Crumbs from the Table

The Croatian people originally lived in the Carpathian region (W. Ukraine) and in the early 600s migrated to their present homeland in the Balkans on the eastern coast of the Adriatic sea. They were evangelised and baptised by priests from Rome in the 600s, and therefore became part of the Latin-speaking western Catholic church centred in Rome (as opposed to the eastern Orthodox church with its headquarters at Constantinople). The initial "conversion" of the Croats probably focused on the elite, and it was only during the course of later phases of Christianisation that the Croats were fully Christianised. Reorganisation of church jurisdictions under the Franks brought the Croatian church under the jurisdiction of the Patriarchal see of Aquileia.  Croatia became a kingdom in 925 and fought wars with Bulgaria. Croatia reached its height under king Petar Kresimir IV (1058-1074/5). In the 1102, Croatia and Hungary were ruled by the Hungarian king Coloman. Croatia was invaded by t...

Cambodia is a land-locked country in south east Asia which borders Vietnam to the East and Thailand to the West. The traditional form of religion is the Theravada branch of Buddhism.  The first recorded Christian missionary contact with Cambodia was in 1555/6 by a Portuguese Roman Catholic missionary and member of the Dominican Order called Gas par Da Cruz. He is said to have only baptised one convert who died shortly afterwards.  Later, Cambodia was under French colonial rule (1863 to 1953), but the Christian church made little impact. Those who were Catholic believers were mainly of Vietnamese heritage.   The first Protestant missionary contact came in 1923 with missionaries from the Christian and Missionary Alliance. The New Testament and later the whole Bible were translated by 1954. (The Cambodian language belongs to the Austro-Asiatic language family, the same language family as Vietnamese.)   The evangelical church saw some growth in the period ...