Eusebius, “High Priests,” and Why Alexander’s Title Smells Like Photius

 Every so often a single Greek word gives the whole game away.

In the debate over Philostorgius’ report about “the high priest of this city, Alexander,” people keep treating the phrase almost as if it were a neutral bit of fourth-century terminology, something Eusebius himself might have written. But if you actually sit down with Eusebius’ Greek, especially in the Laus Constantini (In Praise of Constantine), the picture is very different. For Eusebius, ἀρχιερεύς is a heavily marked word, and it is not a mundane episcopal title.

It belongs to Christ.

Christ as “the great high priest” in Eusebius

In Laus Constantini 1.6 Eusebius introduces the Logos in explicitly priestly terms:

ὁ προὼν αὐτοῦ μονογενὴς λόγος, ὁ δὴ μέγας ἀρχιερεὺς τοῦ μεγάλου θεοῦ, παντὸς χρόνου καὶ πάντων αἰώνων πρεσβύτατος…

“His pre-existent Only-begotten Logos, the great high priest of the great God, elder of all time and of all the ages…”

Here the referent is absolutely clear. The “great high priest” is not an emperor and not a bishop. It is the pre-existent Logos, Christ himself, in a very high, cosmic register.

Later, at 15.13, the same pattern recurs:

…οὗτος δὲ ὁ μέγας ἀρχιερεύς ὁ τῷ πανηγεμόνι καὶ παμβασιλεῖ θεῷ ἱερωμένος, ἕτερος ὢν παρὰ τὸ ἱερεῖον, θεοῦ λόγος, θεοῦ δύναμις καὶ θεοῦ σοφία…

“This great high priest, consecrated to the all-ruler and all-king God, being other than the sacrificial victim, [is] the Word of God, the Power of God and the Wisdom of God…”

Again, the “great high priest” is explicitly identified as θεοῦ λόγος, θεοῦ δύναμις, θεοῦ σοφία. Eusebius is doing christology, not episcopal etiquette. The high priesthood here is part of his metaphysical map: the Logos as the priestly mediator who stands between the unbegotten Father and the created order.

What you do not find in Eusebius is anything like, “the high priest of Caesarea,” “the high priest of Alexandria,” or “the high priest of Constantinople,” used as a routine honorific for a bishop. Bishops in the Historia Ecclesiastica and Vita Constantini are ἐπίσκοποι, ἄνδρες θεῖοι, μάρτυρες, διδάσκαλοι. Their office is certainly sacral, but ἀρχιερεύς is not their job-title.

That’s important, because it means any text that throws ἀρχιερεύς around as a generic label for bishops is already standing at some distance from Eusebius’ own diction.

Philostorgius and Photius: “high priests of God” everywhere

Now put beside that the language of the Epitome of Philostorgius, our Arian historian whose work survives only in the ninth-century summary by Photius.

At Nicaea (1.8), the epitome says:

ἐν ᾗ μετὰ τῶν ἄλλων ἀρχιερέων θεοῦ καὶ Βασιλέα τὸν Ἀμασείας ἐπίσκοπον παρεῖναι…

“In which [council] together with the other high priests of God there was present also Basil, bishop of Amaseia…”

Here “the other high priests of God” are simply the bishops gathered at Nicaea. ἀρχιερεῖς θεοῦ is a solemn collective for the episcopate.

The same elevated register appears in a martyr story:

…τὸν δέ γε τοῦ θεοῦ ἀρχιερέα κατὰ τὰ προπύλαια στάντα τοῦ νεώ…

“[they seized] the high priest of God as he stood at the entrance of the temple…”

Again, “the high priest of God” here is the local bishop, not Christ.

When Akakios is busy refilling vacant sees, the epitome says he “sets up high priests in the widowed churches” (ταῖς χηρευούσαις ἐκκλησίαις ἀρχιερεῖς καθίστη). Once more, ἀρχιερεύς = bishop.

Against that background, the famous line about Alexander suddenly looks very different:

τελευτήσαντος δὲ τοῦ ταύτης τῆς πόλεως ἀρχιερέως Ἀλεξάνδρου, τὸν Νικομηδείας… εἰς τὸν τῆς νεοκτίστου πόλεως ἀρχιερατικὸν θρόνον μεταστῆσαι.

“On the death of the high priest of this city, Alexander, [they contrived] to transfer the bishop of Nicomedia to the arch-priestly throne of the newly founded city…”

Here “the high priest of this city” is the bishop of Constantinople, and Constantinople has an “arch-priestly throne.” That is exactly the same Philostorgian/Photian idiom we have just seen at Nicaea and in the martyr narrative: “high priest of God,” “high priest of this city,” “arch-priestly throne” as elevated ways of talking about bishops and bishoprics.

