Local, provincial, or ecumenical councils offered rare opportunities for bishops and other clergy members to weigh in on normative practice and establish precedents for ecclesiastical polity. While it remains debatable whether councils were effective in prescribing (or proscribing) Christian conduct and beliefs – be they among the heady echelons of clergy members or among the vast majority of laypeople – they nevertheless offer precious windows into which matters Christian leaders considered most urgent and immediate. Conciliar canons from late antiquity, and any historical period, resound with the bias and agenda of the dominant majority, and so treating them as windows through which modern readers can see what religious life was like “on the ground” for everyday Christians is problematic at best. By design, the canons convey the voice of the victors, so figuring out objections to them can be a challenge – and we can be sure that alternatives to the conciliar decisions existed. What conciliar canons do provide, then, is an indication of debates that raged among Christian groups in particular localities – debates about theology, clerical authority, communal organization and identity, ritual performance, and ascetic behavior.

Here is another text that witnesses to the early period of the island monastery of Lérins. Its author, Faustus, succeeded Maximus twice, first as abbot of Lérins and then as bishop of Riez. For his part, Maximus became the abbot after the monastery’s founder, Honoratus, was appointed bishop of Arles in 427 or 428. Maximus served as abbot until 433 or 434, when he became bishop of Riez. Faustus then replaced Maximus as abbot of Lérins, and when Maximus died sometime between 457 and 461, Faustus replaced him again, this time as bishop of Riez. Shortly after Maximus’ death, Faustus preached a homily to the church of Riez that stressed how the monastic virtues Maximus acquired at Lérins were a providential training for his pastoral ministry as bishop of Riez. In fact, Maximus was but one of several Lérinian monks installed as bishops in the 420s and 430s: besides Honoratus becoming bishop of Arles, also Hilary was made bishop of Arles in 430 and Eucherius bishop of Lyons around 434. Of course, Faustus himself followed the same trajectory.

Emperor Theodosius II commissioned and published the Codex Theodosianus, or Theodosian Code, in 439. It is a large anthology of legal issuances and statements from as far back as the era of Constantine, sole ruler of the empire from 324 to 337, and the latest sources come from the time of Theodosius II himself. The selections translated here were, in their own times, written in different contexts and sent to different audiences. There are edicts, made for a more general audience and applicable to many; there are decrees, which arise from the adjudication of a specific case; and there are letters written to specific city, provincial, and imperial officials, containing orders from one or another emperor. Yet as parts of this anthology, they are presented as having equal weight and equal applicability; they are statements by emperors, which establish a precedent of law, presented in this “Code” and accessible to officials and judges for consultation.

In what follows, Tertullian offers his argument to Christians – those who participate in his “discipline” (disciplina) – about why they should not attend any of the public entertainment on offer in a typical late Roman city like his, Carthage. The “shows” he writes about include races at the track, theatrical productions, and gladiatorial contests, and he uses polemic, reason, and the imagination to convince his reader that all of them are hopelessly tied to idolatry.

Over the course of a tumultuous ecclesiastical career, John Chrysostom (ca. 349–407) put on many hats. He was a brilliant student of rhetoric and literature under the tutelage of Libanius of Antioch; he joined Diodore of Tarsus’ ascetic circle, which counted as a member Theodore of Mopsuestia, among others; he was appointed lector in 371 and then presbyter in 381 by Meletius of Antioch; and finally he was consecrated as bishop of Constantinople after the death of Nectarius (a target of Gregory of Nazianzus’ ire in Poem 2.1.12, “On Himself and Concerning the Bishops”). It was during his time as a presbyter in Antioch that he earned his gilded reputation for preaching, which Christians in the fifth century would encapsulate with the moniker “Chrysostom,” or Golden-Mouth. His sermons were known for their power and eloquence, but also for their confrontational tenor and furious hostility toward opponents (in this case, Jews and “Judaizing” Christians). John hoped that every member of his congregation would demonstrate the same zeal that he strived to embody every day.

