Daily Life in the Early Church: Studies in the Church Social History of the First Five Centuries

What did the early Christians wear? What did they eat? What did they talk about over the dinner table? What recreations did they enjoy? These are among the questions answered in this study. In a series of six graphic scenes the author, applying the methods of the social historian to the early Church, describes the daily life of the first believers, personifying the general facts and depicting them in the composite portraits of specific individuals. Six characters (Clement of Alexandria, a virgin martyr, a workman in the catacombs, Paul of Samosata, John Chrysostom and John Cassian) are taken as representatives of different strands of early Christian life. By conducting the reader through their daily routines, hour by hour, the past is recreated as a living reality.