Also, why no Cathars/Albigensians in the south of France during the 12th & 13th centuries?
There doesn't seem to have been any doctrinal disputes, nor any suggestion that British and Irish Christianity was in any way separate from the Church of Rome.
Also 'martyrdom' of St.Thomas is debated. The earliest mention of martyrdom of St.Thomas originate from 16th century portugese missionaries who operated in india at that time. not backed by any evidence.
So, in short, it's like: was unified st thomas christians from st thomas arrival in the 1st century and under church of east since 4th century when it was organised as independent from church of rome till 15th century portuguese arrival and forced latinisations by them leading to coonan cross oath protest, splitting the community into two: one new catholic faction(84 church out of then 116 churches) using the modified east syriac liturgy and the other faction(32 church out of then 116 churches) under patriarch of antioch, adopting the west syriac liturgy locally called the jacobites. The catholic faction mentioned grew into the current syro malabar catholic church. The orthodox jacobite faction underwent another split when british came in the 18th-19th century and tried to create protestant influence, leading to the creation of the marthoma church, which is a protestant church using a protestantised west syriac. In the 18th-19th century times, if I am not wrong, a small faction from the syro malabar catholic church joined the chaldean syrian church, creating a small archdiocese of assyrian church of the east in kerala. Now in the 19th century, a small faction in this jacobite came into communion with vatican keeping the west syriac litury, forming the syro malankara catholic church. At this time in the 19th century the internal conflict regarding whether to be directly under patriarch of antioch came in the jacobites leading to Malankara Orthodox Syrian Church (or Indian Orthodox Church) faction that was mentioned in the comment above.
North Africa played a very important part in the development of Christianity. Augustine, Tertullian, Jerome and Origen were North Africans. Monasticism evolved in Egypt.
Edit - really, someone is asking for a citation that the Islamic conquests happened? Next should ask for a citation that the sky is blue...
This is basic world history, like the discovery of the new world, Alexander the Great's conquests or the Roman empire...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_Muslim_conquests
And yes, it happened over 1300 years ago, the first decisive battle was the Battle of Yarmuk, year 636 CE.
It's not like it was this passive meme that spread because people who encountered it loved it so much they wanted to join.
The big three universalizing religions are Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism.
You can understand a lot of religious history as just those three religions expanding and displacing other belief systems.
Contrast with non-universalizing religions like Judaism, Hinduism, and Shinto.
Mircea Eliade asks how Christianity reinterpreted sacred history, myth, salvation. What does Christianity do with motifs older than itself, such as paradise, rebirth, sacrifice? In A History of Religious Ideas [0], he treats the emergence and development of Christianity, including Judaism, early Christianity, Gnosticism, late antiquity, medieval religious forms and also how it interacted with other traditions. I think it complements quite nicely the geographical spread of Christianity by also clarifying what kind of transformations of religious symbols make it recognisable as Christianity across such different contexts.
There's also "Darwin's Cathedral" [1] that analyses religion as group-organizing system, with a focus on Calvinism. Didn't go through it, but seems relevant. It was recommended by Robert Sapolsky in his Introduction to Human Behavioral Biology lecture series [2].
[0] A History of Religious Ideas - Mircea Eliade
[1] Darwin's Cathedral - David Sloan Wilson
Just south of there is the famous tree of Boniface ?
> the battles were so bloody that the Christian victors not only converted the conquered
Who do you think 'conquered' the Swedes, some continental Frenchman? Their own kings converted, and thereafter converted their countrymen. And the first such Christian king, Olof Skötkonung, inherited the throne -- he didn't conquer it.
Where did Christianity come from in Tibet? If I'm reading it correctly, around 1100AD there seems to be a large number of Christians near Lhasa. And then around 1266 a majority Christian region around (I think) Mongolia suddenly gets wiped out.
[0] https://www.amazon.com/Dominion-Christian-Revolution-Remade-...
The exact opposite of what we tend to think.
Intellectually curious conversation is an entirely different thing and is of course welcome on this or any topic.
By this I don’t really mean the specifics of the religion; but rather 1) the idea of universalizing the value all human life and not only certain subsets and 2) a synthesis of ideology and politics with the explicit goal of expanding its domain by means of assimilation, not just conquest.
Now of course the reality didn’t actually play out exactly along those lines, but I think a similar sort of movement probably would have occurred across the Roman Empire, had Christianity not specifically grown.
In other words I have a hard time imagining that the world would have continued with Roman values indefinitely. The world was changing and Christianity was as much a consequence as a cause.
Very interesting to consider in any case!