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Jerome (ca. 345–420), born Eusebius Hieronymus (perhaps as early as 333), was an outstanding translator, exegete, and theologian of the early church. He was the son of a well-to-do Christian family that owned property in Strido (near Emona, or modern Ljubljana, Slovenia). He was educated in Rome, and his teachers included, until 363, the famous grammarian Aelius Donatus (though not Marius Victorinus, neither does Jerome seem to have been closely acquainted with Ambrose in Rome; he did, however, …

Leo I (d. 461), known as Leo the Great, was pope beginning in the summer of 440. Not much is known about Leo’s early years. Suggestions that he was born in Tuscany remain improbable as long as other signs point to an urban Roman origin. Before becoming pope, he was (arch)deacon at the papal ¶ court, and as early as 440 Empress Galla Placidia entrusted him with a political mission to Gaul. Leo devoted a great deal of energy to his urban Roman congregation, particularly through his sermons, and encouraged the production of narrative and pictorial cyc…

[English version] Salamanes Hermeias (Σῳζομενός, Σαλαμάνης Ἑρμείας), wahrscheinlich in Bethelea bei Gaza (evtl. das h. Bait Lāhiyā) in einer begüterten christl. Familie geb. (vgl. Phot. cod. 30; Soz. 5,15,14). Geburts- und Todesdatum lassen sich nicht ermitteln. Der palaestinische, z. T. auch monastische Kontext seiner Jugend (Mönchtum) prägt noch seine zw. 439 und 450 n. Chr. verfaßte Ἐκκλησιαστικὴ ἱστορία/‘Kirchengeschichte (=‘K.; Soz. 1,1,19). Nach 425 arbeitete S. als Rechtsanwalt (Soz. 2,3,10) bzw. scholastikós (so Phot. l.c. und die Tite…

Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus (ca. 160–ca. 225) was an African church father who wrote primarily in Latin. Texts available for a reconstruction of Tertullian’s biography include, next to his own writings, accounts by Eusebius (ca. 260–ca. 340) and Jerome (ca. 345–420). It has been shown, however, that information from the fourth-century authors should not be used uncritically. From his own writings it appears that Tertullian’s father possibly was in the military, and one could add Jerome’s account that his father was a centurio proconsularis, thus a centurion in the cohors …

[English version] Geb. um 340 n. Chr., beendete zw. 360 und 363 nach seinem Übertritt zum christl. Glauben den Militärdienst (so jedenfalls Paul. Nol. epist. 18,7 mit detaillierter Beschreibung der Umstände) und wurde ca. 380/386 Bischof von Ratomagus (h. Rouen). Aus dieser Zeit sind Briefe des Paulinus [5] von Nola (epist. 18 und 37) und des röm. Bischofs Innocentius I. ([1. Bd. 1, 286]: ein liber regularum) an ihn erhalten. Schwerpunkt seiner Arbeit waren der Kampf gegen die homöische Reichskirchentheologie (Trinität III.; Arianismus), die Förderung des Mö…

[English version] I. Leben Theologe, gest. vor 450 n. Chr. V. von Lerinum (Lérins) starb vor 450 n. Chr., vielleicht um 435. Nach Gennadius (De viris illustribus 65) und Eucherius [3] (De laude heremi 42; Instructiones I, praef. p. 66,5 Wotke) wurde er in Nordfrankreich geb. und verfolgte einen profanen Lebenslauf, bevor er sich vor 427 als Priestermönch auf der kleineren der beiden Inseln Lerinum/Lérins vor Cannes niederließ (Saint-Honorat), die v. a. adligen Flüchtlingen aus Gallien als “Flüchtlingsklos…

[English Version] (sog. Kirchenordnung des Hippolyt, TradAp). 1910 bzw. 1916 entdeckten E. Schwartz und Richard Hugh Connolly, daß sich einige spätantike Kirchenordnungen als Bearb. bzw. Übers. einer (verlorenen) Grundschrift stemmatisch zuordnen lassen. Beide Forscher nahmen an, daß diese den Titel TradAp ( ᾿Αποστολικη` παρα´δοσις/apostolikē´ parádosis, »apostolische Überlieferung«) getragen habe und von Hippolyt vf. wurde. Diese doppelte Hypothese wird heute nur noch von einer Minderheit als zutreffend angenommen. Bestätigt hat sich dagegen die Annahme eines…

[German Version] Norms for the life and theology of Christian communities in the first century were primarily set by the two-Testament Bible, which had become a collection of authoritative texts, but also by church orders in the true sense, by the developing confession (of faith), initially set down in free formulations, and by theology, condensed into dogmas since the imperial councils of the 4th century (Nicea, Constantinople: IV). Naturally, after the demise o…

[German Version] Leontius of Jerusalem and other neo-Chalcedonians (Neo-Chalcedonism) use the Greek adjective ἐνυπόστατος/ enhypóstatos from Late Antiquity to describe their view that the dogma of the human and divine natures of Christ as articulated by the Council of Chalcedon (Christology) is not referring to independent hypostases or persons, and that instead each of the two natures exists “enhypostatically” in relation to the one person of Christ and to the one hypostasis of the Trinity in three hypostases (Leontius, Adversus Nestorianos II 13 [PG 86, 1561 …

