Post on 21-Jan-2023
Theology vs. genre? The universalism of Christian
historiography in Late Antiquity.
Peter Van Nuffelen, University of Exeter
Universality is commonly advanced as a defining feature
of Christian historiography, on the argument that the
Christian view of the world gives a universal outlook to
its understanding of history.1 Two elements in particular
are singled out in this respect: the universal intention
of God’s plan of salvation and the linear development of
Christian time from Creation via Incarnation to Second
Coming.2 God’s message, and history as the record of it,
is meant for all people of all times. All history written
by Christians is thus at least potentially universal,
especially chronicles and church history, the two
specifically Christian forms of historiography.3
1 See, e.g., Allan (2003) 17: ‘The practice of universal history from A.D. 300 to 1000 reflects basic tenets and wider concerns of Christian belief.’2 Dawson (1977) 30-7; Latourelle (1977) 75-7; Luiselli (1980) and (1991) 22-3; Goetz (1991) 247; Wallraff (2004) and (2005) 4.3 den Boer (1961); Goffart (1987) 3-4; Luiselli (1991) 29; Timpe (2001) 108; Wallraff (2004) 153; Ilski (2007).
This assessment of early Christian views of history is
widely accepted and is seen as shaping modern
philosophies of history such as Marxism, as has been most
famously argued by K. Löwith.4 Such an understanding of
the Christian view on history presupposes that
theological considerations determine how a Christian
writes history. As a consequence, it is often suggested
that there is little difference between a Christian work
of history and a Christian theology of history. Indeed,
scholars occasionally tend to disregard specificities of
genre and to conflate Christian historiography, biblical
exegesis and theology. For example, Augustine’s De Civitate
Dei has been assimilated to church history and biblical
exegesis seen as not fundamentally different from the
writing of history.5 The ground for this identification is
that all these works, although they belong to different
literary genres, are understood as having the same aim:
defending the Christian theology of history. Even
heresiology has recently been diagnosed as universal
4 Löwith (1953). See also Niebuhr (1949).5 Luiselli (1980) 518; Press (1982) 123-6; Zakai and Mali (1992-1993); Allan (2003) 24-5; Alonso-Nuñez (2005).
history.6 Such a list could be expanded ad libidum given the
reasoning behind it. Because the Christian world view is
assumed to be universal and to underpin everything a
Christian says about the past, present and future, there
does not seem to be a difference between the writing of
history and a theology of history. And if the latter is
universal by essence, the former must be so as well, at
least potentially if not in act. Everything a Christian
says about the present and past is thus universal.
It is not my aim here to argue against the idea that the
Christian theology of history is universal in theory,
although I am convinced this is too one-sided an
assessment. Indeed, it is important to realise that the
category of ‘universal’ history originated in modern
European thought7 and that the bland characterisation of
ancient Christian thought as ‘universalist’ may miss
numerous nuances.8 For example, it is important to realise
that for much of its early history, Christianity
understood itself as a community of the elect. If there
6 Schott (2007).7 Koselleck (1979) 687; Desideri (2001).8 See the brief remark by Inglebert (2001) 464.
was a focus of God’s dealings with history, it was that
limited community, not the rest of mankind. It is not by
accident that an important strand of early Christianity
saw itself as a ‘third people’, besides the Jews and
‘pagans’.9 Thus, rather than harbouring a simple
universalism, Christianity was characterised by a tension
between, on the one hand, the idea of a universal spread
of Christ’s message and, on the other, that of a
salvation restricted to the adherents of the faith.
Although much more could be said about the limits of
Christian theological universalism, this is not the
avenue that I shall pursue here. Rather, I wish to draw
attention to the distance between the universalism of
Christian historiography as it is assumed on a
theological plane and its very limited expression in
actual histories. This is a gap one needs to reflect upon
before identifying universalism as an essential
characteristic of Christian historiography in general.
Thus, this paper argues for the importance of genre for
the understanding of Christian historiography, against
9 For the example of Eusebius of Caesarea, see now Johnson (2006). Anemphasis on the universal aspects of Christianity can be found in Schott (2008).
the tendency to define the latter only by its supposed
theological presuppositions.
Exegesis and history
For considerations about genre to be helpful, one has to
establish first that Christian authors were indeed able
to distinguish between history and other forms of
writing. This is in itself obvious, but in the light of a
tendency to amalgamate theological exegesis and
historiography it may be useful to dwell briefly on this.
