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…