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The First Thousand Years: A Global History of Christianity . By Robert Louis Wilken . New Haven, Conn. : Yale University Press , 2012. x + 390 pp. $35.00 cloth; $22.00 paper.
Book Reviews and Notes
With this book, Robert Louis Wilken, one of the most distinguished patristic scholars of our time, presents a history of the first Christian millennium that is both scholarly rigorous and accessible for the general reader.
Any historical periodization is to some extent arbitrary, and so is the definition of the end of "early Christianity." Wilken carries his narrative beyond the usual markers, such as the barbarian invasions, the pontificate of Gregory the Great or the iconoclastic controversy in Byzantium. He has chosen two significant developments to conclude his volume: the reign of Charlemagne in the West (often, it seems, neglected in Anglo-Saxon scholarship) and the establishment of Christianity among Kiev Rus in 988. "By the year 1000," he argues, "the map of the early Christian world was largely complete" (1) and lasted for centuries to come.
The title indicates the scope of the book: Christianity as a global...