A conversation with Peter Heather about his new book Christendom: The Triumph of a Religion, AD 300-1300. Peter is one of the leading historians of the fall of the Western Roman empire and the emergence there of the post-Roman, “barbarian” kingdoms. He now brings a revisionist approach to the emergence of the Church in (mostly Western) Europe. This book covers a lot of ground, and so we focus on the early period, where his arguments affect the East too. We talk about the role of contingency, the near-miss of Homoian Christianity, the decisive role of secular rulers, and much more.
A conversation with Peter Heather about his new book Christendom: The Triumph of a Religion, AD 300-1300. Peter is one of the leading historians of the fall of the Western Roman empire and the emergence there of the post-Roman, “barbarian” kingdoms. He now brings a revisionist approach to the emergence of the Church in (mostly Western) Europe. This book covers a lot of ground, and so we focus on the early period, where his arguments affect the East too. We talk about the role of contingency, the near-miss of Homoian Christianity, the decisive role of secular rulers, and much more.
Peter Heather is a Professor of Medieval History at King’s College, London and is a leading historian of the Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. His new book Christendom: The Triumph of a Religion, AD 300-1300 is published by Knopf. Two other books mentioned during this talk are the just-published Why Empires Fall: Rome, America, and the Future of the West, and Empires and Barbarians: The Fall of Rome and the Birth of Europe, published in 2012.
Byzantium & Friends is hosted by Anthony Kaldellis, a Professor at the University of Chicago. You can follow him on his personal website.
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Top Image: British Library Royal 13 B. VIII fol.23v
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