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AD 390

Jerome’s Hebrew translations of the Old Testament

Jerome called his preface to Samuel and Kings a “helmeted” introduction — armour against the critics he expected.

No day in 390, and no finished New Testament

The listing has Jerome completing a Latin New Testament in 390 and then starting the Old. No source records a particular day when he began, and the premise is wrong: his securely attributable New Testament work was a relatively light revision of the four Gospels made in 382–384, and the reviser of Acts, the Epistles and Revelation remains unknown.

Around this period, living near Bethlehem, he moved from revising Septuagint-based Latin texts to producing new Latin versions based principally on Hebrew and Aramaic scripture.

The year 390 is a conventional approximate starting point, not a documented day or even an uncontested first book.

A start spread across years

What began was a sequence of book projects rather than one translation event. Jerome had produced a new Hebrew-based Psalter by approximately 390–392, and recent scholarship dates Daniel, an early part of the larger Hebrew-Aramaic project, to 392–393.

A traditional chronology places Samuel and Kings near the beginning of the enterprise.

The translations were issued book by book, each with its own preface.

The helmeted preface

The prologue to Samuel and Kings declares that Jerome was turning books from Hebrew into Latin, and asks readers to compare his version against Greek and Latin copies. It organised the Hebrew scriptures as twenty-two books and addressed his patrons Paula and Eustochium.

The new versions invited criticism immediately, because familiar church readings derived from the Septuagint could now differ from Jerome’s text.

Hebrew and Aramaic supplied the base, but Jerome also drew on the Septuagint, Old Latin versions, Aquila, Symmachus, Theodotion and Jewish exegesis.

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Date disputed. Sources disagree; the research places it at ~0390.

What the sources leave uncertain

The year 390 is a conventional approximate starting point, not an independently documented day or even an uncontested first book.
The sequence is difficult to reduce to a single “start”: Jerome had already revised or translated Old Testament material from Greek, produced a Hebrew-based Psalter around 390–392 and translated other Hebrew-Aramaic books over the following fifteen years.
The title “Vulgate” is anachronistic for this moment. In Jerome’s lifetime, “common edition” commonly referred to Septuagint-derived text, and the later Vulgate was a composite collection.

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AD 391

Destruction of the Serapeum of Alexandria

The violence began around sacred objects carried into public and ridiculed — not around a library fire.

The wrong building

No reliable source records flames destroying the Great Library in the Mouseion in 391. The event attached to that year is the destruction of the Serapeum, a separate temple complex in Alexandria’s south-western Rhakotis quarter.

The Mouseion’s royal library and the Serapeum’s secondary collection were different institutions in different places.

The destruction is conventionally dated to 391, though 392 also appears in scholarship, and no exact day survives.

Ridicule, then street fighting

According to Socrates Scholasticus, Bishop Theophilus publicly exposed and mocked objects taken from pagan sanctuaries. The fighting that followed between pagan and Christian Alexandrians caused deaths and injuries, and several pagan teachers then fled the city.

Socrates learned about the riot partly from those teachers; he reports that one of them, Helladius, later boasted of having killed nine people himself.

Socrates also reports that Alexandria’s governor and the military commander assisted Theophilus in demolishing temples, that cult images were broken up or melted into utensils for the Alexandrian church, and that one image was kept for public display.

What happened to the books is unsettled

Other accounts give a different sequence: pagans barricaded themselves in the Serapeum after the street fighting, imperial authorities pardoned the rioters but ordered pagan images destroyed, and the cult statue of Serapis was attacked before the complex was levelled and Christianised.

Socrates’s account mentions neither a library nor burning books.

Dirk Rohmann argues from Orosius and other evidence that book chests were emptied and many books probably destroyed — which still does not establish that the Mouseion’s Great Library burned, or identify any particular work lost.

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Date disputed. Sources disagree; the research places it at ~0391.

