Reviews for History of Heresy

The average rating for History of Heresy based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-12-27 00:00:00 Brian Nichols This is a fascinating study of the shifting boundaries between required and banned religious expression. Naturally, those who condemned others had a tendency to violate their own rules. For example, Christie-Murray explores what happened when the Western Church moved toward reversing its rule on marriage for priests -- from forbidding divorce for priests (as ruled at the Council of Nicaea), to denouncing marriage for priests as a sin. While upholders of the new doctrine expressed dismay at the married clergy's moral depravity, the Eastern Church took an opposite view. In 867, Patriarch Photius of Constantinople accused the Roman Church of heresy for repeatedly ordering celibacy in church families. For Photius, the Western Church was succumbing to a Manichaean belief that matter and flesh were evil.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-10-18 00:00:00 David Jacobs A splendid book, part burlesque and part tragedy, documenting the variety of the Christian experience as well as Catholic intolerance and trepidation.