Questions about Christendom
Short answers, pulled from the story.
What does the word Christendom mean and where did it come from?
Christendom refers to the global community of Christians or the lands where Christianity is the dominant religion. The Anglo-Saxon term crīstendōm was coined in the 9th century by a scribe, possibly at the court of King Alfred the Great of Wessex, who needed a word while translating a Roman text from around 416 AD. By around 1400, the word had shifted in Late Middle English to mean specifically the lands where Christianity prevails.
Who is credited with founding Christendom as a political institution?
Emperor Constantine I is widely credited with founding Christendom as a political institution. Malcolm Muggeridge wrote in 1980 that Christ founded Christianity, but Constantine founded Christendom. Constantine issued the Edict of Milan in 313, granting toleration to Christians, and convoked the First Council of Nicaea in 325. Theodosius I reinforced this with the Edict of Thessalonica in 380, making Nicene Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire.
When and why did Christendom split into Eastern and Western branches?
Christendom divided into Western Christianity centered on Rome and Eastern Christianity centered on Constantinople following the Great Schism of 1054. The division deepened when Crusaders conquered Constantinople during the Fourth Crusade, hastening the decline of the Byzantine Empire and ending hopes of religious reunification. Christmas Day 800 AD, when Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne, had already begun defining the two halves as distinct cultural and political worlds.
What role did Christendom play in the founding of universities and hospitals?
Medieval Christianity created the first modern universities in the Western world, with Bologna, Oxford, and Paris among the earliest, established around 1150. These grew from cathedral and monastic schools into chartered institutions teaching law, medicine, theology, and liberal arts. The Catholic Church also established a hospital system in medieval Europe described by historian Guenter Risse as designed to serve those marginalized by poverty, sickness, and age.
What ended the concept of Christendom as a unified Christian political order?
The Peace of Augsburg in 1555 and the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 legally ended the idea of a single Christian hegemony in Europe by establishing that each ruler determined the religion of their territory. Diarmaid MacCulloch argued in 2010 that Christendom was killed by the First World War of 1914-18, which brought down the Russian, German, and Austrian Christian empires. Thomas John Curry identified the First Amendment to the United States Constitution (1791) and the Second Vatican Council's Declaration on Religious Freedom (1965) as two of the most important documents marking its end.
How many Christians are there in the world and which is the largest denomination?
The estimated number of Christians in the world ranges from 2.2 billion to 2.4 billion people, representing approximately one-third of the world's population and making Christianity the largest religion in the world. The Catholic Church is the largest Christian denomination, with an estimated 1.2 billion adherents according to Pew Research Center 2010 data. By 2010, about 157 countries and territories had Christian majorities.