Edict of Thessalonica: Did you mean...?

Emerging from a small sect of Judaism in the 1st century CE, early Christianity absorbed many of the shared religious, cultural, and intellectual traditions of the Greco-Roman world. In traditional histories of Western culture, the emergence...

Pliny the Younger's (61-112 CE) letter (Epistulae X.96) to Roman Emperor Trajan (r. 98-117 CE) is one of our earliest sources on Christianity from an outsider's point of view. It highlights the Christian movement's impact on the old Roman...

Angels in Christianity act as messengers of God, bring good news, and help believers. Their role developed from the function of angels in ancient Judaism but continued to evolve as Christianity became a separate religion. Jewish & Zoroastrian...

Although Huldrych Zwingli (l. 1483-1531) began his Reformation efforts in Zürich in 1519, his first break with the Church came in 1522 when he defended a group of citizens who had broken the Lenten fast by eating sausages. The event, known...

Whether there was a king, a consul, or an emperor that stood supreme over Rome and its territories, the one constant throughout Roman history was the family. Like many earlier societies, the family was the fundamental social unit in the eternal...

In 1204 CE the unthinkable happened and Constantinople, after nine centuries of withstanding all comers, was brutally sacked. Even more startling was the fact that the perpetrators were not any of the traditional enemies of the Byzantine...

Women in ancient Greece, outside of Sparta, had almost no rights and no political or legal power. Even so, some women broke through the social and cultural restrictions to make their mark on history. All of the women did so at great personal...

Paul was a member of the Jewish Pharisees in the 1st century CE, who experienced a revelation of the resurrected Jesus Christ. In this vision, Jesus commissioned him to be the apostle (herald) to the Gentiles (non-Jews). After this experience...

A map of the Roman Empire under Theodosius I “the Great” (reign 379–395 CE). His reign marked a decisive turning point in Roman imperial history, bringing together political reunification, religious transformation, and institutional strain...

Alexander the Great on Bucephalus, bronze equestrian monument by Evangelos Moustakas, photograph by Franco R. Batista Garcia, Thessaloniki, 10 September 2025. Following the assassination of Philip II of Macedon in October 336 BCE, his son...