Brill Encyclopedia of Early Christianity Online

Caecilian (fl. c. 300–c. 325 CE) was bishop of Carthage in Africa Proconsularis (modern Tunisia) during a critical period in the early 4th century CE when his supporters and those of a succession of rival bishops split the Christian church and precipitated what came to be known as the Donatist schism (Donatism/Donatists). Nothing is known of Caecilian’s family background or early life. Notice of the first acts of his ecclesiastical career is found in two documents. They do not seem to be eyewitnesses or even contemporaries. One is the work of Optatus of Milevis ( Against Parmenian the Don…

Caesarea in Cappadocia (today Kayseri, Turkey) served as a major center of administration within the early Roman Empire following the consolidation of imperial rule there beginning in the late 1st century BC, when the local king Ariobarzanes I (95–63/62 BCE) became a Roman client, a situation which prevailed until 14 CE when the kingdom was annexed. Caesarea, previously known as Mazaka, would serve as a provincial capital from this period until the dissolution of the imperial provincial a…

Caesarea, founded by King Herod the Great in the years 22–10 BCE, served as a military stronghold, administrative capital, and main harbor for his vast kingdom of Judaea. He named it after his patron in Rome – Caesar Augustus. The harbor was likewise named σεβαστός (Gk for “Augustus”). A network of five paved Roman roads connected the city with its countryside and with other inland cities. During the circa 650 years of its existence under Roman regime, it was a prospering city.In 68 CE Vespasian was proclaimed emperor by his troops in Caesarea (Jos. Bell. 4.488–506). In 71 CE it became …

Caesaropapism is a term coined by I.H. Böhmer (d. 1749) to describe the subordination of the ecclesiastical power to a secular ruler, whether that be a king or (in the case of the early church) the emperor. It was contrasted by I.H. Böhmer with papocaesarism (the desire of the pope to set himself above secular rulers, especially in the West), and is frequently used to describe the reality of the post-Constantinian Church in the Christian East. Although the early church firmly rejected caesaropapism and instead espoused the ideal of symphonia (i.e. the harmony of church and state, e…

Nothing is known about Calcidius’ life (4th cent. CE); no ancient author mentions his name. Since he supports the divine inspiration of Moses and Genesis, alludes to Jesus’ birth, and speaks of the end of human life in apparently Christian terms, it is probable that he was a Christian. However, this is uncertain (Reydams-Schils, 2020; Ramelli, forthcoming) and did not significantly influence the philosophical outlook of his work, which is broadly Middle Platonist. He cites Origen, which supplies a terminus post quem, hence the general tendency to dating Calcidius before t…

The term Canaan has its roots in the Hebrew כנען/ knʿn and combines the Semitic root k-n-c with a common suffix –(a)n. The term translates into Greek as Χαναάν and into Latin as Canaan. Of the multiple ways to read the word “Canaan” in late antiquity this article focuses on three: Canaan as land, as a people, and as a person.LandScholars connect the name Canaan with the land of Kana'an, the general northwest Semitic name for this region. Canaan appears as KURki-na-ah-na in the Amarna letters (tablets from the 14th cent. BCE), and knʿn appears on coins from Phoenicia in the last half …

Candidus was a Christian teacher, active at the beginning of the 3rd century CE. Very little is known about him. The first explicit reference to Candidus is made by Jerome, who in his critique of Rufinus of Aquileia’s apology for Origen (Jer. Ruf. 2.18–19) indicates that there was a theological dispute, evidently at Athens, between Origen and Candidus, whom Jerome regarded as Valentinian. The written dialogue of the dispute, to which Jerome referred in his text, is no longer extant. Rufinus is also aware of the dispute, although he does not mention Candidus by name (Ruf. Adul. Orig. 7). Bo…

The accusations of cannibalism made against the early Christians have often been seen as a misunderstanding of the body and blood imagery of Jesus’ last supper (1 Cor 11; see John 6), employed in reference to continuing eucharistic meals. The remarkable use of such symbolism demands some reflection, but the obvious symbolic correspondence between sacrament and accusation may not be as important as it appears, since comparison with other ancient accusations (and of instances in quite diffe…

The Canon Muratori – or, more neutrally, the Muratorian Fragment – is a short yet incomplete Latin text about the New Testament books whose author is unknown. It owes its name to its discoverer, the Italian historian L.A. Muratori (1672–1750). He found it in Milan, in a manuscript (Cod. Ambr. 1.101, sup, fol. 10r–11r) of the second half of the 7th or the first half of the 8th century CE (Ferrari, 1989, 25). Perhaps due to the loss of some leaves in the manuscript, the text begins on the hedge of a recto, in the middle of a sentence. Accordingl…

