Early Christianity

the respect it deserved. It thus contrasted sharply, in Eusebius’
view, with the Jews, whom he blamed collectively for initiating
persecution, which he saw as compounding their perfidious
failure to acknowledge Christ as the true Messiah (Ecclesiastical
History3.5.1–2). Indeed, Eusebius saw the empire as the instru-
ment through which God displayed his displeasure against the
Jews. The Roman conquest of Jerusalem and the destruction of
the Jewish temple in AD70 were interpreted by Eusebius as the
Abomination of Desolation foretold by the Old Testament prophet
Daniel (Ecclesiastical History3.5.4–5; cf. Daniel11.31). Further-
more, and in spite of the persecutions, Eusebius saw the Roman
empire as an institution ordained by God as part of his scheme
for the propagation of the Christian faith. As one of the proofs
of this, Eusebius noted the coincidence between the birth of Christ
and the establishment of peace in the Roman world under the
emperor Augustus (27 BC–AD14). It was a point he emphasized
in various other works, including an oration delivered before the
emperor Constantine himself:

At the same time, one empire – the Roman – flourished

everywhere, and the eternally implacable and irreconcilable

enmity of nations was completely resolved. And as the

knowledge of One God and one manner of piety – the salu-

tary teaching of Christ – was imparted to all men, in the

same way and at the same time a single sovereign arose for

the entire Roman empire and a deep peace took hold of the

totality. Together, at the same critical moment, as if from a

single divine will, two beneficial shoots were produced for

humankind: the empire of the Romans and the teachings of

true worship.

(Eusebius,Tricennial Oration16.4,

adapted from Drake 1976)

Taken as a whole, then, Eusebius’ examination of early Chris-
tianity validated his belief in the central role of an orthodox
church in a divinely ordained history of humankind. The themes

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