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Stuart G. Hall, Socrate de Constantinople: Histoire ecclésiastique. Livres II et III. Translated by Pierre Périchon, SJ and Pierre Maraval. Pp. 366. (Sources Chrétiennes, 493.) Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 2005. isbn 2 204 07866 2. Paper €30, The Journal of Theological Studies, Volume 57, Issue 1, April 2006, Pages 328–329, https://doi.org/10.1093/jts/flj063
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With commendable speed the second volume of Socrates, containing books 2 and 3, follows on the first, reviewed in JTS, ns 56 (2005), pp. 687–8. The principles and high quality are the same in this volume as in the first. Socrates devotes the longer book 2 to the reign of Constantius, and 3 to Julian and Jovian. By following Athanasius closely he fixed the terminology which saw all ecclesiastical opposition to Athanasius as an Arian conspiracy, a view which has largely prevailed from Socrates’ immediate followers, Sozomen and Theodoret, until the late twentieth century. This is duly observed in the short introduction and the notes. I have only one caveat: if Socrates was, as Maraval holds, a Novatianist, might not that suggest that the Nicene position, consistently held from the start, had some claim to antiquity, and was not created by Arius’ critics? The not infrequent blunders, confusions, and anachronisms which the historian falls into are duly pointed out by Maraval. Socrates depended to some extent on documents derived from the lost collection of synodical creeds made by the homoeousian Sabinus, some otherwise unknown to us. Unfortunately his attitude to Macedonius is so hostile that Socrates is unfair to the homoeousians generally. He also has unique material on Julian, and an entertaining polemical digression to contest Libanius' praise of the Apostate. As in the first volume, the French version is apparently very good, and the annotations are wide-ranging and instructive. Scholars should accept the whole with praise and gratitude, even if I now add a few complaints and queries of detail.
