A HISTORY OF THE EXPANSION OF CHRISTIANITY: VOL. II By
Kenneth Scott Latourette
In his first volume Professor Latourette dealt with the first five hundred years of the Church's life, her conflict with the Empire, and her expansion along lines made possible by the completeness of the Imperial system. In this second episode the battle-ground is of greater extent, and the issues less sharply defined. The thousand years of uncertainty, as Professor Latourette calls them, were to see the establishment of Christianity as a world religion. It was a slow process; and the leisurely pace at which Christianity made its way amongst the new peoples to whom it was introduced often surprises the reader. In the thirteenth century paganism was still un- subdued in some of the Baltic lands. The expansion of the faith was slowing down, to be reaccelerated only in the period after the Reformation. Professor Latourette maintains the high standard of scholarship which he set in the first volume, and this new instalment (Eyre and Spottiswoode, as.) has a greater range of interest. The thousand years before the Reformation saw the rise of monasticism (and the monks were the chief missionaries of the period) ; the invasion of the empire by the Germanic, Celtic and Bulgarian hordes ; the rise of Islam, and the loss to Christendom of vast portions of her previous conquests ; the irruptions of the Vikings ; the Crusades, and the prominence of the Ottoman Turks. Yet we are still in the region of prolevmena. Volume three, "The Cross circles the Globe," will initiate the true subject of Pro- fessor Latourette's researches.
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