Orosius: Seven Books of History against the Pagans
A. T. Fear
Number of quotes: 23
Book ID: 165 Page: 5
Section: 2A3
In this respect Orosius’s stay in the Holy Land was not a happy one, {25} but it was perhaps leavened by the discovery on 3 December 415 of the body of the protomartyr Stephen by Lucian of Kaphar Gamala. Avitus of Braga, a fellow Spaniard staying with Jerome, managed to obtain some of Stephen’s relics, including, as he proudly says, not just dust, but solid bones,{26} and he gave them to Orosius to take to Palchonius, the bishop of Braga......
He then set out for Spain, but the chaos into which the peninsula had descended prevented him from returning home. He left the relics of Stephen in Magona{29} on Minorca and returned to Africa. {30} This is our last notice of Orosius.
Quote ID: 3468
Time Periods: 5
Book ID: 165 Page: 7/8
Section: 4B
For a moment in Book 2 it appears that he may subscribe to the cyclical theory of history and that Rome will, in her turn, succumb to the passing of time. {133} But it is only a moment. We are also told that God has ordained the Roman Empire for the end of this epoch and so it seems clear that for Orosius the empire will only end when time itself comes to an end at the end of days. {134} Orosius’s self-characterisation as a ‘Christian and a Roman’ is correct; his work is not merely Christian polemic, it is patriotic Christian polemic.
Quote ID: 3469
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 165 Page: 11
Section: 4B
Orosius writes well and uses the full repertoire of the rhetorical techniques available to late antique writers. Recusatio is deployed on occasions, {68}and Orosius has a particular love of contrast, chiasmus, and verbal puns. He has had a good classical education and the deployment of his learning shows that he is writing for those of a similar background. To understand the Histories, it is important to bear in mind that Orosius’s career had been that of an ecclesiastical polemicist. His work is not a mere list or chronicle, but a work of polemical history with a specific target-- the pagan intellectuals of the day and their argument that Christianity had ruined Rome {69} --and it is designed to face down his opponents in the most effective way possible.
Quote ID: 3470
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 165 Page: 12
Section: 3D2
Jerome was horrified; ‘what can be safe if Rome has fallen?’ he asks, and elsewhere bewails that, ‘the whole world has perished with this single city.’{71} Augustine was to deal with the problem by insisting on the distinction between the earthly and heavenly cities and placing priority on the latter. Orosius, though, was taken to a very different tack......
He makes the bold claim that the sack was of no significance, and goes on to stand on its head the standard pagan view that it had come about because of Rome’s neglect of her traditional gods by insisting that its occurrence was, in fact, due to the presence of pagans, not Christians, in the city. {72}
Quote ID: 3471
Time Periods: 5
Book ID: 165 Page: 17
Section: 4B
Orosius’s interpretation of history is more subtle than this. His strategy is to persuade his reader that Rome’s history is from the beginning a Christian history and so it is paganism, not Christianity, that is alien and damaging to Rome......
Orosius’s Romanisation of the Christian faith is also a clever counter-attack against his opponents who wished, particularly after the sack of Rome, to portray Christianity as alien to Rome. Roman history for Orosius is both universal history and Christian history; the three are inseparable from one another: as he says at the beginning of Book 5, everywhere he goes, he will ‘encounter my country, religion, and laws.’{100}
.....
He is happy to style himself as a ‘Roman and Christian’ {102} and to refer to Rome as ‘our country’. {103} In short, he agrees with his contemporary Rutilius Namatianus that Rome had ‘made a single fatherland from far-flung nations’. {104}
Quote ID: 3472
Time Periods: 5
Book ID: 165 Page: 23/24
Section: 3A3A
For a moment in Book 2 it appears that he may subscribe to the cyclical theory of history and that Rome will, in her turn, succumb to the passing of time. {133} But it is only a moment. We are also told that God has ordained the Roman Empire for the end of this epoch and so it seems clear that for Orosius the empire will only end when time itself comes to an end at the end of days. {134} Orosius’s self-characterisation as a ‘Christian and a Roman’ is correct; his work is not merely Christian polemic, it is patriotic Christian polemic.
