The Library
1780 works catalogued century by century, from the literature the Bible was written among to the present — each with a note on what it is, why it lasted, and where to read it.
301–400
144 works
c. 303–304
Latin
De Opificio Dei
Lactantius · c. 250 – c. 325
Written while the persecution was running, and about anatomy. Lactantius walks through the body part by part — the eye, the ear, the hand, the arrangement of the teeth — arguing that nothing in it is accidental, against Epicurus, who said the organs came first and their uses after.
c. 300–305
Greek
De Mysteriis
Iamblichus of Chalcis · c. 245 – c. 325
An answer to Porphyry, who had asked why gods should need rites at all. Iamblichus replies that the soul cannot think its way up: it is joined to the divine by acts whose power lies in the acts themselves, not in the understanding of whoever performs them — names, stones, incense, and prayer.
306
Greek
Peter of Alexandria · d. 311
Fourteen rulings grading the penance owed by Christians who failed under persecution — those who bribed officials, those who sent slaves in their place, those who fled — with a different penalty for each.
c. 308–310; partly survives
Greek
Pamphilus of Caesarea · d. 309
Written in prison with Eusebius's help, answering charge by charge the accusations against Origen's orthodoxy, mostly by quoting him at length.
c. 303–311
Latin
Divinae Institutiones
Lactantius · c. 250–c. 325
Seven books written during the Great Persecution, setting out Christianity as a complete philosophy — false religion, the origin of error, justice, true worship, and the life of blessedness — in the most polished Latin any Christian had yet written.
c. 311–313
Greek
Eusebius of Caesarea · c. 260 – c. 340
A governor active in the persecution had written a book setting Apollonius of Tyana beside Christ and arguing that the pagan wonder-worker was the better attested of the two. Eusebius answers by going through Philostratus's biography and asking what in it a reasonable person would actually believe.
c. 311–313
Greek
Eusebius of Caesarea · c. 260 – c. 340
An eyewitness record of the Diocletianic persecution in the province where Eusebius lived, year by year and name by name — the mines at Phaeno, the men blinded in one eye and hamstrung in one foot and sent to labour, and his own teacher Pamphilus in prison for two years before the end.
c. 311; revised later, survives in Armenian and in Jerome's Latin
Greek, surviving in Armenian and Latin
Chronicon
Eusebius of Caesarea · c. 260 – c. 340
A summary of world history followed by parallel columns — Hebrews, Assyrians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans — ruled across the page so that any year can be read simultaneously in every kingdom that existed in it, from Abraham to the writer's own day.
c. 313–316
Latin
De Mortibus Persecutorum
Lactantius · c. 250–c. 325
A grimly satisfied account of how each emperor who persecuted the church came to a bad end, closing with Constantine's victory and the edict of toleration.
c. 313–320
Greek
Praeparatio Evangelica
Eusebius of Caesarea · c. 260–339
Fifteen books arguing that Christians were right to prefer Hebrew scripture to Greek philosophy, assembled from enormous quotations of pagan authors.
c. 313–316
Latin
De Ira Dei
Lactantius · c. 250 – c. 325
Against the Stoics and Epicureans, who agreed that God cannot be angry. Lactantius argues that a God who cannot be angry cannot love either, since the two are one faculty turned two ways — and quotes Epicurus's dilemma in full: is God willing to prevent evil but not able, or able but not willing.
c. 318
Greek
De Incarnatione Verbi Dei
Athanasius of Alexandria · c. 296–373
A short, unhurried argument that the Word took a body because a creation running back toward nothing could only be restored from inside it — and that the resurrection is the demonstrable proof, visible in martyrs who no longer fear dying.
c. 318
Greek
Contra Gentes
Athanasius of Alexandria · c. 296–373
The first half of a two-part work, arguing that idolatry is a fall from the knowledge of God available through the soul and the order of creation.
c. 320; survives in fragments
Greek
Arius · c. 256–336
A popular verse exposition, apparently written to be sung, arguing that the Son is the first and greatest of creatures, made before time but not eternal.
c. 314–324; ten of twenty books survive
Greek
Demonstratio Evangelica
Eusebius of Caesarea · c. 260 – c. 340
The companion to the Preparation, and the harder half: having shown why Christians abandoned Greek religion, Eusebius now has to show why they kept the Jewish scriptures while refusing the Jewish law. The answer runs through the prophets text by text, arguing that the patriarchs lived by a religion older than the law and that Christians have returned to it.
c. 320–330
Greek
Onomasticon
Eusebius of Caesarea · c. 260–339
An alphabetical gazetteer of biblical places, giving each one's location in the fourth-century landscape and whether the village was still standing.
325; revised 381
Greek
The Council of Nicaea
The confession drawn up by the first ecumenical council, declaring the Son to be of one substance with the Father, and anathematising those who said there was a time when he was not.
c. 313–325
Greek
Historia Ecclesiastica
Eusebius of Caesarea · c. 260–339
A history of the church from the apostles to Constantine, assembled from documents, letters, and now-lost sources that Eusebius quotes at length because he had them and knew others might not.
c. 329–330
Latin
Evangeliorum Libri Quattuor
Juvencus
The gospel story, mostly Matthew, recast in some thirty-two hundred lines of Virgilian hexameter by a Spanish priest of noble birth. The preface says plainly what it is for: Homer and Virgil will burn with the world, but a poem carrying the deeds of Christ will not.
