Ramsay MacMullen quotes:

All Gaza's temples are torn down and burned and the city is cleansed of every belief but the Christian faith. The most stubborn opponents, faute de mieux, are tied up, marched away to the provincial capital, severely tortured, and all killed mala morte, 'a great number.'

Simplicity could only have been bought at a great price in accuracy.

It is a very good exercise, at least from a historian's point of view, to imagine oneself a devout pagan while reading various Christian writings.

More Christians died for their faith at the hands of fellow Christians

More Christians died for their faith at the hands of fellow Christians than had died before in all the persecutions.

Anyone who asserted wrong teachings, anyone serving the devil or his demons, earned instead an equally remarkable antagonism. In their official high meetings together, Christians thus could not keep their own disagreements within the bounds of civil language; their continual quarrels required the intervention of the civil authorities; and all this was well known and noted by friends and foes alike.