The Western Church in the Middle Ages - Hardcover

From its origins in the ancient world as a rival to traditional paganism, Christianity has become one of the great world religions. How the Church took over spiritual control of Western Europe to become the foundation of medieval life, setting the moral agenda of society and dominating its
intellectual world, is the guiding enquiry at the heart of this book. Covering the period between the fall of the Roman Empire and the Reformation, the account is structured in three chronological blocks, starting with the gradual development of unity within the Western Church up to the eleventh
century, followed by the period of centralisation between the eleventh and the thirteenth centuries, and concluding with the break-up of this centralisation in the later Middle Ages. Organisational developments and changes in spirituality and doctrine are examined, and the history of the papacy is
situated in the wider context of changes in both ecclesiastical and lay society. Intellectual developments and the rise of h