The History of the Condemnation of the Patriarch Nicon, composed by the Greek prelate Paisius Ligarides of Scio (1612 1678), is an account of the bitter struggle between the leaders of the Russian church and state during the reign of Tsar Alexis Michaelovich (1629 1676) and the patriarchate of Nicon (1605 1681). The conflict resulted in the exile and deposition of the Patriarch in 1666, decreed by an ecclesiastical council headed by Ligarides. Ligarides' History, a theological and legal essay on the powers of the tsar, is one of the most important polemics produced during the period. The arguments and ideas it contains represented important advances in the developing ideological tradition of the absolute authority of the tsar. This 1873 translation, the third of six volumes on the subject compiled by William Palmer, made this key historical source accessible to English-speaking scholars of Russian ecclesiastical history and political thought.

William Palmer (1811-1879) was a theologian and ecumenist best known for his attempts to forge links between the Anglican and Orthodox churches. Palmer was elected a fellow at Magdalen College, Oxford in 1832, and became an adherent of the Oxford Movement, which emphasised the catholicity of the Anglican church. In the 1840s and 1850s Palmer visited Russia with the controversial aim of studying Orthodox theology and being admitted to communion by the Russian church. His request was refused, however, and his visit deemed a failure. Palmer converted to Roman Catholicism in 1855. The Replies of the Humble Nicon (1871) is volume 1 of The Patriarch and the Tsar (1871-1876), Palmer's six-volume translation of documents relating to the life of Nicon (1605-1681), Patriarch of Moscow, whose theological reforms brought him into conflict with the Muscovite Tsar Alexis.

This fifth volume in John Pocock's acclaimed sequence on Barbarism and Religion turns to the controversy caused by Edward Gibbon's treatment of the early Christian church. Examining this controversy in unprecedented depth, Pocock challenges the assumption that Gibbon wrote with the intention of destroying belief in the Christian revelation, and questions our understanding of the character of 'enlightenment'. Reconsidering the genesis, inception and reception of these crucial chapters of Decline and Fall, Pocock explores the response of Gibbon's critics, affirming that his reputation as an unbeliever was established before his history of the Church had been written. The magnitude of Barbarism and Religion is already apparent. Religion: The First Triumph will be read not just as a remarkable analysis of the making of Decline and Fall, but also as a comment on the collision of belief and disbelief, a subject as pertinent now as it was to Gibbon's eighteenth-century readers.

This beautifully designed, full-color textbook introduces the Roman background of the New Testament by immersing students in the life and culture of the thriving first-century towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum, which act as showpieces of the world into which the early Christian movement was spreading. Bruce Longenecker, a leading scholar of the ancient world of the New Testament, discusses first-century artifacts in relation to the life stories of people from the Roman world. The book includes discussion questions, maps, and 175 color photographs. Additional resources are available through Textbook eSources.

This edition of St Augustine's The City of God (De Civitate Dei) is the only one in English to provide a text and translation as well as a detailed commentary of this most influential document in the history of western Christianity. In Book V Augustine searches out and presents an answer to the question which lies behind the earlier books. In spite of the moral bankruptcy of the Roman state, and in spite of the disasters and injustices which have marked her history since the foundation, Rome has extended her imperial sway throughout Europe and the Near East. If the pagan gods have not guided her to this terrestrial eminence, how has this success been achieved? Augustine divides his response into four main sections: addressing the pagan notion of fate; arguing that God aided the Romans to imperial glory because a minority of them were virtuous even though they did not worship him; stating explicitly that the Roman Empire was set in place by God and is governed by his providence; and devoting the final section to the advent of Christian Emperors. Latin text with facing-page English translation, introduction and commentary.

A history of doctrines of the Early Church, written and arranged with exceptional clarity by a leading patristic scholar. Canon Kelly describes the development of the principal Christian doctrines from the close of the first century to the middle of the fifth, and from the end of the apostolic age to the council of Chalcedon.

