Chronicle (Sacred History)
A short history of the world from creation to the author’s day by a Christian writer of Aquitaine. Its closing chapters give a western and Gallic account of the Arian controversy, the council of Ariminum and the affair of Priscillian.
Read the text at newadvent.org ↗Book 2, from the exile to the author’s own time ↗
Sulpicius Severus was a Christian writer of Aquitaine, the author also of a Life of Martin of Tours. His Chronicle retells the history of the Old Testament and carries the story on through the persecutions to his own time. He reckons his chronology down to the consulship of Stilicho (2.9, 2.27).
For the councils of 359 he writes about forty years after the events and from Gaul. He names an informant, his bishop Gavidius, for one detail (2.41), and his interest is in the Gallic and British bishops and in Hilary of Poitiers, whom he credits with freeing Gaul from heresy (2.45). He is a firm partisan of the Nicene side and calls its opponents Arians throughout. His account of what happened at Ariminum after the envoys returned is fuller than that of Athanasius, whose main narrative was written before the council had ended.
Cited in
- AD 359 to AD 360, firm date