5th century
From Missiopedia
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Overview: History - Epochs - Turnings - Centuries BC - Centuries AD
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Samuel Moffett calls the fifth century "one of the most tumultuous and bitter hundred years in all history." While the Gospel flourished on the edges of the Empire, the Empire itself felt the edges pressing in. Tribal nomads, called barbarians, were moving down from the north, craving Rome's civilization. Goths pillaged Rome in the north, and Vandals took the important city of Carthage away from Rome in the south. In the 25-year cultural winter between 450 and 476, the Western Roman Empire virtually ceased to exist as a political entity. Christianity as a structure, due to internal conflict and disagreement and the outer political collapse of the western Roman Empire, split between the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern church (which would eventually become the Greek-influenced Eastern Orthodox Church). Yet, in spite this civil "dark age," Christianity itself was moving on. In perhaps one of the key moments of Christianity's history, Patrick went to Ireland as a missionary, saw that island converted, and from it was launched a monastic missionary movement that would preserve much of Western history and culture while evangelizing most of Europe.
[edit] Of Note
- Notable controveries: Arian heresy, Nestorian heresy.
- Notable empires: Eastern Roman Empire, Persian Empire
- Notable peoples: Franks, Goths, Visigoths, Lombards
- Notable individuals: Alaric the Goth, Shah Yazdegerd I
- Notable Christians: Saint Patrick, Columba, Venerable Bede
[edit] Events
- 400 - Hayyan begins proclaiming gospel in Yemen after having been converted in Hirta on the Persian border
- 409 - Shah Yazdegerd I issues an edict of toleration for the Persian Church, as important as Constantine's earlier edict for the Roman Empire.
- 410 - Golden Age of Armenia and Armenian Orthodox tradition: New Testament translated into Armenian.
- 410 - Alaric the Goth pillages Rome.
- 410 - The first Persian church council after the persecutions in Persia is held, the Synod of Isaac.
- 420 - An Arabian Bedouin tribe is converted under sheikh Peter-Aspebet
- 425 - The first bishops are ordained for Herat (Afghanistan) and Samarkand (Uzbekistan)
- 431 - Nestorius condemned for heresy and deposed (see Nestorian heresy).
- 432 - Patrick goes to Ireland as missionary; most of Ireland converted, becomes a missionary nation; the Celtic Missionary Movement is born.
- 450 - The Roman Empire loses Carthage in North Africa to the Vandals.
- 450 - Between 450 and 476, most of the Western Roman Empire ceases to exist.
- 496 - Conversion of Clovis I, king of Franks in Gaul, along with 3,000 warriors
- 496 - Odovacar the German deposed Romulus Augustus and ended the western Roman Empire.
- 499 - Persian king Kavadh I, fleeing his country, meets a group of Christian missionaries going to Central Asia to preach to the Turks
