Christianity (Fidem Pacis)

Christianity is a major world religion founded in the 1st century AD based on the teachings of Jesus Christ, a Jewish teacher and preacher who is believed by Christians to have been the Son of God. Formerly widespread across Europe and the Middle East, it is now confined mainly to northern Europe and to North Leifria, though scattered communities can still be found all across its former range.

From its founding to the early 4th century AD, Christianity was considered to be an obscure and slightly dangerous cult. Persecuted at times, it nevertheless flourished among slaves and the poor and eventually became the state religion of the Roman Empire following the conversion of the Emperor Constantine I. From the 4th to the 7th centuries it was shaken by dozens of schisms, heresies and mutual excommunications, all of which weakened the Church and rendered it vulnerable to outside influences.

By AD 630 Christians had settled into several different factions. Greece, Anatolia, Roman Italy and Africa, and Gaul all followed the Chalcedonian creed which mandated an extremely complicated trinitarian view of God, leading some to accuse them of polytheism and idol worship. By contrast, the Visigoths and Lombards were mostly Arians, and in Syria, Egypt and beyond the eastern borders of the empire a Monophysite view of Christianity was dominant. Both of these were far stricted on monotheism, making them more receptive to Islam when that religion arrived.

When the Emperor Heraclius converted to Islam in 632 many Monophysites followed him almost immediately. However the Chalcedonians resisted strongly, and when Heraclius tried to force the issue using an ecumenical council Italy and Africa seceded to form a new Western Empire, and a rebellion in the east led by church leaders and Heraclius' own brother tried to overthrow him and restore the status quo. However, Heraclius was victorius, and in the years to come many Chalcedonians in Greece and Anatolia would convert out of neccessity.

Over the following centuries Christianity steadily lost ground in Europe. Many tribes, especially if new to Christianity, found that they much preferred Islam due to its making more intuitive sense. Africa, southern Italy and Spain all converted in the 9th and 10th centuries, during which time the Papacy was effectively under Frankish control. Before the turn of the millenium the new religion had spread through Aquitaine and was gaining ground in France, and it reached Albion in the 11th century with the Norman conquest.

However, in the Holy Roman Empire Christianity still flourished. Strict religious policies forbade missionaries and discourage anyone from converting, and with this respite the faith was able to make one final push into Scandinavia and Poland. When Norse settlement of North Leifria began in earnest in the 14th century, the colonists built a new haven for Christianity far from any other influences.