Sacrificial procession (Pitsa, ca. 530 BC) People probably began to do animal sacrifice around the time they began farming and keeping domesticated animals, about 10,000 BC. They were certainly sacrificing animals to their gods all over Europe and Asia [...]
Priest blessing people who have the plague As Christianity developed into a world religion, it also developed a lot of special words. These Christian words describe the different people involved. [...]
Gutenberg Bible When people want to tell you where to find certain words in the Christian Bible, they write something like Matthew 10:25, or Exodus 12:1. This means look in the book [...]
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost (Perugino, about 1482 in Rome) Christian people all believed that there was one God. But many people thought God existed in three forms: God the Father, Jesus the [...]
Young tonsured monks at school Tonsure means to cut off someone's hair. Monks and nuns in the Middle Ages generally showed that they were monks by cutting their hair short (when most [...]
St. Francis of Assisi, painted by Giotto in the early 1300s AD From early on, Christians believed that some holy people, when they died, not only went to heaven but [...]
A demon torturing a sinful bishop and a king (Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris, 1200s AD) In the early days of Christianity, people pretty much thought that at the Last Judgment you [...]
Priest blessing people who have the plague Very soon after the crucifixion of Jesus, by around 40 or 50 AD, the early Christians began to choose leaders from among themselves. The Christians called these [...]
Peter and Paul, in a mosaic from Ravenna (500s AD) In the later Roman Empire and the Middle Ages, the Pope was the leader of the Catholic Church. Whenever there was a question [...]
The Roman emperor Trajan (A.D. 98-117) in the Vatican. By the time that Trajan was the Roman Emperor, around 100 AD, Christianity was definitely illegal. We have some letters written by Pliny, the governor [...]
