(a) That some of the sources obviously consulted by both were doubtless known to Sozomen without Socrates to point them out. Rufinus and Eusebius and Sabinus were known to everybody. In all such cases we may concede an independent reading of those authors, and yet the order in which the subject-matter is arranged is at times more that of his guide-book than of his original.
(b) Moreover, he introduces many new outlines and abstracts, particularly in the transactions of the synods.
(c) He also has independent sources of biography.
(d) His ninth book is wholly unique and entirely out of the leading-strings of the master, for unexplained reasons.
The notes also try to indicate in a measure these more independent traits.
2. The next unmentioned source is Rufinus, in his continuation of Eusebius in two books; this Sozomen certainly read independently of Socrates, very likely in a Greek translation. That author's Historia Monachorum also was sifted for a few of the monastic biographies; in these cases there is a closer resemblance to Rufinus than to the parallel sketches of Palladius.
3. Eusebius' Life of Constantine is a primary source for Books i. and ii. In all the events pertaining to that emperor, it is drawn upon freely, just as freely as Socrates employs it, or as Sozomen handles Socrates.
4. Athanasius is also used independently, although in collocating the events, Socrates is followed. There is direct reference to one work only (v. 12), as we have seen. The unmentioned are as follows:--
The Life of St. Antony: Antonii Vita.
Epistola de Synodis Arimini in Italia et Seleuciæ in Isauria celebratis.
Epistola ad Serapionem, de morte Arii.
Synodicon; lost.
Tomus ad Antiochenses.
Epistola ad Episcopos Ægypti et Libyæ; ep. encyclica contra Arianos.
Epistola Encyclica ad Episcopos.
Historia Arianorum ad Monachos.
Apologia contra Arianos.
Apologia ad Constantium imperatorem.
Epistolæ heortasticæ.
5. Philostorgius: Historia Ecclesiastica, also furnished occasional material, as even the excerpts remaining to us indicate.
6. Sabinus: Collection of Synods (Sunagoge ton sunodon), which is lost; this book was written in the Macedonian and Arian interest; the author is mentioned by Socrates and criticised for his partiality. We can observe how Sozomen used it, where he adds to the statements of Socrates, which the latter had borrowed from that work. These additions are quite frequent in the transactions of the synods; and again a few records of councils, otherwise unknown, are thus preserved for us. We have here a proof of how Sozomen improved on his guide in the details.
7. Philippus of Side; the Christian History (christianike historia); a few fragments are preserved; Socrates criticises him severely. [1056]
8. For the laws, outside of the records alluded to, he probably used the Codex Gregorianus and the Codex Hermogenianus, his old text-books, and not unlikely the Codex Theodosianus (438).
9. Basil the Great: the limited use is indicated by the notes.
10. Gregory Nazianzen: Orationes contra Julianum. Other occasional citations are indicated in the notes.
11. Sulpicius Severus: vita S. Martiniwas undoubtedly the source, possibly through a Greek translation of the same, for the summary of that saint's life in iii. 14.
Historia sacra: sometimes there is a hint as if this work had been before him.
12. Palladius: Historia Lausica was not so constant a companion as some have suggested; Sozomen has rather borrowed from the sources out of which the bishop of Helenopolis gathered his sketches of the monks.
Dialogus de vita S. Joannis Chrysostomi was used in narrating the incidents of John's life in Book viii. There is no indication of any large draught of Chrysostom's own writings: they may have been used for a few suggestions, contained in the orations before mentioned.
One does not feel sure that Hieronymus or Orosius came under his eye.
He does not seem to have made any direct use of Ammianus Marcellinus (Res gestæ), nor of the earlier Latin chroniclers. The points of resemblance with Eutropius (Breviarium Historiæ Romanæ) are very doubtful in my judgment; Eunapius (ex historia excerpta et fragmenta) seems to have been used in his full form; Zosimus (Historia) pretty surely; and for the ninth book, hardly with a doubt the full Olympiodorus, of whom fragments only remain, and yet in that same ninth book there are entirely independent political chapters whose source cannot yet be determined.
The Ninth Book.
The most curious feature of all is Book ix., in the entire change of its method; even were the ecclesiastical affairs to have been presented, he has given here in remarkable excess the events affecting the Western state; he has done it nowhere else; to be sure, he proposes it as a demonstration of the value of imperial piety, and of the ever-present Divine grace, but nowhere else has he done this in so cumulative a form. Some wonderful change came over his purpose, whether that were a fuller view of the relation between state and church, or the desire to deepen the impression of his philosophy of history; or did some imperial domestic catastrophe make him reluctant to dwell upon the sad events which darkened the court he had so glorified?
