This 6th century began with a Christianity already very sophisticated. As it had become the official religion of the Roman Empire, it ended up losing the simplicity of the first centuries. A very large distance was created between the Christianity of the first centuries and the Christianity of this century onwards.

Christianity suffered very great influences from three peoples. At first, from the Jews. Remembering that Jesus was born Jewish, his apostles were Jewish, He spoke to Jews and He Himself had said that He had not come to destroy the Law and the Prophets, but to fulfill it. There was also the hypothesis, at that time, that Christianity would become a branch of Judaism. But this did not happen, because when the Christian message began to spread to other cultures, thanks to Paul of Tarsus, the expressions of Christianity began to distance themselves from aspects of the Jewish view.

At a second moment, the idea of the gentiles joined Christian thought and, as they were under the aegis of the Roman Empire, their thinking was their religious reference. Christianity then began to have power, to have status. It ended up adopting the customs and traditions of Roman culture. The followers began to worship images, to venerate saints.

After that, there were the barbarian invasions, initiated in the previous century. Christianity suffered influence from these peoples, with their exogenous cultures, strange cultures, gods, cults and religious truths unknown until then. With all this, Christianity faced a great challenge. How to shelter all these influences that infiltrated its core and move forward? How to live with this variety of cultures and religious ideas?

Since the first influence, when Christianity ceased to be a branch of Judaism and effectively became a religion, there was resistance on the part of Christians, in relation to all the persecutions they suffered for three centuries. However, Christianity moved forward, but without the purity of the early times.

With the barbarian invasions, Christianity faced another very delicate situation. The barbarian peoples did not know Jesus nor His Gospel. They were very rude peoples, they had commitment to their hegemonies, they wanted to take new places, establish their dynasties, impose their own customs and beliefs. However, as the strength of Christianity was very great, since they had converted even the Roman Empire, the conversion of the barbarian peoples began in this century. “And this is spectacular!”

Then arises the king of the Franks, Clovis, a remarkable figure for the propagation of Christian ideas. The Franks were one of the barbarian peoples, those who were gaining great prominence in Europe. The Franks were those who gave rise to France. The very name, France, comes from Franks. So, Clovis, the king of the Franks, converted to Christianity, married Clotilde in a Christian ritual and determined: “Our people will be Christian.” Thus, Christian culture spread among the barbarian peoples.

The barbarian peoples, after bringing down the Western Roman Empire and disputing its spoils, divided it, each one occupying a part.

The Franks were one of these barbarian peoples, who lived in the region that today is Germany. They then went to another region called Gaul and there they fought against the Gauls. They ended up winning and dominating the entire region. And they were so incisive in the domination of that land, that they even managed to change the name of the place. From Gaul to France.

Thus, the Franks, with their leader Clovis, converted to Christianity, made the barbarian peoples Christian. And Christianity grew widely. France was important for the Christianization of Europe. If it were not for Clovis, perhaps the barbarian peoples would have taken everything. There, then, the preparation of France was already beginning to receive, later on, the professor Allan Kardec, in the 19th century.

Historians mention three notable characters for Christianity to exist today: Constantine, who made it possible for the Roman Empire to become Christian. Clovis, the king of the Franks, because if it were not for him, perhaps Europe would have become pagan. Charlemagne, grandson of Charles Martel, who in 732, in the Battle of Poitiers, prevented Europe from becoming Muslim. These three characters are responsible for the structure of Christianity.

When the emperor Romulus Augustulus fell, in 476, historians mark, on this date, the beginning of the Middle Ages, which began with the barbarians and ended in 1453, when the Ottoman Empire brought down the Eastern Roman Empire and took Constantinople. This period is known as the period of darkness.

However, in this period, many good people appeared: Boethius and Thomas Aquinas. But it was also a period in which Christian ideas most distanced themselves from primitive Christianity.

In this century occurred the second Council of Constantinople, which took place from May 5 to July 2, 553, when the main focus was that it was necessary to move away, to definitively end, the ideas of Origen, with his fifteen theses. One of them was apocatastasis (the final redemption of spirits). Another thesis of Origen was palingenesis (reincarnation). Origen was from Alexandria, studied Greek culture and the Greeks believed in reincarnation. The ideas of Origen are all reincarnationist.