What the sources leave uncertain

The destruction is conventionally dated to 391, but 392 also appears in scholarship; no exact day survives.
The narratives were written from sharply partisan Christian or pagan perspectives and conflict over whether the riot preceded authorization, whether demolition was immediately ordered and how the Serapeum’s conversion unfolded.
Russell concludes that later historians telescoped separate stages—the cult statue’s destruction and the precinct’s conversion—whose traditions may span 390–400.
Scholars disagree over the late Serapeum library. Some emphasize that the principal destruction narratives do not mention books; others use Orosius and late-antique descriptions to argue that books were plundered or destroyed.

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November 8, AD 392

Theodosian Code 16.10.12

The edict reached into the household shrine: a splash of wine, a pinch of incense, a lamp or a garland could become evidence of an illegal rite.

8 November 392, at Constantinople

On 8 November 392 at Constantinople, an imperial constitution preserved as Theodosian Code 16.10.12 was addressed to Rufinus, praetorian prefect of the East. Its transmitted heading names Theodosius, Arcadius and Honorius.

The law declared that no person, regardless of rank or wealth, could sacrifice an animal to an image anywhere, or inspect living entrails for divination.

Such divination was to be prosecuted in a manner analogous to treason, even where no inquiry about the emperor had occurred.

Lamps, wine and garlands

Its defining reach was into private household worship. Honouring the Lar with fire, the Genius with wine or the Penates with scent was prohibited, as were lighting lamps, offering incense and hanging garlands.

What it banned was the ritual use: it did not prohibit owning incense, or every figurine as an object.

Nor did it order the general demolition of temples — its sanctions were prosecution, fines and confiscation of the property used for rites.

Twenty-five pounds of gold

A person performing these rites on property he owned could lose the house or the estate to the treasury.

Someone performing them in a public temple, or on another’s property without the owner’s knowledge, faced a fine of twenty-five pounds of gold, and a complicit owner faced the same. Municipal defenders and councillors were ordered to report offences and judges to punish them, with negligent judges and their office staffs paying thirty pounds of gold each.

The language claims universal social reach, but the law was addressed to the praetorian prefect of the East; no parallel western version is preserved, and Theodosius did not then control the territory governed by the usurper Eugenius.

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What the sources leave uncertain

The date and place in the law’s subscription—Constantinople, 8 November 392—are securely transmitted.
Although its language claims universal social reach, it was addressed to the praetorian prefect of the East. No parallel western version is preserved, and Theodosius did not then control territory governed by the western usurper Eugenius.
The practical enforcement of late Roman religious laws was uneven. Repeated later legislation demonstrates that prohibited practices continued.
The law applied in principle to rites such as the Eleusinian Mysteries, but it does not mention Eleusis. Sources variously associate the sanctuary’s closure with the legislation and its physical destruction with Alaric’s invasion in 395 or 396.

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AD 393

Anti-pagan legislation of Theodosius I

The alleged order disappears when the laws are read in sequence: 391 regulates temple worship, 392 reaches household gods, and the next relevant constitution is from 395.

The year with no law in it

No surviving law and no securely attested event from 393 orders the empire-wide destruction of pagan temples, sacred sites, statues or antiquities.

The Theodosian Code was compiled decades later and preserves edited legal constitutions rather than a continuous record of enforcement. Scholars also dispute how universally individual constitutions circulated, and how closely conduct on the ground followed the legal language.

Localised temple attacks did occur, but they do not establish a single centrally directed campaign throughout the empire in 393.

What 391 and 392 actually said

On 24 February 391, a law addressed to Albinus forbade sacrifice and entering temples for pagan worship. It penalised worshippers and negligent officials; it did not command demolition of the buildings.

On 16 June 391, a separate constitution addressed to officials in Egypt prohibited sacrifice and temple worship there — again a cult restriction. On 8 November 392, Theodosius, Arcadius and Honorius prohibited animal sacrifice and domestic rites involving the Lares, the household Genius, the Penates, incense, lamps and garlands, prescribing fines and confiscation.

Restricting or closing worship is not synonymous with demolishing a structure.

The demolition law belongs to 435

The surviving law that explicitly orders remaining sanctuaries and temples destroyed and marked with the Christian sign is Codex Theodosianus 16.10.25, dated 14 November 435 — issued under Theodosius II and Valentinian III, four decades later.

