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Virtutes apostolorum: Origin, Aim, and Use

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2016

Els Rose*
Affiliation:
Utrecht University
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Extract

The history of Christianity shows roughly two ways of remembering the apostles: as a collegium of twelve and as individual authorities or saints. In the earliest centuries, the reference to Christ's disciples as a group predominates. Both in the visual arts and in writing, “the twelve” are undiscriminated, forming a collective representation of testimony to Christian teaching. Prescriptive writings from the first four centuries dealing with matters of ecclesiastical organization, doctrine, and worship may serve as an example, such as the first-century document entitled “Doctrine of the Twelve Apostles,” better known as Didache, and the second- to fourth-century related sources Doctrina apostolorum, Didascalia apostolorum, and Constitutiones apostolicae.

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Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 2013 Fordham University 

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