The Cambridge History of Christianity, Vol. 3: Early Medieval Christianities c .600–c. 1100 (review)

There are few tasks so daunting for scholars at present as that of presenting a history for Christianity. Indeed, the volume title for this third installment of the Cambridge History of Christianity signals from the start that a changed paradigm is now firmly in place, no matter the era: there are histories and Christianities with which to reckon. Happily, scholars will welcome the results. If the enormity of the task defies cohesion, yet the boldness of this volume and the energy of its wide-ranging contributions can only command admiration.

The five maps with which the book opens alert the reader to the scope at hand: the Mediterranean world, western Europe and Scandinavia; the Christian East, stretching south to Ethiopia, north to the Black and Caspian Seas, and eastward deep into Central Asia; the Slavic World, and the British Isles are areas of special attention. Here is a history set in a global world, laced together by travelers and trade routes, pilgrims, missionaries, ambitious kings, caliphs and prelates; at once dazzlingly far-flung in scope and intimately local in close-ups of rich detail.

Two programmatic essays frame the volume, by Philip Rousseau at the beginning and John Van Engen at the end. These lay out in magisterial fashion the historical landscapes at the start and finish of the centuries that compose the book’s focus. Side by side, they mark the vast changes that turned Christianity, flourishing widely in the late-antique Mediterranean world, into a wholly different constellation of peoples and places at the cusp of the high Middle Ages. Chapters in between are organized into sections of broad themes, starting with a series that provide basic chronological narratives charting the developments in different geographical areas, east, west, north, and south.

These early chapters, essentially narrative in form, make no effort to provide an over-arching, unified “master narrative.” Reasons are at once clear in the following section. “Christianity in Confrontation” looks at issues of inter-religious contact, conflict, and co-existence with Jews, Muslims, traditional indigenous religions (“paganism”), and with Christians increasingly differentiated by political as well as geographical locations. “Christianity in the Social and Political Order” takes up developments in church structures, ascetic institutions, law, property, efforts at “reform,” and the presence or lack of visible Christian imprint on early-medieval landscapes. “Christianity as Lived Experience” looks at life cycles, the mundane continuity of sin and its “remedies,” sickness and healing, gender, and ritual practices. “Christianity: Books and Ideas” explores some of the most characteristic areas of Christian thought to mark the period: visions, orthodoxy and deviance, biblical interpretation, notions of the Christian book, the cult of saints, and teachings on Last Things.

The paradigmatic shifts in scholarship that have marked recent decades are evident in more than the geographical scope of this volume. Attention to changing critical theories and methods is everywhere evident. Anthropology; material and documentary evidence; gender studies; ritual and performance studies; and various cultural, social, and literary methodologies are all at work. Attunement to differences in forms, developments, and practices across different political and cultural entities is a constant emphasis. One is left quite deliberately with a mosaic of myriad colorful tesserae. There are surely broad patterns and sweeping designs, but just as surely, no sharply formed, definitive shapes.

The editors have managed an admirable consistency of excellence across these thirty essays, with their own chapters among the most ambitious. The bibliographies for each contribution are schematic rather than extensive, but no one will walk away from this volume without something new in hand.