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"Jesus never existed." "The Bible is a book of fairy tales.""Accounts of Christian persecution are fables."Christians of today face accusations of this type on a regular basis. These charges gain traction in the modern world because the average person has practically no knowledge of the Church's ancient past. I Am A Christian: Authentic Accounts of Christian Martyrdom and Persecution from the Ancient Sources aims to remedy this deficiency by providing a collection of the earliest and most trustworthy eye-witness accounts from Roman antiquity. When Christianity began to spread throughout the Roman world, an insatiable demand erupted for literature relating to Christ, the Apostles and the earliest saints. Fascinated by their new faith, the catechumens wanted details about their predecessors who had suffered and died decades or centuries before. To obtain this information, legal records-which the Romans meticulously kept -were investigated. In several cases, the transcripts of the actual trials of the martyrs were discovered and included within the written acts and deeds of the saints. It is these types of records which form the core of this book.The works collected in this little book are especially valuable because they are survivors. During the last great Roman persecution in the early 4th century AD, the emperor Diocletian decreed that all Christian literature be burned-Sacred Scripture, theological works, lives of the saints, everything. What remains to us are the relatively few ancient works that slipped through the persecutor's grasp. These include numerous obscure but fascinating works that even the most informed Christians know little about, such as the Apology and Acts of Apollonius, the passion of Saint Saturninus, the poems of Prudentius, the epitaphs of Damasus, and many, many others.Taken together, these works form a glorious record of early Christian zeal and fortitude in the face of aggressive state persecution. When reading them, one notices a common refrain: when questioned, the accused would cry out: "I am a Christian," which was the equivalent of saying, "I am guilty as charged." In an era when such an admission carried a death sentence, these authentic testimonies provide a convincing answer to the modern skeptics who will find them as baffling as did the ancient Roman emperors, proconsuls and magistrates of nearly two millennia ago.

Three hundred and thirty-two years after her death, Kateri Tekakwitha has become recognized as a saint of the Catholic Church. Read about her extraordinary life through the eyes of someone who actually knew her: Fr. Pierre Cholonec, one of the two main biographers of St. Kateri. Father Cholonec's account of Kateri's life, as presented in this book, helped solidify her name and reputation within the Catholic world and began the process that would culminate with her canonization in October of 2012. This new edition of Fr. Cholonec's abridged biography, written in 1715, brings the courageous and endearing story of the Lily of the Mohawks out of hard-to-find academic texts to modern readers. Also included in this volume as an addendum to the biography of St. Kateri is Fr. Cholonec's heartwrenching and fascinating account of the Iroquois martyrs, the friends and neighbors of St. Kateri who preferred to die by torture than to give up their hard-won faith.

The year is AD 504. The all-powerfulRoman Empire lies in tatters, its western provinces dismembered into a patchwork of new kingdoms ruled by barbarians. Britain has been abandoned by the Romans for almost 100 years. Gaul, conquered by Caesar, is ruled by a Frankish king. Spain, which produced the Roman emperors Trajan and Theodosius the Great is now the seat of the Visigoths. North Africa, birthplace of St. Augustine, groans under the overlordship of the Vandals. Even Italy and the Eternal City of Rome herself are under the rule of a powerful Ostrogothic king.In Constantinople, the New Rome, the Eastern Roman emperor is beset by problems. New and dangerous barbarian hordes appear on the frontier year after year. The powerful king of Persia demands tribute and threatens Roman Mesopotamia and Syria. Religious controversies spawn catastrophic military uprisings.But unbeknownst to all, in that same year was born Belisarius, the greatest Roman general of them all. At a time when Roman power was thought to be practically extinct, Belisarius did what no sane Roman thought possible. He went toe-to-toe with the empire's most powerful enemies.