Christian History articles from November 2001

Christian History archives from November 2001

Did you know? Interesting facts about the history of recorded history.(Brief Article)
November 1, 2001... STORY TIME Medieval historians assumed that their books would be read aloud, so they address their audiences as both "readers" and "hearers." One book, Ordericus Vitalis's Ecclesiastical History, even contains symbols indicating where the...

History: behind the scenes. (From the editor).(Brief Article)(Editorial)
November 1, 2001... Backstage passes. Insider accounts. "The making of" As much as people enjoy the show, whatever it may be, they seem to have a quenchless desire to peek at the gears and switches, to uncover the messiness behind the polished product. That's what...

The problem of Eusebius: his work became the foundation for centuries of Christian scholarship. Was that foundation firm or hopelessly flawed?
November 1, 2001... Many people know Eusebius of Caesarea as the "Father of Church History." But as Robert M. Grant, a modern historian of the early church period, provocatively asked, "Did the Father of Church History write history?" Jewish historian Doron...

What a difference a reign makes: Eusebius traces the Christian saga: from abuse to esteem in less than a decade.(Brief Article)(Excerpt)
November 1, 2001... Near the beginning of Book 8 of Church History, Eusebius describes the Roman Empire, under Diocletian, launching its fiercest attack on Christians: In March of the nineteenth year of Diocletian's reign, when the festival of the Savior's...

Eusebius's Ancestors: first-century rivals for the title "Father of Church History.".(Brief Article)
November 1, 2001... Nearly 200 years before Eusebius was born, Luke announced his intention to "write an orderly account" of events related to Jesus Christ, based on careful investigation of "everything from the beginning" (see Luke 1:14). With this project,...

In God's Country: those who believe that God rewards righteous nations have Orosius to admire and Augustine to dispute.
November 1, 2001... The idea of Christendom, a domain where Christian politics and ecclesiology entwined, captivated the medieval imagination. Yet Augustine, whose thought (especially as expounded in his massive City of God) dominated the Middle Ages, never...

When God came to England: in Bede's view, the history of the English church--like the history of redemption--begins in Genesis and ends in Revelation.
November 1, 2001... The remote monastery at Jarrow, nestled on a spit of land extending into the river Tyne, was only a few years old when the plague hit in 686. Every monk to succumbed to the pestilence except Abbot Ceolfrid and a "little lad" who had been made a...

Oswald and Aidan: how an English king and a Scottish bishop teamed up to spread the gospel. (Primary Source: 8th century).(Brief Article)(Excerpt)
November 1, 2001... This excerpt from Bede's Ecclesiastical History (Book 3, chapter 3) primarily describes the evangelistic efforts of Northumbrian King Oswald, "a man beloved by God," and his bishop, Aidan, but references to the Easter date controversy and to...

Wide angles & zoom lenses: medieval chronicles showed, christians their place in God's world, from creation to the end.
November 1, 2001... When people think of medieval history, they might think of legends about saints (see page 22) or entries such as these from the Annals of St. Gall: 710. Hard year and deficient in crops. 712. Great flood. 714. Pippin, Mayor of...

Great lessons from "bad" history: hagiography may not be factual biography, but it captures the practices and ideals of pre-modern Christianity perfectly.
November 1, 2001... When Eddius Stephanus, an Anglo-priest, Saxon priest, sat down to write The Life of Bishop Wilfrid in the early decades of the eighth century, he mused, "This very task of preserving the blessed memory of Bishop Wilfrid is of great gain and...

Maggie, the Dragon Slayer? Sometimes even hagiographers wondered if their stories were too good to be true. (Primary source: 13th century).(Brief Article)
November 1, 2001... In the process of adaptation, hagiographic legends often changed, and it is interesting to study what authors omitted from or changed in their traditional sources. Various Lives of the virgin martyr St. Margaret (known as St. Marina in the...

The best of history. (Cover Story).(Cover Story)
November 1, 2001... History comes to life as it is viewed from many angles. Primary sources offer priceless details and yield insights untempered by the passage of time. Scholarly monographs put topics under a microscope, while overviews place subjects in vast and...

Church history's biggest hoax: Renaissance scholarship proved fatal for one of the medieval papacy's favorite claims.
November 1, 2001... What does the fall of Constantinople in 1453 have to do with the exposure of a famous forgery? For a half century before Turks took the city, the capital of the eastern Roman Empire, church scholars traveled often between Constantinople...

Battle for the past: as traditions clashed during the reformation, history became hotly dispute territory.
November 1, 2001... Two perennial theological questions--"What must I do to be saved?" and "Where can I find the true church?"--took on special urgency in the Reformation as the Christian world experienced an unprecedented crisis of authority. This crisis and its...

Model Martyrs: a feisty English Protestant and a meek Dutch Anabaptist take their faith to the flames. (Primary source: 16th century).(Brief Article)(Excerpt)
November 1, 2001... William Flower, 1555 from Foxe's Book of Martyrs Being at home upon Easter Sunday morning, he came over the water from Lambeth into St. Margaret's Church at Westminster; when seeing a priest, named John Celtham, administering and giving the...

Philip Schaff: Father of American church history: Historians continue to explore the territories these four scholars homesteaded: American church history, missiology, Christian culture, and the crossroads of faith, and learning. (Modern Pioneers).
November 1, 2001... In the development of the discipline of church history in the United States, few scholars played a more important role than the Swiss-born, German-educated immigrant Philip Schaff. Known best for his multi-volume History of the Christian...

Kenneth Scott Latourette: historian of six-continent christianity. (Modern Pioneers).(Brief Article)
November 1, 2001... Kenneth Scott Latourette was the first, and until recent years, almost the only major historian to write the history of Christianity in a way that dealt seriously with its presence in all six continents. He is now mainly remembered as a...

Christopher Dawson: champion of christian culture. (Modern Pioneers).
November 1, 2001... When noted eighteenth-century scholar Edward Gibbon studied the history of civilization, he concluded, "As the happiness of a future life is the great object of religion, we may hear, without surprise or scandal, that the introduction, or at...

Herbert Butterfield: scientific and christian. (Modern Pioneers).
November 1, 2001... "It was the fallacy of Whiggish history!" The student concluded her history paper triumphantly and the history professor, nodding in agreement, gave her an A. For decades the accusation resounded in colleges and universities of the...

How could you forget ...: more notable names from the, field's recent past.(church history)(Brief Article)
November 1, 2001... ADOLF VON HARNACK (1851-1930) Harnack believed that the church had so obscured Jesus's message, only a ruthless criticism could possibly uncover it. Layer by layer, he peeled back church doctrines--ideas like the Resurrection, Christ's...

Christian history today: combining Christian convictions and scholarly conventions, two historians create very different blends. (The Link).(Interview)
November 1, 2001... C.S. Lewis wrote, "History is a story written by the finger of God." But can we spot God's fingerprints? Christian historians who answer "yes" fit broadly under the heading "providentialist." Those who aren't so sure frequently wear the...