Eusebius of Caesarea

Caesarean pope and saint

• Born: c. 260
• Birthplace: Probably Caesarea, Palestine (now in Israel)
• Died: May 30, 0339
• Place of death: Caesarea, Palestine (now in Israel)

Eusebius formulated the political philosophy of unity of church and state under the providence of God that became standard in the East.

Early Life

Relatively little is known of the early life of Eusebius (yew-SEE-bee-uhs). He was likely born near Caesarea to peasant parents. The church historian Socrates, writing in the fifth century, states that Eusebius received Christian teaching and baptism at Caesarea and was later ordained a presbyter there.

Eusebius’s mentor, a presbyter from the church at Alexandria named Pamphilus, was one of the leading biblical and theological scholars of the day, a disciple of the Christian philosopher Origen. He founded a school in Caesarea and gathered a large library of both pagan and Christian works there. Eusebius read widely under his teacher’s guidance. By 303 Eusebius had completed early versions of at least two of his most important historical works, Chronicon (c. 300, 325 c.e.; Chronicle, 1583) and Historia ecclesiastica (c. 300, 324 c.e.; Ecclesiastical History, 1576-1577, better known as Eusebius’s Church History).

Eusebius grew very close to Pamphilus, eventually adopting the surname Pamphili (son of Pamphilus). During the persecution begun by the emperor Diocletian, Pamphilus was imprisoned for two years, eventually suffering martyrdom in 309 or 310. Before his teacher’s death, Eusebius assisted him in completing five volumes of a six-volume defense of Origen.

It is possible that Eusebius was jailed for his faith for a short period in Egypt following Pamphilus’s death. At the 335 Synod of Tyre, which dealt with the continuing Arian controversy, Eusebius was accused by Potammon, a rival bishop from Egypt, of having sacrificed to the emperor cult to avoid torture while in prison. The charge probably was false, judging by the harsh stance the Church took toward Christians who lapsed into such actions and by the honors Eusebius received immediately after the persecution. These honors included his consecration as bishop of Caesarea about 314, shortly after the proclamation of peace by Constantine and Licinius.

Life’s Work

Eusebius lived during the period when one of the most dramatic events in the Church’s existence occurred: the transformation of the Roman Empire, under Constantine’s direction, from persecutor to supporter and protector of Christianity. Eusebius’s work cannot be fully understood without recognizing the importance of this apparent miracle for his thought. The first editions of his works, however, were certainly composed before Constantine’s rise, probably during the first years of Diocletian’s reign. A cautious optimism pervaded Christian circles at that time as a result of the lack of persecution, and Eusebius seems to have developed his idea of Christianity as the culmination of the course of human history in the first editions of his Chronicle and Ecclesiastical History.

It was when the Church again came under attack in 303 that Eusebius felt compelled to set forth his views at length, doing so primarily in the works Praeparatio evangelica (c. 314-318; Preparation for the Gospel, 1903) and Demonstratio evangelica (after 314; Proof of the Gospel, 1920). Eusebius’s notions of history and its meaning were greatly influenced by his work in and interpretation of the Scriptures. For him, the Bible was the key to a correct understanding of human history. His beliefs were deeply rooted in the study of the Old Testament, where he saw the beginning of Christianity—not in Judaism proper but rather in the earlier era of the patriarchs.

Christianity from its earliest days had been extremely sensitive to the charge that it was of recent origin. In Kata Kelsou (248; also known as Contra Celsum; Origen Against Celsus, 1660), Origen quoted the pagan writer Aulus Cornelius Celsus as scornfully saying, “A few years ago he [Christ] began to teach.” The earliest Christian apologists tied Christianity to its Jewish roots and insisted that the loftiest ideas of paganism had actually been borrowed from the Hebrews. Eusebius did not consider that explanation to be adequate; he reinterpreted the biblical accounts to show that Christianity was, in fact, the most ancient of all the religions of humankind.

Eusebius, like Origen, saw history as having begun with a fall away from God, as illustrated in the Old Testament by the sin of Adam and Eve. Human beings after the Fall were characterized by savagery and superstition. There were some, however, who were able to see that God transcended the created world. These friends of God were the patriarchs, to whom were made known divine truths by the Logos (Christ). The patriarchs were the original Christians, knowing both God the Father and His Son, the divine Word. The unenlightened contemporaries of the patriarchs were the original pagans.

Judaism came into Eusebius’s scheme as a purely transitional phase, to prepare the way for the new covenant of Jesus that would diffuse the religion of the patriarchs to all humankind. Following the period of the Mosaic law came the central period of history, which began with the nearly simultaneous appearance of Christ and Augustus, the foundation of Church and Empire. He saw the reign of Constantine as the culmination of human history, the last era before the end of the world. The whole story was a “salvation history” that set the Christian experience into a context of historical knowledge that was basically shared by all educated people in the ancient world.

The whole of Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History could be interpreted as the account of the Church’s continual movement forward in the working out of its victory over the demoniac powers. He viewed Constantine as leading people into the way of truth, as preached by the Church. Under his influence, the Gospel could be preached everywhere, and when that was accomplished the end of the world and the return of Christ would take place. Oratio de laudibus Constantini (335-336 c.e.; In Praise of Constantine, 1976) and Vita Constantini (339 c.e.; Life of Constantine, 1845) contain several passages in which Eusebius seems to express hope of seeing the end in his own time.

