Christian Thrue Djurslev: The End of Exile: Sulpicius Severus on the Edicts of Cyrus and Alexander

In late antique Gaul, a nobleman made an exceptional attempt at writing history by combining the historian’s task with Christian orthodoxy. Sulpicius Severus’ Chronica or Historia Sacra(c. 403)offers a concise account of the Old Testament and Christian events until his own day, a potentially dangerous project in light of contemporary controversies. Modern studies have principally focused on the author’s representation of history (e.g. Murru 1979; Williams 2011) and his views on Arianism and Priscillianism (e.g. Fontaine 1975), but his version of the Old Testament also provides intriguing insights into his agenda and methods.In this paper, I investigate his use of historical typology in relation to the end of the Babylonian captivity. Originally, Christians developed typology to link individuals of the Old with the New Testament, but I show here how Sulpicius Severus also connected events within his account of the Old Testament itself. I focus especially on the pair of famed monarchs Cyrus II of Persia and Alexander III of Macedon, whose lives Sulpicius Severus connects in several ways. For example, both personages bestow great honours upon the Jews and Jerusalem. I will discuss their respective edicts that permitted the Jews to return to their native country. The typological relationship constructed for the pair not only informs us of the author’s vision of developments in history through translatio imperii, but also displays how Sulpicius Severus’ historiography distanced himself significantly from his contemporaries, Jerome in particular.