The Encyclopedia of the Early Church is a two-volume reference work providing concise and precise information on all topics concerning the first eight centuries of Christianity. Valuable to historians, archaeologists, philosophers, and philologists as well as theologians, this work extendsthe knowledge of how Christianity evolved to become the most important influence in the history of Western civilization. Tracing the growth of the church from its tiny beginnings in an upper room to its dominance of Europe, western Asia, and northern Africa in the eighth century, scholars frommany disciplines produced articles ranging from a few sentences to ten thousand words on all the major and most of the minor people, works, ideas, and issues of the formative period of Christianity. The first major encyclopedia to cover the life, thought, and growth of Christianity, this workoffers full treatment of doctrines, creeds, and heresies, of iconography and art history, of archaeology and geography, and of monasticism and asceticism.