DAILY LIFE OF EARLY CHRISTIANS

This is a unique venture in the field of church history. For the author is endeavoring to write the social history of the first centuries of the Christian era. This he does by describing the daily life of a few selected individuals: Clement of Alexandria, a sophisticated scholar; Paul, a profligate heretic of Antioch; Victoria, a martyr of Carthage Diogenes, a sexton of Rome; John, a bishop of Constantinople, and John Cassian, a monk of Marseilles. By describing in detail their dress, their food, their manners and customs, and relating their conversations, the author does succeed in making these particular individuals live for his readers. As inevitably the author must take a mass of unrelated material and relate it to a particular time and city and individual, it is impossible to cite sources for his information in each case and the temptation to let the imagination run riot on a slender basis of fact must be great. But it is a challenging experiment and should attract considerable attention among those interested in church history.