A good example to start with is Sulpicius Severus’
Chronica, a work that covers human history from Adam to the
present (ca. 403). Three times, early in his work,
Sulpicius makes clear that he is not dealing with the
spiritual sense of Scripture but only with its historical
meaning.10 Such a distinction between a primary historical
meaning of the Bible and a more spiritual one was common
in biblical exegesis and the distinction between
‘history’ and ‘exegesis’ was often clearly affirmed.11
10 Sulp. Sev. Chron. 1.1.1, 1.5.1, 1.19.1.11 Asterius Hom. 13; Greg. Naz. Or. 4.18-20; Jer. In Ier. 1.4.11; Const. Apost. 1.6.1-7; Aug. Doctr. Chr. 2.105-9; Junilius De part. div. legis PL
Unsurprisingly, theologians could use the distinction to
depreciate history for remaining at a distance from the
true spiritual meaning.12 Sulpicius is thus explicitly
making clear to his audience that they should not expect
a spiritual reading of the Bible, but that he is setting
out the historical facts contained in it.13
This difference in perspective was observed by church
historians as well. Eusebius of Caesarea (ca. 260-339)
conceived his task in parallel to that of classical
historians and defined church history through a series of
topics that his work would address, such as episcopal
succession, Judaism, and persecution.14 Later church
historians adopted an equally ‘formal’ definition of
church history and did not use their histories to set out
a theology of history. Indeed, explicit utterances on the
meaning of history and typological interpretations are
68.16d.12 Hil. Pict. Adv.Val. Urs. 1.6; Evagr. Schol. Gnost. 4.13 One notices the impact of an essentialistic, theological definitionof Christian historiography in Luiselli’s claim ((1980) 519) that Sulpicius wrote history in a way ‘in cui uno storico cristiano non può e non deve scrivere storia.’ It seems the contrary is actually the case.14 Eus. Hist. Eccl. 1.1 and 5.pr. The evidence on which this paragraph relies, is discussed at length in Van Nuffelen (2004a) 162-217.
very few and far between in the extant church histories.15
Christian historians fully appropriated the classical
demands for exactitude and precision as hallmarks of
history, and they explicitly defended that the main task
of the historian is to get the facts right. Theology of
history is left to other works. A further indication of
this is that in the oeuvre of Eusebius and Theodoretus of
Cyrrhus (ca. 390-460), bishops who wrote biblical
commentaries and church histories, one does not notice a
tendency to amalgamate both: they clearly knew what was
expected in what kind of work. I obviously do not wish to
deny that Christian historians had views about how
history developed and how God intervened in it, but a
church history was not the place for explicit reflection
on this nor for probing the deeper meanings of history.16
In this respect it is important to note the peculiar
nature of the world history of Orosius in the context of
15 There is one possible example of a typological reading of a historical event in Socr. Hist. Eccl. 7.43. However, Socrates is reporting a sermon by Proclus of Constantinople: see Van Nuffelen (2004b) 194-8.16 One can note that no historian figures in Luneau’s standard discussion of patristic views on the history of salvation (1964). On Theodoretus’ exegesis and its relation with history, see Guinot (1995).
Late Antique historiography. Extremely influential in the
Middle Ages, his work may resemble, in hindsight, the
paradigmatic Christian history. It is explicitly written
to provide further historical proof for one of the theses
put forward by Augustine in the City of God, namely that
Christianity was not the cause of the calamities of the
Roman Empire. In his zeal, Orosius turned his work into a
proof that more catastrophes befell mankind before the
birth of Christ. Orosius’ work is thus more strongly
impregnated by an explicit apologetical and theological
aim than most other Christian histories. And even in this
case Orosius acknowledges that the argument for his
reading of history had already been made by Augustine and
that he is providing proof for it as a historian.17 As one
of the most theological of Christian historians, Orosius
is less the paradigm of Christian historiography in Late
Antiquity than an important exception.18
Church history as universal history?
17 Orosius, 1.pr. and 1.1.1. The standard work on Orosius’ Geschichtstheologie is Goetz (1980).18 Orosius is usually seen as the only really universal history of Late Antiquity (see Alonso-Núñez (2005) 26 and Fear in this volume) besides the world chronicles (on which see below).
