History and Geography in the Work of Eusebius of Caesarea

This article is organized in three main parts: 1) Eusebius as sui generis historian and geographer; 2) the Ecclesiastical History more geographico; 3) the Onomasticon between exegesis and geographical description. Parts 1 and 2 focus on Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History within the framework of the universal Histories of imperial age. In his Chronici Canones and Ecclesiastical History, Eusebius intended to present a universal history, a concept implying a peculiar perception of the geographical space, if understood as a reinterpretation of the physical space in light of a new historical reality that constitutes its own permanent landmark places. The Ecclesiastical History tells the story of a “new people” who lives in a polycentric oikoumene but who looks at the East as the place where salvation came from. In this sense, the Ecclesiastical History is not different from the other universal Histories of imperial age, which were also written mainly by provincials with a Greek cultural background who, on the one hand, lessened the importance of Rome framing it within a universal picture, and on the other hand, identified in such a universal picture the possibility to value a provincial perspective. Part 3 focuses on the Onomasticon, a work dedicated to Palestine’s biblical places, enriched by historical, religious, biblical and geographical information. Using pre-existing documents, Eusebius depicted a sacred geography of the region, substituting the Greek-Roman imperial perception of it as a negligible “corner” of a world in which decisive events happened elsewhere