The key focus of this book is the vitality and dynamism of all aspects of Christian experience from late antiquity to the First Crusade. By putting the institutional and doctrinal history firmly in the context of Christianity’s many cultural manifestations and lived formations everywhere from Afghanistan to Iceland, this volume of The Cambridge History of Christianity emphasizes the ever-changing, varied expressions of Christianity at both local and world level. The insights of many disciplines, including gender studies, codicology, archaeology and anthropology, are deployed to offer fresh interpretations which challenge the conventional truths concerning this formative period. Addressing eastern, Byzantine and western Christianity, it explores encounters between Christians and others, notably Jews, Muslims, and pagans; the institutional life of the church including law, reform and monasticism; the pastoral and sacramental contexts of worship, belief and morality; and finally its cultural and theological meanings, including heresy, saints’ cults and the afterlife.

Contributors:
Peter Brown, Philip Rousseau, Andrew Louth, Igor Dorfmann-Lazarev, Thomas M. Charles-Edwards, Lesley Abrams, Jonathan Shepard, Bat-Sheva Albert, Hugh Kennedy, Sidney H. Griffith, Tia M. Kolbaba, Ian N. Wood, Thomas F. X. Noble, Anne-Marie Helvétius, Michel Kaplan, Janet L. Nelson, Rosemary Morris, Julia Barrow, Dominique Iogna-Prat, Frederick S. Paxton, Rob Meens, Peregrine Horden, Lynda L. Coon, Arnold Angenendt, Éric Palazzo, Alain Boureau, E. Ann Matter, Guy Lobrichon, Leslie Brubaker, Mary B. Cunningham, Julia M. H. Smith, Jane Baun, John H. Van Engen