Section: 3C2 - Eusebius and Julian
Number of quotes: 194
A Chronicle of the Last Pagans
Pierre Chuvin
Book ID: 4 Page: 33
Section: 3C2
Eusebius claims that Constantine ordered the army to demolish the magnificent temple of Asclepius at Aigeai in Cilicia, one of the god’s chief sanctuaries. It would seem, however, that it was the bishop of the city who, in 326, stripped the temple of its exterior colonnade in order to reuse it as the nave of a church. Julian ordered him, or rather his successor, to restore it at his own expense.{30}
Quote ID: 37
Time Periods: 34
A Chronicle of the Last Pagans
Pierre Chuvin
Book ID: 4 Page: 33
Section: 3C2
Eusebius, in his concern to glorify his hero, the emperor, apparently attributed to him an initiative that was actually local.
Quote ID: 38
Time Periods: 34
A Chronicle of the Last Pagans
Pierre Chuvin
Book ID: 4 Page: 34
Section: 3C2
What emerges, as Louis Robert has pointed out, is Eusebius’ veritable hatred of Asclepius, “Savior” and “philanthropos,” whom he regarded as Christ’s competitor.
Quote ID: 39
Time Periods: 4
A Public Faith: From Constantine To The Medieval World AD 312-600 Vol. 2
Ivor J. Davidson
Book ID: 10 Page: 25
Section: 3C2
Written over a period of many years, the Ecclesiastical History reflects various revisions as political circumstance changed, from the end of persecution in 311 to the defeat of Licinius in 324. It climaxes with the conversion and the reign of Constantine as virtually the fulfillment of the kingdom of God on earth. According to God’s good purpose, the coming together of church and empire represents for Eusebius the definitive convergence of faith and politics in the interests of Christ’s cause.
Quote ID: 133
Time Periods: 34
A Public Faith: From Constantine To The Medieval World AD 312-600 Vol. 2
Ivor J. Davidson
Book ID: 10 Page: 32
Section: 3C2
The Council of Nicaea was duly convened on 20 May 325. It assembled not on church property but in an imperial building, and Constantine himself chaired the opening session. It was the largest gathering of churchmen called up to that time. The total number of bishops present was probably around 220, all of them transported, housed, and fed at public expense in accordance with Constantine’s policy of beneficence toward the clergy.
Quote ID: 138
Time Periods: 34
A Public Faith: From Constantine To The Medieval World AD 312-600 Vol. 2
Ivor J. Davidson
Book ID: 10 Page: 34
Section: 3C2
The Creed of NicaeaIn the end, the following definition was proposed:
We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of all things visible and invisible.
And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the Father, Only-begotten, that is, from the substance (ousia) of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten not made, of one substance (homoousios) with the Father, by whom all things were made; who for us human beings and for our salvation came down and was incarnate, was made human, suffered, and rose again the third day, ascended into heaven, and is coming to judge the living and the dead.
And in the Holy Spirit.
After these clauses, the following statements were added:
And those who say, “There was when he was not, “and “Before his generation he was not,” and “He came to be from nothing,” or those who pretend that the Son of God is of other reality (hypostasis) or substance (ousia), the catholic and apostolic church anathematizes.
Quote ID: 139
Time Periods: 4
A Public Faith: From Constantine To The Medieval World AD 312-600 Vol. 2
Ivor J. Davidson
Book ID: 10 Page: 34
Section: 3C2
The wording of the creed that is generally known as the “Nicene Creed” today does not in fact derive from this council but from a formula endorsed by another gathering later on, the Council of Constantinople in 381 (see pp. 95-98). Scholars often designate the 325 creed “N” and the 381 creed “C” in order to clarify the distinction.
Quote ID: 140
Time Periods: 4
A Public Faith: From Constantine To The Medieval World AD 312-600 Vol. 2
Ivor J. Davidson
Book ID: 10 Page: 35
Section: 3C2,4A
Homoousios was, however, a word with a difficult history. For a start, it was not biblical, which meant that the council was proposing to talk about the nature of the Godhead in terms that were philosophical or conceptual rather than in language drawn directly from the Scriptures.
Quote ID: 141
Time Periods: 4
A Public Faith: From Constantine To The Medieval World AD 312-600 Vol. 2
Ivor J. Davidson
Book ID: 10 Page: 39
Section: 3C2
In Egypt, Alexander ignored the order to readmit Arius to communion, and when Alexander died in April 328 the request remained unanswered. His successor, a young man by the name of Athanasius, was equally determined not to comply.
Quote ID: 144
Time Periods: 4
A Public Faith: From Constantine To The Medieval World AD 312-600 Vol. 2
Ivor J. Davidson
Book ID: 10 Page: 39
Section: 3C2
Athanasius is one of the most significant figures in Christian history.
Quote ID: 145
Time Periods: 4
A Public Faith: From Constantine To The Medieval World AD 312-600 Vol. 2
Ivor J. Davidson
Book ID: 10 Page: 39
Section: 3C2
His shortcomings are difficult to deny, but he was without question a man of outstanding gifts, and his influence as a theologian was enormous, as we shall see further in the next chapter.
Quote ID: 146
Time Periods: 4
A Public Faith: From Constantine To The Medieval World AD 312-600 Vol. 2
Ivor J. Davidson
Book ID: 10 Page: 42
Section: 3C2
In the spring of the following year, Constantine fell ill. Knowing that his time was short, he at last received Christian baptism, clad as a catechumen, at the hands of Eusebius of Nicomedia.Pastor John notes: Eusebius of Nicomedia was a strong supporter of Arius.
Quote ID: 149
Time Periods: 4
A Public Faith: From Constantine To The Medieval World AD 312-600 Vol. 2
Ivor J. Davidson
Book ID: 10 Page: 49
Section: 3C2
On Athanasius’s return to Alexandria in November, he found significant local hostility. As one who had been condemned by an official council in 335, he was deemed to have forfeited the right to his see, and a rival bishop, Gregory, was shortly installed in his stead. After a brief period in hiding, Athanasius was forced to flee. Constantius was disinclined to listen to his pleas, for his doctrinal alignment was already clear, and it was not in Athanasius’s favor; he was in the process of backing the transference of Eusebius of Nicomedia to become his new bishop in Constantinople.
Quote ID: 152
Time Periods: 4
A Public Faith: From Constantine To The Medieval World AD 312-600 Vol. 2
Ivor J. Davidson
Book ID: 10 Page: 54
Section: 3C2
Constantius’s main object in ecclesiastical affairs was to achieve unity, and he was willing to adopt whatever means were necessary to unite the clergy of both East and West around a shared confessional position.
Quote ID: 153
Time Periods: 34
A Public Faith: From Constantine To The Medieval World AD 312-600 Vol. 2
Ivor J. Davidson
Book ID: 10 Page: 54
Section: 3C2
Closely encouraged by Valens and others, Constantius endeavored to persuade the Latin bishops that their loyalties were misplaced and that wisdom dictated they should subscribe to a more flexible understanding of Christ’s status. If necessary, the emperor was prepared to bribe bishops to induce them to fall into line or to remove them and send them into exile if they refused to comply.
Quote ID: 154
Time Periods: 34
A Public Faith: From Constantine To The Medieval World AD 312-600 Vol. 2
Ivor J. Davidson
Book ID: 10 Page: 55
Section: 3C2
A number of bishops resisted Constantius’s demands, and opposition came to a head at Milan when the dissidents were summoned before the emperor and confronted with an ultimatum to condemn Athanasius or face removal.….
Several of them would later go on to join Athanasius in lambasting Constantius as a tyrant and even as the Antichrist himself for his opposition to the true faith.
From Wikipedia: In 222 BC, the Romans conquered the settlement, renaming it Mediolanum. Milan was eventually declared the capital of the Western Roman Empire by Emperor Diocletian in 286 AD. Diocletian chose to stay in the Eastern Roman Empire (capital Nicomedia) and his colleague Maximianus ruled the Western one.
Quote ID: 155
Time Periods: 34
A Public Faith: From Constantine To The Medieval World AD 312-600 Vol. 2
Ivor J. Davidson
Book ID: 10 Page: 55/56
Section: 3C2
The most capable theologian among these exiled leaders was Hilary, who had become bishop of Poitiers around 350.….
As a bishop, he had early on revealed his allegiance to Nicaea and had several relations with other Gaulish bishops who had succumbed to political pressure and acquiesced in the condemnation of Athanasius. In 356 he was implicated in a political revolt led by a Frankish soldier and was condemned and sent into exile in Phrygia, where he spent the next four years.
….
One of a number of works Hilary wrote in exile {4} was a twelve-book treatise, On the Trinity, which presents an elaborate defense of the divine nature of God the Son.
Quote ID: 156
Time Periods: 4
A Public Faith: From Constantine To The Medieval World AD 312-600 Vol. 2
Ivor J. Davidson
Book ID: 10 Page: 56
Section: 3C2
For all the efforts of Hilary and others, the flexible theology favored by Constantius continued to spread, not only within the Roman Empire but beyond as Christianity was taken to other constituencies.
Quote ID: 157
Time Periods: 4
A Public Faith: From Constantine To The Medieval World AD 312-600 Vol. 2
Ivor J. Davidson
Book ID: 10 Page: 56
Section: 3C2
Ulfila (ca. 311-383) was brought up among the Goths but was in Constantinople in the late 330s or very early 340s. There he was consecrated by Eusebius, the former bishop of Nicomedia who was by then head of the church in Constantinople, to go as bishop to the Goths.
Quote ID: 158
Time Periods: 4
A Public Faith: From Constantine To The Medieval World AD 312-600 Vol. 2
Ivor J. Davidson
Book ID: 10 Page: 57
Section: 3C2
The “apostle to the Goths” met with considerable success, and he attracted many converts. One of his greatest achievements was the translation of the Greek Scriptures into the Gothic language for the first time. This was a considerable work of scholarship, for in order to do the job Ulfila had to invent an alphabet, made up of a combination of Greek letters and runes.….
…in Ulfila’s time it looked as if a non-Athanasian perspective was spreading very successfully in the West, both within and outside Rome’s borders.
Quote ID: 159
Time Periods: 4
Ancient Athens on 5 Drachmas a Day
Philip Matyszak
Book ID: 13 Page: 63
Section: 3C2
It is hard to imagine Thucydides in a tavern, simply because he does not seem to like people very much. His passion is for facts. He is practically alone among ancient historians in writing not to excuse or glorify the past, but simply to say what happened, and as far as possible to explain it.With breathtaking self-assurance Thucydides says, “I know some will find this history less interesting because it lacks the romance of myth. I will be content if my words are considered useful by those who want to clearly understand what happened in the past.”
Quote ID: 217
Time Periods: 5
Augustus to Constantine
Robert M. Grant
Book ID: 34 Page: xiii
Section: 3C2
During the fourth and fifth centuries an effort seems to have been made to rewrite much of early Christian history.
Quote ID: 581
Time Periods: 45
Caesar and Christ: The Story of Civilization
Will Durant
Book ID: 43 Page: 651/652
Section: 3B,3C2
Maximian carried out the edict with military thoroughness in Italy. Galerius, become Augustus, gave every encouragement to the persecution in the East. The roll of martyrs was increased in every part of the Empire except Gaul and Britain, where Constantius contented himself with burning a few churches. Eusebius assures us, presumably with the hyperbole of indignation, that men were flogged till the flesh hung from their bones, or their flesh was scraped to the bone with shells; salt or vinegar was poured upon the wounds; the flesh was cut off bit by bit and fed to waiting animals; or bound to crosses, men were eaten piecemeal by starved beasts. Some victims had their fingers pierced with sharp reeds under the nails; some had their eyes gouged out; some were suspended by a hand or a foot; some had molten lead poured down their throats; some were torn apart by being tied to the momentarily bent branches of trees. {23} We have no pagan narrative of these events.
Quote ID: 936
Time Periods: 34
Caesar and Christ: The Story of Civilization
Will Durant
Book ID: 43 Page: 663
Section: 3C2
The bishops learning is enormous, his style is armed with feeling and rises to eloquence in moments of theological odium. He frankly excludes such matters as might not edify his Christian readers or support his philosophy, and he manages to write a history of the great Council without mentioning either Arius or Athanasius. The same honest dishonesty makes his Life of Constantine a panegyric rather than a biography. It begins with eight inspiring chapters on the Emperor’s piety and good works, and tells how he “governed his empire in a godly manner for more than thirty years. “ One would never guess from this book that Constantine had killed his son, his nephew, and his wife.
Quote ID: 952
Time Periods: 34
Caesars & Saints: The Rise of the Christian State, A.D. 180-313
Stewart Perowne
Book ID: 44 Page: 132
Section: 3B,3C2
Philip, son of a sheikh, was a pure-bred Arab. He reigned over the millennial celebration of Rome. Considered to have been a just ruler, he is considered by some, on the fanciful testimony of Eusebius (134) and the comment of Jerome (134) and that of bishop Dionysius of Alexander (135), to be the first Christian emperor. His son was declared to be Pontifex Maximus.
