History of the Christian Church & Ecclesiastical History

"History of the Christian Church" is an eight volume account of Christian history written by Philip Schaff. In this great work Schaff covers the history of Christianity from the time of the apostles to the Reformation period.

"Ecclesiastical History" of Eusebius, the bishop of Caesarea, was a 4th-century pioneer work giving a chronological account of the development of Early Christianity from the 1st century to the 4th century. The result was the first full-length historical narrative written from a Christian point of view. It was written in Koine Greek, and survives also in Latin, Syriac and Armenian manuscripts.



Philip Schaff (1819-1893) was a Swiss-born, German-educated Protestant theologian and ecclesiastical historian who spent most of his adult life living and teaching in the United States. Schaff's broad views strongly influenced the German Reformed Church, through his teaching at Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, through his championship of English in German Reformed churches and schools in America, by his edition of the Heidelberg Catechism, and much more. His History of the Christian Church opened a new period in American study of ecclesiastical history.

Eusebius of Caesarea (AD 260/265 – 339/340) was a historian of Christianity, exegete, and Christian polemicist. He became the bishop of Caesarea Maritima about 314 AD. Together with Pamphilus, he was a scholar of the Biblical canon and is regarded as an extremely learned Christian of his time. As "Father of Church History" he produced the Ecclesiastical History, On the Life of Pamphilus, and the Chronicle and On the Martyrs.