ABSTRACT
Late Antiquity is generally applied by modern historians to the period bridging classical antiquity and the early Middle Ages. The dominant political and cultural entity of the late antique Mediterranean was the Roman Empire which, at the beginning of Late Antiquity around 250, stretched from the borders of southern Scotland to the western margins of the Arabian Desert in what is now modern Jordan. The predominant theological questions for Christian writers of Late Antiquity largely concerned the definition of the Trinity and the relationship between God the Father and Jesus Christ as the Son of God. As with many aspects of life in Late Antiquity, the main organising principle of the church was hierarchy. No single language dominated Christian worship during Late Antiquity, and the experience of individual Christians was constantly framed by the interactions between languages employed by government administration and those used locally in the daily life of individual regions.
