rians.

The sketch given below of the evolution of the Christian Church (see
CHURCH) may well be prefaced by a summary of the history of the great
Church historians, concerning whom fuller details are given in separate
articles. Hegesippus wrote in the 2nd century a collection of memoirs
containing accounts of the early days of the church, only fragments of
which are extant. The first real church history was written by Eusebius
of Caesarea in the early part of the 4th century. His work was continued
in the 5th century by Philostorgius, Socrates, Sozomen and Theodoret,
and in later centuries by Theodorus Lector, Evagrius, Theophanes and
others. In the 14th century Nicephorus Callisti undertook a complete
church history which covers in its extant form the first six centuries.
In the West Eusebius' _History_ was translated into Latin by Rufinus,
and continued down to the end of the 4th century. Augustine's _City of
God_, published in 426, was an apologetic, not an historical work, but
it had great influence in our field, for in it he undertook to answer
the common heathen accusation that the growing misfortunes of the empire
were due to the prevalence of Christianity and the forsaking of the gods
of Rome. It was to sustain Augustine's thesis that Orosius produced in
417 his _Historiarum libri septem_, which remained the standard
text-book on world history during the middle ages. About the same time
Sulpicius Severus wrote his _Historia Sacra_, covering both biblical and
Christian history. In the 6th century Cassiodorus had a translation made
of the histories of Socrates, Sozomen and Theodoret, which were woven
into one continuous narrative and brought down to 518. The work was
known as the _Historia Ecclesiastica Tripartita_, and constituted during
the middle ages the principal text-book of church history in the West.
Before writing his history Eusebius produced a world chronicle which was
based upon a similar work by Julius Africanus and is now extant only in
part. It was continued by Jerome, and became the basis of the model for
many similar works of the 5th and following centuries by Prosper,
Idatius, Marcellinus Comes, Victor Tununensis and others. Local
histories containing more or less ecclesiastical material were written
in the 6th and following centuries by Jordanes (_History of the Goths_),
Gregory of Tours (_History of the Franks_), Isidore of Seville (_History
of the Goths, Vandals and Suevi_), Bede (_Ecclesiasti