Maternus Cynegius, praetorian prefect of the East from 384 to 388, is associated by literary sources with anti-temple activity, but recent scholarship rejects the claim that Theodosius sent him to Alexandria to close the temples there.

Sofie Remijsen finds the supposed Theodosian ban on the Olympic Games, and the traditional 393 end date for them, unfounded.

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Date disputed. Sources disagree about when this happened.

What the sources leave uncertain

The Theodosian Code was compiled decades later and preserves edited legal constitutions rather than a continuous narrative of enforcement.
Scholars dispute how universally individual constitutions circulated and how closely conduct on the ground followed the legal language.
Localized temple attacks occurred, but they do not establish a single, centrally directed 393 campaign throughout the empire.

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AD 397

Confessions (Augustine)

The case for 397 partly depends on a silence: Augustine seems not to know that Ambrose had died in April of that year.

A start nobody wrote down

No day, month, writing location or contemporary notice records Augustine beginning the Confessions in 397.

A scholarly reconstruction places the probable beginning in 396 or 397, possibly after Augustine broke off work on De doctrina Christiana.

No manuscript colophon says he began on any given day; the date is reconstructed from clues left inside the prose.

An argument from what the book does not know

One argument for 397 is that the Confessions appears unaware that Ambrose died and Simplicianus succeeded him as bishop of Milan in April 397.

That is an inference from the text, not a dated authorial statement.

James J. O’Donnell argued for composition in 397 from internal, rhetorical and stylistic evidence; later scholarship treats the single-year conclusion cautiously.

What he had actually started

The work was composed during the early years of Augustine’s episcopate, and is conventionally assigned the broader range of approximately 397 to 400.

Augustine later described it as thirteen books: the first ten concerning himself, the final three concerning Scripture.

The autobiographical narrative largely ends in 387, roughly a decade before the writing began.

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Date disputed. Sources disagree; the research places it at ~0397.

What the sources leave uncertain

The date rests on Augustine’s later ordering of his works, internal allusions, and hypotheses about how the books were composed.
Scholars disagree over whether all thirteen books were produced as a unit or in distinct phases.
A date of 397 is plausible but should not be presented as a witnessed calendar event.

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AD 400

Mahābhārata

The date 401 appears in no colophon and no inscription; it is a modern rounding of an eight-century composition range.

A rounding, not a finishing

No source records an author, editor, court or scribal group finalising the Mahābhārata in 401. The conventional date of around 400 CE is an approximate endpoint for a long range of textual development, not an event date.

A common institutional summary dates the epic’s development from approximately 400 BCE to around 400 CE, and describes the process as extending over a long period.

An Oxford study summarises the mainstream outer limits as a terminus post quem in the fourth century BCE and a terminus ante quem in the fourth century CE, while emphasising scholarly disagreement over how the epic formed.

What the early witnesses show

The much earlier Spitzer manuscript preserves an ancient list of Mahābhārata books, showing that a recognisable large-scale structure existed by roughly the second or third century CE. It does not prove that every later passage was already fixed.

The earliest evidence the Oxford study cites for the epic at approximately its full traditional extent is a land-grant inscription of 532–533 CE, which calls it a collection of 100,000 verses.

That inscription establishes a later terminus; it does not date completion to 401.

Which final text?

Modern comparison of numerous divergent manuscripts produced a critical edition of about 83,000 verses, while the recension accompanied by Nīlakaṇṭha’s commentary approaches 100,000.

So “final form” may mean a lost archetype, the common ancestor of the recensions, a traditional 100,000-verse text, or the modern critical edition — and these are not interchangeable.

The Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute’s critical edition is a twentieth-century scholarly reconstruction, not an ancient final copy.

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Date disputed. Sources disagree; the research places it at ~0400.

What the sources leave uncertain

Approximately 400 CE is the edge of a conventional scholarly range, not a precise year—still less the specific year 401.
Scholars disagree over a long accretion model versus proposals for a shorter, substantially written composition around 150 BCE–1 CE.
“Final form” may mean a lost archetype, the common ancestor of recensions, a traditional 100,000-verse text, or the much later modern critical edition; these are not interchangeable.
The sixth-century inscription proves that a 100,000-verse Mahābhārata was recognized by then, but cannot identify the exact year in which it reached that extent.

