Christian: Did you mean...?

Proclus of Athens (c. 412-485 CE) was a prolific Platonic philosopher whose main aim was the seemingly impossible task of defending traditional Greek polytheism at the time when his contemporary culture was almost completely dominated...

The stories that make up what is known today as Norse mythology once informed the religious beliefs of the people of regions including Scandinavia and Iceland. To the Norse, the world was an enchanted place...

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...

Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius (c. 477-524/525) was a scholar in Late Antiquity who was imprisoned and executed by Theodoric (r. 493-526 CE) but was later idolised by medieval intellectuals. His most famous work...

The Western Roman Empire is the modern-day term for the western half of the Roman Empire after it was divided in two by the emperor Diocletian (r. 284-305 CE) in c. 285/286 CE. The Romans themselves did not use this term...

Edessa (modern Urfa), located today in south-east Turkey but once part of upper Mesopotamia on the frontier of the Syrian desert, was an important city throughout antiquity and the Middle Ages. A city within the Seleucid Empire, then...

The Council of Chalcedon was called in 451 CE by the Roman Emperor Marcian (r. 450-457) to settle debates regarding the nature (hypostases, "reality") of Christ that had begun at two earlier meetings in Ephesus (431 CE and...

The book of Revelation or the Apocalypse of John of Patmos is one of the most famous books in the New Testament. Written near the end of the 1st century CE, it is the only apokalypsis (Greek: "unveiling of unseen realities"...

Saint Patrick (5th century) is the best-known patron saint of Ireland and one of the most successful Christian missionaries in history. He is credited with expanding literacy in Ireland through the monastic orders he established...

In the 2nd century CE, as Christianity was in the process of becoming an independent religion, a body of literature emerged that scholars classify as apocrypha and pseudepigrapha. Apocrypha (Greek: apokryptein, "to...