Patristic Age (from patres): Age of the Patres (Fathers); 300-600 (West), 300-750 (East)

Church Fathers: Three Big Questions

1. How is the Bible to be understood?
2. How are fundamental Christian doctrines to be explained?
3. What does classical culture have to do with Christianity? What does Christianity have to do with classical culture? ("What has Athens have to do with Jerusalem")

Ambrose, Bishop of Milan 339-397

1. He translated the Greek philosophical ideas, and even some of the writings of Greek Christian writers such as Origen of Alexandria into intelligible for for Latins.
2. He developed and he propagated the use allegory in the Latin West as a mode of biblical interpretation.

Jerome 342-420, salon culture

Aurelius Augustinus/St. Augustine 354-430

• Confession (397), introspection
• On Christian Doctrine (396/7), how Christianity related to classical learning
• City of God (413-426/7), theology of history, a linear history towards the salvation as opposed to the Roman notion that the world would exist as long as Rome existed and repeat itself.

Pope Gregory I; Pope 590-604

• Pastoral Rule (ca.590); a manual with respect to how to become a bishop and what to do once you become a bishop

"Cappadocian Fathers"

• Basil the Great (ca. 330-379)
• Gregory of Nyssa (ca. 330-395)
• Gregory of Nazianzus (ca. 329-389)

They laid down the fundamental definitions in the great Trinitarian and Christological battles; God is three in one and God is man and God.

John Chrysostom ("Golden Throated") 347-407; no one should be exempt from the criticism, not even the imperial court

Asceticism, self-denial actions to pure oneself in order to approach God

Christian Monastics

• Anthony (ca. 251-356); established the eremitic idea; heremos=desert
• Pachomius (290-346); created the first formal communities for men, and later for women; Cenobitic life, koinos+bios "common life"

Monastory; Egyptian phenomenon, then universalized in the late antique world

• Monachoi: Lone ones
• Monasterion: House of lone ones
• Regula: Rule

Eremitic Monasticism in the West

• St. Martin (336-397) at Tours
• St. Honoratus (ca. 350-429) at Lerins
• St. Patrick (390-462) in Ireland

St. Benedict of Nursia ca. 480-550

ca. 540, Benedict writes his monastic rule, Benedict Rule

• Christian patronage put an end to the building bust of the 3rd Century.
• The emergence of Christian art
• Christian poets
• The power of celibate men
• The heroism of Christian martyrs and saints