Prayer for the dead in the early church

Prayers and offerings for the dead, and the state of souls they presuppose. Part of Worship.

Acts of Paul and Thecla 29Anonymous · ca. 150–200 · Thecla prays for Tryphaena's dead daughter Falconilla.
Didascalia 6.22Anonymous · first half of the third century · Purity rites from the second legislation must be abandoned; Christians gather and offer the eucharist in cemeteries for the departed, touch the dead without fear, and treat menstruation and seminal flow as no bar to prayer, while adultery alone truly defiles.
Pistis Sophia 108Anonymous · 3rd century
Pistis Sophia 128Anonymous · 3rd century
The Passion of Perpetua and Felicity 3Anonymous · 203 · Perpetua resists her father's pleading, confesses before Hilarianus and is condemned to the beasts, and in two visions sees her dead brother Dinocrates relieved through her prayer.
Exhortation to Chastity 11Tertullian · ca. 208 · A remarried man still prays and offers yearly for his dead wife, and so stands before God with two wives, through a once-married clergy.
Against Marcion 5.10Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · Paul's arguments against those who denied the resurrection, his analogies of seed and body, the first and last Adam, and the change of the flesh at the end all assume the resurrection of the body, which Marcion denies.
On Monogamy 10Tertullian · ca. 210–217 · A widow is even more bound to her dead husband than a divorced wife to hers: she prays and offers for him, will rise with him, and to take another man would divide her heart between two husbands.
Letter 12.2Cyprian of Carthage · 249/250–258 · The dates of martyrs' deaths must be recorded so that the Eucharist can be offered in their memory; the faithful poor deserve special care.
Canons of Hippolytus, canon 33Anonymous · 4th century · Commemorative meals for the dead begin with communion, are not held on Sunday, exclude catechumens, and avoid drunkenness.
Life of Constantine 4.71.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · The clergy and people held a Christian funeral and prayed for Constantine's soul.
Catechetical Lecture 23.9Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · The liturgy commemorates the saints, asking their intercession, and prays for the departed faithful.
Catechetical Lecture 23.10Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · An illustration of a king moved by a crown offered for exiles defends praying for the departed, for whom Christ sacrificed is offered.
Apostolic Constitutions 6.30.2Anonymous · ca. 380 · The faithful gather at the cemeteries to read, sing psalms and celebrate the Eucharist for the departed.
Apostolic Constitutions 8.13.6Anonymous · ca. 380 · The martyrs and the faithful departed are remembered.
Apostolic Constitutions 8.41.1Anonymous · ca. 380 · Prayers for the departed ask that they rest with the patriarchs, and the bishop blesses the living.
Apostolic Constitutions 8.42.1Anonymous · ca. 380 · The dead are commemorated on the third day.
Apostolic Constitutions 8.42.3Anonymous · ca. 380 · And on the fortieth day, as Israel mourned Moses.
Apostolic Constitutions 8.43.1Anonymous · ca. 380 · Alms do not profit the ungodly dead.
Apostolic Constitutions 8.43.2Anonymous · ca. 380 · God's judgment on the ungodly does not change after death.
Letter 22.6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 386–430 · Augustine proposes that the feasts at the tombs be replaced by modest offerings for the dead given freely to all, with money given to the poor.
Homilies on Matthew 31.4John Chrysostom · ca. 390 · Excessive mourning shames the dead, scandalizes unbelievers and contradicts the prayers offered for the departed; the property of the dead should be given in alms on their behalf, and Christ’s death and resurrection forbid lament.
Sermon 86.10Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Christ bids us keep and provide for an eternal future; a dead Christian child is alive with Christ, so his share of the inheritance should be sent to him by giving it to the poor.
Sermon 159.1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Our justification in this life is imperfect, but the martyrs attained perfection; so at the altar the Church prays for the other departed but not for the martyrs, whose prayers we seek.
Sermon 172.2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Funerals and monuments console the living, but the Church's prayers, the eucharistic sacrifice, and alms help the faithful dead, though only those who lived so as to be helped; no new merit is gained after death.
