1.) Major branches within Christianity

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2.) Popular legend remembers Nero playing the fiddle while Rome burned, but this is an anachronism as the instrument had not yet been invented, and would not be for over 1,000 years.

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Fire_of_Rome#Nero_and_the_Great_Fire

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3.) Tacitus described the event:

"Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular. Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty; then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind. Mockery of every sort was added to their deaths. Covered with the skins of beasts, they were torn by dogs and perished, or were nailed to crosses, or were doomed to the flames and burnt, to serve as a nightly illumination, when daylight had expired."

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Fire_of_Rome#Persecution_of_Christians

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4.) Important dates in Development of (Catholic) Christianity:
64: Nero blames Christians for great Fire of Rome (persecutions)
150: Church Fathers write theological and "apologetic" works to defend faith starting around this time
313: Christianity legalized by Constantine with the Edict of Milan
325: First Council of Nicaea (Nicene Creed)
380: Emperor Theodosius I declares Christianity to be official Roman religion and all others to be seen as heretics
382: Council of Rome set Biblical Canon (which books of the Old Testament and the New Testament were to accepted)
431: Council of Ephesus declared Jesus to have been both God and Man simultaneously
450: increase in missionary activity starting(?) around this time
480: Monastic Rule set out by St. Benedict (regulations for monasteries)
787: Second Ecumenical Council of Nicaea ruled in favor of icons (in response to iconoclasm debates earlier in the century)
11th century: cathedral schools, originally only teaching Theology, become Universities and are ancestors to systems of Western learning
11th(?) century: mendicant orders (Dominicans and Franciscans) (urban settlement); Cistercians move towards large isolated monasteries (wilderness settlement); and European cathedrals of Romanesque and Gothic grandeur
1095: Urban II initiates Crusades (against Turkish expansion at request of Byzantine emperor Alexios I)
1184: Inquisition (in response to Cathar heresy)
7th-14th centuries: East-West Schism (West-Latin and East-Greek: Orthodox Church) (Second Council of Lyon (1274) and the Council of Florence (1439) attempted to reunite the churches to no avail)
1204: Forth Crusade sacks Constantinople (the capital of the Byzantine empire: Eastern Orthodox Christian city)
1272: Ninth and last Medieval Crusade to the Holy Land
1517: Martin Luther and his 95 theses (Zwingli and Calvin): Protestants: criticism = indulgences, primacy of the pope, clerical celibacy, the seven sacraments, the eucharist, and various other Catholic doctrines and practices
1534: Act of Supremacy makes King of England Supreme Head of the Church of England
1536: British monasteries are eliminated
1538: Pope Paul III excommunicates King Henry VIII (Rome vs. England)
1563: Council of Trent in response to Protestant threats (Counter-Reformation): the founding of new religious orders, such as the Jesuits, the establishment of seminaries for the proper training of priests, worldwide missionary activity, and the development of new yet orthodox forms of spirituality, such as that of the Spanish mystics and the French school of spirituality
18th-19th centuries: Catholicism under attack from Enlightenment and Modernist thinking
1870: First Vatican Council affirms doctrine of papal infallibility
1965: Second Vatican Council reaffirms historical teachings of Catholicism to modern world

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Catholic#Origins_and_history

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397: Confessions by St. Augustine
1109: Anselm writings
1274: Aquinas's Summa Theologica
1321: Divine Comedy by Dante
14th century: Canterbury Tales by Chaucer
1608-1674: John Milton

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