Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 22.djvu/255

 SOCRATES 239 his work he has himself informed us in the prologues to his first, second, fifth, and sixth books. It is dedicated to one Theodorus, who had urged him to write such a his- tory. He had no thorough preparation for the task, and for the period down to the death of Constantius (361) was practically dependent on Rufinus. His work finished, he became a student of Athanasius and came to see how untrustworthy his guide had been. He accordingly re- Avrote his first two books, and it is only this revision that has reached us. The chief sources from which he drew were (1) the Church History, the Life of Constantine, and the theological works of Eusebius; (2) the Church History of Rufinus ; (3) the works of Athanasius ; (4) the no longer extant Swaywyi) T<OV SwoStKoJv of the Mace- donian and semi-Arian Sabinus, a collection with com- mentaries of acts of councils, brought down to the reign of Theodosius I. (this was a main source) ; (5) collections of letters by members of the Arian and orthodox parties ; (6) the Ancoratus of Epiphanius ; (7) works of Archelaus, Gregory of Laodicea, Evagrius, Palladius, orations of Nes- torius, &c. Theological literature proper as, for example, the writings of the Cappadocians he quite neglected. On the other hand, he appears to have known some of Origen's work, and the Apologia pro Origene of Pamphilus. It is to Origen and Origen's immediate disciples that he refers when he speaks of " the old church writers," or of "the Christian philosophers"; the last designation, how- ever, also includes the monks. Jeep alleges, but does not adduce any adequate proof, that Socrates made use of Philostorgius. As regards profane history his materials were exceedingly defective. Thus, for example, he con- fesses his reason for not relating the political history of Constantine to be that he has been unable to ascertain anything about it. Jeep has instituted an examination into the fasti, containing historical notes, made use of by our author with the following results. His chronological data with the facts he appends to them are of the highest value, especially in those cases where, as sometimes hap- pens, data are preserved which are less precisely given in other fasti and chronicles. Somewhere about the year 395-400 his use of these precisely dated records of profane history comes to an end. From this point his information is purely ecclesiastical (dates of ordination and death of bishops and the like) ; that is to say, he makes use of church fasti. The secular fasti of Socrates come down precisely to the same point as those which lay in the first rank before Idatius. 1 His reckonings by Olympiads are generally wrong, the error arising not from any systematic source but merely from carelessness. It is not altogether impossible, however, after all that Socrates may have taken the historical data of his fasti at second hand from the profane historians. He certainly made use of Eutro- pius ; but that he had any recourse to Eunapius and Olympiodorus is more doubtful, and indeed would be quite improbable if it could be proved that he had Philostorgius before him. There is no evidence of his having known the works of Dexippus and Zosimus. But he is greatly indebted to oral tradition and to the testimony of eye- witnesses, especially of members of the Novatian com- munity in Constantinople ; something also he has set down from personal knowledge. The contents of the closing books are for the most part derived from oral tradition, from the narratives of friends and countrymen, from what was still generally known and current in the capital about past events, and from the ephemeral literature of the day. The theological position of Socrates, so far as he can be said to have had one, is at once disclosed in his unlimited admiration for Origen. All the enemies of the .great Alexandrian he regards merely as empty and vain obscurantists ; for the orthodoxy of his 1 See Holder-Egger, Neues Archiv f. deutsche Gesch., ii. 61. hero he appeals to Athanasius. Closely connected with his high regard for Origen are his appreciation of science generally and the moderation of his judgment on all dogmatic questions. According to him, tr]viKrj iraiBeia is quite indispensable within the church ; many Greek philosophers were not far from the knowledge of God, as is proved by their triumphant arguments against atheists and gainsayers of divine providence. The apostles did not set them- selves against the study of Greek literature and science ; Paul had even made a thorough study of them himself. The Scriptures, it is true, contain all that appertains to faith and life, but give no clue to the art of confuting gainsayers. Greek science, therefore, must not be banished from the church, and the tendency within the church so to deal with it is wrong. This