Braga's Forgotten Son
Today, the most famous Portuguese historian is forgotten even in the town where he served as a priest.
He is probably the most famous historian you’ve never heard of. In his Paradiso, Dante describes him simply as “that pleader of Christian times, of whose Latin work Augustine availed himself” (Paradiso X, 119), without bothering to mention his name. Apparently, the great medieval poet assumed his readers would know who he was talking about. Today, however, few know Orosius’ name. Even fewer know that he was from Portugal.
Paulus Orosius was born around A.D. 380. Scholars do not agree on where. Some have suggested Tarragona, Spain or the French region of Brittany. The most common theory, however, is the Roman city of Bracara (now Braga) in northern Portugal. We know that Orosius entered the priesthood there in a century of decline. The Roman province of Hispania was afflicted by barbarian raids and the Roman Catholic Church by false teaching. In 414, Orosius sailed to North Africa, perhaps with a view to obtaining solace from both these afflictions, although the primary purpose of his voyage was to hone his theological understanding under the tutelage of the legendary Augustine of Hippo. In a letter to Jerome (another Christian leader later canonized as a saint, Augustine described the purpose of Orosius’ visit thus: “Behold, a religious young man has come to me, by name Orosius, who is in the bond of Catholic peace a brother, in point of age a son, and in honour a fellow presbyter,—a man of quick understanding, ready speech, and burning zeal, desiring to be in the Lord’s house a vessel rendering useful service in refuting those false and pernicious doctrines, through which the souls of men in Spain have suffered much more grievous wounds than have been inflicted on their bodies by the sword of barbarians. For from the remote western coast of Spain he has come with eager haste to us, having been prompted to do this by the report that from me he could learn whatever he wished on the subjects on which he desired information” (Letter CLXVI).
Apparently, Orosius impressed Augustine as a student. A year later, Augustine sent him to Jerusalem to debate his theological opponent, Pelagius, and convince church leaders there to condemn Pelagius’ teachings as heresy. Orosius failed to achieve this objective, but since Pelagius had to misrepresent his views to the synod to avoid condemnation, it wasn’t a total loss. “It was not heresy that was there acquitted,” Augustine notes, “but the man who denied the heresy.” Upon Orosius’ return to Hippo, Augustine gave him a new task. The great theologian had begun writing The City of God, a massive philosophy of history that sought to refute the belief, widely held at the time, that Christians were responsible for the fall of Rome to barbarian invaders since they had broken Rome’s ancient allegiance to pagan gods. Augustine was engaged in detailed historical research to help refute this view. He encouraged Orosius to research the subject himself so he could help him complete his great work.
Orosius went above and beyond his assignment. Instead of merely providing research notes to Augustine, he published his own work—Seven Books of History Against the Pagans. Stretching from the creation to Orosius’ day, the history synthesized information from secular and sacred sources into what was arguably the first world history (as opposed to the history of a particular people or event) ever written. Orosius’ book impressed readers in his time and went on to become one of the standard reference works of the Middle Ages. His central historical argument—that polytheistic worship had failed to save countless previous empires and thus Christians were not to blame for Rome’s demise, which was divinely ordained so that the Gospel might reach the barbarians—went virtually unchallenged until the Enlightenment, when Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire reopened the historical question.
In spite of the success of Orosius’ book, we know nothing about Orosius that he does not tell us. Braga’s excellent archaeological museum, the Museu D. Diogo Sousa, houses artifacts that Orosius himself might have recognized, but no statue or monument to him can be found anywhere in the city. This is especially curious since Braga has evolved over time into the religious heart of Portugal. Its cathedral dates to the time of Portugal’s first king in the 1000s and the magnificent Bom Jesus do Monte sanctuary attracts Catholic pilgrims from all over the world to a hilltop overlooking the city. Given that Orosius’ objective in writing his history was to convince his contemporaries not to re-paganize in response to the fall of Rome, Braga’s rich Christian heritage could be seen as being, in some sense, the fruit of Orosius’ labor. That makes the blank space in the memory of the city he served faithfully all the more conspicuous and bizarre.