Orosius

Abstract

Orosius was a Spanish priest, attested in the years 414–419. He is best known as the author of the Histories against the pagans (416–417), a world history that was conceived as a companion piece to the first ten books of Augustine’s City of God. The Histories would become the most-read history of the Middle Ages and be translated in Old English and Arabic in the 9th to the 10th centuries. Orosius also plays a secondary role in other controversies of the period. He wrote a tract against Priscillianism, and an Apology to defend himself from accusations of heresy coming from partisans of Pelagius. Finally, bringing relics of St Stephen to Spain, he landed in Minorca, sparking one of the most-discussed episodes of conversion of the Jews. If Orosius is, all in all, a minor figure in late antique history, his Histories have been treated as proof of some strongly held opinions about late antique historiography and early Christianity. The Histories, relying mainly on earlier sources, have been seen to exemplify the essentially derivative nature of late antique historiography, while its apologetic tendency has been taken as proof that Christians were not interested in historical events and subordinated everything to theological views on the course of history. Scholarship also tends to stress the gulf between Augustine’s apparent rejection of the alliance between empire and Church and Orosius’s apparent espousal of it. More recent scholarship has shed doubt on these long-held views, which are, in fact, shaped by modern theological responses to enthusiasm for dictatorial regimes found in some Christian circles in the 1930s. Scholarship on Orosius is very international, with numerous publications in Spanish, Italian, French, and German. Only starting in the early 21st century has scholarship in English picked up.