''On the Martyrs of Palestine'' is a work by church historian and Bishop of

Caesarea Caesarea () ( he, קֵיסָרְיָה, ), ''Keysariya'' or ''Qesarya'', often simplified to Keisarya, and Qaysaria, is an affluent town in north-central Israel, which inherits its name and much of its territory from the ancient city of Caesare ...

Eusebius Eusebius of Caesarea (; grc-gre, Εὐσέβιος ; 260/265 – 30 May 339), also known as Eusebius Pamphilus (from the grc-gre, Εὐσέβιος τοῦ Παμφίλου), was a Greek historian of Christianity, exegete, and Christian ...

(AD 263 – 339), relating the persecution of Christians in Caesarea under Roman Emperor

Diocletian Diocletian (; la, Gaius Aurelius Valerius Diocletianus, grc, Διοκλητιανός, Diokletianós; c. 242/245 – 311/312), nicknamed ''Iovius'', was Roman emperor from 284 until his abdication in 305. He was born Gaius Valerius Diocles ...

. The work survives in two forms, a shorter

recension Recension is the practice of editing or revising a text based on critical analysis. When referring to manuscripts, this may be a revision by another author. The term is derived from Latin ''recensio'' ("review, analysis"). In textual criticism (as ...

which formed part of his ''

Ecclesiastical History __NOTOC__ Church history or ecclesiastical history as an academic discipline studies the history of Christianity and the way the Christian Church has developed since its inception. Henry Melvill Gwatkin defined church history as "the spiritual ...

'', and a longer version, discovered only in 1866. Eusebius was present in Caesarea at the time of the persecutions he recounts.

Background

The shorter version of ''Martyrs of Palestine'' was probably a revision of the longer recension. It is possible that both extant versions are only fragments of a now lost longer work. The long recension was composed sometime after 311, when the persecutions in Caesarea had ceased, and published in 315–316.

Short recension

Although shorter than the other version, there are accounts of martyrdoms in Caesarea that are not contained in the long recension, such as the voluntary martyrdoms of

Timolaus and Companions Saint Timolaus and five companions, according to the historian of the early Christian church Eusebius in his ''Martyrs of Palestine'', were young men who, having heard that the Roman authorities in Caesarea, Palestine, in 303 AD, had condemned ...

Long recension

The cruelty of the persecutors, the endurance and suffering of the martyrs, are entered into in greater detail in the longer version.

Reliability

Eusebius openly states that he is not going to discuss anything that does not "vindicate the divine judgement" and will relate only those things "which may be useful first to ourselves and afterwards to posterity", which caused 18th-century historian

Edward Gibbon Edward Gibbon (; 8 May 173716 January 1794) was an English historian, writer, and member of parliament. His most important work, ''The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'', published in six volumes between 1776 and 1788, is k ...

to distrust the work altogether. However, in the 19th century, historian

Joseph Barber Lightfoot Joseph Barber Lightfoot (13 April 1828 – 21 December 1889), known as J. B. Lightfoot, was an English theologian and Bishop of Durham. Life Lightfoot was born in Liverpool, where his father John Jackson Lightfoot was an accountant. His mo ...

commended Eusebius in such passages for his honesty.

References

{{Reflist Works by Eusebius of Caesarea History of Rome 310s in the Roman Empire 4th-century Christian martyrs