Church History preface–1.6

… : for those who loved finery it was purple and a crown and things like them; for those devoted to letters, some fabulous poem or a composition able to charm; for those practised in war, to shoot an arrow true, to strike wild beasts, to hurl a spear, or to leap onto a horse. Each presented himself at the palace pursuing whatever happened to please the ruler: one brought a rare mosaic stone, another proposed a brighter dye of purple, another addressed a poem or a composition to him, another introduced some nimble and novel way of handling arms. It was thought the greatest and most kingly thing for the ruler of all to possess a single part of this popular excellence; but of piety, the true ornament of empire, no one took such account. You, most mighty Emperor Theodosius, to put it in a word, have through God practised every virtue. Wearing purple and a crown for those who look on, as a symbol of your rank, within you are always clothed with the true ornament of empire, piety and love of humankind. That is why poets and writers, and most of your officials and of your other subjects, labour on every occasion over you and your deeds. Presiding as judge of contests and of speeches, you are not robbed of accuracy by some clever voice and gesture, but you award the prize sincerely, looking for diction suited to the purpose of the writing, and for the form of the speech, its parts, order and harmony, its phrasing and composition, its arguments, its thought, and its history. You reward the speakers with your judgment and your applause, with golden images, with the setting up of statues, with gifts, and with honours of every kind. The Cretans of old were not such toward that celebrated Homer as you show yourself toward speakers, nor the Aleuadae toward Simonides, nor Dionysius the tyrant of Sicily toward Plato the companion of Socrates, nor Philip of Macedon toward Theopompus the historian, nor Severus the Caesar toward Oppian, who described in verse the kinds and nature of fishes and how they are caught. The Cretans rewarded Homer for his eloquence with a thousand coins and, boasting as if of an unsurpassable generosity, recorded the gift on a public pillar. The Aleuadae, Dionysius and Philip would not have been more close-fisted than the Cretans, who prided themselves on a modest and philosophic way of life; they would quickly have imitated their pillar, had they not lagged behind them in the gift. Severus gave Oppian a gold coin for every line of a modest poem, and so astonished people by his generosity that Oppian's verses are still called “golden” by most people. Such were the gifts of the lovers of learning and of letters of old. But you, O Emperor, have left no one who ever lived a way to surpass you in generosity toward letters; and you seem to me to do this not without reason. For, eager to surpass everyone in virtues, you increase your own, since you have mastered the history of what was achieved of old by Greeks and Romans. They say that by day you exercise your body in arms and arrange the affairs of your subjects, judging and writing what is needed and considering what must be done in private and in public; and by night you busy yourself with books. It is said that for the study of these you have a lamp which, by some device, pours the oil onto the wick by itself, so that none of those about the palace should be forced to toil at your labours and do violence to nature fighting against sleep. So humane and gentle are you toward those about you and toward all, imitating the heavenly King your protector, whose pleasure it is to send rain on the just and the unjust, to make the sun rise, and to give everything else ungrudgingly. Through your wide learning, as is natural, I hear that you know the natures of stones, the powers of roots, and the operations of remedies, no less than Solomon, the wisest son of David. Rather, you surpass him in virtues. For he became a slave of pleasures and did not keep piety to the end, though it had been the cause of the good gifts of wisdom to him. But you, most mighty, setting self-controlled reason against indulgence, rightly consider yourself emperor not only of men but also of the passions of soul and body. If I must say this too, I learn that you master the desire for every dish and drink, and that neither “sweet figs,” to speak poetically, nor any other fruit in season can take hold of you, beyond touching it and merely tasting it, after first blessing the Creator of all. Having accustomed yourself in your daily exercises to master thirst, heat and cold, you consider self-control your nature. Recently, eager to see the city in Pontus named after Heracles and to raise it up, worn as it was by time, you were travelling in summer along the road through Bithynia. When the sun was blazing fiercely about midday, one of your bodyguards, seeing you covered with sweat and dust, hastened to please you and brought you a cup gleaming brightly against the rays of the sun, into which he had put some sweet drink and poured cold water. You, most mighty, accepted it and praised the man for his eagerness, and it was plain that you would soon reward him handsomely with royal generosity; but while all the soldiers gaped at the cup and counted happy whoever would drink it, you, noble one, gave the drink back to him and told him to use it as he pleased. So it seems to me that Alexander son of Philip too has rightly been surpassed by your virtues. His admirers say that as he was marching through a waterless place with the Macedonians, a diligent soldier found water, drew some, and brought it to him; but he did not drink, and poured the drink out. To sum up, then, one may properly