The martyrs in early Christian texts are consistently portrayed as Christ figures. Their words, actions, and deaths are modeled on the person and work of Jesus. As such they provide us with insights into the interpretation and use of scripture in geographically diverse locations and a variety of social settings in a period for which there are lamentably few sources. Moss begins by tracing out the theme of imitating Jesus through suffering in the literature of the Jesus movement and early church and its application in martyrdom literature. She demonstrates the importance of imitating the sufferings of Christ as a practice and ethos in the Jesus movement. She then proceeds to the interpretations of the martyr's death and afterlife. Moss argues against the dominant theory that the martyr's death was viewed as a sacrifice, finding that in their post-mortem existence martyrs continue to be assimilated to Christ, closely resembling the exalted Christ as intercessors, judges, enthroned monarchs and banqueters. The characterization of the martyr as "another Christ" ultimately conflicted with emerging theological commitments to Christ's uniqueness and the egalitarian nature of post-mortem existence for his followers. But for a brief period, Moss finds, the martyr's imitation was viewed as a way in which he or she shared in the status of the exalted Christ.

Jesus taught his followers that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven. Yet by the fall of Rome, the church was becoming rich beyond measure. "Through the Eye of a Needle" is a sweeping intellectual and social history of the vexing problem of wealth in Christianity in the waning days of the Roman Empire, written by the world's foremost scholar of late antiquity.

Peter Brown examines the rise of the church through the lens of money and the challenges it posed to an institution that espoused the virtue of poverty and called avarice the root of all evil. Drawing on the writings of major Christian thinkers such as Augustine, Ambrose, and Jerome, Brown examines the controversies and changing attitudes toward money caused by the influx of new wealth into church coffers, and describes the spectacular acts of divestment by rich donors and their growing influence in an empire beset with crisis. He shows how the use of wealth for the care of the poor competed with older forms of philanthropy deeply rooted in the Roman world, and sheds light on the ordinary people who gave away their money in hopes of treasure in heaven.

"Through the Eye of a Needle" challenges the widely held notion that Christianity's growing wealth sapped Rome of its ability to resist the barbarian invasions, and offers a fresh perspective on the social history of the church in late antiquity.

Many recent discoveries have confirmed the importance of Orphism for ancient Greek religion, philosophy and literature. Its nature and role are still, however, among the most debated problems of Classical scholarship. A cornerstone of the question is its relationship to Christianity, which modern authors have too often discussed from apologetic perspectives or projections of the Christian model into its supposed precedent. Besides, modern approaches are strongly based on ancient ones, since Orpheus and the poems and mysteries attributed to him were fundamental in the religious controversies of Late Antiquity. Both Pagan and Christian authors often present Orphism as a precedent, alternative or imitation of Chistianity. This free and thorough study of the ancient sources sheds light on these controversial questions. The presence of the Orphic tradition in Imperial Age, documented by literary and epigraphical evidence, is confronted with the informations transmitted by Christian apologists on Orphic poems and cults. The manifold Christian treatments of Pagan sources, and their particular value to understand Greek religion, are illuminated by this specific case, which exemplifies the complex encounter between Classical culture and Jewish-Christian tradition.

Depicting the lives of the saints in an array of both factual and fictional stories, "The Golden Legend" was perhaps the most widely read book, after the Bible, during the late Middle Ages. In his new translation, the first in modern English of the complete text from the Graesse edition, William Granger Ryan captures the immediacy of this rich, image-filled work, and offers an important guide for readers interested in medieval art and literature and in popular religious culture more generally.

This book is a comprehensive survey of the history and, more particularly, of the thought of Antioch from the second to the eighth centuries of the Christian era. Dr Wallace-Hadrill traces the religious background of Antiochene Christianity and examines in detail aspects of its intellectual life: the exegesis of scripture, the interpretation of history, philosophy, and the doctrine of the nature of God as applied to an understanding of Christ and man's salvation. The community at Antioch stressed history and literalism, in self-conscious opposition to the tendency to allegorise that prevailed at Alexandria. While insisting on the divinity of Christ, they were equally adamant that no other doctrine should be allowed to compromise their central belief that Jesus was really human.

