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.
401–500
104 works
c. 450
Syriac
Nestorius · c. 386–c. 451
A long self-defence written in exile under a pseudonym, arguing that the author had never taught what he was condemned for and welcoming Leo's Tome as his own position.
c. 400–500; several recensions
Greek and Syriac
Transitus Mariae
Anonymous
The apostles are carried on clouds from wherever they are preaching to Mary's bedside in Jerusalem. She dies without pain, her soul is received by her Son, and the body is taken up before it can be buried — in some versions after a hostile bystander's hands are severed at the bier.
451
Greek
The Council of Chalcedon
One Christ in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation — four negatives marking the boundaries beyond which speech about Christ goes wrong.
c. 452
Greek
Gerontius
The life of one of the richest women in the Roman world, who liquidated estates across several provinces, freed thousands of slaves, and settled on the Mount of Olives.
c. 450–460
Latin
Patrick · 5th century
An open excommunication of a British warlord whose men had killed and enslaved newly baptised Irish Christians, demanding their return.
c. 400–500
Coptic
Anonymous
Jesus tells the apostles on the Mount of Olives how his foster father died at a hundred and eleven, afraid at the last, with Mary holding his feet and Jesus his hands, and Death waiting at the door until permitted to enter.
c. 450–460
Greek
Diadochus of Photike · c. 400 – c. 486
A hundred chapters on how to tell the movements of grace from the movements of delusion, and the first text to prescribe the continuous repetition of the name of Jesus as the way to occupy a mind that will otherwise wander.
3rd–5th century; date disputed
Latin
Commodian
Acrostic poems in rough popular Latin attacking paganism, instructing catechumens, and describing the end of the world with millenarian relish.
c. 460–470
Armenian
Agathangelos
The conversion of Armenia: Gregory the Illuminator kept thirteen years in a pit, the king Trdat driven mad and turned into a boar, the martyrdom of Hripsime and her companions, and the king healed and baptised with his whole nation.
c. 465–475
Coptic
Besa
Written by Shenoute's successor: the miracles, the journeys, the confrontations with officials, and an old man who could be heard arguing with God. It is frank about how frightening he was to live under.
c. 470
Latin
De Gratia
Faustus of Riez · c. 405 – c. 490
A monk of Lérins turned bishop argues against absolute predestination on one side and against Pelagius on the other: grace is necessary throughout, but the will makes a real beginning, and God's foreknowledge is not God's decree.
c. 470
Latin
De Statu Animae
Claudianus Mamertus · d. c. 474
An argument that the soul is wholly incorporeal, against Faustus of Riez, who had held that only God is truly bodiless and that everything created must have some kind of body. Written by a priest of Vienne with more Neoplatonism than anyone else in Gaul.
c. 460–500
Syriac
Anonymous
The life of the ascetic who spent nearly forty years on a pillar near Antioch, judging disputes, advising emperors, and preaching twice a day to the crowds below.
c. 460–480
Latin
Sidonius Apollinaris · c. 430 – c. 489
A Gallo-Roman aristocrat, son-in-law of an emperor, who became bishop of Clermont and led its defence against the Goths. The letters describe villa libraries, dinner parties, and a bath-house, and then a siege, a betrayal, and exile — the same voice throughout.
c. 476–483
Georgian
Iakob Tsurtaveli
An Armenian princess married to a Georgian prince who converts to Zoroastrianism to please the Persian king. She refuses to follow him, is beaten, dragged by the hair, and imprisoned for six years in a cell where she dies, attended by the priest who wrote this down.
c. 480–495
Latin
De Viris Illustribus
Gennadius of Massilia · d. c. 496
A continuation of Jerome's catalogue, adding about a hundred writers of the intervening century with a line or two on each and a verdict. Gennadius is a Gaul of the Lérins school, so Faustus is praised and Augustine handled coolly.
c. 484–489
Latin
Historia Persecutionis Africanae Provinciae
Victor of Vita
An African bishop's record of sixty years under Arian Vandal kings: churches confiscated, catholic clergy deported to the desert, a public debate rigged in advance, and the confessors of Tipasa whose tongues were cut out and who, Victor says, went on speaking.
c. 470–500
Syriac
Memre
Narsai · c. 399–c. 502
Metrical homilies from the school of Nisibis on creation, the incarnation, baptism, and the eucharist, in the Antiochene christological tradition.
c. 495–498
Latin
De Vita Contemplativa
Julianus Pomerius · d. c. 498
Three books for bishops rather than monks: whether a pastor may own property, how to preach, when to withhold the sacrament, and whether the contemplative life is possible for a man who spends his days on other people's business.
c. 450–550
Latin
Quicunque Vult
Anonymous
A long rhythmic confession of the Trinity and the incarnation, stating each proposition and its converse, and framed by warnings about the necessity of holding the catholic faith.
c. 500; attribution disputed
Latin
Anonymous
A Roman list of the canonical scriptures, the approved councils and fathers, and a long catalogue of books to be rejected as apocryphal.
c. 500; edited into the following centuries
Hebrew and Aramaic
Talmud Bavli
The academies of Sura and Pumbedita
The Mishnah with centuries of Babylonian debate wrapped around it, digressing without warning from a rule about a lost ox into medicine, dream interpretation, biography, or a story about God losing an argument to a majority of rabbis.
c. 480–521
Syriac
Jacob of Serugh · c. 451–521
Hundreds of long homilies in twelve-syllable metre, called the flute of the Holy Spirit, meditating on biblical scenes with unhurried imaginative sympathy.
c. 498–518
Greek
Zosimus
The decline of the empire from Augustus to 410, written by a pagan civil servant who says outright why it happened: Rome prospered while it kept the ancestral rites and collapsed once Constantine abolished them.
81–104 of 104 matching · 1780 in the Library