call you, in Homer's phrase, more kingly than the kings before you. For of some we have received that they possessed nothing worth admiring; of others, that they adorned their reign with one virtue or two at most. But you, most mighty, have gathered all the virtues together and surpassed everyone in piety, love of humankind, courage, moderation, justice, generosity, and greatness of soul befitting royal rank. Every age will boast that your rule alone, of all that ever were, is bloodless and pure of slaughter. You teach your subjects serious things with pleasure, so that they show zeal for you and for the common good out of goodwill and respect. So for every reason it seems necessary to me, as I write an Ecclesiastical History, to dedicate it to you. To whom could I do this more fittingly, when I am about to narrate the virtue of many godly men and what befell the catholic church, and how many enemies it met before it came into the harbours of you and your fathers? Therefore, you who know all things and have every virtue, and above all piety, which the divine word says is the beginning of wisdom, receive this writing from me. Examine it, bring to it the additions of your own accuracy, and purify it by your labours. For in whatever way it pleases you, in that way it will appear useful and bright to its readers, and no one will lay a finger on what you have approved. My writing proceeds from the third consulship of the Caesars Crispus and Constantine to your seventeenth. I thought it well to divide the whole work into nine parts. The first and second books will contain what befell the churches under Constantine; the third and fourth, under his sons; the fifth and sixth, under Julian, the cousin of the sons of the great Constantine, under Jovian, and further under Valentinian and Valens. The seventh and eighth books will show us what happened under the brothers Gratian and Valentinian, up to the proclamation of Theodosius, your godly grandfather, until your celebrated father Arcadius, most mighty Emperor, succeeded to his father's rule and was allotted the government of the Roman world together with your most pious uncle Honorius. The ninth book I have dedicated to your Christ-loving and most holy Majesty. May God always guard it in unshaken good cheer, triumphing over its enemies, with all under its feet, and handing on the pious empire to children's children, by the assent of Christ, through whom and with whom be glory to God the Father with the Holy Spirit for ever. Amen.

The thought once came to me: why was faith in God the Word received more readily by other people, while the Hebrews were slow to believe, even though from the beginning they had been taught to honour divine things and had learned through the prophets, before it happened, how the coming of Christ would be? Abraham, who became the founder of their race and of circumcision, was counted worthy to see the Son of God with his own eyes and to entertain him. Isaac his son was honoured by being a figure of the sacrifice of the cross, when he was brought bound by his father to the altar, as also happened to Christ in his passion, as those who study the sacred Scriptures closely say. Jacob foretold the expectation of the nations that now rests on him, and the time at which he came, when he said: “The rulers of the Hebrews shall fail from the race of Judah, the head of the tribe.” He was hinting at the rule of Herod, who was an Idumaean by race on his father's side and an Arabian on his mother's, and to whom the Jewish nation was entrusted by the Roman senate and Augustus Caesar. Of the other prophets, some proclaimed beforehand the birth of Christ, that unspeakable conception, a mother who remained a virgin after giving birth, and his race and his homeland; others his divine and wonderful deeds; others his passion, his resurrection from the dead, his ascent into heaven, and what came about at each. But if anyone does not know these things, it is not hard to learn them by reading the sacred books. Josephus too, son of Matthias, the priest, a man most renowned among both Jews and Romans, would be a credible witness to the truth about Christ. He hesitates to call him a man, as a doer of wonderful works and a teacher of true words; he names him openly as the Christ, and says that he was condemned to the cross and appeared alive on the third day. Nor is he unaware that countless other wonders about him had been foretold by the divine prophets. He testifies that the many Greeks and Jews whom he won over continued to love him, and that the tribe named after him has not died out. In recording this, it seems to me, he all but cries out, in keeping with the deeds, that Christ is God; but, struck with amazement at the wonderful matter, he passed over it somehow in a middle way, laying no blame on those who believed in him, but rather agreeing with them. As I reasoned on these things, it naturally seemed astonishing to me that the Hebrews had not been the first, before other people, to turn to Christianity. For even if the Sibyl and certain oracles foretold the future concerning what befell Christ, one cannot on that account charge all the Greeks with unbelief. Only a few, who were thought to excel in education, knew such prophecies, which were mostly in verse and expressed in language too lofty for the people. It was, it seems to me, a work of providence from above, for the harmony of what was to come, to sound the future not only through its own prophets but in part through foreign ones as well, as a musician who needs an unusual melody may run his plectrum over the spare strings, or add others to those already there. That the Hebrews, then, who had more and clearer