Category: Timeline Stories

Why did the medieval ʿAbbāsid Caliphs have almost all ancient Greek works of philosophy and science translated into Arabic? How did the long list of medieval Muslim polymaths reconcile abstract…

 Jean-Léon Gérôme (1883): The Christian Matyrs’ Last Prayer (Public Domain)   The emperor Diocletian launches ‘The Great Persecution’ in the winter of 303. Edicts prohibit Christians from meeting and Bibles are burnt…

Byzantine fresco of St Mercurius, a victim of Decius’ persecution (1295) (Public Domain)   The Roman Emperor Decius begins the first general persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire in…

The great fire according to Hubert Robert (1787) (Public Domain)   A devastating fire breaks out in Rome in 64 AD. According to the historian Tacitus, the Romans think Nero…

The Deesis mosaic in Hagia Sophia dates from the 12th to 13th centuries (Photo: Edal Anton Lefterov)   In the early 30s AD, Jesus of Nazareth is arrested, tried and executed…

Why did the polytheist Ancient Romans persecute the followers of the new Jewish sect of “Christians” in the first three centuries AD”? How high was the price that Christians had…

Mosaic in Ravenna (Public Domain)   Justinian I (r. 527-565) rules his empire according to the motto “One empire, one faith, one church”. In 529, he closes the ‘pagan’ Neoplatonic…

During Lent of 415, a Christian mob attacks the Alexandrian philosopher and mathematician Hypatia. The Christians drag her through the streets to a local church. According to one account, they…

The bishop Theophilus and his supporters attack the Serapeum – a daughter library to the Great Library of Alexandria – with the support of Emperor Theodosius.  The library is destroyed…