The History of Christianity

The Age of Exploration to the Modern Day

Jonathan Hill

• Publisher: Lion Scholar
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781912552436
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: History of Christianity

How did a group of scared peasants from a backwater of the Roman empire – followers of an executed criminal – form the largest religion on the planet?

The story of Christianity, its transformation from an illegal sect to the religion of emperors, kings and presidents, and its spread across the globe, is an endlessly fascinating one.

The History of Christianity gives readers an overview of these extraordinary 2, 000 years. It is a history not only of how Christianity has changed the world, but also of how the world has changed Christianity.

The first half of this volume is arranged mostly chronologically to create a single narrative from the age of exploration to the late twentieth century.

The second half describes the history of the church in the past hundred years or so, with each chapter focusing on a different part of the world.

Boxed features throughout the volume highlight especially important figures or themes from each of these periods. The History of Christianity: The Age of Exploration to the Modern Day will be welcomed by all those wanting a lively and engaging presentation of the people, events, places, and plain curiosities that have formed the Christian story.

CHAPTER 1

A NEW AGE OF EXPLORATION

The Renaissance saw western Europeans taking a great and renewed interest in the world beyond Europe. This was partly spurred by the remarkable expedition of Marco Polo, a Venetian who, in the late thirteenth century, travelled east to Mongolian-ruled China and upon his return wrote a best-selling book about it. People across Europe were galvanized: inspired by his exploits and hoping to better them, they planned new journeys of discovery.

There were fabulous prizes to be won. India, with its riches, especially in spice, was one such. Somewhere beyond India, tales spoke of an even richer land called Cathay. Explorers were also spurred by tales of the great empire of Mali in West Africa, a Muslim state where there was so much gold that the king used a huge nugget of it to tie his horse to. In fact, Mali really did have a major gold trade, which was conducted by camel caravan over the Sahara Desert with the Maghreb (Muslim northwest Africa, that is, modern Morocco and Tunisia). Since the Maghreb also traded with Christian Europe, this meant that much of the gold current in late medieval Europe came from African mines. In 1324 the king of Mali, Mansa Musa, made a famous pilgrimage to Mecca during which he stopped off in Cairo. Travelling with a retinue of thousands, the king gave away so much gold during his stay that he flooded the market and depressed prices for some years. Europeans were entranced, and the Catalan Atlas, made in Spain some years later, depicts the African emperor upon his throne, holding an enormous nugget of gold.

Most intriguing of all, however, was the mysterious legend of Prester John. Dating from the twelfth century, the story concerned a Christian kingdom, ruled by a priest (or ‘prester’) somewhere in Asia, or possibly Africa (medieval Europeans were rather hazy about where one continent stopped and the other started). Sometimes the Christian emperor John was thought to be a descendant of the magi who visited the infant Jesus; he was briefly identified with Genghis Khan (since there were Nestorian Christians in the Mongol armies). His kingdom was said to be a perfect utopia, though surrounded by the forces of Islam or paganism. It was also thought that the Prester intended to invade Jerusalem and free it from the Muslims.

The renewal of interest in exploration that such legends fostered would lead to an explosion of Christianity beyond its traditional borders. There had, of course, already been far-flung churches in central Asia, China and Sudan, and there were still well established ones in India and Ethiopia. But now European-style Christianity was to be exported and transplanted into distant countries. It happened in two main ways. In one, missionaries went out and sought to convert the people they found. In the other, colonists went and settled in the newly discovered lands, bringing their religion with them more or less incidentally. The two methods were not mutually exclusive – missionaries travelled to colonies, and colonies sprang up around missionaries. As a rule, the ‘mission approach’ prevailed in most of Asia and Africa and tended to be Catholic, while the ‘colonial approach’ dominated in the Americas and tended to be Protestant. But, where the Europeans encountered already existing churches, different beliefs about Jesus, authority or the church itself, which had developed separately for centuries, were brought into sudden contact. When this happened, conflict was usually inevitable: the Europeans, inheriting the clear but simplistic medieval distinction between orthodoxy and heresy, sought to bring the foreign churches into line with their own beliefs, while the members of those churches naturally resisted any attempt to override their cherished traditions.

Africa

Portugal and ‘Pepper and Souls’

Portugal became independent from Spain in around 1139 when Alfonso I (1110–85) proclaimed himself king of the northern part of the modern country, before conquering most of the rest of it. Diniz (1261–1325), king from 1279, founded the University of Lisbon in 1290, negotiated his country’s first commercial treaty with England, formed a Portuguese navy and in 1319 requested the pope to found the Order of Christ as the successor to the recently disbanded Knights Templar; but Portugal did not make much of a mark on the international scene and remained, essentially, Spain’s little brother.

