Chadwick's history of the early church is widely regarded as the standard work on the subject, and it's easy to see why. It's a dense, dry read, jostling with facts and ideas about the development of Christianity between the ministry of Jesus and the Iconoclasm Controversy in the Early Middle Ages that marks the sundering of the Eastern and Western Churches.

Chadwick explores the complex interplay of social, political, and doctrinal forces that worked together to drive the history of the church forward. It's not easy reading and I wouldn't recommend it as a place to start. It greatly benefits from some familiarity with the historical context, particularly the late Roman Empire, and familiarity with the core disputes of early theology, such as the early Trinitarian controversies and the conflict between Catholic and Gnostic forms of Christianity.

By and large, the facts are presented without much context of big-picture-building. I was frustrated to find a serviceable presentation of the big picture only in the final pages, in the book's conclusion - it would have been helpful for me if his broad interpretation had been integrated into the story as he was telling it. I would recommend that most readers start with the conclusion, since it's not exactly going to give anything away, and possibly even refer back to it periodically throughout the read.

The book evidences several ignominious flaws, which, although commonplace in Christian literature, are no less tedious for it. Women receive little consideration, for example. One might think that not a single woman lived in all of Christendom between Monica and Hildegard of Bingen, reading this book. While the roots of monasticism are considered at length, the origins of the orders of nuns receive not a single word.

It probably goes without saying that extra-canonical views are generally treated unsympathetically, to say nothing of so-called "pagans." In the opinion of this reader, it is high time for that imprecise polemical term to be rejected by academic literature.

Despite all that, Chadwick does an admirable job in cooly surveying the various forces at work, and is often judicious in recognizing a meaningless political spat in theological guise for what it is. Armed with a general familiarity of the topic, any reader will certainly come away enriched.