Swiss Guard

We just learned about the Bonfire of the Vanities.

Another part of early Christianity is the Swiss Guard.

In 1505 AD, the Pope asked for the Switzerland to send guards to help protect the Pope and where he lived.
For hundreds of years, the people that guard the Pope have been a group of soldiers from Switzerland, making up the Swiss guard.

Their uniforms are blue, red, orange and yellow, and they usually carry a long staff called a halberd, and also some other weapons.


(from: wikipedia - swiss guard)


Kid Facts - Blast from the past: Gregorian Chant

Bonfire of the Vanities

We just learned about Christianity in the New World.

Another part of early Christianity is the Bonfire of the Vanities.

In 1497 one of the church leaders named Friar Girolamo Savonarola said that there were a lot of things out there that might make people sin, and he wanted to get rid of them.

Some of these things were like mirrors, makeup or pretty dresses that might make someone be vain, or think about wanting to be pretty instead of thinking about God.

Other things were like paintings, games, musical instruments or books.

He thought they were bad because if someone played a game, sang a song or read a book and it wasn't about God then it must be bad and should be destroyed.

So he made a big fire and had thousands of these things burned up.
Some things were just owned by people who lived in the town, but other things were famous paintings and sculptures that were destroyed by this fire.


(from: wikipedia - bonfire of the vanities)


Kid Facts - Blast from the past: Christianity in Britain

Christianity in the New World

We just learned about the Spanish Inquisition.

Another part of early Christianity is Christianity in the New World.

After Christopher Columbus had gone across the Atlantic Ocean and discovered new lands, he came back to Europe to Spain.
The Pope Alexander VI told him to go back to the new world, and to bring priests with him to try and tell people in the new world about God and Jesus and see if they would be Christians.

On this trip Columbus brought 17 ships, and visited Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico.


(from: wikipedia - christopher columbus)


Kid Facts - Blast from the past: Pope Gregory I

Spanish Inquisition

We just learned about the Italian Renaissance.

Another part of early Christianity is the Spanish Inquisition.

We learned before about the Medieval Inquisition that the churches started to try and help make sure people were following the right laws from God.

During the Spanish Inquisition in 1478 AD, the rulers of Spain wanted everyone in Spain to be Catholic.

So they said if someone wasn't Catholic they had to either leave Spain or become Catholic.
And if they found out someone was not following the rules, they would put them in jail and ask them questions to try and make them prove they were good or bad.

Later on things got very bad and the inquisition would hurt or kill people if they thought they were not following the rules from the Bible or from the King.

The inquisition went on for hundreds of years and wasn't over until the year 1834 AD.


(from: wikipedia - spanish inquisition)


Kid Facts - Blast from the past: Anno Domini

Italian Renaissance

We just learned about the Sistine Chapel.

Another part of early Christianity was the Italian Renaissance.

After the Pope moved back to Italy, there was a time that many rich and powerful people were working with the Pope to help make new works of art and very fancy churches.

This was during the time of Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael and Donatello and they all were paid lots of money by the church to make Christian works of art like the Sistine Chapel or Michelangelo's Pieta.


(from: wikipedia - christianity in the 15th century)


Kid Facts - Blast from the past: Hagia Sophia

Sistine Chapel

We just learned about the Gutenberg Bible.

Another part of early Christianity is the Sistine Chapel.

In 1473 AD the builder Baccio Pontelli tore down an old chapel that was falling over and built a new big chapel for the pope at the time called Pope Sixtus IV.
It was called the "Cappella Magna" or Great Chapel, it was the new home for the Pope and was full of many famous works of art by artists like Boticelli and Michelangelo.
The name was changed to the Sistine Chapel for the name of Pope Sixtus.

When the church is trying to choose a new pope, they put a chimney up on the roof.
If all of the church leaders agree on the pope then they throw all their ballots in the fireplace and it makes white smoke out of the top of the chimney, telling everyone that there is a new pope.
If they can not agree, then they put some other things in the fireplace to make black smoke come out of the chimney to tell everyone they have not made up their minds yet.


