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The Early Church · Interactive
The Christian World
Ecclesiae Primae · AD 0–500
A map and timeline of the churches, sees, and councils of the first five centuries. Click any city or council to open its dossier — who led it, what it was praised and rebuked for and by whom, and exactly how we know it was there.
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The Map
Select a church, see, or council above to read its dossier.
About this study & its sources
This is a learning tool, not a textbook. Each entry is built primarily from New Advent — the 1911–1914 Catholic Encyclopedia and its collection of the Church Fathers — supplemented by the scriptural and patristic texts themselves. Every dossier names the concrete evidence that the church existed: a church at Magnesia, for instance, is attested because Ignatius of Antioch addressed his Epistle to the Magnesians to it around AD 107, greeting its bishop by name. Where a founding, a bishop, or a date rests on later tradition rather than a first-hand text, the entry says so.
Every source opens its full text right here on the page — the Catholic Encyclopedia articles, the letters of the Church Fathers, and the Scripture passages — with a link out to the original on newadvent.org. The 1913 Encyclopedia is authoritative for early history but predates a century of later scholarship — treat dates and successions marked “traditional” with that in mind. The map now covers the letter-churches and great sees, the ecumenical councils and the contested/rejected ones, and the regional churches from Gaul to Mesopotamia — 39 sites in all.