Church history
Timeline
The apostolic era through 787, and a deliberately limited later-reception timeline. Every entry carries its evidence, and dates that are genuinely uncertain are shown as ranges.
On dates. Ancient dates are often reconstructions from several sources that do not agree. Where a date is disputed, the entry gives the range the evidence supports rather than picking the tidiest number.
The apostolic Church to 787
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around AD 30-33
Pentecost
The descent of the Holy Spirit on the apostles at Jerusalem, taken in Acts as the beginning of the Church's public life.
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around AD 48-50
The apostolic council at Jerusalem
The apostles and elders settle whether Gentile converts must keep the law of Moses, and send their decision to the churches in a letter. The pattern for every later council.
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70
The destruction of Jerusalem
The Roman capture of Jerusalem and the burning of the Temple. The centre of gravity of the Christian movement shifts decisively outward.
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around 96
Clement writes to Corinth
The church of Rome writes to the church of Corinth about presbyters who had been deposed. The earliest Christian writing outside the New Testament whose occasion we know.
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around 107-140
Ignatius of Antioch writes seven letters
Taken under guard to Rome for execution, the bishop of Antioch writes to six churches and to Polycarp. The earliest evidence for a church ordered around one bishop with presbyters and deacons.
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late first or early second century
The Didache
An anonymous church order giving moral instruction, baptismal and eucharistic directions, and rules for travelling teachers. Lost for centuries and rediscovered in 1873.
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around 144
Marcion excommunicated at Rome
Marcion of Sinope, who rejected the Old Testament and used a shortened Luke with an edited Pauline collection, is put out of the Roman church. One pressure among several on the question of which books the Church reads.
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around 150-155
Justin describes Sunday worship
Writing to the imperial authorities, Justin sets out what Christians do on Sunday: readings, a sermon, prayers, the offering, thanksgiving, the people's Amen, communion, and a collection for the needy.
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around 155
Polycarp and Anicetus on the date of Pascha
The bishops of Smyrna and Rome fail to agree on when Pascha should be kept, and part in communion. Irenaeus records the episode approvingly.
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around 180
Irenaeus writes Against Heresies
The bishop of Lyons sets out the Gnostic systems at length and answers them with the argument for a public, universal, continuous apostolic tradition — and defends the fourfold Gospel.
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around 190
The Quartodeciman controversy
Victor of Rome moves to break communion with the churches of Asia over the date of Pascha. Irenaeus rebukes him, and communion is not broken.
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around 185-253
Origen at Alexandria and Caesarea
The greatest biblical scholar of the ancient Church produces the Hexapla, commentaries on most of Scripture, the first systematic theology, and the fullest answer to pagan critique. He is condemned by name three centuries later.
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250-251
The Decian persecution
An empire-wide requirement to sacrifice produces the first mass apostasy and the question that dominates the next century of Church discipline: what to do with the lapsed.
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251-258
Cyprian governs Carthage through crisis
Persecution, the readmission of the lapsed, schism, plague, and a sharp disagreement with Rome over baptism outside the Church — all documented in his surviving letters.
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around 270-356
Anthony withdraws to the desert
An Egyptian villager gives away his property and takes up a life of solitude, prayer and manual work. Athanasius's account of him gives the monastic movement its pattern.
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303-311
The Diocletianic persecution
The last and most systematic imperial persecution. Scriptures are demanded and burned; the question of clergy who handed them over produces the Donatist schism in North Africa.
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313
Toleration
Imperial policy ends the persecution and restores confiscated property. Within a generation the Church moves from illegal association to favoured institution.
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325
The First Council of Nicaea
The Son confessed as of one substance with the Father; a principle set for the date of Pascha; twenty disciplinary canons. It did not address the canon of Scripture.
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around 325
Eusebius sorts the writings
The Church History surveys which Christian writings are universally acknowledged, which disputed, and which rejected — the closest thing the pre-Nicene Church has to a report on the question.
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335-366
Athanasius exiled five times
The bishop of Alexandria is driven from his see repeatedly, by emperors of several theological persuasions, over some seventeen years in total.
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around 358-370
Basil organises monastic life
Basil of Caesarea gives the ascetic movement an ordered common life of obedience, work, prayer and hospitality, and later builds a hospital and hostel complex outside his city.
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367
Athanasius lists the books
The thirty-ninth festal letter gives the earliest surviving list of the twenty-seven New Testament books, alongside a further group appointed to be read and a group called apocryphal.
