OROSIUS, PAUL. - Spanish priest from Braga, in ancient Galicia (Braulio, Epist., 44), a disciple of Augustine, "of practiced intellect, fluent speech, eager for knowledge, desirous of combating evil doctrines," which were disturbing the distant regions of Galicia (St. Augustine, Epist., 166). Fleeing before the Vandals, he was drawn to Hippo by the prestige of St. Augustine, to whom in the year 414 he presented his problems: the Priscillianism of his homeland, the origin of the soul, etc. He carried with him his Commentarium de errore Priscillianistarum et Origenistarum. St. Augustine replied with his treatise Ad Orosium contra Priscillianistas et Origenistas.
In the spring of 415 O., recommended by Augustine himself, went to Palestine to St. Jerome and found himself in the midst of the Pelagian controversy. In June of that year he found an occasion to set forth his point of view on the matter at the Council of Jerusalem, and he gathered the doctrinal substance of his debates in his Liber apologeticus contra Pelagianos (a. 417-18), the best anti-Pelagian attack of that early hour. He intended to return to Spain, but having learned at Minorca of wartime disturbances he returned to St. Augustine. The holy doctor was then finishing book XI of De civitate Dei (416-17): to the accusation of the pagans, that Christianity was to blame for the calamities of the Empire, he had replied in book III that the evils of those days were not greater than those of past times in the pre-Christian era. This was for O. the guiding idea of his Historiae adversus paganos (a. 418). In them, leaving to other historians the narration of wars, he sets forth the evils that arise from them: illi bello, nos bellorum miserias evolvamus; and with these, plague, famine, earthquakes, floods, storms, volcanic eruptions: Moesta mundi, according to the title that reliable medieval paleography gave to this work. Yet the course of humanity is not abandoned to chance, and here enters the providentialism of O.: the flowing of the ages is a harmonious whole wisely governed by Providence. Nothing is random in the picture. Even the facts apparently most distant and disconnected correspond to one another as members of a single whole intentionally preordained. The work, a summary of universal history, is divided into four periods and seven books; from Adam to the year 417. Sources: Holy Scripture in the first place, then Livy, the commentaries of Caesar (O. attributes them to Suetonius), Tacitus, Justin, Florus, Eutropius, the Chronica of Eusebius in Jerome's translation and recension, Rufinus and St. Augustine. It acquires a more personal value from the year 378 onward. Typical is O.'s optimism in his historical assessment: the invasions of the barbarians are warnings of divine goodness. As a good Spaniard, in the last chapter, consecrated to the history of his homeland, he places Spain at the center of the destinies of the world, since through Ataulf and Wallia it sustains the very stability of the Roman Empire. Yet, at the same time, he feels and celebrates with enthusiasm the ecumenical unity created by Rome and the Gospel. "I am among the Romans, a Roman, a Christian among Christians, among men, a man... Ubique patria ubique lex et religio mea est" (5, 2). He is one of the first to call the domain of Romano-Christian culture by the term Romania. His fervent eloquence and the Virgilian imitation to which he submits ensured for O.'s Historiae a brilliant survival in the Middle Ages: 200 manuscripts transmit it to us; Isidore, Bede, Gregory of Tours, down to Dante, profited from it; Alfred the Great translated it into Anglo-Saxon; the emperor of Constantinople sent it to 'Abd ar-Rahmân III of Cordoba for translation into Arabic: it is described by Dante as "altissima prosa," equal to that of Livy.
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Giuseppe Madoz