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Eusebius
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The two greatest historical works of Eusebius are his "Chronicle" and his "Church History." The former (Greek, Pantodape historia, "Universal History") is divided into two parts. The first part (Greek, Chronographia, "Annals") purports to give an epitome of universal history from the sources, arranged according to nations. The second part (Greek, Chronikoi kanones, "Chronological Canons") attempts to furnish a synchronism of the historical material in parallel columns. The work as a whole has been lost in the original, but it may be reconstructed from later chronographists of the Byzantine school who made excerpts from the work with untiring diligence, especially Georgius Syncellus. The tables of the second part have been completely preserved in a Latin translation by Jerome, and both parts are still extant in an Armenian translation, but these translations do not possess great value on account of numerous interpolations.
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Eusebius was a very important figure in the church of his day. He was not a great theologian nor a profound thinker, but he was the most learned man of his age, and stood high in favour with the emperor Constantine. At the council of Nicaea in 325 he took a prominent part, occupying a seat at the emperor's right hand, and being appointed to deliver the panegyrical oration in his honour. He was the leader of the large middle party of Moderates at the council, and submitted the first draft of the creed which was afterwards adopted with important changes and additions. In the beginning he was the most influential man present, but was finally forced to yield to the Alexandrian party, and to vote for a creed which completely repudiated the position of the Arians, with whom he had himself been hitherto more in sympathy than with the Alexandrians. He was placed in a difficult predicament by the action of the council, and his letter to the Caesarean church explaining his conduct is exceedingly interesting and instructive (see Socrates, Hist.
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In his Praeparatio evangelica (xii, 31), Eusebius has a section on the use of fictions (pseudos) as a "medicine", which may be "lawful and fitting" to use. With that in mind, it is still difficult to assess Eusebius' conclusions and veracity by confronting him with his predecessors and contemporaries because the texts of previous chroniclers, notably Papias, whom he denigrated, and Hegesippus, on whom he relied, have disappeared; they survive largely in the form of the quotes of their work that Eusebius selected, and ... they are to be seen only through the lens of Eusebius.
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The character Eusebius, in the midst of a conversation with his close friend, Jonah Mandelbroit, discovers that Jewish tradition accounts for the natural origins of religion in a manner strikingly close to Vico's (90ff.). Eusebius, perplexed by Vico's professed Catholicism in light of the Scienza Nuova, questions Vico's sincerity in placing Jewish revelation singularly outside the bounds of his principles and method. After giving a brief, fictionally distorted report on Vico's writing to his friend, Eusebius proposes that consistency would require Vico, like Lucretius, to abandon religion for materialist thought. Jonah responds with a disquisition that begins by bolstering (unknown to himself) Vico's claim that the Hebrews commune with Gd's "infinite mind." By tradition, Abraham arrived by his own reasoning at the conclusion that the world has a Creator who is one, immaterial, and holy, a conclusion then confirmed by revelation. "Abraham belonged to Vico's Age of Man, not to the Age of Gods or Heroes.
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From a dogmatic point of view, Eusebius stands entirely upon the shoulders of Origen and Arius. Like Origen, he started from the fundamental thought of the absolute sovereignty (monarchia) of God. God is the cause of all beings. But he is not merely a cause; in him everything good is included, from him all life originates, and he is the source of all virtue. God sent Christ into the world that it may partake of the blessings included in the essence of God. Christ is God and is a ray of the eternal light; but the figure of the ray is so limited by Eusebius that he expressly emphasizes the self-existence of Jesus.
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Eusebius is best known today for his Ecclesiastical History. His purpose in writing the history was to connect the church of which he was part to the beginnings of Christianity. But his history is very one-sided. He used the resources at his disposal to focus attention on the church he saw as the true descendant of first-century Christianity. Other groups that existed in the early centuries were introduced only as they conflicted with or were overcome by the church of which Eusebius considered himself a member. Given the changes brought about within the empire by Constantine, Eusebius ... wanted people to recognize the emperor as a champion of that church.
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Eusebius