is all about ships and, maritime exploration and connection and that kind of thing.
Tim Benson:And pillaging. A little bit of pillaging here and there. Yeah. It
Peter Heather:was a fair bit of pillaging. On the side. Yeah.
Tim Benson:Yeah. Yeah. Pillaging on the side. Alright. Yeah.
Tim Benson:So the book is, once again, Christendom, The Triumph of a Religion, AD 300 to 1300. Fascinating, fascinating book. One of the it's a longer one for those of you who are repeat or, you know, are faithful listeners, a little bit longer than usual. But, just a fascinating, fascinating, read. Just the approach of other I I guess the best thing about a book like this or is it gets you to think of things in a way that you never thought of them before, and then sort of changes your perspective, when reading elsewhere on the topic, from there on out.
Tim Benson:And, I have a feeling this book is gonna be one of those books that, that does that. It's gonna be, you know, something you keep in the back of your mind when you're, you know, reading other stuff, on that issue. So, very, very fascinating read. Tons of tons of information. Very I mean, it's a long book, but it's a quick read.
Tim Benson:It's not, it's not dry. It's not, you know, not, like some academic books can be. But, I mean, it's a it's a it's a book meant for the general reader. It's not a, you know, specialist yet. So it's, it's so everyone out there
Peter Heather:It it's meant to be a a a serious argument made accessible.
Tim Benson:Yes.
Peter Heather:So for intel intelligent people who wanna know about how things really are, not some kind of, you know, fake dumbing down, but, offering the lines of entry so that you can follow and understand what's going on completely. Absolutely.
Tim Benson:Yeah. You said it much better than I did. Anyway, so, again, yeah, fantastic, fantastic book. Highly, highly recommend it for everybody out there. Once again, the name of the book, Christendom, The Triumph of a Religion, AD 300 to 1300.
Tim Benson:And, the author, doctor Peter Heather. So, doctor Heather, thank you so, so much for, taking this, you know, time out of your day to come on the podcast and talk the book with us. And and really thank you for devoting, an entire decade of your life to
Peter Heather:to to writing this code. There wasn't anything else.
Tim Benson:Yes. Alright. So thank you for dedicating 8 actual years of your life
Peter Heather:to
Tim Benson:writing the book. Yeah. And, yeah, so we're all the beneficiaries of of your of your efforts and hard work. So, thank you. Thank you so much for for everything.
Peter Heather:Thank you for having me. It's been a great pleasure. No problem.
Tim Benson:And, again, if you like this podcast, please consider leaving us a 5 star review and sharing with your friends. And if, you have any questions or comments or you have any, books you'd like to see discussed on the podcast, you have any ideas like that, feel free to reach out to me. It's tbenson@heartland.org. That's tbens0n@heartland.org. And for more information about the Heartland Institute, you can just go to heartland.org.
Tim Benson:And, we do, unlike doctor Heather, we do have a little, Twitter slash x account.
Peter Heather:I'll
Tim Benson:always call it Twitter. So you can always reach out to us there too. You know, if you have any questions or comments or whatnot, feel free to do that. Our Twitter handle is at illbooks@illbooks. So make sure you check that out.
Tim Benson:And, yeah, that's pretty much it. So thanks for listening, everybody. We'll see you guys next time. Take care. Love you, Robbie.
Tim Benson:Love you, mom. Bye bye.
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