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Church history and early church historians

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

R. A. Markus
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Extract

From the beginning the Christian group took an interest in its own past. Ecclesiastical history is a specialised form of this corporate self-awareness. The fourth and fifth centuries were the period in the Christian church’s history when this form of self-awareness crystallised. The father of church history, Eusebius, was the fountainhead of a tradition of historiography which came to dominate the work of his successors. His Ecclesiastical History straddles the constantinian revolution. Eusebius began working on it before the end of the last persecution, that under Diocletian and his colleagues; by the time he came to add the last touches to his final edition, twenty or more years later, the social conditions of the church’s existence had come to differ profoundly from those which obtained at the time he began writing. The age of the martyrs and of a persecuted church in a hostile empire were becoming a heroic age recollected in tranquillity. The following century was to take the church very much further along the road away from the situation of the church that Eusebius had been writing about.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 11: The Materials Sources and Methods of Ecclesiastical History , 1975 , pp. 1 - 17
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1975

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References

1 Baur, F. C., Comparatur Eusebius Caesariensis, historiae ecclesiasticae parens, cum parente historiarum, Herodoto Halicamassensi (Tübingen 1834)Google Scholar.

2 Here and throughout I have followed Edouard Schwartz’s conclusions on the composition and editions of the work. See his article ‘Eusebios’ in PW VI/I, PP 1370–1439, at 1395–1407.

3 HE I.I.I.

4 Ibid I.I.3.

5 Generally, see von den Brincken, A.D., Studien zur lateinischen Weltchronistik bis in das Zeitalter Ottos von Freising (Düsseldorf 1957)Google Scholar

6 HE X.I.8.

7 Ibid X.1.3.

8 Rufinus, HE, Praefatio.

9 Though much can in fact be obtained from, the later additions and recensions; see Laqueur, R., Eusebios als Historiker seiner Zeit, Arbeiten zur Kirchengeschichte, II (Berlin 1929)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 See van den Boer, W., ‘Some remarks on the beginnings of Christian historiography’, Studia patristica 4, Texte und Untersuchungen 79 (Berlin 1961) pp 348-62Google Scholar.

11 The old distinction made by Olympiodorus, in reference to his own work is reported by Photios, Bibl[iotheca] 80, ed Henry, W., I (Paris 1959) p 166 Google Scholar; Müller, , FHG IV p 58 Google Scholar.

12 HE VI.33.4; but too much must not be inferred from this.

13 See their ‘Christianity and tradition in the historiography of the late Empire’, Classical quarterly, ns 14 (London 1964) pp 316-28; Cameron, Averil, ‘The “scepticism” of Procopius’, Historia 15 (Wiesbaden 1966) pp 466-82 and Agathias (Oxford 1970) caps 6–9Google Scholar.

14 The suggestion has been made by [Momigliano, A.], ‘L’età del trapasso [fra storiografia antica e storiografia medievale, 300-550 D.C.’], Settimane di studio del Centro Italiano di Studi sull’ alto Medioevo 17 (Spoleto 1970) pp 89–118 Google Scholar, =Rivista storica italiana 81 (Rome 1969) pp 286-303 p 113, on the basis of (i) BG IV (VIII) 25.13, (ii) Anecdota 11.33 and (iii) Anecdota 1.14. The reference in (i) is to ‘things that Christians fight about among themselves’, ήπερ μοι έν λόγοις τοϊς ύπέρ τούτων γεγράψεται; in (ii) and (iii) Procopius promises to deal with matters έν τοΐςοπισθεν . . . λÌγοις: in the first case matters con cerned with Justinian’s treatment of heretics, in the second matters to do with the fate of pope Silverius. These are among Procopius’s unredeemed promises. To infer from them an unfulfilled intention of writing an ecclesias tical history seems highly hazardous.

15 Despite Downey, G., ‘The perspective of the early church historians’, Greek, Roman and Byzantine studies 6 (Durham, N. Carolina 1965) pp 57–70 Google Scholar: ‘The Christian historian was not merely a Christian historian. He was a representative and protagonist of a new kind of history to which a certain section of his society would be hostile’ (p 58). The failure to distinguish a ‘christian history’ in general from ecclesiastical history in particular vitiates Downey’s conclusions, ibid pp 69-70. See also Zimmermann, H., ‘Ecclesia als Objekt der Historiographie’, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-historische Klasse, Sitzungsberichte 234/5 (Vienna 1960)Google Scholar.

16 HE I.1.

17 HE VI.24.

18 ‘Uber Kirchengeschichte’ (1908), Gesammelte Schriften I (Berlin 1938) pp 110-30 at p 117. Schwartz, however, also detected a certain latent unity of conception in the EH.

19 On the meaning of this see Cranz, F.E., ‘Kingdom and polity in Eusebius of Caesarea’, Harvard Theological Review 45 (Boston, Mass 1952) pp 47–66 Google Scholar and Berkhof, H., Die Theologie des Eusebios von Caesarea (Amsterdam 1939) pp 53–9.Google Scholar

20 See for example HE I.4.2; X.4.19.

21 ‘L’età del trapasso’, p 94.

