Orosius

• an ecclesiastic of Tarragona, in Spain, who flourished A. D. 500; he wrote, by the advice of St. Augustine, and to confute the pagans, a history from the beginning of the world to his own times: Historiarum libri VII. adversus Paganos.

Paulus. A Spanish presbyter in Lusitania who, about A.D. 417, and at the wish of St. Augustine, whom he had sought out in Africa, composed a history against the heathen (Historiae contra Paganos) in seven books, the first attempt at a Christian universal history, from Adam to the year A.D. 417. The theory of his work is that the whole history of mankind is directed by the one God who created them, and it aims at refuting the charges brought against Christianity by showing that it was not to Christianity and the abolition of the heathen religion that the calamities of the time were due, but that such calamities had always existed, and to a still greater degree before Christian times. His chief authority is Justin, besides whom he mainly used Livy , Tacitus, Suetonius, and Eutropius. His view of the four kingdoms of the world—Babylon, Macedon, Carthage, and Rome—prevailed throughout the whole of the Middle Ages; and Alfred the Great caused it to be translated into Anglo-Saxon. The history is edited by Zangemeister (Vienna, 1882), with a commentary; and translated into English by Sweet (1883). See Méjean, Orose et son Apologétique (Strassburg, 1862). Besides the Historiae, Orosius also wrote two polemical treatises against the theology of the Pelagians and Priscillianists.