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Welcome to this episode of Gone Medieval. I'm Matt Lewis. I'm delighted to be speaking today with Peter

Heather, who is Chair of Medieval History at King's College London, and his latest book, entitled

Christendom, looks at how a fringe religious cult in the Roman Empire came to dominate Europe and

European outlooks in the medieval period. Thank you very much for joining

us, Peter. It's my pleasure. Thank you for having me. How critical or problematical at its fall

was early Christianity's integration with Roman institutions and structures? Did it help to build

Christianity up but cause problems when Rome fell? Or was it a central part of Christianity's early success?

I think it's really critical to the first major transformation, which makes Christianity into a successful mass religion.

That's not necessarily their generally held view, but it seems to me when you look very closely

at the evidence, but it's strongly suggesting that, and in some really key ways, numbers,

for instance, Christianity becomes the religion of the empire in the fourth century after the

conversion of the emperor, Constantine. And if you look at what evidence we have for what

Christianity looks like before

...