Eusebius Rediscovered in Early Modernity: Renaissance, Reformation, and the Republic of Letters

In February 1424, the Camaldolese monk, theologian, and humanist scholar Ambrogio Traversari wrote to his fellow Florentine humanist Niccolò de’ Niccoli and explained why he had been out of touch. For the past ten days, he said, he had been immersed in reading Eusebius of Caesarea’s Ecclesiastical History: It is hardly possible to believe how struck I have been with this work. Though I had seen it previously in Latin it brought less pleasure to me than now when I have read it in the original language. In many places the author appears to have followed the Arian heresy, but