Research atlas for early Christianity. Claims are tagged attested, traditional, or disputed. Copyrighted full texts, including CCEL editions, are not included.
Research atlas for early Christianity. Claims are tagged attested, traditional, or disputed. Copyrighted full texts, including CCEL editions, are not included.
Groups that sat beside, or broke from, the churches that later called themselves catholic. Miaphysite churches are nested under their parent. A group known only from its opponents is marked as such.
c. 144 (break with Rome) – 5th century (Syria); scattered reports to the 10th century
Marcion distinguished the just but harsh creator God of the Jewish scriptures from the good, previously unknown Father revealed by Jesus. He rejected the Jewish scriptures as Christian scripture. He set up a closed canon of one gospel (closely related to Luke) and ten letters of Paul, edited to remove what he saw as later additions. Baptized members practised strict celibacy and asceticism.
c. 136 (Valentinus in Rome) – late 4th century; named in canons to 692
A transcendent Father emanates a 'fullness' (Pleroma) of paired divine aeons. The youngest aeon, Sophia (Wisdom), falls through her desire to know the Father, and her passions become the material world, which is shaped by a lesser creator (the Demiurge). Christ and the Saviour bring knowledge (gnosis) that restores the spiritual seed. Humanity is described as spiritual, soul-endowed and material, and the 'psychic' ordinary Christians can also be saved.
2nd – 4th century
An unknowable Invisible Spirit and its first thought, Barbelo, generate a divine world. The lower creator, Yaldabaoth, is an ignorant offspring of Sophia who imprisons divine light in human bodies. Seth, the son of Adam, is the ancestor and saviour of an incorruptible 'seed' or 'race', and some texts describe ascents of the soul through visionary stages that overlap with Platonist philosophy.
c. 120 – 4th century (Egypt)
The surviving fragments, mainly in Clement, focus on providence, suffering, sin and election. Basilides seems to have held that suffering, including martyrdom, purifies sins, and that faith and election belong to a person's nature. The two hostile summaries conflict: Irenaeus reports 365 heavens ruled by 'Abrasax' and Simon of Cyrene crucified in Jesus' place, while Hippolytus reports a 'non-existent God' who deposits a world-seed.
early 2nd – 3rd century
According to hostile reports, Jesus was the human son of Joseph whose pure soul remembered the unbegotten Father, and souls pass through bodies until they have experienced everything. Epiphanes' On Righteousness argued from nature that God intended property, and allegedly sexual partners, to be shared. Irenaeus also says they honoured images of Jesus alongside Plato, Pythagoras and Aristotle, which is the earliest report of portraits of Jesus.
c. 157 or c. 172 (date disputed) – mid-6th century
The Paraclete promised in John spoke anew through the prophets Montanus, Priscilla and Maximilla, sometimes in ecstatic first-person oracles. The movement stressed stricter discipline: more fasting, no second marriage, no flight from persecution, and readiness for martyrdom. Its teaching on God and Christ was generally orthodox, and it expected a New Jerusalem to descend at Pepuza.
2nd – early 5th century
Jesus was the Messiah and a righteous man chosen by God, and some held he was born naturally of Joseph and Mary, though Origen knew a group that accepted the virgin birth. They kept the Torah, including circumcision and the Sabbath, used a Hebrew or Aramaic gospel related to Matthew, and rejected Paul as an apostate from the Law. Epiphanius adds vegetarianism and the rejection of sacrifice, possibly under Elkasaite influence.
c. 116 (date of the revelation) – 10th century (if identified with the Mughtasila)
The Book of Elchasai, said to have been delivered by a gigantic angel (the Son of God) with a female Holy Spirit, offered a second baptism for forgiveness of even grave sins. It also taught repeated washing against illness, prayer facing Jerusalem, Torah observance including circumcision and the Sabbath, and the rejection of sacrifice and of Paul. Christ was thought to appear repeatedly in different bodies, and denying the faith under persecution was permitted.
240 (Mani's public mission) – 16th century (Fujian)
Two eternal principles, Light and Darkness, became mixed when Darkness attacked, and the cosmos is a machine for freeing the trapped particles of light. Mani presented himself as the Paraclete and seal of the prophets after Zoroaster, the Buddha and Jesus. The church was divided into celibate, vegetarian Elect, whose ritual meals freed light, and Hearers who supported them. The scriptures were written by Mani himself.
c. 318 – late 7th century (Lombard Italy)
Arius held that the Son was begotten by the Father's will 'before the ages' but was not eternal ('there was when he was not'). For Arius the Son was a unique, perfect creature through whom all else was made. Later Homoians said only that the Son is 'like' the Father according to scripture and avoided 'substance' language, while Heterousians said 'unlike in substance'. Many so-called Arians never followed Arius personally, and the label was a Nicene polemical tool.