Chrodegang of Metz (c. 712-766) was a leading figure of the late Merovingian and early Carolingian Church. Born to one of the principal aristocratic families in Austrasia, he served as referendary of Charles Martel, and was appointed bishop of Metz in the 740s. As bishop, Chrodegang became one of the foremost churchmen in Francia, chairing councils, founding monasteries, and beginning a reform of the lives of the canons of the Metz cathedral. This book is a major study in the English language on Chrodegang, examining his preoccupation with the creation of communities of faith and concord modelled on the early Church. It explores his attempts to unite the Frankish episcopacy, his rule for the cathedral clergy in Metz - the Regula canonicorum - and his introduction of new liturgical practices that sought to transform his see into a hagiopolis, a holy city which provided a model for later Carolingian reform.

The theme of this volume is that of continuity and discontinuity between early Christianity and its Jewish parent. The formation of Christian thought in the context of its Jewish beginnings is the focus of much debate and controversy. These essays cover the historical and social background of Palestine and the Diaspora; the main components of the New Testament canon and early non-canonical writings, examining their relationship to the Jewish tradition; and central themes including monotheism and Christology, apocalyptism, ethics, and martyrdom. The concise treatments, with their helpful bibliographies, by an international team of experts will be of interest and value to teachers and undergraduate students of the New Testament and Christian origins. It puts an alternative complexion on the relationship between Judaism and the convictions of the early Christians, and will stimulate discussion.

Carol Harrison counters the assumption that Augustine of Hippo's (354-430) theology underwent a revolutionary transformation around the time he was consecrated Bishop in 396. Instead, she argues that there is a fundamental continuity in his thought and practice from the moment of his conversion in 386. The book thereby challenges the general scholarly trend to begin reading Augustine with his Confessions (396), which were begun ten years after his conversion, and refocuses attention on his earlier works, which undergird his whole theological system.

Diese oeffentliche Vorlesung wird jahrlich veranstaltet im Andenken an den Kirchenhistoriker Hans Lietzmann (1875-1942), den Nachfolger Adolf von Harnacks als Leiter des Akademienunternehmens Die Griechischen Christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten Jahrhunderte (GCS). Es wird dazu jeweils ein international bedeutender Referent aus dem Bereich der Altertumswissenschaften eingeladen. Die Vortrage behandeln zentrale Themen der antiken Religionsgeschichte mit einer Bedeutung fur die Gegenwart.

In this historical and theological study, John G. Gager undermines the myth of the Apostle Paul's rejection of Judaism, conversion to Christianity, and founding of Christian anti-Judaism. He finds that the rise of Christianity occurred well after Paul's death and attributes the distortion of the Apostle's views to early and later Christians. Though Christian clerical elites ascribed a rejection-replacement theology to Paul's legend, Gager shows that the Apostle was considered a loyal Jew by many of his Jesus-believing contemporaries and that later Jewish and Muslim thinkers held the same view. He holds that one of the earliest misinterpretations of Paul was to name him the founder of Christianity, and in recent times numerous Jewish and Christian readers of Paul have moved beyond this understanding. Gager also finds that Judaism did not fade away after Paul's death but continued to appeal to both Christians and pagans for centuries. Jewish synagogues remained important religious and social institutions throughout the Mediterranean world. Making use of all possible literary and archaeological sources, including Muslim texts, Gager helps recover the long pre-history of a Jewish Paul, obscured by recent, negative portrayals of the Apostle, and recognizes the enduring bond between Jews and Christians that has influenced all aspects of Christianity.

In a time when the ordination of women is an ongoing and passionate debate, the study of women's ministry in the early church is a timely and significant one. There is much evidence from documents, doctrine, and artifacts that supports the acceptance of women as presbyters and deacons in the early church. While this evidence has been published previously, it has never before appeared in one complete English-language collection.

With this book, church historians Kevin Madigan and Carolyn Osiek present fully translated literary, epigraphical, and canonical references to women in early church offices. Through these documents, Madigan and Osiek seek to understand who these women were and how they related to and were received by, the church through the sixth century. They chart women's participation in church office and their eventual exclusion from its leadership roles. The editors introduce each document with a detailed headnote that contextualizes the text and discusses specific issues of interpretation and meaning. They also provide bibliographical notes and cross-reference original texts. Madigan and Osiek assemble relevant material from both Western and Eastern Christendom.

