Talk:Christendom
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[edit] Opening Comments
"Christendom" isn't really congruent with "Christianity". It was a medieval concept meaning "The collective society of the portion of the world where Christianity holds sway". It's kind of like how "The First World" is used to refer to the grouping of the U.S., Western Europe, and so on.
I think there are salient things to say about it as a historical concept that don't fall under the purview of the Christianity entry. -- Paul Drye
I had a vague recollection that they might not be exactly synonymous, but I reckoned that putting up a redirect from the non-existant link I found would at least make someone who knew better react. That seems to have succeeded. Now, the question is why you put the explanation here and not on the main page? --Pinkunicorn
Because I'm one of the folks who disagrees with the "Write stub articles" rule. I would have to have something longer and better researched -- my current research consists of some dusty old neurons firing -- before I would put it anywhere but /Talk. -- Paul Drye
I'll do some more reaserch.
The word itself is also used to signify "living as christ" or "living as a christian".
Christianity is the whole of all organized systems and groups which claim to be Christian. They come and go though-out history. Christianity may even disappear someday. Any description of it needs to be historical and is dependent on the time when written.
Christendom is more the individual experience of being a christian and how this is reflected in his/her actions and has a more eternal nature to it: Walking The Way, believing The Truth and being in The Life so to say. Every christian needs to define this for themselves and any description here can be only very general: the life of Christ, the apostels, and maybe how the view on this changed with time?
Just an example: Christ forbid the usage of titles like Father (Mt 23). How can one reconcile this with the practice in most churches/groups? So there is a difference between Christendom and Christianity. Needless to say that there is a huge overlap in the two concepts, and it's hard to say which feature belongs to which without starting an edit-war between ideologies. -- 194.159.73.69 08:43, 7 November 2005 (UTC)
- Evangelical Christians define Christendom as using the Christianity of your definition, while reserving Christianity as the part of Christendom that acknowledges Jesus Christ is fully God and man, died and physically resurrected, and more importantly, all true Christians which is defined as those who have acknowledged Jesus died for their sins on their behalf and the resurrection points to overcoming the wages of sin, that they accept Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Saviour (i.e. the whole definition of what an evangelical Christian is).--JNZ 02:21, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
This article mistakenly states that Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire in 325 in the following paragraph: "The seeds of Christendom were laid in A.D. 306, when Emperor Constantine became co-ruler of the Roman Empire. In 312 he converted to Christianity, and in 325 Christianity became the official religion of the Empire."
In reality, 325 is the date for the council of Nicaea, and 392 is the appropriate date for the declaration of Christianity as the sole state religion of Rome, under Thodosius I. I am cautious about changing this, as I do not have an external source from which to back this, save the Wikepedia article on Christian Anarchism. Thebigcurve
I have gone ahead and made the appropriate changes to the Christendom page, due to the fact that there was no feedback in the last 5 days. Thebigcurve 17:28 EST 16 November 2005
[edit] References
I was surprised to see that the main article lacks a references section. Surely there must be a multitude of scholarly works which address the subject of "Christendom" from various viewpoints. DFH 18:05, 26 December 2006 (UTC)
- I just tagged several lines in particular that need referencing. I also tagged the entire article for sourcing - there is no reference section at all at this point. The burden to provide sources falls on the primary editors who add the content. Please cite your work! Nswinton\talk 20:18, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Sentence needs clarification
"Sometimes the word Christendom refers to Catholic nations that include the Social Reign of Christ the King." -- What does this mean?
- "Catholic" = "Roman Catholic" here? Or Catholic_Church_(disambiguation)?
- Social Reign -- what's this? Social Reign of Christ the King -- nothing.
- Christ the King redirects to Feast of Christ the King. The term is also mentioned on many other pages [[1]] -- none of which seemingly defines it. (Yes, I understand perfectly well the meanings of the terms "Jesus of Nazareth" and "Christ", but something particular is apparently meant here.)
"Catholic nations that include the Social Reign of Christ the King." -- "Include" probably isn't the right word there, but I'd like to clearly understand the rest of the sentence before I do anything with it. Writtenonsand 20:16, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Holy Roman Empire = Christendom?
The "Christendom as a polity" section contains a lot of, at best, POV, and, at worst, untrue statements regarding the historical concept of Christendom.
Take the statement
- Christendom was given a firmer meaning with the creation of Charlemagne's kingdom, the Christian Empire of the West.
This is ridiculous. Certainly the Roman Catholic Church has to some extent painted history this way but this has certainly never been the general view of the Christian community nor is it a scholarly view. Within the Roman Empire Christendom had been seen as the Roman Empire to a great degree. The Christian kingdoms outside of it were sometimes thought of as part of it but not necessarily. To say that Christendom gained a concrete meaning for the first time with Charlemagne is fabrication. What is true is that for a few centuries in between Roman Rule and Frankish (i.e. Holy Roman) rule Western Europe lacked a strong Christian state and so perceived Charlemagne as re-establishing Christendom in their world.
Regardless, though, the majority of Christians were outside of Charlemagne's empire at the time he was crowned so to argue that his empire was seen generally as "Christendom" is silly. In reality at that time if you took a survey of Christians around the world at that time and asked where the center of Christendom was the majority would have said Constantinople (including many Christians in the West). Obviously by the mid second millenium Constantinople's standing had deteriorated dramatically.
