ABSTRACT
No matter how convincingly rationalised, the chronological limits adopted for any historical enterprise are always somewhat arbitrary and insecure. That applies to the period covered by this volume as much as to any other. To begin around 1050 – with the deliberate imprecision of ‘around’ – cuts through continuity while implying a logical division and a distinct change in direction. Yet, by then, Christianity had already been in existence for over a millennium; its Catholic variant had already gone through some centuries of evolution. The completion of Christianity’s first millennium attracted considerable scholarly attention at the end of the second, but as a chronological marker its significance is still unclear. For most contemporary Christians, it may have been a non-event, and there may indeed have been no consensus about when it actually happened, but historians note it. A similar non-event in terms of its immediate perceptible impact – although more clearly dated – occurred in the year traditionally etched into Church history as marking the definitive break between the Eastern and Western traditions of the Church, between Rome and Constantinople, with the schism of 1054.
