← Bible

The Early Church

The New Testament closes with the gospel spreading out of Jerusalem; the Bible characters page leaves off with the apostles. What followed was the long, contested work of carrying that message across the Roman world and working out what it meant — settling the structure of the church, the shape of its worship, the limits of its scripture, and the words for who Jesus was. This is a who’s-who of that formative age, from the generation that knew the apostles, through the great councils, to Gregory the Great and the Christianising of the new kingdoms that rose on the ruins of the Western empire — roughly the first six centuries, where the patristic age gives way to the medieval. The councils themselves are gathered at the foot of the page as a timeline of events.

It tries to be a fair picture rather than one narrative. The church that emerged drew its boundaries by argument, and the losers of those arguments were once teachers with followings of their own — Marcion, who cut the God of Israel out of the gospel; the Gnostics with their hidden knowledge; Montanus and his prophets; Arius, whose Christ was the first and highest of creatures. Their understanding was not received into the creeds, but they shaped the church as much as their opponents by forcing it to say what it did believe. They are listed here alongside the orthodox, described on their own terms, with a note of how the wider church later judged them.

The apostolic fathers

The generation just after the apostles — bishops and writers, some who had known the eyewitnesses, whose letters and manuals are the earliest Christian writing outside the New Testament.

Clement of Rome — bishop of Rome who wrote to quell a revolt at Corinth; his letter is the earliest dated Christian writing after the apostles. 1 Clement, c. 96
Ignatius of Antioch — bishop carried to Rome to die, who wrote seven letters urging unity under the bishop and was first to call the church ‘catholic’. martyred c. 108
Polycarp of Smyrna — bishop and disciple of the apostle John, a living link to the first generation, burned at the stake in old age. martyred c. 155
Papias of Hierapolis — bishop who gathered oral traditions about the origins of the Gospels of Mark and Matthew. fl. c. 130
Quadratus — the earliest Christian apologist, who addressed a defence of the faith to the emperor Hadrian. fl. c. 124
The Didache — the anonymous ‘Teaching of the Twelve Apostles’, the earliest manual of church life, baptism and the eucharist. c. 100
The Epistle of Barnabas — an anonymous allegorical letter reading the Old Testament wholly as a book about Christ. c. 130
Hermas — a Roman Christian whose visionary ‘Shepherd’, on repentance after baptism, was widely read as scripture. The Shepherd, c. 140
Mathetes — the unknown author of the elegant Epistle to Diognetus, explaining why Christians live ‘in the world but not of it’. 2nd century

The apologists

Second-century writers, many trained in Greek philosophy, who defended the faith to emperors and pagans — arguing Christians were neither atheists nor a threat, and that the gospel was the true philosophy.

Aristides of Athens — a philosopher who wrote one of the earliest surviving apologies, addressed to the emperor. fl. c. 125
Justin Martyr — the foremost apologist, a convert philosopher who argued Christ was the divine Reason (Logos) seeds of which lay in all truth; beheaded at Rome. martyred c. 165
Tatian the Assyrian — Justin’s pupil, who wove the four Gospels into a single narrative (the Diatessaron) but later founded the austere, world-renouncing Encratites. fl. c. 170
Athenagoras of Athens — philosopher who pleaded with Marcus Aurelius against the slanders that Christians were atheists and cannibals. fl. c. 177
Theophilus of Antioch — bishop and apologist, the first writer known to use the word ‘Trinity’ (Greek trias) of God. fl. c. 180
Melito of Sardis — bishop and preacher whose ‘On Pascha’ is an early Easter homily; a leader of the Quartodecimans who kept Easter with the Jewish Passover. fl. c. 170
Minucius Felix — Latin lawyer whose dialogue ‘Octavius’ defended the faith to cultured Romans. 2nd–3rd century

Marcion, the Gnostics and the rival teachers

The most serious challengers from within the wider Christian movement — teachers with their own scriptures, schools and followings, whose understanding the emerging mainstream rejected as it defined itself against them.

