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Athanasius of Alexandria · 362 · Letter
For students of how the Nicene party reconciled after Julian recalled the exiles; short and important.
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Basil the Great · 363–378 · Sermon
For anyone who has heard Basil quoted on wealth and the poor and wants the sermons themselves (I will pull down my barns, To the rich, On the famine, Against usury), with others on fasting, anger, envy and baptism. One is free in English.
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Ephrem the Syrian · 363–373 · Poem
Ephrem the Syrian composed these liturgical hymns during the final decade of his life while serving as a deacon in Edessa, as the young Christian church faced both external persecution and internal…
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Ephrem the Syrian · 363–373 · Sermon
These homilies represent the flowering of Syriac Christianity in the fourth century, delivered by Ephrem the Syrian during his final decade in Edessa. As deacon of the cathedral church, Ephrem preached to…
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Hilary of Poitiers · 364–365 · Treatise
Against Auxentius stands as one of Hilary of Poitiers' final theological battles, written in 364-365 during his last years as he confronted the resurgence of Arianism in the West. The treatise targets…
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Gregory of Nazianzus · 364–365 · Sermon
For historians of Julian and of Christians under a pagan emperor; two long, furious invectives in a Victorian translation, not devotional reading.
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Athanasius of Alexandria · 368–372 · Letter
For historians of the creeds after Ariminum; a short synodal letter.
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Gregory of Nazianzus · 369 · Sermon
For readers who want Gregory on grief, and a picture of his family; the funeral oration for his younger brother, a court physician, ending in consolation for their parents.
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Gregory of Nazianzus · 369–374 · Sermon
For readers interested in how the early church praised a married woman's holiness, and for anyone who liked Oration 7; the funeral oration for his sister.
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Basil the Great · 370 · Letter
For anyone who reads: a bishop telling his nephews how to take what is good from Homer and Plato and leave the rest. An hour's reading, and the best first page of Basil for a newcomer.
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Athanasius of Alexandria · 370–372 · Letter
For readers of Christology between Nicaea and Chalcedon: the short letter in which he insists that Christ's body was a real human body, read aloud at Chalcedon as a touchstone of orthodoxy.
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Gregory of Nyssa · 370–394 · Letter
For readers who want the man behind the treatises: travel, friendships, a church building, his brother Peter, and a bishop's troubles; the NPNF selection gives eighteen of the thirty letters.
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Jerome · 370–420 · Letter
For any reader: the best way to meet Jerome — on virginity, on a clergyman's life, on translating Scripture, on grief, on Rome and Bethlehem — in about 150 letters, the free English being a generous selection.
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Letters Letters (Gregory Nazianzen)
Gregory of Nazianzus · 370–390 · Letter
For readers who want the man behind the orations — friendships, quarrels, favours asked — and for students of Christology, the two letters to Cledonius; the free English is a selection of about fifty of the 249.
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Basil the Great · 370–378 · Sermon
For any reader: nine sermons on the six days of creation, preached to working people, full of the natural history of the ancient world and the wonder of it. The friendliest way into Basil; also the model for Ambrose's Hexaemeron.
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Gregory of Nyssa · 370–390 · Treatise
For readers who want a practical statement of what it means to imitate Christ, built from Paul's names for him; among the most readable of his ascetic writings.
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Basil the Great · 370–379 · Other
For the reader who wants to pray with Basil rather than read about him: the eucharistic liturgy still used in Lent in the Byzantine churches and daily by the Copts, its long anaphora a summary of the whole faith. Follow Hapgood's English; the Greek is for
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Gregory of Nyssa · 371 · Treatise
For readers interested in the beginnings of Christian asceticism and in how a married bishop could praise virginity as the soul's freedom for God; his earliest work, and more philosophical than its title suggests.
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Ambrose of Milan · 374–397 · Letter
The letters of Ambrose of Milan emerge from the turbulent decades when Christianity was consolidating its position as the religion of the Roman Empire. Written between 374 and 397, these epistles document…
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Gregory of Nyssa · 375–395 · Letter
For readers curious about Gregory's visit to the holy places and the Christological quarrel he found there; a short personal letter, read in ten minutes.
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Long Rules Regulae fusius tractatae
Basil the Great · 375 · Treatise
For anyone who wants to know where Benedict's Rule came from: 55 questions on loving God and neighbour, leaving the world, obedience, work and care of the sick, answered from Scripture. The more readable of the two Rules; read it first.
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Ambrose of Milan · 375 · Treatise
Ambrose of Milan's De Cain et Abel, written around 375, stands as one of the bishop's earliest exegetical works, emerging from his pastoral concern to address the spiritual dangers of envy and…
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Ambrose of Milan · 375 · Treatise
Ambrose of Milan's "De Paradiso" emerged from his systematic exposition of Genesis during his tenure as Bishop of Milan in the late fourth century. Written around 375 as part of his larger…
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Basil the Great · 375 · Treatise
For anyone who wants to see how the Church came to call the Spirit God: a careful argument, not a devotional book. Not the place to start if you have never read a Church Father; take the Address to Young Men first.
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