"An excellent overview of the first ten centuries of Christian history. Unsurpassed in its thoroughness, clarity, and organization. This belongs in the library of anyone interested in the history of Christianity."

"This is probably the best single-volume account of the history and key themes of the undivided Christian church through the first millennium and beyond available today. Its scope is both broad and focused, covering all geographical areas and epochs of that period, yet also introducing particular key figures and providing thoughtful analyses of important topics such as the relationship between church and state or the understanding of human sexuality. It also provides well-chosen selections of primary texts for further reading. It is sure to become a standard textbook and reference work for all students of that period."

"In this massive introduction to the history of Christianity's first millennium, John Anthony McGuckin has succeeded in producing a work of great scholarly depth that is easy to read. Although, given the vast scope of this book, he has to move relatively quickly over the numerous theologians of the fourth and fifth centuries, who have been well treated elsewhere, McGuckin is at his brilliant best in rehabilitating the theologians of the second and early third centuries—theologians whose fundamental importance for all later forms of Christianity he demonstrates in definitive fashion. When he turns to particular themes of Christian faith and practice, he combines a master historian's attention to differences between epochs with a master theologian's open willingness to take sides in controversies. A marvelous achievement!"

"This is a monumental work that wonderfully synthesizes a dazzling array of virtues. It is vastly comprehensive, but also enlivened by a judicious selection of concrete detail; deeply learned, yet written with elegant lucidity; it takes the reader on a brisk march through Christian history while also offering historically situated contemplations of perennial Christian themes and preoccupations, such as philanthropy and sexual morality. John McGuckin's prodigious talents as a scholar and teacher, honed over decades, here achieve a brilliant and widely accessible distillation."

"To attempt a study of this kind of historical, geographical, prosopographical, literary, and theological scope for a period as massive as the first ten centuries of the Common Era is as ambitious as it is daring. To actually do so, not only with comprehensiveness but with real depth of insight, is an extraordinary achievement. John McGuckin is one of the most learned and energetic historians of early Christianity in the world, and this fine work may be the capstone of his many distinguished studies. From Christian polity to liturgy, from perspectives on war to practices of healing, from views of slavery to views of art, this spectacular volume covers themes largely untouched in earlier macrohistories of the early church."

"John McGuckin has already provided several comprehensive guides to Eastern Orthodoxy. In this book, he discusses the history of the whole church during the first millennium, when there was yet no schism between East and West. He discusses not simply the public story of the institutional church, as is customary, but pays careful attention to what it was like to be a Christian in this period: how Christians prayed and worshiped, and how they dealt with wealth and poverty, not to mention slavery. Fr. John tells his story with immense erudition and insight, but simply and directly. The result is a rare achievement of immense value to all Christians as they seek to understand their past—and their future."