Simon Magus — the Samaritan of Acts 8 who tried to buy the Spirit; later remembered as the fountainhead of the Gnostic sects. Acts 8; 1st century
Cerinthus — an early teacher who separated the man Jesus from the heavenly Christ; tradition makes him the opponent of the apostle John. fl. c. 100
Marcion of Sinope — shipowner and teacher who rejected the Old Testament and its Creator-God, keeping only a pared-down Luke and ten letters of Paul; expelled from the Roman church, he built a rival network. By fixing a canon first, he forced the wider church to define its own. excommunicated 144
Valentinus — the most brilliant and influential Gnostic, who taught at Rome a vast myth of divine emanations (aeons) and a spark of the divine trapped in matter; he nearly became bishop of Rome. fl. c. 140–160
Ptolemy — leading Valentinian, whose ‘Letter to Flora’ is a rare first-hand statement of the school’s reading of the Law. fl. c. 160
Basilides — Alexandrian Gnostic with an elaborate cosmology of successive heavens. fl. c. 130
Saturninus (Satornilos) — Syrian Gnostic of Antioch who taught a stark dualism of light and darkness. fl. c. 120
Carpocrates — Alexandrian teacher of a libertine Gnostic sect, accused by opponents of holding all things in common. fl. c. 130
Bardaisan of Edessa — Syriac philosopher, astrologer and hymn-writer, founder of an influential dualist current in the East. 154–222
Mani — Persian prophet who fused Christian, Zoroastrian and Buddhist elements into Manichaeism, a rival dualist world religion that long shadowed the church. 216–c. 277

The New Prophecy and the Jewish-Christian currents

Movements that pulled in opposite directions — ecstatic prophecy claiming fresh revelation, and Jewish believers who held to the Law — each in tension with the consolidating mainstream.

Montanus — Phrygian prophet of the ‘New Prophecy’, who with two prophetesses announced fresh outpourings of the Spirit and an imminent end; rigorist and ecstatic, the movement was condemned but drew in Tertullian. fl. c. 165
Priscilla and Maximilla — the prophetesses of the New Prophecy, whose oracles and leading role scandalised their opponents. fl. c. 170
The Ebionites — Jewish Christians who kept the Mosaic Law and honoured Jesus as the human Messiah, rejecting his divinity and the apostle Paul. 2nd–4th century
The Nazarenes — Torah-observant Jewish believers who, unlike the Ebionites, accepted the virgin birth and Christ’s divinity. 1st–4th century
The Elkesaites — a Jewish-Christian baptist sect of the Jordan region with a book of revelation; Mani was raised among them. 2nd–3rd century

Defenders of the rule of faith

The theologians who answered the Gnostics and Marcion, hammering out the tools the church would keep — the ‘rule of faith’, apostolic succession, the fourfold Gospel and a defined New Testament.

Hegesippus — the earliest church historian, who travelled the churches compiling lists of bishops to show the faith handed down unbroken. fl. c. 165
Irenaeus of Lyons — bishop and pupil of Polycarp, whose ‘Against Heresies’ refuted the Gnostics and set out the rule of faith, the succession of bishops and the four Gospels. c. 130–202
Hippolytus of Rome — prolific scholar and rigorist who became a rival bishop of Rome, wrote a ‘Refutation of All Heresies’, and was reconciled before dying in the mines. c. 170–235
Tertullian of Carthage — the first great Latin theologian, who coined ‘Trinity’ (trinitas) and ‘person’ for the Godhead, then in later life joined the Montanists. c. 155–220
Cyprian of Carthage — bishop and former rhetorician, who wrote on the unity of the church and how to receive back the lapsed; beheaded under Valerian. martyred 258
Novatian — learned Roman presbyter and author of an early Latin ‘On the Trinity’, who led a rigorist schism refusing readmission to those who lapsed in persecution. fl. c. 250

Alexandria and the catechetical school

The Christian school of Alexandria, where the faith met Greek philosophy and biblical scholarship most ambitiously — producing the era’s greatest minds, and some of its sharpest later controversies.

