Way of the Fathers

From the distance of more than a millennium and a half, Nestorius can seem a comic character. He was a verbally fussy man with an uncanny knack for alienating people. Within days of his installation as bishop of Constantinople, he had offended the imperial family, the monks, and the nobles, but also the common people. He also caused a major fire in the city. But when he tried to suppress devotion...

Nicaea didn't resolve the Arian crisis. In fact, it provoked a riot of reactions — endless variations on the Arian theme. Imperial force only made matters worse. For a half-century, conflict raged. The situation seemed hopeless until Theodosius summoned bishops to meet in 381. LINKS Socrates Scholasticus, Church History (Book V) https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/fathers/view.cfm?recn...

Nicaea (325 A.D.) is the first of the ecumenical councils, not only in chronology, but also in importance. It occupies a certain primacy. The phrase "Nicene Faith" is sometimes used as an equivalent term for classic Christian doctrine. That's how we see it after centuries of development. But what did it mean to those who attended? LINKS Eusebius of Caesarea, Oration in Praise of the Emperor Consta...

When the Church is in crisis, its bishops meet in council. Since the generation of the Apostles, this has been the customary way of settling major disputes over doctrine and discipline. In the Acts of the Apostles, chapter 15, the Twelve met with certain elders and chosen experts to exercise an authority that was different from the authority that any of them possessed individually. This establishe...

In the first three centuries of Christian history, the practice of the faith was a capital crime, and many gave their lives as the ultimate testimony. The Church called them "witnesses"—in Greek, martures, whence we get the English word martyr. To speak of martyrdom, the early Fathers employed language usually reserved only for the Eucharist. So what does martyrdom have to do with the Mass? LINKS...

Music formed the early Christians in faith. It catechized them. Inspired them. Unified them. Healed them. The Fathers — from Ignatius of Antioch to John of Damascus — testify to this fact. Many of them wrote music. Augustine wrote a book about music. At a time when most people could not read, music was the most effective delivery system for doctrine. The decisions of the councils would have been d...

Why is it big news when someone claims to find a fragment of a lost "gospel"? Why do people say that these ancient apocrypha threaten to overturn everything Christians believe? In the second century, some of these pseudonymous books appeared and quickly landed in the remainder bin, called into question by giants such as Irenaeus and Tertullian. They're news today because of a modern myth, crafted...

Most lowly and most loved, deacons played supremely important roles in the early Church. Think Lawrence of Rome. Think Ephrem of Syria. They were consistently voted most likely to be pope. Jerome wryly observed that when a bishop wanted to demote a deacon, he ordained him to the priesthood. LINKS Ignatius of Antioch, The Epistle to the Trallians https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/fath...

Ever wonder how Bible study was done in the early Church? It was done with chains. The CATENA did the work that Bible software does for us today. It did the work of concordances and even entire shelves of commentaries. Catena is Latin for chain, and the links in these long-ago chains were extracts from the sermons and letters of earlier interpreters of Scripture. LINKS Roger Pearse's blog entries...

When asked what's wrong with the Church, commentators from Pope Francis to Russell Shaw will blame an elusive beast named "clericalism." But what is clericalism, and where did it come from? In this episode we track the beast to its birthplace, the Church of the fourth century. Our native guides are Augustine, John Chrysostom, and others—who offer us good counsel for defeating it in our own time. L...

The hospital arose as a Christian institution, dependent on the Christian principles of charity and hospitality. There were no pre-Christian hospitals. This episode tells the story of how it happened—how the early Church changed the practice of medicine forever. LINKS Mike Aquilina, The Healing Imperative: The Early Church and the Invention of Medicine as We Know It https://catholicbooksdirect.com...

The Empire faced a crisis in the year 9 A.D. Romans were not reproducing. They weren't even marrying. Caesar Augustus recognized that this posed a dire threat to the Roman way of life—the empire's cultural and intellectual heritage, and its homeland security. He made new laws to encourage fertility. He even proposed a pagan "theology of the body." His successors made more laws. All failed, and eve...

John of Damascus, the last of the Fathers, was born into a world newly conquered. In the seventh century, many lands that were once home to Eastern Christianity, had fallen to the invading armies of Arab Muslims. John's father and grandfather, both devout Christians, served as treasury officials for the Muslim caliphate. So John was able to provide a rare outsider's view of Islam when it was new o...