Quote ID: 3473
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 165 Page: 25
Section: 5D
More than two hundred manuscripts of Orosius survive and the work was translated into many European vernacular languages including Old English, {142} and into Arabic at the court of the Caliphs of Cordoba by Hafs al-Quti and Qasim ben Asbag, whence it passed into later Arabic historical thinking, most notably being used as a source by Ibn Khaldun.
Quote ID: 3474
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 165 Page: 32
Section: 2C
You had instructed me to write against the arrogant wickedness of those who are strangers from the city of God and are called pagans, taking their name from crossroads and fields in the countryside, or otherwise gentiles because they know of the things of this world. {5}. . . .
[Footnote 5] The use of pagan in this sense was a recent innovation in Christian rhetoric. Oroisus here is distinguishing between the pagans of town and country, but also skillfully uses the classical preference for urban life here by contrasting the city of God with the countryside of the pagans. To the ancient mind country men were notoriously stubborn and slow-witted and so this contrast also fits with Orosius’s claims about pagan blindness in failing to see the obvious truth of Christianity. For further discussion of ‘pagan’, see O’Donnell (1977).
Quote ID: 3475
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 165 Page: 208
Section: 1B,4B
The enormous difference between past and present can be seen in the fact that what Rome once extorted from us at sword-point to satisfy her own extravagance, now she contributes with us for the good of the state we share.. . . .
If at that time someone, overcome by the burden of his sufferings, abandoned his country along with its enemies, to what strange land could he, a stranger, go? What people, who, in the main, were his enemies, could he, an enemy, ask for pity? Whom could he, a man who had not been invited in as an ally, nor attracted by a commonality of laws, nor feeling secure in religion’s communion, trust on first meeting them?
Quote ID: 3476
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 165 Page: 209/210
Section: 1B,4B
However, when I flee at the first sign of any sort of trouble, I do this secure in the knowledge that I have a place to which I can flee, for I encounter my country, religion, and laws everywhere......
Because I come as a Roman and Christian to Christians and Romans, I find my laws and nation in the broad sweep of the east, in the north’s expanses, in the southern reaches, and in the safe refuges of the great islands. {16} I do not fear my host’s gods, I do not fear that his religion will bring my death, I have no land to dread where the resident is allowed to do what he will and the rover not allowed to ask for what he needs: a place where my host’s law is not my own. The One God, who is loved and feared by all, has ordained in these times when He wished to be acknowledged, this united kingdom. Everywhere the same laws, subject to the One God, hold sway. Wherever I should a arrive as a stranger, I have no fear of being suddenly attacked like a friendless man. For, as I have said, as a Roman among Romans, as a Christian among Christians, and as a man among men, I can call on the state’s laws, a common knowledge of religion, and our common nature. For the short time that I am here.
