A Young People’s Pictorial History of The Church: Volume One, the Early Christians is a great 128-page book and it is full of great pictures. It applies primarily to Catholics, but anyone who likes history will like the pictures in this book. The book was written by Edwar Rice and there is a great deal of prose that goes with each picture. That text was enhanced by Blanche Jennings, a noted educator and textbook editor from the University of Rochester. A Young People’s Pictorial History of The Church: Volume One, the Early Christians is great to look at and the text is very informative. Do you like to look at historical pictures?
Summary of A Young People’s Pictorial History of The Church: Volume One, the Early Christians
A Young People’s Pictorial History of The Church: Volume One, the Early Christians proceeds chronologically through three chapters. The chapters are The Early Christians, Byzantium, and The Dark Ages. Each chapter has some descriptive text, then a picture. There are about 15-20 pictures in each chapter.
In this volume of A Young People’s Pictorial History of The Church: Volume One, the Early Christians it is the case that the pictures are of drawings, frescos, and clay representations because there is not much left from 2000 years ago. One notable exception is the catacombs under Rome, which contain the graves of many of the subjects of this book. There is a picture of the catacombs, and it is a place the author recommends all visit.
The Rest of the Volumes
A Young People’s Pictorial History of The Church: Volume One, the Early Christians is the first of a four-volume set. The other three volumes are The Age of Charlemagne, which is volume 2 and it begins with the reign of Charlemagne and includes the Holy Roman Empire, feudalism, the monastic reform, and the crusades. Volumes 3 and 4 update the pictures and the text to the twentieth century.
The Dark Ages Church
The third and final chapter in A Young People’s Pictorial History of The Church: Volume One, the Early Christians is on the Dark Ages, and though millions of words could be written on this 500-1000-year period, a summary here is in order. There were many things accomplished ibn the so-called dark ages. These accomplishments included the advent of the printing press, maybe the most important development in Western Civilization, the decline of the Roman Empire and enlightenment, and the flourishing of the Catholic church.
Let’s get some preliminaries out of the way. The concept of a “Dark Age” originated in the 1330s with the Italian scholar Petrarch, who regarded the post-Roman centuries as “dark” compared to the “light” of classical antiquity. The Dark Ages is a term for the Early Middle Ages (c. 5th–10th centuries), or sometimes the entire Middle Ages (c. 5th–15th centuries), in Western Europe after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, which characterizes it as marked by economic, intellectual, and cultural decline.
The decline of the Roman Empire occurred on September 4, 476 AD. On this date, the Germanic king Odaecer stormed the city of Rome and deposed its emperor, leading to its collapse. But the story of the fall of Rome is nearly not this simple. There were two empires, the Eastern and Western Roman empires. The western empire fell in 476 AD, the eastern half of the empire lived on, transformed into the Byzantine Empire, and flourished until 1453. It is the fall of the Western Roman Empire that is associated with the fall of the Roman Empire.
Catholicism became the official religion of the Roman Empire under Emperor Constantine, and one would think the decline of the Roman Empire would lead to a halting of the spread of Catholicism. That was not the case. The church spread in this time period. Many people think that the very hard times led people to search for God and join the Church.
Western civilization only began to emerge from the Dark Ages with the Reformation. During the Reformations of the 16th and 17th centuries, Protestants had a similar view to Renaissance humanists but also added an anti-Catholic perspective. They saw classical antiquity as a golden time not only because of its Latin literature but also because it witnessed the beginnings of Christianity. They accused the Catholic church of hypocrisy.
During the Age of Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries, many critical thinkers saw religion as antithetical to reason. Some of the great thinkers were Immanuel Kant, David Hume, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The Enlightenment was a period of great critical thought. Many of the ideas we have today came from the enlightenment.
Conclusion
A Young People’s Pictorial History of The Church: Volume One, the Early Christians gives us a window into the early church. The annotated pictures will be of us to both Catholics and people interested in history. A Young People’s Pictorial History of The Church: Volume One, the Early Christians is recommended to you as a reference.