Isidore of Seville lived at a time when the memory (or fantasy) of a homogeneous Roman culture was rapidly fading. It was a time to gather the last of the classical harvest into the barns. The conquering "barbarians," the Visigoths, had now been ruling in Spain for centuries. They were no longer foreigners. Rather, a new culture was forming, a "melting pot" of Roman and northern elements. A man of...

By the seventh century, Christian thinkers of East and West were settling into scholastic methods, synthesizing and systematizing the thought of their Greek or Latin forebears. Maximus represents the best mind (by far) in this movement. Greek by origin, he spent decades living in Latin lands. His writing reflected the beauty and brilliance of piety and theology on both sides of the Mediterranean....

His name retains its greatness, even in modern times—even for Christians who don't know much history. They know Gregorian Chant, and maybe Gregorian Masses. Who was the Gregory behind those monuments? Born into nobility, he held vast estates in Italy and Sicily, but gave them up to be a monk. Then he gave up being a monk so that he could serve the Church. Elected pope, he recast the papacy as a fu...

Benedict was not the first monk to compose a rule for living in community — but he's certainly the most influential. He wrote the Rule that the Emperor Charlemagne would propose as guidebook for all monks in the West. Yet Benedict himself was self-effacing in the extreme, and he remains elusive for historians. Lately, he has emerged as a patron and model for people whose civilization could be ente...

Forget the shamrocks. Pour the green beer down the sink, and drive the snakes from the Emerald Isle of your imagination. Listen up and encounter the real St. Patrick, author of two passionate, fascinating Christian works—deserving of a place with the Church Fathers. Patrick arrived in pagan Ireland in the fifth century, first as a slave and then as an itinerant bishop. By the end of his life, Irel...

Peter Chrysologus is known as the "Doctor of Homilies," and he always preached with brevity. Every word was golden. He was archbishop of Ravenna during that city's brief term as capital of the Western empire. His sermons rang like poems, rich with biblical insight and glimpses of ordinary life in a fifth-century urban center. LINKS Peter Chrysologus, Sermon 148 http://www.liturgies.net/saints/pete...

Romanus the Melodist looms large from his lifetime in the sixth century. Today he is much sung and little known—at least with certainty. Beautiful legends have filled in the cracks of his biography. According to one, he was tone-deaf and non-musical when heaven granted him the gifts of composition and vocal performance. He went on to compose many verse homilies, kontakia, which are still sung in t...

Though prolific in his words and prodigious in his deeds, Leo was utterly self-effacing. Classically educated, he never quoted the classics. He preached with Gospel simplicity. He strove always to let Christ shine through his sermons and his letters. Yet he made history for three world-changing interventions. It was Leo who stopped Attila the Hun's rampage through Europe. It was Leo who put a deci...

All Christians respected the authority of Scripture, but already in the fifth century the Church was riven by conflicting interpretations of Scripture. A monk in Gaul, Vincent of Lerins, developed a formula to determine true doctrine from false. "All possible care must be taken," he said, "that we hold that faith which has been believed everywhere, always, by all." Conservative by temperament, Vin...

Cyril's uncle was the notorious Theophilus, a ruthless and fiercely competitive churchman — and the old manhood handpicked his nephew to be his successor as bishop of Alexandria. Cyril learned from Theophilus how to orchestrate an international incident and carry it through to the victorious end. But he was very much his own man: a towering intellect, the mastermind of the Council of Ephesus, a pr...

The great ascetic movement was in its first years of explosive growth when John Cassian journeyed from West to East. He visited the communities of monks and hermits in Palestine and Egypt. Though he sought a quiet life, he got caught up in international intrigue and adventure. In his later years he drew together the memories of his years in the desert, and composed two works on the cultivation of...

In this bonus episode originally from the Catholic Culture Podcast, CatholicCulture.org's director of podcasts, Thomas V. Mirus, interviews voice actor James T. Majewski (Catholic Culture Audiobooks) and author Mike Aquilina (Way of the Fathers) about how they make their shows and the effect reading and studying the Church Fathers has had on them personally. Contents [2:15] James's training in phi...