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

When modern Catholics and Episcopalians sing the Agnus Dei in their liturgy, when they invoke the “Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world,” they are following the Syrian custom imported to the Western church by Pope Sergius. Describing the arrival of Theodore and Hadrian from the Mediterranean, Bede records that “[f]rom that time also, they began in all the churches of the English to learn Church music.” What we call