Christianity may be one of the biggest religions in the world today, but its beginning is not as smooth as most Christians may tend to believe. Following Constantine’s move to make it the official and only religion during his reign as Roman Empire, Christianity, a religion where its followers were persecuted gained it roots that would exceed the great Roman Empire. The fall of Western and Eastern Roman Empire contributed in shaping the Christian world. Western Rome that was largely in Europe was divided from the Eastern Rome known as Byzantine and practiced Christianity differently with the former forming the Roman Catholic Church whereas the later formed Orthodox Christian teachings. The Catholic beliefs where the Pope was seen as the God’s sent messenger on earth whereas the later the pope was also the leader of the Byzantine Empire as they did not separate religion and empire. The division was much to the resulting fall of the entire Roman Empire.
The fall of Western Rome in 476 following the attack by the Odoacer, a German general, led to the centralized civilization collapse (Williams, 2001). The barbarians namely the Goths, Franks, Saxons, Lombards, Visigoths, and Angles who were from a Germanic origin rise to dominate Western Europe with each group occupying a different land in what is the present Europe. Whereby in order formed the present day Goths conquered most of Netherlands, Germany, Ukraine, and Italy whereas the others France, England, and Spain. There were intentions to gain power over other groups, but each group adopted the monarch system used by the former Roman Empire. The Franks were the most success between 768-814 under the leadership of Charlemagne ruling the Carolingian Empire, which included the most of Europe. The Roman Catholic Church had strong ties with the independent governorship with the Pope and clergy playing a huge role in the authoritative nature and social issues. For instance, following Charlemagne’s efforts to rescue Leo III leading to the king being termed as the Emperor of Rome on the Christmas Day 800 (Schulman, 2002). The monarchy systems used were based on the Christianity beliefs that leaders were chosen by God.
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The political landscape from such a perspective increased the church’s influence on the medieval Western Europe. The death of Charlemagne leads to the division of the Carolingian Empire with the rise of Edward the Confessor. The land was owned by the king and the elite who received land as fief or gifts from the rulers. Peasants were belonging to the landowners who worked in the areas with their payments being allowed to build houses on the land and a share of the harvests. The new form of social setting from the Roman-Slave keeping had developed into Lord-Vassal relationship thus promoting feudalism. Christianity under the Pope and his clergy depicted the laws of these governments with the priests, bishops, nuns, and monks being of great importance in the critical decision-making of the rulers.
The church influenced everything from law, fashion, culture, architecture, among other doctrines with the examples of cathedrals at the center of most of the cities. The pope’s influence on the leadership and affairs of the independent states is evident in the engagement of the Crusades that began in 1095 in the bid to help assist Byzantine Empire from the invasion of the Islamic Empires ordered by Pope Urban (Robert, & Wiley InterScience, 2009). The Crusades were encouraged and termed as a holy war against those opposed to Christ by the priests encouraging young people to participate in the Crusades that lasted for about four centuries to help save Jerusalem the holy city. The participants believed that by taking part in the war, they would have an eternal life rather than burn in hell. The unity depicted during the first Crusade led to many Europeans moving to middle-east where they were able to rescue the empire, but their behaviors were different from the Orthodox Christian beliefs which are claimed as the birth of the biggest controversy among Christians that is still a dominant issue today.
The war and the plagues, for instance, the Black Death led to killing of thousands of the Western Europe’s population and with the integration in the Middle East illustrating how far behind the Western Europe. Europeans used the trade channels created by the Byzantine Empire to interact with the Chinese dynasties and the Islamic Empires following the fall of Byzantine Empire in 1204 by the Crusaders and later take over by the Turkish conquest known as the “Sword of Islam” of the led by Turks Ottoman, portrayed the strength of the Islamic Middle-East (Goffman, & Mazal Holocaust Collection. 2002). The Orthodox Christians moved to Russia with the Crusaders engaging in trade and borrowing the cultural and technological advancement of each of the cultures they interacted with in the area. The borrowing and studying of the ancient Greek’s learning gained from the Islamic Empires resulted to the growth and change in the ideology of the Western Europeans. Marco Apollo visit to Chinese Ming Dynasty led to his claim that the place was the most beautiful and civilized nations leading to more Europeans to associate with the kingdom. It resulted in borrowing weaponry technology, for example, the use of gunpowder (Spielvogel, 2011).
Conclusion
The information gain, cross-culture association, agriculture, and the freedom from the Western Roman Catholic Church led to the change of the leadership, education, and living in Western Europe. The study of theology in the universities resulted in people asking for proof of God in the 13th century. The magnet compass also helped the Europeans to navigate across many nations and with them led to spread of Christianity. The economic gains, technology resulted in the Western Europe influencing and dominating the world as depicted at the end of the 14th century whereby they were more developed and evolved to engage science and religion, but the education predicted division within Christianity due to the different perceptions, interactions, and geographical movements. It is clear that all the discussed empires had a huge influence on the spread of Christianity as they affected it differently.
References
Goffman, D., & Mazal Holocaust Collection. (2002). The Ottoman empire and early modern Europe . Cambridge [u.a.: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Robert, D. L., & Wiley InterScience (Online service). (2009). Christian mission: How Christianity became a world religion . Chichester, U.K: Wiley-Blackwell.
Schulman, J. K. (2002). The rise of the medieval world: 500 - 1300 : a biographical dictionary . Westport, CT [u.a.: Greenwood Press.
Spielvogel, J. J. (2011). Western civilization: A brief history . Boston: Wadsworth/Cengage Learning.
Williams, M. F. (2001). Making of Christian communities in late antiquity and . United States
