The Peregrine's Odyssey

Download or read book The Peregrine's Odyssey written by Michael Kleinfall and published by Michael Kleinfall. This book was released on 2019-04-28 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Christiani esse non licit. “It is not lawful to be a Christian!” From the time of Nero in the mid-first century, these four words hung over the heads of every Christian for the first three centuries of the nascent Church of the Christos, the God-man. To be a Christian was to be subject to execution. So it was… In 116 AD during the reign of the Emperor Trajan, Ignatius, bishop of Syrian Antioch, heard those four words sentencing him to death in the Roman Colosseum. His condemnation and martyrdom were witnessed by Gaius Segusiavus, the “Peregrine,” a wealthy Gallo-Roman merchant and Ignatius’ lifelong and closest friend. Against the backdrop of Trajan’s Roman Empire, Gaius is inexorably drawn into the Christian world as “The Way” spreads throughout the Empire and into Gaius’ own family. We encounter the Christians of Rome, those in Asia and Bithynia; the emperor Trajan, successful in war, reshaping the face of Rome with his monumental building projects; the decorated centurion Maximus who befriends Gaius; the eloquent Roman senator, Pliny the Younger, through whose letters we live the lives of noble Romans; and a vengeful, banished son who will haunt the last days of the “Peregrine.” Over the course of twenty years the lives of Gaius and Ignatius are increasingly intertwined: Ignatius the martyr who becomes one of the most famous and iconic of the early Church Fathers; Gaius who seeks understanding of his closest friend’s faith, while fearing the possibility of hearing those deadly four words. History and fiction meet in a story of the love of two “brothers” and the Love that conquers all.