The perspective and content of this poem are best understood in light of its author’s career. The poem was likely written in late 381 or early 382, months after Gregory had returned to Cappadocia from a twenty-month stint in Constantinople. He had been sent to the imperial capital, in all likelihood, by bishops who gathered at Antioch in the autumn of 379; his action item was the establishment of a pro-Nicene community in a Homoian-dominated city. In 380, Emperor Theodosius arrived and, as the first pro-Nicene emperor in nearly two decades, he deposed the city’s Homoian bishop Demophilus, made Gregory Constantinople’s de facto bishop, and convened the Council of Constantinople in May 381. More than 150 bishops attended the council, over which Gregory briefly presided, and collectively they tackled issues both theological and practical. The success of the council, then, depended on him having a political tact and finesse that he simply did not have. After alienating allies and hardening the opposition from adversaries, Gregory resigned from both his presidency and episcopate, only to lambaste the bishops at the council after he settled back in Cappadocia.

We know precious few facts about the life of Maximus of Turin. He was not a native of Turin, as Maximus himself implies in Sermon 33, and his clerical status upon arrival in the town is unclear. Gennadius of Marseilles’s On Illustrious Men (late fifth century) notes that Maximus was a bishop of Turin and that he died during the period when the reigns of the western emperor Honorius and the eastern emperor Theodosius II overlapped – that is, sometime between 408 and 423. Gennadius also describes Maximus as a competent preacher able to fit his discourse to any occasion or any biblical text. Neither a terribly significant figure from late antiquity nor the most gifted orator of his era, Maximus left behind a collection of more than a hundred sermons that, collectively, offer a glimpse into a rural Christian community in northern Italy during the late fourth and early fifth centuries. Here Maximus testifies to the region’s theological diversity; both heretics generally and “Arian heretics” specifically lurk around his community, as do pagans and lukewarm Christians. Indeed, he frequently complains directly to his congregation that they should attend his sermons with greater frequency.

The son of a praetorian prefect, well-educated and well-connected, Ambrose was governor of Aemilia and Liguria when, in 374, he was unexpectedly acclaimed bishop of Milan, though he was not yet even baptized. He was an able administrator, a benefactor of the poor and builder of churches, an innovative liturgist who composed hymns still sung today, and an eloquent preacher who dazzled congregants with allegorizing expositions of the Old Testament that drew on Philo, Origen, and other Greek writers. Ambrose used scriptural tapestries of his own creation to persuade his hearers into following a particular course of action, a competency on display in this letter. Ambrose’s voluminous writings were an important conduit of Greek thought to the Latin West. Major works include On the Sacraments and On the Duties of the Clergy. He also wrote texts dedicated to scriptural exegesis and to the promotion of celibacy and asceticism, especially among women. His theological treatises, more synthetic than groundbreaking, challenged Homoian views of the Holy Spirit and the Incarnation.

Augustine was plunged into the Donatist controversy upon becoming bishop of Hippo in 395. In the wake of the Diocletianic persecutions in the early fourth century, the Donatists had split from the group whom Augustine called and considered “catholics” (i.e., “worldwide Christians”), creating a schism in the North African church that lasted for well over a century. The very nature of the church was in dispute: Donatists believed that the church must retain its purity and holiness, separating itself from sinners, whereas catholics maintained that the church could tolerate the presence of sinners as long as consent was not given to their sin. Donatists believed that catholics were implicated in the sin of those who lapsed in the Diocletianic persecutions by handing over the scriptures to imperial authorities; they believed that only by retaining its purity in this way could the church guard against catholic contagion. Furthermore, they regarded any sacrament administered by a cleric in a state of sin as invalid, and accordingly former catholics entering their communion had to be baptized (for the first time, in their view).