The writing of history can thus not be simply reduced to
the expression of a theology of history. This has
important consequences for our understanding of the
universal nature of Christian historiography. A first one
regards the interpretation of church history, a typically
Christian addition to the writing of history and of which
the first practitioner was Eusebius of Caesarea. As noted
above, universal intentions are often ascribed to the
genre. As put by D. Timpe in an elegant and thoughtful
study:
‘Die eusebianische Kirchengeschichte folgt in ihren
Intentionen und mit ihren Grundgedanken der
christlichen Chronistik; wie diese fordert und
fördert sie kein Interesse an realer Geschichte, aber
will den Gesamtraum der Weltgeschichte als
heilsgeschichtlichen Weg der Erfülling des
Verheissenen erklären und als sinnvollen
Realzusammenhang, in dem der einzelne seinen Platz
und Aufgabe hat, verständlich machen.
Kirchengeschichte is kein konkreter und spezieller
historischer Gegenstand neben anderen möglichen und
erst recht kein Gegensatz zu profaner Geschichte,
sondern potentiell Weltgeschichte unter
heilsgeschichtlichem Aspekt; sie zeichnet die
geoffenbarten Wege der göttlichen Vorsehung mit den
Menschen nach.’19
This assessment of Eusebius is usually extended to later
Church historians, who are seen as following and
imitating Eusebius.
In line with general assessments of Christian
historiography, Timpe’s argument attributes a primacy to
the theological understanding of history implicit in
church history and not to genre, i.e. literary
19 Timpe (2001) 108: ‘Eusebius’ church history follows in its intentions and principles the Christian tradition of chronicle-writing. Just as the latter, it does not foster any interest in real history, but intends to explain the full span of world history as a history of salvation and a fulfilment of God’s promise, and to make history intelligible as a meaningful whole, in which each individual element has its place and function. Church history is not a defined and specific historical topic besides other possible themes, and definitely not the counterpart of profane history: it is potential world history seen from the perspective of salvation. It traces the path of divine providence for mankind, as it has been revealed to man.’ See also, e.g., Giordano (1973) 70; Winkelmann (1992).
characteristics and its tradition. It is significant that
he does not think church historians had an interest in
‘real history’ (whatever that may be), but interpreted
history in the light of theological premisses. Therefore
church history is at least potentially universal because
it sets out God’s plan of salvation for mankind. The term
‘potentially’ is crucial here, as it admits that no
church history is actually universal. That of Eusebius
may seem to lay most claim to that title in that it
pretends to cover the history of the church since the
Apostles to his own day and thus narrates the history of
the entire church from its origins. In fact, however, we
notice a clear focus on the Eastern Roman Empire in
Eusebius. A local geographical focus is even more evident
in later church histories. Except for Rufinus (ca. 400),
the genre is Greek and Eastern. Socrates and Sozomen, who
both wrote ca. 440-450, focus on Constantinople, their
place of residence, whereas Theodoretus’ history centres
on Antioch. Zacharias Scholasticus (ca. 465-536) focuses
on Alexandria, whereas Theodorus Lector (after 518)
prefers Constantinople. As the secretary of the bishop of
Antioch, Evagrius Scholasticus (ca. 536-594) is most
interested in that region.20 Information about the West or
regions beyond the Roman empire is scarce in all these
histories.
Temporal universality could be alleged for Church history
because many of them continue each other’s work so as to
form a continuous history from the origins of the church.
But this is largely an optical illusion created by the
preferences of later readers. Many church historians did
indeed write in continuation of each other (Rufinus,
Socrates, Sozomen, Theodoretus continuing Eusebius, being
in turn continued by Theodorus Lector and Evagrius
Scholasticus). But fragments preserved of other church
histories show that they could also focus on a single
council or a single region.21 The fact that the series
from Eusebius to Evagrius survives is because they were
read as offering a continuous history, not because church
historians wrote by definition in continuation of one
another. There is no intrinsic, theological reason why a
20 For the geographical focus of these histories, see Blaudeau (2006).21 Van Nuffelen (2004a) 210-2.
church history must be part of a chain: if there is a
reason, it is that writing in continuation of a
predecessor was a well-established practice in
classisicing history, to which church history
progressively oriented itself. The actual practice of
church historians is thus not universal in any sense of
the word: they do not aim at temporal or spatial
universalism.
