Translation of: Dizionario patristico e di antichità cristiane

Superseded by the 2014 publication entitled Encyclopedia of ancient Christianity (Nuovo dizionario patristico e di antichità cristiane. English)

Includes bibliographical references and index

volume 1. A-M -- volume 2. N-Z, synoptic table, maps, illustrations, index

520 The Encyclopedia of the Early Church is a two-volume
reference work providing concise and precise information
on all topics concerning the first eight centuries of
Christianity. Valuable to historians, archaeologists,
philosophers, and philologists as well as theologians,
this work extends the knowledge of how Christianity
evolved to become the most important influence in the
history of Western civilization. Tracing the growth of the
church from its tiny beginnings in an upper room to its
dominance of Europe, western Asia, and northern Africa in
the eighth century, scholars from many disciplines
produced articles ranging from a few sentences to ten
thousand words on all the major and most of the minor
people, works, ideas, and issues of the formative period
of Christianity. The first major encyclopedia to cover the
life, thought, and growth of Christianity, this work
offers full treatment of doctrines, creeds, and heresies,
of iconography and art history, of archaeology and
geography, and of monasticism and asceticism

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