Quote ID: 3477
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 165 Page: 261
Section: 2B,4B
For their philosophers, to pass over our saints, when inquiring into and observing everything with all their mental energy, have found that One God is the Author of all and that all things ought to be traced back to This One. So now even the pagans, whom the manifest truth now convicts of insolence rather than ignorance, when they debate with us, say that they do not follow many gods, but rather venerate many agents who are ruled by one great god {2}. There remains a confused discrepancy about the apprehension of the True God because of the many theories about how to apprehend Him, nevertheless one opinion is held by almost everyone--namely that there is One God. This is the point, albeit with difficulty, to which man’s investigations have been able to bring him. {3}Pastor John’s note: early 400’s
Quote ID: 3478
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 165 Page: 262
Section: 3A1,4B
After this empire had prospered for a long time under its kings and consuls and come into possession of Asia, Africa, and Europe, by His ordinances He gathered everything into the hands of one emperor who was both the bravest and most merciful of men. Under this emperor whom almost every people justly honoured with a mixture of fear and love, the True God Who was worshipped through unsettling superstitions by those in ignorance, revealed the great fountain of coming to know Him.{7}
Quote ID: 3479
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 165 Page: 262
Section: 1B
10. But in case anyone thinks that this lucid reasoning is wrong and gives their own gods the credit, saying that they first carefully chose them, and then enticed them in with lavish worship with the result that through them they obtained for themselves this great and glorious empire – 11. for they boast that they became the gods’ favourites by performing the best sorts of religious rite and that after these were banned and abandoned, they then left after their shines and altars were abandoned, all the Gods through whom this empire has stood. {9}
Quote ID: 8396
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 165 Page: 316
Section: 3A3A,4B
So in the same year when Caesar, whom God in His deep mysteries had marked out for this task, ordered that the first census be taken in each and every province and that every man be recorded, God deemed it right to be seen as, and become a man. {352} Christ was therefore born at this time and His birth was immediately recorded on the Roman census. This census in which He Who made all men wished to be listed as a man and numbered among men was the first and clearest statement which marked out Caesar as the lord of all the Romans as masters of the world, {353} both individually and as a people. Never since the beginning of the world or the human race had anyone been granted to do this, not even Babylon or Macedon, not to mention any of the lesser kingdoms. {354} Nor can there be any doubt since it is clear to all from thought, faith, and observations that Our Lord Jesus Christ brought to the apogee of power this city which had grown and been defended by His will, vehemently wishing to belong to it when He came and to be called a Roman citizen by decree of the Roman census. {355}
Quote ID: 3480
Time Periods: 12
Book ID: 165 Page: 325/326
Section: 3C
After Christ the Lord had suffered, risen from the dead, and sent forth His disciples to preach, Pilate, the governor of the province of Palestine, made a report to the emperor Tiberius and the Senate concerning Christ’s suffering, resurrection, and the miracles which then followed, both those performed by Himself in public and those performed by His disciples in His name. He also reported that He was believed to be God by the growing faith of a great number of men. Tiberius proposed, and strongly recommended, to the Senate that Christ be considered as God, but the Senate was angry that this matter had not been brought to its notice first, as was the custom, in order that it might be the first to decree that a new cult be adopted. Therefore, it refused to consecrate Christ and passed a decree that Christians be completely extirpated from the City, {39}above all because Tiberius’s prefect, Sejanus strongly opposed adopting the religion. {40} Tiberius then passed a decree threatening death to those who denounced Christians. {41} Because of these events, Tiberius gradually abandoned his praiseworthy moderation in order to take revenge on the Senate for opposing him-- for whatever the king did by his own choice was pleasing to him, and so from the mildest of princes there blazed forth the most savage of wild beasts.Pastor John’s note: what a farce
Quote ID: 3482
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 165 Page: 327
Section: 3D
It was in the 17th year of the same emperor’s reign, when the Lord Jesus Christ voluntarily gave Himself up to suffer, though it was the Jews who blasphemously arrested and fixed Him to the cross.
Quote ID: 3483
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 165 Page: 330
Section: 2C
At the beginning of his reign, Peter, the apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ, came to Rome and with his trustworthy words preached the Faith that brings salvation to all who believe, providing its truth with his mighty miracles......
Jerome, Chronicle, A Abr. 2058. Jerome merely mentions that Peter founded the church at Rome and was bishop there for twenty-five years.
Quote ID: 3484
Time Periods: 145
Book ID: 165 Page: 353
Section: 3B
997 years after the foundation of the City, Philip was made the 23rd emperor after Augustus. He made his son, Philip, his co-ruler and reigned for seven years. {204} He was the first of all the emperors to be a Christian, and after two years of his rule the 1,000th year after the foundation of Rome was completed. So it came to pass that this most pre-eminent of all her previous birthdays was celebrated with magnificent games by a Christian emperor. {205} There can be no doubt that Philip dedicated the gratitude and honour expressed in this great thanksgiving to Christ and the church, as no author speaks of him going up to the Capitol and sacrificing victims there as was the custom. {206}.....