Pantaenus — the first known head of the Alexandrian catechetical school, a former Stoic said to have preached as far as India. fl. c. 180
Clement of Alexandria — philosopher-theologian who presented the faith as the fulfilment of Greek wisdom in his trilogy, the Protrepticus, Paedagogus and Stromata. c. 150–215
Origen — the greatest scholar of the early church: the Hexapla’s six-column Bible, the systematic ‘On First Principles’, and the defence ‘Against Celsus’. Brilliant and ascetic, some of his speculations were condemned long after his death. c. 185–253
Julius Africanus — Christian chronographer who tried to date sacred and secular history together. c. 160–240
Dionysius of Alexandria — bishop and pupil of Origen, ‘the Great’, who guided the church through persecution and doctrinal dispute. d. c. 265
Gregory Thaumaturgus — ‘the Wonderworker’, a pupil of Origen who as missionary bishop is said to have won nearly all of Pontus. c. 213–270
Methodius of Olympus — bishop and martyr who criticised Origen’s teaching on the resurrection and pre-existence. d. c. 311

Persecution and the martyrs

For its first three centuries the church was an illegal sect, and its witnesses under torture — the ‘martyrs’, literally ‘witnesses’ — did as much to spread it as its teachers. Tertullian’s line stuck: the blood of the martyrs is seed.

Pothinus — the aged first bishop of Lyons, who died in the persecution of 177. d. 177
Blandina — a slave girl whose endurance led the martyrs of Lyons, exposed to beasts in the arena. d. 177
Perpetua and Felicity — a young noblewoman and her pregnant slave, killed at Carthage; Perpetua’s prison diary is among the earliest writing by a Christian woman. d. 203
Lawrence of Rome — deacon who, ordered to hand over the church’s treasure, presented the poor; roasted alive under Valerian. d. 258
The confessors and the lapsed — not a person but the great pastoral problem persecution left: how to restore those who had sacrificed or bought certificates (libelli) to save their lives, which split the church under Cyprian and Novatian. 3rd century

Rome and the emperors

The church grew under the gaze of the empire — first its persecutors, who shaped it by fire, then its patrons, who shaped it by favour. The turn from one to the other under Constantine changed everything.

Nero — blamed the great fire of Rome on the Christians; tradition has Peter and Paul die in his persecution. reigned 54–68
Domitian — under whom tradition places a persecution and the exile of John to Patmos. reigned 81–96
Trajan — whose exchange of letters with the governor Pliny is the first outside account of how Rome handled Christians. reigned 98–117
Marcus Aurelius — the philosopher-emperor in whose reign the martyrs of Lyons died. reigned 161–180
Decius — ordered the first empire-wide demand to sacrifice to the gods, a systematic persecution. reigned 249–251
Valerian — targeted clergy and church property; Cyprian and Lawrence died under him. reigned 253–260
Diocletian — launched the ‘Great Persecution’, the harshest and last, destroying churches and scriptures. reigned 284–305
Galerius — the persecutor who, dying, issued the first edict of toleration. edict 311
Constantine — the first Christian emperor, who legalised the faith (Edict of Milan, 313) and summoned the Council of Nicaea. reigned 306–337
Julian ‘the Apostate’ — Constantine’s nephew, who tried and failed to roll back Christianity and restore paganism. reigned 361–363
Theodosius I — who made Nicene Christianity the official religion of the empire and called the Council of Constantinople. edict 380

Before Nicaea: God as one and three

Long before Arius, the church wrestled with how the Father, Son and Spirit could be one God. Several answers were tried and set aside — that the Son was only a man adopted by God, or that the three were merely masks of a single person.

