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TheEcclesiastical History (Ancient Greek:Ἐκκλησιαστικὴ Ἱστορία,Ekklēsiastikḕ Historía;Latin:Historia Ecclesiastica), also known asThe History of the Church[1] andThe Church History,[2] is a 4th-century chronological account of the development ofEarly Christianity from the1st century to the4th century, composed byEusebius, thebishop of Caesarea. It was written inKoine Greek and survives also in Latin,Syriac, andArmenian manuscripts.[3]
The result was the first full-length narrative of the world history written from a Christian point of view.[4] summarizes Eusebius's influence onhistoriography. According toPaul Maier,Herodotus was the father of history and Eusebius of Caesarea is the father of ecclesiastical history.[5] In the early 5th century, two advocates inConstantinople,Socrates Scholasticus andSozomen, and a bishop,Theodoret ofCyrrhus, Syria, wrote continuations of Eusebius's account, establishing the convention ofcontinuators that would determine to a great extent the wayhistory was written for the next thousand years. Eusebius'sChronicle, which attempted to lay out a comparativetimeline of pagan and Old Testament history, set the model for the other historiographical genre, the medievalchronicle oruniversal history.
Eusebius had access to theTheological Library ofCaesarea and made use of many ecclesiastical monuments and documents, acts of the martyrs, letters, extracts from earlier Christian writings, lists of bishops, and similar sources, often quoting the originals at great length so that his work contains materials not elsewhere preserved.
It is therefore of historical value, though it pretends neither to completeness nor to the observance of due proportion in the treatment of the subject-matter. Nor does it present in a connected and systematic way the history of the early Christian Church. It is to no small extent a vindication of the Christian religion, though the author did not primarily intend it as such. Eusebius has been often accused of intentional falsification of the truth[citation needed]. Other scholars, while admitting that his judging of persons or facts is not entirely unbiased, push back on claims of intentional fabrication as "quite unjust."[6]
Eusebius attempted according to his own declaration (I.i.1) to present the history of the Church from the apostles to his own time, with special regard to the following points:
He grouped his material according to the reigns of the emperors, presenting it as he found it in his sources. The contents are as follows:
Andrew Louth has argued that theEcclesiastical History was first published in 313.[7] In its present form, the work was brought to a conclusion before the death ofCrispus (July 326), and, since book x is dedicated to Paulinus,Archbishop of Tyre, who died before 325, at the end of 323 or in 324. This work required the most comprehensive preparatory studies, and it must have occupied him for years. His collection of martyrdoms of the older period may have been one of these preparatory studies.
Eusebius blames the calamities which befell the Jewish nation on theJews' role in the death of Jesus. This quote has been used to attack both Jews and Christians (seeAntisemitism in Christianity).
… that from that time seditions and wars and mischievous plots followed each other in quick succession, and never ceased in the city and in all Judea until finally the siege ofVespasian overwhelmed them. Thus the divine vengeance overtook the Jews for the crimes which they dared to commit against Christ.[8]
Eusebius levels a similar charge against Christians, blaming a spirit of divisiveness for some of the most severe persecutions.
But when on account of the abundant freedom, we fell into laxity and sloth, and envied and reviled each other, and were almost, as it were, taking up arms against one another, rulers assailing rulers with words like spears, and people forming parties against people, and monstrous hypocrisy and dissimulation rising to the greatest height of wickedness, the divine judgment with forbearance, as is its pleasure, while the multitudes yet continued to assemble, gently and moderately harassed the episcopacy.[9]
He also launches into apanegyric in the middle of Book X. He praises the Lord for his provisions and kindness to them for allowing them to rebuild their churches after they have been destroyed.
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The accuracy of Eusebius's account has often been called into question. In the 5th century, the Christian historianSocrates Scholasticus described Eusebius as writing for "rhetorical finish" in hisVita Constantini ("Life ofConstantine") and for the "praises of the Emperor" rather than the "accurate statement of facts."[a] The methods of Eusebius were criticised byEdward Gibbon in the 18th century.[11] In the 19th centuryJacob Burckhardt viewed Eusebius as a liar, the "first thoroughly dishonest historian of antiquity."[12]Ramsay MacMullen in the 20th century regarded Eusebius's work as representative of early Christian historical accounts in which "Hostile writings and discarded views were not recopied or passed on, or they were actively suppressed... matters discreditable to the faith were to be consigned to silence."[13] As a consequence this kind of methodology in MacMullen's view has distorted modern attempts, (e.g. Harnack, Nock, and Gustave Bardy), to describe how the Church grew in the early centuries.[14]Arnaldo Momigliano wrote that in Eusebius's mind "chronology was something between an exact science and an instrument of propaganda".[15]
The work was translated into other languages in ancient time (Latin, Syriac, Armenian).Codex Syriac 1 housed at theNational Library of Russia is one of the oldest Syriac manuscripts, dated to the year 462.[16]
The first partial English translation was byMary Basset, the granddaughter ofSir Thomas More, who worked on Eusebius's first five books between 1544 and 1553 and presented her manuscript toMary Tudor. The first printed English version was byMeredith Hanmer in 1576 and then subsequently much reprinted.
Other early church historians:
Eusebius History of the Christian Church public domain audiobook atLibriVox