The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, also known by the first word of its Greek title, the Didache, is a very ancient text, most likely contemporary with some of the books later included in the New Testament. Scholars typically date it to the latter half of the first century or the first half of the second century. Its author and place of origin are unknown, though some scholars associate it with Syria. The text, as we have it, is the end result of a complex process of redaction. Initially, the document was likely a compilation of various traditional sources deemed useful to introducing converts to a Jewish-Christian community’s way of life, which was then altered and expanded over time as community standards changed and developed. Its first part (1–6) is a prebaptismal catechesis composed of moral precepts derived from an independent and preexisting Jewish source known as the “Two Ways.” Its second (7–10) and third (11–15) parts are a collection of liturgical and disciplinary rules for the developing Christian community concerning baptism, fasting, prayer, the communal meal, traveling apostles, prophets, teachers, hospitality, reconciliation, communal leadership, and fraternal correction. The final part (15–16), whose ending is lost, describes the eschatological expectation that early Christians held.

There are many traditions about Patrick, the priest who was born in Roman Britain during the late fourth century and as a young boy came to live in Hibernia, now the modern island of Ireland. The text below survives in several manuscripts, the earliest from the seventh century, and it tells the story of Patrick’s life from his perspective. Though in the manuscript tradition it often bears the generic label of “letter,” it is also titled a Confession and, like the Confessions of Augustine of Hippo, justifies the narrator’s career to detractors, explaining how his work, however different from expectations, is still pious work, made possible by (and thus sanctioned by) the will of God.

Augustine of Hippo (354–430) was astonishingly prolific, writing sermons, letters, dialogues, a monastic rule, treatises on a variety of subjects, and works of scriptural exegesis, with Genesis and the Psalms being his special interests. Among his best-known works is the Confessions, which is sui generis in ancient literature: an autobiography laced with plaintive prayer, philosophical speculation, and raw self-examination. It relates a journey both spiritual and geographical, one that follows a path of lust and ambition toward conversion and baptism and from the North African countryside where Augustine was born to Carthage, Rome, and Milan, great cities of the western Roman Empire. Written in a gorgeous, protean Latin into which are woven myriad references to classical and biblical texts, the Confessions is a literary masterwork.

On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy is part of a corpus of Greek works by an unknown author in the late fifth or early sixth century. The author wrote under the pseudonym of Dionysius the Areopagite, who according to Acts 17:34 converted after hearing Paul’s preaching. The corpus was highly influential in the Byzantine tradition, its ideas influencing authors from Maximus the Confessor to Gregory Palamas. Through various translators, the most famous being John Scotus Eriugena, it also informed many medieval Latin theologians. It was cited in papal documents and excerpted in collections of sententiae, and no less a thinker than Thomas Aquinas wrote a commentary on the Dionysian text On the Divine Names. In 1457, the humanist Lorenzo Valla demonstrated that the corpus could not have been written by the Athenian convert Dionysius, and his views were disseminated by Erasmus. Still, the corpus contains a classic statement of mystical theology and continues to be read widely today.

Shenoute of Atripe (348–465) was the most important Egyptian monastic leader in late antiquity. He developed a formalized discipline with which he governed three monasteries (two for men, one for women) located in the village of Atripe, across the Nile River from the city Panopolis (modern Akhmim). Thanks to Shenoute’s leadership, these monastic complexes, collectively known as the White Monastery Federation, played a major role in the social, political, economic, and religious lives of people in the region (Christians and non-Christians alike) and would become the hub of Christian literary culture in Egypt well into the Arab period. Shenoute himself occasionally preached public sermons in his native Coptic tongue to large crowds consisting of monastics, clergy members, lay people, government officials, military professionals, and other local luminaries. In those moments, Shenoute repeatedly defined the moral contours of the Christian community by stridently and repeatedly lambasting any zdepravity he believed present among his hearers, such as exploitation of the poor by rich landowners, adultery, violation of monastic vows, theft, cultic veneration of pagan gods, and Origenist and eventually Chalcedonian heresy.