The limits that the genre imposed on church historians
become clear from the polemic waged by Socrates against
the ‘Christian history’ of Philip of Side. The massive
work, which was published between 426 and 439 covered the
history from Creation to the present day, supposedly in
36 books that each contained 24 tomoi. Socrates, who
disliked Philip for being a supporter of John Chrysostom,
criticised the work as an indigestible hodge-podge of
digressions. Yet, he admitted that the title was well-
chosen, because an ecclesiastical history should start
with the Incarnation and not with Creation.22 Here
22 Socr. Hist. Eccl. 7.27. On Philip of Side, see Van Nuffelen (2004a) 209-10; Heyden (2006).
Socrates shows a clear awareness of the genre he
practised: in temporal terms, he was not supposed to go
back to Creation. It is clear that Philip’s history would
stake a much better claim to the label ‘universal’ than a
church history. Socrates informs us also about another
limitation set to church historians: they were to narrate
events relating to the church, and secular and imperial
matters can only be included to the extent that they are
relevant for church history.23 Thus, as shown by Socrates’
explicit reflections on the genre, church history had a
clearly defined scope and was not universal.
The world chronicle
One of the traditional proofs for the universalism of
Christian historiography is the spread of chronicles in
Late Antiquity, often called ‘world chronicles’ because
they give a summary of history from earliest times (often
creation) to the present.24 Moreover, many chroniclers
23 Socr. Hist. Eccl. 5.pr. Van Nuffelen (2004a) 166-70 shows that this position is shared by the other church historians as well.24 The term ‘world chronicle’ is especially used among medieval scholars: see Goetz (1991) 247 with further references.
continue the work of their predecessors, and thus create
an impression of the unity of time. Indeed, their
universalism can be argued to be not just temporal: for
the earlier part of the history, they include, for
example, the history of Chaldaeans, Egyptians, Greeks and
Romans, besides Hebrew history drawn from the Bible.
Chronicles thus appear to have a genuinely universal
spatial and temporal dimension.25 Yet, the argument should
be nuanced.
Christian chronicle writing started with Julius
Africanus, who published a work entitled chronographiai,
covering history from creation to 221 A.D. Preserved in
fragments, it had a major influence on the real father of
Christian chronicle writing, Eusebius of Caesarea.
Eusebius’ chronicle indeed included king lists for
various peoples of the Mediterranean, which were set in
parallel, as well as historical entries in chronological
order. This tendency for setting various peoples in
parallel must be situated against its proper apologetic
background. From early on, Christianity was locked in an 25 Alonso-Nuñez (2005); cf. Allan (2003) 36.
argument with Greco-Roman culture about the antiquity of
its traditions. The age of a culture was not simply the
degree of respect it commanded: Platonist and Stoic
philosophers in this period widely adhered to the idea
that earliest mankind had discovered philosophical
knowledge about cosmos and had hidden this in the
symbolism of religion. The older a tradition was, the
closer it therefore was to that primitive wisdom.
Christianity tried to establish that it was older than
its surrounding cultures, by arguing that it was the true
heir of Judaism – drawing in this on Jewish polemic
against Greco-Roman culture one already notices in Philo
of Alexandria.26 Julius Africanus and Eusebius inherited
this polemical context and their chronographical work
must be seen as supplying the proof that Hebrew culture
is indeed older than the others in the Mediterranean.
Even though Julius Africanus and Eusebius used earlier,
classical universal historians, such as Diodorus of
Sicily and Castor of Rhodes,27 their ‘universal’ interest
was primarily apologetical.28 In this context it must be
26 Pilhofer (1990); Boys-Stones (2001). See also Schott (2008).27 See Roberto (2006) regarding the sources of Julius Africanus.28 Burgess (2006).
noted that Eusebius’ chronicle only started with Abraham,
and not with Adam. Absolute temporal universality was not
his foremost aim, as it sufficed to settle which
tradition was the oldest.29
Eusebius’ chronicle became the mother of all chronicles,
supplying the basis for much of the later Byzantine
tradition, and, through the translation into Latin and
continuation of Jerome, for much of Western chronicle
writing as well. Such later chronicles invariably assume
the shape of an ‘inverted pyramid’ in respect to the
geographical scope of their material. Either by
continuing a version of Eusebius/Jerome or by reworking
the material found there, chroniclers seem to have a
‘universal’ interest as far as early history is
concerned, where they discuss Chaldaean and Egyptian
history besides that of the Greeks. But that interest
soon peters out. Already Eusebius focuses solely on the
Roman Empire from the first century A.D. onwards, and
when each of his continuators adds his bit, they narrowly
focus on their own region. The focus on the West, and in 29 See Inglebert (2001) 508.