(from: wikipedia - sistine chapel)


Kid Facts - Blast from the past: Pentarchy

Gutenberg Bible

We just learned about the Devshirme.

Another part of early Christianity was the Gutenberg Bible.

Long ago when people wanted to make a copy of the Bible they had to write it out by hand.
It was not very easy to make paper, ink or pens, so it took a long time, and each copy looked very different depending on who was writing it and what the paper or pen looked like.

Around 1450 people were using something called a Printing Press that was like a big stamp with a roller of paper that could print a lot of copies quickly.

In Germany a man named Johannes Gutenberg used the printing press to make about 150 copies of the Bible, and send them around Germany.
This started a big change in the world of Christianity because a lot more people could read the actual words in the Bible and learn for themselves about God and Jesus.


(from: wikipedia - gutenberg bible)


Kid Facts - Blast from the past: Baptism of Clovis I

Devshirme

We just learned about the Fall of Constantinople.

Another part of early Christianity was Devshirme.

Many times in history Christians and Hebrews were not treated very well.
In Egypt during Moses time they were slaves, and when Jesus was alive they were not treated well by the Roman empire.
When Emperor Constantine came around, things were very good for Christians for about 1,000 years.

After the fall of Constantinople, some Christians started being mistreated again by the people that were the new Ottoman rulers in the east.

One sad thing that happened is that Christian boys from the ages of 8 to 20 were taken away from their parents and made to work in the army for the Ottomans.

They were not killed or tortured, but they were told that they could not be Christian anymore.
These kids were put into school and could even become rulers in the land, like the Grand Vizier the second most powerful person in a land.

Even though they weren't killed many families were very sad that their kids were taken away.


(from: wikipedia - devshirme)


Kid Facts - Blast from the past: Leo and Attilla

Fall of Constantinople

We just learned about Joan of Arc.

Another part of early Christianity was the Fall of Constantinople.

Back in the year 313 the emperor Constantine made himself a home city of Constantinople, in eastern Europe.
For a long time it was the strongest city in the area, and was the head of the Roman empire.

Later on the eastern and western parts of Europe started arguing over how the church should be run, and about whether the head of the church should be in Rome, Paris or Constaninople.

When that happened, and Constantinople had other problems like fighting off plagues, it was not the strongest city anymore.

In the middle eastern countries the Ottoman Empire was getting very strong, and so they started a war to take over Constantinople.
The western European countries did not come to help Constantinople, so the Ottomans took over Constantinople easily, and also because they were using gunpowder and cannons.


(from: wikipedia - fall of constaninople)


Kid Facts - Blast from the past: Saint Patrick

Joan of Arc

We just learned about the Avignon Papacy.

Another part of early Christianity is the famous French person Joan of Arc.

She was born in France in 1412, while there was a war going on between France and England.

When she was 13 she said that she had a vision of some Christian saints, who told her she needed to go help King Charles VII of France to win the war.

At first no one believed her, but she begged over and over again to go see the king.

When she was 17 she finally got to see the king, and he let her go to some of the battles and try to help out.
Wherever she was at the French won their battles easily, so people started believing that she was a sign from God that they could win the war.

She wasn't really a fighter who carried a sword, she usually had a banner that she waved around to try and help get all the French soldiers excited about winning.

When she was 19 she was captured by the English soldiers, and they had a trial where they said she was bad and wasn't talking to Christian saints but was working for the devil, and they had her killed.

Years later the French people said that trial was not fair and said she was innocent, and the church leaders agreed so she became a Christian hero Saint Joan of Arc.

Her story is very famous in France and people have even found the house where she grew up and turned it into a museum.


(from: wikipedia - joan of arc)


Kid Facts - Blast from the past: Mariology

Avignon Papacy

We just learned about the Mirabilia Descripta.

Another part of early Christianity is the Avignon Papacy.