Regarding
- Christendom as a cohesive political unit effectively ended with the Reformation.
how can you possibly say that. The Great Schism was a much bigger deal in the Christian world than the Protestant Reformation. And those two weren't the only significant schisms.
On what basis was this stuff written?
--Mcorazao 16:44, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
- I agree. I've tried to address some of the obvious problems but, frankly, this is not an area that I know a lot about. Since when was the Holy Roman Empire equated with being all of Christendom? I think it may have been envisioned (by some!) as the embodiment of the theocracy envisioned by the term Christendom but I doubt that those outside the HRE considered themselves to be outside of Christendom. I've tried to move the text in this direction but I'm not convinced that I've made it all the way there.
- I also wonder about the East-West thing. I would imagine that even the West considered the East to be part of Christendom. After all, the Crusades were putatively about regaining the Holy Land for Christendom, right? Now, did the East have this concept of Christendom? Is there a Greek equivalent to the word?
- --Richard 17:10, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, certainly there were mixed views at different times about what was truly Christendom and what was not. To a certain degree it would depend on whether you talked to the bishops or the emperors or the nobility.
The East had the same type of concept but I do not know enough about Greek to know what term existed or whether it was ever expressed with such a succint term. Remember, though, that Christendom is an English word that does not derive from Latin or Greek. So I am not clear that even in the West there was a term with precisely the same connotation (Corpus Christianus is not quite the same). Regardless, the Romans had essentially the same attitude about it before and after the fall of Rome (i.e. the Classical Roman Empire vs the Byzantines). The Roman Empire was the "real" Christendom but the kingdoms outside the empire that were in communion with the Roman Church (i.e. not "heretical") were part of greater Christendom. When the West fell the Easterners gradually looked at the Westerners as being on the fringe and so gradually considered them less and less part of "real" Christendom. Then when the Franks took over Rome their respect for them went down even more (reflected in the fact that, even today, Greeks sometimes call Roman Catholics Frangoi, Franks, implying that they are not real Christians). In general it was one of those things where, if it is discussing of Christians among Christians then it was "you guys are not real Christians." But if it was Christians talking about Muslims then suddenly they were all brothers in Christ.
Regardless, though, the point is that the view that HRE was uniquely Christendom was no more universal than the view that the Byzantine Empire was uniquely Christendom.
--Mcorazao 21:13, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
OK... so what do you think of the edits that I made to the article earlier today? Is it a step in the right direction? What do we need to do in order to improve it?
--Richard 22:29, 15 May 2007 (UTC)
Rather than going back and forth on this discussion I just took a stab at editing the text. Feel free to modify as you like.
--Mcorazao 03:43, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
- No, your edit looks fine. As I said, this is not an area in which I know a lot. I think it looks much better now than when we started. Are you satisfied or do you think more needs to be done?
- --Richard 04:03, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
The POV concerns are addressed for me. --Mcorazao 06:48, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Comment
The notion of Christendom probably begins with the One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic Church of the Nicene Creed, which is possibly rooted in the Great Commission. I'm not sure if this is stated in the article or not. 75.14.223.27 19:33, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
Strike my previous commentary. I got my terminology confused. --Mcorazao 19:42, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
[edit] "Roman" aspect of Christendom
I don't have a lot of specific knowledge on this (i.e. I couldn't explicitly name an authoritative resource) but I'm curious if somebody out there has a good reference ...
There is an interesting aspect to how Christendom was thought of in most of the Christian realms historically. As Christianity developed in the Empire there was a separation created between "orthodox" Christianity and "heresy" (the original largest component of the heresy being Arianism which existed within the empire for a long time and dominated the German Christians for even longer). As Christianity grew in importance "orthodox Christianity" and "Romanity" came to be thought of as being two sides of the same coin. And as Roman high culture developed, orthodox Christianity, Romanity, and civilization came to be though of as one and the same (i.e. in contrast to the barbarian tribes some of which claimed to be Christian but were considered heretics). After the Western Empire declined the Western descendants of the Romans clung to the Church as their last remaining link to civilization (a.k.a Romanity a.k.a. Christianity; note that they distinguished between the orthodox Christianity of the Empire and the Arian Christianity of some of their conquerors). The Easterners contrasted themselves to the poor Western wretches who were now far away from Romanity/Christanity/civilization. Before and after the fall of Rome, some barbarian tribes, notably the Franks, converted to orthodox Christianity with the intent of becoming associated with this civilized identity. And, of course, when the Pope crowned Charlemagne the Franks enjoyed the (disputed) prestige of being called Romans/Christians/civilized people.
So there would be two points that might be interesting to bring out if someone has a good reference to base this on (i.e. my understanding is limited so I can't say that my facts are 100% correct).
- Christendom can be seen as expressing a sociopolitical identity associated with Roman culture that was only loosely connected to religious ferver. Although no one in the Middle Ages would have ever said such a thing it is arguably not an incorrect perspective on history.
- The concept of Christendom to some degree seems to have been used to distinguish between orthodoxy and non-orthodoxy.
--Mcorazao 19:42, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Reference For This Article
The article on Christendom is lifted whole and uncredited from this, which is credited and signed:
http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Corpus-christianum
Wp650385 23:09, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Help
Can anyone translate the writing on the t&o map at the top of the page???67.76.13.166 (talk) 21:27, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
