Amid the debates about the organization and unity of the church in third-century Carthage, Cyprian rose as a prominent and learned catechist. This chapter looks at several writings associated with basic education – Ad Donatum, Ad Quirinum, De dominica oratione – as well as letters from the ecclesiastical debates to shed light on the way these debates shaped approaches to teaching knowledge of God in catechesis.

As Christianity continued to transition from school churches to the monepiscopate, the role of hiddenness and openness in Christian teaching become an increasingly contested issue. Three writings associated with the so-called Hippolytan school – the Traditio apostolica, the Commentarium in Canticum Canticorum, and De Christo et antichristo – shed light on the tensions between hiddenness and secrecy in baptismal instruction.

The Tuscania Archaeological Survey investigated the archaeology of the countryside within a 10 km radius of the small town of Tuscania some 80 km northwest of Rome. The aim of the project was to contribute to present understanding of the processes that have shaped the development of the modern Mediterranean landscape as a physical and cultural construct. The specific research context of the project was debates about these processes in Etruria, the western side of central Italy that was the heartland of the Etruscan civilization in the mid first millennium BC: the character of prehistoric settlement prior to Etruscan urbanization; the relations between Etruscan towns and their rural populations; the impact on Tuscania and its landscape of being absorbed into the expanding Roman empire (‘Romanization’) and its economic structures after about 300 BC;the collapse of that system in the mid first millennium AD and the subsequent emergence of nucleated medieval villages (incastellamento); and the vicissitudes of peasant life through the political upheavals of medieval and post-medieval Italy. The chapter closes with an explanation of why we selected Tuscania and its intensively-farmed volcanic landscape as an ideal ‘laboratory’ for investigating this long-term landscape history, and how the project was planned.

This chapter documents the precipitous collapse of the fortunes of the papacy, and the Roman Church more generally, following the murder of John VIII in 882. A series of short-lived pontiffs must devote their energy to attempts to protect the city of Rome from physical assault, but the loss of any semblance of security in the surrounding hinterland leads to an economic collapse reflected in the archaeological record, the apparent absence of new building projects or significant gifts of precious objects, and also the discontinuation of the series of papal biographies (Liber pontificalis). The one exception is the Life of Stephen V (885–891), and this reveals the complete impoverishment of the papal treasury. The pope is reduced to making gifts of books, and this leads to a substantial discussion of what is known about book culture in Rome in the ninth century.

The Introduction sets out the methodological approach of the book, and the major themes to be addressed. It is a ‘history in art’, a notion that provides for a primary focus on the evidence adduced from material culture (archaeology, standing remains and their decoration, surviving objects including manuscripts) integrated with information derived from written sources (in this instance primarily the series of papal biographies known as the Liber pontificalis, supplemented by other documents such as the Ordines Romani and the chronicles of Frankish and Italian historians). The two other overarching themes are the gradual decline of the Roman economy, and the resulting impoverishment of the Roman Church over the course of the ninth century and its effects on papal patronage, and the continuing adherence of Roman artistic production to the broader context of Mediterranean Christian visual culture. A historiographical survey/analysis is also included.

I have attempted to trace a constellation of ideas about truth, and how a variety of late ancient scholars thought about, and went about, bringing it to light. Even if truths are unchanging, there is a history to the way that people have sought to access it. That history is obscured when modern disciplinary boundaries become wardens of historical imagination, limiting our estimation of ancient networks of influence. I have argued that the rise of Christianity in the Roman empire caused a revolution in meaning-making, and that as Nicene Christians came to hold positions of imperial power, their argumentative methods and aims found expression in domains of knowledge production far removed from theology.