EUSEBIUS of EMESA. - Born at Edessa, he was elected bishop of Emesa for his knowledge of both Greek and Syriac. His rhetoric still bears the stamp of Semitic style. Little concerned with theological problems, he was primarily an exegete of Holy Scripture, of Antiochene type (St Jerome says he saw his tomb in Antiocha), and a disciple of Eusebius of Caesarea. He was listed by St Jerome among the Arians, but St Epiphanius does not accuse him of heresy, probably on account of his traditionalism, his interest in holy places and his asceticism. Died c. 359.
Until recently only a few fragments of his were known, preserved in Theodore and some Syriac authors; the discovery by Fr A. Wilmart of 17 homilies by E. in Latin translation (4th–5th cent.) in a manuscript at Troyes (the same manuscript no. 523, once in the possession of Clairvaux Abbey, which also contains Tertullian’s De Baptismo) offers, when the full text is published, the prospect of a better understanding of his figure and work in his own time.
BIBL.: A. Wilmart, Le souvenir d'Eusèbe d'Émèse. Un discours en l'honneur des saintes d'Antioche, Berne, Prosecole et Domme (and opusculum 6), in Analecta Bollandiana, 38 (1920), pp. 241 ff.; id., Un discours théologique d'Eusèbe d'Émèse. Le fils imagé du Père (and opusculum 5), in Revue de l'Orient chrétien, 22 (1920–21), pp. 72 ff. On the question of the authenticity of the 17 treatises cf. J. Morim., La collection gallicane d'Eusèbe d'Émèse et les problèmes qui s'y rattachent, in Zeitsch. für die neutest. Wissenschaft, 34 (1935), pp. 82–12; E.-M. Buytaert, L'authenticité des 17 homélies d'Eusèbe d'Émèse, in Revue d'histoire ecclésiastique, 43 (1948), pp. 2–89. Fragments also edited by K. Staab, Paulus homiliae aus der griechischen Kirche, Münster 1933, pp. 46 ff.; R. Devreese, in Revue biblique, 45 (1936), pp. 201–211; A. Souter, Observations on the Peaceful Embassy collection of Gallican Sermons, in The Journal of Theological Studies, 41 (1940), pp. 47–57. On St Jerome’s reading of E., V. P. Courcelle, Les lettres grecques en Occident, Paris 1943, p. 86 n. 2, p. 105 n. 11, pp. 106 ff.
