Church History 10.8.17 · Sophia Scriptura

Summary: Governors punished bishops as criminals; some were hacked to pieces and thrown into the sea.

Greek text · Dindorf 4:486

καὶ δῆτα τῶν ἡγεμόνων οἶ κόλακες, τὰ φίλα πράττειν τῷ δυσαγεῖ πεπεισμένοι, τῶν ἐπισκόπων τοὺς μὲν συνήθως ταῖς τῶν κακούργων ἀνδρῶν περιέβαλλον τιμωρίαις, ἀπήγοντό τε καὶ ἐκολάζοντο ἀπροφασίστως τοῖς μιαιφόνοις ὁμοίως οἶ μηδὲν ἠδικηκότες· ἤδη δέ τινες καινοτέραν ὑπέμενον τελευτὴν, ξίφει τὸ σῶμα εἰς πολλὰ τμήματα κατακρεουργούμενοι, καὶ μετὰ τὴν ἀπηνῆ ταύτην καὶ φρικτοτάτην θέαν τοῖς τῆς θαλάσσης βυθοῖς ἰχθύσι εἰς βορὰν ῥιπτούμενοι.

English · Claude translation

And indeed the flatterers among the governors, persuaded that they were doing what pleased the accursed man, subjected some of the bishops to the punishments customary for criminals, and men who had done no wrong were led away and punished without pretext like murderers. Some even suffered a more novel death, their bodies cut into many pieces with the sword, and after this cruel and most horrible spectacle thrown into the depths of the sea as food for the fish.

About this passage

Source

Dindorf 4:486 · 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

Martyrdom, Church office

Cite this passage

Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 10.8.17 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/eusebius-historia/10/8/17/).

Plain text

Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 10.8.17 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/eusebius-historia/10/8/17/).