Page "Evagrius Scholasticus" Paragraph 6

Some historians, particularly Pauline Allen, allege that Evagrius ’ s Chalcedonian theological stance directly influenced his selection of information, in order to defend Chalcedonian-aligned political agents against negative reputation.

Whitby, however, emphasizes the legal scholar ’ s acceptance and inclusion of information written by other historians who adopted opposing stances, when he discerned that their accounts were reliable.

For example, Evagrius Scholasticus relies heavily on Zachariah ’ s textual study of history even though he was a monophysite, occasionally omitting minor facets of his work that explicitly promote his theology, but largely considering him to be dependable.

Allen also reasons that Evagrius built on Zachariah ’ s work because his was the only comprehensive historical account of events taking place from Theodoret of Cyrus ’ s time till his own era.

Unfortunately, however, Zachariah ’ s original manuscripts have been lost.