Constantine and Eusebius

The novelty of Constantine and Eusebius, which accounts for its unconventional structure, lies in the fact that Professor Barnes is determined, in writing the biography of Constantine and the history of his age, to make full use of all the extant works of Eusebius, and to use them critically, first placing him in his intellectual and historical context. He begins by keeping his two strands separate, giving an account first of the life and times of Constantine from his birth in 272/3 to his victory over Licinius in 324, then of the intellectual antecedents and earlier writings of Eusebius, and finally of the new Christian Empire in which they both played leading roles. It is only in the final chapter that we are given a critical analysis of Eusebius's unfinished Life of Constantine (written between the death of Constantine in 337 and that of Eusebius in 339), a major source for much of what has gone before.

Timothy Barnes tries to show that the first version of Eusebius's Ecclesiastical History was written before the end of the third century. It reflects an optimistic view of the history of the Church according to which Christ's message won immediate and widespread acceptance, so that attempts to suppress Christianity were mere aberrations and were doomed to failure. The establishment by Constantine of a worldwide Christian Empire is seen as the fulfilment of prophecy and the consummation of history. No further development is envisaged: doctrine is fixed for all time, and Eusebius can only understand heresy as a temporary, devil-inspired infatuation. In works written before the Council of Nicaea in 325, Eusebius propounds without apology the essentially Arian theology which he had inherited from Origen.