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The history of the Catholic Church is the formation, events, and historical development of the Catholic Church through time.. According to the tradition of the Catholic Church, it started from the day of Pentecost at the upper room of Jerusalem; [1] the Catholic tradition considers that the Church is a continuation of the early Christian community established by the Disciples of Jesus.
The History of the Catholic Church, From the Apostolic Age to the Third Millennium James Hitchcock, Ph.D. Ignatius Press, 2012 ISBN 978-1-58617-664-8; Triumph: The Power and the Glory of the Catholic Church. Crocker, H.W. Bokenkotter, Thomas. A Concise History of the Catholic Church. Revised and expanded ed. New York: Image Books Doubleday, 2005.
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.28 to 1.39 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2024. [ 4 ] [ 5 ] [ 9 ] It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions and has played a prominent role in the history and development of Western civilization .
[150] [151] It was the world's largest cathedral for nearly a thousand years, and its dome remains the third largest in the modern world. [152] In Gaul, the Frankish king Clovis I converted to Catholicism; his kingdom became the dominant polity in the West in 507, gradually converting into a Christian kingdom over the next centuries.
Most historians agree that Jesus or his followers established a new Jewish sect, one that attracted both Jewish and gentile converts. According to New Testament scholar Bart D. Ehrman, a number of early Christianities existed in the first century CE, from which developed various Christian traditions and denominations, including proto-orthodoxy. [13]
Catholicity (from Ancient Greek: καθολικός, romanized: katholikós, lit. 'general', 'universal', via Latin: catholicus) [1] is a concept pertaining to beliefs and practices that are widely accepted by numerous Christian denominations, most notably by those Christian denominations that describe themselves as catholic in accordance with the Four Marks of the Church, as expressed in the ...
The Catholic Church during the Age of Discovery inaugurated a major effort to spread Christianity in the New World and to convert the indigenous peoples of the Americas and other indigenous peoples. The evangelical effort was a major part of, and a justification for, the military conquests of European powers such as Portugal , Spain , and France .
The term catholicism is the English form of Late Latin catholicismus, an abstract noun based on the adjective catholic. The Modern Greek equivalent καθολικισμός katholikismos is back-formed and usually refers to the Catholic Church. The terms catholic, catholicism, and catholicity are closely related to the use of the term Catholic ...