prophecies of the coming of Christ, came behind the Greeks in faith in him, so much is enough to say. Yet even so it would not seem unreasonable that the church grew most of all through the other nations. First, because God likes to bring about unexpected changes in divine and very great matters; then, because one can find that the religion was ordered by no ordinary virtues in those who led it from the beginning. Even if they did not have a tongue sharpened for expression or beauty of diction, and did not persuade their hearers by words or geometrical demonstrations, the cause they laboured for did not fare worse on that account. Stripped of their possessions, neglecting their own families, impaled, enduring many harsh tortures as if in other people's bodies, neither won over by the flatteries of the people and magistrates in the cities nor terrified by their threats, they made it plain to all that they endured this contest for the greatest prizes. So there was no need of persuasive words, since the facts, without effort, compelled households and cities to believe what they had not heard before. When so great a divine and wonderful change came upon the world that people neglected even their former religion and their ancestral laws, it would be strange if the boar of Calydon and the bull of Marathon and other such things that happened, or are told in fables, in countries or cities, were thought worth so much attention that many of the most esteemed writers among the Greeks, with a natural gift for writing, laboured over them, while I should not force my nature and write an ecclesiastical history. For I am persuaded that, since the subject was not fashioned by men, it is not hard for God to make me appear, unexpectedly, as its writer. At first I set out to write this work from the beginning. But considering that others had attempted it down to their own times (Clement and Hegesippus, very wise men, who followed close upon the succession of the apostles; Africanus the writer; and Eusebius surnamed Pamphili, a man very learned in the divine Scriptures and in the poets and writers of the Greeks), I treated in an abridgement in two books what befell the churches, so far as it has come down to us, from the ascent of Christ into heaven to the overthrow of Licinius. Now, with God's help, I shall try to narrate what came after. I shall record events at which I was present, and those I heard of from people who knew or saw them, in our own generation and the one before us. Of things further back, I sought knowledge from the laws enacted concerning religion, from the synods held from time to time, from the innovations, and from the letters of emperors and bishops. Some of these are still preserved in the palace and the churches; others are scattered among the learned. I often thought of including their wording in my writing, but judged it better, because of the bulk of the work, to report their sense briefly, except where I find something disputed on which most people hold differing opinions. Then, if I have any document, I shall set it out as proof of the truth. And lest anyone, not knowing the facts, should condemn my work as false because he happens to read documents that contradict it, he should know this: on the pretext of the doctrines of Arius and of those that sprang up afterward, the leaders of the churches quarrelled with one another, and each party wrote to those of its own opinion about what it was pressing for. Meeting by themselves in synods, they voted as they wished and often condemned those of the opposite opinion in their absence. Courting the emperors of the time and the powerful men about them, they persuaded them as far as they had power and made them like-minded. And to show that they were thought to worship rightly, some attaching themselves to one party and some to the other, they made collections of the letters that supported their own sect and left out the contrary ones. This made it very difficult for us to discover what happened in these matters. But since the truth must be cared for above all, because history must be free of falsehood, it seemed necessary to me to search into such documents as far as I could. If, then, I also narrate the disputes of churchmen among themselves over precedence, or over preference for their own party, let no one think me vulgar or ill-intentioned for recording such things. For, first, as has been said, it befits the historian to put everything second to the truth; and second, the doctrine of the catholic church will appear all the more genuine, since it was often tested by the plots of those who held opposite views, and yet, as if by God's gift of victory, it returned again to its own strength and drew all the churches and peoples to its own truth. As I deliberated whether I ought to record only what I knew to have happened to the church within the Roman empire, it seemed good to me also to narrate, as far as I can reach, what befell religion among the Persians and the barbarians. Nor is it foreign to ecclesiastical history to narrate in this work who were, as it were, the fathers and founders of those called monks, and who after them, in succession, were renowned, so far as we know or have heard. We shall not seem ungrateful to them by consigning their virtue to oblivion, nor ignorant of their history; and at the same time we shall leave a pattern of conduct to those who wish to live the philosophic life in this way; by following it they will share in a most blessed and happy end. But the account, as it proceeds, will attend to these things as far as possible. I now turn to the narration of events, calling on God as a gracious helper. The present writing will begin from here.