Quote ID: 1011
Time Periods: 34
Christian Initiation and Baptism in the Holy Spirit: Evidence from the First Eight Centuries
Kilian McDonnell and George T. Montague
Book ID: 53 Page: 163
Section: 3C2
The distinction between Origen and Eusebius is a little blurred because Eusebius was an ardent follower of the Alexandrian scholar. Eusebius stands in a direct line of descent. Eusebius was a pupil of Pamphilus (c. 240-309), author of the Apology on Origen, a work now lost except for the first book. More than that Eusebius assisted Pamphilus in writing that defense. After Pamphilus’ martyrdom, Eusebius succeeded him as curator of Origin’s library and archives. A considerable section of the sixth book of the Ecclesiastical History is devoted to the life of Origen.{51}
Quote ID: 1181
Time Periods: 34
Christian Initiation and Baptism in the Holy Spirit: Evidence from the First Eight Centuries
Kilian McDonnell and George T. Montague
Book ID: 53 Page: 164
Section: 3C2
Eusebius says that the church, as the house of God, still lives in the realm of the flesh; nonetheless, it already enjoys the goods which adorn God’s house: “divine conversation, sacred instruction, the charisms of the Holy Spirit.”{59} Among them are the word of wisdom, the word of knowledge, faith, healings, and tongues.{60} The River of God is the Holy Spirit, which inundates and makes the land “drunk . . . with the charism of the Holy Spirit.”{61} The force of God’s torrents makes glad the city of God.
Quote ID: 1182
Time Periods: 34
Christians as the Romans Saw Them, The
Robert L. Wilken
Book ID: 201 Page: 166
Section: 3C2
It was customary for the sons of the wealthy to study both the Greek classics and the Christian Scriptures.
Quote ID: 4597
Time Periods: 4
Christians as the Romans Saw Them, The
Robert L. Wilken
Book ID: 201 Page: 174
Section: 3C2
But now that the gods have granted us freedom it seems to me absurd for men to teach what they disapprove. If they are real interpreters of the ancient classics, let them first imitate the ancients’ piety towards the gods. If they think the classics wrong in this respect, then let them go and teach Matthew and Luke in the church. Ep.. 36
Quote ID: 4598
Time Periods: 4
Christians as the Romans Saw Them, The
Robert L. Wilken
Book ID: 201 Page: 175
Section: 3C2
For two centuries Christian intellectuals had been forging a link between Christianity and the classical tradition, and with one swift stroke Julian sought to sever that link. Julian’s law, however, did not only concern intellectuals, for a rhetorical education was absolutely necessary for anyone who wished to advance in society. Christian parents, especially the wealthy, insisted that their sons receive the rhetorical education, and it now appeared as though Julian were limiting this to pagans.
Quote ID: 4599
Time Periods: 4
Christians as the Romans Saw Them, The
Robert L. Wilken
Book ID: 201 Page: 175
Section: 3C2
So grave was the situation that Christians sought their own way of insuring that their children would be properly educated. Two men, a father and a son, both named Apollinarius, came up with the ingenious idea of rendering the Scriptures in the style and form of Greek literature.
Quote ID: 4600
Time Periods: 4
Christians as the Romans Saw Them, The
Robert L. Wilken
Book ID: 201 Page: 176
Section: 3C2
Julian’s school law was a well-timed, calculated, and astute attack on the Christian communities within the Roman Empire. He realized that Christianity, which had not yet developed its own educational system, was wholly dependent on the pagan schools and the literary tradition handed down in these schools.
Quote ID: 4601
Time Periods: 4
Christians as the Romans Saw Them, The
Robert L. Wilken
Book ID: 201 Page: 179
Section: 3C2
Like Porphyry, Julian argued that the notion that Jesus is divine was a fabrication of his followers, not the teaching of Jesus himself; unlike Porphyry, he is surer in his handling of the New Testament text and more discriminating in his use of the biblical data. Only one of the disciples, John, taught the new idea that Jesus was divine. The other Apostles did not.
Quote ID: 4602
Time Periods: 34
Christians as the Romans Saw Them, The
Robert L. Wilken
Book ID: 201 Page: 181
Section: 3C2
The conflict between Julian and the Christians was not between the polytheism of the Greeks and the monotheism of Christians and Jews. What Julian opposed to Christianity and Judaism was a sophisticated idea of God that he learned from his Platonic teachers.
Quote ID: 4603
Time Periods: 4
Christians as the Romans Saw Them, The
Robert L. Wilken
Book ID: 201 Page: 183
Section: 3C2,4A
For several decades Christian thinkers had been debating whether the son was “ungenerated” or “generated.” If the son was generated - that is, came into existence - then he could not be divine. Only God is ungenerated, for he exists eternally without change.
Quote ID: 4604
Time Periods: 4
Christians as the Romans Saw Them, The
Robert L. Wilken
Book ID: 201 Page: 185
Section: 3C2
For Julian this was not simply a philosophical or literary argument; his attack on Christianity was supported by a conspicuous historical gesture, and one that could only have been made by an emperor: the plan to rebuild the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. More than anything else, this action set Julian apart from other critics and elicited the ire of later Christians. “May his very memory be a curse! Amen!.......
Quote ID: 4605
Time Periods: 4
Christians as the Romans Saw Them, The
Robert L. Wilken
Book ID: 201 Page: 185
Section: 3C2
Christians interpreted the fall of the city of Jerusalem and the cessation of sacrificial worship to mean that the Jewish religion had come to an end.
Quote ID: 4606
Time Periods: 1
Christians as the Romans Saw Them, The
Robert L. Wilken
Book ID: 201 Page: 189
Section: 3C2
Julian’s plan to rebuild the Temple also fitted in with his renewal of the traditional religion. He believed, as he had learned from his Neoplatonist teachers, that prayer was not complete without sacrifice.
Quote ID: 4607
Time Periods: 34
Christians as the Romans Saw Them, The
Robert L. Wilken
Book ID: 201 Page: 189
Section: 3C2
Why not enlist the Jews as allies in the effort to restore traditional worship to the cities of the Roman Empire? Although the Jews could not embrace the traditional religion of Greece and Rome, they did believe in the efficacy of sacrifices.
Quote ID: 4608
Time Periods: 4
Christians as the Romans Saw Them, The
Robert L. Wilken
Book ID: 201 Page: 194
Section: 3C2
In the winter of 362-63, while staying in Antioch and preparing for his campaign against the Persians, Julian appointed Alypius, a close friend and former provincial governor, to oversee the rebuilding of the Temple. “I will rebuild at my own expense the holy city of Jerusalem” (Ep. 51). Amply provided with imperial funds, Alypius set out for Jerusalem to begin the project. The construction, however, was abruptly cut short later in the spring by an earthquake or some other disaster.
Quote ID: 4609
Time Periods: 4
Christians as the Romans Saw Them, The
Robert L. Wilken
Book ID: 201 Page: 195
Section: 3C2
Possibly Julian’s advisors urged him to set it aside because of the impending Persian campaign. In June of the same year, in the midst of a battle with the Persians, Julian was killed, and the project was never resumed.
Quote ID: 4610
Time Periods: 4
Christians as the Romans Saw Them, The
Robert L. Wilken
Book ID: 201 Page: 195
Section: 3C2
Even though Julian’s program to rebuild the Temple was unsuccessful, it was the final, and most brilliant, stroke in the ancient conflict between paganism and Christianity.
Quote ID: 4611
Time Periods: 4
Civilizations of the Middle Ages: A Completely Revised and Expanded Edition of Medieval History, The
Norman F. Cantor
Book ID: 203 Page: 48/49
Section: 3C2
Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea, the first historian of the Christian church and a friend and confidant of Constantine, gives three accounts of the events leading to Constantine’s great victory. In 316 he stated vividly that Constantine accepted Christianity and put the chi-rho upon the shield of his legionnaires. In 325, in the Ecclesiastical History, Eusebius asserted that Constantine prayed to the Christian God before the battle and later erected in Rome a statue of himself with the Christian standard. No evidence of the statue has ever been found, and the account is probably untrue. Eusebius’ Life of Constantine, written shortly after the emperor’s death in 337, presents the model for the standard life of a Christian monarch that was followed until the eleventh century. In this work Constantine and his army are said to have seen a flaming cross in the sky and the inscription “By this sign thou shalt conquer” before they crossed the Alps to Italy. This sight demonstrated to Constantine the power of the Christian God, whose standard his army henceforth carried.
Quote ID: 4664
Time Periods: 34
Civilizations of the Middle Ages: A Completely Revised and Expanded Edition of Medieval History, The
Norman F. Cantor
Book ID: 203 Page: 52/53
Section: 3C2
Eusebius’ Life of Constantine is one of the most important works of medieval literature. It sets the pattern for the ideal life of a medieval king. Medieval kings were, by and large, hard, brutal, and barbarous men until at least the late eleventh century. The lives of these men were written, however, by clerical ministers of the king who wished to portray their masters as men of noble virtues called to their office by God and as great friends of the church, as well as temperate and kind.Early medieval historical literature, like hagiography (saints’ lives), was based upon the concept of presenting a fulfillment of the ideal and not the actual.
Quote ID: 4668
Time Periods: 34
Civilizations of the Middle Ages: A Completely Revised and Expanded Edition of Medieval History, The
Norman F. Cantor
Book ID: 203 Page: 53
Section: 3C2
According to this thesis of Eusebius, the world entered its greatest stage with the joint inauguration of the Christian faith and the Roman imperial power, both personified in Constantine. The Roman Empire would make sure that Christianity lasted forever, Eusebius believed, and God would reward the empire with yet greater glory and happiness.
Quote ID: 4669
Time Periods: 4
Civilizations of the Middle Ages: A Completely Revised and Expanded Edition of Medieval History, The
Norman F. Cantor
Book ID: 203 Page: 59
Section: 3C2
Julian is generally known as Julian the Apostate. Like his uncle Constantine, he also experienced a conversion, but in the opposite direction - from Christianity to paganism. While Julian had been brought up in the Christian religion, he had acquired a taste for Roman literature and Greek philosophy, and he finally abandoned the Christian religion for that monotheistic kind of paganism already described.
Quote ID: 4675
Time Periods: 4
Climax of Rome, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 204 Page: 181
Section: 3C2
That is partly why devotees of the Sun, in spite of all these connections, were among the fiercest enemies of the Christians. When Julian the Apostate (361-3) temporarily brought the official religion of the empire back to paganism, he was moved by a prophecy to choose the worship of the Sun, the religion of his Illyrian ancestors, and censured his relative Constantine for deserting it.
Quote ID: 4745
Time Periods: 4
Climax of Rome, The
Michael Grant
Book ID: 204 Page: 237
Section: 1A,3C,3C2
Church and state were to be run in double harness. But as the emperor increasingly became aware of his personal mission, the successive Councils of Arelate (314) and Nicaea (325) – the former attended by western, and the latter mainly by eastern bishops—showed that the master was Constantine, to whom the celestial will had committed the government of all things on earth. Consequently membership of the church now meant resignation to the claims of the state, and an extremely oppressive state it was (pp. 63 ff). Since, however, there was going to be an official church, nothing but this enforced subordination could produce the power-structure needed to guarantee that state and church, and the empire with them, would not fall apart. Eusebius, whose Life of Constantine framed the new theory of Christian sovereignty in terms comparing the relationship of the emperor to Jesus with that of Jesus to God the Father, {101} felt so anxious not to return to the relative ineffectiveness of earlier Christian institutions, whose persecution by Diocletian even seemed to him deserved and merciful, that he applauded the capitulation of the church to Constantine.
Quote ID: 4773
Time Periods: 14
Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 173
Section: 3C2
As its name suggests, Constantinople was Constantine’s city. This is an important point because there has been considerable debate over whether Constantinople was founded as a Christian city or not. The issue arose because of Eusebius’ misleading claim, in his attempt to assert the Christian commitment of Constantine, that Constantinople was always wholly Christian and without a single pagan temple. For its founder this was not relevant; this was the city of Constantine, not of Christ.
Quote ID: 4839
Time Periods: 4
Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 173
Section: 3C2
Pagan statues and monuments were brought from all over the empire to grace the public spaces.
Quote ID: 4840
Time Periods: 4
Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 173
Section: 3C2
Jerome tells of whole cities being stripped of monuments--among those known to have been taken by Constantine were the column commemorating the Greek victory over the Persians in 479 B.C. from Delphi (the base survives today in Istanbul), statues of Apollo, one of them possibly also from Delphi, and of the Muses from mount Helicon in Boeotia.
Quote ID: 4841
Time Periods: 45
Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 173/174
Section: 3C2
In fact, Constantine recognized that Byzantium’s protecting goddesses had to be respected. The most ancient of these was Rhea, the mother of the Olympian gods. Another important deity was Tyche, the personification of good fortune, who was believed to be able to protect and bring prosperity to cities. Constantine honoured them both with new temples.
Quote ID: 4842
Time Periods: 4
Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 174
Section: 3C2
In the circular forum, on one of the highest hills of the city, Constantine erected a great porphyry column twenty-five metres high and arranged for it to be crowned by a gold statue of himself; the column still stands, in battered form, today. Here the emperor was again associated with the sun, whose rays spread from the statue’s head. All this was dedicated on a great day of celebration in May 330, as much a celebration of Constantine as of his city. Among the events that followed one stood out: the arrival in the hippodrome of a golden chariot carrying a gilded statue of the emperor. The statue held a smaller figure of Tyche. For the next 200 years, the ritual drawing of the statue and chariot through the hippodrome was to be re-enacted on the anniversary of the dedication. Where did Christianity fit into all this? In the original celebrations hardly at all. Space was, however, reserved in the centre of the of the city for churches, but their titles--Hagia Sophia, Holy Wisdom, Hagia Eirene, Holy Peace, and Hagia Dynamis, Holy Power--suggest that Constantine was once again deliberately using formulas that were as acceptable to pagan world as to the Christian.
Quote ID: 4843
Time Periods: 4
Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 175
Section: 3C2
It was keeping the consensus which was important: the only saints honoured with churches were local martyrs, and it was not until the end of the century that Constantinople could be seen as a fully Christian city.
