On Christ and Antichrist


Book Description

Hippolytus of Rome (170–235) was the most important 3rd-century theologian in the Christian Church in Rome, where he was probably born. Photios I of Constantinople describes him in his Bibliotheca (cod. 121) as a disciple of Irenaeus, who was said to be a disciple of Polycarp, and from the context of this passage it is supposed that he suggested that Hippolytus himself so styled himself. However, this assertion is doubtful. He came into conflict with the popes of his time and seems to have headed a schismatic group as a rival Bishop of Rome. For that reason he is sometimes considered the first antipope. He opposed the Roman bishops who softened the penitential system to accommodate the large number of new pagan converts. However, he was very probably reconciled to the Church when he died as a martyr. Starting in the 4th century, various legends arose about him, identifying him as a priest of the Novatianist schism or as a soldier converted by Saint Lawrence. He has also been confused with another martyr of the same name. Ironically, it is Pius IV who identifies him as "Saint Hippolytus, Bishop of Pontus" who was martyred in the reign of Alexander Severus through his inscription on a statue found at the Church of St. Lawrence in Rome and kept at the Vatican as photographed and published in Brunsen.







St. Irenaeus


Book Description




The History of Byzantine and Eastern Canon Law to 1500


Book Description

Intro -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations -- 1. The Formation of Ecclesiastical Law in the Early Church -- 2. Sources of the Greek Canon Law to the Quinisext Council (691/2): Councils and Church Fathers -- 3. Byzantine Canon Law to 1100 -- 4. Byzantine Canon Law from the Twelfth to the Fifteenth Centuries -- 5. Sources of Canon Law in the Eastern Churches -- Index of Councils and Synods -- General Index.




When the Church Was Young


Book Description

If the word trinity isn’t in Scripture, why is it such an important part of our faith? And if the Bible can be interpreted in many ways, how do we know what to make of it? And who decided what should be in the Bible anyway? The Church Fathers provide the answers. These brilliant, embattled, and sometimes eccentric men defined the biblical canon, hammered out the Creed, and gave us our understanding of sacraments and salvation. It is they who preserved for us the rich legacy of the early Church. D’Ambrosio dusts off the dry theology and brings you the exciting stories and great heroes such as Ambrose, Augustine, Basil, Athanasius, Chrysostom, and Jerome. This page-turner will inspire and challenge you with the lives and insights of these seminal teachers from when the Church was young.




Homilies on Numbers


Book Description

Origen was one of the most influential pre-Nicene church fathers, whose exegetical method shaped much of subsequent interpretation of the Old Testament. Some of his theological speculations were condemned in the 6th cenutry, but his influence as a Christian scholar and Old Testament exegete remain undiminished. This book offers a fresh, contemporary translation of Origen's 28 homilies on the book of Numbers.







The Saint's Saints


Book Description

The Saint's Saints presents Jerome’s world picture as seen through his saints’ Lives. It analyses both his rhetoric and his descriptions of realia, and the way he combines classical, Christian and Jewish sources to re-write the biblical Holy Land as a new and Christian world for his readers. Susan Weingarten looks at how Jerome dovetails his literary sources with his experience of the material world of the fourth century to write the Lives of the saints Paul, Hilarion, Malchus and Paula, effectively using them to write the Life of Saint Jerome. This is the first full-length study of Jerome’s saints’ Lives. It widens the on-going debate about mutual influences in Jewish and Christian literature in the fourth century, and revises our picture of the historical geography of Palestine.