The Cambridge History of Christianity, Volume 5: Eastern Christianity

The Cambridge History of Christianity #5

by Michael Angold

This volume brings together in one compass the Orthodox Churches - the ecumenical patriarchate of Constantinople and the Russian, Armenian, Ethiopian, Egyptian and Syrian Churches. It follows their fortunes from the late Middle Ages until modern times - exactly the period when their history has been most neglected. Inevitably, this emphasises differences in teachings and experience, but it also brings out common threads, most notably the resilience displayed in the face of alien and often hostile political regimes. The central theme is the survival against the odds of Orthodoxy in its many forms into the modern era. The last phase of Byzantium proves to have been surprisingly important in this survival. It provided Orthodoxy with the intellectual, artistic and spiritual reserves to meet later challenges. The continuing vitality of the Orthodox Churches is evident for example in the Sunday School Movement in Egypt and the Zoe brotherhood in Greece.

Genres: History, Religion, Nonfiction, Church History, Christianity

742 pages, Hardcover

First published September 4, 2006

About the author

Michael Angold is Professor Emeritus of Byzantine history at the University of Edinburgh.

He is Editor of Cambridge History of Christianity V - Eastern Christianity (2006); and author of A Byzantine Government in Exile (1974), The Byzantine Empire 1025-1204 (1985), Church and Society in Byzantium under the Comneni 1082-1261 (1995), and The Fourth Crusade (2003).

Reviews

[Czarny Pies]

This is a superb book which deals with the Orthodox, Armenian, Coptic and other churches that existed outside of the jurisdiction of the Roman Catholic Church. Unfortunately there are simply not titles on this subject.