Paul Smith: Philostorgius and the Construction of the Eunomian Holy Man

Since Peter Brown first introduced the idea of the “holy man,” scholarship has exploded with books, articles, and talks establishing, refining, and challenging the identity and function of the holy man, and the related category ascetics, in the fourth century. However, most of these focus on the holy man and ascetics in the Nicene tradition and ignore the non-Nicene tradition. This paper builds upon Thomas Ferguson and Anna Lankina by examining the Eunomian historian, Philostorgius, and demonstrating how he utilizes the concept of the holy man in order to promote his understanding of the ideal Christian state. Philostorgius’ holy man combines his reputation for working miracles, his ascetic life, and his ecclesiastical office to be a patron to the Emperor. Philostorgius thus constructs a holy man which overlaps with several modern scholarly conceptions of the Nicene holy man, while putting his own emphasis on the concept. Philostorgius places his holy men in an urban context, with urban ascetic virtues and leadership. Their societal engagement makes them key figures in constructing what Philostorgius sees as the ideal Christian state, supported by non-Nicene holy men who take an active role in advising the Emperor, using their status as holy men to guide the empire in a non-Nicene direction.

Anna Lankina-Webb: Reclaiming the Memory of the Christian Past: Philostorgius’s Missionary Heroes

In the first half of the fifth century, the Eunomian layman Philostorgius (368-439) published the Ecclesiastical History, offering up a decidedly non-Nicene vision of Christian history to the educated readers of the Later Roman Empire. Living during the resolutely Nicene reign of Theodosius II (408-450), the historian not only had little hope of his work finding a welcome audience but even faced possible persecution as a heretic for the publication. Nevertheless, Philostorgius knowingly took the risk, as he desired not only to counter the Nicene representation of history by Rufinus of Aquileia (345-410), but also to reclaim the memory of the Christian past for his own faith community.                                                                             Philostorgius’s narrative reveals a Christian past in which divinely inspired bishops and wonder-working missionaries actively participated in the ecclesio-political events of the Roman Empire that served as the arena for God’s activity on earth. Richard Vaggione has effectively utilized Philostorgius’s Ecclesiastical History as a source for the history of the Eunomian Christian community. Few scholars, however, have analyzed the work for its representation of Christian history, leadership, and empire, instead privileging the Nicene ecclesiastical historians. Despite significant advances in scholarship dismantling the heresy vs. orthodoxy dichotomy, Philostorgius’s work has been largely neglected or disparaged as little more than pro-Arian polemic. In an effort to restore Philostorgius to his place in late antique Christian historiography, this paper will examine his perspective on Christian leadership in the Roman Empire through his representation of missionaries.