Introduction

Eusebius, surnamed Pamphilus, wrote the history of the church in ten books and closed it with the time of the emperor Constantine, when the persecution that Diocletian had begun against the Christians came to an end. He also wrote the life of Constantine, but there he touched only lightly on the affair of Arius, being more intent on the polish of his writing and on the praises of the emperor than on an accurate account of the facts. We propose to set down in detail what has happened in the churches from his time to our own day, and so we begin by telling the things he left out. We will not be anxious to make a show of words; we will lay before the reader what we have been able to gather from documents, and what we have heard from people who knew the facts, as they told them to us. And since it bears closely on our subject, it will be right to give a short account of Constantine’s conversion to Christianity and to begin with that event. [a]