Church History (Historia Ecclesiastica)

Regarding the Capitulatio table of contents/chapter headings, to which I have restored its place before the individual books according to the tradition, see Chapter IV of the introduction; the Greek numerals in the margin are taken from the Hss., for which the apparatus provides an account; the Arabic numerals designate the chapters and paragraphs of the Schwegler edition.

So that those preliminary remarks from the year 1902 can be omitted entirely, I add the words that Th. Mommsen placed before the first volume at that time:

"Rufinus's Latin translation of Eusebius's Church History has, aside from the two books added by Rufinus, no independent value alongside the preserved original, and it is also not of particular importance for its criticism. But for the use of the important work in Western literature, it is of such significance that, given the total lack of a critically founded edition, its attachment to the original work seemed expedient.

The Capitulatio of the tradition is ancient and frequently follows the Eusebian one where the translator has permitted himself rearrangements in the text. The numerals placed before the chapters are not ancient, but were arranged in each manuscript by the scribe at his own discretion, taking the preceding Capitulatio into account; it therefore seemed expedient to retain the current ones of the Cacciari edition in the margin.

The little else that is to be remarked remains reserved for the final volume."

The introduction to which Mommsen refers is printed verbatim below, according to the manuscript he handed to me at the time.

The user who is not trained in chronology cannot do anything with the dates in the KG without guidance. If a date could be easily converted into the Christian era, I have noted it in the margin; since the chronological years and those of the Seleucid era run from autumn to autumn, and those of the era of persecution from spring to spring, double years were unavoidable. But these cases are rare; the frequent information in imperial years cannot be easily expressed in the year figures of our era without risk of error. To illustrate the system of lists upon which the chronology of the KG is built, I have had these lists printed in a concise form, with the additions necessary for understanding; they are intended at the same time to explain Chapter VII of the introduction.