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.
1–100
1 work
c. 90–125; survives in fragments
Greek
Kerygma Petrou
Attributed to Peter
A missionary sermon in Peter's name, preserved in a handful of quotations by Clement of Alexandria. It sets Christians apart as a third people who worship neither as the Greeks, who serve wood and stone, nor as the Jews, who serve angels and months and moons.
301–400
1 work
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.
401–500
2 works
c. 443–450
Greek
Sozomen · c. 400–c. 450
A parallel history covering much the same period as Socrates, with far more attention to monasticism and to the conversion of peoples beyond the empire.
c. 450–460
Latin
Confessio
Patrick · 5th century
A defence written in awkward, unschooled Latin by a former slave who returned to convert the people who had kidnapped him, answering British churchmen who questioned his fitness.
501–600
4 works
c. 570–579
Latin
Formula Vitae Honestae
Martin of Braga · c. 520 – 579
A short handbook of the four cardinal virtues for a Suevic king, drawn almost entirely from Seneca and containing not one scriptural quotation or Christian doctrine — written by a bishop, for a recent convert, as the way in.
c. 585–588
Syriac
John of Ephesus · c. 507 – c. 588
Church history by a bishop who was both Justinian's missionary to the pagans of Asia Minor — he claims seventy thousand baptisms — and a Miaphysite imprisoned under a later emperor. The third part was written in confinement and says so.
c. 590–600
Latin
Columbanus · c. 543–615
A severe Irish rule for the monasteries he founded across Gaul and Italy, paired with a penitential assigning a specific penance to each named sin.
590–604
Latin
Gregory the Great · c. 540–604
Over eight hundred surviving letters administering the estates of the Roman church, negotiating with Lombards, and instructing the mission he sent to England.
601–700
2 works
c. 635–641
Chinese
Alopen and the Church of the East mission
The gospel explained to a Tang audience in Buddhist and Daoist vocabulary: God is the Emperor of Heaven, the Messiah is born of the Cool Breeze upon a chosen woman, and the duties owed are to God, to the emperor, and to one's parents, in that order.
c. 673–684
Latin
Vita Eligii
Audoin of Rouen · c. 609 – 684
The life of a goldsmith who made the Merovingian royal shrines, became a bishop, and preached to Flemish peasants against Thursday observance, herbal charms, shouting at eclipses, and dancing at the solstice — the sermon lists what he was up against in detail.
701–800
9 works
c. 703–728
Latin
Willibrord and his circle · c. 658–739
A working liturgical calendar from a missionary bishop's own book, with a marginal note in his hand recording the year of his consecration.
c. 720–730
Latin
Pirmin · d. 753
A short handbook of the faith for missionaries working among recently converted Germanic peoples, running from creation to judgement and listing forbidden pagan customs.
c. 716–754
Latin
Boniface · c. 675–754
The correspondence of an English missionary among the Germans — requests for books and warm clothing, appeals to Rome, complaints about wandering bishops, and letters to and from abbesses at home.
731
Latin
Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum
The Venerable Bede · c. 673–735
The conversion of the English told from Roman Britain to Bede's own day, with named sources, dated events, and a monk's eye for the moment a king's council decides the fate of a people.
c. 760–768
Latin
Willibald · 8th century
The career of the missionary from Devon who felled the oak of Thor at Geismar, reorganised the Frankish church, and was killed in Frisia holding a book over his head.
c. 780
Latin
Paul the Deacon · c. 720 – c. 799
The Lombard historian's life of the pope who had sent the mission to the English and negotiated with his own people. It carries the story of the dove at Gregory's ear dictating what he wrote, and the account of the slave boys in the Roman market.
c. 780–820
Syriac
Timothy I · c. 728–823
The correspondence of a patriarch in Baghdad appointing bishops for Tibet and China, hunting for manuscripts of Aristotle, and negotiating with the caliph's officials.
c. 796
Latin
Alcuin of York · c. 735 – 804
A prose life and a verse one of the Northumbrian who evangelised Frisia, written by his kinsman. Willibrord baptises in a spring on Heligoland, an island sacred to a god whose cattle nobody dared touch, and kills some of the cattle for food.
c. 780–804
Latin
Alcuin of York · c. 735 – 804
Some three hundred letters to kings, bishops, and former pupils. He tells Charlemagne that a people cannot be forced to faith and that tithes have destroyed the Saxon mission; he asks Lindisfarne after the Viking raid what safety there is if Cuthbert cannot defend his own church; and he asks a monastery what Ingeld has to do with Christ.
