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A study of how John Cassian, a fifth-century Gallic author, tried to direct and reshape the development of Western monasticism. Richard J. Goodrich focuses on how Cassian's ascetic treatises were tailored to persuade a wealthy, aristocratic audience to adopt a more stringent, Christ-centred monastic life.

This book shows that Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy aims to affect the listener through the designs of its rhythmic sound. Blackwood explains how these metres are arranged as aural patterns with a therapeutic and even liturgical purpose.

This book ventures to describe Augustine of Hippo's understanding of demons, including the theology, angelology, and anthropology that contextualize it.

Covering the widest array of manuscript evidence to date, this book reconstructs the compositional and editorial practices by which Tatian the Assyrian wrote his Gospel.

This monograph provides the first book-length treatment of Jerome's opus Paulinum in any language.

David Lloyd Dusenbury provides the first monograph in English on the first Christian anthropology-a text which influenced ideas about human nature in the Byzantine and Islamicate worlds, and in Europe, well into the early modern period.

This study examines the acts of ancient church councils as the objects of textual practices, in their editorial shaping, and in their material conditions.

Through close literary analysis of the original Greek texts, Hazel Johannessen explores how Eusebius of Caesarea (c.260-339) used ideas about demons in his political thought.

This volume is a study of discourses on the resurrection of the dead, examining how early Christian writers developed key texts from the New Testament on the theme and showing that belief in resurrection became a marker of Christian identity.

This book examines the writings of an early sixth-century Christian mystical theologian who wrote under the name of a convert of the apostle Paul, Dionysius the Areopagite, and argues that the pseudonym and the corresponding influence of Paul are the crucial lens through which to read this influential corpus.

Irenaeus and Clement, writing at the end of the second century, offer us very different views of holiness from those that came to dominate the monastic ideal. This book examines in detail their philosophies of what it means to be a human being living in the presence of God.

Thecla, a disciple of the apostle Paul, became perhaps the most celebrated female saint and 'martyr' in the early church. Bringing together literary, artistic, and archaeological evidence, the author shows how the cult of Saint Thecla was especially popular among early Christian women.

A reconstruction of how Augustine, one of the most famous and productive theologians in the Western Church, used the Bible, based on information in his writings and surviving manuscripts. Includes a commentary on Augustine's text and exegesis of the Gospel according to John.

The study of "Arianism" has proved one of the abiding fascinations and abiding problems of early Christian studies. This book addresses the definition of the doctrine, and why it generated such intense social turmoil, examining the standpoint of one of its principal supporters, Eunomius of Cyzicus.

This book is the first publication of a very early set of Christian monastic rules from Roman Egypt, accompanied by four preliminary chapters discussing their historical and social context and their character as rules. These rules were found quoted in the writings of the great Egyptian monastic leader Shenoute.

Pelagius was at the centre of one of the most important controversies of the early Christian church. This is the first English translation of his commentary on Paul's Letter to the Romans.

This book is a study of the text and language of the earliest Latin versions of the four Gospels. In it the author seeks to cast new light on their origins, translation techniques, and value as a source for vulgar Latin.

John Damascene, one-time civil servant in the Umayyad Arab Empire, became a monk near Jerusalem in the eighth century. This book presents an account of John's life and work. It sets John's theological work in the context of the process of preserving, defining, defending, and celebrating the Christian faith of the early synods of the Church.

How did the early Church understand the relation between grace, salvation, and the person of Christ? Donald Fairbairn's persuasive study shows that, despite intense theological controversy, there was in fact a very strong consensus in the fifth century about what salvation was and who Christ needed to be in order to save people.

This study examines the sixth century formation of the Syrian Orthodox Church. Menze shows that the separation of the Syrian Orthodox Christians from Western Christianity occurred due to the divergent political interests of bishops and emperors. Discrimination and persecution forced the establishment of an independent church.

This study of the largest extant source for fifth-century Antiochene Christology conclusively demonstrates that its fundamental philosophical assumptions about the natures of God and humanity compelled the Antiochenes to assert that there are two subjects in the Incarnation: the Word himself and a distinct human personality.

Can humans know God? Eastern Orthodox theology affirms that we cannot know God in his essence, but may know him through his energies. Henny Fiska Hagg investigates the beginnings of Christian negative (apophatic) theology, focusing on Clement of Alexandria in the late second century.

The first translation into a modern language of an important patristic text, Gregory of Nyssa's treatise on the inscriptions of the Psalms. The book shows Gregory's indebtedness to classical culture as well as to Christian tradition, and compares his early understanding of the stages of the spiritual life with that in his later treatises.

Drawing on textual and rhetorical analysis, Peter Van Nuffelen proposes a major revaluation of The Histories Against the Pagans of Orosius, arguing that it is a much more subtle and complex text than usually assumed. Van Nuffelen uses Orosius as a lens to consider fourth- and fifth-century historiography.

Maximus the Confessor (580-662) was an important Byzantine thinker, the 'father of Byzantine theology'. This study describes his metaphysical world-view. The discussion covers Maximus' doctrine of creation, the Logos and the logoi, the cosmic order, the activities or energies of God, and how created beings may participate in God.

Deification was not only a pagan concept but a metaphor for a deeply Christian view of the purpose of human life. This is the first book on the subject for over sixty years. It brings together much recent research on the Church Fathers from the second to the seventh centuries, offering an analysis of their spiritual teaching and setting it within the context of the times.

Art, Craft, and Theology in Fourth-Century Christian Authors analyses Christian Greek literature in the fourth century in order to emphasise the style, ingenuity, and craftsmanship demonstrated by the authors of such texts. It considers the way these 'wordsmiths' used classical literature techniques to strengthen their theological writings.

This book examines the way Christians in Jerusalem prayed and how their prayer changed in the face of foreign invasions and the destruction of their places of worship.