Quote ID: 4844
Time Periods: 4
Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 182
Section: 3C2
Julian’s survival to manhood was in itself remarkable, in that most of his family had been eliminated by Constantine’s three sons. His father and seven immediate members of his family were executed in 337, when Julian was only six. His teenage years had been spent with his half-brother Gallus on a remote estate in Asia Minor, but Gallus himself was executed by Constantine in 354.
Quote ID: 4852
Time Periods: 4
Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 183
Section: 3C2,4A
The clergy lost all their exemptions, and in 362 they were forbidden to teach rhetoric or grammar. It was absurd, declared Julian, for Christians to teach classical culture while at the same time pouring scorn on classical religion--if they wished to teach, they should confine themselves to teaching the Gospels in their churches.
Quote ID: 4854
Time Periods: 4
Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 185
Section: 3C2
He reintroduced blood sacrifices as part of his enthusiasm for the old gods but by doing so offended the more sophisticated pagans.
Quote ID: 4855
Time Periods: 4
Closing of the Western Mind, The
Charles Freeman
Book ID: 205 Page: 297
Section: 3C2
Augustine rejected Eusebius’ claim that Constantine had inaugurated a Christian state. The state, however Christian it may appear, can only be a community in which saints and sinners are mingled.
Quote ID: 4984
Time Periods: 34
Constantine and Eusebius
Timothy D. Barnes
Book ID: 64 Page: 126
Section: 3C2
Christianity, for Eusebius, was not a new religion but the primeval religion from which the traditional religions of mankind were mere offshoots or declensions.
Quote ID: 1577
Time Periods: 34
Constantine and Eusebius
Timothy D. Barnes
Book ID: 64 Page: 127
Section: 3C2
Christianity is identical with the religion of the patriarchs, and the worshipers of God from Adam to Abraham were Christians in all but name. Eusebius draws a rigid distinction between the Hebrews (the original Christians) and the Jews, whose way of life derives from the laws of Moses.
Quote ID: 1578
Time Periods: 04
Constantine and Eusebius
Timothy D. Barnes
Book ID: 64 Page: 127
Section: 3C2
Thus Christianity is the most ancient and most venerable of all religions:accepted of old by Abraham and the patriarchs, now proclaimed to all
mankind through the teaching of Christ, Christianity is the original, the
only, the true way to worship God. {3}
Quote ID: 1579
Time Periods: 4
Constantine and Eusebius
Timothy D. Barnes
Book ID: 64 Page: 129/130
Section: 3C2
Moreover, in its present form Book One concludes by quoting the correspondence between Jesus and King Abgar, translated from a Syriac document preserved in the public archives in Edessa - though the quotation of this recently produced document may not have occurred in the original edition.{15} Books Two to Seven, however, weave together the disparate strands of the History into a narrative which proceeds chronologically.[Footnote 15] HE 1.13, drawing on an earlier version of the Syriac Doctrine of Addai, the extant form of which seems to date from c. 400; see I. Ortiz de Urbina, Patrologia Syriaca2 (Rome, 1965), 44. Eusebius describes how Thaddaeus went to Edessa after the Ascension (13.11 ff.):
the preface to Book Two states “let us now consider the events after his ascension” (2, praef. 2).
Quote ID: 1580
Time Periods: 4
Constantine and Eusebius
Timothy D. Barnes
Book ID: 64 Page: 130
Section: 3C2
Eusebius adopts a broad definition of Christianity which allows him to claim Philo and Josephus, both Jews by race and religion, as virtual Christians and to use them as valuable evidence for the first century.
Quote ID: 1581
Time Periods: 4
Constantine and Eusebius
Timothy D. Barnes
Book ID: 64 Page: 131
Section: 3C2
Eusebius repeats Tertullian’s story that the emperor Tiberius, on receiving a report from Pontius Pilate, proposed to enroll Jesus among the gods of the Roman pantheon, and that when the Senate demurred, the emperor gave Christians legal protection.
Quote ID: 1582
Time Periods: 1234
Constantine and Eusebius
Timothy D. Barnes
Book ID: 64 Page: 134
Section: 3C2,4A
From the middle of the second century onward, Eusebius asserts, Christianity was universally recognized as a sober and respectable philosophy against which no one dared to revive the ancient calumnies. {44}[Footnote 44] HE 4.7.
Quote ID: 1583
Time Periods: 4
Constantine and Eusebius
Timothy D. Barnes
Book ID: 64 Page: 136
Section: 3C2
For Eusebius success was a mark of truth, and his treatment of persecution reflects this belief - which was to receive emphatic validation from the persecution in his own day.{75} Eusebius does not present the early Church as a hated and persecuted minority gradually attaining security and respectability. For him the Christian church normally enjoyed respect and toleration, even in its earliest days. {76}[Footnote 75] Chapter IX
Quote ID: 1584
Time Periods: 4
Constantine and Eusebius
Timothy D. Barnes
Book ID: 64 Page: 140/141
Section: 3C2
A close inspection of the text and a comparison of the History with the documents and writers employed as sources immediately discloses several grave deficiencies. When Eusebius paraphrases, he feels free to rewrite, to omit or to expand passages, to alter the emphases of the original, and he often misreports, just as if he had composed his paraphrase from memory.
Quote ID: 1585
Time Periods: 4
Constantine and Eusebius
Timothy D. Barnes
Book ID: 64 Page: 141
Section: 3C2
In any event, it is unwise to rely on Eusebius’ reports as reproducing exactly the precise tenor, or even main purport, of lost evidence.
Quote ID: 1586
Time Periods: 4
Constantine and Eusebius
Timothy D. Barnes
Book ID: 64 Page: 142
Section: 3C2,4B
He thus could not perceive or document one of the crucial transitions in early Christianity. In 180 the Christians were an obscure sect, widely believed to enjoy “Oedipodean incests and Thyestean banquets.” {143} within a generation, however, there were Christians or Christian sympathizers at the imperial court and in the Roman Senate: an apologist could soberly inform a proconsul of Africa that if the proconsul wished to rid his province of Christians, he would need to decimate his own staff and social circle, and a governor of Arabia could ask the prefect of Egypt to send him a Christian teacher for an interview. {144}It is by no means easy to discover when a majority of the population of the Roman Empire (or any area within it) became Christian. The more significant stage in the transformation of Roman society occurred when figures like Tertullian in Africa, Clement and Origen in Alexandria, and, a little later, Cyprian in Carthage demonstrated the moral, social and intellectual respectability of their religion. {145} Eusebius’ picture of the Church before 200 is fundamentally anachronistic.
[Footnote 143] R. Freudenberger, Theologische Zeitschrift 23 (1967), 97 ff.
Quote ID: 1587
Time Periods: 234
Constantine and Eusebius
Timothy D. Barnes
Book ID: 64 Page: 162
Section: 3C2
In 311 Eusebius stressed the continuing role of the martyrs, who walk with God and can assist their brethren on earth with their prayers; persecution created a link with the first apostles, who themselves suffered martyrdom. {106}
Quote ID: 1591
Time Periods: 1234
Constantine and Eusebius
Timothy D. Barnes
Book ID: 64 Page: 173/174
Section: 3C2
God the Father was “the first cause”, the creator or demiurge of the universe, uncreated and the father of all things, the “first and uncreated God.” {62} God the Son, the divine Word, or Logos, so Eusebius repeatedly states, is different from and inferior to God the Father. {63} Although the Son is Lord and God, and the only Lord and God apart from the Father, he occupies second place after the Father, he is a minister of his Father’s will, and his power was given him by the Father. {64} He may be the “angel of mighty counsel” (Isaiah 9:6) who performs and announces the will of the Father to every created thing, but he is essentially different from the Father; he has a substance (hypostasis) of his own which differs from that of the Father, he is a separate being from the Father who sent him, and though he is called God, he is “the first of all created things after the uncreated beginning.”{65}[Footnote 63] The Father is a “greater Lord,” the Word “in second place after the Father” (Ibid., 1.12).
Quote ID: 1592
Time Periods: 4
Constantine and Eusebius
Timothy D. Barnes
Book ID: 64 Page: 174
Section: 3C2
Admirers of Eusebius’ theology assert fervently that he was no Arian. {69} That was not the opinion of Eusebius’s contemporaries, and the General Elementary Introduction repeatedly affirms two propositions which the Council of Nicaea condemned as heretical: that God the Son differs in substance from God the Father, and that the Son belongs to the created order.[Footnote 69] H. Berkhof, Die Theologie des Eusebius (Amsterdam, 1939), 65 ff. The imperfect antithesis “nicht Arianer, sondern Origenist” was developed by M. Weis, Die Stellung des Eusebius von Caesarea im arianischen Streit (diss., Freiburg-im-Breisgau, 1919), 62 ff.
Quote ID: 1593
Time Periods: 4
Constantine and Eusebius
Timothy D. Barnes
Book ID: 64 Page: 179
Section: 2B2,3C2
Throughout, Eusebius has one main polemical aim: to demonstrate, against Porphyry, an essential harmony or identity between Christianity and all that is best in Greco-Roman civilization. The quotations of Greek writers thus form an integral part of the overall argument, which Eusebius has ordered into a carefully designed structure.
Quote ID: 1596
Time Periods: 4
Constantine and Eusebius
Timothy D. Barnes
Book ID: 64 Page: 181
Section: 3C2
Christianity (he holds) is identical with the religion of the Hebrew patriarchs, who saw the truth while the first pagans wallowed in error. Hence it is of greater antiquity than Judaism, which is a way of life founded by Moses, the last of the ancient Hebrews, as a temporary dispensation to allow knowledge of the Old Testament to circulate so that all mankind can embrace the religion of the Hebrew patriarchs revealed fully and to all in Christianity. {132}Book Ten stands alone, occupying a pivotal position in the argument, for it provides the crucial proof that the Greeks derived their learning, as well as their philosophy, from the Hebrews.
Quote ID: 1597
Time Periods: 4
Constantine and Eusebius
Timothy D. Barnes
Book ID: 64 Page: 186
Section: 3C2
The Preparation for the Gospel and the Proof of the Gospel also reflect basic theological ideas which Eusebius had long held. As in the General Elementary Introduction, he virtually ignores the Holy Spirit when speaking of God and thinks of God the Father and God the Son in terms of the First and Second Gods of Middle Platonism. {169}
Quote ID: 1598
Time Periods: 4
Constantine and Eusebius
Timothy D. Barnes
Book ID: 64 Page: 202
Section: 3C2
The Libyan Arius was a popular preacher at the church of Baucalis. {115}
Quote ID: 1604
Time Periods: 4
Constantine and Eusebius
Timothy D. Barnes
Book ID: 64 Page: 241
Section: 3C2
In one respect at least, Eusebius’ quotations must be deliberately misleading.
Quote ID: 1642
Time Periods: 34
Constantine and Eusebius
Timothy D. Barnes
Book ID: 64 Page: 249
Section: 3C2
Constantine has legislated the gods and heroes of pagan antiquity out of existence and made the whole world worship the true God together, receiving divine instruction every Sunday. Constantine has seen the Savior often, both while awake and in dreams, and the emperor directs his policies by the revelations God vouchsafes him - God, his champion and guardian. . . .
Quote ID: 1650
Time Periods: 4
Constantine and Eusebius
Timothy D. Barnes
Book ID: 64 Page: 253/254
Section: 3C2
This preface Panegyric to Constantine sets the tone for what follows. Eusebius deliberately eschews exclusively Christian terminology, never uttering the name of Jesus or the word of “Christ.” {88}….
On the contrary, Eusebius coolly appropriates the terminology of Greek philosophy to justify the Christian empire and the suppression of paganism.
Quote ID: 1653
Time Periods: 4
Constantine and Eusebius
Timothy D. Barnes
Book ID: 64 Page: 254
Section: 3C2
The Constantine of Eusebius’s speech is no benevolent tolerator of religious pluralism: he has “cleansed all the filth of godless error from his kingdom on earth.” {94}
Quote ID: 1654
Time Periods: 4
Constantine and Eusebius
Timothy D. Barnes
Book ID: 64 Page: 255
Section: 3C2
Constantine reigns under the saving and life-giving sign of the Cross, he sets one day in seven aside as a day of prayer, and his armies pray to God and fight with the labarum as their standard.
Quote ID: 1655
Time Periods: 4
Constantine and Eusebius
Timothy D. Barnes
Book ID: 64 Page: 255
Section: 3C2
Although Eusebius and Eunapius both describe his government, their accounts hardly coincide at a single point. Eusebius gives an extravagant panegyric. His Constantine was generous in every way. He gave freely to all, bestowing money, land, and status on any who asked and never refusing any request. From the emperor, some received consular rank, others membership in the Senate, many a provincial governorship; some became comities of the first, second, or third rank while countless others received the rank of eminentissimus or some other title.
Quote ID: 1656
Time Periods: 4
Constantine and Eusebius
Timothy D. Barnes
Book ID: 64 Page: 265/266
Section: 3C2
Strangely, however, the picture of Eusebius himself which is implicit in the Life has usually been taken on trust. Eusebius suggests that he was close to the emperor; hence he becomes, in many modern accounts, a constant adviser of Constantine, a close confidant, his principal counselor on ecclesiastical matters. {66} Basic facts of geography and chronology contradict this conventional portrait. Eusebius of Caesarea did not, like his namesake of Nicomedia, reside near the imperial capital, come to court when he chose, or have ready access to the emperor’s presence. He was no courtier, still less a trusted counselor from whom Constantine sought constant advice on ecclesiastical policy.
