This collection of documents from early Christianity (the second century to the early middle ages) recounts the lives of various Christian leaders (both male and female).  Some of the documents parallel the New Testament book of Acts in narrating stories about the earliest apostles and disciples of Jesus.  Other documents are more properly "hagiography," stories about later saints; these hagiographies often recount a saint's struggles against nonbelievers to the point of the saint's (normally glorious) death.  These documents reveal much about the ways early Christians viewed themselves and what they counted as virtue.

10/8/05