The New Subject of Historical Narrative in the «Ecclesiastical History» of Eusebius of Caesarea

Abstract

This article is devoted to the question of the complex genre specificity of Eusebius of Caesarea’s «Ecclesiastical History». The complexity of genre identification of this work is due to the fact that it contains elements of various genres: panegyric and hagiography, apologia and polemics, literary history and biography. The aim of the article is to clarify the phenomenon of Ecclesiastical History. For this purpose, it seems necessary to consider this work within the framework of Greek historiographical tradition, as well as to trace the evolution of the historical genre, referring also to the works of Herodotus, Thucydides, Polybius, Josephus Flavius, which will allow us to identify in what Eusebius followed his predecessors, and in what he was unique. In building his argumentation, the author of the article resorts to comparative and comparative analysis, as well as the historical and philological method of research, which combines the study of the genre nature and plot and semantic organization of the text. The author concludes that the genre heterogeneity of the Ecclesiastical History is due, on the one hand, to the expansion of the historical sphere — beginning with Herodotus, each subsequent historian contributed something new to the historical narrative — and, on the other hand, to the extensive and diverse heritage of the first church historian, due to which elements of all the genres in which Eusebius wrote are found in his historical work.