The History of the Church of Christ, of Daniel Rops, is a ten-volume collection that reconstructs twenty centuries of Christianity, from the height of the Roman Empire to the Second Vatican Council. Here's a quick guide to what each volume covers and where to start.
It is one of the most ambitious works ever written on the subject. Instead of jumping from cliché to cliché, Rops follows the entire chronology and shows the story from the inside: the decisions of popes, saints, kings, artists and intellectuals that shaped the West. Below, the collection map.
The journey of the ten volumes
Volume I: The Church of the Apostles and Martyrs
The starting point is the Roman Empire at the height of its power. In the midst of the legions and official gods, a small and persecuted group changes the world. Paul of Tarsus crosses the Mediterranean with a message that no army followed, and the community grows precisely because it is persecuted, as Tertullian summarized: the blood of martyrs is the seed of Christians. Then comes Constantine, the Edict of Milan in 313 and the Council of Nicaea in 325. In less than a century, the Church goes from clandestine to institutional.
Volume II: The Church of Barbarian Times
Rome crumbles under the barbarians, and the question is what remains of civilization when the political structure collapses. The answer from Daniel Rops: the Church was the only institution that survived. Benedictine monasteries copied manuscripts, cultivated the land, and created schools; the Irish monk Columbanus evangelized peoples that Rome never reached; and Pope Gregory the Great reorganized everything with one foot in Antiquity and the other in the Middle Ages. The coronation of Charlemagne, in the year 800, closes the period.
Volume III: The Cathedral Church and the Crusade
It is the most cinematic volume. In 1095, Pope Urban II convenes the Clermont assembly and the crowd responds with one voice: God wants it. The First Crusade begins. Here appears Godofredo de Bulhão, who sold his own castle to finance the campaign, conquered Jerusalem in 1099 and refused the crown of the new kingdom, as he did not want to wear a golden crown where Christ wore a crown of thorns. Rops also shows the reverse: Saint Bernard of Clairvaux preaching the Second Crusade and seeing it fail, and the Fourth Crusade diverting to sack Constantinople. The ideal corrupted by politics.
Volumes IV to VI: the rupture and the two Reformations
The big break. Erasmus of Rotterdam criticizes abuses with sharp irony, Luther preaches the 95 Theses in Wittenberg, and the Gutenberg press spreads the text across Europe within weeks. Calvin builds a theocracy in Geneva; Henry VIII breaks with Rome. The answer comes at the Council of Trent, with the Jesuits, Saint Teresa of Ávila and Saint John of the Cross. Rops makes a point of highlighting: the Catholic Reformation was not just a reaction to Protestantism, it was already underway before Luther.
Volume VII: the Great Century
The French 17th century. While Descartes began to build a philosophy without God, Catholic France produced some of the greatest names in Western spirituality: Saint Vincent de Paul, who organized charity like no State had done; Saint Francis de Sales, who taught holiness in everyday life; Pascal's Jansenism; the mystique of Fénelon. A century of brilliant contradictions.
Volume VIII: the French Revolution
1789, without the school manual version. Rops shows the Carmelites of Compiègne, twelve nuns who ascended the scaffold singing, one by one, while the last one heard the sisters' voices falling silent. It also shows Pope Pius VII arrested by Napoleon, and the logic of a process that began with legitimate criticism and ended with churches converted into temples of Reason.
Volume IX: the 19th century
A permanent combat. Bismarck expels the Jesuits from Germany, secular France closes convents, the Papal States fall. In the midst of this, Leo XIII writes Rerum Novarum, in 1891, and inaugurates the Church's social doctrine: a vision of human work that preserves the dignity of the person, in the face of savage capitalism and atheistic socialism.
Volume X: our time
The 20th century. Pius XII and the Second World War, with debates that still divide historians. The Catholic intellectual renewal of Maritain, Gilson, Chesterton and Bernanos. And, on the horizon, John XXIII, who convenes the Second Vatican Council in 1962. Daniel Rops ends the work on the threshold, as if understanding that some chapters are still being written.
Unfiltered historical memory transforms your view of the world.
Where to start
Start with the first volume. The work is chronological, and the initial volumes on Rome and the first martyrs provide the key to understanding everything that comes after. The risk of skipping steps is anachronism: judging one century with the ruler of another.
If the idea of going through ten volumes alone is intimidating, that's exactly what guided reading is for: someone who comments on each chapter, gives the context and weaves together history, philosophy and theology.
Guided reading
Go through the ten volumes with support
The course comments on each chapter of the work of Daniel Rops with Prof. Dr. Rodrigo Bitencourt, with historical, philosophical and theological context.
Get to know the course Daniel RopsFrequently asked questions
How many volumes does the collection have?
Ten, from the height of the Roman Empire until the 20th century, ending on the eve of the Second Vatican Council.
What is the best reading order?
The chronological order of the volumes themselves. Each era prepares the next, and reading out of order encourages anachronism.
Is the work useful for non-specialists?
Yes. Rops writes for the common reader, with the clarity of a novelist. The guided reading course is the complement for those who want to go deeper.
See also: Who was it Daniel Rops?