Orosius

Born around 375–385 in what's now Braga, Portugal, Orosius was a priest with enough standing to seek out the heavyweights: he travelled the Mediterranean to work with Augustine of Hippo and Jerome of Stridon. He didn't just talk theology — he co-wrote sections of Augustine's City of God. In 415 he was sent to Palestine to confer with intellectuals, sat in on a Church Council in Jerusalem, and carried back the relics of Saint Stephen. His Seven Books of History Against the Pagans, finished by 418, was a chronicle of pagan peoples from deep antiquity to his own day, written to show that pre-Chri…