Paulus Orosius

Description

Paulus Orosius
Kolbe’s Greatest Books Volume 31

Paulus Orosius (375-418) was born in the Roman province of Hispania Gallaecia, in Northern Portugal-Spain. He won renown an historian and correspondent to Saint Augustine of Hippo and of Saint Jerome whom he met in Jerusalem.

Orosius’ research on the pagans was an integral contribution to St. Augustine’s City of God.  His Seven Books of History Against the Pagans, completed in 418 shotly after the sack of Rome by Alaric, won him renown as an historiographer. He composed these books in response to request for detailed research about the history of the pagans that could support his own research and conclusions about the down fall of Rome, which he attributed to the perverse religious practices of the pagans.

Orosius provided Augustine, and he provides all of us, with detailed and accurate information about the pagan peoples from antiquity up to the fourth century in which they lived. Like Augustine, he intended to demonstrate the great improvement in moral, social, political, economic and overall human well-being that the Christian brought to  people steeped in the darkness of paganism.