Who is Eusebius?
Eusebius was the bishop of Caesarea in Palestine in the 4th century, and he played a very active role in church politics at the time. He was at the Council of Nicea, which was the first major ecumenical council. And he had contact with the Emperor Constantine. So he was a very prominent figure. He’s most important to us, however, as the first church historian. He wrote several things during his long and active lifetime including a history of the martyrs of Palestine, a collection of prophetic texts. But the most important work is his ecclesiastical history, which describes the development of the church down through his own period, and then the persecutions which took place in the first decade of the fourth century. And finally the vindication of the church with the accession of Constantine and his rise to supreme power. … Eusebius is, first of all, valuable as an historian because he preserves a large number of sources that are not available in other forms. He clearly has an axe to g
