The Library
1693 works catalogued century by century, from the literature the Bible was written among to the present — each with a note on what it is, why it lasted, and where to read it.
401–500
104 works
397–426
Latin
De Doctrina Christiana
Augustine of Hippo · 354–430
How to read the Bible and how to preach it: signs and things, the rule of love as the test of any interpretation, and a final book on using classical rhetoric without being used by it.
426
Latin
De Gratia et Libero Arbitrio
Augustine of Hippo · 354 – 430
Written for monks at Hadrumetum who had read Augustine on grace and concluded that correction was pointless, since nothing they did was theirs. He answers that scripture plainly commands and plainly promises, so both the will and the grace that moves it must be real, and that God crowns his own gifts in us.
413–426
Latin
De Civitate Dei
Augustine of Hippo · 354–430
Begun after Rome fell in 410 and pagans blamed the Christians. Augustine answers with a history of two cities founded on two loves — one on love of God to the contempt of self, the other on love of self to the contempt of God — running intermingled to the end of the age.
426–427
Latin
Retractationes
Augustine of Hippo · 354–430
A review of his own ninety-three books in order of composition, correcting what he now thought wrong and explaining what he had meant.
c. 425–429
Greek
Cyril of Alexandria · c. 376–444
A vast doctrinal commentary reading the fourth gospel as a sustained demonstration of the Word made flesh, with heavy emphasis on the eucharist as the flesh that gives life.
c. 427–428
Latin
De Laude Eremi
Eucherius of Lyons · c. 380 – c. 449
A letter to Hilary of Arles arguing that the wilderness is not empty but furnished — God met Moses in it, fed Israel in it, and sent his own Son into it — and that the island monasteries of Lérins are its western equivalent.
c. 426–429
Latin
Collationes
John Cassian · c. 360–435
Twenty-four conversations with the elders of Egypt on the goal of monastic life, discernment, unceasing prayer, and the way the mind wanders even at prayer.
428–429
Latin
De Dono Perseverantiae
Augustine of Hippo · 354 – 430
The last thing Augustine finished. Even holding on to the end is a gift, not an achievement — which means no one can know they have it, and the church prays for perseverance precisely because it cannot be secured. Answering monks in Gaul who said this made preaching pointless, he replies that preaching is one of the means by which the gift is given.
429
Greek
Proclus of Constantinople · d. 446
Preached in the Great Church with Nestorius sitting in the congregation, and deliberately: a cascade of titles for Mary as Theotokos, the loom on which the robe of union was woven, the bridge from God to men. Nestorius rose and answered it from the same pulpit.
428–429
Latin
Augustine of Hippo · 354–430
A late work written for monks in Gaul, arguing that even the beginning of faith is God's gift and not a human contribution that God then rewards.
c. 400–430
Greek
Nilus of Ancyra · d. c. 430
Over a thousand short letters to monks, officials, and bishops, most only a few lines: what to do about a brother who talks in chapel, why an official should not decorate a church he oppresses a province to pay for, how to read a psalm.
430
Greek
Cyril of Alexandria · c. 376–444
Twelve propositions appended to a letter to Nestorius, each condemning a way of dividing Christ, and demanding subscription.
c. 410–435
Armenian
Mesrop Mashtots, Sahak, and their pupils
Made within a generation of the invention of the Armenian alphabet, and made for that purpose. Begun from Syriac, then revised against Greek manuscripts brought back from Constantinople and Alexandria after Ephesus.
c. 425–450
Latin
Carmen Paschale
Sedulius
The gospel story retold in five books of Virgilian hexameters, with the miracles of Christ set against the wonders of the Old Testament.
c. 425–440
Greek
Mark the Monk
Two hundred short sentences on how the law works inside a person, insisting against one party that baptism gives everything and against another that nothing is received without being worked out — grace is complete and hidden, and is uncovered by keeping the commandments.
c. 400–450 in its standard form
Syriac
Anonymous
The standard Syriac Bible, its Old Testament translated directly from Hebrew and its New Testament settled in the fifth century, replacing the Diatessaron.
431
Greek
The Council of Ephesus
The record of a council that opened before the Syrian bishops had arrived, deposed Nestorius in a single day, and was then countered by a rival council that deposed Cyril. Eight canons, the reading of Cyril's second letter into the record, and the crowd of Ephesus escorting the bishops home by torchlight.
434
Latin
Vincent of Lérins · d. c. 445
How to tell catholic truth from novelty: hold what has been believed everywhere, always, and by everyone — with a careful account of how doctrine may nevertheless grow.
