The Ecclesiastical History of Evagrius Scholasticus - Coptic ...

INTRODUCTION xxxiii
acta in the earlier books, though the Procopian material is carefully
chosen so that the religious focus of the narrative is preserved.
However, Evagrius’ treatment of Justinian’s complex theological initiatives
is incomplete, and the Fifth Ecumenical Council, the Origenist
dispute and the Aphthartodocete initiative are relegated to the end of
the Book, the location for diverse secular material in Books i^iii. This
may re£ect Evagrius’ distaste for Justinian, which perhaps discouraged
him from attempting to assemble relevant material and unravel the
connections between the various moves; alternatively, the lack of an
existing narrative to provide a structure may have been too great a
handicap.
For his adult lifetime, the events covered in Books v and vi, Evagrius
had even less guidance. He knew that his cousin, John of Epiphania,
was producing a narrative of the Persian war of 572^91 (v.24) and this
may have in£uenced his arrangement, but it did not provide much material
since eastern military matters are not reported in great detail: his
narrative of the momentous £ight of Khusro II to the Romans (vi.17^
21) devotes far more attention to the actions of bishops, holy women
and saints than to the events themselves. The character of leading
contemporaries, the emperors Justin II, Tiberius and Maurice, and the
two patriarchs of Antioch, Anastasius and Gregory, became Evagrius’
most prominent concern.
Evagrius’ approach to structuring his narrative had the considerable
advantage that it evaded whatever problems might have been caused by
the di⁄culties of combining several sources into a single account. Chronological
accuracy was not one of Evagrius’ strengths, 52 and he made
serious errors in narrating the events of his own lifetime, even of the
very recent past when he was responsible for the collection and organization
of his information. 53 Also, he was not particularly concerned about
the details of military a¡airs, even on the eastern frontier where they
would most directly a¡ect his world. The only exceptions are when
52 Allen, Evagrius 15^16, and see below.
53 In Books v and vi, Evagrius exploited some documents (e.g. Justin’s edict; Khusro’s
dedications), but there is no evidence that he was aware of, or had access to, Menander
Protector’s History, and there are su⁄cient di¡erences between Evagrius and Theophylact
in the presentation of the military narrative of the 570s and 580s to suggest that Evagrius,
unlike Theophylact, did not base his account on the contemporary narrative of his cousin,
John of Epiphania: for discussion, see Whitby, Maurice 244^5, and for the opposite view,
Allen, Evagrius 10^11, Olajos, The¤ophylacte 95.