Church History 10.4.60 · Sophia Scriptura

Summary: Christ used the emperors to purge the world of tyrants, then brought forth his hidden servants, the clergy, to cleanse souls by teaching.

Greek text · Dindorf 4:468–469

αὐτὰς δὴ οὖν πρώτας τὰς τῶν ἀνωτάτω βασιλευόντων ψυχὰς προελόμενος, τῶν μὲν δυσσεβῶν καὶ ὀλεθρίων πάντων, αὐτῶν τε τῶν δεινῶν καὶ θεομισῶν τυράννων τὴν οἰκουμένην ἅπασαν διʼ αὐτῶν τῶν θεοφιλεστάτων ἐκαθήρατο· εἶτα δὲ τοὺς αὐτῷ γνωρίμους ἄνδρας, τοὺς πάλαι διὰ βίου ἱερωμένους αὐτῷ, κρύβδην γε μὴν ὡς ἐν κακῶν χειμῶνι πρὸς τῆς αὐτοῦ σκέπης καλυπτομένους, εἰς φανερὸν ἀγαγὼν, καὶ ταῖς τοῦ πνεύματος μεγαλοδωρεαῖς ἐπαξίως τιμήσας, αὖθις καὶ διὰ τούτων τὰς μικρῷ πρόσθεν ἐρρυπωμένας ψυχὰς, ὕλης τε παντοίας καὶ χώματος ἀσεβῶν ἐπιταγμάτων συμπεφορημένας, ὄρυξι καὶ δικέλλαις ταῖς πληκτικαῖς τῶν μαθημάτων διδασκαλίαις ἐξεκάθηρέ τε καὶ ἀπέσμηξε·

English · Claude translation

Choosing first the very souls of the supreme emperors, he cleansed the whole world through these men most dear to God of all impious and destructive men, and of the terrible and God-hated tyrants themselves. Then he brought out into the open the men known to him, who had long been consecrated to him through their lives but had been hidden, as in a storm of evils, under his shelter, and honored them worthily with the great gifts of the Spirit; and again through them he cleansed and scoured out, with the picks and mattocks of the searching teachings of instruction, the souls which a little before had been defiled and heaped up with every kind of rubbish and the dust of impious decrees.

About this passage

Source

Dindorf 4:468–469 · 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

Church office

Cite this passage

Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 10.4.60 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/eusebius-historia/10/4/60/).

Plain text

Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 10.4.60 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/eusebius-historia/10/4/60/).