Historiae Ecclesiasticae Tripartitae Epitome, the abridged history (in twelve books) of the early Christian Church known as the Tripartite History, was the standard manual of Church history in Medieval Europe. The work was compiled, under the direction of Cassiodorus, in about 510 CE, by his assistant Epiphanius Scholasticus. Epiphanius was assigned the translation into Latin of the Greek church histories of Socrates Scholasticus, Sozomen and Theodoret, written in the previous century. He would probably have used the library assembled by Cassiodorus at Monasterium Vivariense, the monastery of Vivarium on his family estates at the foot of Mount Moscius on the shores of the Ionian Sea. Cassiodorus revised and corrected the work and arranged it into one continuous history of the church. His scriptorium then published it for the use of the clergy. The book attained a high reputation. Only Eusebius' History, in a Latin translation by Rufinus competed with it as the official version of church history in the West, until original sources began to be rediscovered, edited and printed by humanist scholars in the 15th century.
