Apostolic Age and Early Christianity

After the death of Jesus, his followers formed communities in Judaea and carried their message into cities across the eastern Mediterranean. Missionaries including Peter and Paul addressed Jewish and non-Jewish audiences, debated membership and religious law, and created networks linked by travel, hospitality and letters.

Christian groups reached Rome within the first decades of the movement. Their refusal to participate fully in traditional religious practice, private meetings and claims about a crucified messiah could attract suspicion, although Roman treatment varied by place and circumstance. Under Nero, Christians were blamed and punished after the Great Fire of Rome in 64 CE.

This context supports fiction about the apostles, house churches, conversion, Roman surveillance and the spread of Christianity before it became an established imperial religion. It is the principal later setting for Jeanne Blanchet’s Man at the Cross Road.