It is likely that Constantine first took notice of Eusebius at the Council of Nicaea in 325. This council was called by the emperor to put an end to the strife in the Church over the doctrines of Arius, a presbyter of Alexandria, who taught that Christ was a created being and therefore not eternal. Although Eusebius had at first opposed action against Arius and evidently favored his subordinationist position, Eusebius was primarily interested in preserving unity in the Church. He was the leader of a moderate group at Nicaea, which attempted to steer a middle course between the position of Arius and that of his chief antagonist, Athanasius. Eusebius had been provisionally excommunicated by an earlier council in Antioch for his refusal to sign its strongly anti-Arian creed.

At Nicaea, Eusebius presented a creed used in Caesarea as proof of his orthodox beliefs and as a possible solution statement to the question of the relationship between the Father and Son in the Godhead. This Caesarean creed, however, was expanded considerably before the bishops arrived at a final form. The most notable addition was of the term homoousios (Greek for “of the same substance” as God) to describe Christ. Although Eusebius reluctantly subscribed to the new creed for the sake of unity, during subsequent years he was involved in various actions against Athanasius, including the Synod of Tyre in 335, which formally condemned him.

Eusebius gained the respect of Constantine because of his peacemaking attitude; he enjoyed a rather close relationship with the emperor through the rest of his life. In 336, in celebration of the thirtieth anniversary of Constantine’s accession, Eusebius praised the ruler in a lengthy speech that had as its theme the resemblance of Constantine to Christ. When Constantine died in May, 337, Eusebius immediately set about writing his Life of Constantine, which was left unfinished at his death in 339. His successor as bishop of Caesarea, Acacius, finished and published the book later the same year.

Significance

Eusebius’s approach to historiography is unique in several ways. He was the first Christian apologist to bring the literary-historical point of view to his works. While all other early opponents of paganism and heresy wished only to enter into polemical discussion, occasionally mentioning chronological facts when it served their argument, Eusebius fixed the dates of writers and cataloged their works, clearly grasping the concept of a Christian literature.

In the ancient world, Eusebius’s Ecclesiastical History was so successful that no one tried to supersede it. Instead, 150 years after his death, three writers, Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret, continued Eusebius’s history down to their own times. The approach of Eusebius was dominant in the writing of church history almost until the time of the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century. The Ecclesiastical History is classed as one of the four or five seminal works in Western historiography.

Eusebius’s overriding theme was celebration of the success of Christianity in the Roman world. He produced the reformulation of Christian political theory necessitated by the legalization of Christianity under Constantine. In his reinterpretation, the government became a positive institution in which Christians could take a more active part and for which they began to take more responsibility. In the Eastern Roman Empire, his idea of the Church under the jurisdiction of a Christian ruler remained the norm until the fall of Constantinople in the fifteenth century.

Eusebius’s optimistic theory of the general advance of human history under God proved to be the only real alternative to the historical views that would be developed in the fifth century by Saint Augustine of Hippo. Augustine was as much influenced in his comparatively pessimistic concept by the sack of Rome in 410 as Eusebius had been by the triumph of Constantine.

Bibliography

Barnes, Timothy D. Constantine and Eusebius. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981. An extremely well-documented and interesting volume that the author describes as an “interpretive essay” on Eusebius and Constantine as individuals and their relationship to each other. Of the 458 pages, more than 180 contain helpful apparatus, including copious notes to the chapters, a bibliography, a list of editions of Eusebius’s works, and a chronology of his life.

Chesnut, Glenn F. The First Christian Histories: Eusebius, Socrates, Sozomen, Theodoret, and Evagrius. 2d ed. Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1986. Details the historical work of Eusebius and the historians who followed him, placing them in the context of historiography in the pagan world of their times. Shows the importance of Eusebius’s work in the development of a Christian historiography. Contains footnotes but no bibliography.

Drake, H. A. Notes to In Praise of Constantine: A Historical Study and New Translation of Eusebius’s Tricennial Orations. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976. Although focusing primarily on Eusebius’s laudatory speech of 336, this slender volume of 191 pages is much more than simply a critical edition of the speech. It provides a number of valuable insights into the thought and actions of Eusebius throughout his life. Sixty pages of notes and bibliography make it very valuable for a study of Eusebius.

Eusebius. The History of the Church from Christ to Constantine. Translated by G. A. Williamson. New York: Penguin Books, 1989. This is Eusebius’s most famous work. An introduction by the translator, a map, and several helpful appendices of names mentioned in the text make this volume of the Penguin Classics series a must for students of Eusebius.

Grant, Michael. “Eusebius.” In The Ancient Historians. London: Duckworth, 1995. A chapter in Grant’s monumental work, which, though only fifteen pages long, is valuable for its insights into Eusebius’s place among historians of the ancient world. The book itself is lengthy, and it is more than most students need for a study of Eusebius alone but very valuable for a context of ancient historians.

Grant, Robert M. Eusebius as Church Historian. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1980. An in-depth study of the Ecclesiastical History and an evaluation of Eusebius as a historian. Focusing on seven major themes (including apostolic succession, heretics, persecution, martyrdom, and the canon of Scripture), Grant points out both strengths and weaknesses of the first church historian’s work. Footnotes and a brief bibliography are included.

Kofsky, Arieh. Eusebius of Caesarea Against Paganism. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 2000. Part of Brill’s Jewish and Christian perspectives series; includes indexes and bibliography.

Mosshammer, Alden A. The Chronicle of Eusebius and Greek Chronographic Tradition. Cranbury, N.J.: Associated University Presses, 1979. A critical study of Eusebius’s seminal work of historical chronology that details the possible sources for the work and places it in the context of early Greek chronography.