TY - BOOK AU - Hilary, AU - Smulders,Pieter Frans TI - Hilary of Poitiers' preface to his Opus historicum: translation and commentary T2 - Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae, SN - 9789004312968 AV - BT1350 .H5513 1995 U1 - 270.2 20 PY - 1995/// CY - Leiden, New York PB - E.J. Brill KW - Hilary, KW - Arianism KW - History KW - Church history KW - Primitive and early church, ca. 30-600 KW - fast KW - Primitive and early church N1 - Includes bibliographical references (p. 157-162) and indexes; Preliminary material -- INTRODUCTION -- TEXT -- NOTES ON THE TEXT -- COMMENTARY I -- COMMENTARY II -- COMMENTARY III -- COMMENTARY IV -- EXCURSUS I -- EXCURSUS II -- EXCURSUS III -- EXCURSUS IV -- EXCURSUS V -- CONCLUSIONS -- BIBLIOGRAPHY -- INDICES; Available to subscribing member institutions only N2 - What precisely does Hilary's so-called Opus Historicum aim at? His Preface provides the clue. An introduction to the present edition sketches the mutilated work's discovery, tabulates its contents, and discusses problems of dating and authenticity. The English translation, which faces the Latin text, adopts some alternative readings. The Preface is elucidated in itself, and by reference to the earlier In Matthaeum . Central issues are hope and love, confessors and martyrs, imperial favours and threats, the bishop and his inner freedom. The circumspect treatment of both the reader and the subject reveals 'conscientization' of the bishops as the aim of the Opus Historicum . One of the book's excurses deals with the edict of Arles and Milan, and concludes that the nameless creed quoted by Hilary might preserve the lost edict's doctrinal preliminaries UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/9789004312968 ER -