The grave question arises, Is anything of Book ix. lost?
That it is unfinished cannot be doubted; for (a) In the Proëmium he announces his purpose to carry it to the year a.d. 439, or the seventeenth consulate of Theodosius; but this is not done with any of his ordinary fullness, although his hints reach beyond, as we have seen. (b) In lauding Pulcheria (ix. 1) he remarks, "That new heresies have not prevailed in our time, we shall find to be due especially to her, as we shall subsequently see." Here is the declared purpose of delineating the history of Nestorianism and its overthrow, but there is no appearance of the struggle in the record itself; he altogether passes by Nestorius, as bishop of Constantinople. (c) The record of the forty martyrs he purposely took out of its normal order, to illustrate the excellence of Pulcheria; a late event is anticipated, but the whole of what would have been its normal setting is not there. (d) One would naturally expect that a book which had thus far treated mainly of state difficulties would have the usual balance, at least, and that ecclesiastical affairs would have preponderated in the remaining chapters; but there is only an initial chapter. Seventeen chapters are not his usual tale for a book; there is an evident break; the discussion of Nestorianism is not written. Most of all would one expect some allusion to the restoration of Chrysostom under Proclus. (e) In ix. 16, he says, "Among other relics, those of Zechariah, the very ancient prophet, and of Stephen, who was ordained deacon by the Apostles, were discovered; and it seems incumbent upon me to describe the mode, since the discovery of each was marvelous and divine;" but he gives only the invention of Zechariah (c. 17). The story of Stephen fails us, and would doubtless have followed immediately. It was his purpose to narrate the story,--this story which Theophanes and Marcellinus mention and Lucianus wrote a book about. (f) In c. ix. 17, this is confirmed; for he says, "I shall first speak of the relics of the prophet"; to his second he does not come. (g) The close is abrupt; one feels instinctively that something is amiss. Hence the work, as we have it, is obviously not complete.
Did he finish it, and is the conclusion lost?
The mistake into which Gregory I. fell in ascribing to Sozomen the commendation of Theodore of Mopsuestia, with which Theodoret really closes his history, led Baronius to maintain that we did not have the whole of Sozomen; and others have asserted the same for reasons which are indeed sufficient to prove that the history is unfinished, but not that anything is lost. That we have all that Sozomen wrote is more likely, because the Tripartite History at x. 24 makes the last use of Sozomen at viii. 25; it would surely have gone further in its dependence upon him had the later controversy been treated of, since he had been already a chief authority. Nicephorus Callistus, Historia Ecclesiastica, xiv. 8, gives the account of the finding of Zechariah in c. 9; the story of Stephen in c. 10; then the story of the forty martyrs. His source beyond is Socrates, until Evagrius takes up the thread of affairs. If Sozomen had written the more recent events parallel with Socrates, Nicephorus would undoubtedly have followed him as before. Of Theophanes, one cannot speak so confidently. Moreover, we cannot help asking, since we have Socrates, Theodoret, and Evagrius complete, why should Sozomen, who was so admired an author, have suffered any loss? Now, if we have Sozomen entire so far as he wrote, why did he stop where he did? There are no sufficient subjective reasons to be offered. It could scarcely have been in any unfavorable criticism of his prince, for the work seems to have been accepted by his imperial patron; and there was certainly nothing as objectionable in Sozomen, as in Socrates or in Olympiodorus. Nor is it likely that the unhappiness which invaded the court, the domestic jealousies, which rent its religious as well as connubial peace, or the quarrels over Cyrus or Paulinus or Chrysaphius, in any way restrained him; for he was beyond some, if not all of these agitations, at the time of his writing, and he had deliberately chosen to ignore such noble personages as Anthemius, Troïlus, Synesius, Aurelianus, and Eudocia, so that we can argue little from his silence, save his manifest jealousy for Pulcheria, and his hostility to certain more liberal tendencies developed under Eudocia. The Nestorian controversy would have been a choice field wherein to exalt the influence of Pulcheria, as he himself suggested. On the whole, one is constrained to believe that Sozomen died before he had completed the record which he had proposed to himself. He must have been nearing his seventieth year when thus suddenly arrested in his chosen study.
The Major uses made of his Work.
The major uses of him subsequently were by:
(a) Epiphanius Scholasticus, who made a translation into Latin, which Cassiodorus abbreviated, polished, and incorporated in the Historia Tripartita. [1057]
(b) The deacon Liberatus, in his Historia Nestorianorum, used the Tripartita.
(c) Theophanes, in his Chronographia.
(d) Theodorus Lector in his Historia Tripartita.
