Pat gets a very ascetic no-prize for bringing us news of the discovery of an ancient Christian church:

The remains of an ancient church and monks' retreats that date back to the early years of monasticism have been discovered in a Coptic Christian monastery in the Red Sea area, officials said Saturday.
...
[St. Anthony's] monastery, which is in the desert west of the Red Sea, was founded by disciples of St. Anthony, a hermit who died in A.D. 356 and is regarded as the father of Christian monasticism. A colony of hermits settled around him and he led them in a community.

I actually thought Anthony was earlier than that, but I probably just wasn't paying attention in my antiquities class that day. As a triangulation, the forth century saw the legalization of Christianity, the re-location of the Roman imperial capital from Rome to Constantinople, the infamous "sack of Rome" (the first time the ancient city had fallen in more than seven centuries) and the eventual division of the empire itself into East and West.

It was a time of a brief restoration followed by steep declines in the stability and viability of the empire. It also represented a watershed moment in Western history as an entire people gradually moved from their ancient traditional gods to the great mystery religions of Christianity, Mithraism, and the cult of Isis. It was, in short, the century that saw the flame of the ancients begin to gutter and die, while the briefest flickers of a new age (medievalism) were first seen.