The Canon Romanus is an anaphora (eucharistic prayer), intended to transform the bread and wine offered at a Mass into the body and blood of Jesus (Christ, Jesus, 01: Survey). Although it may have been composed as a single prayer, in written form it would normally be presented as a series of individual formulas. The boundaries of what marked the beginning and end of the Canon Romanus in the context of the Mass are unclearly demarcated in our earliest manuscripts, but it was chanted after the offertory (in which the bread and wine were ceremonially offered) …

The earliest Christian assemblies were localized and individuated. However, from the earliest times there was communication between them both at a local level and at a more distant level as Christian assemblies understood themselves as participating in a translocal movement. This was largely carried out by correspondence (thus we may note the letters of Dionysius of Corinth) and so we should not imagine, as Eusebius of Caesarea seems to think, that issues such as the new prophecy and the timing of Pascha were discussed in formal councils (Eus. Hist. eccl. 5.16.10; 5.23.2 ). Whether loc…

The Canons of Hippolytus is a “church order,” partly derived from the Traditio apostolica ( Apostolic Tradition [Traditio Apostolica]), though also containing additional material of independent origin. It thus discusses ordinations, catechumenate and baptism, ritual meals, and daily prayer (in reworking its source), and adds further discussion of the place of women, asceticism, the duties of the clergy, and the church's provision of poor relief.In following its source, the Canons of Hippolytus is largely faithful to the order of material, with the exception of o…

The system known today in English as the Eusebian Canon Tables (following the German “Kanontafeln”) is a paratextual apparatus designed by Eusebius of Caesarea to serve as a cross-referencing guide to the fourfold Gospel. It consists of three components. First, the text of each Gospel is marginally annotated with a series of numbers that demarcate discrete sections of text, beginning with the number one at the start of each narrative and continuing to the end, resulting in 355 sections for Matth…

Capernaum was a village on the northwest shore of the Sea of Galilee. Its name in Hebrew was Kefar Naḥum, that is, the village of Naḥum, if Naḥum was a personal name. There is no reason to connect this Naḥum with the prophet Naḥum. Other possibilities are that the name was derived from the root nhm (“consolation”), and thus village of consolation or from the root n`m, meaning “beauty” and thus the village of beauty. In non-Semitic languages, it is transliterated as one word, usually either as Capharnaum (Kapharnaoum) or Capernaum (Kapernaoum). In Flavius J…

The Cappadocian Fathers were prominent 4th-century CE Christian theologians and bishops, profoundly influenced by Origen: Basil of Caesarea (b. 329/c. 330, d. end 378 CE), Gregory of Nazianzus (Nazianzen, b. 329/c. 330, d. 389/390 CE in Arianzus), Gregory of Nyssa (Nyssen), younger than Basil by some years (on Gregory’s life, see Ramelli, 2007; Silvas, 2007) – and the Cappadocian mother Macrina the Younger, the eldest sister of Basil and Nyssen and founder and leader of a double house-mo…

Capreolus was the bishop of Carthage between 427 and 437 CE, and the successor of the bishop of Carthage Aurelius, who died between 429 and 430 CE. Capreolus was bishop during the Vandalic occupation of North Africa. The emperor Theodosius II summoned the Council of Ephesus in 431 CE (Ephesus, First Ecumenical Council). Because of Vandalic invasion, Capreolus refused to go to Ephesus and sent a deacon, called Bestula, as his representative to the council. Bestula read a letter written by…

Carmen de Sodoma (167 dactylic hexameters) and Carmen de Iona (105 dactylic hexameters) are two thematically related narrative poems that fall outside the canon of the biblical epic in late antiquity and appear in the manuscript tradition as works of Tertullian or of Cyprian of Carthage, although neither can be regarded as their true author for a variety of reasons, not least due to considerations of style (Peiper, 1891, xxviii). There is a good deal of uncertainty as to the poems' original titles…

This article adapts parts of the author’s profile of Carpocrates (Litwa, 2022, 212–219).Carpocrates was probably born in the late 1st century CE. His name means “master of the harvest,” and it was an epithet or alternative name of the Egyptian god Harpocrates, son of Isis and Osiris. Biographical data on Carpocrates comes from Clement of Alexandria ( Strom. 3.2.5.1–2). Carpocrates had a wife named Alexandreia. He also had a son, Epiphanes, whom he instructed in encyclical and Platonic studies. This teaching assumes that Carpocrates was himself comp…

