Desmond O’Grady, a Rome-based writer, has an intimate familiarity with the fascinating figures who changed the face of the Church in the centuries between Constantine’s legalization of Christianity, and Charlemagne’s attempt to erect a Holy Roman Empire. O’Grady also offers informed, critical, sympathetic accounts of the people who made that era, such as Jerome, Augustine, and dissenters such as Pelagius. Learn how Augustine was considered a liberal in his day for his embrace of the goodness of Christian marriage—and how he urged tolerance of Christians toward Jews. You will also see how quickly and how intimately church and state became intertwined, and how the church had to step in after the collapse of the Roman state to preserve some modicum of public order and pass along the great traditions of Greece and Rome to a barbarian Europe.