point of view was the common one of the majority of educated Christians at that period, and is not to be regarded as exceptionally liberal. The same holds true of the position of Socrates in regard to dogmatic questions. On the one hand, indeed, orthodoxy and heresy are symbolized to his mind by the wheat and the tares respectively ; lie clings to the naive opinion of Catholicism, that contemporary orthodoxy has pre- vailed within the church from the first ; he recognizes the true faith only in the mystery of the Trinity ; he judges heretics who have been already condemned as interlopers, as impudent innovators, actuated by bad and self-seeking motives ; he apologizes for having so Ihuch as treated of Arianism at all in his history of the church ; he believes in the inspiration of the ecclesiastical councils as much as in that of the Scriptures themselves. But, on the other hand, lie takes absolutely no interest in dogmatical subtleties and clerical disputes ; he regards them as the source of great evils, and expresses his craving for peace : "one ought to adore the ineffable mystery in silence. " This attitude, which was that of most educated By- zantine laymen, has in particular cases made it possible for him to arrive at very free judgments. Even granting that some feeble remains of antique reserve may have contributed to this, and even although some of it is certainly to be set down to his disposition and temperament, still it was his religious passivity that here determined the character of Socrates and made him a typical ex- ample of the later Byzantine Christianity. If Socrates had lived about the year 325, he certainly would not have ranked himself on the side of Athanasius, but would have joined the party of mediation. But the 6/ioowrtoj has been laid down, and must be recognized as correctly expressing the mystery ; only one ought to rest satisfied with that word and with the repudiation of Arianism. Anything more, every new distinction, is mischievous. The con- troversy in its details is a vvKro/j.axia to him, full of misunder- standings. Sometimes he gives prominence, and correctly, to the fact that the disputants partially failed to understand one another, because they had separate interests at heart, those on the one side desiring above everything to guard against polytheism, those on the other being most afraid of Sabellianism. He did not fail, how- ever, to recognize also that the controversies freqxiently had their root in mere emulation, slander, and sophistry. Not nnfrequently lie passes very sharp judgments on whole groups of bishops. In the preface to his fifth book he excuses his trenching on the region of political history on the ground of his desire to spare his readers the disgust which perusal of the endless disputes of the bishops could not fail to excite, and in that to his sixth book he prides himself on never having flattered even the orthodox bishops. This attitude of his has given him a certain measure of impartiality. Constantius, and even Julian not Valens, it is true are esti- mated very fairly. The Arian Goths who died for their religion are recognized as genuine martyrs. His characterizations of Cyril and Nestorius, and his narrative and criticism of the beginnings of the Christological controversy, are models of candour and his- torical conscientiousness. In frequent instances, moreover, he acknowledges his own incompetency to give an opinion and hands the question over to the clergy. For the clergy as a whole, in spite of his criticism of individuals, he has the very highest respect, as also for the monks, without himself making any inordinate religious professions. In a special excursus of considerable length he has paid a tribute of the highest order to monachism, and in his characterization of Theodosius II. also (where he has made use of the brightest colours) he does not fail to point out that in piety the emperor could almost compete with the monks. But, apart from these two chapters (iv. 23, vii. 22), it is but seldom that one could learn from the pages of Socrates that there was such a thing as monasticism in those days. To his mind the convent is not far removed from the church, and as a layman he is not at all inclined to accept the principles of monachism as applying to himself or to square his views of history in accordance with them. He has even gone so far as formally to express his sympathy with Paphnutius, the champion of the right of bishops to marry. As a source for the period within which he wrote, the work of Socrates is of the greatest value, but as "history" it disappoints
 * ven the most modest expectations. Eusebius, after all, had some

onceptioii of what is meant by "church history," but Socrates has _ione. " As long as there is peace there is no material for a history of the church " ; "but, on the other hand, neither do heresies by rights