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AD 412

The City of God

The project that became twenty-two books started from private letters about whether Christian teaching was compatible with governing a Roman state.

412 or 413

At Hippo Regius in Roman North Africa, Bishop Augustine began the work that became De civitate Dei. Modern datings vary: the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy dates the beginning to 412, while James O’Donnell places the first three books between late 412 and September 413.

No source records a particular day on which Augustine began writing, so 413 is a conventional date rather than a securely witnessed starting year.

His age is not secure either. Augustine was born on 13 November 354, so he was 58 through most of 413 and may well have begun the work at 58.

What Marcellinus asked for

The immediate project answered arguments circulating after Rome’s sack in 410 — especially claims that Christian teaching, or the abandonment of Rome’s gods, had harmed the Roman state.

Marcellinus, an imperial commissioner, relayed those objections and asked Augustine to produce books addressing them; Augustine later described City of God as fulfilling a promise made to him.

The Roman aristocrat Volusianus supplied questions about Christianity and government that helped define the controversy Augustine set out to answer.

Out in installments

By 1 September 413 Augustine had completed at least Books 1 to 3.

He sent those books to Macedonius, vicar of Africa, and individual books or installments began circulating. Within months the work was already public in Roman Africa and had reached senior officials.

It was issued piecemeal rather than released as a single book, and its eventual twenty-two-book form was still more than a decade away.

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Date disputed. Sources disagree; the research places it at ~0412.

What the sources leave uncertain

No source records a particular day on which Augustine began writing.
O’Donnell places the first three books between late 412 and September 413; the Stanford Encyclopedia dates the beginning to 412. Thus 413 is a conventional date, not a securely witnessed starting year.
The listed age of 59 is not secure. Augustine was born on 13 November 354, so he was 58 through most of 413 and may have begun the work while 58.

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AD 429

Vandal conquest of Roman Africa

The supposed 80,000-strong army included children, older people, slaves and masters — a count designed to make Gaiseric’s following look terrifyingly large.

May 429, across the strait

In May 429, King Gaiseric — who had succeeded Gunderic the year before — left the Roman province of Baetica in southern Hispania and transported the Vandals, the surviving Alans and their households across the strait into Roman Mauretania.

Hydatius, a near-contemporary chronicler in Hispania, says Gaiseric crossed with all the Vandals and their families. He does not describe an army of 80,000 fighting men.

That figure comes from Victor of Vita, writing roughly six decades later, and it counts a whole migrating population — down to children and dependants.

A crossing interrupted mid-operation

During the operation Gaiseric learned that the Suevic leader Hermigarius was raiding nearby Spanish provinces. He returned with part of his force, defeated him near Mérida, and then resumed the crossing.

A modern scholarly reconstruction places the likely passage between Tarifa and the vicinity of Tangier, probably using repeated trips by large boats and requisitioned merchant vessels.

That route is a reconstruction rather than one Hydatius names; Procopius says only that the Vandals crossed at the strait of Gadira.

Why Africa — and who invited them

Gaiseric’s position in Baetica was insecure, while Roman Africa was prosperous and had been disorganised by Boniface’s conflict with the imperial government.

Procopius’s later story that Boniface invited the Vandals is possible but unsupported by contemporary sources, and modern scholarship judges it doubtful.

Once across, the migrants began an eastward march through Roman North Africa that combined mass migration with conquest and plunder; Carthage was not captured until 439.

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Date corrected. The research places this at 0429-05.

What the sources leave uncertain

Hydatius securely supplies May 429, but no exact day survives.
Tarifa-to-Tangier is a probable modern reconstruction, not a route named by Hydatius. Procopius instead broadly says the Vandals crossed at the strait of Gadira.
The figure of 80,000 comes from Victor of Vita, writing roughly six decades later. Victor presents it as a total population count designed to magnify Gaiseric’s strength, not as a count of soldiers.
Whether Boniface invited the Vandals remains disputed: Procopius reports it more than a century later, while contemporary sources are silent.