particular Spain, for example, of Hydatius and John of
Biclar is well-known (resp. late fifth and sixth century
A.D.). John Malalas (sixth century A.D.) has, in turn, a
clear focus on the East, and in particular Antioch,
although he is also well-informed on Constantinople where
he resided. One does not notice any universal interest
for their contemporary world.
The apparent universalism of the chronicle is thus
largely determined by literary tradition. Inserting
themselves in the tradition of Eusebius, chroniclers are
obliged either to continue him or to rehearse his
material, and they therefore incorporate the earlier
material relating to non-Greek people as well – even in a
time when the argument about antiquity had long been won
by the Christians. But the scope of their actual
contribution is very limited and hardly universal in any
sense of the word.30 The genre of the chronicle thus
incorporates some universal elements, not because
Christian chroniclers are universal historians, but
30 For a similar argument regarding medieval chronicles, see Goetz (1991).
because these universal elements were a fossilised part
of the genre ‘chronicle.’
The genre ‘history’ as universal history
The foregoing pages have shown that there was little
actual universal historiography in Late Antiquity. Church
historians are not universal historians in any sense of
the word, whereas the universal dimension often noticed
in chronicles is actually a relic of the apologetic
origins of the genre, and does not betray a real
universal interest on the part of each individual
chronicler. When considered from the view point of actual
historiographical practice, universalism is not the
essential characteristic of Christian historiography that
it is made out to be in a theological perspective.
It would be facile, however, to play out genre against
theology without having an eye for nuances. Even when
focussing on historiographical practice, universal
elements can be detected. We have seen that there exist a
few histories, such as those by Orosius and Philip of
Side, that could be labelled universal. Moreover, even as
a relic, chronicles did incorporate some universal
elements. In this last section, I wish to draw attention
to another area in which one can detect a universal
dimension in Christian historiography. I have argued
above that church historians usually focus on a limited
geographical and temporal part of ecclesiastical history,
and that their practice is not universal at all. If they
did not conceptualise their own particular history as
universal, however, there exists a fascinating passage in
the late sixth-century church historian Evagrius, who
seems to have considered the entire historiographical
tradition as mapping the entire world and the entire span
of time. In this way, the genre ‘history’ in its entirety
becomes universal, even if individual works are not.
Living in Antioch, Evagrius continued Theodoretus’ church
history from 428 up to 592 in six books. He concludes his
fifth book by summing up the fore-going historiographical
tradition (5.24). The chapter breaks up in three parts.
First, Evagrius situates himself in the tradition of
church history by enumerating his predecessors Eusebius,
Theodoretus, Socrates, Sozomen. Theodoretus wrote as the
last of the three successors of Eusebius,31 but Evagrius
list him as the first because both were Antiocheans and
because Evagrius picks up where Theodoretus left off. By
this time church history had clearly established an
identity as a genre with canonical names that one needed
to continue and imitate.32
Then Evagrius distinguishes between archaia and thurathen
history. The former is what we would call sacred history:
the books of the Old Testament written by Moses and
Flavius Josephus. Evagrius indicates that Moses paved the
way for Christianity and that Josephus’ work is also
extremely useful for this period. This may be his reason
for designating it with the term ‘ancient history’: it is
the history that precedes and prepares Christianity.
31 Martin (2006) 29-37 has argued that Theodoretus wrote before Sozomen, but I have expressed my reservations regarding such a changeof the traditional order: Van Nuffelen (2007) 410-2.32 On the formation of the genre ‘church history’, see Van Nuffelen (2004a) 163-217.
