Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years

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Published in Great Britain as A History of Christianity by Allen Lane, an imprint of Penguin Books Ltd.

Illustration credits appear on pages xi-xiv.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

MacCulloch, Diarmaid.

Christianity : the first three thousand years / Diarmaid MacCulloch. p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

eISBN : 978-1-101-18999-3

1. Church history. I. Title.
BR145.3.M33 2010
270--dc22
2009040184

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Acknowledgements

Such a hubristic enterprise as a single-volume history of quite a lot of history floats on a sea of friendship and help. As ever, Stuart Proffitt has been the prince of editors, combining encouragement, critical judgement and a relish for getting prose exactly right, and Joy de Menil and Kathryn Court have also provided thorough and invaluable editorial comment from across the Atlantic. Unflappable and assiduous in their help in preparing the text have been Sam Baddeley, Lesley Levene, Cecilia Mackay and Huub Stegeman. My literary agent, Felicity Bryan, once more had the ability to envisage me writing this book when I might have felt faint-hearted, and has always been there to cheer me on. Many professional colleagues have shown generosity in their conversation and replies to importunacies as I have been constructing the book; some of them have even taken on the penitential task of reading drafts of the text. I am indebted to them all, but particularly to Sam Baddeley, Sebastian Brock, James Carleton Paget, Andrew Chandler, Eamon Duffy, Craig Harline, Philip Kennedy, Judith Maltby, Andrew Pettegree, Miri Rubin, John Wolffe and Hugh Wybrew. I am also grateful for advice on particular points to Sarah Apetrei, Kwabena Asamoah-Gyadu, Pier Giorgio Borbone, Michael Bourdeaux, Frank Bremer, Michael Chisholm, Tom Earle, Massimo Firpo, Peter Groves, Ahmad Gunny, Peter Jackson, Ian Ker, Sangkeun Kim, Graeme Murdock, Matteo Nicolini-Zani, Martin Palmer, Mark Schaan, Bettina Schmidt, Andrew Spicer, Dom Marie-Robert Torczynski, Dom Gabriel van Dijck, Steve Watts, Philip Weller and Jonathan Yonan, and to Pier Giorgio Borbone, Joel Cabrita and John Edwards for permission to quote unpublished material. Remaining imperfections are of course my responsibility and not theirs.

My colleagues in the Theology Faculty and the Humanities Division of the University of Oxford made researching for and writing this book much easier by their forbearance and flexibility in agreeing to my having an extended period of unpaid leave to create it, and I am especially grateful to the Rev. Dr Charlotte Methuen for being my alter ego in the university during this period. It has been a privilege to be a member of a university where there are so many seminars and lectures on offer to give glimpses of specialist wisdom across the whole span of Christian history, and I am grateful to all the convenors and lecturers who have given me a hospitable welcome when, as a bogus asylum seeker, I have sought self-improvement on their shore. As ever, Oxford's wonderfully rich library resources and benevolent librarians have been a luxury at my disposal, and I am particularly appreciative of the help of Alan Brown. As festive companions and encouragers in this venture, my colleagues in the running of the
Journal of Ecclesiastical History
have been exemplary: Martin Brett, James Carleton Paget, Christine Linehan and Anne Waites.

Colleagues in a different enterprise have been all those involved in making the BBC television series which has accompanied the writing of this book, a mammoth operation which has brought much fun and many varied expeditions round the world. Among the very many involved in that process, I particularly thank Gillian Bancroft, Jean-Claude Bragard, Kathryn Blennerhassett, Nick Holden-Sim, Mike Jackson, Roger Lucas, Erin Mactague, Lucy Robinson, Sian Salt, Graham Veevers and Michael Wakelin. Both projects spanned a new time in my life. I am especially in Sam Baddeley's debt for his friendship and shrewd advice. Support, morale-boosting or wise words have also come from Mark Achurch, Isabel and Rosa Gerenstein, Peter and Bea Groves, Gaynor Humphrey, Philip Kennedy, Craig Leaper, Judith Maltby, Jane Upperton and Allen Young, to name the principals among legion.

Diarmaid MacCulloch
St Cross College, Oxford
Passiontide 2009

Organized Christianity came into existence, and exists, to preserve a treasure, a command to be executed, a promise to be repeated, a mission to be fulfilled. This treasure belongs to past, present, and future; it is potential, yet active; an object of contemplation, yet the inspiration of right conduct. An unfathomable mystery, it must be related to all knowledge. And in their endeavours to guard and transmit their trust, its guardians have raised the most perplexing issues. They have caused endless destruction of life in the name of universal peace. They have built up the most realistic of political systems in the effort to establish a kingdom not of this world. In the exploration of the recesses of the soul, they have developed the arts and sciences, and constructed theories of the universe. And, in their desire to satisfy the deepest needs of mankind, they have raised up against themselves the visions, prophecies, and extravagances of excitable and obstinate men, and the dislike of many sensible men.

The treasure which has caused all this activity was cast into the world with a few simple sentences. 'Thou shalt love the Lord thy God and thy neighbour as thyself. What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?' And again, 'God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. No one cometh to the Father, save by Me. Take, eat; this is my body.' And again, 'Go and preach the Kingdom of God. Feed my sheep. Thou art Peter, and upon this rock will I build my Church. Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you. I have come not to bring peace, but a sword.'

Maurice Powicke, 'The Christian Life', in
The Legacy of the Middle Ages
(Oxford, 1926)

Introduction

In seventeenth-century England, there lived a country parson called Samuel Crossman. A rather reluctant Anglican of Puritan outlook, he spent most of his ministry in a small Gloucestershire parish, whose chief hamlet is delightfully called Easter Compton, though briefly at the end of his life he was Dean of Bristol Cathedral. Crossman wrote a handful of devotional poems, one of which, in a most unusual metre, is a work of genius. Beginning 'My song is Love unknown', it ends the tale of Jesus's arrest, trial, death and burial with an exclamation of quiet joy that this suffering so long before had shaped the life of Mr Crossman in his little English parsonage:

Here might I stay and sing,
No story so divine;
Never was love, dear King!
Never was grief like Thine.
This is my Friend,
In Whose sweet praise
I all my days
Could gladly spend.
¹

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