CulturalMemoryandtheResourcesofthepast

THE TRANSMISSION AND TRANSLATION OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY: The Historia Tripartita of Epiphanius-Cassiodorus
Désirée Scholten

The project will focus on the translation and transmission of ecclesiastical history in the form of the remarkable Historia ecclesiastica tripartita of Epiphanius-Cassiodorus. This text is a composite Latin abridgement of the Greek ecclesiastical histories of Sozomen, Socrates and Theodoret produced by Epiphanius for the sixth-century Italian scholar Cassiodorus as part of his fascinating programme of Latin translations of Greek texts. The implications of its content in the sixth century as well as the subsequent reception and influence of the Latin version for perceptions of the Roman Empire and of the church in the Carolingian period will be addressed. Ideas, information, narratives and normative texts travel, and not always only in one direction. Study of such a text as the Historia ecclesiastica tripartita offers the opportunity to make a precise case study of cultural transmission from the Greek fifth-century East to the Latin sixth-century West and then onward to assess the cultural impact of this articulate vision of Roman and Christian history in the Carolingian world of the ninth century.

This project will build on a pilot study, published by the project participant as an MA Thesis: The History of a Historia: Manuscript transmission of the Historia Ecclesiastica Tripartita by Epiphanius-Cassiodorus (Utrecht University, July 2010).

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