Product Overview
This is a history of Christendom over the twenty centuries since the time of Christ, focusing on what was good, bad and beautiful in each century. At the heart of all healthy societies and cultures is the presence of the good, the true and the beautiful. This triune presence is perfected in the person of Christ who is "the Way, the Truth and the Life", and thus, we can see the very pattern of history as a tapestry of varying threads which are good, bad or beautiful.
These threads reflect the three facets of man, who manifests himself in life and in history as homo viator, homo superbus and anthropos. The three threads weave their way through the hearts of each and every person, forming the tapestry which reveals the pattern of our individual lives. Thus, these same threads weave their way through the collective lives of men and are the three dimensions of history itself.
No one has seen this three-dimensional pattern in the tapestry of history more clearly than Benedict XVI. In words of beauty and brilliance, Pope Benedict speaks of the goodness of the saints and the beauty of art as the only antidote to the dark thread of evil which runs through the whole of human history. All three threads are interwoven in the history of man because they are all interwoven in the heart of man. Inspired by this understanding of history by Pope Benedict, Joseph Pearce presents the history of the past two millennia in the light of this three-dimensional pattern of the good, the bad and the beautiful.
Editorial Reviews
"Joseph Pearce's book is history with a tremendous purpose -- to remind us that we are called to battle for the good and the beautiful, and that our 'active service ends when we cross the threshold from time to eternity.' Pearce has provided a unique and concise history of two millennia that is sure to inspire."
— H. W. Crocker III, Author, Triumph: The Power and the Glory of the Catholic Church, A 2,000-Year History
"We look, we look, but with such difficulty do we see the meaning of our lives, because we are lost in the complexity of immediate experience. In order to see and to understand we need context and perspective, and this is what Joseph Pearce provides, as he traces the hand of divine providence in history, and offers us the interpretive key of the good, the bad, and the beautiful."
— Cardinal Thomas Collins, Archbishop Emeritus of Toronto, Canada
"Today's historians do not know what history is. They imagine it an account through time of persons, nations, races, classes, and religions jockeying for advantage on a vast playing field—the Catholic Church a mere one of many competing political interests, sometimes ascendent, but increasingly irrelevant. Joseph Pearce provides the corrective: A history that locates the Incarnation and the Church in time, and moves through time and into eternity at the origin of all events, those that precede it and those that follow. There are other readings of history, but this is the only correct one."
— Christopher Check, President, Catholic Answers
