THE CONQUEROR IS SET IN THE ANCIENT CHURCH PERIOD, but it isn’t a “biblical” novel. Many readers will be familiar with the genre of historical fiction in which a backstory is imagined for the apostles or other characters from Scripture. This isn’t such a book. The ancient church period lasted about five hundred years after the birth of Christ, until the Roman world gave way to the Middle Ages. While this novel does take place in the Roman Empire, it isn’t the empire of Jesus’s day. The events occur three hundred years later, when mighty Rome was learning to bow the knee to Christ. The persecution of Christians was coming to an end. Emperors were taking notice of Christianity—even converting. The age of Christian Rome was dawning.
Historians know quite a bit about this tumultuous era from various written and archaeological sources. As a scholar of that period, I have tried to add a certain realism to my story that reflects the way things really were. The characters are not “evangelicals in togas” who think and act like modern Christians. They were part of the ancient catholic church, not twenty-first-century evangelicalism.
The word catholic means “universal.” In this novel, the term should not be equated with all the doctrines and practices of today’s Roman Catholic Church. At the same time, the faith of the early Christians took a shape different from what today’s born-again Christians are familiar with. In some ways, ancient church practices do reflect Roman Catholic belief patterns. We must remember that this novel takes place twelve hundred years before the Reformation. The characters are neither Roman Catholic nor Protestant. They are the “little-c” catholic Christians of ancient Rome.
Politically, this was the age of what modern historians call the Tetrarchy, which means “rule by four.” The ancients referred to it as the Imperial College. This political system, devised by Emperor Diocletian in the late third century, divided the whole Roman Empire into quadrants. Two leading figures, each called an augustus, would rule their halves of the realm, assisted by two caesars who were supposed to take their place in orderly succession. However, this wasn’t what happened. The history of the Tetrarchy was tumultuous because many claimants vied to be augusti or caesars, backing up their aspirations by military action. It is safe to say the Tetrarchy led to a lot of civil war, until Emperor Constantine finally defeated all his challengers and united the empire again in AD 324.
Since The Conqueror is a historical novel, obviously some of the book’s characters are actual figures from history. Rex and Flavia, however, are not real (though there were certainly people like them: a Germanic army recruit, an aristocratic Christian daughter). The main story characters attested in actual history are:
Of course, we know varying amounts of historical detail about these figures. The best attested is Emperor Constantine. He did indeed witness a solar phenomenon while on a march, interpret it as a sign from the Christian God, mark his soldiers’ shields with the cross, and fight Maxentius at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in AD 312.* Other historical figures require more effort to reconstruct, yet they also grant more latitude to an author’s creativity. What I, as a fiction writer who is a church history professor and scholar of early Christianity, have tried to do in The Conqueror is spin an entertaining tale that blends real history, accurate context, and exciting drama. May you enjoy the ride. I promise, there is more to come.
Dr. Bryan Litfin
*You can read my academic article about these events at http://www.tinyurl.com/y73bnqy8.