How did Christianity spread throughout Europe

Parchment

CHRISTIANITY SPREAD IN THE BRITISH ISLES

While the word,&nbsp;Christianity&nbsp;might conjure up images of monumental cathedrals and powerful bishops, the religion was not always so powerful. In fact, Christians were persecuted throughout the Roman Empire for centuries. Some, like Emperor Nero, famously blamed Christians for whatever went wrong, including a fire that burned much of Rome. As a result, Christians remained secretive, sometimes going as far as to meet and worship in underground catacombs. However, this persecution couldn't stop the spread of Christianity!

By the time that the Renaissance started in Europe in the 14th century, the Catholic Church was broke. The&nbsp;Crusades, a series of wars fought in the Middle East to recapture Jerusalem, along with the Church's sponsorship of Renaissance art, had gotten the Church into debt. To pay for its expenses, the Church began selling&nbsp;indulgences, pieces of paper that forgave a person for past sin

Unfortunately, neither the pope nor the patriarch was going to back down. In 1054, the situation became unbearable when the pope ordered the patriarch to be excommunicated, meaning that the pope no longer recognized the patriarch as Christian and no longer recognized his authority over Eastern churches. The pope did this by sending his couriers to tack the excommunication notice to the patriarch's podium in Constantinople while the Patriarch was speaking from the pulpit!

As time marched one, the Church found itself having to answer questions even tougher than those posed by Martin Luther. Science had begun to look beyond Christianity for answers in the natural world, and little found through observation and experiment that seemed to support the idea of a creation having occurred in six, 24-hour days. Charles Darwin, himself having once considered a career as a priest, took issue with some of Christianity's teachings after writing his famous book&nbsp;On the Origin of Species. From evolution to geology to astronomy, it seemed that Christianity no longer had all the answers

Christianity was introduced to the British Isles sometime later, probably during the Christianization of the Empire under Constantine, in the 4th century. Early Celtic Christians observed worship practices that differed from those of the rest of Europe. Who brought Christianity to England? The Christianization of Britannia occurred when in the 6th century AD. Pope Gregory I decided to send an "expedition" to bring Christianity to England, through Augustine. Christianity spread to Ireland initially through the work of St. Patrick. The fifth century, and part of the sixth, saw the presence of many Christian missionaries in Wales, Scotland and Ireland; many were the ascetics and hermits who retired to the mountains devoting themselves to prayer and meditation. With the task of evangelizing the British Isles and especially Ireland, the story of St. Patrick takes religious form with the task entrusted to him by Pope Celestine I. The missionary takes on the previous missionary work, subsequently abandoned, of Bishop Palladius

While Christianity was dominant in Europe, questions remained. Foremost was the issue of a number of&nbsp;heresies, or so-called false beliefs, that spread throughout what had been the Western Roman Empire, weakening the unified authority of the religion. Ultimately, the teachings of the bishop of Rome, more commonly known as the pope, prevailed over the heresies. This type of Christianity, which is led by the pope is known as&nbsp;Catholicism, which gets its name from the Greek word for universal, due to its adherents' belief that it's the universal, or main branch, of Christianity.

As the position of pope grew in power, each successive pope became more efficient at getting the kings of Western Europe to do what the Church wanted. Although the Western Roman Empire had fallen, the Eastern Roman Empire, called the Byzantine Empire, was still strong, causing tension between the pope in the West and the emperor in the East.

The East had always been the richer half of the Roman Empire, and the emperor of the Byzantine Empire didn't want someone a thousand miles away giving him orders. He made sure that he had the power to appoint whomever he wanted as leaders of the Church in the East. The most important of these was the bishop of Constantinople, known as the patriarch. Increasingly, with the encouragement of the emperors, patriarchs challenged popes on a variety of issues for the next few centuries.

A number of people took issue with this practice, most notably a German priest named Martin Luther. Originally, he tried to work within the Catholic Church to change this practice. However, the Church made it clear that the indulgences weren't going away. Similar to a previous protest within the Church, Luther tacked his complaints on the front door of his church for everyone to see in 1517, setting off what came to be known as the&nbsp;Protestant Reformation

As a result, in 313, the&nbsp;Edict of Milan&nbsp;was passed, which guaranteed freedom of religion throughout the Roman Empire, ending the persecution of Christians. Such a measure was partially designed to help Christians have more faith in the Roman Empire, which was growing weak. Ultimately, however, this wouldn't be enough to restore people's trust in the Western Roman Empire, which fell in the year 476. Still, Christianity was here to stay

New political thinking also challenged the role of Christianity. The French Revolution guaranteed freedom of religion for everyone, as the French had long seen fights between Protestants and Catholics drag France into numerous wars. Later, communism in the Soviet Union would try to stamp out all religious thought, while the absolutism of nazism and fascism, which co-opted Christianity, would taint the religion for many

Many people were tired of Roman state rituals that seemed empty and were attracted to the idea of social equality, justice, and the promise of an afterlife that Christianity offered. Beginning in the Middle East, Christianity began its spread north and west into Europe, carried by merchants, missionaries, and soldiers. Of course, the Roman imperial government couldn't ignore the fact that, despite the persecutions, Christianity was growing stronger.

The resulting break became known as the&nbsp;Great Schism&nbsp;because it divided the Church into two halves: the Catholic half led by the pope and the other half led by the patriarch. This latter group called itself&nbsp;Orthodox, from the Greek word&nbsp;orthos, which means 'straight' or 'right' and&nbsp;doxa, which means opinion, because they felt that they were the original, or proper, Church.

Luther and those who thought like him had broken away from the Catholic Church, becoming known as&nbsp;Protestants&nbsp;because they protested the way the Catholic Church was operating. Soon, all of northern Europe was Protestant, and while the Catholic Church would try a counter-reformation aimed at converting everyone back to Catholicism, it largely failed