[German Version] (Jul 31, 1788, Merseburg – May 31, 1843, Jena) studied classical philology and theology in Leipzig. After completing his habilitation in 1809 in the philosophical faculty there, he became associate professor of theology in 1812 and full professor of theology in 1817 in Jena. Baumgarten's erudition is demonstrated by his numerous articles on ancient philology and church h…

[German Version] I. The Term – II. Periods of the Early Church – III. The History of the Church and of Christianity in Antiquity – IV. Review I. The Term The term “early church” is one of the most common English expressions used to designate the church during the times of the emperors in Greco-Roman antiquity, i.e. the Christian church from its beginnings until the end of antiquity or Late Antiquity. The end of this …

[German Version] (also called the Church Order of Hippolytus). E. Schwartz (1910) and Richard Hugh Connolly (1916) discovered that a few Late Antique church orders could be treated stemmatically as editions or translations of a (lost) literary archetype. Both scholars theorized that it had the title (᾿Αποστολικὴ παράδοσις/ apostolikḗ parádosis, “Apostolic Tradition”) and had been written by Hippolytus. Today only a minority of scholars accept this double hypothesis. What has been confirmed is the hypothesis of a single archetype, probably in Greek, of these chur…

[German Version] (333/334, Trier – 397) was an important bishop and is regarded as one of the four teachers of the Western Church since the end of the 7th century. Ambrose was from a prominent family of Roman (city?) Christians; educated in Rome, he was the governor of Aemilia Liguria with a seat in Milan between 372 and 374. In 374, as the compromise candidat…

[German Version] The monastic theologians and bishops, Basil the Great, his brother Gregory of Nyssa and their friend Gregory of Nazianzus came from the province of Cappadocia in Asia Minor and spent most of their lives there. For this reason, they are often referred to by modern historians and theologians as “the three great Cappadocians.” A cousin of Gregory of Nazianzus and colleague of Basil, Amphilochius of Iconium, is sometimes added to their number. The t…

[German Version] I. Life – II. Works – III. Theology (c. 185/186 Alexandria – c. 253/254) I. Life In reconstructing the life of Origen, we must rely on information given by his grandson and pupil Eusebius of Caesarea ( Hist. eccl. VI 1–39). The relevant portions of the Apology for Origen of Pamphilus of Caesarea (CPG 1, 1715) were not translated into Latin by Tyrannius Rufinus and have been lost with the Greek original, but certain statements by Jerome, Rufinus, and Photius of Constantinople (Bibl. Codex 118) may derive from that source. The detailed section in Epiphanius of Salamis ( Haer. 64…

[German Version] The earliest evidence for the veneration of a Christopher goes back to the year 452, when the honorific title Χριστόφορος/ Christóphoros (“Christ-bearer”) first came into use as a proper name ( ASS Nov. II/2, 396 no. 39). The Acts of Saint Christopher (BHG 309) date from the early 6th century. They apparently equate Christopher with Christianus, a dog-headed soldier saint from the Acts of Bartholomew, who was called Reprebos before his baptism and who came from the land of the cannibals. Early Byzantine iconography accordingly portrayed…

[German Version] The received text (T, first attested by Pirmin, Scarapsus §§10/12/28) of the creed known in the modern period as the Symbolum apostolicum or Symbolum Apostolorum goes back to the so-called Old Roman creed (R). The great majority of scholars accept the hypothesis of J. Ussher, archbishop of Armagh (1647), that R is first attested in Greek in Marcellus of Ancyra (Epiphanius, Haer. 72.3.1 = BSGR §17) or in the Psalter of Aethelstan (§18); the Latin text can be reconstructed from Rufinus's Explanatio symboli (§19). From 1910–1916 onward,…

[German Version] of Bēth Ukkāme (Paul the Black, Paulos Melanos; c. 500 Alexandria – 584 Constantinople). In 564 Jacob Baradaeus consecrated Archimandrite Paul, who had grown up in Alexandria, as the anti-Chalcedonian (Jacobite) patriarch of Antioch (Monophysites), a position he held until 577. His tenure was beset by serious church-political conflicts. A temporary flirtation of the patriarch with the creed of Chalcedon affirming the two natures of Christ (c. 571) was followed by an abrupt dissoci…

[German Version] The term Nestorianism can be used in two senses. First, it can designate the theology (and sometimes also the ecclesiastical organization) of today’s Holy Apostolic and Catholic Assyrian Church of the East, whose members are called Nestorians (or East Syrians or Chaldeans; Apostolic Church of the East) because in 484/486, in conscious departure from the Roman imperial church, they adopted the Christology of Nestorianism, which had been condemned at the Council of Ephesus in 431 (Nes…

[German Version] According to Eusebius ( Hist. eccl. IV 28, cf. also 21) Musanus wrote a lost, “very elegant” book against people who had gone over to the so-called Encratites. Both the author's date and his place remain unclear. Suggestions, among others, are (because of the statement of Eusebius) the reign of Emperor Marcus Aurelius (161–180), or on the basis of Eusebius, Chronicorum liber ad annum, 2220 the time of Septimius Severus (193–211), and the regions of Egypt or Asia Minor. Christoph Markschies Bibliography A. v. Harnack, Geschichte der altchristlichen Litteratur bis E…