PHILOSTORGIUS. - Christian historian, b. ca. 386 at Borissos, in Cappadocia Secunda, to Arian parents. At the age of twenty he met Eunomius of Cyzicus, the leader of Anomoeanism, for whom he shows boundless admiration, fully accepting his doctrines concerning the dissimilarity of the Son from the Father, the comprehensibility of the Trinity, and the denial of Mary's virginity. Remaining a layman, he continued his education at Constantinople and on journeys he made to Palestine and elsewhere. He himself reports that he wrote an apology against Porphyry and an encomium of Eunomius.
His capital work, completed before 433, is the Historia ecclesiastica, in 12 books, which continues that of Eusebius down to 425. The text, lost because of its heterodox character, could be reconstructed in part from the epitome made of it by Eosius, from the Pario S. Artensi, a martyr of the time of Julian the Apostate, from certain articles of the Suda, and from a late Vita Constantini. The interest of the work lies particularly in the documents it has handed down and in the abundance of information on the most eminent personalities of Arianism: Aetius, Eunomius, Asterius of Cappadocia, Theophilus the Indian, Ulila. F. had at his disposal copious material of information, which he combined with the precise intent of exalting Anomoeanism against Nicene orthodoxy and against the moderate currents of Arianism itself; more than the history of the universal Church, he makes it the history of the Eunomian "Church" in its conflicts against paganism and particularly against the other Christian confessions. He shows a marked apocalyptic and chiliastic tendency. The style is careful and elegant, not without a certain affectation, with an Atticizing tendency, with a certain care for rhythm.
Bibliography4 works
Michele Pellegrino