The Worlds of Christendom

Contraction, Expansion, and Division

Yao Hong is a chinese women who is one of many millions who has made christianity a
very rapidly growing faith in China, along with many other Asian and European countries. The earliest teachings of jesus were outside of the european region.

Christian Contraction in Asia and Africa

In the Early 1500 Christianity, which was a largely known European faith had become
defeated, dissolved and also diminished in places like Asia and Africa because of Islam. As Islam was a sudden monotheistic religion that had started in the middle east, it grew fast to large places of the world but mainly in Asia and Africa.

Therefore, it left Europe to be the middle point of Christianity.

Asian Christianity

The homeland of Islam is is in Arabia. The killing of christian groups had happened about a century after the death of Prophet Muhammad, not many christians survived. Muslims used destroyed christian building to build their mosque called the grand mosque of San’a. Muslims had taken control of Jerusalem, as the location was very sacred to them. For the Jews, it was where Abraham had offered to sacrifice Isaac for god, For Christianity it was a place where the jesus and crucified. Abd al-Malik, a caliph wants peace and made it acceptable for both Muslim and Christian legacies, but that Islam is not going nowhere. Even though Arab was involved warfare with the byzantine empire, they did not force conversions. The large amount of people in Syria and Persia were attracted to Islam mostly because of it’s huge success. Christian churches and communities did well depending on how the Muslim ruler was, whether there was hate to none. The nestorian Christians communities of Syria, Iraq and Persia survived the assault of Islam, but while doing that they abandoned religious paintings and sculptures because they felt it would offend the Muslims. Later when Mongols conquest China, the welcomes the Nestorian christians etc.. Large amount of Mongols converted to Christianity.

Africa Christianity

Africa, like Asia and Middle East did the same things, the decline of churches happening because of the expansion of Islam. But before Muslim would conquer Egypt, Christianity had already became major religion in the country. Things started to change as Christian crusaders started to threaten egypt, therefore Muslims ruler started questioning the loyalty of their Christian subjects, and some forced the removal of Christians of the land. Although Egypt was becoming a Muslim country, Christians managed to stay strong and were 10% of the population. The rulers of Axum had taken in Christianity. Ethiopia became a Christian land in the Muslim Sea because Muslims still remember thankfully and gratefully that Ethiopia had sheltered some persecuted followers of the Prophet Muhammad.

Byzantine Christendom : Building on the Roman Past

The Expansion and spread of Islam and the Arab empire had taken away what had been the
Middle Eastern and North African provinces of the Roman Empire and had brought Spain under the Muslim Control. Byzantine empire had no start point, because it was just a continuation of the fallen Roman Empire. It had became more urbanized, and wealthier along with many other good things, such as it becoming more cosmopolitan. The Byzantine sought to preserve the legacy of Greco-Roman civilization. But as so many things changed over the centuries in the Byzantine Empire, it had became a very distinctive civilization.

The Byzantine State

The continuing of Christianity is continued mostly in europe also. The Christianity in europe had continued on because of the byzantine empire. After the fall of the Western Roman empire, the Eastern empire never tried to take back the land. Even though things like the law of the Roman was still implied some things changed such as different systems to help the Byzantine state. There was also large amount of luxury and richness that was in the court of the Byzantine empire. After 1805, the Byzantine empire shrank because of the invaders like the Catholic Crusaders and the Turkic Muslims.

The Byzantine Church and Christian Divergence

Unlike Western Europe, where the Roman Catholic church had kept some independence from the political authorities. The Byzantine emperor was like a “Caesar”, someone head of state, and the pope who was the head of state. The Eastern Orthodox Christianity had a huge influence on the people on the literally every aspect of the byzantine life. The Christian movement was rent by theological controversy and political division. Even though the Eastern Orthodox and the Roman Catholic Church had an agreement on fundamentals doctrines, they had disputes on the nature of trinity, and that led to a lot of controversy. The was the start of fighting between what are the Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodox churches, which had ended up lasting until the 11th century. The 4th crusade, the Catholic Crusaders had raided the Constantinople for a great amount of time, around a couple decades, and with that led to a divide between the two churches that can never be fixed

The Byzantium and the World

The Byzantine Empire had interacted very thoroughly with their neighbors. With Persia, they continued a Long-time fight on a very political and military level, but as this conflict continued both Empires weakened. Although the Persians had become a part of the Islamic world, the Byzantine empire held on. It was also a focus player between the long distance trade of Eurasia, as it had commercial links to a large vent of places, also a great amount of coins, and silk production. The cultural of Byzantine was very important. The empire preserved much of ancient greek learning, the empire also conveyed this to the Islamic world etc.. The Byzantine culture spread widely among Slavic-speaking peoples in the Balkans and Russia. The Cyrillic script made it possible to translate the Bible and other religious literatures into these languages and greatly assisted the process of conversion."

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