Hagiographic History: Reading and Writing Holiness in the Ecclesiastical History of Anonymous Cyzicenus

Abstract

The late fifth-century Ecclesiastical History of Anonymous Cyzicenus (formerly attributed to a fictitious "Gelasius of Cyzicus") treats the Council of Nicaea from a pro-Chalcedonian perspective, containing far more doctrinal discussion and spiritual admonition than is usual for the genre. This article demonstrates how the author incorporates numerous hagiographic elements into his ecclesiastical history and argues that the resultant text, a composite "hagiographic history," transformed historical inquiry into a means of effecting piety through ascetic modes of reading and writing. I suggest that the author pursued this ascetic approach to ecclesiastical history in part because he was likely a member of a Bithynian monastic community. In making his history of Nicaea hagiographic, the author makes it more scriptural, peppering the text with biblical allusions, insinuating his history's divine inspiration, and drawing a direct line between the events of the New Testament, the Council of Nicaea, and the composition of his own history. Ecclesiastical history, like hagiography, becomes quasi-scriptural: writing is done in imitation of the saints who wrote scripture and meditation upon the text bears spiritual fruit. Nicaea's treatment as both history and hagiography also illustrates the developing sacralization of the Council in the aftermath of mid fifth-century theological controversies.