Ignatius of Antioch, the author of the Didache, Clement of Rome, a brilliant and passionate martyr, a down-to-earth canon lawyer, a spokesperson for the Church of Rome, seen in retrospect as the third Pope. These are some of the figures examined in this scholarly but accessible book. They belong to the period when the church was only gradually beginning to shape its own canon of Scripture, with a New Testament as well as the old Jewish Bible, and was progressively formalizing its structures and institutions and developing a consciousness of its own orthodox doctrine. Simon Tugwell guides the reader through the major figures and debates of this key age in the emergence and spread of Christianity.