For nearly seventy years, the bishops of Rome did not live in Rome. From 1309 to 1377 the papal court resided mainly at Avignon, a city on the Rhône under heavy French influence. Critics called it a Babylonian Captivity. Then, after Gregory XI returned to Rome and died, Latin Christendom split in the Western Schism … Read More
Roman officials sometimes killed Christians, seized property, burned books, and demanded sacrifice to the gods and the emperor. Yet the movement was not erased. By the early fourth century it was large enough that Constantine and Licinius chose toleration rather than another round of destruction. Survival was not a miracle that needs no explanation, and … Read More
Women are not a sidebar in early Christianity. They appear as patrons of households, coworkers in mission, prophets, widows enrolled for service, deaconesses, teachers in contested roles, and martyrs whose speech fills some of the most vivid early Christian texts. The historical task is to hold two truths at once: the evidence of women’s participation … Read More
John Wycliffe died in his bed in 1384. Jan Hus died in fire at Constance in 1415. Neither man was Martin Luther in a medieval costume, and treating them as rehearsal actors for 1517 flattens three different centuries. The useful question is institutional: what could a late medieval critic of the Latin church actually change—an … Read More
Early Christianity was not one city with suburbs. It was a map of hubs. Alexandria, Antioch, and Rome were three of the most important: a scholarly Egyptian metropolis, a Syrian crossroads of mission and languages, and the imperial capital whose bishop later claimed a unique role. Comparing them shows how geography, intellectual style, and politics … Read More
Paul of Tarsus did not invent urban religion. He used it. The Mediterranean’s ports, roads, workshops, synagogues, and households became the wiring through which his teams carried a message about Israel’s Messiah for Jews and Gentiles. Letters then kept the wires live when the travelers moved on. This article explains Pauline mission as a network … Read More
Renaissance humanism taught Europe to go back to the sources—ad fontes—in cleaner Latin, recovered Greek, and a taste for the fathers over late scholastic jargon. Christian humanists applied that program to the Bible and the early church. Protestants used the same toolkit to justify rupture. Many Catholics used it to purify preaching, education, and Scripture … Read More
The Arian controversy was not a footnote to the Council of Nicaea. Nicaea was one chapter in a longer war over whether the Son of God is a creature or true God. The argument began in Alexandria, exploded across the eastern Mediterranean, drew emperors into theology, and continued for decades after the creed of 325. … Read More
Jesus and his first followers were Jews. Within a few centuries, most people who called themselves Christians were Gentiles, and “Christian” and “Jew” functioned as distinct communal identities across much of the Roman world. How that happened—and how long Jewish believers in Jesus remained a living bridge—is one of the most sensitive problems in ancient … Read More
In January 1525, in Zürich, a small group baptized one another as believing adults. Opponents called them Anabaptists—“rebaptizers”—and under imperial law rebaptism could mean death. They rejected the label because they denied that their infant baptisms had been true Christian baptism at all. That disagreement looks like a ritual quibble only if you miss the … Read More