Church history usually jumps from Acts to the Reformation, and the two centuries that decided what Christianity would actually be get a paragraph. This covers them properly: from the death of the last apostle to the first ecumenical council.
Twenty-nine events across eight sections. Every entry is marked as persecution and empire pressure, a church event, a writing or canon development, or a heresy and challenge, so the two halves can be read apart. The pattern that emerges is the point: pressure arrives, the church answers, and the answer is usually what we now call orthodoxy.
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Early Church Timeline, AD 100 to 325 · PDF
12 pages · 0.9 MB · US Letter
Free to print, copy and share for teaching, classroom and personal study. No signup, nothing to buy, and no attribution required. There is also an interactive version that is searchable and links every reference through to the text.
What is on the sheet?
29 events across 8 sections, carrying 45 chapter-and-verse references.
- IThe Sub-Apostolic Generationc. AD 100 – 130 · The men who knew the men who knew Jesus
- IIThe Apologistsc. AD 130 – 165 · The faith argues its case to the empire
- IIIThe Gnostic Crisis — Marcion, Valentinus, Montanusc. AD 140 – 180 · Not crude rejection but reinterpretation from within
- IVIrenaeus and the Orthodox Answerc. AD 177 – 200 · Canon, Rule of Faith, Succession
- VCarthage & Alexandriac. AD 195 – 254 · Tertullian, Clement, Perpetua, Origen
- VIThe Decian Crisis and the LapsedAD 249 – 260 · A loyalty oath that broke the church open
- VIIThe Long Peace & the Great PersecutionAD 260 – 311 · Forty quiet years, then Diocletian
- VIIIConstantine & the Road to NicaeaAD 312 – 325 · The era closes where Era III opens
Who is it for?
For anyone teaching a church history unit and needing the ante-Nicene period on one handout, and for readers who have met Irenaeus or Tertullian in a footnote and want to know where they sit.
How does it print?
It is laid out for US Letter at 12 pages, portrait, on a light background so it does not drink a toner cartridge. It prints cleanly in black and white, though the section colours carry meaning and are worth having in colour if you can. Every page footer carries the source, so a copy handed round a class can always be traced back.
