Ante Nicene
Apostolic Fathers
Barnabas
The name carried by an early letter that reads the law and the prophets throughout as a book about Christ.
Clement of Rome
An early bishop of Rome, whose letter to Corinth pleads for peace and order in a congregation torn by rivalry.
Ignatius
Bishop of Antioch, who wrote seven letters on the road to martyrdom, pleading for unity and for love.
Irenaeus
Bishop of Lyons, who answered Gnostic teaching by telling the whole story of God's saving work from beginning to end.
Justin Martyr
A philosopher who kept his cloak after conversion, defending the faith before emperors and dying for it.
Mathetes
The unnamed writer of the Epistle to Diognetus, one of the loveliest descriptions of Christians in the world.
Fathers of the Second Century
Athenagoras
An Athenian philosopher who pleaded the Christian cause before emperors with unusual calm and courtesy.
Clement of Alexandria
An Alexandrian teacher who welcomed Greek learning as a schoolmaster leading its pupils toward Christ.
Hermas
The visionary of The Shepherd, an early Roman book of visions and parables calling the church to repentance.
Tatian
A pupil of Justin who addressed the Greeks with sharp candour and wove the four Gospels into one narrative.
Tertullian
The first great Latin Christian writer, whose vivid, forceful prose gave the West much of its theological vocabulary.
Theophilus
Bishop of Antioch, whose three books to Autolycus commend the living God to a sceptical friend.
Fathers of the Third Century
Alexander of Alexandria
The bishop whose circular letters record the opening of the Arian controversy and Alexandria's answer to it.
Alexander of Lycopolis
An Egyptian philosopher whose short treatise sets out the teaching of Mani and answers it point by point.
Archelaus
A Mesopotamian bishop remembered for the recorded disputation in which he met and answered the teaching of Mani.
Aristides
An Athenian philosopher whose Apology commends the faith to the emperor by pointing to the manner of Christian lives.
Arnobius
A convert and teacher of rhetoric who turned his craft to answering the objections of his pagan neighbours.
Asterius Urbanus
An early writer whose surviving pages record the church's careful response to the Montanist movement in Asia.
Caius
A Roman churchman of the early third century, surviving in fragments that defend the apostolic memory of the city.
Commodianus
A Christian poet whose acrostic verses call pagans to conversion and believers to watchfulness.
Constitutions of the Holy Apostles
A fourth-century manual of worship, ministry, and church order, gathered and issued under the apostles' names.
Cyprian
Bishop of Carthage and martyr, who wrote on unity, prayer, and the care of a church living under persecution.
Didache
The church's earliest manual: two ways of life, prayers, baptism, the Lord's table, and the ordering of a young congregation.
Dionysius
Bishop of Alexandria through years of plague and persecution, surviving in letters of rare pastoral tenderness.
Early Liturgies
The ancient liturgies of James, Mark, and the Blessed Apostles, preserving the church's oldest orders of worship.
Gregory Thaumaturgus
A pupil of Origen and bishop of Neocaesarea, remembered for his creed and for a ministry marked by wonders.
Hippolytus
A Roman presbyter of vast learning, who catalogued the heresies of his day and expounded the Scriptures.
Julius Africanus
An early Christian historian who set the chronology of Scripture alongside the records of the nations.
Lactantius
A Latin rhetorician whose Divine Institutes commend the Christian faith with elegance and unusual clarity.
Methodius
A bishop and martyr whose Banquet of the Ten Virgins praises chastity in the manner of Plato's dialogues.
Minor Writers
Shorter remains of early teachers such as Anatolius, Theognostus, Malchion, and Phileas, saved from a lost literature.
Minucius Felix
A Roman lawyer whose dialogue Octavius answers pagan objections in a conversation walking by the sea.
Novatian
A Roman theologian whose treatise on the Trinity is the fullest Latin statement of that doctrine before Nicaea.
Origen
The Alexandrian scholar of boundless industry, who gave the church its first systematic theology and its first critical Bible.
Peter of Alexandria
Bishop and martyr, whose canons guided the gentle restoration of Christians who had faltered under persecution.
Pseudo-Cyprian
Anonymous North African treatises carried alongside Cyprian's works, on baptism, rebaptism, and division.
Rufinus
A translator and historian who carried much of the Greek Christian inheritance safely into Latin.
The Acts of Xanthippe and Polyxena
An early Christian tale of conversion, peril, and rescue, treasured as popular storytelling of the apostolic age.
The Apocalypse of Peter
An early vision of the world to come, outside the canon, which coloured later pictures of heaven and hell.
The Apocalypse of Sedrach
A short apocryphal dialogue in which a visionary pleads with God over judgment, repentance, and mercy.
The Apocalypse of the Virgin
A late apocryphal vision of Mary shown the places of judgment and interceding for mercy upon them.
The Gospel of Peter
A fragmentary passion narrative from outside the canon, preserved as a witness to early Christian storytelling.
The Narrative of Zosimus
An apocryphal tale of a hermit carried to the far land of the blessed Rechabites and returning with their story.
The Nicene Creed
The church's shared confession of faith, framed at Nicaea and Constantinople and still said the world over.
The Passion of the Scillitan Martyrs
The court record of twelve North African Christians, the earliest surviving document of the Latin church.
The Testament of Abraham
An apocryphal account of Abraham's last days, his journey through the heavens, and his plea for sinners.
The Vision of Paul
A pseudonymous Christian visionary whose tour of the afterlife shaped medieval accounts of heaven, punishment, and judgment.
Venantius Fortunatus
A poet of sixth-century Gaul whose Easter verses celebrate the triumph of the cross in flowering spring.
Victorinus
Bishop of Pettau and martyr, the earliest Latin commentator on Scripture, best known for his work on the Apocalypse.
Fathers of the Third and Fourth Centuries
Apocrypha of the New Testament
Gospels, acts, and apocalypses that circulated outside the canon, valued as windows into early Christian imagination.
Memoirs of Edessa And Other Ancient Syriac Documents
Syriac writings from Edessa and beyond: the Abgar story, the teaching of Addaeus, and the acts of its martyrs.
Pseudo-Clement
Homilies, recognitions, and letters circulated under Clement's name: early Christian narrative from other hands.
Remains of the Second and Third Centuries
Fragments of Melito, Hegesippus, Quadratus, and other early writers whose fuller works have not survived.
The Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs
Farewell speeches placed on the lips of Jacob's twelve sons, rich in moral counsel and forward hope.
Fathers of the Fifth Century
Moses of Chorene
The father of Armenian history, whose narrative preserves the memory of his people and their conversion.