Remember that there were church leaders in all the different countries called Bishops, and that the Bishop in Rome - Italy was supposed to be the leader of all the other Bishops, called the Pope.

In the early 1300s, the king of France was very powerful, and helped a French person get elected as the Pope.
But to make France more powerful, he wanted him to live in the city of Avignon instead of Rome.

So in 1305 this Pope and the 6 popes after him all lived in Rome and were the heads of all the other churches.
It made the people in the city of Rome angry because they believed they were the most important city, and also having the Pope live in your city means you get a lot of power and money that they didn't get anymore.

After 74 years in 1379 AD the new Pope moved back to Rome.


(from: wikipedia - avignon papacy)


Kid Facts - Blast from the past: Saint Augustine of Hippo

Mirabilia Descripta

We just learned about the first English Bible, Wycliffe's Bible.

Another part of early Christianity from around the 1300s is the book Mirabilia Descripta.

When a Christian person named Jordanus of Severac went to India to explore and see what people believed in, he ran into some trouble, and was put into prison.

Later on he was let out, and traveled all over India writing about the way people lived, what they believed in, and all about the land and country.

He wrote it into a book he called Mirabilia Descripta which means something like Diary of Marvels.
His book was so well written at the time it was better than any other explorer from the west who traveled to India.

Because he wrote so well about it, other Christians were able to travel to India and help tell people about God and Jesus.


(from: wikipedia - jordanus)


Kid Facts - Blast from the past: Saint Ninian in Scotland

Wycliffe's Bible

We just learned about the Divine Comedy - Paradiso.

Another part of early Christianity is Wycliffe's Bible.

When people found the old writings and letters that make up the Bible, they were in different languages like Hebrew, Greek or Aramaic.

The church put all of these together and translated them into Latin, and some other languages like Greek or Cyrillic.

The first time the Bible was written in English was when a priest named John Wycliffe worked to translate the whole Bible into English in 1395.

Wycliffe believed that people needed to be able to read the Bible in their own language, and not many people could speak or read Latin to understand the Bible readings in church.


(from: wikipedia - wycliffe's bible)


Kid Facts - Blast from the past: Latin Vulgate Bible

Divine Comedy - Paradiso

We just learned about the Divine Comedy - Purgatorio.

Another part of the Divine Comedy book written in Early Christianity is Paradiso.

In this part of the story, Dante writes about what heaven might be like.

Long ago people didn't really know how the planets and stars worked, and a lot of people thought that the other planets and the sun went around the earth.
These days we know that the earth and other planets go around the sun, but in Dante's picture of heaven he thought the earth was the middle of our universe.

He wrote about 10 levels of heaven:
- Moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Stars, Primum Mobile, Empyrean

Each higher level was better than the last one, and the Empyrean was the special holy perfect place where God lived.
The Primium Mobile was like a circle outside all of the planets that helped move the sun and stars, and this was where the angels lived.

Just like the other parts of this book, it was so popular that many people came to believe that this was what heaven really looked like.



(from: wikipedia - divine comedy)


Kid Facts - Blast from the past: The Great Persecution - Persia

Divine Comedy - Purgatorio

We just learned about the Divine Comedy and it's picture of the inferno.

Another part of that story is the Divine Comedy's picture of Purgatory.

Some Christians think that after you die if you believed in Jesus but did some bad things that you can go to a place between heaven and hell called purgatory and work your way up to heaven.

Other Christians don't agree and don't think this is a real place.

In the Divine Comedy, after the story goes through and talks about what hell looks like, it goes on to talk about what purgatory looks like.

In this place people were treated very badly, but not usually as badly as they were in the inferno hell.
They were forced to carry heavy weights, there was poisonous smoke and fire, and they were starving or blind.

If people made it through their suffering here for long enough they could go to heaven.
Many of the people and ideas in this picture of purgatory came from Greek mythology, so these weren't stories from the bible.
But because this book was so popular many people believed it was true.


