Church History 9.7.1 · Sophia Scriptura

Summary: Petitions and imperial replies against Christians were engraved on bronze in the cities; Eusebius copies Maximin's rescript from the tablet at Tyre.

Greek text · Dindorf 4:425

Ἀνὰ μέσας γέ τοι τὰς πόλεις, ὃ μηδὲ ἄλλοτέ ποτε, ψηφίσματα πόλεων καθʼ ἡμῶν καὶ βασιλικῶν πρὸς ταῦτα διατάξεων ἀντιγραφαὶ στήλαις ἐντετυπωμένα χαλκαῖς ἀνωρθοῦντο, οἵ τε παῖδες ἀνὰ τὰ διδασκαλεῖα Ἰησοῦν καὶ Πιλάτον καὶ τὰ ἐφʼ ὕβρει πλασθέντα ὑπομνήματα διὰ στόματος κατὰ πᾶσαν ἔφερον ἡμέραν. ἐνταῦθά μοι ἀναγκαῖον εἶναι φαίνεται αὐτὴν δὴ ταύτην τὴν ἐν στήλαις ἀνατεθεῖσαν τοῦ Μαξιμίνου γραφὴν ἐντάξαι (ἵνʼ ὁμοῦ τῆς τε τοῦ ἀνδρὸς θεομισείας ἡ ἀλαζὼν καὶ ὑπερήφανος αὐθάδεια φανερὰ κατασταίη, καὶ τῆς παρὰ πόδας αὐτʼ ὂν μετελθούσης ἱερᾶς δίκης ἡ ἄυπνος κατὰ τῶν ἀσεβῶν μισοπονηρία, πρὸς ἧς ἐλαθεὶς οὐκ εἰς μακρὸν τἀναντία περὶ ἡμῶν ἐβουλεύσατό τε καὶ διʼ ἐγγράφων νόμων ἐδογμάτισε), τοῦτον ἐπʼ αὐτῶν λέξεων ἔχουσαν τὸν τρόπον· Ἀντίγραφον ἑρμηνείας τῆς Μαξιμίνου πρὸς τὰ καθʼ ἡμῶν ψηφίσματα ἀντιγραφῆς, ἀπὸ τῆς ἐν Τυρῷ στήλης μεταληφθείσης.

English · Claude translation

In the middle of the cities, a thing never done before, petitions of the cities against us and copies of the imperial rescripts in reply were set up engraved on bronze tablets, and the children in the schools had Jesus and Pilate and the Acts forged to insult us on their lips every day. Here it seems necessary to me to insert this very document of Maximin set up on the tablets (so that at once the boastful and arrogant presumption of the man's hatred of God may be made plain, and the sleepless hatred of evil against the ungodly shown by the sacred justice that followed hard on his heels, driven by which not long afterward he both planned the opposite concerning us and decreed it by written laws). It runs in these very words: Copy of a translation of Maximin's rescript in reply to the petitions against us, taken from the tablet at Tyre.

About this passage

Source

Dindorf 4:425 · Wilhelm Dindorf, ed., Eusebii Caesariensis Opera, vol. 4: Historiae ecclesiasticae libri I–X (Leipzig: Teubner, 1871) · Greek text: W. Dindorf, Eusebii Caesariensis Opera 4 (Leipzig: Teubner, 1871), digitized by the First Thousand Years of Greek project (Open Greek and Latin), CC BY-SA 4.0

Text

As printed in Dindorf, Eusebii Opera 4. Manuscript variants and the editor's apparatus are not reproduced; no textual problem is noted in this passage.

Translation

Claude translation (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 · Translated by Claude from the Greek text of Dindorf, Eusebii Caesariensis Opera 4 (Teubner, 1871); made independently of existing English translations.

Compare

Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, series 2, vol. 1 (1890) (an older public-domain English translation, whole volume at CCEL; checked against ours only after ours was made)

Topics

Persecution

Cite this passage

Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 9.7.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/eusebius-historia/9/7/1/).

Plain text

Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 9.7.1 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/eusebius-historia/9/7/1/).