A History of the Church: Trilogy

By Philip Hughes To survey the history of the Catholic Church is, in the words of Eamon Duffy, to be left with “a sense of the intractable complexity of the historical reality of the Church and its institutions.” To do justice to this complexity, Philip Hughes wrote an ambitious, three-volume survey of Church history—comprehensive in scope yet accessible in detail. Volume I: The Church and the World in Which It Was Founded dispenses with the chronological method, instead following the organic division of West and East and the development of the Church in those respective regions. In this “politically Roman and culturally Hellenic” world, Hughes treats the West through to the conversion of Constantine in the early years of the fourth century and the East up to the death of Justinian II in the eighth century. Volume II: The Church and the World It Created, Hughes focuses on the West from the Augustinian moment and the conversion of Constantine, when the Church was just beginning to es