How were the Johannine books of the New Testament received by second-century Christians and accorded scriptural status? Charles E. Hill offers a fresh and detailed examination of this question. He dismantles the long-held theory that the Fourth Gospel was generally avoided or resisted by orthodox Christians, while being treasured by various dissenting groups, throughout most of the second century. Integrating a wide range of literary and non-literary sources, this book demonstrates the failure of several old stereotypes about the Johannine literature. It also collects the full evidence for the second-century Church's conception of these writings as a group: the Johannine books cannot be isolated from each other but must be recognized as a corpus.

Augustinus (354430 CE), son of a pagan, Patricius of Tagaste in North Africa, and his Christian wife Monica, while studying in Africa to become a rhetorician, plunged into a turmoil of philosophical and psychological doubts in search of truth, joining for a time the Manichaean society. He became a teacher of grammar at Tagaste, and lived much under the influence of his mother and his friend Alypius. About 383 he went to Rome and soon after to Milan as a teacher of rhetoric, being now attracted by the philosophy of the Sceptics and of the Neo-Platonists. His studies of Paul's letters with Alypius and the preaching of Bishop Ambrose led in 386 to his rejection of all sensual habits and to his famous conversion from mixed beliefs to Christianity. He returned to Tagaste and there founded a religious community. In 395 or 396 he became Bishop of Hippo, and was henceforth engrossed with duties, writing and controversy. He died at Hippo during the successful siege by the Vandals.

From Augustine's large output the Loeb Classical Library offers that great autobiography the "Confessions" (in two volumes); "On the City of God" (seven volumes), which unfolds God's action in the progress of the world's history, and propounds the superiority of Christian beliefs over pagan in adversity; and a selection of "Letters" which are important for the study of ecclesiastical history and Augustine's relations with other theologians.

This interdisciplinary study follows an international and ecumenical meeting of twenty-one scholars held in New York at Easter 2003: the Redemption Summit. After an opening chapter, which explores seven central questions for writers on redemption, five chapters are dedicated to the scriptural roots of the doctrine. A section on the patristic and medieval periods then examines the interpretation of redemption through the centuries. The volume moves on to foundational and systematic issues: the problem of horrendous evil, karma and grace, and differing views on justification. Studies on the redemption in literature, art, music, and preaching form the final part. There is a fruitful dialogue between experts in a wide range of areas and the international reputation of the participants reflects and guarantees the high quality of this joint work. The result is a well researched, skilfully argued, and, at times, provocative volume on the central Christian belief: the redemption of human beings through Jesus Christ.

Evagrius of Pontus (c.345-399) was one of the most prominent figures among the monks of the desert settlements of Nitria, Sketis, and Kellia in Lower Egypt. Through the course of his ascetic writings he formulated a systematic presentation of the teaching of the semi-eremitic monks of these settlements. The works of Evagrius had a profound influence on Eastern Orthodox monastic teaching and passed to the West through the writings of John Cassian (c.365-435). This is the first complete English translation of Evagrius' Greek ascetic writings, based on modern critical editions, where available, and, where they are not, on collations of the principal manuscripts. Two appendices provide variant readings for the Greek texts and the complete text of the long recension of Eulogios. The translations are accompanied by a commentary to guide the reader through the intricacies of Evagrian thought by offering explanatory comments and references to other Evagrian texts and relevant scholarly literature. Finally, detailed indexes are provided to allow the reader to identify and study the numerous themes of Evagrian teaching.

Was there a genuine theological consensus about Christ in the early Church? Donald Fairbairn's persuasive study uses the concept of grace to clarify this question. There were two sharply divergent understandings of grace and christology. One understanding, characteristic of Theodore and Nestorius, saw grace as God's gift of co-operation to Christians and Christ as the uniquely graced man. The other understanding, characteristic of Cyril of Alexandria and John Cassian, saw grace as God the Word's personal descent to the human sphere so as to give himself to humanity. Dealing with, among others, John Chrysostom, John of Antioch, and Leo the Great, Fairbairn suggests that these two understandings were by no means equally represented in the fifth century: Cyril's view was in fact the consensus of the early Church.

