The Promotion Of The Constantinian Agenda In Eusebius Of Caesarea’s On The Feast Of Pascha

Abstract

In this chapter, the author argues that Eusebius of Caesarea' treatise was a response to continued opposition to the decision reached at Nicaea and was in fact commissioned by Constantine himself in order to win over persistent dissenters by a scripturally-based theological argument. In other words, in this fragment Eusebius promotes Constantine's agenda for a single celebration of Easter at the emperor's request. This is most clearly seen in how Eusebius consciously interprets scripture in such a way that he takes as his starting point some of the reasons advanced by Constantine for a single observance of Easter. He thus sets the emperor's agenda for religious unity in the celebration of Easter on a solid theological and scriptural basis. This fragment is one of the examples of how scriptural exegesis and theological discourse developed during the initial stages of the Christianization of the empire in the service of ecclesiastical unity. Keywords: Constantine; Easter; Eusebius of Caesarea; Nicaea; On the Feast of Pascha

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 40 citations exist upstream.