Socrates, Scholasticus

Socrates, Scholasticus, an ecclesiastical historian, was born at Constantinople towards the end of the 5th century. He studied grammar and rhetoric under Ammonius and Helladius, of Alexandria, and afterwards followed the profession of advocate or scholastic. He appears, however, to have abandoned this profession in order wholly to devote himself to the study of ecclesiastical history. In the latter part of his life he undertook to write the history of the Church, beginning at 309, where Eusebius ends, and continued it down to 440, in seven books. He is generally considered the most exact and judicious of, the three continuators of the history of Eusebius, being less florid in his style and more careful in his statements than Sozomen, and less credulous than Theodoret. "His impartiality is so strikingly displayed," says Waddington, "as to make his orthodoxy questionable to Baronius, the celebrated Roman Catholic historian; but Valesius, in his life, has shown that there is no reason for such suspicion. He is generally suspected of being a Novatian, though he shows but little knowledge upon the subject, and confounds Novatian, a priest at Rome, with Novatus of Africa." His history has been abridged by Epiphanius, the scholastic, in his Historia Tripartita, and was published for the first time as a continuation of Eusebius by Robert Stephens (Paris, 1544, fol.). There was an edition with notes, published by Reading (Lond. 1720, 3 vols. fol.), and an English edition (Cambridge, 1683, fol.). There is a good French translation of it by the president Cousin. See Smith, Dict. of Gr. and Rom. Biog. s.v.