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.
101–200
1 work
177
Greek
The Churches of Lyons and Vienne
An account sent to the churches of Asia describing a local pogrom: the mob, the amphitheatre, the aged bishop Pothinus, and the slave Blandina, who outlasted her torturers.
301–400
1 work
c. 396–397
Latin
Vita Martini
Sulpicius Severus · c. 363–c. 425
The soldier who cut his cloak in half for a beggar, left the army because he was Christ's soldier and could not fight, and became a reluctant bishop of Tours.
401–500
3 works
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. 470
Latin
De Statu Animae
Claudianus Mamertus · d. c. 474
An argument that the soul is wholly incorporeal, against Faustus of Riez, who had held that only God is truly bodiless and that everything created must have some kind of body. Written by a priest of Vienne with more Neoplatonism than anyone else in Gaul.
c. 460–480
Latin
Sidonius Apollinaris · c. 430 – c. 489
A Gallo-Roman aristocrat, son-in-law of an emperor, who became bishop of Clermont and led its defence against the Goths. The letters describe villa libraries, dinner parties, and a bath-house, and then a siege, a betrayal, and exile — the same voice throughout.
501–600
5 works
c. 503–542
Latin
Caesarius of Arles · c. 470–542
Around two hundred and fifty short sermons in deliberately plain Latin, attacking drunkenness, sorcery, and the survival of pagan festivals among nominally Christian peasants.
c. 534
Latin
Regula ad Monachos
Caesarius of Arles · c. 470 – 542
A short rule for a men's community, notably milder than the one he wrote for his sister's nuns: no absolute enclosure, no punishment specified beyond correction, and a working day arranged around the office rather than the other way round.
c. 573–576
Latin
Vita Sancti Martini
Venantius Fortunatus · c. 530 – c. 609
Sulpicius Severus's prose life turned into two thousand two hundred lines of hexameter by an Italian poet who had come to Gaul after his own eyes were cured at Martin's shrine, and stayed.
c. 585–590
Latin
In Gloria Martyrum
Gregory of Tours · c. 538 – 594
A hundred and six short chapters on relics and what they did: oil that flowed, a candle that would not go out, thieves struck down, and a Jewish man who took an icon and was found out by the blood it wept.
c. 573–594
Latin
Decem Libri Historiarum
Gregory of Tours · c. 538–594
Ten books from creation to the author's own day, dominated by the murderous politics of the Merovingian royal family, told in a Latin the author apologises for.
601–700
1 work
c. 639–643
Latin
Jonas of Bobbio · 7th century
The life of the Irish founder of Luxeuil and Bobbio, written a generation later by a monk of his own house, including his quarrel with the Frankish court.
11 of 1774 works