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Description
Today, Eastern Orthodox Christianity flourishes in the Balkans and Russia with over 150 million members worldwide. It's quite unlike Catholicism or Protestantism: worship is carefully choreographed..., icons pull the faithful into a mystical union with Christ, and everywhere is a symbol of a fierce-looking bird - the double-headed eagle. What story is this ancient drama trying to tell us? In his third journey into the History of Christianity, Diarmaid MacCulloch charts Orthodoxy's extraordinary fight for survival. After its glory-days in the Eastern Roman Empire, it stood right in the path of Muslim expansion, suffered betrayal by crusading Catholics, was seized by the Russian Tsars and faced near-extinction under Soviet Communism. MacCulloch visits the greatest collection of early icons in the Sinai desert, a surviving relic of the iconoclastic crisis in Istanbul and Ivan the Terrible's Cathedral in Moscow to discover the secret of its endurance.
Today, Eastern Orthodox Christianity flourishes in the Balkans and Russia with over 150 million members worldwide. It's quite unlike Catholicism or Protestantism: worship is carefully choreographed..., icons pull the faithful into a mystical union with Christ, and everywhere is a symbol of a fierce-looking bird - the double-headed eagle. What story is this ancient drama trying to tell us? In his third journey into the History of Christianity, Diarmaid MacCulloch charts Orthodoxy's extraordinary fight for survival. After its glory-days in the Eastern Roman Empire, it stood right in the path of Muslim expansion, suffered betrayal by crusading Catholics, was seized by the Russian Tsars and faced near-extinction under Soviet Communism. MacCulloch visits the greatest collection of early icons in the Sinai desert, a surviving relic of the iconoclastic crisis in Istanbul and Ivan the Terrible's Cathedral in Moscow to discover the secret of its endurance.
| Series: | A history of Christianity |
|---|---|
| First transmission date: | 19-11-2009 |
| Original broadcast channel: | BBC4 |
| Published: | 2009 |
| Rights Statement: | |
| Restrictions on use: | |
| Duration: | 00:58:29 |
| + Show more... | |
| Producer: | Catherine McCarthy |
| Presenter: | Diarmid MacCulloch |
| Contributors: | Marun Budok; Simon Cuff; Chris Foster; Diarmaid MacCulloch; Paulos Konstantinos Politis; Diane Tatt |
| Publisher: | BBC Open University |
| Link to related site: | Website: http://www.open2.net/christianity/index.html |
| Subject terms: | Christianity; Church history |
| Production number: | NMGX003H |
| Videofinder number: | 81292 |
| Available to public: | no |
