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23990 results in Ancient history

Page 329 of 1200

  • Chapter 6 - Christian Martyrs

  • from Part II
  • James Corke-Webster, King's College London
  • Book:
    Eusebius and Empire
    Published online:
    04 January 2019
    Print publication:
    10 January 2019, pp 175-212

  • Summary

    Chapter 6 argues that Eusebius, far from sharing the unproblematic celebration of martyrdom of much second- and third-century Christian literature, in fact re-appropriates Christianity’s past martyrs to make them vehicles for intellectual and pastoral qualities. In so doing he de-escalates the connotations of resistance towards Rome that martyrs had acquired in earlier Christian literature. Though Eusebius is often treated as celebrating martyrdom, he in fact values future contribution to the Christian community more highly than violent death. Eusebius therefore celebrated Christian martyrs, but he emphasised passive endurance under torture rather than active oppositional dialogue with state officials. His interest was not simply in the act of martyrdom itself but equally – if not more – in teaching and pastoral care, and he praised flight from persecution, especially when it facilitated care of the Christian community. He thus turned martyrs from symbols of violent resistance to Rome into models of those aspects of authority elevated in the preceding chapters, and he aligned Christianity’s past martyrs with Graeco-Roman philosophical views of self-killing. Again, this was done both in response to elite conservative criticism of Christianity’s martyr mentality and as part of Eusebius’ wider re-imagination of Christianity for his fourth century moment.

  • Chapter 2 - The Ecclesiastical History

  • from Part I
  • James Corke-Webster, King's College London
  • Book:
    Eusebius and Empire
    Published online:
    04 January 2019
    Print publication:
    10 January 2019, pp 54-86

  • Summary

    The second chapter considers the place of the History within the picture of Eusebius, his world, and his work drawn in the first chapter. First, it pays detailed attention to the dating and audience of the History. While the History was undoubtedly the subject of authorial revision, this chapter argues that Eusebius’ priorities and aims remained the same throughout its composition. It also argues that Eusebius must also be envisaged as writing for both clerics and a wider Christian audience, many of whom shared the education, values, and prejudices of elite, Hellenised Roman citizens. These conclusions, in turn, suggest answers to why Eusebius wrote this text and how he wrote it to achieve those aims. It was the historical moment in which and the audience for whom he wrote, this chapter suggests, that dictated Eusebius’ historical project – to use the history of Christianity to construct a vision of the Christian community and its relationship with Rome. This was intended both to respond to conservative criticisms of Christianity – and to do so better than had previous Christian attempts – and, more importantly, to argue that it was the Christians who best represented traditional Roman values and who were thus best placed to inherit Rome.

  • Conclusion

  • from Part III
  • James Corke-Webster, King's College London
  • Book:
    Eusebius and Empire
    Published online:
    04 January 2019
    Print publication:
    10 January 2019, pp 280-301

  • Summary

    The Conclusion considers the consequences of Eusebius’ rewriting of Christian history. He worked to construct a new and thoroughgoing vision of Christian authority in line with a traditional rhetoric of intellectual, temperate authority, rooted in Graeco-Roman and Christian paideia, learned in Christian households and schools and witnessed in life and death. In this, Eusebius was proposing a model by which Christian leaders should be judged. This meant, first of all, that Eusebius’ own position was strengthened, since he fared well against the criteria of legitimate authority he himself had established. Second, by erasing those elements of the Christian past that might make an elite Graeco-Roman Christian audience uncomfortable, the History sought to tear down the barriers to seeing ‘Christian’ and ‘Roman’ as aligned for an audience in which many would have thought of themselves as both. Third, Eusebius was making a statement about Christian authority and about authority in the Empire more generally, namely that Christians were best suited to wield authority not only in the church but also in the state. In closing, the Conclusion considers the final proof of this: Eusebius’s presentation of Constantine as the best of emperors by traditional standards precisely because of his Christianity.

Page 329 of 1200