(from: wikipedia - divine comedy)


Kid Facts - Blast from the past: Constantinople

Divine Comedy - Inferno

We just learned about the Divine Comedy.

Another part of early Christianity is Divine Comedy - Inferno.

We've learned that the Divine Comedy was a story about a man named Dante getting to see what heaven and hell are like.

Because this story was so popular, many people came to believe the things he wrote about are actually what heaven or hell are like.

When he wrote about hell, which he called inferno, he said there were 9 levels, called circles.

Each of the circles was bad, and had terrible things like terrible storms, freezing smelly rain, heavy stones to carry, smelly slimy swamps, fires, boiling rivers, burning sand, and many monsters.

This story uses a lot of things from Greek mythology like the river Styx, the dog cerebus, medusa and the minotaur.

Even though it was just a story and mixed things together like Christianity and Greek mythology, a lot of people believed that maybe he was right, and so for a long time people have talked about the circles or levels of hell and the different types of monsters and punishments there.


(from: wikipedia - inferno (dante))


Kid Facts - Blast from the past: Monasticism

Divine Comedy

We just learned about the Medieval Inquisition.

Another part of early Christianity is the book the Divine Comedy.

This was written by a man named Dante Alighieri who was an Italian poet.

Long ago there were many ideas about what heaven and hell looked like.
The different mythologies from Romans and Greeks and other people mixed together and a lot of people took those ideas and mixed them in with what the Bible says about heaven and hell.

Dante wrote this book of poetry and talked about going into hell and heaven, and a lot of the places that he described going are a lot like the stories from mythology.

No one really knows what hell and heaven look like, but Dante's book was so popular that many people started to believe that what he wrote about was what they really looked like.


(from: wikipedia - divine comedy)


Kid Facts - Blast from the past: Fifty Bibles of Constantine

Medieval Inquisition

We just learned about the Dominican Order.

Another part of early Christianity was the Medieval Inquisition.

We've learned that orthodoxy is what the church says you are supposed to do, and heresy is what the church says you are not supposed to do.

Long ago in many states and countries it was against the law to do or say something that was heresy.
If you were caught, the king or lord of the land would have a trial, and if you were found guilty you could be killed.

The church leaders decided that the kings and lords shouldn't be in charge of those trials, because they didn't know the laws that well.
They also wanted to try and give people the chance to learn what they did wrong and stop being heretics instead of being killed.

The church would send people from the Dominican or Franciscan order as judges to rule on trials as to whether the person was really bad or if they were just confused and needed to learn the right orthodox way to believe.
These trials were called Inquisitions.

For a while the Inquisitions were peaceful and did not allow anyone to be hurt. They were actually better than trials from the kings or lords where people were hurt and killed a lot more.

But as time went on the Inquisitions changed, and the Dominican and Franciscan leaders started to hurt people during the trials, to try and force them to admit that they had done something bad and were heretics.



(from: wikipedia - medieval inquisition)


Kid Facts - Blast from the past: Four Great Uncials

Dominican Order

We just learned about the Orthodoxy.

Another part of early Christianity is the Dominican Order.

We learned that the church all worked together and agree on rules that were called "Canon".
Following the rules is called "Orthodoxy", and breaking the rules is called "Heresy".

The Dominican Order is a group of people the church put in charge to make sure people followed the rules.

They were called the Dominican because the order was started by a church leader named Saint Dominic.


(from: wikipedia - dominican order)


Kid Facts - Blast from the past: Codex Vaticanus

Orthodoxy

We just learned about the Heresy.

Another part of early Christianity is Orthodoxy.

Just like heresy is when someone breaks the laws of the church, orthodoxy is when someone follows the laws of the church.

The word orthodoxy comes from the Greek word ὀρθοδοξία (orthodoxía) meaning a correct opinion.
There are some churches like the Greek Orthodox Church that put that word in part of the name of their church to show that they try very hard to follow the rules of the church.


(from: wikipedia - orthodoxy)


Kid Facts - Blast from the past: Christology