St. Peter and the First Years of Christianity

Next to the period of Our Lord’s earthly life, the apostolic age that followed was—and is—the richest and most revealing for Christians. It was then that the blueprint for living the Gospels was drawn. Yet, for Catholics of the past two generations, the indispensable fruits of the Patristic Era have been all but memory holed, and the Church and broader society have suffered for it. As a remedy, Sophia Press has brought back Abbe Constant Fouard’s intimate and ingenious account of the early years of Christianity. Fouard created an authoritative and reverent account based on the Acts of the Apostles, brimming with precious facts from historians of Greece and Rome, penetrating reflections on Saints Matthew and Mark’s Gospels, an extensive outline related by Saint Luke, and a timeless introduction by James Cardinal Gibbons which upholds the authenticity of the Sacred Scriptures. As Catholic World magazine trumpeted over 100 years ago: “[Abbe Fouard’s book] shows how much may be obtained by