Theodotus of Byzantium — a leatherworker who taught at Rome that Jesus was a man on whom the Spirit descended (‘adoptionism’); excommunicated. fl. c. 190
Praxeas — held that the Father himself suffered on the cross (‘modalism’), drawing Tertullian’s sharp reply that he ‘crucified the Father’. fl. c. 200
Noetus of Smyrna — an early modalist who taught that Father and Son were one and the same. fl. c. 200
Sabellius — gave his name to ‘Sabellianism’: one God appearing successively as Father, Son and Spirit, three modes rather than three persons. fl. c. 220
Paul of Samosata — bishop of Antioch who taught an adoptionist Christ and was deposed by a council; the term homoousios was first viewed with suspicion through him. deposed 268
Lucian of Antioch — scholar, biblical critic and martyr whose pupils included many future leaders of the Arian party. d. 312

The Arian controversy and Nicaea

The defining dispute of the fourth century: was the Son truly God, of one being with the Father, or the highest of creatures? The Council of Nicaea (325) said the former — but the argument ran on for decades, with emperors on both sides.

Arius — the Alexandrian presbyter whose slogan ‘there was when he was not’ held the Son to be created, distinct from and subordinate to the Father; condemned at Nicaea, but his cause long outlived him. c. 256–336
Alexander of Alexandria — the bishop who first condemned Arius, his own presbyter, opening the controversy. d. 328
Athanasius — deacon at Nicaea, then bishop of Alexandria for forty-five years and exiled five times; the tireless champion of the Son’s full deity (homoousios) and of the 27-book New Testament canon. c. 296–373
Hosius of Cordoba — the Spanish bishop and adviser to Constantine who presided at Nicaea and likely proposed the key word homoousios. c. 256–359
Eusebius of Nicomedia — the well-connected bishop who led the Arian cause at court and baptised Constantine on his deathbed. d. 341
Eusebius of Caesarea — the ‘father of church history’, whose Ecclesiastical History preserves the early church; a moderate who leaned to the Arian side at Nicaea. c. 260–340
Marcellus of Ancyra — a fierce anti-Arian whose own teaching was attacked as Sabellian, prompting the creed’s clause ‘of whose kingdom there shall be no end’. d. c. 374
Aetius and Eunomius — the radical ‘Anomoeans’ who pushed Arianism to its limit, holding the Son ‘unlike’ the Father. fl. c. 360
Ulfilas (Wulfila) — missionary bishop to the Goths, who gave them an alphabet and a Bible in their own tongue; through him much of the Germanic world became Arian Christian. c. 311–383

The Cappadocians and the Nicene settlement

The theologians who finally secured the Nicene faith and extended it to the Holy Spirit, leading to the creed of Constantinople (381) — the ‘Nicene Creed’ still recited today.

Basil of Caesarea — ‘the Great’: bishop, monastic founder and statesman, whose ‘On the Holy Spirit’ defended the Spirit’s divinity. c. 330–379
Gregory of Nazianzus — ‘the Theologian’, whose Five Theological Orations gave the doctrine of the Trinity its classic form. c. 329–390
Gregory of Nyssa — Basil’s younger brother, the most speculative of the three, who carried the argument into mysticism and philosophy. c. 335–395
Macrina the Younger — sister of the two Gregorys’ circle, an ascetic teacher remembered as their spiritual guide. c. 327–379
Hilary of Poitiers — ‘the Athanasius of the West’, who carried the Nicene cause into the Latin church and suffered exile for it. c. 310–367
Ambrose of Milan — the formidable bishop who faced down emperors, resisted Arianism and baptised Augustine. c. 339–397
Cyril of Jerusalem — bishop whose Catechetical Lectures are a vivid guide to early baptism, worship and belief. c. 313–386
Epiphanius of Salamis — bishop and zealous heresy-hunter whose ‘Panarion’ (‘medicine chest’) catalogues eighty sects, preserving much of what we know of them. c. 310–403
Didymus the Blind — blind from childhood, head of the Alexandrian school and a defender of Nicaea, later condemned for following Origen. c. 313–398

The person of Christ: Ephesus and Chalcedon

With the Trinity settled, the question turned to Christ himself: how the divine and human met in one person. The councils of Ephesus (431) and Chalcedon (451) drew the lines — and left lasting divisions in the East.

