An early Christian house church at Dura Europos, in Syria (200s AD) Christian persecution pauses During the forty years between 261 AD and 303 AD, the Roman government did not officially persecute the Christians. The emperors were busy with the worst of the Crisis of the Third Century. Maybe they were following the example of [...]
February, in the Tres Riches Heures du Duc de Berry (1400s AD) Lent was originally a Germanic word for the season of Spring and the Anglo-Saxon word for the month we call March. The word "Lent" may come from older words meaning "longer days". That's because the days get longer in the spring. In the ancient and medieval worlds, Lent was [...]
The Roman emperor Constantine becomes a Christian - the first Christian emperor In 312 AD, the Great Persecution was still going on in the Eastern part of the Roman Empire (though not really in the West). But then Constantine became a Roman Emperor. He had had a vision which made him convert to Christianity. Constantine becomes a Christian As [...]
One of the earliest images of Jesus, from St. Callisto catacomb in Rome (ca. 250 AD) Around the time of the beginning of the Roman Empire, a new religion began among the Jews living in Israel: Christianity. People seem to have felt that these new governments - these big empires - needed bigger, more organized religions to stand up [...]
Egyptian caves where early monks and nuns lived The first Christian nuns, like the first Christian monks, lived in Africa - they lived alone in the desert in Egypt in the 300s and 400s AD, where they could be alone to pray all day. Like the men, they probably got the idea from earlier Buddhist nuns in India (many traders went back and forth [...]
