Making Christian History: Eusebius of Caesarea and His Readers by Michael J. Hollerich

Abstract

Reviewed by: Making Christian History: Eusebius of Caesarea and His Readers by Michael J. Hollerich Carson Bay Michael J. Hollerich Making Christian History: Eusebius of Caesarea and His Readers Berkeley: University of California Press, 2021 Pp. xi + 316. HB/E-Book $95.00. This book is a pleasure to read. A prominent Eusebius scholar details an expansive account of Eusebius’s foundational place in the history of Christian-history writing. While selective and diffuse in subject matter, the information distilled herein encapsulates the most important aspects of Eusebius’s Historia Ecclesiastica (HE) and its legacy. Chapter One proffers an expert, up-to-date, expeditious introduction to Eusebiana: a survey of Eusebius’s life and works and his literary predecessors: Hegesippus, Julius Africanus, and Flavius Josephus. Most important here are 1) Hollerich’s four-part framework for defining Eusebius’s “theo-political vision,” the intellectual lifeblood of Eusebian literature, and 2) in-depth introductions to the HE and Chronicle. One problem: Hollerich tacitly affirms Momigliano’s statement (“Pagan and Christian Historiography in the Fourth Century A.D.” in Essays in Ancient and Modern Historiography [Middltown, CN: Wesleyan University Press, 1975]) that Christians invented new historiographies in the fourth century (ecclesiastical history, saint biography) and completely failed to reproduce “ordinary military, political, or diplomatic history in Christian terms” (32). At least one history from the generation after Eusebius directly contradicts this: Pseudo-Hegesippus’s On the Destruction of Jerusalem—a minor issue for a book on Eusebius, however. Chapter Two approaches HE’s Greek reception, first reading its manuscript history as reception, following approaches by Aaron Butts (for Syriac) and Rosamind McKitterick (for Latin). This survey is based on Matthieu Cassin’s recent work. Next Hollerich summarizes Rufinus’s translation-continuation of HE and the fifth-century Greek church historians that followed in Eusebius’s footsteps: Philostorgius, Socrates Scholasticus, Sozomen, Theodoret, and Evagrius Scholasticus. Hollerich’s treatment of this Eusebian historiographical “canon” is excellent, lightly reflecting on the reception of Eusebius’s “theo-political vision” and relying much on Peter Van Nuffelen, then Annick Martin, then Michael Whitby. This chapter clarifies this book as that of a historian: historical contents and contexts—as opposed to literature, philology, or theory—remain the clear object of inquiry. Hollerich dedicates Chapter Three to the HE’s reception in the “Non-Greek East”—a sign of the times, in which the study of Syriac, Coptic, and Armenian traditions is trending upwards. Hollerich provides a readable, thorough, illuminating romp exploring Eusebius’s influence on these three regional/linguistic Christian historiographical traditions. Relying again upon various experts, he shows how Eusebius’ Chronicle and HE supported a Syriac church history tradition that gave way around the sixth century to chronicling, and how West Syrian writers revived ecclesiastical history modeled on Eusebius’s HE. A special case is Eusebius’s Abgar legend (HE 1.13, 2.1.6–7), transformed into the Doctrina Addai, a purported correspondence between Jesus and the king of Edessa resulting in the [End Page 111] evangelization of that city by the apostle Thomas’s envoy Thaddeus (=Addai). Hollerich next summarizes how Armenian “church histories,” epitomized by the History of Armenia atttributed to Movsēs Xorenac’I, cribbed off the Chronicle and HE, along with Syriac traditions, in producing a more nationalistic Christian historiography (for example, an embellished Doctrina Addai connecting Armenia itself to Jesus via Thomas’s evangelist). Finally, Hollerich frames Eusebius’s work within the intricate Coptic church history tradition, working backwards from the Arabic History of the Patriarchs of Alexandria to the fragmentary “Coptic church history” embedded in the former, which is rendered in problematic Coptic Books 1–7 of Eusebius’s HE. The fourth- and fifth-century doctrinal disputes that alienated the Syriac, Armenian, and Coptic ecclesial traditions from Constantinople and the West left pockmarks on each of these traditions. Chapter Four deals with Eusebius’s afterlife within Latin Christendom. Rufinus translated and emended the HE, and Jerome translated and extended (part of) the Chronicle. Also in play are Bede and the regional, national, and/or contemporary Christian historiographies that sourced Eusebius. Hollerich mentions Cassiodorus’s importance in cementing Eusebius’s authority within his Institutions of Divine and Secular Learning. There Eusebius...