Eusebius's account is the only surviving historical record of the Church during its crucial first 300 years.
Bishop Eusebius, a learned scholar who lived most of his life in Caesarea in Palestine, broke new ground in writing the History and provided a model for all later ecclesiastical historians. In tracing the history of the Church from the time of Christ to the Great Persecution at the beginning of the fourth century, and ending with the conversion of the Emperor Constantine, his aim was to show the purity and continuity of the doctrinal tradition of Christianity and its struggle against persecutors and heretics.
The History of the Church: From Christ to Constantine
Eusebius
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Known as the “Father of Church History,” Eusebius was bishop of Caesarea in Palestine and the leading Christian scholar of his day. His Ecclesiastical History is an irreplaceable chronicle of Christianity’s early development, from its origin in Judaism, through two and a half centuries of illegality and occasional persecution, to a new era of tolerance and favor under the Emperor Constantine. In this book, Michael J. Hollerich recovers the reception of this text across time. As he shows, Eusebius adapted classical historical writing for a new “nation,” the Christians, with a distinctive theo-political vision.
Eusebius’s text left its mark on Christian historical writing from late antiquity to the early modern period—across linguistic, cultural, political, and religious boundaries—until its encounter with modern historicism and postmodernism. Making Christian History demonstrates Eusebius’s vast influence throughout history, not simply in shaping Christian culture but also when falling under scrutiny as that culture has been reevaluated, reformed, and resisted over the past 1,700 years.
Eusebius’s text left its mark on Christian historical writing from late antiquity to the early modern period—across linguistic, cultural, political, and religious boundaries—until its encounter with modern historicism and postmodernism. Making Christian History demonstrates Eusebius’s vast influence throughout history, not simply in shaping Christian culture but also when falling under scrutiny as that culture has been reevaluated, reformed, and resisted over the past 1,700 years.
Making Christian History
Eusebius of Caesarea and His Readers
by Michael Hollerich, June 2021
About this book, University of California Press
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I decided to try that approach“ [reception history”] to measure the impact of Eusebius’ book on church history, a subject that he could legitimately claim to have invented.
For too long, the Constantinian panegyrics dominated how moderns read him.
I wanted to look at how Ecclesiastical History survived and influenced later ages and religious cultures, as well as what that tells us about how Christians (and also non-Christians) understood themselves and their past. To borrow a usage from German scholar Dorothea Weltecke, a student of the universal history of Michael the Syrian, I wanted to see works of history as themselves historical events, a methodological turn in the study of ancient historiography in general.
By Michael Hollerich, May 27, 2022
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