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June AD 431

Council of Ephesus

The decisive session opened without a major episcopal delegation and without Rome’s legates — and ended with the bishop of the imperial capital deposed in absentia.

Monday, 22 June 431

On Monday 22 June 431, bishops supporting Cyril of Alexandria assembled in Ephesus, in the church named for Mary, for the council’s first official session.

They proceeded despite the absence of John of Antioch and his eastern bishops, and over the objection of the imperial representative, Count Candidian.

Cyril moved when continued delay, illness and expense at Ephesus made his party unwilling to wait any longer — the session opened sixteen days beyond the originally appointed date.

Two letters tested against a creed

After Nestorius declined the council’s summonses, the bishops examined the Nicene Creed, Cyril’s Second Letter to Nestorius, Nestorius’s reply and extracts from his sermons.

The session judged Cyril’s letter consonant with the Nicene faith, rejected Nestorius’s position and decreed his removal from the episcopate and priestly communion.

What it condemned was not the bare proposition that Christ has distinct human and divine natures — the dispute concerned how those realities were united in one acting subject.

Torches, then a rival synod

News of the sentence produced public celebration in Ephesus; a historical account based on the conciliar material describes residents illuminating the city and escorting the bishops with torches.

Administratively, nothing was settled. Within days John of Antioch arrived and convened a rival synod that purported to depose Cyril and Memnon, leaving Theodosius II facing competing sentences.

The decree forbidding a rival faith to the one established at Nicaea is recorded under 22 July, and Rome’s legates arrived only that month, confirming the sentence afterwards.

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Date corrected. The research places this at 0431-06-22.

What the sources leave uncertain

The opening date and deposition on 22 June are well attested. Attendance totals vary because bishops arrived at different times and because rival assemblies operated in Ephesus; the article should not attach a single approximate total to the opening without defining whom it counts.
The extant record dated 22 July containing the decree on the sufficiency of the Nicene Creed has a more complicated documentary status than the securely attested first session; modern editors describe it as a purported later session.
Whether Nestorius himself held everything later labeled 'Nestorianism' remains debated. The event can securely be described as the council's condemnation of his recorded language and teaching, not as proof that every later caricature accurately represents his theology.

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AD 432

Saint Patrick

Patrick said his return began with a bundle of letters in a vision and a chorus from Ireland begging him to “walk again among us”.

A year Patrick never gives

The listing puts the arrival at 430. Patrick’s own Confessio says only that, many years after escaping captivity in Ireland, he returned to the Irish people to preach the gospel — it supplies no year, no landing place and no arrival narrative.

The traditional annalistic year is 432, not 430, and even that chronology is retrospective and disputed.

A Cambridge study summarises modern placement of the mission in the middle or late fifth century.

The letters in the vision

Patrick describes a vision in Britain in which a figure, Victoricus, brought letters from Ireland while voices begged him to “come and walk again among us”.

He presents that calling as the motive for his return, along with the gospel and God’s promises.

No reliable source preserves what he did on his first day ashore.

Palladius, the year before

Prosper of Aquitaine records that Pope Celestine sent Palladius as first bishop to Irish believers in 431 — a securely dated mission often confused or entwined with Patrick’s chronology.

The traditional 432 sits suspiciously close to it, and may have been constructed retrospectively.

Prosper’s notice refers to Irish people already believing in Christ, so Patrick did not arrive on an entirely non-Christian island.

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Traditional date. Conventionally dated here; the research places it at ~0432.

What the sources leave uncertain

Patrick’s own surviving writings contain no securely datable event, including his missionary arrival.
The Irish annalistic tradition supplies 432, but that date is suspiciously close to the securely recorded dispatch of Palladius in 431 and may have been constructed retrospectively.
Modern scholarship ranges from an early-fifth-century Patrick to a mission in the middle or later fifth century. A Cambridge study summarizes modern placement in the middle or late fifth century.
The listed year 430 has no comparable traditional or contemporary support and may reflect loose rounding of the conventional 432 date.

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October 8, AD 451

Council of Chalcedon

On opening day the bishops had to sit through a reading of their own words from two years earlier — then loudly disown them.

8 October 451, in St Euphemia

The Council of Chalcedon opened on 8 October 451 in the Church of St Euphemia at Chalcedon, across the Bosporus from Constantinople.