In the consulship of the Caesars Crispus and Constantine, Silvester led the church of Rome, Alexander that of the Alexandrians, and Macarius that of Jerusalem. At Antioch on the Orontes no one had yet been entrusted with the church after Romanus, since the persecutions, it seems, did not allow the ordination to take place. Not long afterward those who met at Nicaea, admiring the life and words of Eustathius, judged him worthy to lead the apostolic see, and transferred him, who was bishop of neighbouring Beroea, to Antioch. Of the Christians, those in the East as far as the Libyans who border on the Egyptians did not then dare to assemble openly, because Licinius had changed his goodwill toward them; but those in the West, Greeks, Macedonians and Illyrians, worshipped without fear because of Constantine, who ruled the Romans there.

We have received that many other things befell him by which he was persuaded to honour the doctrine of the Christians, but above all the divine sign that appeared to him. When he had resolved to make war on Maxentius, he was naturally at a loss within himself how the battle would turn out and who would be his helper. While he was in these anxieties, he saw in a dream the sign of the cross shining in the sky. As he gazed in amazement at the sight, divine angels stood by him and said: “Constantine, conquer by this.” It is said that Christ himself also appeared to him, showed him the symbol of the cross, and commanded him to make a likeness of it and to have it in his wars as a helper and a bringer of victory. Eusebius son of Pamphilus, however, affirms that he heard the emperor himself say on oath that about midday, when the sun had already begun to decline, he and the soldiers with him saw in the sky a trophy of the cross formed of light, with an inscription joined to it which said, “Conquer by this.” For this wonder happened as he was marching somewhere with the army, on the road. While he was considering what it might be, night came on; and as he slept Christ appeared to him with the sign that had appeared in the sky, and commanded him to make a likeness of it and to use it as a safeguard in his battles against the enemy. Since there was no further need of an interpreter, but it had been shown to the emperor plainly what he must believe about God, at daybreak he called together the priests of Christ and asked about their doctrine. They brought out the sacred books, explained what concerns Christ, and showed from the prophets that the prediction of these things had been clear before they happened. The sign that had appeared to him, they said, was the symbol of the victory over Hades which Christ won when he came among men, by being crucified, dying, and coming back to life on the third day. On this ground, they said, they hope that after departing from life here, at the end of the present age, all people will rise and will be immortal: some to receive rewards for the good lives they lived in this world, others punishments for the evil they did. Yet for sins committed here there is a means of salvation and a cleansing from sins: for the uninitiated, initiation according to the law of the church; for the initiated, not to sin again. But since this is achieved by very few and godly men, they taught that a second cleansing has been appointed, that of repentance. For God, being a lover of humankind, grants pardon to those who have fallen, if they repent and confirm their repentance by good works.

While the priests were explaining such things, the emperor, marvelling at the prophecies about Christ, ordered skilled craftsmen to remake into the symbol of the cross, with gold and precious stones, what the Romans call the Labarum. This was a military standard, more honoured than the others, since it was the custom for it always to go before the emperor and to be reverenced by the soldiers. I think that Constantine [was] most [eager] to change this most distinguished symbol of Roman rule into the sign of Christ, so that by seeing and honouring it constantly his subjects would be weaned from their ancestral customs and would hold as God only the one whom the emperor also worshipped and used as leader and ally against his enemies. This sign was always carried before his own troops, and he ordered it to be present with the hard-pressed lines in battle. He appointed picked men of his bodyguard to attend to it, whose task was to carry the standard on their shoulders in turn and to go round the ranks of the enemy. It is said that once, when the enemy suddenly charged, the man carrying it took fright, handed it to another, and slipped away from the battle; and when he was already out of range of the missiles he was suddenly struck and fell mortally wounded. But the man who had taken the divine symbol remained unhurt, though many shot at him. In some wonderful way, as if directed by divine power, the enemy's missiles stuck fast in the standard and flew away from the bearer, though he was in the midst of the danger. It is said, too, that no other man who served this standard ever met with misfortune, as a soldier naturally might in war, or was wounded or taken prisoner.

