NOTES

Page 123: Christianity is the greatest single change
Christianity: The new religion began as a group within Judaism at a time of division and uncertainty among the Jews arising out of their encounter with the international civilization of Greece and Rome. In, Two centuries, Christianity developed away from Judaism to establish its own scattered, empire-wide community, The Catholic Chruch, wihch was already well on the way to forming the beliefs and practices that it would keep for centuries to come. From about 200 A.D., they became such a formidable threat that the emperors could hold them off only by building up the army, replacing self-rule by centralized governement, and openly ruling as absolute monarchs- changes that, in the long run failed to hold the empire together, but had lasting results for the future development of the West. The empire was still strong enough to bring about the last and greatest of the changes in civilization that took place under its rule. As long as Rome has prospered, the emperors had taken little notice of Christianity's growth and spread; in the empires time of troubles, they sometimes harshly persecuted it and sometimes deliberately tolerated it. Now, in the course of the empires restructuring, they took Christianity into parternership as the offical and majority religion