Early Church History: AD 100 to 325

The generation that had known the apostles and then buried them. Ignatius on the way to his execution, Polycarp at the stake, and the first use of catholic.

Justin Martyr wrote to the emperor asking to be judged on conduct rather than on a name. What the apologists argued, and the trial transcript that survives.

Not a rival religion but a reinterpretation from inside, claiming to be the real Christianity. Marcion, Valentinus, Montanus, and what each one actually taught.

A bishop wrote five books because a friend asked how to answer the Valentinians. The three public answers he gave, and the one argument he got badly wrong.

The man who gave the West its trinitarian vocabulary and then left the church, a prison diary by a young mother, and the most brilliant scholar of the age.

The edict was a loyalty oath, not an anti-Christian measure, and it lasted eighteen months. The fight over what to do with those who broke lasted far longer.

Forty years of open growth, then the worst persecution the church faced. It ended with an exhausted emperor conceding the policy failed, and a lasting schism.

Two accounts of the vision that do not match, one contested Greek word, and a council that settled less than people think. What Nicaea decided and left open.