414–442
Greek
Cyril of Alexandria · c. 376 – 444
Twenty-nine annual letters announcing the date of Easter and the beginning of the Lenten fast to the churches of Egypt, each expanding into a treatise — on fasting, on the incarnation, on why Jews and Greeks read the same signs differently.
c. 437
Greek
Theodoret of Cyrus · c. 393 – c. 460
Twelve books answering pagan objections a century after the temples closed, quoting some three hundred and forty pagan authors — many of them now lost apart from these pages — and asking why, if the philosophers were right, it is the fishermen's teaching that has filled the world.
c. 438
Greek
Cyril of Alexandria · c. 376–444
A late dialogue restating the case that the one who was born, suffered, and died is the eternal Word himself and not a man joined to him.
c. 439
Greek
Socrates Scholasticus · c. 380–c. 439
A continuation of Eusebius from Constantine to 439 by a Constantinopolitan lawyer, unusually willing to quote documents and to criticise bishops.
c. 433–450
Latin
Peter Chrysologus · c. 380–c. 450
Around a hundred and eighty very short sermons from Ravenna, built on antithesis and wordplay, and rarely longer than a few minutes to deliver.
c. 435–441
Greek
Contra Iulianum
Cyril of Alexandria · c. 376 – 444
A reply to the emperor Julian's Against the Galileans, written eighty years after the fact because the book was still circulating and still doing damage. Cyril quotes Julian at length, section by section, before answering.
c. 443
Armenian
Koriun
A pupil's account of the man who invented the Armenian alphabet: the years of searching, the vision of a hand writing on stone, the first sentence set down — to know wisdom and instruction — and then the schools, the translations, and an alphabet made for Georgian and Caucasian Albanian as well.
c. 444
Greek
Theodoret of Cyrus · c. 393–c. 460
Thirty portraits of Syrian ascetics the author knew personally, including Symeon on his pillar, described without embarrassment and with considerable affection.
c. 441–449
Armenian
On God
Eznik of Kolb
Four books against pagan fatalism, Zoroastrian dualism, Greek philosophy, and Marcion, by a translator who had studied at Edessa and Constantinople. The section on Zurvanism is a straight description of Persian religion from someone living under Persian rule.
c. 440–450
Latin
De Gubernatione Dei
Salvian of Marseilles · c. 400–c. 490
An argument that the barbarians are overrunning the empire because Roman Christians are more corrupt than the pagans they despise, with the taxes and the arena as evidence.
c. 443–450
Greek
Sozomen · c. 400–c. 450
A parallel history covering much the same period as Socrates, with far more attention to monasticism and to the conversion of peoples beyond the empire.
c. 445–450
Latin
Quodvultdeus · d. c. 454
Written in exile at Naples by the bishop of Carthage, expelled when the Vandals took the city. It runs through scripture as a series of promises made and kept, and reads the catastrophe that has just happened to his own church as one more chapter rather than as the end.
447
Greek
Theodoret of Cyrus · c. 393–c. 460
Three dialogues against the view that Christ's humanity was absorbed into his divinity, arguing that the Word remained unchangeable and impassible while genuinely human.
449
Latin
Leo the Great · c. 400–461
A letter to the bishop of Constantinople setting out in plain Latin that Christ is one person in whom two natures each act according to their own character.
c. 450–460
Latin
Confessio
Patrick · 5th century
A defence written in awkward, unschooled Latin by a former slave who returned to convert the people who had kidnapped him, answering British churchmen who questioned his fitness.
c. 449–450
Greek
Theodoret of Cyrus · c. 393–c. 460
A history from Arius to 428 written from the Antiochene side, preserving many letters and conciliar documents in full.
c. 400–500; several recensions
Greek and Syriac
Transitus Mariae
Anonymous
The apostles are carried on clouds from wherever they are preaching to Mary's bedside in Jerusalem. She dies without pain, her soul is received by her Son, and the body is taken up before it can be buried — in some versions after a hostile bystander's hands are severed at the bier.
c. 5th century
Greek, surviving in Syriac
Testamentum Domini
Anonymous
A church order framed as the risen Christ's own instructions to the apostles before the ascension, prescribing the shape of the building, the ordination prayers, the conduct of widows, and a full eucharistic rite.
c. 385–465
Coptic
Shenoute of Atripe · c. 348 – c. 465
The vast output of the abbot of the White Monastery, who ruled thousands of monks and nuns for eight decades: sermons against pagan landowners and their household shrines, letters disciplining his own communities, and rules enforced by beating.
440–461
Latin
Leo the Great · c. 400–461
Ninety-six short sermons for the feasts and fasts of the Roman year, in a compressed and balanced Latin built for oral delivery.
c. 5th century; older material within it
Greek
The church of Jerusalem
The eucharistic rite of Jerusalem, with the fullest of all ancient anaphoras: a long thanksgiving over creation, the Sanctus, the words of institution, and an explicit invocation of the Spirit on the gifts. It contains the hymn Let all mortal flesh keep silence.
c. 400–500
Hebrew and Aramaic
The academies of Galilee
Thirty-seven homiletic units on Leviticus, each built outward from a verse elsewhere in scripture and arriving at the reading by a long route. It is preaching rather than commentary, and much of it is about poverty, charity, and the body.
41–80 of 104 matching · 1693 in the Library