The Neronian persecution took place A. D. 64. The occasion was the great fire which destroyed a large part of the city of Rome. To turn public suspicion from himself as responsible...
After the recall of the Donatists by the Emperor Julian, the sect rapidly increased, though soon numerous divisions appeared in the body. The more liberal opinions of the Donatist...
Aurelius Augustinus, the greatest of the Latin fathers, was born 354, at Tagaste, in Numidia. He was educated to be a teacher of rhetoric, and practised his profession at Carthage,...
The insistence upon clerical celibacy and even the mere regulation of the marriage of the clergy contributed not a little to making a clear distinction between the clergy and the l...
Primitive Christianity was marked by great chiliastic enthusiasm, traces of which may be found in the New Testament. By chiliasm, strictly speaking, is meant the belief that Christ...
The Christian Church grew up not on Jewish but on Gentile soil. In a very short time the Gentiles formed the overwhelming majority within the Church. As they did not become Jews an...
The Church was the company of the saints. How far, then, could the Church tolerate in its midst those who had committed serious offences against the moral law? A case had occurred...
No subject in Church history has been more hotly discussed than the organization of the primitive Christian Church. Each of several Christian confessions have attempted to justify...
When Constantius became sole Emperor, on the death of his brother Constans in 350, there was no further need of considering the interests of the Nicene party. Only the necessity of...
One of the intentions of Constantine in his support of Christianity seems to have been the employment of the Christian religion as a basis for imperial unity. The policy of several...
In the great persecutions schisms arose in connection with the administration of discipline (cf. § 46). The schismatics held in general the same faith as the main body of Christian...
The persecution developed the popular opinion of the superior sanctity of martyrdom. This was itself no new idea, having grown up in the Church from the time of Ignatius of Antioch...
Asceticism is a wide-spread phenomenon in nearly all religions. It is to be found in apostolic Christianity. In the early Church it was regarded as a matter in the option of the Ch...
Neither on his conversion nor on his attainment of the sole rule of the Empire did Constantine establish the Church as the one official religion of the State. The ruler himself pro...
Schools never wholly disappeared from Western society, either during the barbarian invasion or in the even more troublous times that followed. Secular schools continued throughout...
An outline of some of the legislation is here given, whereby the parish as organized in the West was built up, and the diocese was made to consist of a number of parishes under the...
Gregory the Great was born about 540. In 573 he was appointed prefect of the city of Rome, but resigned the following year to become a monk. Having been ordained deacon, he was sen...
The Christian religion in the course of the latter part of the second century began to attract the attention of heathen writers; it became an object of literary attack. The princip...
The reign of Julian the Apostate (361-363) is important in the history of the Christian Church, in the first place, as indicating the slight hold which heathenism had retained as a...
Though Gnosticism was expelled from the Church as it perfected its organization and institutions on the basis of the episcopate, the Canon of Scripture, and the creeds, outside the...
In the West Montanism rapidly discarded the extravagant chiliasm of Montanus and his immediate followers; it laid nearly all the stress upon the continued work of the Holy Spirit i...
The last great rival religion to Christianity was Manichaeanism, the last of the important syncretistic religions which drew from Persian and allied sources. Its connection with Ch...
Recently Marcion has been commonly treated apart from the Gnostics on account of the large use he made of the Pauline writings. By some he has even been regarded as a champion of P...
Ignatius of Antioch, Ep. ad Romanos, 4. Ignatius was bishop of Antioch in the opening years of the second century. According to tradition, he suffered martyrdom in Rome under Traja...
Montanism was, in part at least, an attempt to revive the enthusiastic prophetic element in the early Christian life. In its first manifestations, in Asia Minor, Montanism was wild...
Christians were convinced that their religion made the highest possible moral demands upon them. They were to live in the world, but remain uncontaminated by it (cf. supra, § 11)....
The last phase of Hellenic philosophy was religious. It aimed to combine the principles of many schools of the earlier period and to present a metaphysical system that would at onc...
The period in the Church before the clash with Gnosticism and the rise of an apologetic literature comprises the apostolic and the post-apostolic ages. These names have become trad...
The history of the Church in the first period of the second division of the history of ancient Christianity has to deal primarily with three lines of development, viz.: first, the...
In the second period of the history of the Church under the Christian Empire, the Church, although existing in two divisions of the Empire and experiencing very different political...