Theodore Lector (the Reader)

Theodore Lector (The Reader)

a Church historian in the East, was reader in the Constantinopolitan Church in or about the year 525. He furnished an abstract of the history from the twentieth year of Constantine to the accession of Julian, taken from the works of Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret, which is known under the name Historia Tripartita, and is still extant in manuscript form. Valesius published so much of its contents as was found to vary from Theodore's sources. A second and more important work begins an independent record at the point where the history of Socrates ends, and carries it forward to the year 439. Neither of these works can be regarded as a completed whole, and between them is an untouched space of seventy years. The latter history, which was contained in two books, has been lost; but extended fragments have been preserved in John of Damascus, Nilus, and especially Nicephorus Gallistus, and published by Robert Stephens and Valesius. These remains show that the histories of Theodore contained mulch important matter. in relation to politics and the progress of the Church. Comp. the literary notices in Cave, Fabricius. Hamberger, and Staudlin-Hemsen, Gesch. u. Lit. d. Kirchengesch. p. 76. Editions: Stephanus, Ε᾿κ τῆς ἐκκλησιαστικῆς ἱστορίας θεοδώρου ἀναγνώστου ἐκλογαί, cum Eusebio (Par. 1544); Reading, Excerpta ex Eccl. Hist. Theod. Lect. et Fragmenta alia H. Valesio Interpr. cum Theod. Historia (Cantabr. 1720). —Herzog, Real-Encyklop. s.v.