(There were Christians outside of the West, such as China, India, Russia, Byzantium and the Middle East).
Western Christianity has played a prominent role in the shaping of Western civilization, which throughout most of its history, has been nearly equivalent to Christian culture. Charlemagne founded the Carolingian Empire and he is referred to as the "Father of Europe." Contributions also emerged from pagan peoples of pre-Christian Europe, such as the Celts and Germanic pagans as well as some significant religious contributions derived from Judaism and Hellenistic Judaism stemming back to Second Temple Judea, Galilee, and the early Jewish diaspora and some other Middle Eastern influences. Major cultural contributions also came from the Christianized Germanic peoples, such as the Franks, the Goths, and the Burgundians. The civilizations of Classical Greece and Ancient Rome are considered seminal periods in Western history. However "European" as cultural term did not include the territories where the Orthodox Church represented the dominant religion until the 19th century.
The earliest concept of Europe as cultural sphere (instead of simple geographic term) appeared during the Carolingian Renaissance of the 9th century, which reflected to the territories of the Western Christianity. It is linked to ancient Greece, the Roman Empire and Medieval Western Christendom which emerged during the Middle Ages and experienced such transformative episodes as the development of Scholasticism, the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, the Scientific Revolution, and the development of liberal democracy. Western civilization traces its roots back to Europe and the Mediterranean. The School of Athens, a famous fresco by the Italian Renaissance artist Raphael, with Plato and Aristotle as the central figures in the scene
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