Thurathen history is profane, classical history, opposed
to both ‘ancient history’ and church history. In the
third section, Evagrius offers us a long list of various
classical historians. It is noteworthy that they are
arranged so as to cover the entire history of the world
from its origin. In the previous section, Evagrius had
noted that Moses had started with the creation of the
world and he now starts with earliest profane history:
‘All that occured, whether in legend or fact, between
Greeks and the ancient barbarians in their struggles
between themselves or against the other, and anything
else which has been achieved from the time when they
record that mankind existed, has been recorded by
Charax and Ephorus and Theopompus and innumerable
others.’33
Evagrius thus starts with the first generation of
‘universal historians’, which discussed the various
peoples from their earliest memory onwards, including
Ephorus. But it is doubtful that Evagrius or his source 33 Tr. Whitby (2000) 286.
went back to Ephorus himself: the central figure seems to
have been Charax, a second century A.D. universal
historian who probably included their material into his
own work up to his own age. Evagrius’ interest then
quickly shifts to Roman history. He constructs a chain,
including Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Polybius, Appian,
Diodorus, Dio Cassius, Herodian, Dexippus and some minor
historians, up to his own age with Procopius and
Agathias. This chain is obviously spurious: not all of
these historians, especially the earlier ones, are
writing in continuation of one another. But the list of
Evagrius arranges them in such an order to give the
impression that they cover the entire history of Rome
without any gap. This distortion has the remarkable
consequence that Evagrius does not appreciate the
universal dimension of authors such as Diodorus of
Sicily, who is reduced to a Roman historian.
The way Evagrius has constructed this list strongly
reminds one of the universal dimension found in
chronicles: just as these had a traditional interest in
other peoples besides the Greeks, such as Chaldaeans and
Egyptians, before the rise of Rome, their attention
shifted primarily to Rome after that. And indeed, it is
highly likely that Evagrius has lifted the entire passage
from the world chronicle (chronike epitome) of Eustathius of
Epiphania (early sixth century).34
Evagrius’ overview of the historiographical tradition is
fascinating because it constructs the genre ‘history’,
with its subgenres ecclesiastical, sacred, and profane
history, as covering all time and space. The universal
temporal dimension becomes clear in the fact that he
construes his predecessors as a chain of historians who
wrote in continuation of one another: for Evagrius the
line of time has to be covered by an unbroken chain of
history.35 This becomes explicit in what Evagrius says
about his own work in his preface:
‘Since subsequent events (i.e. after Theodoretus),
which are not far inferior to these, have not
34 Whitby (2000) 286-7; Allen (1981) 237-9.35 See the use of the expression ‘in continuation’ (kath’heirmon) (5.24 p. 218 l. 3).
obtained any sort of sequential account, I decided
(…) to undertake the labour for their sake and to
make these into an account (…)’.36
The idea clearly is that time needs to be filled out with
works of history. Evagrius thus construes the
historiographical tradition not as a selection of great
individual examples to follow (Herodotus and Thucydides
are conspicuously absent), but as a continuous stretch of
historians who cover the entire span of time one after
the other.
But history is not just universal in a temporal sense.
The clear distinction between ecclesiastical and profane
history can already be found in earlier church
historians, who see classisicing and ecclesiastical
history as covering two distinct realms of society: that
of the church and that of the empire. Taken together,
they cover the whole of society.37 By including both in
his overview, as well as ‘sacred’ ancient history that
preceded the history of the church, Evagrius has
36 Evagrius Hist. Eccl. pr. Tr. Whitby (2000) 5.37 Van Nuffelen (2004a) 117-23, 153-6.
structured historiography so that it covers all parts of
society.
In this way, time and space is entirely carved up amongst
historians, who as a collective entity offer a general
history of the world, being universal in both time and
space – with the important caveat that the perspective
remains restricted to the Roman Empire. Historiography,
in its various guises and with its various traditions
(classical and ecclesiastical), is made to map the full
span of time and to cover the two main parts of society
(church and state). Each historian occupies his specific
position and role in that grand scheme. Evagrius, or any
other historian on his own, is not a universal historian,
but he clearly has the awareness that he is part of a
historiographical tradition that can provide complete
coverage of the history of mankind.
Conclusion
This paper has argued against the tendency to project a
universal intention on every Christian work of history,
on the assumption that Christian theology is by
definition universal and that Christian history is by
default theological. Not only does such an interpretation
overemphasise the theological nature of Christian
historiography at the expense of the actual practice of
historians, I also doubt that such an ‘a priori’
universal dimension is very helpful in understanding
Christian historiography in Late Antiquity. As I have
shown, when one focuses on genre (i.e. when one asks what
the literary constraints of a particular work are and
what the tradition is in which historians situate
themselves), it becomes clear that that there is little
actual universalism in Christian writing of history.
