The story of how Europe was converted to Christianity from 300AD until the barbarian Lithuanians finally capitulated at the astonishingly late date of 1386. It is an epic tale from one of the most gifted historians of today.

This remarkable book examines the conversion of Europe to the Christian faith in the period following the collapse of the Roman Empire, to approximately 1300 when the hegemony of the Holy Roman Empire was firmly established.

Like Alan Bullock and Simon Schama, Fletcher is a historian with the true gift of a storyteller and a wide general readership ahead of him.

Fletcher’s previous book, The Quest for El Cid , won both the Wolfson History Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Award for History. This book is even better – the most impressive achievement so far of this strikingly gifted historian.

First published in 1954, this book examines the process by which the Codex--the traditional form of the western book--replaced the scroll as the primary vehicle for literature. Drawing upon evidence accumulated in the last thirty years, this revised edition gives fresh insight into the
remarkable role the early Christian church played in the transformation of the printed word.

A history of Catholicism from the Council of Trent in the middle of the sixteenth century to the suppression of the Society of Jesus in the eighteenth century, this accessible study of Catholicism offers the first synthesis of the vast scholarship on Catholic renewal in Europe and on Catholic missions in the non-European world. Professor Hsia discusses the doctrinal and ecclesiastical renewal after Trent and the progress of Catholic reconquest in various lands. He also analyses the social composition of the Tridentine clergy and the papal curia and explores the making of early modern sainthood and the enclosure of religious women. Encompassing art and architecture, Hsia attempts to understand Catholic renewal as a vast historical development that shaped European civilization between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries and at the same time explores its expansion and encounter with non-Christian civilizations in America, Africa, and Asia.