{205} Perhaps an odd comment, given Orosius’s hostility to the games, Jerome, Chronicle, A Abr 2262, gives more detail, speaking of ‘innumerable’ animals killed in the Circus Maximus, games celebrated in the Campus Martius, and three days and nights of theatrical performances. {206} This is a striking claim and not made by other Latin authors. Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, 6.34, claims Philip was a Christian, but says nothing about Rome’s millennium. For Orosius, the link he has made shows that Rome and its empire are an integral part of God’s plan. Orosius suppresses Eutropius’s, 9.3, comment that the two Philips were deified after their deaths, which would have destroyed his case. See Pohlsander (1980) for a sceptical, and Shahid (1984), for a more accepting, approach to Philip’s possible Christian beliefs.
{207} Decius claimed that he was ‘forced’ to declare himself emperor by his troops and promised to lay aside his claim on entering Italy. In fact, he met the elder Philip in battle at Verona, where he defeated and killed him. When news of the battle spread, the Praetorian Guard lynched the younger Philip in their barracks at Rome.
Quote ID: 3485
Time Periods: 3
Book ID: 165 Page: 371
Section: 3A2A
He [PJ: Arius] was excommunicated from the church by Alexander who was the then bishop of this town [PJ: Alexandria]. {294}
Quote ID: 3486
Time Periods: 4
Book ID: 165 Page: 384
Section: 2D3B
One God gave One Faith, and spread one Church over all the earth. It is this Church that He watches over, cherishes, and defends. Whosoever hides under whatever name, if he does not associate with this Church, he is a stranger to it, and if he attacks it, he is its enemy.
Quote ID: 8397
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 165 Page: 398
Section: 3D2
…more severely than usual, at that time two Gothic tribes, led by their two most powerful kings, raged through Rome’s provinces. 9. One of these was Christian, more like a Roman, and, as events have proved, less savage in his slaughter through his fear of God.{442}….
{442} Alaric and his people. Orosius goes on to make great play of Alaric’s Christianity, conveniently forgetting that Alaric and the Goths were Arians, a heresy that he has ferociously denounced.
Quote ID: 8398
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 165 Page: 401
Section: 3D2
Alaric came, besieged, threw into panic, and burst into Rome as she trembled, but he first gave the order that whoever had fled to the holy places, above all to the basilicas of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul, were to be left safe and unharmed.{459} He also told his men that as far as possible, they must refrain from shedding blood in their hunger for booty.. . . .
{459} Orosius’s choice of verb for Alaric’s entry into Rome, inrumpere, ‘to break in’, is perhaps chosen to deny any questions of treachery. Procopius, History of the Wars, 3.2.20-32, explicitly states that the Visigoths entered the city through treachery and perhaps this was also true of Zosimus, 6.7, whose account of the sack is lost, but who hints here that the Anicii family may have betrayed Rome. Alaric entered through the Salarian Gate on 24 August AD 410. For churches as refuges in the sack, see also Augustine, City of God 1.2 and 1.7.
Quote ID: 3487
Time Periods: 5
Book ID: 165 Page: 402
Section: 3D2
3. As the barbarians rampaged through the City, it happened that in a certain convent one of the Goths, a powerful, Christian man, came across an elderly virgin, who had dedicated her life to God. When he asked her, politely, for gold and silver, 4. steadfast in her faith, she promised him that she had a great deal and would soon bring it forth, and brought it forth. When she saw that the barbarian was astounded by the size, weight, and beauty of what she had brought out, but had no idea of the nature of the vessels, Christ’s virgin said to him, 5. ‘These are the sacred vessels of the Apostle Peter, take them, if you dare, and you will be judged by your act. I dare not keep them, as I cannot protect them,’ 6. The barbarian was moved to religious awe through his fear of God and the virgin’s faith, and sent a messenger to tell Alaric about these matters. He immediately ordered that all the vessels should be taken back, just as they had been found, to the basilica of the Apostles 7. and that the virgin and any other Christians who might join her be taken there with the same degree of protection.
Quote ID: 8399
Time Periods: ?
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