Apollinaris of Laodicea — a staunch Nicene who over-corrected, denying Christ a human mind; condemned in 381 for leaving him not fully human. c. 310–390
Diodore of Tarsus — founder of the Antiochene school, which stressed the distinct human reality of Christ and read scripture more literally. d. c. 390
Theodore of Mopsuestia — the Antiochene school’s leading exegete, revered in the East but condemned long after his death as the root of Nestorianism. c. 350–428
Nestorius — patriarch of Constantinople who objected to calling Mary ‘God-bearer’ (Theotokos), seeming to divide Christ into two; condemned at Ephesus, his name lives on in the Church of the East. c. 386–450
Cyril of Alexandria — the powerful patriarch who drove the case against Nestorius and shaped the language of the one incarnate Christ. c. 376–444
Eutyches — an aged Constantinople monk who, opposing Nestorius, swung the other way into ‘monophysitism’ — one nature in Christ; condemned at Chalcedon. c. 380–456
Flavian of Constantinople — the patriarch who condemned Eutyches and died of injuries from the ‘Robber Synod’ of 449. d. 449
Pope Leo the Great — bishop of Rome whose ‘Tome’ on the two natures in one person was acclaimed as the standard of the Council of Chalcedon. d. 461

Grace and free will in the West

A distinctly Western argument that has echoed ever since — over original sin, free will and the grace of God — fought out mainly between Augustine and the followers of a British monk.

Pelagius — the ascetic British monk who taught that human beings can choose the good by their own will, denying inherited guilt; condemned, his name became shorthand for trusting in works. c. 354–418
Caelestius — Pelagius’ bolder disciple, who pressed the denial of original sin and was condemned first. fl. c. 410
Augustine of Hippo — the towering theologian of the Latin church, whose Confessions and City of God, and whose insistence on original sin and the priority of grace, shaped all later Western Christianity. 354–430
John Cassian — monk who carried Egyptian monasticism west and sought a middle way on grace, later labelled ‘semi-Pelagian’. c. 360–435
Vincent of Lérins — monk who gave the famous test of catholic truth: what has been believed ‘everywhere, always, by all’. d. c. 445

Scholars, preachers and the shaping of the canon

Those who fixed the texts the church would read and pray — settling which books were scripture, translating them, and preaching them — closing the formative age.

The Muratorian Fragment — the earliest known list of New Testament books, an anonymous Roman catalogue that shows the canon already taking shape. c. 170–200
Jerome — the greatest scholar of the Latin church, who learned Hebrew and produced the Vulgate, the standard Latin Bible for a thousand years. c. 347–420
Damasus of Rome — the bishop who commissioned Jerome’s revision and whose Roman synod listed the canonical books. d. 384
Rufinus of Aquileia — translator who put Origen and Eusebius into Latin, then quarrelled bitterly with Jerome over Origen. c. 345–411
John Chrysostom — ‘golden-mouthed’ preacher and patriarch of Constantinople, whose homilies on scripture are among the treasures of the age. c. 347–407

Into the early medieval West

As the Western empire fell to the Germanic kingdoms, the church became the carrier of learning and the maker of new Christian nations — converting the barbarian peoples, many of them Arian, preserving the texts of antiquity, and founding the monasteries that would copy them. With Gregory the Great the patristic age in the West gives way to the medieval.