Quote ID: 1659
Time Periods: 4
Constantine and Eusebius
Timothy D. Barnes
Book ID: 64 Page: 273
Section: 3C2
Eunapius of Sardis developed Julian’s insinuations into a historical interpretation of the fourth century which blamed Constantine and his conversion to Christianity for the decline of the Roman Empire. {5}
Quote ID: 1660
Time Periods: 4
Constantine and Eusebius
Timothy D. Barnes
Book ID: 64 Page: 274
Section: 3C2
He the German humanist Johann Lowenklau (Johannes Leunclavius) argued that Zosimus’ picture of Constantine should be preferred to that of Eusebius and the ecclesiastical historians of the fifth century; Zosimus held a correct and judicious balance between the emperor’s virtues and vices, where as Eusebius was not a historian but a panegyrist, constrained to utter nothing except laudation - and therefore, incapable of giving a true portrait of Constantine. {8}
Quote ID: 1662
Time Periods: 45
Constantine and the Bishops: The Politics of Intolerance
H.A. Drake
Book ID: 65 Page: 15
Section: 3C2
What is important at the moment is the obviously political reasoning that Eusebius says went into Constantine’s decision: he wanted to find a god who would not only protect him from magical arts but also give him a secure and successful reign. Entirely missing from the story are those spiritual concerns that, to a modern reader at least, are the prime components of a conversion experience: concerns for immorality and ethical conduct, the afterlife and the fate of one’s soul.
Quote ID: 1672
Time Periods: 4
Constantine and the Bishops: The Politics of Intolerance
H.A. Drake
Book ID: 65 Page: 15
Section: 3C2
...the bishop’s utter duplicity in putting a pious veneer over such raw ambition— “the first thoroughly dishonest historian of antiquity,” Burckhardt called him. {15}
Quote ID: 1673
Time Periods: 4
Constantine and the Bishops: The Politics of Intolerance
H.A. Drake
Book ID: 65 Page: 16
Section: 3C2
...he obviously, almost embarrassingly, dotes on his subject, sees no contradiction, much less shame, in Constantine’s behavior at the moment of his conversion.
Quote ID: 1674
Time Periods: 4
Constantine and the Bishops: The Politics of Intolerance
H.A. Drake
Book ID: 65 Page: 127
Section: 3C2
The disclaimer did not stop Constantine’s renegade nephew, the emperor Julian, from later mocking with republican sarcasm his uncle’s love of finery. Ironically, in this case it was Julian who was out of step. Although modern scholars frequently write with admiration of Julian’s efforts to restore the simpler behavior of the Principate, contemporaries found it demeaning; while Christian writers scorned the man they called “the Apostate” for turning away from the faith, even their pagan counterparts conceded that he had failed to achieve the dignity of his office. {23}
Quote ID: 1681
Time Periods: 4
Constantine by Ramsay Macmullen
Ramsay MacMullen
Book ID: 69 Page: 72/73/74
Section: 2E1,3C,3C2
Constantine one night was told in a vision to paint on his soldiers’ shields the sign of God, which would bring victory. It is described as the letter CHI, turned (not X but +), and the top in a loop (symbol). He followed instructions, equipping a few score of his guard with the sign, we may suppose-hardly all forty thousand!Lactantius is the source followed here.
….
He was a devout Christian; yet he disposes of the whole miracle in thirty-one words. Pagan orators of 313 and 321, to whom we will return, speak only vaguely and briefly of divine aid to Constantine; a triumphal arch erected in 315 at the senate’s orders connects the victory not with Christ but with the Sun-God.
Among Christian sources, Eusebius has nothing to say about the vision in a work otherwise receptive to the miraculous (the Ecclesiastical History of 325), and in 336, in a long oration, he lays stress on the sign of the cross as bringer of victory, and in Constantine’s presence refers to “the divine vision of the Savior which has often shone on you”; but he never puts cross and visions together in any reference to the events of 312. The emperor himself ignores them in contexts where they might naturally find a place, and an intimate of his son’s (Cyril of Jerusalem) in mid-century assures Constantius II that the sight of a cross marked in the sky by a recent meteor is a greater grace than even the true cross that his father found in the Holy Land. The passage, of course, fairly cries out for mention of Constantine’s vision. Farther removed, Ambrose knew nothing of it; Rufinus puts it in the setting of a dream. With Rufinus, we reach the fifth century. The miracle has simply had no impact. It has passed unnoticed among real men. But it was otherwise in the world of books, in which by this time much fuller versions circulated.
They originated in Eusebius’ effusive Life of Constantine, composed after the subject’s death.
…
In 312, at some unspecified spot seemingly in Gaul, and in answer to prayer, he saw the sign of the cross blazing in the afternoon sky, and around it the words, “In this, conquer.” His entire army saw it, too.
…
if the skywriting was witnessed by forty thousand men, the true miracle lies in their unbroken silence about it. We may compare another instance of intervention from on high. A violent rainstorm descended once on Marcus Aurelius’ enemies out of the blue and drove them off the battlefield. This was really seen by thousands. Marcus Aurelius, on coins and relief sculpture, advertised this proof that Jupiter fought on his side. Why did Constantine not do likewise?
Quote ID: 1878
Time Periods: 4
Constantine the Great
Michael Grant
Book ID: 66 Page: 82
Section: 3C2
Constantine wore long, shoulder-length hair (recalling Alexander the Great) - some of it false. He also covered himself with bracelets and other jewelry, and put on elaborate jewelled robes with flowery designs. Eusebius, somewhat disingenuously, said he did this only because the people enjoyed it, like children ’wondering at a hobgoblin’, whereas Constantine’s attitude was merely one of detached amusement.
Quote ID: 1690
Time Periods: 4
Constantine the Great
Michael Grant
Book ID: 66 Page: 82
Section: 3C2
However, from c.315/16 a gemmed, high-crested helmet, foreshadowing the Byzantine crown, appeared his coins, replaced ten years later by a pearl decked diadem consisting that amounted, it might be said, to the deliberate elevation of the emperor far above other mortals (and even his sons began to wear diadems from c.325).
Quote ID: 1691
Time Periods: 4
Constantine the Great
Michael Grant
Book ID: 66 Page: 138
Section: 3C2
Indeed, it is possible that he had had this experience: or, rather, that he had seen a cross in the sky, where the sun occasionally presents such an image, known as the ’halo phenomenon’.Inscriptions in the sky are not very plausible, and it is possible to look behind the polite words of Eusebius (written down only after Constantine’s death) and to detect that even he, strong supporter of Constantine that he was, believed that the emperor, consciously or unconsciously, was not altogether telling the truth about his vision - which was, in fact, fictitious: or rather, the inscription and its visibility to the army were fictitious, although Constantine may perhaps have seen some natural phenomenon in the sky which he later looked back on as a heaven-sent Christian symbol.
For Constantine was extremely disposed to see visions, which was why, earlier, a pagan vision had been attributed to him.
Quote ID: 1712
Time Periods: 4
Constantine the Great
Michael Grant
Book ID: 66 Page: 141
Section: 3C2
According to Eusebius, it was now that he began to devise his special standard, the labarum, which displayed the Christogram (Chi-Rho: the initial letters of Christos) at the summit of the cross, and which became a magical, miraculous amulet, almost the equivalent of the Ark of the Covenant.
Quote ID: 1713
Time Periods: 4
Constantine the Great
Michael Grant
Book ID: 66 Page: 142
Section: 3C2
The labarum took the form, Eusebius tell us, of a long spear, covered with gold, and joined by a transverse bar which gave it the shape of the cross. At the summit of the standard was a wreath made of gold and precious stones: and it was within this wreath that the Chi-Rho sign was inserted. The labarum, then, was an amalgamation of religious banner and military vexillum (emblem of power), analogous to a standard earlier employed by the Mithraists.
Quote ID: 1714
Time Periods: 4
Constantine the Great
Michael Grant
Book ID: 66 Page: 143
Section: 3C2
The symbol also bore some resemblance to the mystic Egyptian ankh, and others might have noted or assumed a connection with the worship of the Sun or Apollo or Mithras (though the theory of the development of the Christogram Chi-Rho from a pagan star does not seem admissable), or it might just have been regarded as a good-luck sign. Subsequently, of course, it became a Christian symbol, but how and when this transfer or transformation occurred is a matter for conjecture.In other words, the Chi-Rho had a double meaning, one for pagans and one for Christians. Double meanings were nothing new for Constantine, who had been brought up (at Diocletian’s court) in an atmosphere that required dissimulation. The Chi-Rho may have appeared again in his statue at Constantinople, which was not only adapted from a representation of Apollo but possessed the radiate crown of the Sun-god (so familiar from the imperial coinage) and faced the Rising Sun. That is to say, the Christogram could be reverenced by both pagans and Christians: an illustration of Constantine’s desire to play to both audiences. Indeed, that may have partly been the reason why he welcomed both the Chi-Rho and the labarum - because of their ambiguity, which was convenient for his purposes.
Quote ID: 1715
Time Periods: 4
Constantine the Great
Michael Grant
Book ID: 66 Page: 146
Section: 3C2
One school of thought maintains that he had undergone this conversion a good deal earlier than the Battle of Milvian Bridge, which only confirmed his decision; after all, he already had Christian bishops in his entourage as he marched on Rome.
Quote ID: 1716
Time Periods: 4
Constantine’s Bible
David L. Dungan
Book ID: 67 Page: 116
Section: 3C2
Thus were the lurking-places of the heretics broken up by the emperor’s command and the savage beasts they harbored. I mean the chief authors of their impious doctrines driven to flight....Some, intimidated by the emperor’s threats, disguising their real sentiments, crept secretly into the Church. For the law directed that search should be made for their books which they had to give up....Thus the members of the entire church became united and compacted in one harmonious whole; and the one Catholic Church, at unity with itself, shone with full luster, while no heretical or schismatic body anywhere continued to exist.
Quote ID: 1803
Time Periods: 4
Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews
James Carroll
Book ID: 68 Page: 173
Section: 3C2
Constantine was the instrument of a revolution in the religious imagination of the Mediterranean world, and eventually of Europe. His political impact on Christianity is widely recognized, but his role as a shaper of its central religious idea is insufficiently appreciated.
Quote ID: 1816
Time Periods: 4
Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews
James Carroll
Book ID: 68 Page: 173
Section: 3C2
...at the time, Constantine was a kind of, well, Moses -- an image I would not presume to apply to him. It originates with Eusebius of Caesarea, his biographer.{1}
Quote ID: 1817
Time Periods: 34
Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews
James Carroll
Book ID: 68 Page: 173
Section: 3C2
Eusebius (c. 260--c. 339), the bishop of Caesarea, was born before Constantine and died after him. He is sometimes called the father of Church history. The author of several important works, especially History, the earliest telling of the ascendancy of the Church, he is usually a reliable recorder in the mode of Josephus.{2} But his Life of Constantine is a celebration of the divinely ordained union of the Church and the empire -- Constantine as Moses -- and not in any way an objective work of biography.
Quote ID: 1818
Time Periods: 34
Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews
James Carroll
Book ID: 68 Page: 176
Section: 3C2
That pivotal 125 years not only illuminates the conflict between Christians and Jews, but escalates it. In the new era, Christians went from being 10 percent of the empire,{16} a despised and violently persecuted minority, to being its solid majority. Christianity went from being a private, apolitical movement to being the shaper of world politics. The status of Judaism was similarly reversed, from a licit self-rule, a respected exception within a sea of paganism, to a state of highly vulnerable disenfranchisement. What might be called history’s first pogrom, an organized violent assault on a community of Jews, because they were Jews, took place in Alexandria in 414, wiping out that city’s Jewish community for a time. Even in Palestine, Jews became a besieged minority. The land of Israel, long ignored by Christians who had happily left it behind for the centers of the empire, now became known as the Christian Holy Land. Christians returned to it, not for the last time, with a vengeance.
Quote ID: 1823
Time Periods: 345
Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews
James Carroll
Book ID: 68 Page: 178
Section: 3C2
Here we see Eusebius at work not as a historian but as the emperor’s mythmaker....From the start, Constantine wanted to be taken as a man with a mandate from the gods.
Quote ID: 1824
Time Periods: 34
Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews
James Carroll
Book ID: 68 Page: 198
Section: 3C2
But in Eusebius’s detailed account of Helena’s progress through Palestine, there is no mention of the True Cross at all, which is a surprise, if only because the emperor himself referred to it (“token of that holiest Passion”) in the same time frame. {8} In describing Helena’s sojourn, Eusebius is concerned just with the uncovering and celebrating of the ancient tomb of Jesus -- the Holy Sepulcher, which to Eusebius is the site of the Resurrection. To him, the Resurrection is what counts. He has no interest in Golgotha, site of the crucifixion. As for the True Cross -- like most Christians, he’d have regarded it as a token of shame, not an object to be sought out and revered. The Resurrection was the point.
Quote ID: 1841
Time Periods: 4
Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews
James Carroll
Book ID: 68 Page: 204
Section: 3C2
The result? In 361, a member of the family who had been raised in this pathological culture of holy violence succeeded to the throne. His name was Julian. He was the son of a half-brother of Constantine’s who had been murdered by supporters of Constantine’s sons....Julian tried to overturn the Constantinian revolution. He is remembered as the last pagan emperor, but it is important to note that he was raised a Christian -- he is known as Julian the Apostate. Only after his army had saluted him as the new Augustus did he reveal that he had become a pagan, and that he intended to return the empire to paganism. {27} Given what he had seen in the household of Christianity, why not?
