Catholic priests celebrating Christian Mass The central Christian ritual The central part of Christian life in antiquity and the Middle Ages was the Christian Mass. That was when you went to church and the priest went through a [...]
Pieter Brueghel, Carnival (Mardi Gras) on the left and Lent on the right First there was Lent In the later Roman Empire, around 300 AD, people began fasting for Lent, for the forty [...]
Manichaean painting (Turfan, western China, ca. 900s AD) - Who were the Manichaeans? The prophet Mani in the Sassanian Empire In the 300s and 400s AD many Christians turned to believing in [...]
History of Lent: February, in the Tres Riches Heures du Duc de Berry (1400s AD) Why do we call it Lent? Lent was originally a Germanic word for the season of Spring [...]
John the Baptist baptizes Jesus (sarcophagus from Santa Maria Antiqua, Rome, 200s AD) Who was John the Baptist? John the Baptist was, according to the Bible, the cousin of Jesus Christ. He [...]
The birth of Jesus - a Nativity scene from a Roman sarcophagus, 300s AD. Arles, France - Life of Jesus How do we know about Jesus? Everything we know about [...]
Byzantine iconoclasm: an Icon of St. Nicholas (Russia) Byzantine iconoclasm By the early 700s AD, the Roman Empire had seen four hundred years of religious arguments about what or who Jesus Christ was. The Arians believed that [...]
Pope Gregory the Great writing, carved near Strasbourg, about 875 AD. That's under Charlemagne's grandchildren. The Holy Spirit (in the form of a dove) sits on his shoulder and dictates to [...]
The Gnostics - Books of Roman Gnostic writings from Nag Hammadi in Egypt (300s AD) When were the Gnostics? About the time of Jesus, about 100 BC-100 AD, people living in the Eastern [...]
Medieval excommunication ceremony What is excommunication? Excommunication was a Christian idea. It meant you could not take Communion anymore. Beginning in the Roman period, bishops or groups of bishops excommunicated people who were doing [...]
