T H E   D O C U M E N T A R Y   S E R I E S

Steeped in the culture of the Greeks, ruled by the law of the Romans, its people worshipped ancestors, emperors and a pantheon of gods from Athena to Zeus. They lacked the ethics and communal values that we know as religion today.

In the year 33, in a remote province of the Roman empire known as Palestine, a faith was born that would fill the hearts, minds and souls of humankind. It began as a Jewish sect, but soon moved beyond its base to spread around the Mediterranean. It would arise in the many cultures that made up the Mediterranean World. It would struggle to find itself as a universal faith. Its believers would be martyrs, monks, philosophers and finally emperors.

Narrator:
Mike Farrell

During the first few centuries after the death of Jesus, Christianity had spread to every corner of the Roman Empire. Constantine had made it the religion of the Empire. But by the 5th Century, the Empire had expanded as far as it could go. Beyond its outer limits was the world of the pagan barbarians. It was this pagan world , beyond the reach of the weakening Roman Empire that helped the next great burst of Christianity.

As the Roman Empire declined and slid into the darkness of the middle ages, the church continued to grow. Its success was not due to any grand design, but to individual men and women who experienced Jesus in their own ways. Among them were a runaway slave, an unkempt, long-haired hermit--once mistaken for a wild animal, a young girl locked in a tiny cell much of her life and a privileged would-be knight who ended up a beggar.

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Narrator:
Joseph Campanella