Church History (Historia Ecclesiastica)

than the hurried reader might desire. By writing out the passages in full, I have ensured as much as possible that the reader is not overly delayed by constant reference to other sources. It will, of course, not be entirely avoidable; in general, the introduction as a whole, and the sections concerning the Hss. manuscripts in particular, are intended only for those who are already familiar with the text of the KG Church History through multiple readings. Conversely, what was stated in the preliminary remarks provided with the first volume in 1902, which is immediately necessary for the use of the critical apparatus—beyond the list of Hss. provided on page 1—may be repeated here.

Orthographic matters have been excluded from the apparatus and are arranged in systematic order in Chapter VI of the introduction.

Furthermore, the collations in this edition are presented completely, so that conclusions ex silentio from silence are permissible for the Greek Hss.; however, in all passages important for the recensio critical revision, I have also noted the reading I adopted in the apparatus. I expressly request, once and for all, not to be misled by the often erroneous information in the apparatus of Burton, which Schwegler adopted; I have intentionally refrained from noting every time that Burton’s notes are incorrect, nor have I marked the places where, following all Hss., I have corrected an error that had been carried forward in the printed editions. For the translations and the indirect tradition, it goes without saying that no conclusions may be drawn from the silence of the apparatus.

In the excerpts, the task was to constitute the text that Eusebius handed over to his scribes for copying, even if this text was faulty, which is not infrequently the case. Where the originals are lost, I have drawn attention to corruptions in the apparatus; even without an explicit addition, those errors that Eusebius already encountered are always to be understood, not those that only arose in the transmission of the KG. If the original is preserved, I have noted the correct reading found there in the apparatus, as well as those variants that coincide with Hss. of the KG, but I have refrained from noting all deviations of the excerpts in the KG from the Hss. of the original. Regarding biblical passages, I have in principle refrained from listing variants of the biblical Hss. in the apparatus; the sparse citations in the KG are not sufficient to reconstruct the biblical text of Eusebius: that must be left to the editor of the Demonstratio evangelica Proof of the Gospel. To facilitate this task for them, I have endeavored to collect as completely as possible the passages where Eusebius cites the same Bible verses differently in his other writings, or appears to cite them according to the tradition; in doing so, I have left aside the fragments preserved in catenae chains of commentary.