The Library
1774 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.
1–100
1 work
c. 100 BC – AD 200
Greek
Anonymous
Genesis says Joseph married the daughter of an Egyptian priest and says nothing else. This fills the gap: Aseneth's seven days in sackcloth, the angel who gives her a honeycomb made by the bees of paradise, and her rebirth as a City of Refuge.
101–200
1 work
c. 195
Greek
Protrepticus
Clement of Alexandria · c. 150–c. 215
An invitation rather than a defence: the old myths are dismantled, and the new song of the Word is offered in their place to readers assumed to be cultivated and curious.
201–300
2 works
c. 246
Latin
Ad Donatum
Cyprian of Carthage · c. 210–258
A convert's account of his own change, set against a bleak survey of the world he left — the arena, the courts, the marriage market — written in the ornate style he soon abandoned.
c. 297–303
Latin
Adversus Nationes
Arnobius of Sicca · d. c. 330
Seven books by a recent convert, ridiculing pagan mythology in exhaustive detail while holding theological opinions the church would not have endorsed.
301–400
5 works
c. 334–337
Latin
Julius Firmicus Maternus
The longest astrological handbook to survive from antiquity: eight books on the houses, the aspects, and what each configuration produces in a life, written with real piety toward a cosmos in which the stars carry out the will of a supreme mind.
c. 357–363
Latin
Adversus Arium
Marius Victorinus · c. 290 – c. 364
A famous Roman rhetorician who converted late and publicly, writing Trinitarian theology in the language of Neoplatonic metaphysics: being, life, and understanding as one movement out and back, with the Son as the act by which what is at rest becomes what moves.
c. 363
Latin
Marius Victorinus · c. 290–c. 364
The work of an elderly and celebrated rhetorician whose late conversion caused a sensation in Rome, reading Paul with a Neoplatonist's philosophical vocabulary.
386–387
Latin
Soliloquia
Augustine of Hippo · 354–430
A dialogue between Augustine and his own reason, written at a country villa in the months between his conversion and his baptism, asking to know God and the soul and nothing more.
c. 397–400
Latin
Confessiones
Augustine of Hippo · 354–430
A life told as prayer: a restless African rhetorician traces his own thefts, ambitions, and long detour through Manichaeism and Neoplatonism, then turns in the final books to memory, time, and the opening verses of Genesis.
401–500
1 work
c. 460–470
Armenian
Agathangelos
The conversion of Armenia: Gregory the Illuminator kept thirteen years in a pit, the king Trdat driven mad and turned into a boar, the martyrdom of Hripsime and her companions, and the king healed and baptised with his whole nation.
501–600
1 work
c. 583–600
Latin
Leander of Seville · c. 534 – c. 600
A rule written for his own sister Florentina, closing with an unguarded page asking her to pray for him and grieving that their brother died before the conversion; and the sermon preached at Toledo when the Goths came over, which is pure jubilation.
1101–1200
1 work
c. 1113
Old Church Slavonic
Povest' vremennykh let
Attributed to Nestor the Chronicler · c. 1056–c. 1114
The history of the Rus from the flood to 1110, including the envoys sent to compare religions who reported that in Constantinople they did not know whether they were in heaven or on earth.
1201–1300
1 work
c. 1292–1298
Latin
Angela of Foligno · c. 1248–1309
A widow's account of thirty steps of conversion, dictated to a scribe who repeatedly admits he cannot render what she says and is frightened by it.
1501–1600
2 works
1555
Spanish
Luis de Granada · 1504–1588
Motives for turning to God and a rule of life for those who do, addressed to people fully occupied with business, marriage, and property.
dictated 1553–1555
Spanish
Acta
Ignatius of Loyola · 1491–1556
Dictated reluctantly in the third person: the cannonball at Pamplona, the convalescent reading, the year at Manresa, the pilgrimage, and repeated arrests by the Inquisition.
1601–1700
3 works
c. 1607–1633
Chinese
Xu Guangqi · 1562–1633
A senior Ming official's defence of Christianity as supplementing Confucianism and correcting Buddhism, alongside his translations of Euclid and works on agriculture.
1646, enlarged 1648
English
Richard Crashaw · c. 1612–1649
Baroque religious poetry of extravagant imagery on the tears of the Magdalene, the wounds of Christ, and the ecstasy of Teresa, by an English convert to Rome.
1682
English
John Bunyan · 1628–1688
The town of Mansoul is taken by Diabolus, recaptured by Emmanuel, and then infiltrated again — an allegory of conversion and of the relapse that follows it.
1701–1800
1 work
1746
English
Jonathan Edwards · 1703–1758
Written after the Great Awakening, when both the enthusiasts and their critics were claiming too much. Edwards sets out twelve signs distinguishing genuinely gracious affections from religious excitement, and refuses to make intensity itself the test.
1801–1900
1 work
1864
English
John Henry Newman · 1801–1890
Provoked by a public charge that he did not regard truth as a virtue, Newman answered with the history of his own religious opinions — the whole slow argument that carried him out of the Church of England and into Rome.
1901–2000
1 work
1948
English
Thomas Merton · 1915–1968
The conversion story of a rootless, clever young writer who moved between France, England, and New York, found his way into the Catholic Church, and then vanished into a Kentucky monastery of the strictest observance.
21 of 1774 works