One God over All: Monarchy and Prophecy in the Eusebian Tricennial Orations (original) (raw)
Related papers
The intention of this undergraduate dissertation is to discern whether Eusebius of Caesarea’s Tricennial oration, ‘In Praise of Constantine’, reflects a specifically Christian development of imperial panegyric in terms of style and content. Thanks to Harold Drake's new translation of the "In Praise of Constantine" speech in his historical study from 1976, I was able to access the content of this panegyric. In my analysis, I intend to examine classical rhetorical precepts for composing a speech, namely ‘arrangement’/ style and ‘invention’/ content. In this examination, I will seek to identify where Eusebius adheres to classical precedent, and where he diverges from it, and if this reflects Christian influence, or circumstantial adaptation. To do this, I will look to contemporaneous sources that might have guided or influenced Eusebius' speech writing, namely Menander Rhetor's prescripts in his Basilikos Logos, as well as provide contrasts with pagan orators speaking to the Emporor, namely Nazarius. Finally, I also look to the effect of the printed transmission of Eusebius' Tricennial orations, which actually comprise two separate speeches that are not divided in print, and contemplate the effect of this as a Christianised sermon-rhetoric with a Christian political ideology intended to influence later Christian Byzantine orators.
Church History, 2021
Modern scholarship often attributes to Eusebius of Caesarea (d. circa 340 AD) the view that God's heavenly kingdom had become manifest in the Roman Empire of Constantine the Great. Consequently, Eusebius is deemed significant in the development of Christian eschatological thought as the supposed formulator of a new “realized eschatology” for the Christian Roman Empire. Similarly, he is considered the originator of so-called “Byzantine imperial eschatology”—that is, eschatology designed to justify the existing imperial order under the emperors in Constantinople. Scholars advancing these claims most frequently cite a line from Eusebius's Tricennial Oration in which he identified the accession of the sons of Constantine with the prophesied kingdom of the saints in the Book of Daniel. Further supposed evidence has been adduced in his other writings, especially his Life of Constantine. This article argues that this common interpretation of Eusebius's eschatology is mistaken a...
Church History, 2021
Modern scholarship often attributes to Eusebius of Caesarea (d. circa 340 AD) the view that God's heavenly kingdom had become manifest in the Roman Empire of Constantine the Great. Consequently, Eusebius is deemed significant in the development of Christian eschatological thought as the supposed formulator of a new "realized eschatology" for the Christian Roman Empire. Similarly, he is considered the originator of so-called "Byzantine imperial eschatology"-that is, eschatology designed to justify the existing imperial order under the emperors in Constantinople. Scholars advancing these claims most frequently cite a line from Eusebius's Tricennial Oration in which he identified the accession of the sons of Constantine with the prophesied kingdom of the saints in the Book of Daniel. Further supposed evidence has been adduced in his other writings, especially his Life of Constantine. This article argues that this common interpretation of Eusebius's eschatology is mistaken and has resulted from treating a few passages in isolation while overlooking their rhetorical context. It demonstrates instead that Eusebius adhered to a conventional Christian eschatology centered on the future kingdom of heaven that would accompany the second coming of Christ and further suggests that the concept of "Byzantine imperial eschatology" should be reconsidered.
2021
This paper deals with the representation of the emperor Constantine I (306–337) in Greek historiography of Late Antiquity. I will draw on three sources. The first is Eusebius of Caesarea’s Life of Constantine (c.337–341). The other two are church histories by Socrates and Sozomen, composed between AD 439 and 450. I will discuss difference and similarity in the representation of Constantine in these sources. Ultimately, I will argue that while in Eusebius Constantine is a sacralized ruler, in Socrates and Sozomen he is predominantly an earthly ruler. This transformation is emblematic of the transition from the struggle between Christianity and other cults in the early fourth century to a clash between different doctrinal versions of Christian faith and practice under Theodosius II.
The transformative currencies of empire in the life and writings of Eusebius of
This paper will briefly attempt three things: (i) drawing on Eusebius's writings and in particular M. J. Hollerich's work on Eusebius's commentary on Isaiah, to demonstrate that Eusebius was not just a popular panegyrist but a serious ecclesiastical theologian of empire; (ii) to propose from recent historical and theological research that Eusebius's writings provide evidence that the paradigm of peace through sovereign power was displacing the counter-imperial declaration of the kingdom of God and subsuming the structure and teachings of the ecclesia; (iii) to indicate ways in which the distinctive components of empire in Eusebius's writings: monarchy, law and appeasement, came to be central to the church in the West and the ongoing legitimation of the politics of sovereignty.
Harvard Theological Review, 2015
Yale University It was Franz Overbeck who, in his attack on Harnack, referred to Eusebius's work as “[that] of a hairdresser for the emperor's theological periwig,” and the eminent historian Jacob Burckhardt who declared Eusebius to be “the most objectionable of all eulogists” and “first thoroughly dishonest historian of antiquity.” The summary judgment of such luminaries has aided the tendency to write off the bishop of Caesarea as a hopeless ideologue. In recent decades, a shift has been underway to recalibrate the picture we have of Eusebius, with robust scholarship arguing in support of his work as an historian and biblical scholar. The aim has been in part to distance Eusebius from Constantine, a proximity that is the source of much of the modern consternation with the bishop, given modernity's own genealogical unease with the relation between religion and politics. Whatever Eusebius's actual relations with the emperor, however, his rhetoric of apparently unequivocal exaltation of Constantine endures. Yet this, too, requires reassessment.
‘The Gracious and Favouring Interposition of God’: Eusebius and Divine Providence
2008
Eusebius of Caesarea began the eighth book of his Historia Ecclesiastica with the above paragraph, reiterating the concluding remarks of his seventh book. The first seven books reflect, amongst other themes, an intense focus on demonstrating apostolic succession, and contain episcopal lists of the four apostolic sees: Rome, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem. This preoccupation is also evident, and even more comprehensive, in the eighth book of the Chronici Canones. Eusebius’ abrupt deviation from this trajectory has been described as a ‘mystery’ by Burgess, who can offer no explanation as to why ‘apostolic succession ceased to be an important issue for Eusebius after the beginning of the persecution and the acceptance of Christianity by Constantine’. The panegyrical quality of Book X (and the Canones), inappropriate in a work of historiography, are surpassed only by Eusebius’ rendering of Constantine in Vita Constantini, in which he patently flatters the emperor, presenting him as a...
Christ the Emperor: Roman Emperor and Christian Theology in the 4th Century AD
2021
This project focuses on the intersection of Roman Imperial politics and Christian theology in the 4th century AD. I argue that during the transition to Christianity under Constantine and his successors, Christian theology became the principal realm in which political structure and theory were debated. Through close readings of political and theological sources, I contend that emperors such as Constantine and his son Constantius should be seen as active, engaged theological protagonists, while bishops should be given their due as creative and consequential political thinkers and actors. In Chapter One, I argue that the Emperor Constantine possessed a consistent theological viewpoint centered on the justification of his legitimacy in religious terms, as a charismatic "Man of God" appointed by a monarchical deity to supreme rule of the Empire and the world. This theology in later stages was developed in dialogue with that of Eusebius of Caesarea, profiled in Chapter Two, whic...