(e) Nicephorus Callistus, in his Historia Ecclesiastica incorporating Theodorus' Tripartita.
The Errors.
The errors are numerous, as already suggested by Possevin, on dogmatic grounds; Du Pin, and more recently by Harnack, for historic reasons. They are due to the lack of a systematic chronology, and the blind copying of his authority, especially Socrates, and occasionally to his attempts to correct the order given by his authority.
[1048] Otto, Corp. App. Vol. ix. (Migne, P. G. vi.).
[1049] See his epigrams in Anth. Gr.
[1050] Güldenpinning thinks there may be a suggestion of the fatal apple in Sozomen's praise of his sovereign's abstemiousness. I would like to agree, but cannot. Die Kirchengesch. des Theodoret von Kyrrhos, pp. 12, 13.
[1051] Heraclea Pontica of the maps.
[1052] Marcell. Am. Chron. s. d.; Chron. Pasch. s. d.; Novell. Theod. xxiii. 5, 21.
[1053] Myrobib. cod. XXX.
[1054] H. E. vii. 48.
[1055] Jeep: Quellenuntersuchungen zu den griechischen Kirchenhistorikern, pp. 137-147.
[1056] H. E. vii. 27.
[1057] See preface of that work.
Part III.--Bibliography.
A. Bibliography of Bibliography.
Gesner: Bibliotheca universalis. s.v. 1545.
Possevin: Appartus sacer. s.v. 1608.
Du Pin: Nouvelle bibl. d. Auteurs Eccles. Tom. iii. Pt. ii. 189-90. 1690.
Sluter: Propylæum Historiæ Christianæ, ix. 6, p. 45. 1696.
Ittig: De bibliothecis patrum apostol. s.v. 1699-1700.
Olearius: Bibliotheca scriptorum eccles. Tom. ii. s.v. 1711.
Fabricius: Bibliotheca Græc. Vol. vi. Lib. v. c. 4. xxxi. 1726.
Cave: Scriptorum Eccles. Hist. Literaria. p. 427. 1740.
Walch: Bibl. Theol. Tom. iii. p. 114. 1762.
De Bure: Bibliographie instructive. Nos. 4393-5. 1768.
Nodier: Bibliothéque sacrée gr.-lat. s.v. 1826.
Boose: Grundriss der Christ. Liter., § 230. 1828.
Clarke: Concise view of the succession of Sac. Lit. Vol. ii. p. 225. 1831.
Hoffmann, S.F.W.: Lexicon Bibliog. s.v. 1833-38.
Walch, J.G.: Biblioth. Patristica, ii. § 16. 2. ed. Danz. 1834.
Vossius (ed. Westermann): De Historicis Græcis, ii. 20. 1838.
Ceillier: Hist. Gen. des Auteurs Sacrés. Tom. viii. c. 39. 1858 sqq.
Alzog: Handb. d. Patrologie. 3d ed. 1876.
Nicolai: Griech. Literaturgesch. in neuer Bearbeitung. 1874-8.
Chevalier: Répertoire des sources hist. d. M.A. s.v. 1877 sqq.
Nirschl: Lehrbuch der Patrologie u Patristik. Vol. iii. c. 4, 235. 1881 sqq.
Harnack: Herzog R.E., Vol. xiv. s.v. 1884.
----: Encycl. Br., Vol. xxii. s.v. 1887.
Thuille: Patristisches Handbuch. 1888.
B. Texts.
I. Manuscripts.--It would indeed be a desirable work to have a uniform apparatus of the codices, not only of Sozomen, but of all the Greek Church historians. Admirable as is Heinchen's survey of Eusebian mss., it is neither uniform nor complete. No editor of Sozomen from Stephen down, has deemed it necessary to work up the detail even as well as Heinchen. Nolte evidently had the material in hand, but the labor remains to be done. The numbers and positions of many codices have been changed since the days of Valesius, Montfaucon, and Hænelius, and it is impossible to bring harmony out of the differences without direct inspection. It would seem as if no one had consulted some of those mentioned by Montfaucon; e.g. in the Inventarium mss. monasterii S. Petri Carnutensis, the title is given without number; Socratis, Sozomenis et Theodoreti historia Ecclesiastica, vol. in fol. notat P. sæculo ix. (ii. 1246); and the two described by Hænelius (a) Socratis, Sozomenis historia ecclesiastica memb. fol. exemp. vetus., at Chartres (Fasc. i. col. 130). (b) iv. 2, Hermiæ Sozomeni Salaminis, historicæ ecclesiasticæ lib. ix. (Fasc. iii. c. 93) in the Escorial.