801–900
8 works
c. 825–840
Old Saxon
Anonymous
The gospel retold in alliterative Germanic verse for recently conquered Saxons: Christ as a liege-lord, the disciples as his warrior band, the nativity in a hall.
c. 836
Latin
Rudolf of Fulda · d. 865
The English abbess whom Boniface summoned to Germany, learned in scripture and canon law, consulted by bishops, and buried beside him at his own request.
c. 840
Syriac
Thomas of Marga · 9th century
A history of the great monastery of Beth Abhe and its abbots, full of anecdote about monks, demons, mission journeys, and quarrels over books.
begun 863
Old Church Slavonic
Constantine-Cyril and Methodius · Cyril, c. 826 – 869; Methodius, c. 815 – 885
The gospels, the psalter, the epistles, and the liturgy rendered into Slavonic in a purpose-built alphabet, for a mission to Moravia. Frankish clergy objected that God could be worshipped in three languages only; the brothers took the case to Rome and won.
c. 864–870
Latin
Christian of Stavelot
A teaching commentary that keeps breaking into the present: on the gospel being preached to all nations, Christian notes that the Bulgars have just been baptised, that the Khazars observe the law of Moses, and that the Danes are still to be reached.
c. 870–876
Latin
Rimbert · d. 888
The career of a missionary to Denmark and Sweden, including a shipwreck, a Viking raid that destroyed his church, and the calm return to start again.
c. 870–880
Old Church Slavonic
Anonymous
The life of the missionary called Cyril, who devised an alphabet for the Slavs, translated the liturgy, and defended vernacular worship against those who allowed only three sacred languages.
c. 885–890
Old Church Slavonic
Anonymous
The career of Cyril's brother, who continued the Slavonic mission in Moravia, was imprisoned by Frankish bishops, and translated most of the Bible before his death.
901–1000
3 works
c. 893–916
Old Church Slavonic
Clement of Ohrid · c. 840–916
Simple festal sermons written for newly converted Bulgarian congregations by a disciple of Cyril and Methodius who trained thousands of Slavonic clergy.
c. 967–968
Latin
Adalbert of Magdeburg · d. 981
A continuation of Regino's chronicle to 967 by a monk who had led a failed mission to the Rus and returned with nothing to show for it.
c. 999
Latin
John Canaparius · d. 1004
The bishop who twice abandoned his see in despair at his flock and was killed preaching to the Prussians, written within two years of his death.
1001–1100
2 works
c. 1044
Latin
Gerard of Csanád · c. 980–1046
A commentary on the song of the three young men, digressing constantly into complaints about pagan Hungarians, false teachers, and the state of learning on the frontier.
c. 1073–1076
Latin
Adam of Bremen · d. c. 1085
A history of the northern mission whose fourth book describes Scandinavia, the pagan temple at Uppsala, and lands to the west including Vinland.
1301–1400
1 work
c. 1396–1400
Old Church Slavonic
Epiphanius the Wise · c. 1350–c. 1420
The missionary who devised an alphabet for the Komi people, translated the liturgy into their language, and cut down their sacred birch — told in an ornate style of word-weaving.
1501–1600
7 works
1541
Spanish
Toribio de Benavente Motolinía · c. 1482–1569
An early friar's account of the conquest's aftermath — mass baptisms, epidemics, the destruction of temples — by a man the Nahuas named for his poverty.
1542–1552
Spanish
Francis Xavier · 1506–1552
Letters from India, the Moluccas, and Japan on baptisms, language difficulties, the failures of Portuguese colonists, and his plan to enter China.
c. 1547–1558
Spanish
Ignatius of Loyola · 1491–1556
A religious order without choir office, without a habit, and without enclosure, governed centrally and free to be sent anywhere in the world at short notice.
1564
Nahuatl
Coloquios y Doctrina Cristiana
Bernardino de Sahagún and Nahua elders
A reconstruction of the 1524 debates between the first friars and Aztec priests, giving the Nahua side space to argue that their gods gave them life and food.
c. 1545–1579
Nahuatl
Historia General de las Cosas de Nueva España
Bernardino de Sahagún and his Nahua collaborators · c. 1499–1590
Twelve books on Nahua religion, government, medicine, trade, and natural history, compiled from interviews with elders and written in Nahuatl by native scribes.
c. 1574–1581
Spanish
Diego Durán · c. 1537–1588
Aztec history and religion recorded from native accounts and painted books by a friar raised in Mexico who spoke Nahuatl from childhood.
1588
Latin
José de Acosta · 1540–1600
A manual of missionary method arguing that peoples differ in their capacities and customs and must be approached differently, and that force produces only pretence.
1–40 of 46 matching · 1780 in the Library