The name Cataphrygians was given to the followers of Montanus, a name derived from the place where this movement originated, between Phrygia and Mysia, in the second half of the 2nd century CE (see Markschies, 2012, 1197–1199; Berruto Martone, 1999, 127–130). From the beginning, ancient Christian authors used the expression “the Phygrian heresy” (Eus. Hist. eccl. 5.16.1; 5.18.1; 6.20.3; Heresy/Heretical), or even more briefly “Phrygians” (Clem. Strom. 4.93.1; 7.108.2; Anonimus ap. Eus. Hist. eccl. 5.16.22), “according to the Phrygians” (Epiph. Haer. 48.1.1; 48.1.3; 49.1; in…

Catechesis (κατήχησις = catechesis, instruction; from κατηχεῖν = to teach or instruct orally) originally referred to any oral teaching, but in Christianity was applied exclusively to the instruction given to new Christians usually in connection with baptism. Latin adopted these Greek terms within an entirely Christian context to give catechizare, catechismus, catechumenus. Discerning the origin and development of early Christian catechesis is complicated by the application of these terms: is catechesis instruction that is only given to catech…

Biblical catenae (from Lat. catena, chain) are exegetical tools where the sacred text is accompanied by a continuous commentary made up entirely of excerpts from patristic authors (Patrology/Patristics). The biblical text (sometimes with hexaplaric readings incorporated in the margins or between the lines) is divided into units called biblical lemmata (which may extend over several modern verses, or simply consist of a single phrase); each lemma is commented on by a variable number of extrac…

Cathedra means the ministerial and honorary seat of a bishop for his liturgical duties in a church building. Its origin is closely related to the development of the episcopate, in which the bishop becomes the sole head of his jurisdiction, and the other clergy are subordinate to him. This process toward monepiscopacy may be considered largely complete in the 3rd century CE. By then the bishop was not only the head of the hierarchy, but also the teacher of the faith par excellence.The term cathedra is derived from the Ancient Greek verb καθησθαι/ kathèsthai, for “to sit.” As a noun, cat…

The identity of the Celsus who wrote the treatise Alêthês Logos, or the True Word, is blurred, among other things because his text is only known from Origen’s Contra Celsum, and because there were other famous persons by the name Celsus who have been confused with the author of Alêthês Logos.In Cels. 1.8, Origen says that he has heard about two Epicurean philosophers called Celsus. The first allegedly lived at the time of Nero (37–68), and the other at the time of Hadrian (r. 117–138). Origen thinks that it is the latter who wrote the treati…

The term “Celtic liturgy” is used to refer to the early medieval liturgy in the Celtic-speaking lands; however, there was never a distinctive Celtic church, nor even uniform practice within the Celtic-speaking world of Ireland, Wales, Scotland, Brittany, and Gaul. Early Christians in the Celtic-speaking regions considered themselves to be members of the universal Catholic Church just as everyone else. In the early Middle Ages, there was regional variety in liturgy and ecclesiastical prac…

The study of cemeteries involves a wide set of aspects, ranging from geographical location, architecture, and how graves were made to grave goods, the manner of burial, and the analysis of the skeletons.Most researchers today agree that, between the end of the west Roman Empire and 1000 CE, an individual might be buried in diverse locations, either in or around towns and in the countryside. There was considerable topographical continuity with respect to previous Roman burial areas, which were located outside settlements (c…

Cerdo was a Christian teacher, generally held to be a gnostic (Gnosis/Gnosticism), who flourished at Rome in the time of Hyginus (136–140 CE), simultaneously with Valentinus the Gnostic and Marcion and somewhat earlier than Justin Martyr. If Cerdo committed anything in writing, nothing has been preserved of his texts. According to Epiphanius of Salamis ( Haer. 41.1.1) and Filastrius of Brescia ( Haer. 44), he was an immigrant from Syria. This information is uncertain, however, and may simply have its origin in Irenaeus of Lyon’s report according to whi…

Cerealis, Nicene bishop of an unknown see ( Castellensis), is the main character of an anti-homoian treatise entitled Disputatio Cerealis contra Maximinum. He is also typically presented as the author of the same text, although this is an unsubstantiated inference. The text, most likely an imaginary dialogue, specifies that the highly structured theological debate it pretends to record took place in Carthage, against an “Arian” bishop (Arianism), when a king was in power, hence the near-universal consensus to situate Cerealis’ Disputatio during the Vandal period (429–534 C…

As many other so-called heretics (Heresy/Heretical), Cerinthus is known to us only through writings of those Christian teachers who had nothing good to say about him. Furthermore, none of these critics was contemporary to this disputed figure of the early 2nd-century CE Christianity in Asia Minor. In retrospection of later centuries, Simon Magus (Acts 8:5–25) and Nicolaus (Acts 6:5; Rev 2:6; 2:14; 2:20–24) were considered the earliest enemies of orthodox Christianity, since they were kno…