title: The Formation of Christendom (Princeton Paperbacks)
author:  Judith Herrin 
description: <b>"Judith Herrin, Winner of the 2016 Dr A.H. Heineken Prize, Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences"</b><br /><br />"The main argument of Judith Herrin's <i>The Formation of Christendom</i> is that what she calls the 'initial particularity' of Europe is to be sought in the period between the fourth and the ninth centuries. . . . Herrins's scholarship is unerring, her scope is wide and her style fluent. . . . The treatment of the so-called iconoclastic controversy, the dispute over the veneration of images in Christian worship which convulsed the Byzantine world in the eighth century, is sparkling. . . . Debate about where modern Europe came from . . . will be enriched by this civilized and accomplished book." (<i>The Economist</i>)<br /><br />". . . Herrin follows some magnificent themes with the lucid dispassion of a good detective."<b>---Thomas D'Evelyn, <i>The Christian Science Monitor</i></b><br /><br />"It is [the] binding together of distant past and immediate present which makes Judith Herrin's scholarship so exciting: she can convince the reader that the roots of Western distinctiveness really do lead all the way to forgotten episcopal meetings in small towns in Asia Minor in the fourth century."<b>---Michael Ignatieff, <i>The Observer</i></b><br /><br />"...a learned, challenging, and gracefully written interpretation of the transition from antiquity to the Middle Ages."<b>---Robert L. Wilken, <i>Commonweal</i></b><br /><br />"Judith Herrin has produced an ambitious, learned, lucid, and instructive book."<b>---Alexander Murray, <i>The Times Literary Supplement</i></b><br /><br />"...it will no longer be possible to hop from pagan antiquity to Carolingian Europe as if nothing had happened in between. Judith Herrin has laid her sheet of paper over the map of that 'dark' age and rubbed and rubbed until the rich web of connections and cracks has shown through."<b>---Marina Warner, <i>The Independent</i></b><br /><br />"This is a serious and powerful book....a grand synthesis on a scale few people would dare now to attempt, ranging across diverse societies with considerable assurance."<b>---Christopher J. Wickham, <i>The International History Review</i></b>
zlib_text: THE FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOM
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ## The Formation of
  
  
  ## CHRISTENDOM
  
  
  CHRISTOPHER DAWSON
  
  
  IGNATIUS PRESS SAN FRANCISCO
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Originally published by Sheed & Ward, New York, 1965
  
  
  First English edition published by  
  Sedgwick and Jackson, Ltd, London, 1971
  
  
  © Julian Philip Scott 2008  
  Literary Executor of the Estate of Christopher Dawson  
  Reprinted by permission of Mr. Julian Philip Scott  
  All rights reserved
  
  
  Cover photograph:  
  Christopher Dawson, Oxford, ca. 1952  
  Courtesy of the Department of Special Collections,  
  University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minn.
  
  
  Cover design by Roxanne Mei Lum
  
  
  Reprinted in 2008 by Ignatius Press, San Francisco
  
  
  ISBN 978-1-58617-239-8  
  Library of Congress Control Number 2007941453  
  Printed in the United States of America
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ORIGINAL PUBLISHER’S NOTE
  
  
  The material in this book has been somewhat expanded from the Harvard
  lectures. In the lectures themselves, Mr. Dawson sometimes used a few
  paragraphs from earlier books. 