Marcian had transferred the council from Nicaea to nearby Chalcedon, which let the imperial government supervise it more tightly.

The first session was not a drafting meeting but an appeal-style review of the Second Council of Ephesus of 449, conducted by reading its extensive minutes aloud.

Their own words read back

Bishops who had taken part in the 449 proceedings heard their own statements supporting Eutyches and condemning Flavian read back to them, and many responded with vocal expressions of contrition.

Dioscorus of Alexandria was moved from his episcopal seat and treated as the principal defendant, while his accuser Eusebius of Dorylaeum and the restored Theodoret of Cyrrhus were heard amid intense factional protest.

Theodoret’s admission to the session provoked competing cries of “orthodox” and “Nestorian” from the assembled bishops.

None of the famous outcomes happened that day

The session set the council’s direction toward reversing the judgments of 449, but 8 October produced neither the Chalcedonian Definition, nor Dioscorus’s formal deposition, nor Jerusalem’s jurisdictional settlement.

Dioscorus was deposed on 13 October after declining three recorded summonses. The Definition of Faith followed on 22 October and was solemnly approved on 25 October, with 38 high state officials recorded; the Antioch–Jerusalem settlement came on 26 October.

The “November 1” in the listing is the probable final session, at which modern editors argue the last appeal over Canon 28 was heard.

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What the sources leave uncertain

The listed title says 'November 1' while the supplied date is 8 October. These are respectively the probable final date and the secure opening date of the council.
The transmitted acts contain inconsistent session numbering and at least one demonstrably incorrect date; modern editors argue that the final appeal over Canon 28 occurred on 1 November.
Ancient and modern attendance totals vary, and a total for the entire council should not automatically be described as the number present at the opening.
Dioscorus's formal deposition was not a simple verdict that he personally taught Eutyches's doctrine. Modern scholarship stresses procedural and disciplinary grounds, especially his failure to answer the council's summonses.

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AD 453

Death of Attila

Attendants waited through much of the morning before breaking down the door; inside they found no wound and a veiled bride weeping beside the body.

453, but probably not March

Attila died in 453 after a feast celebrating his marriage to a woman named Ildico. No exact day and no securely identified location survive.

A recent chronological study by Péter Kovács concludes that news of the death was not yet known in Rome by mid-March, so the traditional “c. March” dating is too early, or at least too precise.

Ildico’s name looks Germanic, but the sources do not establish that she was Gothic, a princess, or from any particular royal family.

No wound on the body

In the conventional account attributed to Priscus and preserved by Jordanes, attendants broke into Attila’s room late the following morning and found him dead from an effusion of blood, with no wound visible, while Ildico wept beneath her veil.

That version says Attila lay on his back heavy with wine and sleep, and that blood which would ordinarily have run from his nose went down his throat instead.

It is a transmitted narrative rather than a verified diagnosis: Priscus’s near-contemporary text survives only through Jordanes, writing roughly a century later.

A strava, then a fight over the inheritance

Jordanes reports that Hunnic mourners cut their hair and faces, displayed Attila’s body in a silken tent and rode in circles reciting a funeral song.

A feast called a strava followed the lamentation, and Attila was buried secretly at night in coffins associated with iron, silver and gold. The burial place has never been identified, and the details come from a literary account rather than archaeology.

After the rites, Attila’s sons competed for supremacy and demanded that subject kings and their peoples be divided among them by lot.

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Date disputed. Sources disagree about when this happened.

What the sources leave uncertain

Only the year 453 is secure. A 2023 chronological study concludes that news of Attila's death was not known in Rome by mid-March, so the traditional 'c. March' dating is too early or at least too precise.
Priscus's near-contemporary narrative is lost in its original form and survives through Jordanes, writing roughly a century later.
The reported nosebleed or hemorrhage cannot be medically verified. A later chronicler alleged murder by a wife, but that account was recorded decades later and conflicts with the woundless body in the Priscus–Jordanes tradition.
Ildico's name appears Germanic, but the sources consulted do not establish that she was Gothic, a princess or from any particular royal family.