As a framework of historical analysis this falls a little flat on multiple points, but principally I’m going to detail exactly why the idea that framing Christendom as a “besieged religion” in Europe is contra factual. That being said if you isolate it to specific points of early Christian history it is not without merit.
Short version -- in the Fourth Century, Christianity gained legal, official, and majority status in the Roman Empire, while converting a number of other peoples and kingdoms (Armenia, Ethiopia, the Germans, etc); then in the Fifth Century, the Western Roman Empire underwent civilization collapse, and some parts of the empire even fell to pagans (like Britain); then Islam came, and Christendom lost a lot of people and territory; and they continued to suffer losses into the Ninth Century.
While Rome in the west did collapse and Christianity lost political ground in the Mediterranean, it more than made up for it during the centuries which here are claimed to be periods of loss when the Carolingians initiated a period of previously unforeseen expansion of Christian hegemony into Northern Europe, but also a new political mode of Germanic Christianity that was far less religiously tolerant and focused on the conquest of foreign non Christians which was itself informed by Christian social expansion in the 4th century Roman Empire.
Now, while Western Christendom and Christianity as a whole did manage to make recoveries during the High and Late Middle Ages, it wasn’t until the Age of Exploration (and the Dawn of European Imperialism) that the demographic and economic impact of Christianity as a share of the world managed to surpass their pre-Islamic heyday. In other words, Christendom spent about a millennium trying to recover from the Fall of the Roman Empire; or put another way, when you factor in pre-Constantine, Christianity spent a majority of its history under “siege”.
Here is the greatest problem with this entire thesis, which is that Christianism not being political dominant over vast swathes of territory is conflated with “being under siege” which is frankly in my opinion a non sequitur. Suggesting that the Roman Empire had literally anything to do with the lives of the vast majority of people from the first millennia onwards is blatantly not true, the vast majority of people in medieval Europe were simply existing and this included the nobles as well, there was no besiegement, in any way. In fact when you actually include non Christian Europeans (In thus context, pagans and Jews from the 4th century onwards) into the narrative then such a historical framing becomes materially untenable. To quote the Paderborn epic, which generally reveals the mentality of the medieval euro-Christian mindset, we get more clarity.
“What the contrary mind and perverse soul [pagan polytheists in this context, but “the heathen/heretic periphery” in general] refuse to do with persuasion / Let them leap to accomplish when compelled by fear.”
An analysis of the Wendish crusades shows this further, when proselytizing failed force was not just attempted but vehemently encouraged with zeal. Outposts were built in wendish lands, converts were socially isolated from pagan families, customs totally alien to culture were forcibly imposed and the imposed population were referred to as dogs. This is not the mentality of a society under siege, but one that is expanding and perpetuating itself by military conquest and forced conversion of its civilization-political periphery. People under siege develop defensive and retaliatory mindsets (as Jews and samaritans did from 4th-7th Centuries), not ones of expansion, so I would say that applying this historical framing to the early medieval period onward would be to do so without accounting for the vast shift in the political and cultural changes of Christianity from the fourth century to the twelfth. I’m going to refer to these relations of subjugation, forced conversion, and expansion of the pagan periphery as “the Carolingian model” for most of the discussion after this.
What do you guys think of this historical framing? Does it help when looking at Late Antiquity, Medieval History, or the Early Modern Period? Or “big picture” AH scenarios concerning thereof?
This framing is only useful in discussing Christian history from the 1st to 6th centuries CE, from the beginning of the religion to the forced closure of the last active non Christian polytheist font of public discourse. Anything beyond that and I would say that the attempt to fit a square peg into a round hole, and doesn’t account for the upheaval of perspective and political ability for Christianity to enforce itself.
From the 1st to 3rd century Christianity was religion that totally contravened social norms of its era and so was the subject of violent persecution from a hegemonic state, from the 4th to 6th centuries Christianity experienced a dramatic shift in power and the main concern of that era was the enforcing of a correct form of Christianity or the reconciliation, often violently, of schisms within itself. From the 7th to the 8th Century Christianity experienced a territorial decline in the face of the expansion of Islam, but the 9th and 12th centuries were the early period if a renewed period of expansion and subjugation of the non Christian periphery, weather it be Saxony, to Slavia (the land of the wends) in the 12th century and onward. The 13th to early 14th centuries were a period of further expansion through the Crusades but also one of fracturing as the same Crusades that expanded Latin Christendoms political authority in the Levant also trampled under Constantinople and made Byzantium (the primary barrier toward the political expansion of Turco-Persian Islam) a ruin, and the Mongol empires expansion ultimately caused most of those gains to recede especially in Eastern Europe. The 14th century was a period of growth which culminated in the 15th century which was a time of fracturing (Protest/Catholic conflict), but the late 15th and 16th centuries also saw a period of expansion in the Americas despite Christianity losing its political ground fully in the Levant. The 17th-18th centuries greatly furthered this expansion and from the 19th century onward that facilitated global dominance. So with all that in mind (and keep in mind I did cut many a corner trying to make this concise, as this is a very long stretch of history) what we have (in broad strokes) is;
- 1st-3rd Century; Siege and persecution, survival is the primary concern, legitimacy of social cohesion in the face of persecution a great concern as shown by the Donatist schism.
- 4th-6th Century; Consolidation of Christianity over Mediterranean polytheism and philosophy via force, expansion of Christianity into Palestine and recession of Judaism and Samaritanism, conflict with Zoroastrian Iran, codification of the foundations of statist Christianity and orthodoxy, incubation of the Carolingian model.
- 7th-8th Century; A low point, territorial decline, followed by a period of expansion that snowballed into the later eras.
- 9th-12th Century; Expansion, subjugation, and forced conversion of the pagan periphery and the expansion of a Carolingian model of Christian rulership that defined western history afterwards.
- 13th-14th Century; Further expansion of Christianity in the east, Carolingian model exported to the Levant which defined the initial encounter between Crusaders and eastern Christian’s/Muslims/Jews. Eastern Europe and the Balkans recedes to a periphery region and eventually the Crusades are undone. This period of expansion seemed to be followed by schism, as contact with Eastern Christians who were viewed as heretics led to a breakdown in social relations and eventually the crippling of eastern Romania.
- 15th-16th Century; Expansion, the Carolingian model defines the European encounter defined European encounter with indigenous people in the Americans and Africa, expansion seems to coincide with a later period of schism as the Protestant reformation causes great upheaval in Europe.
17th-18th Century; Further expansion, the end period of the schismatic conflicts, incubation of future dominance.
19th Century onward; Total dominance of world affairs, the Carolingian model becomes the fully dominant way of interaction with the periphery in and out of one’s own society (as seen with the relations between Europeans and native Americans and other colonized peoples), zenith of Christian political authority and global hegemony.
So with that in mind, I would actually say that in terms of political history, Christianity is far more determined by expansion and consolidation, saying that it spent most of its history under siege is inaccurate. I wouldn’t, however, say that the early periods under siege did not inform the expansionist mentality that developed after, but at what point that is the result of the actual implications of scripture becomes a theological question. I would also say that the history of western Christianity is most defined by 2 people; Constantine and Charlemagne. But to create a singular framework to unify all of the historiography of Christianity I think would require a greater endeavor.
