Hermias Sozomen practiced the law at Constantinople, at the same time with Socrates. His ancestors were not mean; they were originally natives of Palestine, being inhabitants of a village near Gaza, called Bethelia. This village was very populous in times past, and had most stately and ancient churches. But the most glorious structure of them all was the Pantheon, situated on an artificial hill, which was the tower as it were of Bethelia, as Sozomen relates in chap. xv. of his fifth book. The grandfather of Hermias Sozomen was born in that village, and first converted to the Christian faith by Hilarion the monk. For when Alaphion, an inhabitant of the same village, was possessed with a devil, and the Jews and physicians, attempting to cure him, could do him no good by their enchantments, Hilarion, by a bare invocation of the name of God, cast out the devil. Sozomen’s grandfather, and Alaphion himself, amazed at this miracle, with their whole families embraced the Christian religion

 When artists paint on panels and on walls the events of ancient history, they alike delight the eye, and keep bright for many a year the memory of the past. Historians substitute books for panels, bright description for pigments, and thus render the memory of past events both stronger and more permanent, for the painter’s art is ruined by time. For this reason I too shall attempt to record in writing events in ecclesiastical history hitherto omitted, deeming it indeed not right to look on without an effort while oblivion robs noble deeds and useful stories of their due fame. For this cause too I have been frequently urged by friends to undertake this work. But when I compare my own powers with the magnitude of the undertaking, I shrink from attempting it. Trusting, however, in the bounty of the Giver of all good, I enter upon a task beyond my own strength.

Early Christianity emerged from obscurity to dominate the Roman world: that story, told and retold, continues to fascinate historians and believers. From literary remains scholars have fashioned a reasonably coherent portrait of Christian leaders and their teachings, their controversies, and their struggles with the imperial power. But the religion of ordinary Christians is not so well or easily known; they have left us no literary record of their faith and their hope, their marrying and their dying, their worship and their common life. Scholars relying on literary evidence have little to say of daily life in the Christian church before the "peace" of Constantine halted the persecution of Christianity in the empire. "It is only in nonliterary data," Graydon Snyder writes, "that one can catch a glimpse of what actually happened." Before the publication of "Ante Pacem there was no introduction or source-book for early Christian archaeology available in English. With his book Professor Snyder has performed an incalculable service for students of early Christianity and the world of late antiquity. He analyzes in one lavishly illustrated volume every piece of evidence that can, with some degree of assurance, be dated before the triumph of the emperor Constantine at the Milvian Bridge in 312CE thrust the nascent Christian culture "into a universal role as the formal religious expression of the Roman Empire." Previous assessments have interpreted early Christian artifacts using the literature of the "church fathers" as a template. The method of the so-called "Roman school" presupposed a continuity of Christianity from its beginning through the later church, so its proponents attempted toharmonize the nonliterary evidence with late tradition. However, the early church artifacts that first appeared about 180 were derived from the culture of the empire. From then until about 313CE, "the early Christian Church gave to the Mediterranean world a religious alternative of considerable depth that was expressed in activities and symbols that were readily understood by that culture," according to Professor Snyder.

The distinctions and similarities among Roman, Jewish, and Christian burials can provide evidence of social networks, family life, and, perhaps, religious sensibilities. Is the Roman development from columbaria to catacombs the result of evolving religious identities or simply a matter of a change in burial fashions? Do the material remains from Jewish burials evidence an adherence to ancient customs, or the adaptation of rituals from surrounding cultures?  What Greco-Roman funerary images were taken over and "baptized" as Christian ones? The answers to these and other questions require that the material culture be viewed, whenever possible, in situ, through multiple disciplinary lenses and in light of ancient texts. Roman historians (John Bodel, Richard Saller, Andrew Wallace-Hadrill), archaeologists (Susan Stevens, Amy Hirschfeld), scholars of rabbinic period Judaism (Deborah Green), Christian history (Robin M. Jensen), and the New Testament (David Balch, Laurie Brink, O.P., Margaret M. Mitchell, Carolyn Osiek, R.S.C.J.) engaged in a research trip to Rome and Tunisia to investigate imperial period burials first hand. Commemorting the Dead is the result of a three year scholarly conversation on their findings.

Constantine the Great is one of those rare historical figures who is nearly as controversial today as he was in his own time. Lauded, both then and now, as a military hero who ended the brutal persecutions of Christians and as the first Roman emperor to himself embrace Christianity, Constantine is just as often vilified as a destructive innovator, a coddler of heretics, and a tyrannical hypocrite with the blood of his own family on his hands. The Life of the Blessed Emperor Constantine was penned shortly after the emperor's death in AD 337 by the great Church historian Eusebius Pamphilus, bishop of Caesarea. Though criticized as mere panegyric lionizing Constantine's virtues while ignoring his flaws, Eusebius's Life is nonetheless the most substantial and detailed biography of the first Christian emperor to come down to us from antiquity. The work is also the sole source for several key episodes in Constantine's life--including the emperor's famous vision of a cross in the sky accompanied by the words, "Conquer by this.""

The Fifth-Century Political Battles That Forever Changed the Church

In this fascinating account of the surprisingly violent fifth-century church, PhilipJenkins describes how political maneuvers by a handful of powerful charactersshaped Christian doctrine. Were it not for these battles, today’s church could beteaching something very different about the nature of Jesus, and the papacy as weknow it would never have come into existence. Jesus Wars reveals the profoundimplications of what amounts to an accident of history: that one faction ofRoman emperors and militia-wielding bishops defeated another.