Crumbs from the Table

From the very start of Christianity, with the life of Christ and his Apostles, the Christian church lived as a tight-knit community representing a religious minority in a society which, to a greater or lesser degree, was hostile towards it. Within Judaism, the Christian church began life as "the sect of the Nazarenes", while in the eyes of the Roman Empire it was considered an illicit religion (non-approved religion). It is customary to categorise the persecution of the church up to 311 into ten periods. Back in the times of the New Testament, in particular Emperors such as Nero and Domitian persecuted Christians. Later, even those considered "enlightened Emperors" (Trajan, Adrian, Mark Aurelius, Septimius Severus and Maximinus of Thrace) had a dislike for the Christian church and persecuted it. Under these Emperors, there were many who suffered for their faith or were martyred, such as Polycarp of Smyrna or Blandina the slavegirl from Lyon, or Perpetua and her serv...

By the mid to late 100s, the Christian faith had spread to places such as Carthage, North Africa (180?), Lyon in what is now France (140?), and Pityus on the Black Sea (a place of refuge from persecutions). The next chapter in the history of the Christian church unfolds in the city of Lyon in what is now France. The Christian church in that city began shortly before 177 thanks to trading links with the province of Asia, and the first bishop of the Lyon church was someone called Pothinus.  One of the young believers at the Lyon church was called Irenaeus. He himself born in Smyrna, in the Roman province of Asia, where he had been discipled by none other than Polycarp. One day Irenaeus met up with someone who had once been a member of the Lyon church but was now "into" Gnosticism. This troubled Irenaeus and he made it his life's work to combat the new false teaching which was making in-roads into the church. Interaction with this and other rival teachings help to formulate ...