S tudia H istorica S lovenica
one crucial point: they have ignored the Eusebius' innovation and always begun their works with the creation.16 As mentioned above, Eusebius of Caesarea, "father of the Church history", can be seen as the most important Christian chronographer as well.17 His contribution to the Christian chronicle and thus indirectly to the universal history is immense. Not only did he end the connection of the chronography with the chiliastic thought and started his own work with the more terrestrial Patriarch Abraham in 2105 BC instead of the common creation of the world (in both of these novelties he wasn't always followed by later colleagues), but also developed a type of chronicle which was duly imitated by an entire "diachronic syndicate"18 of Christian writers from Syria to Ireland. Among his followers and continuators Sulpicius Severus, an ascetic monk of aristocratic origin, who lived and worked in the second half of the fourth and in the beginning of the fifth century AD,19 should be particularly mentioned. He was one of the only few Westerners who began his own Chronicle with the beginning of the world. By a more extensive narration he also created an important bridge between the Eusebian chronicle and the Orosian universal history although ideologically he could hardly be a greater antipode to the Spanish historian. Not only was he much more pessimistic about the future. He almost despised Roman traditions and history and thus based his account mainly on Biblical narrative what was somehow echoed in Augustine's City of God where the Biblical history was put to the spotlight once more. The apologetic tendency, realized in chronographic works, wasn't the only (if very important) source of the Christian universal history. Its other impetus was theologically perhaps even more decisive, for Christians have understood human history as history of salvation where God's actions were in interaction with human responses. Thus God's position as Lord of the Universe must be reflected in entire history of the world, not only in its Roman part. This emphasis is crucial for Orosius who is widely seen as one of the finest representatives of the historical providentialism.20 His position is clear from the following passage of his Histories against the Pagans:
16
Momigliano, "Pagan and Christian Historiography", 63. See Croke, "Origins", 124 ss. 18 The expression itself was coined by Robert A. Markus, "Church History and Early Church Historians", in: Studies in Church History 11: The Materials, Sources and Methods of Ecclesiastical History, ed. D. Baker (Cambridge, 1975), 8. 19 On him see Zecchini, "Latin Historiography", 335–338. 20 See e. g. François Paschoud, "La polemica providenzialistica di Orosio", in: La storiografia ecclesiastica nella tarda antichità, ed. S. Calderone (Messina, 1980), 113–133. 17
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