Heresy and polemic: reassessing the fifth-century ecclesiastical historians of Late Antiquity

Abstract

ABSTRACT:Scholars have tended to emphasize distinctions within late antique historiography, breaking it up into categories of ecclesiastical/‘pagan’, orthodox/heretical, Greek/Latin, narrative/chronicle, and others. The division of ecclesiastical historians into orthodox/heretical has led to designating non-Nicene history writing as polemical. I hope to show that drawing a stark line between the ecclesiastical historians discounts the significant connections between them. Philostorgius, Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret serve as a good starting point for the reintegration of these historians into the literary culture of which they were a part. I examine these histories to demonstrate their commonalities while simultaneously showing their distinctiveness. Specifically, I focus on how these historians presented the imperial role in the destruction of religious property.