All this changed in the fifteenth century, as the Portuguese crown embarked upon a sustained period of war with the Muslim powers of Iberia and the Maghreb. The Muslims were still a lingering presence in the southern part of Spain, but vastly weaker than they had once been, although Arabian corsairs were causing havoc among Portuguese merchant shipping. Portugal therefore built a significant navy. In 1415 the Portuguese sent an invasion fleet across the Straits of Gibraltar and seized Ceuta. More Portuguese conquests in North Africa followed throughout the century, especially under Alfonso V (1432–81), known for his campaigns as ‘the African’.

This African empire was expensive and subject to constant attacks from African Muslims, and it dwindled to almost nothing in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. At the same time new possibilities were being opened up. The key figure in this process was Henrique (1394–1460), normally known as Prince Henry the Navigator, son of King John I, who was helped by the fact that he was the apostolic administrator of the Order of Christ. This knightly order had taken over all the Portuguese possessions of the Knights Templar and Henry used these resources to finance new expeditions, ensuring that the order would have spiritual rule over any new lands that were discovered, and the Portuguese ships of discovery bore the Templars’ red cross upon their white sails.

Quite how much Henry himself contributed materially to the new era of exploration is disputed: he did not personally travel anywhere apart from North Africa, nor did he found the School of Navigation traditionally attributed to him. Nevertheless, he did help to create a new atmosphere, where exploration was not done by individual sea captains as they saw fit, but was a systematic programme run by the government. Madeira and the Azores, west of Portugal, had already been discovered, but they were systematically settled during Henry’s lifetime.

The first focus of Portuguese exploration was Africa. Explorers were sent further and further down its west coast, trading with native peoples as they went. Everywhere they travelled, they asked after Prester John and his Christian kingdom – for the eternal struggle with the Muslims was still uppermost in the Portuguese mind, and Prester John, should he be found, would doubtless be a valuable ally. In 1495 Manuel I decided to widen the scope of exploration to Asia as well. In 1497 Vasco da Gama (c. 1469–1525) set sail with four small ships. Stating that his goal was to find ‘pepper and souls’, he sailed all the way down the African coast, around the Cape of Good Hope, north up Africa’s eastern coast and eventually all the way to India. He returned to Lisbon in 1499 a hero, having successfully opened up the route not only to India but to much of Africa too. Manuel I ordered the construction of the magnificent Jerónimos Monastery near Lisbon to commemorate the discovery of this route. For the explorers were not only going to spread Portuguese trade and military influence: they were also going to bring Christianity. To oversee this endeavour, Manuel created a missionary tribunal, dominated by the Order of the Cross, of which he was now the head. The tribunal, one of the earliest bodies established for the express purpose of evangelization, met every fortnight to determine the course of mission in the new lands.

But, as they explored and claimed land, the Portuguese clashed with other powers, primarily Spain. In 1479 Spain and Portugal agreed the Treaty of Alcáçovas, which allowed the Spanish to claim anything north of the Canary Islands and the Portuguese to claim anything to the south. This proved unsatisfactory, especially following Columbus’s discovery, in 1492, of what was to become known as the Americas. Pope Alexander VI (who was Spanish) proposed a north-south dividing line, giving the Spanish anything to the west and the Portuguese anything to the east. This was settled in the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494, although the Portuguese insisted on moving the line west. Together with the Papal division of the world into two hemispheres went the bestowal of the padroado, essentially a divine prerogative to the Portuguese to conquer and govern whatever lands lay within their half and to oversee religion there.

Settlers and Missionaries

As the explorers opened up the African coast, other people followed in their wake. First they built forts and trading posts and then they built settlements. Since all trade was in the hands of the Portuguese crown, and any smuggling was punishable by death, settlement was relatively slow and sparse. Clearly many people felt put off by the strict rules. However, settlements still appeared, especially around the mouth of the River Gambia. The settlers built churches, and some took local women as their wives. In 1482 a fort was constructed at São João da Mina (on the coast of what is now Ghana), which was used as a base for trading with the whole region, especially what is now Senegal, Guinea and the Ivory Coast. Gold, ivory, pepper and slaves were traded all along the coast, and missionaries from the Order of Christ arrived there and began to preach to the indigenous people. In this they were helped by a fortuitous miracle: the face of a wooden statue of Francis of Assisi which they had brought darkened in the humidity and heat. The missionaries claimed that the saint was turning black, becoming the patron saint of Africans.

