Early Christianity

medieval Christianity had begun. Indeed, one recent study has

shown that deciding where early Christianity ends is difficult to

determine, and that the change to medieval Christianity was some-

thing that happened gradually and fitfully over a number of

centuries (Markus 1990). Yet one has to begin somewhere and,

pedagogically, periods provide manageable chunks that can be

comprehended easily by students. Even so, I ought to offer some

justification for the limits set on the particular period I have chosen

if they are not to appear entirely arbitrary.

My choice is dictated by a happy coincidence of the prac-

ticalities of publishing and what I discern as ancient realities. It

is anticipated that this series will contain another book on the

period after Constantine’s conversion, so it seemed appropriate

for me to draw my study to an end at that point. But that deci-

sion imposed by the publisher reflects a real difference between

the character of Christianity in the pre- and post-Constantinian

periods. After Constantine’s conversion, the Roman state gener-

ally accorded Christianity its support, and emperors (with the

exception of the pagan convert Julian ‘the Apostate’, who ruled

for about a year and a half between 361 and 363) were also

vigorous in promoting the interests of the Christian community

(E. D. Hunt 1998). In other words, the Christian church now began

to be an important institution of – as opposed to just in– the

Roman empire. As such, Constantine’s conversion marks an

important stage in the process by which the Christian church

was to become the major political and social as well as religious

institution of medieval Christendom.

Before Constantine’s conversion the situation was rather

different. Far from enjoying the adherence or support of the

emperors, Christianity periodically experienced their wrath in

the form of persecution (although, as we shall see in chapter 6,

this was never a uniform process and defies easy generalizations).

So what unifies the Christianity described here is that it existed

within an intermittently hostile environment whose form it could

not determine and whose destiny it could not dictate, for all its

aspirations to do so. This political circumstance was reflected in

WHAT IS EARLY CHRISTIANITY?

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