Christianity in the making of Europe

pp. 51-71

in: Gérard Delanty, Formations of European modernity, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2019

Abstract

Christianity provided some of the most important cultural orientations for Europe. However, given the diverse forms of Christianity that developed in the Western and Eastern parts of the Roman Empire, the legacy of the Reformation, counter-Reformation and modern secularism, the Christian legacy is by no means a clearly defined one. Christianity shaped Europe history, but did so in a way that undermined the possibility of cultural unity. This was precisely the condition that made possible the formation of a European cultural model, for a paradoxical consequence of Christianity was, despite the intolerance and eradication of difference that it promoted, not unconnected to a spirit of freedom, criticism and individualism that arose in the questioning of doctrinal authority and in demands for freedom of worship. Whether the continuity that Christianity established diminished the discontinuities of history is a controversial issue. The decisive matter is the timing of major ruptures. There is considerable evidence to suggest that the basic value orientations and institutional structures were in place before the collapse of a unitary Christian worldview once known as Christendom. While the general move to modernity from the seventeenth century onwards resulted in the gradual erosion of medieval Christianity, what remained was a civilizational framework that proved to be highly resilient. From the sixth century, the basic institutional structures of European civilization were established in the legal and administrative systems of the medieval states and the cathedral cities and universities that were later born.