FILOSTORGIO. — Christian historian, born ca. 386 at Berissus, in Cappadocia Secunda, to Arian parents. At the age of twenty he met Eunomius of Cyzicus, the coryphaeus 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 in Constantinople and during journeys that he made
in Palestine and elsewhere. He himself reports that he wrote an apology against Porphyry and a panegyric of Eunomius.
His principal work, completed before 433, is the Historia ecclesiastica, in 12 books, which continues that of Eusebius up to 425. The text, lost because of its heterodox character, could be partially reconstructed from the epitome made of it by Eosio, 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 Costantini. The interest of the work lies particularly in the documents it transmitted and in the wealth of information about the most eminent personalities of Arianism: Assio, Eunomius, Asterius of Cappadocia, Theophilus Indus, Ulilia. F. had abundant informational material at his disposal, which he assembled with the precise intention of exalting anomoeanism against Nicene orthodoxy and against the moderate currents of Arianism itself; rather than the universal Church, he makes it the history of the Eunomian «Church» in its conflicts with paganism and, especially, with the other Christian confessions. He shows a marked apocalyptic and chiliastic tendency. The style is careful and elegant, not without some affectation, with an Atticizing tendency and a certain concern for rhythm.