There are very few histories that are truly universal:
even chronicles have a very limited scope, except for the
parts regarding the earliest times that they have copied
from their predecessors. Scholarship has a subliminal
awareness of this difficulty, illustrated by the
recurring distinction between ‘potential’ and ‘real’
universality regarding Christian historiography.38 The
former is supposedly shared by all Christian historians,
whereas the latter would rarely be actualised.
The gap between modern assessment and ancient practice
should not be glossed over, as if it is accidental that
no church history realised its universal potential.
Besides the fact that the gap illustrates that the
vocabulary and concept of ‘universal history’ is largely
a modern one which must be applied with care to
Antiquity,39 the gap also shows that scholars tend to
define Christian historiography not by genre, but by its
theological underpinnings: a Christian work of history is
one that harbours a Christian theology of history. An
important paper by C. Meier, for example, distinguishes
Christian historiography from classicising histories on
the basis of the mode of explanation of the events
(divine intervention vs. chance and rational causality).40
Such an approach may make sense to distinguish Eusebius
from Ammianus in the fourth century, but when Christians
38 Besides the references above, see Inglebert (2001) 478.39 Desideri (2001) suggests to do away with the term when discussing ancient works of history.40 Meier (2004).
start to write classicising history this distinction
becomes hard to maintain: although Procopius uses a
classicising vocabulary, it is hard to see a clear-cut
difference with how an ecclesiastical historian would
explain events.41 More importantly, such a definition
disregards the fact that Christian historians had a clear
awareness of genre: ecclesiastical historians, for
example, had an explicit understanding of what it meant
to write church history: using the tools of classical
historiography to cover the history of the church, in
contrast with secular matters which were left to
‘profane’ historians. They thought of ecclesiastical
history as a subgenre of history,42 and did not define
their task as ‘tracing God’s plan of salvation in
history’. We should therefore see Christian
historiography in the first place as history, obviously
written from a Christian perspective, and not as a
transposition of theology in history. This means that for
Christians in Late Antiquity, just as for their non-
Christian contemporaries, history is in the first place a
41 See Van Nuffelen (2004a) 292-309; Brodka (2004); Whitby (2007). 42 Van Nuffelen (2004a) 214-5.
discipline in its own right, not a subcontractor for
theology. When we wish to understand Christian forms of
historiography, we must situate them in the context of
ancient historiography, not set them apart as theology in
disguise.
Awareness of the gap between theological universalism and
actual historiographical practice is important in another
respect. By labelling Christian historiography
‘universal’ in its entirety, one runs the risk of
creating a false continuity with earlier forms of
universal history. Indeed, a continuity between
Hellenistic universal historians and Christian
chroniclers has been claimed.43 It is clear that Christian
historians were aware of the works of previous universal
historians (as they were of Herodotus and Thucydides) and
that they incorporated facts drawn from these sources.
But one cannot argue for a continuity of the tradition of
Hellenistic ‘universal history’ into Late Antiquity.
43 For arguments in this sense, see Roberto (2006) 15, who suggests that Julius Africanus adapted the viewpoint and method of Hellenisticuniversal historians when composing his chronicle. See also Mortley (1996); Schott (2008).
Rather, both ‘universalist’ traditions fit into different
contexts. Whereas Hellenistic universal history is the
result of the incorporation of various peoples in the
Roman Empire and is for that reason largely limited to
the Late Republic and the Early Empire,44 the universal
dimension of Christian historiography, as found in
chronicles and Orosius, is determined by its apologetic
background. Whereas one can claim that there were always
universalist tendencies in ancient historiography, I
doubt one can construct a direct continuity between the
various tendencies.
Due care must thus be taken when claiming universal
universalism for Christian historiography. But this does
not mean that all universal elements are absent. Some
historians, such as Orosius and Philip of Side, can be
labelled as such, and universalist elements became
fossilised in the chronicle tradition. More important,
probably, was the conception that history as a genre
covered time and space entirely: in Evagrius’ summary of
44 Clarke (1999); Yarrow (2006). See also Hartog, Sheridan, and Engelsin this volume.
the historiographical tradition, that tradition is
construed as universal. No individual historical work
really was universal, but as a genre, history could be.
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