OROSIO, PAOLO. – Spanish priest from Braga, in ancient Galicia (Braulio, Epist., 44), a disciple of Augustine, “a man of experienced intellect, fluent speech, eager for knowledge, desirous of combating the evil doctrines” that troubled 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 brought 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 see St Jerome and found himself amid the Pelagian controversy. In June of that year he had the opportunity to set forth his position on the matter at the Council of Jerusalem, and collected the doctrinal substance of his debates in his Liber apologeticus contra Pelagianos (a. 417–18), the finest anti-Pelagian refutation of that first period. He intended to return to Spain, but, having learned at Minorca of military disturbances, he went back to St Augustine. The holy doctor was then completing Book XI of De civitate Dei (416–17):
to the accusation of the pagans that Christianity was responsible for the calamities of the Empire, he had replied in Book III that the evils of those days were no greater than those experienced in past, pre-Christian times. This was for O. the guiding idea of his Historiae adversus paganos (a. 418). In them, leaving the narration of wars to other historians, he sets forth the evils that result from them: illi bello, nos bellorum miserias evolvamus; and, alongside these, pestilence, famine, earthquakes, floods, storms, and volcanic eruptions: Moesta mundi, according to the title that sound medieval palaeography assigned to this work. Yet humanity’s course is not abandoned to chance, and here O.’s providentialism enters: the succession of the ages is a harmonious whole wisely governed by Providence. Nothing is accidental within the picture. Even events that appear most remote and disconnected correspond to one another like the limbs of a single, intentionally preordained whole. The work, a summary of universal history, is divided into four periods and seven books, from Adam to the year 417. Sources: first and foremost, Sacred Scripture, then Titus Livius, Caesar’s commentaries (O. attributes them to Suetonius), Tacitus, Justin, Florus, Eutropius, Eusebius’s Chronica in the Hieronymian translation and reworking, Rufinus, and St Augustine. It acquires a more personal character from 378 onward. O.’s optimism in historical evaluation is typical: the invasions of the barbarians are warnings of divine goodness. As a good Spaniard, in the final chapter, devoted to the history of his homeland, he places Spain at the centre of the world’s destinies, since through Ataulf and Wallia it supports the very stability of the Roman Empire. At the same time, however, he feels and enthusiastically celebrates 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 use the term Romania for the dominion of Roman-Christian culture. His fervent eloquence and the Virgilian imitation to which he conforms ensured O.’s Historiae a brilliant survival in the Middle Ages: 200 manuscripts transmit it; Isidore, Bede, Gregory of Tours, and even Dante benefited from it; Alfred the Great translated it into Anglo-Saxon; the emperor of Constantinople sent it to ʿAbd ar-Raḥmān III of Córdoba for translation into Arabic; Dante calls it “altissima prosa,” equal to that of Titus Livius.