333
Latin
Itinerarium Burdigalense
Anonymous
A bare itinerary from Bordeaux to Jerusalem listing every staging post and change of horses, with terse notes on the holy places seen at the end.
c. 334–337
Latin
Julius Firmicus Maternus
The longest astrological handbook to survive from antiquity: eight books on the houses, the aspects, and what each configuration produces in a life, written with real piety toward a cosmos in which the stars carry out the will of a supreme mind.
c. 337–339
Greek
Vita Constantini
Eusebius of Caesarea · c. 260–339
A frankly admiring portrait of the first Christian emperor, including the vision of the cross before the Milvian Bridge and the documents of his religious policy quoted in full.
c. 330–348; survives complete in Latin
Greek, surviving in Latin
Hegemonius
A staged public debate in Mesopotamia between a bishop and Mani, judged by pagan referees, followed by a hostile biography in which Mani is made the heir of a line of frauds and dies flayed at the Persian king's order.
337–345
Syriac
Aphrahat · c. 280–c. 345
Twenty-three treatises by the Persian Sage on faith, love, fasting, prayer, war, humility, and the sons of the covenant — written entirely outside the Greek theological world.
c. 330–345
Coptic
Pachomius · c. 292–348
Regulations for a walled community of monks living, working, eating, and praying together under a superior, with detailed provision for admission, clothing, meals, and correction.
c. 339–345
Greek
Orationes contra Arianos
Athanasius of Alexandria · c. 296–373
Three long discourses arguing text by text that the Son is eternally begotten, and that if he were a creature then creatures would be worshipping a creature.
c. 335–340; survives in fragments
Greek
Marcellus of Ancyra · c. 285 – c. 374
A defender of Nicaea who defended it too far: the Word was in God from eternity but became Son only at the incarnation, and at the end will be reabsorbed, so that the kingdom of Christ has a term. Eusebius wrote two books against him.
c. 346–350
Latin
De Errore Profanarum Religionum
Firmicus Maternus
An appeal to the sons of Constantine to suppress the mystery cults by force, describing their rites in detail in order to condemn them.
c. 348–350
Greek
Cyril of Jerusalem · c. 313–386
Lectures delivered to candidates for baptism through Lent, then five more given in Easter week explaining the rites they had just been through for the first time.
c. 350–355
Greek
De Decretis
Athanasius of Alexandria · c. 296–373
A defence of the council's use of a word not found in scripture, arguing that non-biblical language was needed precisely to protect the biblical sense.
c. 340–380 and later
Syriac
Anonymous
Accounts of the great persecution under Shapur II, in which Christians were taxed at double rate as suspected partisans of Rome and their clergy killed when they refused to collect it. Simeon bar Sabbae is executed with a hundred of his clergy on the eve of Good Friday.
c. 350–356
Greek
Euchologion
Serapion of Thmuis · d. after 362
Thirty prayers for a bishop's own use: the eucharistic prayer, blessings of oil and water, prayers over the sick, over the newly baptised, over the dead, and for the ordination of deacons, presbyters, and bishops.
c. 358
Greek
Athanasius of Alexandria · c. 296–373
A partisan account of the persecution of Nicene bishops under Constantius, written in hiding, and among the earliest Christian arguments that an emperor has no authority over doctrine.
359
Latin
De Synodis
Hilary of Poitiers · c. 310 – c. 367
Written in exile to the bishops of Gaul, setting out every Eastern creed of the previous thirty years in turn and asking, of each, whether it can be read in an orthodox sense. He is unusually willing to grant that men who reject his vocabulary may hold his faith.
c. 360
Greek
Vita Antonii
Athanasius of Alexandria · c. 296–373
The life of the Egyptian hermit who heard the gospel read in church, sold everything, and went into the desert — told as a spiritual biography of temptation, discipline, and eventual public authority.
c. 360
Greek
Eunomius of Cyzicus · c. 325 – c. 395
A tight, almost geometric argument that God's essence is unbegottenness; that the Son, being begotten, is therefore of a different essence; and — most provocative of all — that the human mind can know God's essence as well as God knows it, since a name given rightly reaches the thing itself.
c. 359–361
Greek
Athanasius of Alexandria · c. 296 – 373
Written from hiding in the desert to a bishop who had reported a group willing to confess the Son fully but not the Spirit. Athanasius argues that a created Spirit would break the Trinity into unlike parts, and that since we are made divine by the Spirit, the Spirit cannot be a creature.
c. 356–360
Latin
De Trinitate
Hilary of Poitiers · c. 310–367
Twelve books written in exile in Asia Minor, bringing the Greek arguments against Arianism into Latin for a Western church that had barely followed the controversy.
c. 350–380
Gothic
Ulfilas · c. 311–383
A translation of most of the Bible into Gothic by a missionary bishop who invented an alphabet to do it, said to have omitted the books of Kings as too warlike for his converts.
c. 357–363
Latin
Adversus Arium
Marius Victorinus · c. 290 – c. 364
A famous Roman rhetorician who converted late and publicly, writing Trinitarian theology in the language of Neoplatonic metaphysics: being, life, and understanding as one movement out and back, with the Son as the act by which what is at rest becomes what moves.
1–40 of 144 matching · 1780 in the Library