Rufinus and the Logic of Retribution in Post-Eusebian Church Histories
It is no secret that the great orthodox ecclesiastical historians of the fourth and fifth centuries were purveyors of the new Christian imperial ideology. They as much as any group of writers laid the foundations of Byzantinism, by demonstrating from the course of events how it paid for emperors to...
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
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| Published: |
Cambridge Univ. Press
1992
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| In: |
The journal of ecclesiastical history
Year: 1992, Volume: 43, Issue: 3, Pages: 351-371 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Parallel Edition: | Non-electronic
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| Summary: | It is no secret that the great orthodox ecclesiastical historians of the fourth and fifth centuries were purveyors of the new Christian imperial ideology. They as much as any group of writers laid the foundations of Byzantinism, by demonstrating from the course of events how it paid for emperors to be pious according to the prescriptions of the Catholic tradition, or how much better it was for the security, prosperity and destiny of the Roman Empire when the state and the (true) Church were consonant and false religion abandoned. So successful was the campaign in which they were engaged that by the sixth century, even though virtually all the Western provinces had fallen into barbarian hands, a clash between Church and State had become unthinkable, and no other ‘single hope for the permanency of the Empire’ had become possible but ‘the favour of God Himself, as Justinian, the energetic champion of reunification, proclaimed to all his successors.1 Such sentiments were in large measure the results of the works of those who had created attractive historical images of good Christian rulers.2 It was above all Eusebius Pamphilus, Tyrannius Rufinus, Socrates ‘Scholasticus’, Salmaninius Sozomen, Theodoret of Cyrrhus and Gelasius of Cyzicus who bequeathed to future generations an unblemished, idealised picture of Pax Constantiniana, a paradigm also reinforced by other Christian historians such as Lactantius and Athanasius.3 It was Rufinus who set the |
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| ISSN: | 1469-7637 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: The journal of ecclesiastical history
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1017/S0022046900001330 |