… that Constantine, having killed some of his nearest kin and having had a part in the death of his own son Crispus, repented and consulted about a cleansing Sopater the philosopher, who at that time headed the school of Plotinus; that Sopater declared there was no cleansing for such crimes; and that the emperor, distressed at this refusal, met bishops who promised to cleanse him of every sin by repentance and baptism; that he was pleased with what they had said to his purpose, admired the doctrine, became a Christian, and led his subjects to it. To me it seems that this was invented by those who are eager to slander the Christian religion. For Crispus, on whose account they say Constantine needed a cleansing, died in the twentieth year of his father's reign; while he lived he enacted many laws with him in favour of the Christians, being honoured with the second rank in the empire as Caesar, as the dates attached to the laws and the titles of the lawgivers bear witness to this day. As for Sopater, first, it is not likely that he came into conversation with Constantine while Constantine ruled only the part of the empire toward the Ocean and the Rhine. For when Constantine was in Italy because of his quarrel with Maxentius, the Roman state was in turmoil, and it was not easy then to travel to the Gauls, the Britons and those who live there; yet it is agreed that it was among them that Constantine embraced the Christian religion, before he marched against Maxentius and came to Rome and the Italians. Again the dates and the laws he enacted in favour of the religion bear witness to this. And even if we were to grant easily that the emperor met Sopater in some way, or asked him by letter about what he wished to know, it is surely not credible that the philosopher did not know that Heracles son of Alcmene was cleansed at Athens by the mysteries of Demeter after the killing of his children, and after the murder of Iphitus, whom he had unjustly killed though he was his guest and friend. That the Greeks promised cleansings for such crimes, then, what has been said is enough; and it convicts of falsehood those who invented the story that Sopater declared the contrary. For I would not say that the man who was then the most distinguished among the Greeks for learning did not know these things.

The churches in the region ruled by Constantine fared as they wished and grew daily, enjoying the benefits of a well-disposed and like-minded emperor. Even before this, the Divine had kept them free of persecution and trouble. For while the churches throughout the rest of the world were persecuted, Constantius alone, Constantine's father, allowed the Christians to worship without fear. I know that he did this remarkable thing, worth recording. Wishing to test which of the Christians in the palace were good and upright men, he called them all together and announced that if they chose to sacrifice and worship as he did, they might remain about him and keep their rank; but if they refused, they must leave the palace, grateful that they had not also incurred punishment. When they had divided on either side, some betraying their religion, others preferring divine things to their present advantages, he decided to keep as friends and counsellors those who had remained faithful to the better cause; the others he turned away from as unmanly knaves and drove from his company, reckoning that those who had so readily become traitors to God would never be loyal to the emperor. For this reason, naturally, while Constantius was still alive it was not thought unlawful to be a Christian among the peoples beyond Italy, the Gauls and the Britons and those who live about the Pyrenees as far as the western Ocean. When Constantine succeeded to the same rule, the affairs of the church became more conspicuous. For when Maxentius son of Herculius had been slain and his share of the empire had fallen to Constantine, those who lived by the river Tiber worshipped without fear, and by the Eridanus, which the inhabitants call the Padus, and by the Aquilis, down which, it is said, the Argo was hauled and brought safe to the Tyrrhenian sea. For the Argonauts, fleeing from Aeetes, did not make the same voyage on their return. They crossed the sea beyond the Scythians, came by way of the rivers there to the borders of Italy, wintered there, and built a city called Emona. When summer came, with the help of the inhabitants, they dragged the Argo overland by machines for about four hundred stades and brought it to the river Aquilis, which flows into the Eridanus; and the Eridanus empties into the sea of Italy. After the battle at Cibalae the Dardanians and Macedonians, those who live by the Ister, the so-called Hellas, and the whole Illyrian nation came under Constantine.