This research will examine the founding of the Roman Catholic Church from the period of Jesus (6-4 BCE-30 CE) to the institutionalization of the Papacy and Church apparatus that occurred in the context of the Church's emergence during the Roman Imperial period. The research will cover the church's response to forces such as barbarian invaders of the Roman Empire during its decline until the coronation of Charlemagne.
The rise of the earliest Christian Church, from the time of its founding to the time of Charlemagne, can be seen with reference to three dynamic processes that correspond roughly to three phases of development: the theological/doctrinal phase, during which fundamental mainstream Church beliefs were authoritatively established; the phase of intrinsic institutional rationalization, during which institutional management, hierarchy, and praxis were conformed; and the phase of Church interaction with non-Church institutions, notably secular culture and state apparatus emergent in early medieval Europe. Now these three dynamics and phases overlap and converge, and overlaying them is the shaping of a distinctively Christian religious identity. Moreover, key events and issue resolution in early Church history must be located geographically because strands of thought and institutional praxis that were to become dominant were associated with specific Christian-era sites, notably the following: Jerusalem, inland from the southeastern Mediterranean coast in Palestine; Antioch, northward from Jerusalem and inland from the northeastern Mediterranean coast in Syria; and Rome, seat of political power in the Christian era and, over the first several hundred years of Christian development, the seat of Church power as well.
The core source for the establishment of Christianity as a religious movement organized around the figure of Jesus is the Bible, in particular Acts, which says that "the disciples were called Christians first in An...