Church History 1.3.10 · Sophia Scriptura

Summary: No anointed king or priest ever gave his followers his name, received worship, or moved all nations as Christ has.

Greek text · Dindorf 4:14

οὐδείς γέ τοι ἐκείνων καίπερ ἀξιώματι καὶ τιμῇ ἐπὶ πλείσταις ὅσαις γενεαῖς παρὰ τοῖς οἰκείοις διαλαμψάντων τοὺς ὑπηκόους πώποτε ἐκ τῆς περὶ αύτοὺς εἰκονικῆς τοῦ Χριστοῦ προσρήσεως Χριστιανοὺς ἐπεφήμισεν· ἀλλʼ οὐδὲ σεβάσμιός τινι τούτων πρὸς τῶν ὑπηκόων ὑπῆρξε τιμή· ἀλλʼ οὐδὲ μετὰ τὴν τελευτὴν τοσαύτη διάθεσις, ὡς καὶ ὑπεραποθνήσκειν ἑτοίμως ἔχειν τοῦ τιμωμένου· ἀλλʼ οὐδὲ πάντων τῶν ἀνὰ τὴν οἰκουμένην ἐθνῶν περί τινα τῶν τότε τοσαύτη γέγονε κίνησις, ἐπεὶ μηδὲ τοσοῦτον ἐν ἐκείνοις ἡ τοῦ συμβόλου δύναμις οἴα τε ἢν ἐνεργεῖν, ὅσον ἡ τῆς ἀληθείας παράστασις διὰ τοῦ σωτῆρος ἡμῶν ἐνδεικνυμένη·

English · Claude translation

Not one of them, at any rate, though they shone among their own people in rank and honour for very many generations, ever named his subjects Christians from the name of Christ which they bore in image. Nor did any of them receive worshipful honour from his subjects; nor, after his death, such devotion that people were ready to die for the one honoured; nor was there such a movement of all the nations throughout the world concerning any of those men; for the power of the symbol could not work so strongly in them as the presence of the truth displayed through our Saviour.

About this passage

Source

Dindorf 4:14 · Wilhelm Dindorf, ed., Eusebii Caesariensis Opera, vol. 4: Historiae ecclesiasticae libri I–X (Leipzig: Teubner, 1871) · Greek text: W. Dindorf, Eusebii Caesariensis Opera 4 (Leipzig: Teubner, 1871), digitized by the First Thousand Years of Greek project (Open Greek and Latin), CC BY-SA 4.0

Text

As printed in Dindorf, Eusebii Opera 4. Manuscript variants and the editor's apparatus are not reproduced; no textual problem is noted in this passage.

Translation

Claude translation (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 · Translated by Claude from the Greek text of Dindorf, Eusebii Caesariensis Opera 4 (Teubner, 1871); made independently of existing English translations.

Compare

Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, series 2, vol. 1 (1890) (an older public-domain English translation, whole volume at CCEL; checked against ours only after ours was made)

Topics

Christology

Cite this passage

Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 1.3.10 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/eusebius-historia/1/3/10/).

Plain text

Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 1.3.10 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/eusebius-historia/1/3/10/).