The Beginnings of Western Christendom

A study of the development of Christianity in the West, showing how the Church developed in the different regions, based on literary and archaeological evidence. Appeal is often made in ecumenical discussion between East and West to the standard of the undivided Church of the first centuries of the Christian era, but understanding is not helped by the assumption that the divergences between East and West did not seriously arise in this early period. One of the many services rendered by the author is to show that Western Christendom had distinctive features from the beginning, and that it had a unity of culture other than that imposed by the Papal See. In his use of recent archaeological studies and of the apocryphal New Testament, and in arrangement of the material at his disposal, Elliott-Binns’ history breaks new ground.