Category Archives: 3. Nicene & Post Nicene (325-600 AD)

From the fading light of the apostolic and martyr church, the Christian story advances into the era of patriarchs and emperors, when the faith once despised is enthroned alongside imperial power, and the cross is borne not only by confessors in the arena, but by bishops in the council chamber. This third period, stretching from Constantine the Great to Gregory the Great (a.d. 311–590), witnesses the decisive transformation of Christianity’s… Read more

From the twilight of the ancient world into the dawn of modern historical consciousness, a succession of masterful, if varied, narratives has sought to illuminate the epoch from Constantine to Gregory the Great. Each work bears the stamp of its author’s confession, temperament, and scholarly method, offering, in concert, a prism through which the fourth to sixth centuries of the Church may be studied in all their theological, political, and… Read more

The age stretching from the triumph of Constantine to the ascendancy of Gregory the Great marks one of the grandest transitions in the history of Christendom. It is an era in which the persecuted church rose to imperial favor, in which councils convened to settle the great dogmas of the faith, and in which the political and theological destinies of Europe became irrevocably intertwined. The sources for this period are… Read more