Epitome from the Historia Tripartita of Theodore Anagnostes – A Few Remarks

Historia Tripartita of Theodore Anagnostes was the first attempt to create a complete history of the Church from the reign of emperor Constantine to the reign of Theodosius II. For this purpose, Theodore put together information included in the three Church Histories by Sozomen, Socrates Scholasticus and Theodoret of Cyrus. From the parallel narratives of these three authors, it was Theodore’s intention to select the most straightforward and pertinent accounts, while also taking into consideration all the unique items of information each of them might contain. It should also be noted that Theodore is very creative in compiling the texts. He often changes or modifies the texts of the compiled Histories, supplementing them with explanations or additional information. Historia Tripartita of Theodore has only been preserved fragmentarily. Its two first books can be found in the unpublished manuscript Codex Marcianus Graecus 344, dating from the turn of the thirteenth century and stored in Venice. The original text of the second part of Theodore’s work has not preserved to our times, only the summary-Epitome. There is very little information on the epitomator himself. Apart from some speculative suggestions that could be formulated on the basis of his own annotations to the text of the Epitome, we have virtually no biographical information on him. His composition can be dated to the years 610-615. In turn, the works from which he had drawn to make his extracts include the church histories by Eusebius of Caesarea, Gelasius of Caesarea, Philip of Side, John Diakrinomenos, and Th. Anagnostes. In particular, this part of the Epitome, which deals with the first two books of the Historia Tripartita, provides excellent material to demonstrate how the epitomator, who certainly - as previous studies have shown - did not passively transcribe a found text, worked.