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around 375
Basil writes On the Holy Spirit
The fullest surviving argument for the Spirit's divinity, made from the way the Church prays and baptises rather than from speculation.
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381
The First Council of Constantinople
The Holy Spirit confessed as Lord and Giver of life. The Creed recited in Orthodox worship takes its received form. An Eastern council with no Western participation, later received as ecumenical.
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around 391-405
Jerome translates from the Hebrew
The Latin translation that becomes the Vulgate, together with prefaces arguing that books not in the Hebrew should be distinguished from those that are — a view the Church did not follow.
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398-404
John Chrysostom at Constantinople
Taken from Antioch to the capital against his will, he reduces the expenses of his see, disciplines clergy, preaches against luxury, and is twice deposed. He dies on a forced march into exile.
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around 420-430
Cassian brings the desert west
The Institutes and Conferences transmit the teaching of the Egyptian fathers to the Latin world, and set out purity of heart as the goal and the kingdom as the end.
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431
The Council of Ephesus
The Virgin Mary confessed as Theotokos and Nestorius condemned, in proceedings contested at the time. The first council whose reception divided the Church permanently.
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around 434
Vincent writes the Commonitory
A monk of Lérins asks how a Christian tells the Church's faith from novelty, and answers with universality, antiquity and consent — and with an account of how understanding grows without becoming something else.
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449
The Second Council of Ephesus
Convoked as an ecumenical council, it rehabilitates Eutyches and deposes his opponents. Leo of Rome calls it a robbery and the Church does not receive it.
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451
The Council of Chalcedon
One Christ in two natures, without confusion, change, division or separation. Thirty canons. And a division from the churches of Egypt, Syria and Armenia that has lasted fifteen centuries.
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around 500
The Dionysian corpus appears
Four treatises and ten letters begin circulating under the name of Paul's Athenian convert. They shape mystical theology in East and West for a millennium; the attribution is not sustainable.
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553
The Second Council of Constantinople
Chalcedon read in Cyrilline terms and the Three Chapters condemned, in an attempt to recover the non-Chalcedonian churches that failed. Origen condemned by name.
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655-662
Maximus the Confessor tried and exiled
For refusing an imperial formula on the will of Christ, Maximus is tried, mutilated and exiled, and dies in 662. The Sixth Council confesses his position nineteen years later.
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680-681
The Third Council of Constantinople
Two natural wills and two natural operations confessed in Christ, and monothelitism condemned — together with a former bishop of Rome, by name.
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692
The Council in Trullo
102 canons supplying the disciplinary legislation the Fifth and Sixth Councils had not issued. Canon II becomes the canonical index of the Orthodox tradition. Rome did not receive the collection.
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around 730
John of Damascus defends the images
Writing from outside the empire and so beyond the reach of the emperor enforcing iconoclasm, he makes the fullest case for holy images and is anathematised by name in 754.
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754
The iconoclast council of Hiereia
Over three hundred bishops meet, call themselves the seventh ecumenical council, and condemn the veneration of images. The Church does not receive it. Its definition is archived here in its own words.
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787
The Second Council of Nicaea
Holy images restored, with the distinction between the honour given to an image and the worship due to God alone. Twenty-two canons. The last council the Orthodox Church receives as ecumenical.
Later reception
A short selection, included because the councils and canons above were received, contested and re-read in these later centuries. This is not a general history of the Church after 787.
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843
The Triumph of Orthodoxy
Iconoclasm, which had returned in 815, is finally ended. Commemorated on the first Sunday of Great Lent.
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879-880
The council of 879-880
A council at Constantinople under Photius, received with authority in the Orthodox Church. Orthodox usage does not agree on whether to number it among the ecumenical councils, and this site does not assign it a number.
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1054
The mutual excommunications of 1054
Legates of the Roman see and the patriarch of Constantinople excommunicate one another. This is a significant episode in a long estrangement, not its cause and not its completion; communion continued in places for a long time afterwards.
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1204
The sack of Constantinople
The Fourth Crusade takes and sacks the imperial capital and installs a Latin patriarch. Many historians regard this, rather than 1054, as the point at which estrangement between East and West became irreparable in ordinary Christian memory.
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1341-1351
The Palamite councils
Councils at Constantinople confirm the distinction between the unknowable divine essence and the divine energies in which creatures participate, defending the hesychast tradition. Received with authority; not uniformly numbered.