About EcclesiasticalHistory.com
EcclesiasticalHistory.com is a primary-source library for the study of Christian history, bringing original-language texts, English translations, scholarly source information, and reading tools together in one accessible resource.
Church History Through Its Primary Sources
Our purpose is to make the documentary sources of Church history easier to read, search, compare, and study.
A central focus of the website is the great tradition of ancient ecclesiastical history represented by Eusebius of Caesarea, Socrates Scholasticus, Sozomen, Theodoret of Cyrus, Philostorgius, Evagrius Scholasticus, and Rufinus of Aquileia.
Their historical works provide overlapping and sometimes differing accounts of the development of Christianity, theological controversies, councils, bishops, emperors, persecutions, schisms, and major events in the early Church.
EcclesiasticalHistory.com aims to present these works in their original Greek or Latin wherever suitable source texts are available, together with accessible English translations.
More Than the Ecclesiastical Historians
The project is designed to grow into a broader library of primary Christian sources, including the Apostolic Fathers, apologists, theologians, letters, martyr accounts, councils, creeds, monastic writings, imperial documents, and other material important for the study of Church history.
Historical English collections such as the Ante-Nicene Fathers may also be incorporated where appropriate and where their legal and textual status permits reuse.
Original-Language Study
Greek and Latin texts are more useful when readers can investigate the language itself. For this reason, original-language passages may include interactive lexical and morphological tools.
Readers may be able to select a Greek or Latin word to view its lemma, grammatical analysis, concise English gloss, and links to fuller lexical information. These tools are intended to assist both beginning readers and experienced students of ancient languages.
New English Translations
EcclesiasticalHistory.com is also developing new English translations from the original-language texts. These translations are intended to combine accuracy with readable contemporary English while preserving the terminology, structure, historical claims, and theological distinctions of the source.
Where a work survives only indirectly or fragmentarily, that fact will be made clear. Philostorgius, for example, will be identified as surviving substantially through the epitome of Photius and associated fragments rather than being presented as though his complete original work had survived.
Transparency and Provenance
Whenever possible, pages identify the edition, editor, source repository, language, license, publication information, and other provenance associated with the underlying text.
We believe readers should be able to distinguish an ancient author’s words from a modern edition, translation, editorial note, lexical gloss, or interpretation.
An Ongoing Scholarly Project
EcclesiasticalHistory.com is an evolving digital project. Ancient texts, digital transcriptions, translations, metadata, and automated linguistic analyses can contain errors. Corrections and improvements may therefore be made as sources are checked and better information becomes available.
Readers who identify a textual, translation, citation, metadata, or licensing issue are encouraged to contact us through the site’s correction and contact page.