311/312 – c. 600 (last mentions in Gregory the Great's letters)
The church must be pure and holy, so sacraments given by clergy who had betrayed the faith under persecution ('traditores', those who handed over scriptures) were invalid. Converts from the Catholic side therefore had to be rebaptized. Donatists saw themselves as the continuing church of the martyrs and of Cyprian, persecuted by a compromised state church.
251 – 7th century
Their doctrine of God and Christ was fully orthodox; Novatian's On the Trinity was the first major Latin Trinitarian treatise from Rome. They held that the church could not restore to communion those who had denied the faith under persecution, or later those who committed other grave sins after baptism, and left such people to God's mercy. Some groups also refused second marriages.
c. 305 – 5th century (later traces uncertain)
There was no doctrinal difference at first. The dispute was over church order and the readmission of the lapsed: Melitius demanded stricter terms than Peter of Alexandria and ordained clergy in other bishops' sees during the persecution. Later the Melitians allied with the anti-Nicene party against Athanasius.
410 (Synod of Isaac) – present
It follows the Antiochene Christology of Diodore and Theodore: Christ has two natures (kyane) and two concrete individualities (qnome) united in one person (parsopa), and it avoids language suggesting God suffered. It honours Mary as 'Mother of Christ' and generally rejected 'Mother of God'. It never accepted Ephesus (431), and the label 'Nestorian' was applied by opponents. Scholars such as Sebastian Brock call it a 'lamentable misnomer'.
451 (rejection of Chalcedon) – present
Following Cyril's formula 'one incarnate nature (mia physis) of God the Word', they confess Christ as one nature from two, fully divine and fully human, united without mixture, confusion or division. They rejected Chalcedon's 'in two natures' and Pope Leo's Tome as reviving Nestorius. They also condemned Eutyches, so the older label 'Monophysite', implying the humanity was absorbed, is rejected as unfair.
451 – present
Miaphysite Christology after Cyril and Dioscorus. It uses the Coptic language and liturgies (Basil, Gregory and Cyril), and Coptic and Arabic in later centuries.
518 (Severus deposed) / 542–543 (parallel hierarchy) – present
Miaphysite Christology after Cyril and Severus. It has a strong scholarly tradition of translating Greek philosophy and science into Syriac.
c. 301/314 (conversion) – present; anti-Chalcedonian from 506/554
Miaphysite Christology defined at the synods of Dvin. Its distinctive rites include an unmixed Eucharistic chalice and celebrating Christmas and Epiphany together on 6 January.
c. 330s–340s (Ezana) – present
Miaphysite Christology ('tewahedo', unity). It keeps distinctive practices such as Sabbath observance, circumcision, food laws and the tabot (replica of the Ark), and a broad canon including 1 Enoch and Jubilees.
c. 370s – late 6th century
A demanding lay and clerical asceticism, with retreats during Lent and Advent, fasting on Sundays, and study circles that included women. Members read apocryphal scriptures alongside the canon. Opponents accused them of Manichaean dualism, astrology and sorcery. Modern scholars (e.g. H. Chadwick 1976) see Priscillian's surviving writings as largely orthodox, if charismatic and speculative.
c. 405 – 431 (Ephesus); Semi-Pelagian debate to 529 (Orange)
God's commands are possible to keep, so human beings can and must choose the good. Adam's sin harms his descendants by bad example, not by inherited guilt, and newborns are not damned. Grace was understood above all as God's gifts of free will, the Law, Christ's teaching and example, and forgiveness.
mid-7th century – 17th century (Catholic conversion of the Bulgarian Paulicians)
According to Byzantine sources, they distinguished an evil creator of this world from the heavenly Father, rejected the Old Testament, the cult of Mary, the cross, icons, sacraments and a separate priesthood, and valued the Gospels and Paul's letters. Nina Garsoïan argued that early Armenian Paulicianism was an adoptionist, iconoclast reform movement rather than a dualist one, and that Byzantine writers projected 'Manichaeism' onto it. That view is debated.
mid-10th century – 15th century
Bogomils taught a moderate dualism: Satanael, God's rebellious firstborn, made the visible world and human bodies, and Christ came to free souls. They rejected church buildings, icons, the cross, relics, infant baptism and the Eucharist. The Lord's Prayer was their central prayer, and the Gospel of John their favourite book. The 'perfect' abstained from meat, wine and marriage.
