The Early Middle Ages: 476-1000

480 b. Boethius, a significant thinker who influences the Middle ages. In The Consolation of Philosophy he tries to find comfort in reason and philosophy. He doesn't quote scripture

480 b. Benedict of Nursia, who wrote the normal Rule for Western monks to the present

521 b. Columba, Irish missionary to Scotland working from the isle of Iona

540 b. Columban, Irish missionary to the continent when it was struggling with a resurgence of paganism

525 d. Boethius

529 The Council of Orange approves the Augustinian doctrine of sin and grace, but without absolute predestination

540 b. Gregory the Great

550 d. Benedict of Nursia

560 b. Isidore of Seville, whose Book of Sentences was the key book of theology until the twelfth century

575 Gregory the Great becomes a monk


Pope Gregory the Great

590 Gregory the Great becomes pope. He was a very effective and popular pope during a time when the government was weak. He fed the peasants and protected farms and villages from Lombard invasion. His development of the doctrine of purgatory was instrumental in establishing the medieval Roman Catholic sacramental system

596 Gregory sends Augustine of Canterbury to convert the pagans in England. He imposed the Roman liturgy on the old British Christians

597 d. Columba, missionary to Scotland

602 Through Gregory's influence and his baptism of a Lombard King's child, the Lombards begin converting from Arianism to Orthodoxy

604 d. Gregory the Great

613 d. Augustine of Canterbury

615 d. Columban, missionary to the continent

622 Mohammed's flight from Mecca to Medina, the beginning of Islam

635 The Nestorian church did not disappear after the council of Ephesus in 431. They evangelized east. By 635 Nestorian Christianity had reached the heart of China, but it disappeared after two hundred years

636 d. Isidore of Seville

637 b. Wilfrid, British missionary to Belgium

663 Synod of Whitby reconciles the old British liturgy and the Roman liturgy

675 b. John of Damascus, an important Eastern Orthodox mystic

680 b. Boniface, who brought Anglo-Saxon Christianity to the pagans in Germany. He cut down the pagan's sacred tree and built a church out of it 8th Century Composition of Be Thou My Vision

709 d. Wilfrid

711 Islam has spread from India to North Africa. All of North Africa is under Islamic control

720 Muslims take Spain

726-787 The iconoclastic controversy. Emperor Leo III attacked the use of images. John of Damascus defended the use of icons in worship by differentiating between veneration and worship. He also argued that the use of images is an affirmation of Christ's humanity, because a real person can be depicted. The opposition responds that images of Christ are not valid depictions because they can only represent his humanity, but not his divinity

732 Europeans turn back the Muslims at the Battle of Tours

749 d. John of Damascus

754 d. Boniface

787 Council of Nicea supports the decision of John of Damascus concerning icons. This decision was not well recieved in the West because John's words for veneration and worship were difficult to translate

800 Pope Leo III crowns Charlemagne head of the Holy Roman Empire (a.k.a. the Nominally Christian Germanic Kingdom). His dynasty is called the Carolingian Empire. His reign is the cultural high point of the Early Middle Ages

875-950 The Dark Ages. The Carolingian Empire was weakened and was assailed by new invaders. This period also marks the low point of the papacy