Kann die Annahme der weltlichen Kriege in die spätantike Kirchengeschichten als diese Gattung der Geschichtsschreibung an die Mustern der militärisch-politischen Zeitgeschichten annähernd bewertet werden? Der Fall des Kirchenhistorikers Sokrates

Abstract

The specific nature of Late Antique Church histories in comparison with Greco-Roman historiography is understood as both the outcome of the difference in the narrative’s subject and the particular method of its performance. Apparently, the Church historians’ growing interest in the traditional theme of wars seems to account for this approaching to the “classical” patterns and the blurring of the genre’s specific character. The author argues that this “assimilation” phenomenon was essentially the consequence of the proximity of the main subject of the narration, the history of the Church represented as a story of conflict, while - as the present analysis of some relevant sections from the work of the Church historian Socrates has demonstrated - the narrative of the history of wars would rather play the role of a digression in this narration and the “Divine” commentary on the events being depicted, thus hindering rather than facilitating the assimilating of the “Church History” to the norms determined by the so-called Zeitgeschichten.