About the archive
About
I’m so glad you’ve found this website! This is my attempt to document the early Church up to around AD 400.
I’ve tried to record the name of every person I could find, regardless of how significant or insignificant their role may have been within the Church. I’ve also included some people from outside the Church who had a significant influence on its history; for example, those who persecuted Christians, helped make Christianity legal, or otherwise shaped the circumstances in which the early Church developed.
I maintain this site myself. I’ve had an interest in learning about the history of the early church, and as I tried to learn, I found that other websites lacked a modern design that visually displays who each person is and exactly how they link together. So I figured, why not create a modern website and try to present as much information as I can find?
What this archive is, and is not
Because this archive is compiled and maintained by me, Lucas Bunting-Dos Santos, working alone, it is not the work of an institution, a university department, a church body, or a funded project, and it has no editorial board.
It claims no original manuscript research, and I have made no new translations. What the archive does instead is gather, for each named person, every source I could find that mentions them, and set those sources side by side so they can be read together. Each passage is quoted exactly from a named public-domain edition — Schaff’s Ante-Nicene Fathers and Nicene & Post-Nicene Fathers, Lightfoot, Lake, McGiffert, Whiston, the KJV and others — with the translation named beside it, the date of composition where it is known, and the earliest surviving manuscript witness for the text it comes from. Nothing is paraphrased, summarised, or reconstructed to fill a gap.
The aim is to lay out what the sources actually say and then get out of the way. Where two sources disagree, both are given and the disagreement is recorded rather than resolved. Where a date is uncertain it is marked “c.” and left uncertain. Where a person is known from one passage and one passage only, the profile says so instead of padding it out into a biography. I have no thesis to defend here and no tradition to protect: you should be able to work through a figure’s page, see every witness that names them, see how far each witness stands from the events it describes, and come to your own judgement without having to take mine on trust.
It has not been peer-reviewed, and it should not be cited as though it had. Use it as a finding aid: let it point you to the passage, then read that passage in the edition named beside it. Every citation is there so you can go and check me.
Editorial standards
What earns a profile
A named person attested in a source the archive admits. Names alone are enough — an obscure deacon mentioned once was still there. A figure known only from later tradition, with no early witness, appears as a proposed identification on the relevant profile, never as a profile of its own.
What is left out
Invented dialogue, harmonised biographies, and dates presented as settled when the sources do not settle them. If the record is thin, the profile is thin — padding a page to look substantial would misrepresent the evidence, which is the one thing an archive must not do.
How mistakes are handled
Corrections are made on the page itself rather than appended as a footnote, because a wrong date left visible for the sake of an audit trail is still a wrong date being read. See Corrections below.
Independence
No advertising, no affiliate links, no sponsored entries, nothing paid for placement. No one has bought a mention here and no one can. Voluntary donations are the only income, and they buy no influence over what the archive says.
Research methodology
Primary sources first
Every mention in the archive quotes or cites a named public-domain translation — Schaff’s Ante-Nicene Fathers and Nicene & Post-Nicene Fathers, Lightfoot, Lake, McGiffert, Whiston, the KJV and others. No quotation is ever invented, paraphrased, or reconstructed.
Traditional datings, honestly marked
Dates follow traditional ecclesiastical reckoning, ordered by year of death. Scholarly ranges are marked “c.” and never presented as settled.
Attestation horizon
Sources are admitted to about AD 500. Figures resting on a single attestation are certified in a verified-singles ledger, with the basis stated on the profile, rather than padded out with material the sources do not support.
Manuscript witness
Each text carries its manuscript evidence, earliest witness first, so a reader can see how far the surviving copies stand from the composition.
Corrections
The archive is a work in progress and corrections are welcome. If a date, a citation, or an attribution is wrong, it should be fixed — write to info@christearlychurch.co.uk. Please quote the page and, if you can, the source you are working from; that is usually enough to settle it in one exchange. I read everything that arrives and aim to reply to substantive corrections within a fortnight.
Method and sources last reviewed 2026-07-26.
Supporting the archive
Has this research been helpful? The only donation address for this archive is:
Before sending anything, check that the link above goes to paypal.me/christearlychurch. If you are reading a copy of this archive that shows a different address, it is not ours — the pages of this site are freely copyable, and the donation link is the one thing worth altering in a copy.