The Golden Thread

The Man Who Decided What We Would Remember


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In 303 CE, Roman soldiers moved through the streets of Caesarea burning Christian scriptures on imperial orders. A young scholar named Eusebius watched the fire and made a decision that would shape the next seventeen centuries: he would remember everything. Eusebius of Caesarea invented ecclesiastical history as a genre, preserved voices that would otherwise be entirely lost, and built the narrative spine that allowed early Christianity to survive its own trauma. But he also wrote under the shadow of Emperor Constantine, and the story he told was never quite as tidy as he made it appear. Harmonia reflects on the nature of faithful witness --- and why the phone in your pocket makes you a more powerful historian than Eusebius ever was.

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The Golden ThreadBy Adam Bauer