Rufinus’s Historia Ecclesiastica And The Myth Of A Lost Eusebian Book X

 Let’s start with what Rufinus actually says.

In his Latin preface to the Historia Ecclesiastica (addressed to Chromatius of Aquileia), Rufinus tells you exactly how he handled Eusebius – and it’s the opposite of the fantasy that he’s secretly translating some lost, fuller Greek Book X.

Here’s the key move:

Rufinus admits that Eusebius wrote ten books. But he says the Greek Book X, as he had it, was basically useless for “history” because it was stuffed with episcopal panegyrics.

His words:

Sciendum sane est, quod decimus liber huius operis in Graeco … per Episcoporum panegyricis tractatibus, nihil ad scientiam rerum conferentibus occupatus, omissis quae videbantur superflua…

“It should be known that the tenth book of this work, in the Greek, is taken up with panegyrics of bishops, which contribute nothing to the knowledge of facts, and I omitted what seemed superfluous.”

So: for Rufinus, Greek Book X is not a treasure-trove of lost post-Nicene history. It’s a speech night for bishops.

Then he says:

… historiae si quid habuit, nono coniunximus libro…

“…whatever in it belonged to genuine history, we joined to the ninth book…”

In other words: the historical crumbs from Eusebius’s Greek Book X get pushed back into his Latin Book IX. At that point, as far as Rufinus is concerned, Eusebius’s narrative is done.

And this is where Rufinus makes his big claim.

He openly announces that he himself wrote the next two books:

Decimum vero et undecimum librum nos conscripsimus, partim ex maiorum traditionibus, partim ex his quae nostra iam memoria comprehenderat; et eos velut duos pisciculos supra scriptis panibus addidimus.

“Truly we have composed the tenth and the eleventh book, partly from the traditions of our forebears, partly from what our own memory has already gathered; and we have added them as it were two little fishes on top of the loaves written above.”

Three important points here:

1. “Nos conscripsimus” – “we wrote them.” He takes full credit for Books 10 and 11. No talk of “translating Eusebius’s lost continuation.”

2. His sources are traditiones maiorum (traditions of the elders) and nostra memoria (what his own lifetime has collected).

3. He uses the “two little fishes” image to underscore that his work is an addition laid on top of the Eusebian “loaves.”

Later, at the end of his Latin Book IX, he says the same thing again in different words: Eusebius ends here; from now on I’ll add what I find in recent writers and what I know myself.

So structurally, Rufinus’s project looks like this:

– Books 1–9: Latin Eusebius, with Greek Book X’s historical scraps folded into Book 9.
– Books 10–11: not Eusebius. Rufinus’s own continuation, compositionally separate, taking the story from Constantine/Nicaea down to Theodosius.

There is no place in this architecture for a hidden Greek “Book 10” of Eusebius full of juicy post-Nicene material that Rufinus supposedly translated and concealed.

If such a book existed, this is the worst possible way to treat it. You don’t say, “the Greek tenth book is mostly panegyrics, I chopped out the superfluous stuff, grabbed the historical crumbs for Book 9, and then I wrote Books 10–11 myself.” That’s not how you describe a faithful translation of a lost Eusebian continuation. That’s how you describe cutting Eusebius off at the knees and building your own extension.

And this is exactly how the Latin text behaves.

Rufinus’s Books 10–11 read like a fourth-century Latin churchman’s history. They are full of Rufinus’s themes, Rufinus’s polemical choices, Rufinus’s theological spin. There are obvious resonances with other writers (including Jerome’s chronology and various Greek and Latin sources), but nowhere do you get the feeling “this is clearly Eusebius speaking.”

The one genuinely interesting “lost Greek” factor in all this is not Eusebius but Gelasius of Caesarea.

We know (from Socrates and others) that Gelasius, nephew of Cyril of Jerusalem and later bishop of Caesarea, wrote a church history in Greek that continued Eusebius for the post-Nicene period. That work is now lost, surviving only in fragments and echoes. Unsurprisingly, some scholars have wondered whether Rufinus knew Gelasius and quietly plundered him for his own continuation. Others have flipped it around and proposed that Gelasius might even have translated Rufinus back into Greek.

The point is: when modern scholarship talks about a “lost Greek continuation,” it’s talking about Gelasius, not about some mythical Eusebian Book X that Rufinus is hiding.

Rufinus himself doesn’t help the Eusebian-myth crowd at all. He:

– Declares that Eusebius wrote ten books.
– Dismisses the Greek tenth as mostly panegyric fluff.
– Cannibalizes its historical bits into Latin Book 9.
– Then very loudly says, “I wrote Books 10 and 11 myself.”

No manuscript, no patristic neighbor, no late antique gossip ever says, “By the way, there was another, longer Greek tenth book by Eusebius covering everything after Nicaea, and Rufinus translated it.” That idea is a modern projection.

Once you actually read Rufinus’s own preface, the picture is boringly clear:

– Eusebius’s Historia Ecclesiastica “ends” (for Rufinus) with the events around Nicaea.
– The Greek Book X is structurally real but narratively thin – a kind of victory-lap of episcopal panegyrics.
– Rufinus cuts that off, tops up his Book 9 with whatever little bits of “real history” he can salvage, and then starts over in his own voice for Books 10–11.

The only “lost book” that might really be lurking behind his continuation is Gelasius’s history, and even there the evidence is fragmentary and debated. There is nothing in Rufinus’s own text, or in the patristic tradition, that suggests a hidden Eusebian source running under his Latin Books 10–11.

Rufinus tells you what he did. We just have to take him at his word:

Decimum vero et undecimum librum nos conscripsimus…
“We wrote the tenth and the eleventh book.”

Everything else is wishful thinking.