Histoire ecclésiastique (review)

Jonathan Armstrong

Journal of Early Christian Studies, Volume 15, Number 1, Spring 2007,pp. 124-126 (Article)

Published by The Johns Hopkins University PressDOI: 10.1353/earl.2007.0010

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is credible, the impact of other institutions is unnecessarily minimized in this chapter. For example, military infirmaries are dismissed as the hospital’s closest ancestor because they did not provide charitable care, they were concentrated in Europe (not the East), and there is no evidence of Basil’s familiarity with them (127). Yet, monasteries did not actually provide charitable inpatient care; as Crislip himself admits, Pachomius and Shenoute expressed reservations about extending the services of their infirmaries to non-monastics. And Basil’s presumed ignorance of military infirmaries is a tenuous argument from silence. Some monks had been soldiers (like Pachomius); it is plausible that members of Basil’s circle knew how the vast institution of the military operated. Additionally, the timeline of the evolution from monastery to hospital needs more explanation. Much of the evidence for “pre-Basilian” monastic proto-hospitals is culled from texts that do not pre-date Basil or from texts whose dating is problematic for the purposes of early fourth-century social history (Shenoute’s writings, some Pachomian texts, the Apophthegmata Patrum, etc.). This chapter is on firmer ground with more nuanced positions such as the claim that Basil’s hospital was the “institutional extension of the monastic health care system once monasticism was incorporated into the Christian administration of charity” (138), than it is when it attempts to plot a linear evolution of the hospital or to undermine arguments for other possible predecessors.

Nonetheless, this volume is a welcome addition to the field. JECS readers will appreciate the breadth of information about monastic medical care, the exploration of the cultural role of the sick, and the attention to non-miraculous techniques of healing. Because of the significant background information it provides on ancient families and monastic life, the book will appeal especially to historians of medicine, historians of Christianity in later periods, and to students.

Caroline T. Schroeder, Stanford University

Socrate de ConstantinopleHistoire ecclésiastiqueTraduction par Pierre Périchon et Pierre MaravalSources chrétiennes 477 [Book I] and 493 [Books II–III]Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 2004/2005Pp. 267/366. €27/30.

Socrates Scholasticus, the first of the three famed continuators of Eusebius’s Historia Ecclesiastica, compiled his seven-volume work during the fourth decade of the fifth century. The present French translation follows the critical edition of the Greek text published by Günther Christian Hansen in 1995 (GCS). Pierre Maraval’s concise and informative footnotes render the Sources chrétiennes edition worth the additional effort for English readers. Neither of the English translations available, whether the anonymous version of 1844 (Bohn’s Ecclesiastical Library)

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or the 1890 revision of this translation by A. C. Zenos (NPNF), was based on critical editions. Further, both closely followed the now antiquated notes of Valesius originally published in 1668. Volume I (SC 477) includes a twenty-six page introduction, featuring a biographical sketch of Socrates, an essay outlining his historical project, and a few paragraphs on manuscript transmission. In the footnotes to the main text, Maraval furnishes the reader with ample bibliography, and he painstakingly reconstructs Socrates’ use of sources, commenting on his dependence on and divergence from the narratives of Eusebius, Rufinus, Sozomen, Theodoret, Philostorgius, Athanasius, et al. Volume II (SC 493) does not include an independent introduction.

Socrates’ express purpose in composing his history was to correct Eusebius’s presentation of the Arian crisis (I.1.1–2), an episode that all but consumes books I and II of his oeuvre. He at first relied upon Rufinus for his report on the crisis, but after discovering Athanasius’s apologies and becoming aware of factual errors in Rufinus’s work, Socrates rewrote books I and II completely (II.1.1–4). Socrates’ vigilance in guarding the accuracy of his account of the Arian crisis substantiates his claim that he considered it to be of greatest thematic significance for his his-tory. He also criticizes Eusebius’s brevity in recounting the rise of Manichaeism (I.22.2). In Eusebius’s failure to record the testimony of the Novatian bishop Acesius at the Council of Nicea, Socrates believed himself to have discovered a sinister prejudice against the Novatians (I.10.5). His persistent reporting on sects and heresies alike has led certain scholars to question his orthodoxy, and Maraval recommends Martin Wallraff’s proposal that Socrates was in fact a Novatian (Der Kirchenhistoriker Sokrates, 1997). Whereas Eusebius’s historiography is oriented towards the development of orthodoxy, Socrates’ vision of church history is focused on the divisions among Christians. Maraval even quips that without factions within the church, the church historian would have nothing to write about (I.18.15)! His conclusion merits quotation: “Non peut-être sans quelque anachronisme, on pourrait dire que Socrate veut écrire une histoire du christianisme sous tous ses aspects plutôt qu’une histoire de l’Église, ce qui n’était certainement pas la conception d’Eusèbe, pour lequel il n’y a qu’une Église” (15–16).

The first three books of Socrates’ history represent a rich source of informa-tion concerning Athanasius’s dramatic career. Socrates recounts his altercations with Arius, his repeated exiles from Alexandria, and the slanderous and some-times ridiculous accusations of his politically powerful enemies. The charge that forced Athanasius into exile for the first time, for example, was that he had amputated Arsenius’s hand for the purposes of divination (I.27.18). Together with the inspiring accounts of Athanasius’s personal courage, Socrates draws up a play-by-play diagram of the councils that anticipates the final victory of Nicene-Constantinopolitan orthodoxy, including the councils of Antioch, Sardica, Sirmium, Milan, Rimini, Seleucia, Constantinople, and Alexandria. His reporting on the councils may lack the luster of modern journalism, but he renders a valuable service to future historians in reproducing the credos achieved at each conclave. One wonders whether Socrates, who viewed “tromperie dialectique” as the true villain of church history (I.18.15), actually intended his reader to be irritated by

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the tiresome repetition of the creeds one after another. In his own words, Socrates dubs his compilation a “labyrinthe des formules de foi” (II.41.17).

Students of ancient Christian historiography will be especially delighted to see the appearance of the first two volumes of Socrates’ Historia Ecclesiastica. For all the criticism that scholars have levied against Eusebius’s historiography since F. C. Baur’s 1853 work, Kirchengeschichte der drei ersten Jahrhunderte, very little attention has been paid to Eusebius’s first critic. Two final volumes are forthcoming from Sources chrétiennes: the third containing books IV–VI and the fourth containing book VII.

Jonathan Armstrong, Fordham University