Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind

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Apart from providing a brilliant history of Christianity in the first part, the book essentially demonstrates that common liberal and secular values of human rights owe a lot to Christianity and that these are extensions of the religion. The people who recognised the radical nature of Christianity championing the weak against the strong were its enemies — Nietzsche, the Marquis de Sade, Thomas Huxley, Goebbels — and they despised it on that account.

And he does so in an extremely interesting and readable manner, picking his historical periods and personages very judiciously to illustrate his thesis. This book is of interest to anyone looking to understand the development of modern western culture and how it came to be such as it is. It shows that Christianity is not a static, rigid doctrine but instead process of continuous revolution that constantly questions it's premises, reshapes and reinvents itself, from the very first church of Peter and Paul onward. His biography of Æthelstan, the first King of England, was published in 2016 under the Penguin Monarchs series, and his biography of Æthelflæd, England’s Forgotten Founder, was a Ladybird Expert Book published in 2019. If all men were equally redeemed by Christ and equally beloved of God, then there would no hierarchies or rank.This drew on a principle as old as Christianity itself: that the rich had a duty to give to the poor. A masterpiece of scholarship and storytelling, Dominion surpasses Holland's earlier books in its sweeping ambition and gripping presentation -- John Gray * New Statesman * [Holland encapsulates] so much, so intelligently and entertainingly, in a book that's fizzing with ideas -- Andrew Lycett * Mail on Sunday * I love the sweep of it * Sunday Telegraph * Tom Holland's stupendous new book .

Holland makes the point that concern for the victims of earthquakes, famines and floods was disproportionately in Christendom, which also had the overwhelming concentration of international aid agencies. Holland also argues that many of those who clearest recognized the "radical" implications of Christianity, and its departure from earlier morality, were those fundamentally opposed to it – including Friedrich Nietzsche, the Marquis de Sade and the Nazi Party.What this book may do is persuade others to recognise the revolutionary character of the beliefs that our generation is hastening to discard. average hourly wage with the cost of a suite at the Peninsula costing over two thousand dollars a night.

We are told of Emperor Julian providing an embryonic social welfare state in 362 building on the earlier examples of Basil and Gregory who devoted their lives to the poor with the former establishing what was in effect the first hospital.

Despite these omissions, Dominion packs an astonishing amount of stuff into its 500 pages on Christianity’s enduring influence. It was released to positive reviews, although some historians and philosophers objected to some of Holland's conclusions. When Caravaggio depicted the first pope, St Peter, he didn’t represent pomp but the indignity of his upside-down crucifixion.