Quote ID: 1848
Time Periods: 4
Conversion
A.D. Nock
Book ID: 70 Page: 157/158
Section: 3C2
The best known of these conversions is that of Julian. Here we are fairly well informed on the details of the process. Julian himself speaks of the way in which the Sun’s rays and light fascinated him from childhood, and tells us of the library of George Cappadocia, to which he had access during his life at Macellum: it contains ‘all kinds of philosophers, many commentators and not least plenty of writings of every kind of the Galilaeans’. Then came the contacts at Nicomedia with Libanius, which deepened if they did not actually inspire his passion for hellenism as a cultural force. Libanius, a sympathizer who was a notable rhetorician, says in a speech delivered at Antioch to welcome him (Oratio xiii, II): ‘There was a concealment here (at Nicomdeia) a spark of the prophetic art which had with difficulty escaped the hands of the impious. This first enables thee to pursue the truth, and under the softening influence of the prophecies thou didst check thy violent hatred against the gods’. This is the most important, for it shows us Julian as an eager Christian, and his writings reveal him as throughout saturated with Christian thought. A prophecy moved him, no doubt an oracle reminding him of the devotion of his ancestors to the Sun, perhaps substantially like the words of the Sun to the young man in his myth, “We wish to purify thy ancestral house out of respect for thy ancestors. So remember that thy soul is immortal and descended from us, and that if thou followest us thou wilt be a god and wilt with us see our father.”Pastor John notes: John’s Note: Xns, wow
Quote ID: 1960
Time Periods: 4
Conversion
A.D. Nock
Book ID: 70 Page: 158
Section: 3C2
But in the main Julian’s conversion is due to a cultural ideal quickened by the sense of a personal and at the same time hereditary mission; this feeling came as a result of religious experience. It was an emotional and not an intellectual quest: it was therein different from that of St. Augustine, although they resemble one another in that each ends in a return to something which has all the time been in the background.It would be wrong to generalized from him or to suppose that the enthusiastic support which he received in various parts of the Empire (above all Syria, where a deep rooted local feeling centred around the great temples) represents piety of his type and earnestness, and a desire to convert humanity: men felt joy at the abolition of interference with good old customs.
Quote ID: 1961
Time Periods: 4
Conversion
A.D. Nock
Book ID: 70 Page: 159
Section: 3C2
The two opposing forces had drawn near one another. Paganism had moved largely towards a sort of monotheism, and Julian’s revival depended on the giving to it of those features which had in Christianity been most effective, theological and moral dogma, hierarchic organization, and systematic works of charity and benevolence. Julian purposed, we are told, to adorn pagan temples with the equipment and order of Christian piety.
Quote ID: 1963
Time Periods: 4
Councils of Ariminum and Seleucia
Vita S. Antoni
Book ID: 446 Page: 3/4
Section: 3C1,3C2
5. As to the Nicene Council, it was not a common meeting, but convened upon a pressing necessity, and for a reasonable object. The Syrians, Cilicians, and Mesopotamians, were out of order in celebrating the Feast, and kept Easter with the Jews; on the other hand, the Arian heresy had risen up against the Catholic Church, and found supporters in Eusebius and his fellows, who were both zealous for the heresy, and conducted the attack upon religious people. This gave occasion for an Ecumenical Council, that the feast might be everywhere celebrated on one day, and that the heresy which was spring up might be anathematized.*John’s note: Even though the Trinity controversy is the point of this document, and though the subject has already been mentioned, the first reason for the Council is still the correct date for Easter.*
Quote ID: 8824
Time Periods: ?
Councils of Ariminum and Seleucia
Vita S. Antoni
Book ID: 446 Page: 10
Section: 3C2
…what can Acacius say of his own master, Eusebius, who not only gave his subscription in the Nicene Council, but even in a letter signified to his flock, that that was true faith, which the Council had declared? for, if he explained himself in that letter in his own way, yet he did not contradict the Council’s terms, but even charged it upon the Arians, that their position that the Son was not before His generation, was not even consistent with His being before Mary.
Quote ID: 8828
Time Periods: ?
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Vol. 2, The
Edward Gibbon
Book ID: 210 Page: 76
Section: 3C2
....the character of Eusebius, which was less tinctured with credulity, and more practised in the arts of courts, than that of almost any of his contemporaries.
Quote ID: 5200
Time Periods: 4
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Vol. 2, The
Edward Gibbon
Book ID: 210 Page: 323/324
Section: 3C2
The character of Eusebius has always been a problem; but those who have read the second critical epistle of Le Clerc (Ars Critica, tom. iii. P. 30-69) must entertain a very unfavourable opinion of the orthodoxy and sincerity of the bishop of Caesarea.
Quote ID: 8557
Time Periods: 4
Early Christian Church, The
J.G. Davies
Book ID: 214 Page: 160
Section: 3C2
The paganism that Julian intended to substitute for the Christianity he had renounced owed much to the latter. He appreciated its institutional, its moral and its theological aspects. He therefore sought to create a pagan ‘Church’, and under himself as Pontifex Maximus he appointed high priests in every province, corresponding to the Christian bishop, and by making their tenure life-long superseded the old system whereby leading laymen performed priestly functions for a year only.Each village was to have its priest, thus paralleling the parochial organization of Christianity. Julian also sought to regulate their lives and conduct, insisting that they were to be charitable, grave, and chaste, and that they were not to frequent theatres or taverns nor associate with jockeys, actors or dancers. They were provided with funds to distribute to the poor; some were organized in communities on the lines of the Christian monasteries; fasting was approved, a sermon was introduced into the acts of worship and a psalter of pagan hymns was issued. Undoubtedly this was the most effective side of Julian’s scheme. He saw that the weakness of the old religion lay in its lack of organization and this he provided, but his attempt to co-ordinate the disconnected elements of pagan belief into a coherent theology was less successful.
Quote ID: 5312
Time Periods: 4
Eunomius: The First Apology (Internet Article)
Translated by William Whiston (1711) http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/eunomius_apology01.htm
Book ID: 405 Page: 11
Section: 3C2
XXI. There is but one God, who is declared both by the Law and the Prophets: and he is own’d by our Saviour himself to be the God of the Only begotten. For says he, I go unto my God and your God. The only True God, the only Wise, and only Good, and only Powerful Being, who only has Immortality.{8}Nor let any one be diforder’d or disturb’d in his mind at this. For we do not use this Language in order to take away the Divinityof the Only-begotten, or his Wisdom, or his Immortality, or his Goodness, but in order to put a difference between things; and to own the supereminent Dignity of the Father. For we acknowledge the only-begotten God and our Lord Jesus, |21 to be Incorruptible, and Immortal, and Wise, and Good; but we affirm that the Father is the Cause of his entire Being;, and of every thing that he is; who himself has no cause of his own Substance, or of his Goodness; as being Unbegotten: the foregoing Premises affording us this Notion.
Quote ID: 8522
Time Periods: 4
Eunomius: The First Apology (Internet Article)
Translated by William Whiston (1711) http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/eunomius_apology01.htm
Book ID: 405 Page: 11
Section: 3C2
XXII. We ought therefore to lay aside the Notion of Likeness as to Substance, and to embrace that of the Likeness of a Son to the Father, in agreement with his own words; that is, so to reduce the intire Cause and Origin of all to the One and Only Being, that the Son may be esteem’d subject to his Father.
Quote ID: 8523
Time Periods: 4
Eunomius: The First Apology (Internet Article)
Translated by William Whiston (1711) http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/eunomius_apology01.htm
Book ID: 405 Page: 11
Section: 3C2
XXIII. But as to these Greeks…
Quote ID: 8524
Time Periods: 4
Eunomius: The First Apology (Internet Article)
Translated by William Whiston (1711) http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/eunomius_apology01.htm
Book ID: 405 Page: 12
Section: 3C2
XXIII. Wherefore we ought not to acquiesce in the Opinions of the Greeks, taken up without examination.
Quote ID: 8525
Time Periods: 4
Eunomius: The First Apology (Internet Article)
Translated by William Whiston (1711) http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/eunomius_apology01.htm
Book ID: 405 Page: 14
Section: 3C2
XXVI. “…to be compared with him that begat him, as to his Substance; nor to that Holy Spirit which was made by him: for he is inferior to the one, as a Being made by him; and superior to the other, as his Maker."
Quote ID: 8526
Time Periods: 4
Eunomius: The First Apology (Internet Article)
Translated by William Whiston (1711) http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/eunomius_apology01.htm
Book ID: 405 Page: 14
Section: 3C2
XXVI. And the Blessed Apostle John, when he said, All things were made by him;and without him was not any thing made.{18}From whence it will follow, that either the Spirit is Unbegotten, which is a piece of Impiety: or if he were made, he must have been made by him.
Quote ID: 8527
Time Periods: 4
Eunomius: The First Apology (Internet Article)
Translated by William Whiston (1711) http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/eunomius_apology01.htm
Book ID: 405 Page: 16
Section: 3C2
XXVIII. There is therefore one unbegotten God, uncreated, not made; and one Lord Jesus Christ the Son of God, a Being begotten of him that is unbegotten; tho not like other beings that are begotten: a Being created by him that is uncreated; tho not like other created Beings; a Being made by him that was not made; tho not like other beings that were made…
Quote ID: 8528
Time Periods: 4
Eunomius: The First Apology (Internet Article)
Translated by William Whiston (1711) http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/eunomius_apology01.htm
Book ID: 405 Page: 16
Section: 3C2
XXVIII. And one Holy Spirit, the first and greatest of all the Works of the only-begotten, made indeed by the Command of the Father, but by the Energy and Power of the Son.*John’s Note: Eunomius of Cyzicus was a leader in the second wave of Arianism, which took place after the First Council of Nicaea.*
Quote ID: 8529
Time Periods: 4
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History Books, LCL 153: Eusebius I, Books 1-5
Eusebius
Book ID: 141 Page: 39
Section: 3C2
Book I chapter IIIStrangest of all, we, who have been consecrated to him, honour him not only with our voices and with the sounds of words, but with the whole disposition of our soul, so as to value testimony to him more than our very life itself.
Quote ID: 3075
Time Periods: 4
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, LCL 265: Eusebius II, Books 6-10
J.E.L. Oulton
Book ID: 142 Page: 303
Section: 3C2
Book VIII chapter XIVHis son Maxentius, who secured for himself the tyranny at Rome, at the beginning counterfeited our faith in order to please and fawn upon the Roman populace; and for this reason ordered his subjects to give over the persecution against Christians . . .
Quote ID: 3110
Time Periods: 4
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, LCL 265: Eusebius II, Books 6-10
J.E.L. Oulton
Book ID: 142 Page: 359
Section: 3C2
Book IX chapter IIIConstantine, the superior of the Emperors in rank and dignity, was the first to take pity on those subjected to tyranny at Rome; and, calling in prayer upon God who is in heaven, and His Word, even Jesus Christ the Saviour of all, as his ally, he advanced in full force, seeking to secure for the Romans their ancestral liberty.
Quote ID: 3111
Time Periods: 4
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, LCL 265: Eusebius II, Books 6-10
J.E.L. Oulton
Book ID: 142 Page: 363
Section: 2E1,3C2
Constantine by his very deeds sang to God the Ruler of all and Author of the victory; then he entered Rome with hymns of triumph, and all the senators and other persons of great note, together with women and quite young children and all the Roman people, received him in a body with beaming countenances to their very heart as a ransomer, saviour, and benefactor, with praises and insatiable joy. But he, as one possessed of natural piety towards God, was by no means stirred by their shouts nor uplifted by their praises, for well he knew that his help was from God; and straightway he gave orders that a memorial of the Saviour’s Passion should be set up in the hand of his own statue; and indeed when they set him in the most public place in Rome holding the Saviour’s sign in his right hand, he bade them engrave this very inscription in these words in the Latin tongue: “By this salutary sign, the true proof of bravery, I saved and delivered your city from the yoke of the tyrant; and moreover I freed and restored to their ancient fame and splendour both the senate and the people of the Romans.”
Quote ID: 3112
Time Periods: 4
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, LCL 265: Eusebius II, Books 6-10
J.E.L. Oulton
Book ID: 142 Page: 371
Section: 3C2
Book IX chapter IXaIn truth, this monster of iniquity had resolved not to give in as regards this matter; until he was smitten by the divine Justice, and at the last against his will forced to do so.
Quote ID: 3114
Time Periods: 1234
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, LCL 265: Eusebius II, Books 6-10
J.E.L. Oulton
Book ID: 142 Page: 381
Section: 3C2
Book IX chapter XAll at once he was smitten by a stroke of God over his whole body, with the result that he fell prone under the onslaught of terrible pains and agonies; he was wasted by hunger, and his flesh entirely consumed by an invisible, divinely-sent fire; the form which his body once possessed wasted away and vanished, and there remained only a form of dry bones, like some phantom shape long since reduced to a skeleton, so that those present could not but think that his body had become the tomb of his soul, which had been buried in what was now a corpse and completely wasted away. And as the heat consumed him still more fiercely in the very depths of his marrow, his eyes projected, and falling from their sockets{1} left him blind.
Pastor John notes: John’s note: silly myth
Quote ID: 3117
Time Periods: 1234
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, LCL 265: Eusebius II, Books 6-10
J.E.L. Oulton
Book ID: 142 Page: 393
Section: 3C2
Book X chapter IThe whole race of God’s enemies had verily been removed even as we have stated,{1} and in a moment blotted out of men’s sight; so that once more a divine saying hath fulfilment, that which says: “I have seen the wicked in great power, and lifted up like the cedars of Lebanon. And I passed by, and, lo, he was not: and I sought his place, and it was not found.” And now henceforth a day bright and radiant with rays of heavenly light, overshadowed by never a cloud, shone down upon the churches of Christ throughout the whole world; nor were even those outside our society {2} grudged, if not the equal enjoyment of our divinely-sent blessings, at any rate a share in their effluence and a participation thereof.