Origen carried within himself the concepts of spiritual liberation. He was considered a gnostic. For him “Jesus is the model, is the guide, He teaches me, but I do not necessarily need to accept Him. I need to accept and live the proposals that He brings me”. For the Church this was a heresy.

Therefore, in this second Council of Constantinople, Origen and his theses were left behind and it was decided, then, that the soul is created at the moment of conception and at the moment of death there will be a judgment and the fate will be defined.

Traditions say why the ideas of Origen were fought. Theodora, the wife of Justinian II, who was the emperor of the Eastern Empire, had been a “courtesan”. As people at that time believed in reincarnation, they commented that, just as a former courtesan, who came from a lower life, had become empress, so it could also happen to everyone, to have a better fate. Theodora did not like these comments, that they spoke of her past. So, she ordered all her five hundred “ex-friends”, former companions of the past, to be killed so that there would be no more comments about her.

As she had ordered her companions to be killed so that her story would not spread, the people who believed in reincarnation began to say that she would have to be reborn several other times to be able to pay for her debts, because in the reincarnationist belief, if there is a cause, there must be an effect. So, she would bear the effects of her own sowing. Theodora told her husband, Justinian II, to pressure the bishop Vigilius so that there would be a Council that would end the doctrine of reincarnation, because she did not like to know that she would be reborn to pay for her debts. And, in a tight vote, according to this tradition, the ideas of Origen were removed from the proposal of the Church. From this fact, the Church ceased to be reincarnationist.

In this century, some great religious figures appeared, who wanted to bring the idea of Christianity into the already weakened structure of the Western Roman Empire. One of them was Gregory the Great. He was the great religious figure of the 6th century, the one who gave great contributions to the Church, even to this day. One of them was Gregorian chant, because, according to him, the best way to praise God was through singing.

The patriarch of the East did not accept Gregory. He told him that the Empire had fallen and only the Byzantine Empire of the East remained. Gregory replied: “But Christianity of the West has not ended, we are here”. He named the Christians of the West as being “the servants of the servants of God”.

In 591, in one of his preachings, he suggested that Mary Magdalene is the same character found in the Gospel of John, in chapter 8, being the woman caught in adultery and taken to the square to be stoned. On another occasion, he makes another hypothesis, that Mary Magdalene would have been the one who washed the feet of Jesus and dried them with her hair. In the face of these interpretations of Gregory, however, theologians of the Catholic Church and the Protestant Church reached different conclusions, being today the dominant opinion that Mary Magdalene is not the woman caught in adultery in chapter 8 of the Gospel of John. They are two different women. As for the woman who washed the feet of Jesus, Mary Magdalene would be the one found in the Gospel of Luke 7. The anointing described in the other Gospels (Matthew, Mark and John) would have been done by another Mary, the one from Bethany (dominant view today). In truth, knowing who is who does not truly free our souls from their imperfections.

A curiosity: Mary of Magdala and Mary Magdalene are the same person, because the women of Magdala were known as the magdalenas. Over time, the letter g dropped and they became “madalenas”.

The 6th century is characterized by the peak of the Byzantine Empire of the East, which had as its emperor Justinian, who transformed the city of Constantinople, today Istanbul. There was, then, there, a true cultural effervescence, making it a very rich city, with exuberant commerce, with many Churches. One in particular, which became the pearl of universal architecture, the Church of Hagia Sophia (hagia = holy; sophia = wisdom of God). He built the Church in honor of the Wisdom of God, the Byzantine Christian Church.

In 570, the structures of the world began to change, because in the city of Mecca, Muhammad, the prophet Mohammed, was born. However, his religious importance will be verified in the next century.

Boethius, a Christian philosopher, appeared in this century. He became known as a theologian-philosopher, because his inspiration was that reason should be together with religion, there was no way to separate faith and reason, science and religion. He was very important because besides being a theologian he was a statesman, a philosopher. He wanted to bring Christianity back to the forefront.

We cannot say that the Middle Ages was only the age of darkness, because several important characters appeared in this century and brought great contributions to Christianity. However, many persecutions happened, much blood was shed... there was the emergence of the Crusades, the Inquisition and much intolerance.

The divinity never left us alone, there were always people who came to try to bring Christianity to the center but, unfortunately, the great majority insisted on disturbing themselves.