1143 (Cologne report) – c. 1321–1330
Cathars taught a dualism, either absolute (two eternal principles) or moderate (a fallen Satan), in which the material world was not created by the good God. The only sacrament was the consolamentum, a laying-on of hands given to the 'perfect' and to the dying. They rejected Catholic sacraments and clergy. The perfect lived lives of strict poverty, celibacy, fasting and vegetarianism, and the 'believers' (credentes) supported them.
late 1st – 2nd century
Revelation implies that they accepted eating food offered to idols and sexual immorality, possibly meaning compromise with pagan civic religion. Later writers give contradictory pictures of them as either libertines or ascetics.
c. 100 – 2nd century
The world was made by a power far below the supreme God. Jesus was the natural son of Joseph and Mary, and the divine Christ descended on him at baptism and left before the crucifixion. Gaius of Rome and Dionysius of Alexandria also report that Cerinthus expected a carnal millennial kingdom.
1st – 3rd century
In hostile accounts Simon claimed to be 'the Great Power' of God, and Helena was the fallen First Thought, redeemed by him. Menander promised his baptized followers immortality, and Saturninus taught that angels made the world and that Christ was not truly embodied.
c. 170 – 5th century
Baptism meant renouncing marriage, meat and wine, and some used water instead of wine in the Eucharist. Irenaeus adds that Tatian denied Adam's salvation and borrowed Valentinian aeon ideas.
late 2nd – 10th century
Bardaisan, a philosopher at King Abgar VIII's court, taught that human life is shaped partly by fate (the stars) and partly by nature, but that free will governs moral choices. His Book of the Laws of Countries (written by his pupil Philip) argues this from the different customs of peoples. Later opponents accused him of cosmological dualism and denying bodily resurrection.
2nd century – 5th century (as a separate group)
Christ's Passover (Pascha) should be kept on 14 Nisan, the Jewish Passover date, whatever the day of the week, following what they held to be the practice of John and Philip. They had no distinct doctrine otherwise.
late 2nd – 4th century
To protect the one rule (monarchia) of God, modalists held that Father, Son and Spirit are names or modes of one divine person, so the Father himself became incarnate and suffered (hence 'Patripassians'). A separate 'dynamic' monarchianism (Theodotus the Cobbler, Paul of Samosata) saw Jesus as a man empowered by God; see the Paulianists.
c. 260 – 4th century
As reported by opponents, the divine Word or Wisdom dwelt in the man Jesus as in a temple, rather than becoming personally incarnate, and Jesus was 'from below'. Paul was also accused of worldly pomp and of having hymns sung to himself.
c. 360s – 5th century
Christ is one, not two. The divine Word took the place of the human mind or rational soul in Jesus, so that Christ's flesh was united with God without a competing human will. Opponents replied: 'what is not assumed is not healed' (Gregory of Nazianzus).
c. 360 – 5th century
The Son is of like or same substance with the Father, but the Holy Spirit is a ministering being, neither God nor creature in the full sense, and should not be worshipped as God.
c. 360s – the label used into the Middle Ages
According to opponents, every person has an indwelling demon that only constant prayer, not baptism, can drive out, after which the soul receives the Spirit perceptibly and is freed from passion and from labour. They are said to have refused work and slept in public streets.
633 (Pact of Union in Alexandria) – 713 (last imperial revival under Philippikos)
A compromise between Chalcedonians and Miaphysites: Christ has two natures but one 'energy' (Monoenergism, 633) or one will (Ecthesis, 638).
first crisis 393–403; second crisis 6th century to 553
Speculative ideas drawn from Origen and Evagrius: the pre-existence of souls (minds) before bodies, a non-literal resurrection body, and the final restoration of all things (apokatastasis). Origen had framed many of these as hypotheses.
c. 1173 – present
Apostolic poverty and lay preaching from vernacular scripture. They rejected oaths, the death penalty, purgatory and prayers for the dead, and the authority of unworthy clergy. Unlike the Cathars, they were not dualists.