A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years

by Diarmaid MacCulloch

It is impossible to estimate the numbers of converts involved; Pliny’s experience in Bithynia would suggest that in Asia Minor at least, right at the beginning of the second century, Christians could form an economically significant part of the population. That likelihood of a precocious Christian presence there is reinforced by the prominent part played by Asia Minor in the theological ferment already discussed (see Ch. 4) and by archaeological finds which show that during the third century Christians in Asia Minor were putting up blatantly Christian tombstones, presumably in public places – generations before the appearance of similar openly Christian material in provincial settings elsewhere.20 Beyond Asia Minor, Christian communities were probably quite small, particularly in the West outside Rome, and even there their numbers were dwarfed by the immense scale of the city. What was impressive, and increasingly noticed by non-Christians, was not so much the numbers of any one community but the geographical spread of the Church throughout the empire and beyond, and its sense of community.