The faces.

“For He was made man that we might be made God; and He manifested Himself by a body that we might receive the idea of the unseen Father; and He endured the insolence of men that we might inherit immortality.”

Athanasius became bishop of Alexandria in 328 and held the post 45 years — 17 of them spent in five separate exiles, driven out by emperors who sided with the Arian bishops he refused to yield to. He had stood at Nicaea as a young deacon, and his 367 Festal Letter is one of the earliest surviving lists matching the 27-book New Testament in use today.

Today: The church he led — the Coptic Orthodox Church, tracing itself to Mark the Evangelist's arrival in Alexandria around 42-49 AD — counts millions in Egypt and over a million more in diaspora, under Pope Tawadros II, 118th on the See of Saint Mark.

“In the year of our Lord 635 he arrived at Chang-an; the Emperor sent his Prime Minister, Duke Fang Hiuen-ling; who, carrying the official staff to the west border, conducted his guest into the interior; the sacred books were translated in the imperial library, the sovereign investigated the subject in his private apartments; when becoming deeply impressed with the rectitude and truth of the religion, he gave special orders for its dissemination.”

Alopen, a Syriac-speaking monk of the Church of the East, was the first recorded Christian missionary to reach China, arriving at the Tang capital Chang'an in 635 with sacred books the emperor had translated in the imperial library; by 638 an edict permitted the faith and China's first church was built. He is known only through the Nestorian Stele — carved in 781, buried around 845, rediscovered in 1625.

Today: The stele still stands on public display at the Beilin Museum in Xi'an, and the Assyrian Church of the East and Syriac communities worldwide hold its rubbings as the touchstone of Christianity's first arrival in China.

Frumentius arrived at Aksum a shipwrecked captive boy from Tyre and rose at the royal court, tutoring the young heir Ezana; consecrated by Athanasius as the first bishop of Aksum, he is credited with baptizing King Ezana — making Aksum one of the first states in the world to adopt Christianity as its official religion. The Ethiopian church calls him Abba Salama, Father of Peace.

Today: The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, the first indigenous Christian church of sub-Saharan Africa, remains the largest of the Oriental Orthodox churches — tens of millions strong, tracing itself directly to his mission at Aksum.

Gregory the Illuminator, son of the man who assassinated Armenia's king, was tortured and held for years in the pit-dungeon of Khor Virap when he refused King Tiridates III's order to sacrifice to the goddess Anahit. After his release he converted that same king — Armenia dates its adoption of Christianity as state religion to 301 AD, the first state to do so — and became the first Catholicos of the Armenian Apostolic Church.

Today: The Armenian Apostolic Church is still Armenia's national church — roughly 94% of the country identifies with it — served by two Catholicosal sees, Holy Etchmiadzin and Cilicia in Antelias, reaching the diaspora across the former USSR, the Middle East, Europe, and the Americas.

“But to whom do we do any harm by building a place of entertainment for strangers, both for those who are on a journey and for those who require medical treatment on account of sickness, and so establishing a means of giving these men the comfort they want, physicians, doctors, means of conveyance, and escort?”

Basil, bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, led the generation that made Nicaea's faith speakable: with his brother Gregory of Nyssa and his friend Gregory of Nazianzus he gave the Trinity its lasting grammar — one essence, three persons — and would not bend when the Arian emperor Valens came to his liturgy to break him. At the city's edge he built the Basiliad, a 'new city' of hospice, hospital, and workshops for the poor.

Today: Cappadocia's Greek Christians kept the faith among its rock-cut churches until the 1923 population exchange scattered them; the tradition lives on across the Greek Orthodox world, which still serves the Liturgy of Saint Basil ten times a year and cuts the vasilopita in his name each New Year.

“Would you do honour to Christ's body? Neglect Him not when naked; do not while here you honour Him with silken garments, neglect Him perishing without of cold and nakedness.”

John Chrysostom — "golden-mouthed," for his preaching — was Archbishop of Constantinople from 397 to 407, and was exiled twice after sermons against luxury and vanity were taken by Empress Eudoxia as personal attacks; he died on forced travel toward a further exile. His homilies kept insisting that honoring Christ in the Eucharist meant caring for the poor.

Today: The Divine Liturgy that bears his name is still the standard Sunday eucharistic liturgy of the Eastern Orthodox Church, which venerates him as one of the Three Holy Hierarchs.

“Belatedly I loved thee, O Beauty so ancient and so new, belatedly I loved thee.”

Augustine, born in Thagaste in North Africa, served as Bishop of Hippo Regius from 395/396 until his death — writing the Confessions, the account of his own conversion, and The City of God after Rome fell to the Visigoths in 410. He died in 430 with the Vandals besieging his city; when they burned it, only his cathedral and library were spared.

Today: His theology of grace, original sin, and the two cities still underpins Roman Catholic doctrine and shaped Luther and Calvin a millennium later — and in Annaba, Algeria, the modern city on the site of Hippo, the Basilica of Saint Augustine stands as a pilgrimage site near the ancient ruins.