*Eusebius, Vita Constantini and Contra Marcellum Ancyranum.
*Athanasius, especially De Incarnatione Verbi Dei, De Decretis Synodi Nicænæ, Orationes contra Arianos, De Synodis, Ad Antiochenos, Ad Afros. Convenient editions of most of these by Professor Bright of Oxford. [Translations of *De Incarnatione (Bindley in Christian Classics Series) and of the Orationes and most of the historical works, Newman in Oxford Library of the Fathers.]
Hilary, especially De Synodis. Cyril's Catecheses [translation in Oxford Library of the Fathers]. Basil, especially Letters. Gregory of Nazianzus, especially Orationes iv. and v. (against Julian). Of minor writers, Phœbadius and Sulpicius Severus (for Council of Ariminum). Fragments of Marcellus, collected by Rettberg (Göttingen, 1794). [German translations of most of these in Thalhofer's Bibliothek der Kirchenväter. English may be hoped for in Schaff's Select Library of the Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers (vol. i. Buffalo, 1886) in 25 vols.]
Heathen writers:—Zosimus (bitterly prejudiced); Ammianus Marcellinus for 353-378 (cool and impartial); Julian, especially Cæsares, Fragmentum Epistolæ, and Epp. 7, 25, 26, 42, 43, 49, 52.
(B.) Modern Writers.
1. For general reference:—
Gibbon's Decline and Fall (prejudiced against the Christian Empire, but narrative still unrivalled); Schiller Geschichte der römischen Kaiserzeit, Bd. ii. (church matters a weak point); Ranke, Weltgeschichte, Bd. iii. iv.
General Church Histories of Neander [translation in Bohn's Standard Library]; Kurtz (zehnte Aufl., 1887); Fisher (New York, 1887); also Hefele, History of the Church Councils [translation published by T. & T. Clark].
Articles in Dictionary of Christian Biography (especially those by Lightfoot, Reynolds, and Wordsworth), and in Herzog's Realencyclopädie (especially Mönchtum by Weingarten).
Weingarten's Zeittafeln z. Kirchengeschichte (3 Aufl. 1888).