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The Chronology of Eusebius
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
Extract
Mr. Norman H. Baynes thinks that the conclusions which I reached in my essay on the ‘Chronology of the Ninth Book of the Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius’ are ‘difficult to believe.’ That is due, he says, to the fact that I based my reconstruction ‘on one of the most doubtful sections of that book’—that in which Eusebius states that the Emperor Maximin wrote his letter to Sabinus after he received the ‘Edict of Milan.’ From it I inferred that the letter was dispatched early in 313. No doubt Eusebius' assertion raises difficulties. But when a contemporary witness of high authority speaks it may be wise not to reject his evidence before the difficulties which seem to overthrow it are scrutinized. In the present instance the difficulties seem to me to vanish on examination. But Mr. Baynes appears to have overlooked my attempt to deal with them. His own view of the date of the letter is expressed in a single sentence ‘In November of 312 Maximin would receive news of Constantine's victory [at the Milvian Bridge], and as a result he issues the letter to Sabinus permitting Christian worship late in 312.’ But where is his evidence? All I can find is that in his edict of toleration Maximin affirms that ‘last year’ he wrote the letter. ‘This passage proves that that letter dates from the year 312.’ Yes, if Maximin's year began in January. But is that certain? In the East, New Year's Day was not uncommonly in September.
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References
page 96 note 1 Cf. Knipfing, John R., The Date of the Acts of Phileas and Philoromus. Harvard Theological Review XVI. (1923), pp. 198–203CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
page 96 note 2 In the shorter (Greek) version. Where chronological references are given in the text Cureton's Syriac version, they are in agreement with those of the Greek. In the one instance where the date given in a heading in the Syriac conflicts with that given by the Greek text, we of must, I think, accept the latter.
page 97 note 1 Oxford, 1912.
page 97 note 2 
δυεῖν ὅ;λων χρ⋯νον. The fragment of longer Greek version has δυεῖν 
χρνον.
page 97 note 3 Published in the edition of the M.P. in the Vienna Corpus.
page 98 note 1 Attention is called to them by Professor Lawlor, op. cit.
page 98 note 2 As a matter of fact Easter Sunday in 307 fell on April 6, not April 2. There is a similar discrepancy in all cases where the day of the week and the day of the month are both given. But the question whether the precise dates given by Eusebius for individual martyrdoms are accurate is for the present purpose immaterial.
The fact that the Syriac and the longer Greek versions state simply that Theodosia was martyred on a Sunday may imply some doubt (at the time when Eusebius wrote) whether it was Easter Sunday or the previous Sunday: and the alteration if the longer version is to be regarded as a revision of the shorter, may indicate either an avoidance of the dispute or an acceptance of the earlier date. The change of construction from εἰς πμπτον τος π α ρ α τ α θ ν ο ς to παρετενετο might suggest the latter. The effect of that change is to place the martyrdom of Theodosia at the end of the fourth year instead of in the fifth, or rather, perhaps, in an indeterminate period that could not be precisely assigned either to the fourth or the fifth. The use of such an expression as εἰς πμπτον ἔτος παρετενετο might appear in itself to lend support to the hypothesis of indefiniteness in the dating of the persecution year.
page 99 note 1 Professor Lawlor explains this by his theory that by ‘whole years’ Eusebius means ‘unbroken years, together with parts of the years preceding and following, so that a period, say, from some date in January, 303, to some day in December, 305, would be ' not two whole years’ —a theory I cannot accept.