Der liturgische Exkurs in der Kirchengeschichte des Sokrates

Abstract As the longest of all the digressions in the Church History, the chapter on Easter liturgy (5,22) plays a crucial role in the work of the Christian church historian Socrates of Constantinople. This is the reason why it has been examined in several monographs on Socrates. For example, it has been shown that Socrates’ tone in this chapter is polemical and that he deals with a conflict within the church of the Novatianists. This contribution provides an analysis of the language Socrates uses and the rhetorical strategies he adopts, shedding light on the question of how Socrates displays Jewish and Christian and, among the latter, also Novatianist liturgical customs. In particular, it shows that Socrates downplays the tensions between the Novatianists in order to portray them as a unity and to bring most of the Novatianists closer to the Western church.