The missions had some success. Many Africans converted to Christianity, often as the chiefs or kings of tribes converted and had all their followers baptized at once. Yet it was often a rather ephemeral affair. Most of the missionaries spoke little of the local languages, and they did not explain much about Christianity to their prospective converts: instead, it was often considered enough for someone to be able to make the sign of the cross and repeat a formula about the Trinity. Inevitably, there were problems, as many Africans expected to be able to continue traditional religious practices even after Christian baptism. There was little attempt at accommodation. One slave continued to leave bread out for her dead father, who she claimed came to eat it. She was taken to Lisbon, tried before the Inquisition and imprisoned for life.

The colonists were fortunate to arrive at a time of flux in West African politics. To the north the great empire of Mali was breaking up, soon to be replaced by the even more extensive Songhai empire. Most of the vast forests and jungles of the African interior were inhabited by small tribes or statelets with no real unity. An exception was Benin, to the east, which in the fifteenth century under Oba Ewuare ‘the Great’ and his son Oba Ozulua ‘the Conqueror’ came to dominate the south of what is now Nigeria. Benin and its client states were happy to trade with the Portuguese, but there was little progress in evangelization in this region. Christianity remained largely confined to the coastal forts and settlements, and the evangelization of Benin was sporadic at best. We know of one enthusiastic Beninite convert, called (after his baptism) Gregorio Lourenço. He worked as an interpreter and helped the few missionaries who came to Benin, but they seem to have rather neglected him: he wanted to have his family baptized, but the oba forbade it, and the missionaries, keen to win the conversion of the king and his court, complied. For people like Gregorio Lourenço, conversion to Christianity meant social marginalization.

In the seventeenth century a group of Capuchin friars (a sub-order within the Franciscans) managed to gain permission to build a chapel in the capital, Benin City, but again little came of the mission. They did manage to infiltrate a religious rite in 1665, which turned out to be a human sacrifice in the presence of the king. The friars stepped out of the crowd and tried to halt proceedings, for which they were summarily thrown out.

Congo and the Slave Trade

Far more successful – at least initially – was the mission to Congo, further south. One of the first Portuguese enclaves was set up at the coastal region of Soyo, a client state of Congo – for, like Benin and indeed most African empires, Congo was essentially a federation of states dominated by the central government at the capital city, Mbanza Kongo. In 1491 Nzinga Nkuvu, the king of Congo, was baptized and took the name João (Portuguese for ‘John’); one of his first acts was to command the destruction of all non-Christian idols. However, there were difficulties already. Many Congolese adopted Christianity quite enthusiastically, seeing it as an addition rather than a replacement for their traditional religion. Many others rejected it, and Nzinga Nkuvu himself subsequently returned to paganism, forcing his son, Mvemba Nzinga, who was being brought up in the Christian faith, to flee the country.

In 1506 the old king died and Mvemba Nzinga, more commonly known by his baptismal name of Afonso, returned in triumph to Congo and proceeded to stamp his personality on the country. Under Afonso churches were built and printing presses imported. He was determined to make Congo the cultural and technological equal of Portugal, and even sent two sons to Portugal to be educated: one became bishop of Uttica, the other professor of humanities at the University of Lisbon.

By the time Afonso died in 1543, there were around two million Christians in Congo – half the entire population. However, despite the apparent success of the mission there and Afonso’s own attempts to Christianize the country, things were not looking good. One major problem was the slave trade, which was steadily destroying Congo’s economy and its people. This was largely driven by greed for the profits to be made from sugar, which was becoming a major trade in the Atlantic islands, so great was the demand for it in Europe. Weight for weight, sugar was almost as valuable as gold, and the Portuguese wanted huge numbers of slaves to work the plantations. They found a ready supply in the ‘slave rivers’ of West Africa. Most slaves entered slavery when powerful states such as Benin or, to the south, Congo, captured people from weaker or client statelets and sold them on to the Europeans.

The slave trade quickly became central to the economies and burgeoning power of many European countries. One of the first English slave traders was John Hawkins, who first captured slaves on the West African coast in 1562. Two years later he had no less a backer than Elizabeth I for his next expedition. The fact that the ship he used for this cruel purpose was called Jesus of Lubeck reflects one of the more chilling aspects of the whole terrible business: most Christians seem not to have been bothered by the capture, sale or exploitation of slaves, or the exceptionally cruel treatment they suffered both in the slave ships and while working on the plantations. We shall see in the next two chapters how many Christians subsequently came to oppose slavery, but in the sixteenth century it seems that a love of profit overrode any moral scruples suffered by those who oversaw the trade – who all claimed, at least, to be Christians. This is despite the fact that, of course, Jesus himself not only preached about love for one’s fellow human beings but warned of the dangers of wealth and avarice. Nevertheless, many Christians remained unable to see a contradiction here well into the eighteenth century: it is well known that John Newton, the author of the hymn Amazing grace, was a slaver before his conversion to evangel...