Abstract
The persecutions in the age of Diocletian had barely come to an end and the freedom of religion had barely been promulgated when a new literary genre came into existence, now called early Christian Church history. Lactantius' De mortibus persecutorum and Eusebius of Caesarea's Historia ecclesiastica (HE) are generally considered to be the pioneers in this genre. This chapter presents three works such as: Gelasius of Caesarea, Rufinus of Aquileia and the Historia acephala . It discusses the oldest of these texts, that of Gelasius, who wrote at the end of the fourth century. The chapter continues with a discussion on the two other texts both having their origins in the beginning of the fifth century: the text by Rufinus and the Historia acephala . Scholars of Classical Antiquity, Early Christianity or the Byzantine era, none of them will deny the importance of Photius' Bibliotheca as a true literary museum. Keywords: church historians; Gelasius of Caesarea; Historia acephala ; Historia ecclesiastica (HE); Rufinus of Aquileia
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