Sermon 172.3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · Mourners may weep with healable grief and should be comforted by others; burial is a good work praised in Scripture, but offerings, prayers, and alms that help the dead matter much more.
Sermon 284.5Augustine of Hippo · ca. 391-430 · The Church prays for the other dead but not for the martyrs, who fought to the point of blood; Christ, tempted first by allurements and then by cruelty, taught them to conquer both.
Confessions 9.27Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Falling ill at Ostia, Monica asks only to be remembered at the Lord's altar, wherever her sons may be.
Confessions 9.32Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Augustine does not weep even at the eucharist offered for Monica; a bath does not help, but sleep and Ambrose's hymn ease his grief.
Confessions 9.34Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Augustine now weeps for Monica in another way, praying for her sins, since no one is sinless before God.
Confessions 9.35Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Augustine prays that God will forgive his mother any sins committed after her baptism.
Confessions 9.36Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Monica asked only to be remembered at the altar, where the sacrifice that cancels our debts is offered.
Confessions 9.37Augustine of Hippo · ca. 397–401 · Augustine asks his readers to remember Monica and Patricius at the altar.
City of God 21.24Augustine of Hippo · 413–426 · The saints will not pray for the damned at the judgment, as the church does not pray for the devil or for the ungodly dead; some of the regenerate dead are helped by prayer, but the threat of eternal punishment is true, and Psalm 77, Nineveh, Psalm 31, and Romans 11 do not teach otherwise.
On the Soul and Its Origin 2.15Augustine of Hippo · ca. 419–420 · Victor “decrees” eucharistic sacrifices for unbaptized infants on the example of 2 Maccabees, but those sacrifices were for the circumcised.
On the Soul and Its Origin 3.18Augustine of Hippo · ca. 419–420 · Tenth error: Christian sacrifice is not to be offered for the unbaptized; Victor, a layman, presumed to “decree” it.
On the Soul and Its Origin 4.27Augustine of Hippo · ca. 419–420 · Dinocrates appeared with his wound, which shows the soul bears likenesses of bodily things, not a body that can be wounded or killed.
On Care for the Dead 1Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–422 · Augustine explains that Paulinus of Nola asked him whether burial near a saint's shrine helps the dead, prompted by the widow Flora's son Cynegius.
On Care for the Dead 2Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–422 · Augustine reconciles prayers for the dead with judgment according to deeds: such help profits only those whose life in the body made them fit to be helped.
On Care for the Dead 3Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–422 · Augustine cites Maccabees and the church's custom of commending the dead at the altar, rejects Virgil's belief that the unburied cannot cross the river of the dead, and introduces a passage from The City of God.
On Care for the Dead 6Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–422 · Burial at a martyr's shrine helps the dead only by moving the living to commend them in prayer to the martyr, and the church's general prayer for all the faithful departed matters more than the place of burial.
On Care for the Dead 7Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–422 · What helps the dead is not the place of burial but the living prayers it prompts, just as bodily gestures of prayer stir up the heart; where burial in a holy place is impossible, prayer must go on.
On Care for the Dead 17Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–422 · The rich man's concern for his brothers shows care, not knowledge, and Abraham could have learned of earthly things from Lazarus after his death.
On Care for the Dead 22Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–422 · Only the church's sacrifices, prayers, and alms reach the dead, and only those whose lives made them fit to be helped; burial is a humane duty and a witness to the resurrection, and burial at a martyr's shrine helps only by increasing prayer.
Enchiridion (Handbook on Faith, Hope, and Love) 110Augustine of Hippo · ca. 421–423 · The Eucharistic sacrifice and alms offered for the baptized dead help those whose lives merited such help, as thanksgiving for the very good, propitiation for the not very bad, and consolation to the living for the very bad.
Canon 2Anonymous · 442 · Penitents who die suddenly before reconciliation are to have their offerings received and to be commemorated in the liturgy.
Part 2, chapter 40Quodvultdeus of Carthage · ca. 445-450 · The Maccabean martyr mother and her seven sons, and Judas’s offering for the dead, figure the Church’s martyrs and hope of resurrection; the end of Judah’s rulers under Herod fulfils Jacob’s prophecy of the coming of Christ, born in the census under Augustus; the second part of the book ends.