A Nearly Infallible History of Christianity
Nick Page
Hodder & Stoughton £16.99
(978-1-444-75012-6)
Church Times Bookshop £15.30 (Use
code CT260 )
ALTHOUGH it is never stated explicitly, Nick Page's Nearly
Infallible History of Christianity is a sort of Horrible
Histories brought to bear on belief. Like that popular series,
its tone is light and breezy. It is full of anecdotes, and can be
typified by a footnote that explains the origins of the word
"rectum". Like Horrible Histories, too, this book is
suspicious of authority - and of authorities. The implication
throughout is that this is the sort of stuff they do not want you
to read.
Ironically - and, again, rather like Horrible Histories
- the end result is an ostensibly subversive book that none the
less retells a very traditional story.
Here is the pure Early Church, as it descends into Constantinian
corruption and the absurdities of esoteric theological disputation.
Here is the appalling medieval Church, with its grasping,
avaricious popes. Above all, here is a history of Christianity
which is actually a history of Christian institutions - above of
all, of the Western Church.
A really popular history, you might have thought, would have got
beneath the pontiffs and the preachers to look at what ordinary
people actually believed. This might have explained why the
medieval Church was so popular, despite the corruption; why the
abstract theological debates of the Byzantines were carried out on
every street corner, Gregory of Nyssa complaining that even
"old-clothes men, money-changers, food-sellers" were busy arguing
about the nature of Christ, or the economy of the Trinity.
That Page could imagine another sort of history is made clear by
his conclusion, which acknowledges that "the people who have really
and always carried the story forward" are not those he has written
about, but "those on the ground, the footsloggers". Can we hope
that he will take his fertile, inventive, and imaginative pen, and
write just such a story next?
The Revd Dr William Whyte is a Tutorial Fellow in Modern
History at St John's College, Oxford, and Assistant Curate of
Kidlington.