Methodology & caveats

This site maps 206 figures from Jesus of Nazareth to John of Damascus (317 relationships) using a single rule: every link must be defensible from a cited source. The aim is to make the chain of teaching, correspondence, and acquaintance legible at a glance — without papering over the gaps in the record.

Strength tags

Each relationship carries one of three strengths:

• Documented (247). Solid line. A primary source from antiquity directly attests the relationship — either the person's own writing, a contemporary's, or a near-contemporary historian like Eusebius writing within ~150 years. Examples: Paul's epistles to Timothy; Cyprian's letters to Cornelius; Augustine on Ambrose in the Confessions; Irenaeus on his own boyhood listening to Polycarp.
• Tradition (69). Dashed line. Attested only by a later source (Jerome's De Viris Illustribus writing centuries after, hagiographic Vitae, episcopal succession lists reconstructed by 4th-century historians). The link may well be true, but the chain of evidence is thinner. Most 1st- and 2nd-century Roman / Antiochene successions fall here.
• Disputed (1). Dotted red. Modern scholarship contests or rejects the link. Currently this category is rare — the most prominent is Vincent of Lérins's Commonitorium as an attack on Augustine.

A note on "lineage" and "chain to Jesus"

The phrase chain to Jesus does theological work, and the work isn't all the same kind. For Polycarp, "taught by John" is a real apostolic-succession claim. For Bede, the chain runs through citation — Bede cited Augustine, who was baptised by Ambrose, who corresponded with Basil, who cited Origen, who is traditionally linked to Hippolytus, who is traditionally taught by Irenaeus, who heard Polycarp, who heard John. That's not one thing. It's a transmission graph — pedagogical, epistolary, citational, sometimes sacramental.

Catholic and Orthodox readers will read "chain to Jesus" as apostolic succession (bishop-to-bishop laying on of hands). What we show by default is closer to transmission. The two overlap but aren't the same. Each figure page now lets you switch the view: All transmission (default — the strongest path through any relationship), Pedagogical (only teacher → student), Episcopal succession (only bishop-to-bishop, the Catholic/Orthodox sense), and Documented only (any type, but never tradition or disputed). Many figures will return no chain in episcopal mode because they were not bishops; that's the point.

We also weight chains by evidence: a four-hop path entirely through "taught" is shown in preference to a two-hop path that includes a "met (tradition)" link. So the chain you see is not always the shortest; it's the strongest.

What's in, what's out

• Coverage: AD 0 – ~750. Ends with John of Damascus, the traditional final Father.
• Heterodox figures (Marcion, Valentinus, Arius, Nestorius, Pelagius, Severus of Antioch, etc.) are included where they were load-bearing for the orthodox story. Their bios flag the heterodoxy.
• Anonymous works (the Didache, the Epistle of Barnabas) appear as personless authors with stable ids.
• Churches / sees as entities are not nodes — only individuals.

Honest weak spots

• Aphrahat ↔ Ephrem the Syrian is tagged tradition with no primary citation. Aphrahat (the Persian Sage, d. ~345) and Ephrem (d. 373) wrote in the same Syriac milieu but neither cites the other in surviving works. The link rests on modern scholarly consensus (Murray, Brock) that they share theological vocabulary. Without this single edge, Aphrahat would be isolated from the rest of the graph. We've kept it flagged honestly rather than dropping it; readers should treat it as a contextual rather than evidentiary connection.
• Apostolic biographical dates (e.g. Andrew d. 60, Bartholomew d. 70, Thomas d. 72, Matthias d. 80) are tradition, not evidence. The New Testament gives no martyrdom dates for most apostles. Hovering reveals the precise dates we used; they should be read as central tendencies of later tradition, not hard facts.
• Episcopal succession lists for 1st-century Rome and Antioch were reconstructed by Irenaeus (Adv. Haer. 3.3) and Eusebius. They are tagged tradition; Hegesippus's notebooks, the source for some, are lost.
• Hippolytus of Rome may be two people, not one (Brent and Cerrato split the Roman presbyter from a Greek-writing easterner). We've kept a single entry with a note.

Sources we lean on

• Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiastica
• Jerome, De Viris Illustribus
• Irenaeus, Adversus Haereses; Letter to Florinus (in Eus. HE 5.20)
• Each Father's own letters and treatises (Paul, Cyprian, the Cappadocians, Augustine, etc.)
• Council acta (Nicaea, Ephesus, Chalcedon, Constantinople III)
• Reference: Quasten Patrology, ODCC, CCEL

Corrections

Each per-person page lists the citations for every claim. If you spot something wrong, the data is JSON in the repo — open an issue or a PR. We'd rather be corrected than wrong.