Introduction to This Volume
How this book is arranged
This is the seventy-ninth volume of a series that gathers the writings of the early Church in order of date, from the generation after the apostles down to the eighth century. This volume holds The Chronicles and Church Histories of the Sixth Century, from the period about AD 495 – 594.
Within each work the text is divided into chapters and numbered sections, so that any passage can be found again and cited. The small bold figures in the text are the section numbers.
The translations
The text is in English only. Wherever a modern English version has been prepared for SermonIndex it is used here; otherwise the book prints an older public-domain translation. In both cases the wording is the translator’s own: older translations have not been altered beyond dividing them into sections. The sources for every work are listed at the back of the book, together with the licence under which each text is released. All the works in this volume are printed in older public-domain translations.
In this volume
Joshua is named in later manuscripts as a stylite, a monk who lived on a pillar. His Chronicle, written in Syriac about AD 507, tells of the years from AD 495 to 506. It describes the locusts, famine and plague that struck Edessa and the Persian war of AD 502 to 506, and it is the work of a man who saw these things himself.
The Chronicle of Edessa is a short Syriac record of events in the city of Edessa, drawn from the city archives. It runs from the beginning of the kingdom of Edessa in 132 BC to AD 540. It notes floods, earthquakes, bishops, councils and the wars of Rome and Persia.
The Syriac Chronicle was compiled in AD 569 by a writer whose name is not known, and it came to be attributed to Zachariah, bishop of Mitylene. In its middle books it follows the lost Greek church history of Zachariah Rhetor, which covered the years from AD 450 to 491, and the later books bring the story to the reign of Justinian. It is a main source for the controversy over the Council of Chalcedon and for the Church in Syria and Egypt.
John was born about AD 507 near Amida in Mesopotamia and became a monk. Justinian sent him to convert the pagans of Asia Minor, and about AD 558 he was made bishop of Ephesus for the Syrian Orthodox. He wrote the Lives of the Eastern Saints and a Church History in three parts, of which only the third part survives in full. He died about AD 588.
Evagrius was born about AD 536 at Epiphania in Syria and practised law at Antioch, which is the meaning of the name Scholasticus. He served as adviser to the patriarch Gregory of Antioch. His Ecclesiastical History in six books runs from the Council of Ephesus in AD 431 to AD 594, and it is rich in the history of the plague, earthquakes and wars of his own age.
The histories in this volume record the wars, earthquakes, plagues and church struggles of the sixth century as seen from Syria and Constantinople. They are printed in the order in which they were written, from the chronicle of Joshua the Stylite to the Ecclesiastical History of Evagrius.
Dates and authorship
Dates are approximate and are debated by scholars. Each work begins with a short introduction that states what is known about its author and its date, and what is uncertain.