1.
a.
b. So the whole human race was freed from the oppression of the tyrants. And, delivered from his former ills, each one after his own fashion acknowledged as the only true God Him who was the Champion of the pious.
c.
Quote ID: 3118
Time Periods: 4
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, LCL 265: Eusebius II, Books 6-10
J.E.L. Oulton
Book ID: 142 Page: 395
Section: 3C,3C2
Book X chapter II. . . and bishops constantly received even personal letters from the Emperor, and honours and gifts of money. It may not be unfitting at the proper place. . . .
Quote ID: 3119
Time Periods: 4
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, LCL 265: Eusebius II, Books 6-10
J.E.L. Oulton
Book ID: 142 Page: 395
Section: 3C,3C2
Book X chapter IIIAfter this there was brought about that spectacle for which we all prayed and longed: festivals of dedication in the cities and consecrations of the newly-built houses of prayer, assemblages of bishops, comings together of those from far off foreign lands, kindly acts on the part of laity towards laity, union between the members of Christ’s body as they met together in complete harmony.
Quote ID: 3120
Time Periods: 4
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, LCL 265: Eusebius II, Books 6-10
J.E.L. Oulton
Book ID: 142 Page: 397
Section: 3C,3C2
Book X chapter IIIYea verily, our leaders conducted perfect ceremonies, and the consecrated priests performed the sacred rites and stately ordinances of the Church, here with psalmody and recitation of such other words as have been given us from God, there with the ministering of divine and mystic services; and the ineffable symbols of the Saviour’s Passion were present.
Quote ID: 3121
Time Periods: 4
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, LCL 265: Eusebius II, Books 6-10
J.E.L. Oulton
Book ID: 142 Page: 399
Section: 3C2
Book X chapter IVPanergyric on the building of the churches, addressed to Paulinus, bishop of the Tyrians:
Quote ID: 3123
Time Periods: 4
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, LCL 265: Eusebius II, Books 6-10
J.E.L. Oulton
Book ID: 142 Page: 429
Section: 3C2
Book X chapter IVBut meanwhile in the present time she who hath long been a widow and deserted hath been robbed by the grace of God with these blossoms, and is become in truth as a lily, as saith the prophecy; and having received again the garb of a bride and put on the garland of beauty, she is taught by Isaiah to dance, as it were, presenting her thank-offering to the glory of God the King in words of praise. Let us listen to her as she saith:
. . . .
“With these words, then, she danceth. But with what words the Bridegroom also, even the heavenly Word, Jesus Christ Himself, answereth her, hear the Lord as He saith: ’Fear not for thou hast been put to shame; neither dread for that thou hast been put to reproach: for thou shalt forget thy everlasting shame, and the reproach of thy widowhood shalt thou remember no more. . . .
Quote ID: 3130
Time Periods: 34
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, LCL 265: Eusebius II, Books 6-10
J.E.L. Oulton
Book ID: 142 Page: 435
Section: 3C2
Book X chapter IV“But when through the envy and jealousy of the demon which loveth evil she became of her own free choice a lover of that which is sensual and evil, and the Deity departed from her, leaving her bereft of a protector, she fell an easy capture and prey to the snares of those who long had envied her; and, laid low by the engines and machines of her invisible enemies and spiritual foes, she feel a tremendous fall, . . .
Pastor John notes: John’s note: NT saints
Quote ID: 3131
Time Periods: 1234
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, LCL 265: Eusebius II, Books 6-10
J.E.L. Oulton
Book ID: 142 Page: 435
Section: 3C2
“But her Guardian, the Word, the divinely-bright and saving One, when she had paid the just penalty for her sins, once more again restored her, hearkening to the loving-kindness of all-gracious Father. First, then, choosing unto Himself the souls of the supreme Emperors, by means of these men most dearly beloved of God He cleansed the whole world of all the wicked and baneful persons and of the cruel God-hating tyrants themselves.
Quote ID: 3132
Time Periods: 1234
Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, LCL 265: Eusebius II, Books 6-10
J.E.L. Oulton
Book ID: 142 Page: 441
Section: 3C2
Book X chapter IV. . . even Jesus, the only-begotten of God, receiveth with joyful countenance and upturned hands the sweet-smelling incense from all, and the bloodless and immaterial sacrifices offered in prayer, and sendeth them on their way to the heavenly Father and God of the universe; whom He Himself first adoreth and alone rendereth to His Father the honour that is due. . .
Quote ID: 3133
Time Periods: 1234
Eusebius, NPNF2 Vol. 1, Eusebius Pamphilius: Church History, Life of Constantine, Oration in Praise of Constantine
Edited by Philip Schaff
Book ID: 668 Page: 12
Section: 3C2
“What was transacted concerning ecclesiastical faith at the Great Council assembled at Nicæa you have probably learned, Beloved, from other sources, rumour being wont to precede the accurate account of what is doing. But lest in such reports the circumstances of the case have been misrepresented, we have been obliged to transmit to you, first, the formula of faith presented by ourselves; and next, the second, which the Fathers put forth with some additions to our words.” Prolegomena
PJ book footnote reference: “The Life and Writings of Eusebius of Caesarea”, NPNF2, Vol. 1, 12.
Quote ID: 9514
Time Periods: 4
Eusebius, NPNF2 Vol. 1, Eusebius Pamphilius: Church History, Life of Constantine, Oration in Praise of Constantine
Edited by Philip Schaff
Book ID: 668 Page: 12
Section: 3C2
Since Eusebius, your brother in Caesarea, and Theodotus, and Paulinus, and Athanasius, and Gregory, and Aetius and all those in the East say that God pre-exists the Son without a beginning, they have been condemned. Prolegomena
PJ book footnote reference: “The Life and Writings of Eusebius of Caesarea”, NPNF2, Vol. 1, 12.
Quote ID: 9515
Time Periods: 4
Eusebius, NPNF2 Vol. 1, Eusebius Pamphilius: Church History, Life of Constantine, Oration in Praise of Constantine
Edited by Philip Schaff
Book ID: 668 Page: 32
Section: 3C2
The date of the work can be determined with considerable exactness. It closes with a eulogy of Constantine and his son Crispus; and since the latter was put to death by his father in the summer of 326, the History must have been completed before that time. On the other hand, in the same chapter Eusebius refers to the defeat of Licinius, which took place in the year 323 A.D. This gives a fixed terminus a quo. It is not quite certain from Eusebius’ words whether the death of Licinius had already taken place at the time he wrote, but it seems probable that it had, and if so, the completion of the work must be put as late as the summer of 324. On the other hand, not the slightest reference is made to the Council of Nicaea, which met in the summer of 325; and still further the tenth book is dedicated to Paulinus, at one time bishop of Tyre and afterward bishop of Antioch (see Euseb. Contra Marc. I. 4, and Philost. H.E. III. 15), who was already dead in the summer of 325; Prolegomena
PJ book footnote reference: “The Life and Writings of Eusebius of Caesarea”, NPNF2, Vol. 1, 32.
Quote ID: 9516
Time Periods: 4
Eusebius, NPNF2 Vol. 1, Eusebius Pamphilius: Church History, Life of Constantine, Oration in Praise of Constantine
Edited by Philip Schaff
Book ID: 668 Page: 45
Section: 3C2
But the question has been raised whether the earlier books may not have been composed some years before this. Lightfoot (following Westcott) supposes that the first nine books were completed not long after the edict of Milan and before the outbreak of the quarrel between Constantine and Licinius in 314. There is considerable to be said in favor of this theory. The language used in the dedication of the tenth book seems to imply that the nine books had been completed some time before, and that the tenth is added as a sort of postscript. The close of the ninth book strengthens that conclusion. Moreover, it would seem from the last sentences of that book that Constantine and Licinius were in perfect harmony at the time it was written, a state of affairs which did not exist after 314. Prolegomena
PJ book footnote reference: “The Life and Writings of Eusebius of Caesarea”, NPNF2, Vol. 1, 45.
Quote ID: 9517
Time Periods: 4
Eusebius, NPNF2 Vol. 1, Eusebius Pamphilius: Church History, Life of Constantine, Oration in Praise of Constantine
Edited by Philip Schaff
Book ID: 668 Page: 84
Section: 3C2
To which she adds: “The Lord created me in the beginning of his ways, for his works; before the world he established me, in the beginning, before he made the earth, before he made the depths, before the mountains were settled, before all hills he begat me. When he prepared the heavens I was present with him, and when he established the fountains of the region under heaven I was with him, disposing. I was the one in whom he delighted; daily I rejoiced before him at all times when he was rejoicing at having completed the world.” That the divine Word, therefore, pre-existed, and appeared to some, if not to all, has thus been briefly shown by us.
Pastor John’s footnote reference: Eusebius, Church History, I.ii.
Quote ID: 9519
Time Periods: 4
Eusebius, NPNF2 Vol. 1, Eusebius Pamphilius: Church History, Life of Constantine, Oration in Praise of Constantine
Edited by Philip Schaff
Book ID: 668 Page: 105
Section: 3C2
Pontius Pilate informed Tiberius{1} of the reports which were noised abroad through all Palestine concerning the resurrection of our Saviour Jesus from the dead. He gave an account also of other wonders which he had learned of him, and how, after his death, having risen from the dead, he was now believed by many to be a God. They say that Tiberius referred the matter to the Senate, but that they rejected it, ostensibly because they had not first examined into the matter (for an ancient law prevailed that no one should be made a God by the Romans except by a vote and decree of the Senate),
Pastor John’s footnote reference: Eusebius, Church History, II.ii.
Quote ID: 9521
Time Periods: 4
Eusebius, NPNF2 Vol. 1, Eusebius Pamphilius: Church History, Life of Constantine, Oration in Praise of Constantine
Edited by Philip Schaff
Book ID: 668 Page: 229
Section: 2D3A,3C2
They were quite orthodox, accepted fully the doctrinal teachings of the Catholic Church, and did not pretend to alter in any way the revelation given by Christ and his apostles.
Pastor John’s footnote reference: Eusebius, Church History, V.xvi.1.
Quote ID: 9531
Time Periods: 47
Eusebius, NPNF2 Vol. 1, Eusebius Pamphilius: Church History, Life of Constantine, Oration in Praise of Constantine
Edited by Philip Schaff
Book ID: 668 Page: 229
Section: 2D3A,3C2
Montanism must not be looked upon as a heresy in the ordinary sense of the word. . . . But although it failed and passed away, Montanism had a marked influence on the development of the Church. In the first place, it aroused a general distrust of prophecy, and the result was that the Church soon came to the conviction that prophecy had entirely ceased. In the second place, the Church was led to see the necessity of emphasizing the historical Christ and historical Christianity over against the Montanistic claims of a constantly developing revelation**, and thus to put great emphasis upon the Scripture canon. In the third place, the Church had to lay increased stress upon the organization—over against the claims of irregular prophets*** who might at any time arise as organs of the Spirit. The development of Christianity into a religion of the book and of the organization was thus greatly advanced, and the line began to be sharply drawn between the age of the apostles, in which there had been direct supernatural revelations, and the later age, in which such revelations had disappeared. We are, undoubtedly, to date from this time that exalted conception of the glory of the apostolic age, and of its absolute separation from all subsequent ages, which marks so strongly the Church of succeeding centuries and which led men to endeavor to gain apostolic authority for every advance in the constitution in the customs, and in the doctrine of the Church. . . . They were quite orthodox, accepted fully the doctrinal teachings of the Catholic Church, and did not pretend to alter in any way the revelation given by Christ and his apostles.
Pastor John’s footnote reference: NPNF2 Vol.1, 229. Church History, V.xvi.1, footnote 1.
** This is what Christians insist happened with Trinity doctrine, etc.
*** in other words, beyond the control of Xn rulers.
Quote ID: 9532
Time Periods: 47
Eusebius, NPNF2 Vol. 1, Eusebius Pamphilius: Church History, Life of Constantine, Oration in Praise of Constantine
Edited by Philip Schaff
Book ID: 668 Page: 363
Section: 3C2
Constantine, who was the superior both in dignity and imperial rank, first took compassion upon those who were oppressed at Rome, and having invoked in prayer the God of heaven, and his Word, and Jesus Christ himself, the Saviour of all, as his aid, advanced with his whole army, proposing to restore to the Romans their ancestral liberty.
Pastor John’s footnote reference: Eusebius, Church History, IX.ix.2.
Quote ID: 9544
Time Periods: 4
Eusebius, NPNF2 Vol. 1, Eusebius Pamphilius: Church History, Life of Constantine, Oration in Praise of Constantine
Edited by Philip Schaff
Book ID: 668 Page: 364
Section: 3C,3C2
“Let us sing unto the Lord, for he hath gloriously glorified himself; horse and rider hath he thrown into the sea; a helper and a protector hath he become for my salvation;” and “Who is like unto thee, O Lord; among the gods, who is like unto thee? Glorious in holiness, marvelous in glory, doing wonders.” These and the like praises Constantine, by his very deeds, sang to God, the universal Ruler, and Author of his victory, as he entered Rome in triumph. Immediately all the members of the senate and the other most celebrated men, with the whole Roman people, together with children and women, received him as their deliverer, their saviour, and their benefactor, with shining eyes and with their whole souls, with shouts of gladness and unbounded joy. But he, as one possessed of inborn piety toward God, did not exult in the shouts, nor was he elated by the praises; but perceiving that his aid was from God, he immediately commanded that a trophy of the Savior’s passion be put in the hand of his own statue. And when he had placed it, with the saving sign of the cross in its right hand, in the most public place in Rome, he commanded that the following inscription should be engraved upon it in the Roman Tongue: “By this salutary sign, the true proof of bravery, I have saved and freed your city from the yoke of the tyrant; and moreover, having set at liberty both the senate and the people of Rome, I have restored them to their ancient distinction and splendor.”
