Christendom
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This T-and-O map, which abstracts the known world to a cross inscribed within an orb, remakes geography in the service of Christian iconography. More detailed versions place Jerusalem at the centre of the world. |
Christendom, in the widest sense, refers to
Christianity as a territorial phenomenon: those countries where most people are Christians, or nominal Christians, are part of Christendom.
In a more significant, and meaningful sense, it refers to the medieval and renaissance notion of the Christian world as a sort of social and political
polity. In essence, the vision of Christendom is a vision of a Christian
theocracy, a
government devoted to the enforcement of Christian values, and whose institutions are suffused with Christian piety. In this vision, members of the Christian
clergy wield plenty of political clout. Secular rulers are their subordinates and agents; and national or political divisions are subsumed under the unitary government of a unique and universal
church institution. This
tempting vision of an earthly
crown was one of the greatest challenges to the institutional Christian church.
The seeds of Christendom were laid in
A.D. 306, when Emperor
Constantine became co-ruler of the
Roman Empire. In
312 he converted to Christianity, and after the
First Council of Nicaea in
325 government
persecution of Christians ended.
Christianity became the
state religion of the Empire in
392 when
Theodosius I passed legislation prohibiting the practice of
pagan religions; it had before this already become the state religion of
Armenia and of
Aksum, and in its Arian variety, of the
Gothic nations; all of these lay just beyond the peripheries of Rome.
Christendom was given a firmer meaning with the creation of
Charlemagne's kingdom, the Christian Empire of the West. On
Christmas Day,
A.D. 800, Charlemagne was crowned by the Pope as ruler of the
Holy Roman Empire, a title which would exist up until
Napoleon's defeat of
Francis II in
1806.
After the collapse of Charlemagne's empire, Christendom became a collection of states loosely connected to the
Holy See. Tensions between the
popes and secular rulers ran high, as the pontiffs attempted to retain control over their temporal counterparts. The idea of Christendom was already greatly discredited by the time of the Renaissance Popes because of the moral laxity of the pontiffs and their willingness to make war, peace, and alliances like secular rulers.
Christendom as a cohesive political unit effectively ended with the
Reformation.The term can also refer to Christians considered as a group (the "Christian World") or to the informal cultural hegemony that Christianity has traditionally enjoyed in the
West.
There is another sense to the polity, with less of a secular meaning, which would have been compatible with the idea of both a religious and a temporal body:
Corpus Christianum.
The Latin term
Corpus Christianum is often translated as
the Christian body, meaning the community of all Christians.
It described the pre-modern notion of the
community of all
Christians united under the
Roman Catholic Church. This community was to be guided by Christian values in its politics, economics and social life. Its legal basis was the
corpus iuris canonica (body of canon law). The Church's peak of authority over all European Christians in the
Middle Ages and common endeavours of the Christian community helped to develop this sense of communal identity against the obstacle of Europe's deep political divisions. The Corpus Christianum can be seen as a Christian equivalent of the Muslim
Ummah. The concept also justified the
Inquisition and anti-Jewish
pogroms, to root out divergent elements and create a religiously uniform community.
This concept has been in crisis since the late
Middle Ages, when the
kings of
France managed to establish a French national church during the
14th century and the papacy became ever more aligned with the
Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation.
Other developments in philosophy and events in England and Europe were also critical: the
War of the Roses, the
Hundred Years' War, the end of
feudalism and the rise of strong, centralized monarchies presaging the modern nation state. The Empire, due to its massive size, did represent a large portion of European Christians. Thus the Corpus Christianum was limited to the Christian community of the Empire, rather than all Christians worldwide.
The rise of
Modernity and the
Reformation during the early
16th century entailed the further deconstruction of the Corpus Christianum. The acceptance of different interpretations of the
Bible by the
Peace of Augsburg in
1555 officially ended the idea that all Christians could be united under one church. The principle of
cuius regio, eius religio ("whose the region is, his religion") established the religious, political and geographic divisions of Christianity. The Corpus Christianum was replaced by something foreshadowing the modern idea of a tolerant and diverse society consisting of many different communities.
However, under the motto of the
clash of civilizations, the idea might currently experience a revival, in order to help define the
West in contrast to other cultures.
Among
Evangelical Christans, the term Christendom is synonymous with the secular world's definition of Christianity, while the Church and Christianity are redefined as the body of people who have accepted
Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour.
*
Oikoumene*
Church Militant*
Res publica christiana*
Caesaropapism*
Constantinian shift*
Muslim World and
Ummah