22 Paschoud, F., Zosime: Histoire nouvelle I (Paris 1971) pp lxi—lxiii and lxviii.Google Scholar

23 Except apparently Jerome in the work he intended to, but never did, write Vita Malchi I.

24 F.C. Baur, quoted from the English translation ed Hodgson, P.C., Ferdinand Christian Baur on the writing of Church history (New York 1968) pp 67 and 69.Google Scholar

25 On Rufinus and Gelasius of Caesarea see most recently Winkelmann, F., ‘Untersuchngen zur Kirchengeschichte des Gelasios von Kaisareia’, Sitzungsberichte der deutschen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Klasse für Sprachen, Literatur und Kunst, 1965, no 3 (Berlin 1966)Google Scholar where previous views are discussed. See also the same, ‘Charakter und Bedeutung der Kirchengeschichte des Gelasios von Kaisareia’, Byzantinische Forschungen I (Amsterdam 1966) pp 346-85.

26 Vita Malchi I: latiorem historiam from the beginnings to these bad times under the Christian emperors.

27 συναγαγεΐν τών έκκλησιαστικών ίστοριών τούς έκθέντας καΐ μίαν τινά έξ αύτών άρμόσασθαι σύνταξιν. Theodoros Anagnostes Kirchengeschichte, ed Hansen, G.C., GCS (1971) p I Google Scholar. On τούς έκθέντας see Bidez, J., ‘La tradition manuscrite de Sozomène et la Tripartite de Théodore le lecteur’, TU 32.2 (Leipzig 1908) p 46 Google Scholar, apparatus to line 7 of text.

28 de tribus auctoribus unam facere dictionem CSEL 71 p I.

29 See the subscriptions to books I and II, the titles to books II and III, and other passages: Gelasios Kirchengeschichte, ed Loeschke, G. and Heinemann, M., GCS 28 (1918) pp 25, 26,137, 138, 139, 140, 155Google Scholar.

30 See, for instance, Theodosius writing to the council of Ephesus: ‘The stability of the commonwealth is dependent on the devotion whereby God is worshipped, and there is a close link and relationship between the two. They are connected, and each gains from increase of the other. True religion flourishes in blamelessness of life, and the commonwealth, being compounded of both, benefits from both,’ Mansi 4 col 1112. Whether Socrates had Theodo-sius’s letter before him or not, his views express the principles which animated Theodosius II in 431.

31 HE V.1.

32 Ibid III.1.

33 Ibid IV.34.

34 Ibid II.25.

35 Ibid II.25; IV.4.

36 Ibid IV.4, 7.

37 Ibid V.l.

38 Ibid IV.7, for instance, leads straight into the (related) troubles of Athanasius in ch 8.

39 For instance ibid and 25; IX.1-14.

40 Ibid VIII. 1.

41 Ibid VIII.25.

42 Ibid IX.I.

43 Ibid IX.16.

44 Ibid IX.17.

45 Ibid XII.II.

46 Bibl 31.

47 Ibid 35.

48 HE VII.27.

49 On it see Honingmann, E., ‘Patristic studies XII: Philippus of Side and his “Christian history” ‘’, Studi e testi 173 (Rome 1953).Google Scholar

50 See for instance Chronikon I.1.4 and II.14.6–8.

51 Gennadius, , De scriptoribus ecclesiasticis, PL 58 (1862) col 1072.Google Scholar

52 See Prete, S., I Chronica di Sulpicio Severo: saggio storicocritico (Rome 1955) p 119 Google Scholar. On historical epitomes in the fourth century see Momigliano, A., ‘Pagan and Christian historiography [in the fourth century A.D.’, The conflict between paganism and Christianity in the fourth century], ed Momigliano, A. (Oxford 1963) pp 79–99 at pp 85-6Google Scholar. On the value of epitomes to Christians in a hurry with little time to waste ‘much labour for the sake of a few facts’, see Augustine, , De doctrina Christiana II.39.59.Google Scholar

53 Chronikon I.1.4.

54 Only the narrowness of focus and the slightness of Sulpicius Severus’s interest, in practice, in secular history allow a rapprochement with the last two books of Rufinus’s HE, almost exactly contemporary. See also Paulinus of Nola, ep 28.5. The scope and genres differ despite this limited convergence. A further form to be distinguished from all those here discussed is Orosius’s Historiarum adversus paganos libri septem: a work of historical apologetics rather than any kind of history.

55 Sirmond, Appendix Codicis Theodosiani cap 20 in Haenel, Corpus legum 1183, p 241. On some its medieval echoes see Morrison, K.F., The Two Kingdom (Princeton, N.J. 1964) p 39 CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Congar, Y.M.J., L’ecclésiologie du haut Moyen Age (Paris 1968) p 98 n 173Google Scholar.

56 ‘L’età del trapasso’, p 103.

57 Stroheker, K.F., Der senatorische Adel im spätantiken Gallien (Reutlingen 1948) p 128 Google Scholar has pointed out that in his initial conspectus of world history Gregory draws on chronicle material; thereafter, until the end of the fourth century, ecclesiastical history is the basis of his narrative, and only with the fifth century does roman secular and finally frankish history come in.

58 See Momigliano, ‘Pagan and Christian historiography’, p 92.

59 Rufinus, HE, Praefatio.

60 I wish to thank Dr Margaret Gibson for most helpful criticism of the first draft of this paper.