Philip Sidetes

EARLY FIFTH century. Historian. Native of Side in Pamphylia, he was ordained deacon in Constantinople by his friend John Chrysostom,* and was later three times unsuccessful in his candidacy for the patriarchate of Constantinople. Between 434 and 439 he wrote Christian History, in thirty-six books, treating world history from the Creation to about 426. The ecclesiastical historian Socrates (c.380-450) and later Photius have commented upon it, remarking unsympathetically about his Asiatic style, poor chronological order, and the mass of often unrelated information. Only fragments of the work remain and are valuable as a supplement to Eusebius. These deal with Papias* of Hierapolis, his alleged assertion that the Jews had martyred both John the Divine and James, and the Catechetical School of Alexandria. A refutation of Julian the Apostate's treatises against Christianity and other tracts are apparently no longer extant.