Introduction to This Volume

How this book is arranged

This is the eightieth 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 Cosmas Indicopleustes, John the Lydian and John of Nikiu, from the period about AD 550 – 690.

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

Cosmas was a merchant of Alexandria who traded as far as Ethiopia and the Red Sea, and who later became a monk. About AD 550 he wrote the Christian Topography in twelve books, in which he argues from the Bible that the earth is a flat rectangle under a vaulted heaven, shaped like the tabernacle of Moses. The book is also valued for its first-hand notes on the trade of Ethiopia and India.

John was born in AD 490 at Philadelphia in Lydia and served for forty years in the offices of the praetorian prefect at Constantinople. He wrote three learned works, On the Magistracies, On Portents and On the Months. The last explains the Roman calendar month by month with its festivals, and it keeps a good deal of old pagan custom that the Church of his day had to live beside.

John was bishop of Nikiu in the Egyptian delta in the late seventh century and chief overseer of the monasteries of Lower Egypt. His Chronicle was written in Greek or Coptic and now survives only in an Ethiopic version made from Arabic. The first part is a short history of the world, and the last chapters give an eyewitness account of the Arab conquest of Egypt in AD 639–642.

Cosmas, John the Lydian and John of Nikiu wrote in Greek, Greek and Ethiopic respectively. Cosmas describes the world as a tabernacle, John the Lydian explains the months and feasts of the Roman year, and John of Nikiu gives a chronicle from Adam to the Arab conquest of Egypt.

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.