Orosius
Paulus. A Spanish presbyter in Lusitania who, about
A.D. 417, and at the wish of St. Augustine, whom he had sought out in Africa, composed a
history against the heathen (
Historiae contra Paganos) in seven books, the
first attempt at a Christian universal history, from Adam to the year A.D. 417. The theory of
his work is that the whole history of mankind is directed by the one God who created them, and
it aims at refuting the charges brought against Christianity by showing
that it was not to Christianity and the abolition of the heathen religion that the calamities
of the time were due, but that such calamities had always existed, and to a still greater
degree before Christian times. His chief authority is Justin, besides whom he mainly used Livy
, Tacitus, Suetonius, and Eutropius. His view of the four kingdoms of the
world—Babylon, Macedon, Carthage, and Rome—prevailed throughout the whole
of the Middle Ages; and Alfred the Great caused it to be translated into Anglo-Saxon. The
history is edited by Zangemeister
(Vienna, 1882), with a commentary; and
translated into English by Sweet
(1883). See Méjean,
Orose et son Apologétique (Strassburg, 1862). Besides
the
Historiae, Orosius also wrote two polemical treatises against the theology
of the Pelagians and Priscillianists.
