Introduction to This Volume
How this book is arranged
This is the fifteenth volume of a series that gathers the writings of the early Church in order of date, from the generation after the apostles down to the eighth century. This volume holds Lactantius, Peter of Alexandria and Alexander of Alexandria, from the period about AD 300 – 325.
Within each work the text is divided into chapters and numbered sections, so that any passage can be found again and cited. The small bold figures in the text are the section numbers.
The translations
The text is in English only. Wherever a modern English version has been prepared for SermonIndex it is used here; otherwise the book prints an older public-domain translation. In both cases the wording is the translator’s own: older translations have not been altered beyond dividing them into sections. The sources for every work are listed at the back of the book, together with the licence under which each text is released. All the works in this volume are printed in older public-domain translations.
In this volume
Peter was bishop of Alexandria from about AD 300 and was martyred in AD 311. His Canonical Epistle sets out how those who had denied the faith in the Diocletian persecution were to be received back.
Lactantius was a North African teacher of rhetoric who became a Christian and was later tutor to the son of the emperor Constantine. His Divine Institutes is the first full presentation of the Christian faith in elegant Latin.
Alexander was bishop of Alexandria from about AD 313 until AD 328 and the first to oppose the teaching of Arius. His letters belong to the beginning of the Arian controversy.
Peter’s Canonical Epistle and the letters of Alexander belong to the history of the church in Egypt, at the end of the great persecution and the beginning of the Arian dispute. The Phoenix is a Latin poem ascribed to Lactantius, though some scholars doubt that it is his.
Dates and authorship
Dates are approximate and are debated by scholars. Each work begins with a short introduction that states what is known about its author and its date, and what is uncertain.