Pastor John’s footnote reference: Eusebius, Church History, IX.ix.11.
Quote ID: 9545
Time Periods: 4
Eusebius, NPNF2 Vol. 1, Eusebius Pamphilius: Church History, Life of Constantine, Oration in Praise of Constantine
Edited by Philip Schaff
Book ID: 668 Page: 386
Section: 3C,3C2
Wherefore, the protector of the virtuous, mingling hatred for evil with love for good, went forth with his son Crispus, a most beneficent prince, and extended a saving right hand to all that were perishing. Both of them, father and son, under the protection, as it were, of God, the universal King, with the Son of God, the Saviour of all, as their leader and ally, drew up their forces on all sides against the enemies of the Deity and won an easy victory, God having prospered them in the battle in all respects according to their wish.
……..
Pastor John’s footnote reference: Eusebius, Church History, X.ix.4.
Quote ID: 9551
Time Periods: 4
Eusebius, NPNF2 Vol. 1, Eusebius Pamphilius: Church History, Life of Constantine, Oration in Praise of Constantine
Edited by Philip Schaff
Book ID: 668 Page: 386
Section: 3C,3C2
But Constantine, the mightiest victor, adorned with every virtue of piety, together with his son Crispus, a most God-beloved prince, and in all respects like his father, recovered the East which belonged to them;2987 and they formed one united Roman empire as of old, bringing under their peaceful sway the whole world from the rising of the sun to the opposite quarter, both north and south, even to the extremities of the declining day.
Pastor John’s footnote reference: Eusebius, Church History, X.ix.6.
Quote ID: 9552
Time Periods: 4
Eusebius, NPNF2 Vol. 1, Eusebius Pamphilius: Church History, Life of Constantine, Oration in Praise of Constantine
Edited by Philip Schaff
Book ID: 668 Page: 487
Section: 3C,3C2
The father of Constantine, then, is said to have possessed such a character as we have briefly described. And what kind of death was vouchsafed to him in consequence of such devotion to God, and how far he whom he honored made his lot to differ from that of his colleagues in the empire, may be known to anyone who will give his attention to the circumstances of the case. For after he had for a long time given many proofs of royal virtue, in acknowledging the Supreme God alone, and condemning the polytheism of the ungodly, and had fortified his household by the prayers of holy men, he passed the remainder of his life in remarkable repose and tranquility, in the enjoyment of what is counted blessedness, --neither molesting others nor being molested ourselves.
Accordingly, during the whole course of is quiet and peaceful reign, he dedicated his entire household, his children, his wife, and domestic attendants, to the One Supreme God: so that the company assembled within the walls of his palace differed in no respect from a church of God;
Pastor John’s footnote reference: Eusebius, The Life of Constantine, I.xvii.
Quote ID: 9558
Time Periods: 4
Eusebius, NPNF2 Vol. 1, Eusebius Pamphilius: Church History, Life of Constantine, Oration in Praise of Constantine
Edited by Philip Schaff
Book ID: 668 Page: 515
Section: 3C1,3C2
How Controversies originated at Alexandria through Matters relating to Arius.
In this manner the emperor, like a powerful herald of God, addressed himself by his own letter to all the provinces, at the same time warning his subjects against superstitious{2} error,
[Footnote 2] ”Demoniacal.” 1709 renders “diabolical.”
Pastor John’s footnote reference: Eusebius, The Life of Constantine, II.lxi.
Quote ID: 9573
Time Periods: 4
Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History of Rome and the Barbarians, The
Peter Heather
Book ID: 223 Page: 125
Section: 1A,3C2
Many Christian bishops, as well as secular commentators, were happy to restate the old claim of Roman imperialism in its new clothing. Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea was already arguing, as early as the reign of Constantine, that it was no accident that Christ had been incarnated during the lifetime of Augustus, the first Roman emperor. Despite the earlier history of persecutions, went his argument, this showed that Christianity and the Empire were destined for each other, with God making Rome all-powerful so that, through it, all mankind might eventually be saved.
Quote ID: 5572
Time Periods: 1456
Final Pagan Generation, The
Edward J. Watts
Book ID: 384 Page: 40/42
Section: 3C2
A panegyric delivered in Gaul in 310 even presented to its audience a fictitious genealogy that tied Constantine to the popular later third-century emperor Claudius Gothicus, a laughable idea that Constantine’s court seems nevertheless to have encouraged.{19}
Quote ID: 8304
Time Periods: 34
Final Pagan Generation, The
Edward J. Watts
Book ID: 384 Page: 90
Section: 3C2
Constantius in 347.{39}....
In it, Themistius first defined himself as a politically impartial philosopher who, because of his commitment to philosophical truth, would speak only as reason dictated.{40} He then proceeded to praise Constantius as an ideal ruler who embodied philosophical virtues and whose policies reflected the principles of Plato and Aristotle. It was a masterful performance that immediately seems to have earned Themistius the gratitude and trust of the emperor.
Quote ID: 8308
Time Periods: 34
Final Pagan Generation, The
Edward J. Watts
Book ID: 384 Page: 92
Section: 3C2
He begins by characterizing the speech as one “freed from suspicion” because it is delivered by a philosopher “who must speak the truth.”{56}….
“You are,” Themistius tells Constantius, “lenient in victory, you lead your life with more self-control than the most moderate of private citizens, you set the highest value on education,” and you embody all the attributes that Plato claimed a philosopher-king possessed.{59} Most importantly, Themistius continued, “you accept these words from a philosopher while philosophy accepts the truth from you and your thanks for her praises because she does not lie.”{60}
While philosophy may not lie, its spokesman here stretched the truth considerably.
Quote ID: 8309
Time Periods: 4
Final Pagan Generation, The
Edward J. Watts
Book ID: 384 Page: 94
Section: 3C2
In 349, Libanius delivered a panegyric of Constans and Constantius that so pleased the emperors that Constantius summoned him to Constantinople to take a publicly funded teaching pos in the city.{73}
Quote ID: 8311
Time Periods: 4
Final Pagan Generation, The
Edward J. Watts
Book ID: 384 Page: 117
Section: 3C2
When Julian was appointed Caesar, Themistius sent a message of congratulations that apparently repeated many of his standard lines about the philosophical nature of a good king, Julian’s embodiment of all the best philosophical virtues, and the divine nature that Julian possessed. Julian responded by calling Themistius’s rhetorical bluff.{81} Julian both denied that he possessed any divine nature and argued that Themistius was either misunderstanding or misrepresenting the ideas expressed by Plato and Aristotle.{82} He went further than this, however, and calling into question the very conceit that Themistius repeatedly exploited when praising emperors. “I am sure,” Julian writes, “that it was unlawful for you as a philosopher to flatter or deceive, but I am fully conscious that by nature there is nothing remarkable about me.{83}
Quote ID: 8313
Time Periods: 4
Julian’s Against the Galileans
R. Joseph Hoffmann
Book ID: 123 Page: 31
Section: 3C2
The Christian testimonies concerning Julian’s early religious beliefs might be worthless were it not that his apologist Libanius, whose positive assessment of Julian’s reign the Christian writers deplored, sees Julian as a convert to Hellenism, a man who was moved by the gods to slough off superstition and embrace the light of day. {68}
Quote ID: 2826
Time Periods: 4
Julian’s Against the Galileans
R. Joseph Hoffmann
Book ID: 123 Page: 31
Section: 3C2
In his letter to the Alexandrians written in 363, he states that he had given up the Christian faith when he was twenty years old and had been an adherent of the ancestral rites for a dozen years prior to writing the letter. {70} This corresponds to Ammianus’s “official” view that Julian did not openly profess paganism until the threat of reprisal was removed in his thirty-first year.
Quote ID: 2827
Time Periods: 4
Julian’s Against the Galileans
R. Joseph Hoffmann
Book ID: 123 Page: 32
Section: 3C2
Experience had taught him “that no wild beasts are as dangerous to man as the Christians are to one another.” {73}
Quote ID: 2828
Time Periods: 4
Julian’s Against the Galileans
R. Joseph Hoffmann
Book ID: 123 Page: 34
Section: 3C2
Julian’s solution, however, suggests his desperation; his tactic is to outdo the Christians in displays of generosity. He orders hostels established in Galatia for the benefit of strangers and the poor, who are also to have an allocation of corn and wine. “It is disgraceful,” Julian complains, “that no Jew ever has to beg and the wretched Galileans take better care of our poor, as well as their own, than we do.” {82}
Quote ID: 2829
Time Periods: 4
Julian’s Against the Galileans
R. Joseph Hoffmann
Book ID: 123 Page: 35
Section: 3C2
….his real concern is that Christians were looking more and more to the church for their protection and security and less to the emperor. What Christians privately encourage with their benevolence, he suggests, is apostasy from the state, though their practices are not a typical form of sedition. The view that Christianity was a subtle form of rebellion against the legitimate rule of the emperor is something Porphyry had also cited in his books against the Christian sect. {83}
Quote ID: 2830
Time Periods: 34
Julian’s Against the Galileans
R. Joseph Hoffmann
Book ID: 123 Page: 35
Section: 3C2
A key goal of Julian’s reforms was to create a series of social institutions that reinforced his role as supreme patron of citizens and clients.
Quote ID: 2831
Time Periods: 4
Julian’s Against the Galileans
R. Joseph Hoffmann
Book ID: 123 Page: 35
Section: 3C2
In a letter to an unnamed official Julian reminds a negligent public servant, who had let an assault on a priest go unpunished, that priests must be respected as much as sacred objects, things set aside for sacred use.
Quote ID: 2832
Time Periods: 4
Julian’s Against the Galileans
R. Joseph Hoffmann
Book ID: 123 Page: 36
Section: 3C2
A man “who strikes a priest is guilty of sacrilege,” because he offends at once the priest, the temple, the emperor, and the gods,{87} and an officer of the peace who does not punish the sacrilege is guilty of complicity in the crime.
Quote ID: 2833
Time Periods: 4
Last Pagan: Julian the Apostate and the Death of the Ancient World, The
Adrian Murdoch
Book ID: 242 Page: 140
Section: 3C2
But imperial patronage of paganism and marginalization of Christians was not enough for a full-scale pagan revival. Julian’s masterplan was no less than the creation of a religious infrastructure that would counter the Christian model at the grassroots level. He understood its success and appeal and knew the difficulties in going against what was a tight-knit organization. “Why have we not noticed that it is their benevolence toward strangers, their care for the graves of the dead and the pseudo-holiness of their lives that has done most to increase atheism i.e., Christianity?” {44} he asked. Julian recognized that paganism had to be given the tools to fight back and turned his attention to the pagan priest who would be his frontline troops in the battle for the souls of the Roman Empire. With himself as head of the Church, he saw high priests as counterparts to the archbishops, who in turn appointed and managed their own priests.
Quote ID: 6102
Time Periods: 4
Last Pagan: Julian the Apostate and the Death of the Ancient World, The
Adrian Murdoch
Book ID: 242 Page: 144
Section: 3C2
The three essays which Julian wrote in early 362 – To the uneducated Cynics, the reply to the Cynic Heracleios and To the Mother of the Gods – show an emperor groping his way toward a unified set of beliefs. They were all written in haste and Julian admits that he had been “writing on such a great subject so rapidly and without taking breath” and that he was “only able to give it two days as the Muses, or rather you yourselves will bear witness.” {59} Their importance lies in that they are a snapshot of the emperor’s mindset rather than extended policy documents; editorials rather than academic papers. And although they cover different topics, all three emphasize the asceticism and the behavior that he expected. “let no one divide philosophy into many kinds or cut it into many parts. Let no one suggest that it is many rather than one. Just as there is one truth, so too there is one philosophy,” writes Julian. {60} Only if they pulled together could they defeat the enemy.In the end, the difficulty is not that Christianity succeeded, it is that paganism failed. It was not a case of bringing the empire back to the fold; rather, Julian was faced with having to create an entirely new organization. While Christianity by its very exclusivity was unified, pagans worshipped a multiplicity of gods in a variety of ways and there simply wasn’t anything that could be called a systemized pagan theology. Julians’ attempts at creating a pagan doctrine betray his Christian upbringing. His law against teachers shows that he recognized the threat, but in a real sense Julian could never truly apostatise. By the very fact of his early education, he was already, as he would have put it, polluted.
Quote ID: 6103
Time Periods: 4
Last Pagans of Rome, The
Alan Cameron
Book ID: 241 Page: 223
Section: 3C2,4B
His account of Olybrius’s city prefecture is another fascinating illustration of Ammianus’s technique:He never deviated from a humane policy, and took great pains to ensure that no word
or act of his should be accounted harsh. He punished slander severely, pruned the profits of the treasury wherever he could, drew a sharp distinction between right and wrong, and all in all was an admirable judge and very mild towards those he governed. Nevertheless, these good qualities were overshadowed by a defect, which did little harm to the community but was discreditable in a high official. His private life verged on the luxurious and was almost entirely devoted to the stage and to women, though his liaisons were not criminal or incestuous. (28. 4. 2)
A seemingly glowing testimonial-with a sting in the tail. Once again, Barnes detects an explanation in terms of Olybrius’s Christianity. But this would be a strangely oblique way of attacking a man for his religion.