This concise and engaging introduction to the history of early Christianity examines the development of Christianity from its origins up through the year 620. Accessible to beginning students with no background in the subject, Early Christianity: A Brief History is also captivating reading for more advanced students. The book is organized chronologically into four parts: The Contexts of Early Christianity, Christianity in the Second and Third Centuries, The Creation of a Christian Empire, and Life in the Christian Empire. Each part begins with a timeline in order to guide students in the chronology of events. Opening with a look at the historical Jesus--which considers what we know and how we know it--the book continues on with coverage of the Jewish and Roman worlds in which Christianity arose. It then charts the extraordinary progress of Christianity, ranging from its status as a fringe sect in Judaism, to that of a dominant religion, up through the reign of Pope Gregory I. Chapters on society and culture and an epilogue on Muhammad and the rise of Islam are also included.
Focusing on important themes and developments throughout, author Joseph H. Lynch does not overwhelm students with an encyclopedic amount of detail. In addition, he acknowledges the often neglected diversity of early Christian views without losing sight of the major lines along which the religion developed. Lynch integrates excerpts and quotations from a wide variety of ancient sources--including the New Testament, the Gospel of Thomas, the Didache, and the writings of Dio Chrysostom, Fronto, and Tactitus--in order to engage students and show them how historians learn about the ancient world. Each chapter ends with carefully selected suggestions for further reading that are drawn from both ancient and modern sources. The book also features custom-drawn maps and photos to help students understand the visual and geographical developments of ancient Christianity.

"Why This New Race" offers a radical new way of thinking about the origins of Christian identity. Conventional histories have understood Christianity as a religion that from its beginnings sought to transcend ethnic and racial distinctions. Denise Kimber Buell challenges this view by revealing the centrality of ethnicity and race in early definitions of Christianity. Buell's readings of various texts consider the use of "ethnic reasoning" to depict Christianness as more than a set of shared religious practices and beliefs. By asking themselves, "Why this new race?" Christians positioned themselves as members of an "ethnos" or "genos" distinct from Jews, Romans, and Greeks.

Buell focuses on texts written before Christianity became legal in 313 C.E., including Greek apologetic treatises, martyr narratives, and works by Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Tertullian. Philosophers and theologians used ethnic reasoning to define Christians as a distinct people within classical and ancient Near East society and in intra-Christian debates about what constituted Christianness. Many characterized Christianness as both fixed and fluid-it had a real essence (fixed) but could be acquired through conversion (fluid). Buell demonstrates how this dynamic view of race and ethnicity allowed Christians to establish boundaries around the meaning of Christianness and to develop universalizing claims that all should join the Christian people.

In addressing questions of historiography, Buell analyzes why generations of scholars have refused to acknowledge ethnic reasoning in early Christian discourses. Moreover, Buell's arguments about the importance of ethnicity and religion in early Christianity provide insights into the historical legacy of Christian anti-Semitism as well as contemporary issues of race.

The Mediterranean Diaspora in Late Antiquity examines the fate of Jews living in the Mediterranean Jewish diaspora after the Roman emperor Constantine threw his patronage to the emerging orthodox (Nicene) Christian churches. By the fifth century, much of the rich material evidence for Greek and Latin-speaking Jews in the diaspora diminishes sharply. Ross Shepard Kraemer argues that this increasing absence of evidence is evidence of increasing absence of Jews themselves. Literary sources, late antique Roman laws, and archaeological remains illuminate how Christian bishops and emperors used a variety of tactics to coerce Jews into conversion: violence, threats of violence, deprivation of various legal rights, exclusion from imperial employment, and others. Unlike other non-orthodox Christians, Jews who resisted conversion were reluctantly tolerated, perhaps because of beliefs that Christ's return required their conversion. In response to these pressures, Jews leveraged political and social networks for legal protection, retaliated with their own acts of violence, and sometimes became Christians. Some may have emigrated to regions where imperial laws were more laxly enforced, or which were under control of non-orthodox (Arian) Christians. Increasingly, they embraced forms of Jewish practice that constructed tighter social boundaries around them. The Mediterranean Diaspora in Late Antiquity concludes that by the beginning of the seventh century, the orthodox Christianization of the Roman Empire had cost diaspora Jews-and all non-orthodox persons, including Christians-dearly.