For Philostorgius as epitomized by Photius, in other words, ἀρχιερεύς is the fancy way to say “bishop,” especially when you want to underline sacral authority. It is not a unique pope-style title for Constantinople, and it is certainly not a technical Constantinian term that Eusebius himself uses.

So whose voice are we hearing?

Once you see this contrast, the Alexandrian / Constantinopolitan Alexander problem looks different. The epitome’s phrase τελευτήσαντος δὲ τοῦ ταύτης τῆς πόλεως ἀρχιερέως Ἀλεξάνδρου is almost certainly not “Eusebian” language carried over; it is Philostorgius’ or Photius’ own way of dressing up the story in their contemporary ecclesiastical idiom.

That has two consequences.

First, we should not build any historical argument on the assumption that Eusebius, in the early fourth century, was calling Alexander “the high priest of this city.” In Eusebius’ own surviving works that phraseology simply does not exist for bishops. When he says “great high priest,” he means Christ.

Second, the way the epitome talks about Alexander fits the general pattern of ninth-century Constantinople much better than it fits Eusebius. Photius himself is patriarch of Constantinople. In his rhetorical world, the great sees (and especially his own) have “high priests” and “arch-priestly thrones.” It would be entirely natural for him, retelling an Arian historian’s story three centuries later, to say “the high priest of this city, Alexander,” and “the arch-priestly throne of the new city,” without that wording ever having stood in Eusebius’ text.

If that is right, then the “arch priest” language in Philostorgius tells us more about how Photius thought a Constantinopolitan bishop should be spoken of than about what Eusebius or even early fourth-century Arian circles actually called Alexander.

One Alexander or two? Re-reading the epitome

This observation also makes the “two Alexanders” problem in Philostorgius less intractable.

In the epitome as we have it, we seem to get:

1. “The high priest of this city, Alexander” tied to Constantinople, and then

2. A switch to “Alexander of Alexandria” when the narrative shifts to events in Egypt.

On a naïve reading that gives you two different Alexanders: one bishop of Constantinople, one bishop of Alexandria.

But if you keep in mind the rhetorical habits on display, another possibility opens up. What we actually see is Photius shifting narrative frames and adjusting labels on the fly. First the frame is Constantinople, so Alexander is “the high priest of this city.” Then the frame moves to Egypt; the same name needs to be geographically qualified, so we get “Alexander of Alexandria.” The added genitive can just be Photius’ way of orienting his readers in a crowded fourth-century name-field, not a proof that he is thinking of two distinct men.

None of this can be proved with absolute certainty. What we can say is that the diction “high priest of this city” fits Philostorgius-as-epitomized-by-Photius, and does not fit Eusebius. The only author in play who certainly uses ἀρχιερεύς for bishops is Philostorgius/Photius. The only author in play who certainly reserves ἀρχιερεύς for the Logos is Eusebius.

So if someone wants to argue that “arch priest” was the original papal-style title of the bishop of Constantinople, they are going to have to explain why the one contemporary source we actually have that loves to call bishops “high priests” is a fifth-century Arian whose work survives only in a ninth-century Constantinopolitan epitome—not Eusebius.

Christ, bishops, and the drift of titles

The bigger takeaway, for me, is how this little exercise sketches the drift of Christian language over five centuries.

In Eusebius, ἀρχιερεύς is christological, almost metaphysical. It belongs to the Logos, the cosmic mediator and “great high priest of the great God.” Bishops are important, but their technical vocabulary is still relatively sober: ἐπίσκοπος, πρεσβύτερος, διάκονος.

By the time we reach Philostorgius (through Photius), the hierarchy has absorbed some of that high language. Bishops are now “high priests of God,” their sees have “arch-priestly thrones,” and the man who sits on the throne of Constantinople is “the high priest of this city.” The language that once marked Christ’s unique priesthood has been partially redistributed to the human hierarchy, at least rhetorically.

That is why it is so dangerous to read the epitome’s terminology straight back into the early fourth century, and still more dangerous to attribute it to Eusebius. The words have moved. The titles have inflated. Photius’ Constantinople is not Eusebius’ Caesarea.

If you let Eusebius speak in his own idiom, the contrast is sharp. When he says “great high priest,” he is not thinking of Alexander, or Chrysostom, or any bishop at all. He is thinking of the Logos, the one whose priesthood is the template that all later Christian “priesthoods” imitate in miniature. And once you grasp that, the “arch priest Alexander” of Philostorgius looks exactly like what it is: a later narrator’s pious and imperial rhetoric, not a window into Eusebius’ vocabulary or into a lost Constantinian “papal” title for the bishop of Constantinople.