Exegesis, Empire and Eschatology: Reading Orosius’ Histories Against the Pagans in the Carolingian World

This essay seeks to uncover nuggets of eschatological thought in three Carolingian commentaries on the Gospel of Matthew. It does so by examining the different ways that Hrabanus Maurus, Paschasius Radbertus and Christian of Stavelot read and interpreted Orosius’ Seven Books of Histories Against the Pagans, a work of Christian apologetic history composed c. 417. Orosius’ Histories, which were hugely influential throughout the whole of the Middle Ages, typically have been seen as expressing a distinctly eschatological understanding of the Roman Empire, an understanding that is frequently contrasted with that of Orosius’ teacher and dedicatee: Augustine of Hippo. The exegetical reception of Orosius, which has not yet been subject to close scrutiny, reveals that some ninth-century intellectuals did not use Orosius to show that the duration of the world was bound to the lifespan of the Roman Empire. Rather, they employed the Histories as an authoritative account of the beginnings of the ecclesia, the Christian Church. These biblical exegetes fashioned close intertextual bonds between Orosius’ narrative and Matthew’s account of the birth of Christ. By bringing Orosius into dialogue with the central narrative of Christianity, they invested the Histories with eschatological meaning.