Disc 1
Episode 1:A Peculiar People
Beginning with the followers of an itinerant preacher in a backwater of the Roman Empire, Christianity became Rome’s religion with astonishing speed.
Episode 2:The Christian Empire
Between the 3rd and 6th centuries CE, Christianity evinced two contrasting impulses that persist to this day: worldliness and asceticism.
Episode 3:The Birth of Europe
After waves of barbarians swept through the Roman Empire, Charlemagne struck a deal with Pope Leo III to establish both religious and political stability.
Disc 2
Episode 4:Faith and Fear
Constantly living in the shadow of death, medieval Christians turned to relics to temper God’s judgment and built mighty cathedrals to glorify Him.
Episode 5:People of the Book
Jews, Christians, and Muslims hold sacred not only some of the same scriptures, but also some of the same sites, which they’ve fought over for centuries.
Episode 6:Princes and Prelates
Leading up to the Renaissance, as many as three popes simultaneously claimed spiritual and political authority—while dissidents decried their corruption.
Disc 3
Episode 7:Protest and Reform
Martin Luther’s reformist ideas threatened to wreak theological and political havoc, but soon his acolytes had exported Protestant concepts all over Europe.
Episode 8:The Conquest of Souls
In the 16th century, as Spain expanded Christianity into the New World, the Catholic Church countered the Reformation with its elite "shock troops," the Jesuits.
Episode 9:In Search of Tolerance
Many Protestants persecuted breakaway sects as vigorously as the Catholic Church had attacked heretics. But when some victims sought refuge in America, they too turned tyrannical.
Disc 4
Episode 10:Politeness and Enthusiasm
George Whitefield and John Wesley injected emotion into a faith that had become rational, genteel, and—for too many Christians—boring and irrelevant.
Episode 11:Missions Abroad
By the 19th century, Europe had begun to export its own brand of commerce and Christianity to Africa, while industrialized urban poverty choked religion at home.
Disc 5
Episode 12:The Roots of Disbelief
It took the Vatican two centuries to accept a heliocentric universe. But science proved only one threat to faith, and change often sparked a fundamentalist reaction.
Episode 13:The Godless State?
Ironically, Christianity survived—even thrived—in Communist Russia and Poland, while Communism exerted itself in nominally Catholic Italy.
Packaging: Thinpak
Run Time: 674 minutes
Format: Full screen
Number of discs: 5
Language: English
Subtitles: N/A
Color or B&W: Color
CC: No
SDH: Yes, main program only
Region Code: 1
Aspect Ratio: 4:3
Rating: N/A
"Lavishly produced"—New York Times
Longtime host of the popular British quiz show University Challenge, Bamber Gascoigne studied at Cambridge and earned a Harkness Fellowship at Yale. He has hosted several historical documentaries and written over a dozen books.
The Christians
3 Stars
from on 11/6/2010 12:00:00 AM wrote:
I know it's thirty or forty years old and they didn't have HD then but I was not expecting such an awful quality print; I felt ripped off. It might be more transparent to warn the purchaser: 'must be prepared for a 'sixties' viewing experience'.
