Church History: Era of the Seven Ecumenical Councils

Era of the Seven Ecumenical Councils

• 330 - Ethiopian King Ezana of Axum makes Christianity an official religion
  
• 334 - The first bishop is ordained for Merv / Transoxiana (area of modern-day Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and southwest Kazakhstan) ^[29]
  
• 341 - Ulfilas begins work with the Goths in present-day Romania
  ^[31]
  
• 354 - Theophilus "the Indian" reports visiting Christians in India;^[16]
  Philostorgius mentions a community of Christians on the Socotra islands, south of Yemen in the Arabian Sea^[33]
  
• 370 - Wulfila translates the Bible into Gothic, the first Bible translation done specifically for missionary purposes
  
• 378 - Jerome writes, "From India to Britain, all nations resound with the death and resurrection of Christ"^[24]
  
• 380 - Roman Emperor Theodosius I makes Christianity the official state religion^[35]
  
• 382 - Jerome is commissioned to translate the Gospels (and subsequently the whole Bible) into Latin (Price, p. 78</ref>
  
• 386 - Augustine of Hippo converted ^[36]
  
• 432 - Patrick goes to Ireland as missionary ^[38]
  
• 450 - First Christians reported in Liechtenstein^[24]
  
• 496 - Conversion of Clovis I, king of Franks in Gaul, along with 3,000 warriors ^[39]
  
• 499 - Persian king Kavadh I, fleeing his country, meets a group of Christian missionaries going to Central Asia to preach to the Turks
  
• 500 - First Christians reported in North Yemen; Nairam becomes Christian center
  
• 563 - Columba sails from Ireland to Scotland where he founds an evangelistic training center on Iona
  ^[43]
  
• 596 - Gregory the Great sends Augustine and a team of missionaries to (what is now) England to reintroduce the Gospel. The missionaries settle in Canterbury and within a year baptize 10,000 people ^[45]
  
• 635 - First Christian missionaries (Nestorian monks, including Alopen, from Asia Minor and Persia arrive in China ^[49]; Aidan of Lindisfarne begins evangelizing in the heart of Northumbria (England) ^[50]
  
• 697 - Muslims overrun Carthage, capital of North Africa
  ^[54]
  
• 720 - Caliph Umar II puts heavy pressure on the Christian Berbers to convert to Islam
  
• 716 - Boniface begins missionary work among Germanic tribes
  ^[55]
  
• 724 - Boniface fells pagan sacred oak of Thor at Geismar in Hesse (Germany) ^[56]
  
• 740 - Irish monks reach Iceland
  ^[57]
  
• 771 - Charlemagne becomes king and will decree that sermons be given in the vernacular. He also commissioned Bible translations.^[58]
  
• 781 - Nestorian Stele erected near Xi'an (China) to commemorate the propagation in China of the Luminous Religion, thus providing a written record of a Christian presence in China ^[59]