The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia—and How It Died

by Philip Jenkins

To appreciate the full diversity of the Christian experience, it is eye-opening to think what was happening in western Europe at this exact time. The year 782 marked one of the worst horrors of Charlemagne’s reign, the reputed beheading of forty-five hundred Saxons who resisted the Frankish campaign of forced conversion to Catholic Christianity.