Baptism in Early Christianity

From the beginning already in the Bible attested, in the course of the first early Christian centuries, in East and West a structured preparation for baptism (catechumenate), which was usually administered in the Easter Vigil, developed itself and took the form of a dramatically designed process. In some places this was followed by so-called mystagogogical catecheses, which interpreted the single symbolic rites only afterwards. This form can be reconstructed on the basis of the surviving catecheses (Cyril of Jerusalem, John Chrysostom, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Ambrose) and contemporary reports (including those of Egeria).