The Historia ecclesiastica of Eusebius took part in the cultural negotiations that attended the
turn to a post-Constantinian Christianity. The immediate success of Historia ecclesiastica
indicates its success in legitimizing the change process and in conferring upon the Christian
readers a past in keeping with their own situation. This book pinpoints the more or less
fragmented concepts of history and world implied in Historia ecclesiastica and investigates
what narrative(s) on the history of Christianity are contained in the work and how
Christianity and church are constructed as ideal entities. Differing from more conventional
readings where Historia ecclesiastica would be read as a more or less reliable document
concerning the history of early Christianity the book primarily reads the work as a text
pointing towards the cultural system which the text is itself a part of but to which our
access is only partial.
