The Church in the Dark Ages, Volume 2

By Henri Daniel-Rops The Church in the Dark Ages is the second installment in Henri Daniel-Rops’ monumental History of the Church of Christ. This volume includes the last five chapters of that work, surveying the threats to the Christian East, from the rise of Islam and onslaughts of jihad to the Iconoclastic Controversy, burgeoning heresy, and imminent schism; the greatness of Charlemagne and the Carolingian Renaissance; the subsequent era of disorder in the West, counteracted by the first great medieval pope, St. Nicholas I; the Byzantine Revival, emergence of “Caesaro-Papism,” and conclusive Great Schism; and, lastly, the tragic dawn of the new millennium, whose light finds the Church inspired by a spirit of renewal, manifest in the monastic reforms of the Abbaye de Cluny. When we look at the power for action which the Church displayed in the Dark Ages, we must not forget that this capacity rested on supernatural graces, on a deep spiritual life, and a permanent contact with God.