Category: Death
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The Didache
About the Work: In the Early Church standardization soon became a problem. This problem was addressed through texts like the Didache, Teaching, the first word of its Greek title which we translate as The Teaching of the Lord through the Twelve Apostles to the Nations, circulated in Greek in the first century AD. The Didache covers important topics like the…
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The Martyrdom of Polycarp
About the Author: This letter from the Church at Smyrna is the earliest story of martyrdom not counting the New Testament. The original author is unknown, though our text includes the names of several men who copied the original letter. It tells the story of Polycarp, the 86 year old bishop of Smyrna, and of…
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The Dance of Death by John Lydgate
About the Author: In the early 14th century, the bubonic plague, the Black Death as it was called, swept through Europe, killing as much as half the population. Europeans suddenly had a sense of the presence of death among them, always ready to snatch them away. A French poet expressed this as the Danse Macabre, the Dance…