Caesarea Maritima and the Ecclesiastical History

Lisa Johnson, “Caesarea Maritima and the Ecclesiastical History: Reading Eusebius in Geographical Context” (Ph.D. Dissertation, University of California, Santa Barbara, 2021).

Caesarea Maritima, an ancient city located along the eastern Mediterranean coast, has long been recognized for its role as an intellectual hub of early Christian study and as a city with political significance, both in the early years of Empire and further into late antiquity. In this city, Eusebius of Caesarea wrote the first History of the Church (History) during the late third- and early fourth-century CE. The History is, and has been since its inception, a central source for understanding how the Christian movement emerged within the Roman Empire.

The text’s importance for historians along with Eusebius’ varied roles in the religious and political world of the Roman East have, in a sense, divorced the text from its original context(s?). My dissertation analyzes textual and archaeological evidence through the use of digital tools in order to deepen our understanding of the immediate context for this influential, fourth-century CE, Christian history. Rather than studying the History through a literary lens, my dissertation re-visualizes the texts and the relationships therein through a process of mapping – first, by understanding the city itself and its position among trading cities on the Mediterranean Sea; as I engage with data sets and digital tools to create this method of understanding, it becomes clear how the narrative thread, style, and scope of the History played a role in the text’s reception and legacy.  Through this process I show that Eastern Mediterranean episcopal networks were critical components of the text’s composition. Further, I engage with the geographical scope of the text by using digital tools, (e.g. database design, GIS, and semantic annotation) to analyze textual elements and archaeological evidence together – enriching our understanding of the text in a way that incorporates its immediate, earth-bound context. In doing so, I demonstrate that episcopal networks of Eastern Mediterranean regions – sitting amid the crossroads of empire – were critical components of the text’s composition and, thus, narrative scope. 

My dissertation analyzes the last four books (occurring during the lifetime of Eusbius himself) of this influential, fourth-century CE, Christian text.[1]  By annotating books seven through ten of the History and visualizing the data through digital tools, I show that the universalizing rhetoric of the text was, in fact, geographically localized and masked the contingent nature of the text’s production. The first digital tool I employ is ORBIS, a project from Stanford to show how Caesarea Maritima participated in trade networks throughout the Mediterranean world. The three main ORBIS features I used to visualize these networks were the flow diagram (e.g. how goods and people flowed through the Mediterranean), the cartogram (visualizing geography via connection ease and frequency rather than spatiality), and cost (showing how costly travel would be, on average). The second digital tool in my work is Recogito, a partner of the Pelagios network. Via Recogito, I use a digitized version of the books and use semantic annotation (tagging or labeling a document with similar concents like location, person, idea, etc.) in order to identify and quantity the number of geographic locations and people referenced throughout the text. After building this data set, I depict these relationships and their GPS coordinates using both the Recogito platform, data made available by the Ancient World Mapping Center, and Esri ArcGIS. Finally, I am able to combine these data sets and visuals, combining ORBIS data with the inputs from Recogito, to understand the relationships annotated and the networks they build. 

Before my analysis of these books, however, I first contextualize the city of Caesarea Maritima by exploring its positionality within coastal and inland networks, relationships via trade and the early church. Through this process I emphasize the non-Roman historical influences on the city and argue that Caesarea’s strategic use as an administrative city and military base must inform our understanding of the city in the fourth-century CE. In developing this understanding, I make it clear that Caesarea was not (as is often assumed) a backwater city on the Roman periphery, but a diverse city that sat at a crossroads of empire. Not only was it a busy trading city, it was strategically important to the Roman (and likely Palmyrene) military forces. Moreover, its role as an administrative center deserves more attention in understanding how an increasingly organized institution, like the church, could take residence in the city and build a reputation for its scholars and its library. In addition to a view of the city itself, I offer a series of possibilities regarding the city’s experience of the various political and military crises within the third century. Studying the local ramifications of these broader imperial concerns points to further avenues for inquiry and nuance of our current assumptions about the city. Showing how the city’s role as a strategic hub played a role in providing the environment in and networks through which Eusebius could establish a well-respected library and school while building a good reputation for the scholarship being produced therein. 

After developing context for Caesarea, I then analyze the geographical components in books seven through ten of the History. These books narrate Christian history in order to convey two specific goals: 1) the apostolic line of succession from Jesus to circa 325 CE and 2) to record the hardships Christians experienced over roughly three centuries.[2]  Through data sets (largely presented through tables and maps) I argue that Eusebius’ idea of where the Roman and Christian worlds came together was a winnowing, localized region: the Roman East. By doing so, I frame the History as a work embedded in its Eastern Mediterranean context and join the ranks of scholars who argue not only for a more nuanced understanding of Eusebius and his work in context, but also those who work to show how canonical texts have long been used to reinforce power dynamics in the modern world.[3] 

I also use books seven through ten of the History to understand how Eusebius used geography to complement his own overarching goals for this particular composition. While the narrative becomes increasingly localized, the geographical locations connected to the actions of Christians become increasingly decontextualized. This process sheds light on how the geographical sensibility of the narrative reinforces the universalizing rhetoric, even when the locus of activity is concentrated in Eusebius’ backyard. 

Contextualizing the History is the first step in grappling with the work and its utterly contingent nature as a cultural product produced under the particular limitations and strengths of its author and his understanding not only of the Roman East but also his proposal for the future of his church. There are several avenues for future research: mapping networks from the eastern empire further east, exploring Palmyrene influence on Caesarea, examining the relationship between the archaeological work done at Caesarea Maritima and the nation building efforts of modern Israel and Palestine, and the reception of Eusebius’s reputation through the Western Roman empire. This list is not exhaustive, but serves as a complement to the research included here and parallels new developments in scholarship on Late Antiquity more broadly.

My research builds upon the broader network of digital scholarship dedicated to this region. Of critical important is the Inscriptions of Israel/Palestine Project, supported by Brown University’s Center for Digital Scholarship, which assembles previously published inscriptions of Palestine in order to make this area of research more accessible to scholars. Caesarea-Maritima: A Comprehensive Bibliography, supported by the Program in Classical and Mediterranean Studies at Vanderbilt University, lists all published texts on Caesarea since the 19th century. Finally, Caesarea Maritima: Excavations at the Promontory Palace, hosted by Cornell and the University of Pennsylvania Museum, offers an overview of archaeological work on site. 

The diverse approaches of these projects underscore the rich resources for studying Caesarea and its history as well as the potential for future digital-first studies of the ancient world. Reading the History within its geographical context facilitates a robust reading of this pivotal text in its material world—even when the text moves beyond its local materiality to discuss regions far afield. While the reception of the History plays a large role in its decontextualization, it also serves as a reminder that all texts, and especially those that are mined for information, once had a contingent, localized life of their own. By contextualizing the work, we can better approach the topic of appropriation (whether immediate or slowly over time) and the limits of how a textual artifact can illuminate the history of regions far removed from its original context. On the other hand, if we choose to ignore the utterly contingent character of the History and its own rich history of reception, we lose sight of the narrative’s competition, how it created a world for its readers and students, and the diversity of the Roman world in favor of a homogenous image of the Empire and Christian Church.

[1] I chose to focus on the final four books of the History to narrow the focus of the text to the narrative that overlaps Eusebius’ own lifetime. By doing this, I am able to visualize the networks he himself curated and utilized in order to develop a holistic view of the church in the late third- and early fourth-centuries. While the narrative within the opposite books are also contingent on early Christian networks, they are less indicative of Eusebius’ own.

[2] Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica, 1.1-2.

[3] For the foundational work on this area of study, see Nadia Abu El-Haj, Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in Israeli Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001.