The History of Christianity Within Historical Sciences

Abstract

The paper embraces the whole of the history of historiography dealing with Christianity from the ancient times up to now. In the first centuries it was, above all, the writing connected with the so-called patristic period. Christian intellectuals made then a synthesis in the history of Christianity between the pagan vision and the new vision of history, a history connected with Christ and the whole of Christianity.

In European Middle Ages the conception of Christian history was universally accepted, but the knowledge of history itself was not included within the basic university syllabus.

The times of the Renaissance and church reforms brought about numerous debates and a slow emergence of the visions connected with particular churches. The traditional vision of a Christian history was undermined in the time of the Enlightenment and Romanticism, but at the same time from the 19^th century onwards history was included in the syllabus of the European university. From that time on the history of Christianity was present in the theological and historical faculties of various universities.

The final part of the paper discusses the most recent tendencies in church historiography as well as profound transformations which had occurred in it over the second half of the 19^th century.

Some mention has been made about the Polish research, and, eventually, today's new perspective of theology, theology of history and modern religious history, tending to as complete as possible understanding and presentation of the phenomenon of religion in the lives of people.