Among his many duties as bishop of Hippo in North Africa, Augustine (354–430) oversaw the reception of converts into the church. When newcomers to Christianity were ready to prepare for baptism, they were designated as catechumens. The catechumenate was a period of training, often lasting several years, in which newcomers learned how to live as Christians. At the beginning of each Lent, those catechumens who wished to be baptized at the upcoming Easter would submit their names and thereby formally become “petitioners” (competentes). During Lent the petitioners engaged in a number of ascetical and ritual practices designed to complete their initiation into the Christian way of life. These included fasting, undergoing periodic exorcisms, and receiving special instruction from the bishop by listening to sermons that covered a broad range of Christian doctrine and practice. Two weeks before Easter, petitioners participated in a ceremony known as the traditio symboli, the “handing over” of the creed. At this ceremony the bishop formally recited the creed, with the expectation that afterward the petitioners would memorize it. There was a similar ceremony that “handed over” the Lord’s prayer (traditio orationis). At the Easter Vigil, the petitioners would “hand back” the creed (redditio symboli) and the Lord’s prayer (redditio orationis) by reciting them before the congregation and fully participate in the Eucharistic liturgy for the first time, in the course of which they received the sacraments of initiation: baptism, chrismation, and Eucharist. During the Easter octave – the eight days from Easter Sunday to the following Sunday, counting inclusively – the newly baptized, whom Augustine called “newborns,” would attend sermons that unpacked the meaning of the sacraments they had just experienced and received at the Easter Vigil.

What little we know about the Latin author Commodian comes directly from his own poems – the Instructions and the Apologetic Poem (also known as the Poem about Two Peoples). Gennadius (On Illustrious Men 15) mentions him but relies on Commodian’s poems just as we do. Commodian was most likely writing in North Africa, probably Carthage, in the third quarter of the third century. He has a deep affinity for and familiarity with Cyprian, and was likely a direct contemporary, though it appears he himself never held ecclesial office. Commodian seems to have been a layperson whose own journey from “frequenting the [pagan] temples” (1, 1.5) to becoming a “Law-inspired” – that is, “scripture-inspired” – Christian (1, 1.6) prompted him to make his own efforts to influence his various communities in Carthage. It seems likely that he identified as ethnically Syrian (hence the final poem’s title, where the author of the Instructions identifies himself as “the man from Gaza”), and that, prior to his time in Carthage, he spent substantial formative years in Aquileia.

Gregory of Nazianzus (ca. 330–390) was one of the famous “Cappadocian Fathers” (along with Basil of Caesarea and Gregory of Nyssa). Gregory was not only an important ecclesiastical leader – indeed, he acted as bishop of several cities and briefly presided over the second Council of Constantinople in 381 – but also an innovative theologian. His understanding of the Trinity helped to articulate and publicize pro-Nicene theology in the 370s and 380s, and his Christological ideas had enduring effects on later Christian thought. Perhaps the most underappreciated aspect of Gregory was his literary genius. Highly trained in classical texts, he was an accomplished epistolographer (more than 240 of his letters survive) and poet (nearly 20,000 lines of his verse survive).

Thascius Caecilianus Cyprianus – better known to history as Cyprian – converted to Christianity around 246 after a successful secular career as a rhetorician. Soon he was ordained to the priesthood and in 248 or 249 was consecrated as the bishop of Carthage. Not long after this, in late 249, the persecution of Emperor Decius broke out and Cyprian fled Carthage out of a concern that his church not be deprived of its bishop, as had recently happened in Rome and elsewhere. When the persecution ended in 251, in its wake there arose in Carthage and Rome several theological and pastoral problems, particularly over the readmission into the church of those who had lapsed in the persecution. Cyprian adopted a measured policy of readmitting the lapsed after a period of suitable repentance, and this policy was adopted also by Cornelius, the new bishop of Rome. He lays out this approach in On the Lapsed (De lapsis), written in 251. But laxists in Carthage, who supported the lenient readmission of the lapsed, and rigorists in Rome, who denied that readmission was even permissible, opposed the official policy, leading to schisms in both places.