Chapter 3 considers Eusebius’ consistent privileging of the intellectual and literary in Christian leaders. These qualities are not celebrated in isolation, the chapter suggests, but only in so far as they have a concrete positive effect on others, via pastoral and anti-heretical activities. Simultaneously, Eusebius was wary of the independent authority that intellectual excellence could bring, since his goal was ultimately to celebrate the orthodox, institutional church and its denizens. That meant not simply highlighting the intellectual and literary qualities of official clerics, but either suppressing or appropriating Christianity’s tradition of independent and eclectic teaching. In this, Eusebius was wading into an ongoing debate among early Christians over the basis of legitimate authority for Christian leaders. He was also responding to elite Graeco-Roman prejudices about Christian status and education, since this picture of an intellectualised Christianity effectively countered the stereotype of Christianity as a religion that was born in the gutter and evangelised only the foolish, young, and gullible, and established it instead as an elite intellectual movement alongside comparable groups that had flourished under the Roman Empire. This, Chapter 3 argues, was the first aspect of Eusebius’ new vision of Christianity and its place in the Empire.