One of the most well-known and yet misunderstood texts of Christian antiquity is Eusebius's Ecclesiastical History. The work was penned in the early fourth century during what is frequently characterized as a watershed moment in the history of the church as an emperor of Rome converted to the faith and began involving himself in church affairs. Eusebius and his composition of this period, the Ecclesiastical History, have either been defended as carefully (if sometimes mistakenly) preserving earlier materials in a “documentary history” or maligned as being the spin-doctor of a misleading portrait of an institution that had scarcely existed as he imagined. Few scholars have given serious and sustained attention to the History’s literary features (although there are some notable exceptions). Corke-Webster's new book now makes a sizable contribution to our appreciation of the History as a piece of literature in its own right.

Significantly, Eusebius and Empire seeks to trace the ways in which Eusebius constructed a history of the Church for an elite Christian readership in ways that would shape their own image of themselves and their role in the Roman world. His basic thesis claims that Eusebius's goal in the History was to show that Christians embodied Roman values better than their pagan peers and thus were the best group to inherit Rome (57, and passim). Although our image of the “Great Persecution” is largely due to Eusebius's narratives, the persecution ironically impressed him less than the “little peace” of the Church in the decades before the persecution. In ways that will persuade only some, Corke-Webster baldly states, “The ‘Great Persecution’ need not have left Eusebius with a deep-seated mistrust of Rome. To imagine Christianity and Rome in harmony was no utopian dream for Eusebius. He had lived it” (33).

In order to develop his thesis, Corke-Webster follows an initial discussion of Eusebius's life and literary work (chapter 1) with chapters canvassing the genre and audience of the History (chapter 2), its emphasis on the intellectual labors of its heroes (chapter 3), its portrayal of their asceticism (chapter 4) and family relations (chapter 5), their performance (or avoidance) of martyrdom (chapter 6), the institution of the church (chapter 7), and the relationship of the church to Rome and its first Christian emperor (chapter 8). In each, Corke-Webster breaks new ground and offers original readings that will be essential for all future studies of Eusebius.

Avoiding the rats’ nest of attempting to discern multiple editions of the History, Corke-Webster allows for a more fluid text, which ultimately was always intended “to climax with the possibility of a Christian emperor” (62). It drew upon genres of philosophical biography and national history with the intention of responding to anti-Christian criticisms raised by the likes of Celsus and Porphyry. Its “string of biographical pearls” (74) displayed the intellectual contributions of key historical figures who exemplified all the traditional philosophical and Roman virtues, especially wisdom. The concern with exemplars of virtue was shared by both philosophical biography and national history. In two of the best chapters of the book, Corke-Webster delineates Eusebius's concern to exhibit Christian intellectuals as engaged in only moderate forms of asceticism and as possessed of strong family values and thus resisting the more extreme portraits of heroic asceticism and rejection of the family that were possible in earlier Christian literature. As with asceticism, Eusebius is then shown to have a moderate stance towards martyrdom: ideal martyrs more or less quietly maintained their faith before enraged persecutors or avoided martyrdom altogether, which for Eusebius was a respectable option (unfortunately, his claim that parrhesia, which normally denotes “freedom of speech,” meant in these contexts “generosity” since Eusebius's martyrs were frequently restrained in their speech [177, 198] is a bit of a stretch; their words may have been few, but they were well-chosen for clearly displaying the martyrs’ independence of mind). An excellent chapter on Eusebius's vision of the church traces the ways in which the History emphasizes chronological continuity (in the successions of bishops of major cities) and geographical continuity (in the ecclesiastical networks exhibited through epistolary ties); while the former has been much discussed, the latter, with its high volume of quotations from letters, has rarely received comment as a phenomenon in itself. Here one gains firm footing for appreciating Eusebius's literary craft.

The final chapter concludes with a discussion of the church and Rome that, for some, will seem less firmly established. Persecution is here said to be an anomaly only practiced by bad emperors, all others favored or at least showed a benign neglect of Christianity. Eusebius promotes an “accommodationist picture of Christian history” (251) in which church and empire share a mutually satisfying relationship. Yet, to claim that Eusebius “exonerates” the “good emperors” from the taint of persecution overstates the evidence; for instance, Eusebius's reminders before and after the quotations of Gallic martyr material in HE 5.1 that these things happened under the emperor's reign and even that one could infer widespread persecution in other provinces from what happened in Gaul (even if the emperor is often misnamed), must balance any claims to imperial exoneration. Furthermore, nowhere (even under Constantine) is the Christian ethnos hinted as becoming coterminous with the Roman people; instead, it sits somewhat awkwardly (albeit often peacefully) beside the inhabitants of the Empire's cities as so many instances of paroikia or “sojourning” in migrant status.

In spite of this reviewer's hesitation towards some of this book's claims, Corke-Webster has offered an engaging and often compelling series of analyses that surely illuminate our understanding of one of the most significant texts of ancient Christianity. He has not only shown the fruitfulness of an inquiry into the literary workings of the History but has extended our understanding of one of the most fecund minds of late antiquity.