ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the happenings in churches, and the temporal and spatial context of the activities. The sixth-century papyrus document from which the following extract comes lists church services in the Egyptian town of Oxyrhynchus from October 535 to March 536. The Apostolic Constitutions was a handbook on church organisation probably compiled in Syria in the late fourth century, and drawing heavily on a third-century work known as the Teaching of the Apostles. As church membership expanded beyond the capacity of house churches such as that at Dura-Europos, it became necessary to construct purpose-built structures able to hold large numbers. Baptism was one of the most important rituals in church life, the essential qualification which allowed a Christian to partake of the eucharist. However, some distance from actual reverence for images, which becomes apparent during the sixth century and was to prove so controversial in the Byzantine iconoclastic controversy of the eighth and ninth centuries.
