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In the mid-16th century AD, Christianity arrived in Japan. Heralded by daring Jesuits from Spain and Portugal zealous to bring the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the four corners of the earth, Christianity soon took root in that distant land. At that time, Japan was fractured among warring states as feudal lords known as daimyo vied for supremacy. From the first day, the Catholic faith found surprising acceptance among Japanese of all social status and within fifty years, Japanese converts known as Kirishitans numbered in the hundreds of thousands. But with the advent of a unified Japan under the powerful Tokugawa shogunate in the early 17th century, things began to change. While the Tokugawa sho...
"Jesus never existed." "The Bible is a book of fairy tales." "Accounts of Christian persecution are fables." Christians of today face ridiculous claims of this type on a regular basis. These charges gain traction in the modern world because the average person has practically no knowledge of the Church's ancient past. I Am A Christian: Authentic Accounts of Christian Martyrdom and Persecution from the Ancient Sources aims to remedy this deficiency. The works collected in this book represent some of the most trustworthy first-hand accounts of the triumphs and travails of the early Church that have survived antiquity. These include several authentic transcripts of Roman legal proceedings agains...
Attila, king of the Huns, is a name universally known even 1,500 years after his death. His meteoric rise and legendary career of conquest left a trail of destroyed cities across the Roman Empire. At its height, his vast domain commanded more territory than the Romans themselves, and those he threatened with attack sent desperate embassies loaded with rich tributes to purchase a tenuous peace. Yet as quickly he appeared, Attila and his empire vanished with startling rapidity. His two decades of terror, however, had left an indelible mark upon the pages of European history. Priscus was a late Roman historian who had the ill luck to be born during a time when Roman political and military fortu...
Her Frankish mother dead, 17-year-old Aemilia arrives at Soissons in Roman Gaul in search of her Roman father whom she has never met. She knows only that his name is Tarunculus and that he is a former centurion. She finds an old man fixed on the past, attempting in vain to kindle a spark of patriotism in his dispirited countrymen. Soon, Aemilia is caught up in her father's schemes to save the Empire and the intrigues of the Roman nobility in Soissons. In the war between Franks and Romans to decide the fate of the last imperial province, Providence will lead her down a path she could never have imagined. Written and illustrated by master storyteller Justin Swanton, Centurion's Daughter is a thoughtful and compelling journey to a little-known period of history when an empire fell and the foundations of Christendom were laid.
Here is the tale of Godfrey de Montferrat, a boy who became both a monk and a knight who swore an oath to defend the Kingdom of Jerusalem. It is also the tale of that kingdom, which men called Outremer-The Land Beyond the Sea. With the miraculous success of the First Crusade, all said that the heroic tales of old had come to life in that place. By Godfrey's time-the late 12th century-the Kingdom is dying, chivalry fading, hope growing cold, and foes pressing hard from every side. But Godfrey stands in contradiction to the prevailing rot-a young man striving to live up to the heroic ideal. Surrounded by greed and corruption, Godfrey must determine where his true loyalties lay: to friends? to ...
The year is A.D. 1565 and the tiny island fortress of Malta, defended by an anachronistic crusading order called the Knights of St. John Hospitallers, is all that stands between the war machine of Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent and the very heart of Christendom. Pitifully outmatched and against impossible odds, the indomitable Grand Master Jean Parisot de La Valette nevertheless inspires his knights to "strike a blow for Christ" and sacrifice their lives to halt the invading Turks at the gates of Europe. Nicholas Prata relates the actual events of the Great Siege in riveting and graphic prose which brings the extreme heroism of the knights and the horror of combat sharply into focus.
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The emporer Justinian tasks the young general, Belisarius with the difficult campaign against a powerful Vandal kingdom in North Africa.
Originally published in the Journal of the American Oriental Society, this English translation of The Life of Saint Simeon the Stylite is a fascinating account of the prototypical pillar saint-the first of those strange holy athletes who took their stand atop a high column. Of unknown authorship, this vita was originally written in Syriac and was most likely penned shortly after Simeon's death in AD 459. Much of Simeon's biography consists of mystical events, miraculous cures, piety rewarded, depravity punished, divine and satanic interventions in the lives of men. But the vita also contains a wealth of information about monastic and penitential practices and provides dozens of vignettes chronicling daily Christian life and the many hardships faced by ordinary citizens of the late Roman Empire in the East. This book also includes an another article originally published in the Journal of the American Oriental Society by Charles C. Torrey entitled, "The Letters of Simeon the Stylite." This article offers English translations of several letters purportedly written by Simeon, along with a useful discussion of the controversy over the saint's opinion of the Council of Chalcedon.
Saint Ambrose of Milan is one of the towering figures of the late 4th century AD. A high official in the western Roman government, Ambrose was conscripted against his will by the people of Milan to serve as their bishop. He would go on to become one of the most important fathers of the Western Church: a fierce opponent of heretics, admonisher of emperors, voluminous writer, worker of miracles, and the spiritual father of other great saints. This biography of Ambrose was written by one of the deacons who served under him: Paulinus of Milan. Paulinus was encouraged in this biographical effort by none other than Saint Augustine of Hippo, Ambrose's most famous disciple. Written in a style simila...