"of the many Christianities of this time. For the entire period from 200 to 1000, Christianity remained predominantly a religion of Asia and of northern Africa. Though well established in parts of the western Mediterranean (and not least in large cities such as Rome and Carthage) Christianity spread slowly throughout the non-Mediterranean West. What we now call a distinctively "European" Christianity was unthinkable in the year 500 A.D. Even the notion of "Europe" itself only took on its modern meaning in around the year 650 A.D. (as we will see at the end of chapter 11). By the year 1000 A.D., what could be called a "European" Christianity had only recently been established, with the conversion of Germany, of parts of Eastern Europe, and of Scandinavia."