Patrick — the Romano-British missionary bishop, once a slave in Ireland, who returned to evangelise it; the ‘apostle of the Irish’. 5th century
Remigius of Reims — the bishop who baptised the Frankish king Clovis, bringing the Franks to the Catholic rather than the Arian faith. c. 437–533
Clovis — the Frankish king whose conversion (c. 508) made the Franks the first great Catholic Germanic kingdom and a pillar of the Western church. d. 511
Boethius — Roman senator and philosopher who, awaiting execution, wrote ‘The Consolation of Philosophy’ and handed Greek logic on to the Latin Middle Ages. c. 477–524
Cassiodorus — statesman who founded the Vivarium monastery to copy and preserve classical and Christian texts, a model for monastic learning. c. 485–585
Benedict of Nursia — the father of Western monasticism, whose Rule — ‘pray and work’ — ordered monastic life for a thousand years. c. 480–547
Caesarius of Arles — preacher and bishop whose Council of Orange (529) settled the long grace dispute against semi-Pelagianism. c. 470–542
Dionysius Exiguus — the monk who devised the Anno Domini reckoning of years from the birth of Christ, still in use today. c. 470–544
Columba — the Irish monk who founded the monastery of Iona and carried the gospel to the Picts of Scotland. 521–597
Columbanus — the Irish monk-missionary who planted monasteries across Gaul and northern Italy, reseeding the continent with learning. c. 543–615
Gregory of Tours — bishop and historian whose ‘History of the Franks’ is our chief window onto the Merovingian church. 538–594
Reccared — the Visigothic king of Spain who renounced Arianism for the Catholic faith at the Third Council of Toledo (589). d. 601
Pope Gregory the Great — monk, pope and pastor: reformer of the liturgy and its chant, author of ‘Pastoral Care’, and the pope who sent the mission that won the English — the hinge between the patristic and the medieval church. c. 540–604
Augustine of Canterbury — the monk Gregory sent to England, who baptised King Ethelbert of Kent and became the first archbishop of Canterbury. d. c. 604
Isidore of Seville — bishop and encyclopedist whose ‘Etymologies’ gathered the learning of antiquity into one book for the Middle Ages. c. 560–636
John of Damascus — in the East, the last of the Greek Fathers, defender of the icons and systematiser of doctrine in ‘The Fountain of Knowledge’. c. 676–749
Bede — ‘the Venerable’, the English monk and scholar whose ‘Ecclesiastical History of the English People’ closes the patristic age in the West. c. 673–735

The councils

The church’s habit of deciding together, in gatherings of bishops whose creeds and canons drew the boundaries of orthodoxy — listed here as events; the people who shaped them appear in the sections above. The first seven are reckoned ‘ecumenical’, received by the whole church, with a few local synods that mattered.

The Council of Jerusalem — the apostolic council that freed Gentile converts from having to keep the Law of Moses. c. 49 · Acts 15
First Council of Nicaea — condemned Arius and confessed the Son ‘of one being’ (homoousios) with the Father; gave the Nicene Creed. 325
First Council of Constantinople — affirmed the deity of the Holy Spirit and completed the creed recited as ‘Nicene’ today. 381
Council of Carthage — a regional synod whose list of the canonical books shows the New Testament canon settled in the West. 397
Council of Ephesus — condemned Nestorius and affirmed Mary as Theotokos, ‘God-bearer’. 431
Council of Chalcedon — defined Christ as one person in two natures, divine and human; its rejection split off the Oriental Orthodox churches. 451
Second Council of Constantinople — condemned the ‘Three Chapters’ in a bid to win back the miaphysites. 553
Third Council of Toledo — the Visigoths of Spain renounced Arianism for the Catholic faith; an early Western use of the filioque. 589
Synod of Whitby — settled the English church on the Roman rather than the Celtic reckoning of Easter, binding it to Rome. 664
Third Council of Constantinople — condemned monothelitism, confessing two wills in Christ, human and divine. 680–681
Second Council of Nicaea — restored the veneration of icons after the iconoclast crisis; the last of the seven ecumenical councils. 787

These are the people — and the gatherings — through whom a persecuted sect became the faith of an empire, and then of the kingdoms that rose in its place; the people it argued with are here too. To read the scriptures they were debating in the original languages, see the Bible; for where this age sits in the longer story, the Bible timeline; and for the biblical generation that came before, the Bible characters.