Pastor John notes: Ammianus was a pagan.
Quote ID: 6087
Time Periods: ?
Later Roman Empire, The
Averil Cameron
Book ID: 243 Page: 16
Section: 3C2
....completed after Constantine’s death in AD 337.----
The Life of Constantine, in four books, is less a biography than an extended and extremely tendentious panegyric, whose exaggerations and distortions have led many scholars in the past to doubt whether it could be the work of Eusebius.
Quote ID: 6105
Time Periods: 4
Later Roman Empire, The
Averil Cameron
Book ID: 243 Page: 17
Section: 3C2
All this makes one suspicious of Eusebius’s honesty as a reporter.
Quote ID: 6107
Time Periods: 34
Later Roman Empire, The
Averil Cameron
Book ID: 243 Page: 17
Section: 3C2
Eusebius’s is also the only eye-witness account of the Council of Nicaea, of which no official Acts survive, and is notoriously disingenuous, since he himself, as an Arian sympathizer recently formally condemned by another council, had much to explain away...
Quote ID: 6108
Time Periods: 34
Later Roman Empire, The
Averil Cameron
Book ID: 243 Page: 17
Section: 3C2
He passed through the assembly like a heavenly angel, giving out a bright radiance as if by shafts of light, gleaming with fiery rays of purple, and adorned with the bright light of gold and precious stones. So much for his physical appearance. He could also be seen to be adorned in his character by fear of God and downcast eyes, his ruddy complexion, his gait and the other aspects of his appearance, including his height, which surpassed all those around him (II.10). Eusebius’s description of Constantine’s appearance as patron of the Church at the Council of NicaeaPastor John notes: John’s note: this is only an early part of the courtship
Quote ID: 6109
Time Periods: 4
Later Roman Empire, The
Averil Cameron
Book ID: 243 Page: 95
Section: 3C2
Julian’s Xn bro, Gallus, had transferred to Daphne the bones of a dead local saint named Babylas. Julian ordered these remains removed and the shrine to be cleansed.
Quote ID: 6141
Time Periods: 4
Later Roman Empire, The
Averil Cameron
Book ID: 243 Page: 16b
Section: 3C2
Other sycophant writings in the classic pandering to emperor style.
Quote ID: 6106
Time Periods: 4
Later Roman Empire, The
Averil Cameron
Book ID: 243 Page: 57c
Section: 3C2
after his baptism, C no longer wore the imperial purple, but dressed only in white. (Eusebius, VC.62-3).Pastor John notes:“A liar” in reference to Eusebius
Quote ID: 6114
Time Periods: 4
Later Roman Empire, The
Averil Cameron
Book ID: 243 Page: 60c
Section: 3C2
There are no extant records from the council itself. We have to rely on Eusebius’s account (VC III.7-14), which is “disingenuous in the extreme”. He, being Arian in his own beliefs, ignored his conscience and signed the Nicean documents.
Quote ID: 6119
Time Periods: 34
Later Roman Empire, The
Averil Cameron
Book ID: 243 Page: 60d
Section: 3C2
He Eusebius described how all the bishops were invited to dinner with the emperor:the circumstances of which were splendid beyond description. detachments of the bodyguard and other troops surrounded the entrance of the palace with drawn swords, and through the midst of these the men of God proceeded without fear into the innermost of the imperial apartments, in which were some of the emperor’s own companions at table, while others reclined on couches arranged on either side. One might have thought that a picture of Christ’s kingdom was thus shadowed forth, and a dream rather than a reality. (III.15)
Quote ID: 6120
Time Periods: 34
Later Roman Empire, The
Averil Cameron
Book ID: 243 Page: 63b
Section: 3C2
Eusebius claimed that “not a breath of paganism was allowed within” Constantinople.
Quote ID: 6125
Time Periods: 34
Later Roman Empire, The
Averil Cameron
Book ID: 243 Page: 68d
Section: 3C2
Eusebius - the Christian emperor was God’s representative on earth...this “suggested that God’s kingdom had already been realized”
Quote ID: 6126
Time Periods: 4
Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew
Bart D. Ehrman
Book ID: 420 Page: 14
Section: 3C2
In his ten-volume Church History, Eusebius narrates the history of the Christian Church from the days of Jesus down to his own time, in the early fourth century. This writing is our best source for the history of Christianity after the period of the New Testament to the time of the emperor Constantine, the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity.
Quote ID: 8592
Time Periods: 1234
Lucretius, On The Nature Of Things, LCL 181: Lucretius
Lucretius
Book ID: 162 Page: 193
Section: 3C2,5B
Thus it is more useful to scrutinize a man in danger or peril, and to discern in adversity what manner of man he is: for only then are the words of truth drawn up from the very heart, the mask is torn off, the reality remains.
Quote ID: 8644
Time Periods: 04
Making of Late Antiquity, The
Peter Brown
Book ID: 251 Page: 52
Section: 3C2
The evolution we have sketched out in a few tentative strokes lies behind the failure of Julian. In a great city such as Antioch, the ceremonial of the potentes had come to mean more than the ceremonies of the gods. Julian had given funds to the city for collective sacrifice: “Accordingly, I hastened thither . . . thinking that I should enjoy the sight of your wealth and public spirit. And I imagined . . . the sort of procession it would be . . . beasts for sacrifice, libations, choirs in honor of the gods, incense and the youth of the city surrounding the shrine.” {111} But when he arrived, he found an old priest and his goose. The Antiochenes had spent the money on chariot racing. They had invested in that ceremonial of power and good fortune in which the cities of the eastern Empire crystallized a new, more secular, sense of stability and triumph. {112}
Quote ID: 6308
Time Periods: 4
Making of Late Antiquity, The
Peter Brown
Book ID: 251 Page: 53
Section: 3C2
By the reign of Theodosius II this ceremonial of power would focus on the potens par excellence of Byzantium -- the emperor himself. The defeat of Julian at Antioch was not a victory of the Christian church. It was the victory of a Late Antique mentality and style of life that would blossom, in a hauntingly non-Christian form, in the ceremonial of the Hippodrome of Constantinople. {114}
Quote ID: 6309
Time Periods: 345
Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church
A Study of a Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus By W.H.C. Frend
Book ID: 316 Page: 1/2
Section: 3B,3C2
In the summer of 177 there took place at Lyons one of the most terrible dramas in the history of the early Church. The story of the persecution is preserved in Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History, Book v, Chs. 1 – 3, from an account sent to the Churches of Asia and Phrygia by an anonymous survivor of the Gallic community.{1} For simplicity, sincerity and for the sheer horror of the events it describes it is unmatched in the annals of Christian antiquity.. . . .
Yet, however one looks at the evidence, there is no doubt that the Gallic Churches were in a rudimentary stage of development. In particular, and there seems to be no point in denying this,{11} Greek influences still predominated. Not only was the letter sent to the Churches in Asia Minor written in Greek, but any statements spoken in Latin were specially noted.{12}
Quote ID: 7648
Time Periods: 234
Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church
A Study of a Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus By W.H.C. Frend
Book ID: 316 Page: 224
Section: 3C2
If Eusebius’ account in the Ecclesiastical History is correct,…
Quote ID: 7670
Time Periods: 4
Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom, The
Candida Moss
Book ID: 386 Page: 143/145
Section: 3B,3C2
In his Church History, Eusebius writes that, with the exception of a handful of “good emperors,” every one of the Roman emperors had participated in a demonically inspired program of persecution.{21} But apart from the Pliny-Trajan correspondence there is no record of imperial involvement in the handling of Christians.….
The important thing for us to note for now is that prior to 250 there was no legislation in place that required Christians to do anything that might lead them to die. Even the correspondence between Pliny and Trajan provided guidelines only for Pliny, not for the entire empire.
Quote ID: 8336
Time Periods: 123
Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity
Walter Bauer
Book ID: 458 Page: 191
Section: 3C2
…Eusebius is guilty of a serious misuse of the superlative (myrioi = “countless,” pleistoi = “very many,” pantes = “all,” etc.) when he deals with the church, its size, its influence, its success, its champions, its sacrifices, and the like, even in cases where the particular piece of evidence he reports actually should have made him more moderate in his claims.What an incredible outburst of faith, worlds away from all reality, characterizes the situation in the apostolic era in this presentation!
Quote ID: 8990
Time Periods: 4
Pagans and Christians: Religion and the Religious Life from the Second to Fourth Century A.D.
Robin Lane Fox
Book ID: 173 Page: 199
Section: 3C2,4A
As Emperor, Julian took up the office of prophet at Didyma, and also stepped into its intellectual legacy. Like Theophilus, he believed that Apollo was the “master-founder of philosophy,” ….
Quote ID: 3863
Time Periods: 4
Pagans and Christians: Religion and the Religious Life from the Second to Fourth Century A.D.
Robin Lane Fox
Book ID: 173 Page: 199
Section: 3C2
Julian did not only live by the words of the pagan gods: he died to the sound of them. {99} In his last hours, he was consoled by a charming oracle from the Sun god, or Apollo, on the fate of his soul: it promised him deliverance from the sufferings of his mortal limbs and a place in the “Ethereal Light” of his father’s heavenly court, the place from which his soul had descended to human form.
Quote ID: 3864
Time Periods: 4
Rome and the Barbarians (100 B.C. – A.D. 400)
Thomas S. Burns
Book ID: 190 Page: 335
Section: 3C2
As Ammianus reveals, however, normal recruitment had long meant accepting numerous barbarians, and many of Julian’s recruits came from among those barbarians who had remained loyal to his dynasty.. . . .
During the rest of the century whenever civil war broke out among the Romans, both sides immediately intensified their normal recruitment efforts among the barbarians.
. . . .
The final battle between Theodosius and the usurper Eugenius and his general Arbogastes pitted two closely matched Roman armies in a desperate struggle. The most striking similarity of the two armies was that both were led by Roman generals whose fathers or grandfathers had immigrated into the empire: the Gothic Gaines and half-Vandal Stilicho with Theodosius, Arbogastes at the head of the rebels. Their armies fought for two days with terrible losses on both sides, especially among the newly raised barbarian units.
Quote ID: 4214
Time Periods: 4
Search for the Christian Doctrine of God, The
R.P.C. Hanson
Book ID: 268 Page: 164
Section: 3C1,3C2
It cannot be stated too often that the ancients did not suffer from the same passion for exact accuracy which modern scholarship displays.
Quote ID: 6776
Time Periods: 147
Socrates, NPNF2 Vol. 2, Socrates and Sozomenus Ecclesiastical Histories
adapted by AJW
Book ID: 682 Page: 2
Section: 3C2
But after the grace of God delivered us from those detestable heresies, with all their impiety and blasphemy, and from those persons, who had dared to cause such conflict and division among a people previously at peace,...
Quote ID: 9750
Time Periods: 4
Socrates, NPNF2 Vol. 2, Socrates and Sozomenus: Ecclesiastical Histories
Edited by Philip Schaff
Book ID: 685 Page: 14
Section: 3A2A,3A2B,3C2
Victor Constantine Maximus Augustus, to the bishops and people.—Since Arius has imitated wicked and impious persons, it is just that he should undergo the like ignominy. Wherefore as Porphyry, that enemy of piety, for having composed licentious treatises against religion, found a suitable recompense, and such as thenceforth branded him with infamy, overwhelming him with deserved reproach, his impious writings also having been destroyed; so now it seems fit both that Arius and such as hold his sentiments should be denominated Porphyrians, that they may take their appellation from those whose conduct they have imitated. And in addition to this, if any treatise composed by Arius should be discovered, let it be consigned to the flames, in order that not only his depraved doctrine may be suppressed, but also that no memorial of him may be by any means left. This therefore I decree, that if any one shall be detected in concealing a book compiled by Arius, and shall not instantly bring it forward and burn it, the penalty for this offense shall be death; for immediately after conviction the criminal shall suffer capital punishment. May God preserve you!*PJ footnote reference: Socrates, Church History, 1.9.*
Quote ID: 9766
Time Periods: 4
Theodora: Empress of Byzantium
Paolo Cesaretti
Book ID: 281 Page: 120
Section: 3C2
To him, this error was the diametric opposite of the equally wrong ideas of Nestorius and Arius, who were fundamentally opposed to Christ’s divinity.
Quote ID: 7032
Time Periods: 6
Theodosius: The Empire at Bay
Stephen Williams, Gerard Friell
Book ID: 282 Page: 17/18/19
Section: 3C2
It is indicative of the scale of the defeat that no-one knew for certain where and how Valens was slain.….
The staggering scale of the disaster sent a shock of disbelief through the East.
….
The impossible, the unthinkable, had happened. The shock and fear arising from the disaster are reflected in contemporary sources, especially since the loss of the emperor himself in battle indicated the true scale of events....
….
The battle of Adrianople has repeatedly been seen since Ammianus as a turning point, both in the history of the Roman empire and in the history of warfare. Whilst it was certainly a great disaster for Rome, and completely changed the terms on which Romans and barbarians would deal in the future, it was not necessarily the ’beginning of the end’ for the empire, and we will return to this thesis later.
Pastor John’s note: For a lot of Barbarian officers in the Roman army in the 4th century (pgs. 196 -194 from Ramsay MacMullen see “Acknowledgments”)
Quote ID: 7051
Time Periods: 4
End of quotes