FILOSTORGIO. - Christian historian, born ca. 386 at Berisso in Cappadocia Seconda, of Arian noble parents. At the age of twenty he met Eunomius of Cyzicus, the leader of the Anomœans, whom he admired without reserve, fully accepting his doctrines regarding the dissimilarity of the Son from the Father, the comprehensibility of the Trinity, and the denial of the virginity of Mary. He continued his education in Constantinople as a layman and during travels he made to Palestine and elsewhere. He himself states that he wrote an apology against Porphyry and a panegyric of Eunomius.
His principal work, completed before 433, is the Historia ecclesiastica in twelve books, which continues that of Eusebius down to 425. The text, lost because of its heterodox character, has been partly reconstructed from the epitome made by Photius, from the Passio S. Artemii, a martyr of the time of Julian the Apostate, from some articles in the Sūda, and from a late Life of Constantine. The interest of the work lies particularly in the documents it preserves and in the abundance of information about the leading figures of Arianism: Acacius, Eunomius, Asterius of Cappadocia, Theophilus the Indian, and Ulfilas. F. had at his disposal abundant material, which he used with the precise aim of extolling Anomœanism against Nicene orthodoxy and even against the moderate currents of Arianism; more than the history of the universal Church, he wrote the history of the “Church” of Eunomius in its conflicts with paganism and especially with the other Christian confessions. He shows a marked apocalyptic and chiliastic tendency. His style is careful and elegant, not without some affectation, with an Atticizing tendency and a certain concern for rhythm.