The legend of Constantinus according to the mozarabic tradition

Abstract

Legends about the first Christian emperor, Constantine the Great, are preserved in various Mozarabic sources. The most important is, without any doubt, “Hurusiyus”, the interpolated Arabic version of Orosius’ Historiae adversus paganos, whose lacunous text is proposed to be completed in the German rendering of the present article, on the one hand, by means of comparison with the borrowings that both al-Maqrizi and Ibn Haldun made of this section, and, on the other hand, by the parallel version of the socalled Historia universal de Qayrawan. Hurusiyus’ claim that the material dealing with Constantine ultimately derives from the Church historian Eusebius of Cesarea can be explained from the Latin tradition: in a Martyrology of Silos dating from the second half ot the 10th century (now Paris, BnF mss. latins [nouvelles acquisitions] 2178-2180) both Actus Silvestri and Inventio Sanctae Crucis are linked to Eusebius’ name.