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David
Ayerst & A. S. T. Fisher.
Records of Christianity, Volume II:
Christendom.
Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1977.
ISBN 0631171703.
Hardback, stitch bound.
141x221x25mm.
xvi,329pp inc. 19 drawings, 3 maps, plus 8 pages of
plates,
all monochrome.
English.
Very good condition: unused, slightly dusty copy due to long period of
storage.
This item
£12.00
600g.
How to order this book
Christendom,
the sequel to The Church in the Roman Empire in the series Records
of Christianity, deals with the Middle Ages in the words of
contemporary
writers. We still worship in the churches they were first to use. We
know
about the buildings, but their minds are often a closed book to us.
What
were they really like? The purpose of this book is to let them tell us.
In these pages there is ignorance, superstition and brutality, but also
abundance of heroic devotion and a spiritual sensitivity well beyond
the
reach of most of us.
Dante
and Thomas
Aquinas, Bede and Alfred the Great, Francis of Assisi and Peter Abelard
are among the writers. But there is also an unknown Irish monk's verses
on his cat and a private soldier's story of how, though beaten in the
Third
Crusade, he yet visited the Holy Places by courtesy of Saladin. There
is
much nonsense and much good sense in the instruction a Cistercian monk
gave his Rhineland novices. Readers can listen to the debate which
decided
that Iceland should become Christian, and on what terms. They can trace
in the Koran Israel's blood relationship with Christianity and measure
the distance between them. They may meet Jews and simple pagans. They
may
travel to China at a time when it seemed possible that Asia might
replace
the lost Christian heartland in the Middle East.
The
illustrations
are as much an integral part of the book as the extracts. Introductions
and notes are included to help fix the passages in time and place, an
important
matter in a book which spans eight centuries and five thousand miles.
This
is not a book for the theologian or the political historian, though
there
are of course both theology and politics in it as of course there had
to
be - Christendom is both a religious and a political conception. It is
meant for the general reader - for the parson in his study, the teacher
in the classroom, the man or women in the pew, and for anybody,
Christian
or agnostic, who has any interest in religion.
See
the "book
descriptions" page for explanations of the criteria used in this
listing.
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