Crumbs from the Table

The Russian language is a language in the Slavic branch of the Indo-European language family.  The Proto-Slavic language was spoken by the Proto-Slavic people living in the area around the modern-day town of Pripyat (famous for its association with the Chernobyl nuclear power station) between modern-day Belarus and Ukraine. From the 500s, the Slavs spread out westwards and southwards (and some in a north-westerly direction).  From 862, missionaries from Constantinople, Cyril and Methodius, introduced an alphabet and liturgy (text of a church service) for the Slavonic-speaking people of Great Moravia (modern-day Czechia), based on the Slavonic language spoken near their native city of Thessalonica. The Slavonic liturgy, originally created by Cyril and Methodius for the people of Great Moravia, is common to all Slavic peoples who profess Eastern Orthodox Christianity, however it has increasingly differed from the everyday speech of the various Slavic peoples. Already by the time...

The homeland of the Slavic peoples was originally in the area near to the present town of Pripyat , between Belarus and Ukraine. It was from here that, from the 500s, the Slavic peoples spread westwards and southwards (and also in a north-easterly direction). For example, according to Constantine VII Porphyrogennetos of Constantinople, the ancestors of the Croats and Serbs settled in the area now known as Bavaria, later relocating to their present homeland in the Balkans. What became the Moravian people settled in what is now Czechia, and in the early 800s formed the first Slavic state (Great Moravia) with its capital in Velihrad. Other Slavic tribes migrated as far south as what is now Greece in the Empire of Constantinople.  Particularly in the early 800s (but also for some time before that), the Empire of Constantinople reclaimed territories settled by Slavs, re-establishing government control and re-introducing Greek language and the Orthodox Christian faith. This is known as t...

From the 1600s, France, ruled by Louis XIV, became the leading Roman Catholic kingdom fulfilling a role previously held by Spain and Portugal. Meanwhile, the ideas of the Enlightenment were at work in society and in the church. The philosophes, the intellectuals of the Enlightenment, while acknowledging the church's contribution in terms of morals, social order and care for the needy, also found much to criticise in terms of the church's intolerance, authoritarianism, dogmatism, attitudes towards celibacy, and its huge wealth. This generated a groundswell of anticlerical (anti-church, anti-priest) sentiment in society. A telling moment, indicative of the change of mood was the suppression, by the Pope in 1773, of the Jesuit monastic order considered too reactionary. Another telling incident came in 1781, Louis XVI allegedly rejected one candidate for bishop of Paris saying, "The Archbishop of Paris should at least believe in God!" It all culminated in the French Revol...

The Anabaptists were Christians at the time of the Protestant Reformation in the 1500s who wanted a more radical break with the past and return to the truth of the Bible.  The Anabaptists were a very eclectic collection of different people and causes, united only by the fact that they did not align with the Roman Catholic church nor with the so-called Magisterial Reformers. "Anabaptist" means "rebaptiser" because in many if not most cases they rejected the longstanding practice of baptising infants, and instead practised believer's baptism on profession of faith.  The Anabaptists are called the "stepchildren" of the Reformation - at times disowned and unloved, but clearly the product of the time and in some ways more consistent and radical than their Protestant counterparts.  The first iteration of Anabaptism were the Carlstadt and the Zwickau prophets, who sought a more radical reformation that Luther espoused.  A second expression came in the form of...

The Finns are a people of Finno-Uguric descent, linguistically related to the Estonians and Hungarians, but also peoples such as the Evenki of Siberia. In Finnish Finland is known as Suomi.  There had been a Christian presence in Finland from the 1000s.  In 1155, Eric IX of Sweden launched a campaign to Christianise Finland, accompanied by bishop Henry of Uppsala, who was martyred in 1156. About a century later, in 1249, Finland was annexed by Sweden. The first indigenous bishop was Abo of Turku in 1298. While most of Finland became part of Sweden, to the east, Karelia remained under Russian control, and the form of Christianity planted there was Eastern Orthodoxy.  At the time of the Reformation, a follower of Luther called Mikael Agricola came to Swedish-controlled Finland and completed translation of the Bible in 1551, as well as translating other texts into Finnish. 1593 is the date when Lutheran Christianity was officially adopted in Finland.  An early figure in...

The most ancient African civilisation south of the Sahara is known as the kingdom of Cush or Kush, located in what is now Sudan.    The first phase of the Cushite civilisation began around 2500 BCE and was centred around the city of Kerma, which is considered the "first urban centre" south of the Sahara. The Kerma culture particularly flourished between about 1780 and 1580 BCE. The language spoken by the Kerma culture may have belonged to the Nilo-Saharan (like the modern-day "Fur" language of Sudan) or Afro-Asiatic (like Semitic, Egyptian or Berber) language family. Around 1504, the Kingdom of Kerma was invaded by its powerful northern neighbour, Egypt, and was occupied by the Egyptians until about 1070 BCE.  When Egyptian power weakened (what is known "Third Intermediate Period" in Egyptian history, from about 1069 BCE), independence was regained.  The emerging centre of the Cushite civilisation was the city of Napata, founded in 1400s and situated near ...