The Formation of Christendom

A groundbreaking history of how the Christian West emerged from the ancient Mediterranean world In this acclaimed history of Early Christendom, Judith Herrin shows howfrom the sack of Rome in 410 to the coronation of Charlemagne in 800the Christian West grew out of an ancient Mediterranean world divided between the Roman west, the Byzantine east, and the Muslim south. Demonstrating that religion was the periods defining force, she reveals how the clash over graven images, banned by Islam, both provoked iconoclasm in Constantinople and generated a distinct western commitment to Christian pictorial narrative. In a new preface, Herrin discusses the books origins, reception, and influence.