Baus, Karl. From the Apostolic Community to Constantine // History of the Church. Ed.H.Jedin, J.Dolan. Vol. I.
Content
PREFACE
As any historical work of this kind must do, the handbook seeks first of all to give a reliable account of the principal events and leading figures in Church history. In the second place — and here it is distinguished from most previous manuals — it examines not only the Church's external career in the world but also her inner life, the development of her doctrine and preaching, her ritual and devotion. Our presentation does not follow the usual lines but attempts to evoke the fruitful plenitude of the mystery which is the Church by shedding light on the interaction between her outward vicissitudes and her inner life. With this end in view (and in order to avoid duplication as far as possible) the collaborators drew up a complete table of contents in 1958, and at their last meeting in Trier, in 1960, submitted specimen chapters which indicated the arrangement and orientation of the book. We discovered in the course of this work how difficult it is to give the most comprehensive possible account of the facts in a readable style. Each collaborator has had to wrestle with this problem; with what success, we must leave the critics to judge.
No less difficult was the problem of sources and literature. The handbook must after all provide an introduction to these if it is to be useful not only at university level but also for religious instruction in secondary schools and for adult education. Now bibliographies of every sort abound. But who is in a position to collect the material there cited — scattered as it is all over the world —, to read it, and to sift the important information from the unimportant? We had to content ourselves with a limited bibliography relevant to our purpose and selected on the following principles: we must indicate the most important sources and such of the older literature M is still indispensable, and cite the most recent books and articles in which further bibliography can be found. The Bibliography at the back °f the book contains a section for each chapter. Reference to sources and literature on special subjects, as well as some biographical material in the sections on modern times, are given in the footnotes, which we have purposely kept to a minimum.
The chief editor, Professor Jedin, has attempted in the General Introduction to Church History to point out the basic method of this discipline and to show in more detail than has been done hitherto how the Church's consciousness of her history evolved into an academic study. It is a first attempt and the writer is by no means unaware of its shortcomings.
The author of this volume on the pre-Constantinian Church, Professor Baus, was only entrusted with his task in 1958. Some of his decisions regarding choice of material and the scope of particular chapters were taken in view of the following considerations: The apostolic age might have been given much fuller treatment on the basis of the history of New Testament times, but the volume would then have far exceeded the size proposed. The author has therefore tried to summarize those features of the early Church which continue to characterize her during her subsequent history. The bibliography for this period sufficiently indicates his indebtedness to special studies. In contrast with most textbooks, considerable space is here devoted to the development of Christian literature, a factor of such importance for the Church's inner life that its neglect would seriously distort the general picture. Finally, the special aims of the handbook made it necessary to include comparatively detailed chapters on the growth of early Christian liturgy, on the sacrament of penance, and on the life of the Christian community, which in certain respects — for example the spirituality of baptism and martyrdom — are still an almost untouched field.
In the course of preparing this volume the author received help from many quarters, help which was most welcome when it took the form of criticism. He is indebted in the first place to the other collaborators, but particularly so to the general editor, Hubert Jedin, to his former teacher J. A. Jungmann, and to Oskar Kohler, head of the Lexicographical Institute at the publishing house of Herder. A special word of thanks is also due to the staff of the library of the Theological Faculty at Trier, who showed such zeal in finding important literature.
This first volume of the handbook appears during the deliberations of the Second Vatican Council. The authors hope that their work may contribute in some measure to a deeper understanding of the Church and a greater love for her.
Hubert Jedin, Karl Bans
PREFACE TO THE ENGLISH EDITION
It is sincerely hoped that the appearance of the English version of the Handbuch der Kirchengescbichte so soon after the original German edition will fill a long neglected need in this area of study. Over half a century, unparalleled in productive historical research, has passed since the publication in English of Funk's Manual of Church History. Similar works available in translation have, for the most part, failed to utilize much of the post-war scholarship in scriptural and patristical studies. Unlike traditional manuals of this type, with their skeletal outlines and perfunctory narrative, the present work combines a wealth of current and scholarly research with an accompanying text that is equally scholarly in presentation and interpretation. The Handbuch not only offers the student precise information on the important events and personalities in the history of the Church, it also focuses considerable attention on all that expresses or reflects its internal life — the development of dogma, liturgy, ecclesiastical organization, the spiritual and moral life, and the literary activity of the Christian communities.
The ample treatment given the Dead Sea scrolls and the discoveries at Nag Hammadi is extremely relevant as theologians continue to rethink the attitude of the primitive Church toward Judaism and to examine the syncre- tistic aspects of early Christianity and its reaction to the ancient mythological image of the world. The international and non-sectarian composition of the secondary source material gives the book an ecumenical dimension, while the objective treatment of such problems as the Vatican excavations and the political turn of Constantine to Christianity are representative of its avoidance of the polemic and confessional partisanship often latent in Church histories.
Professor Jedin's masterful introductory essay on the historical development of Church history from Christian antiquity to the present day is a forthright declaration of the serious academic nature of ecclesiastical history and may well prove a literary landmark in the final emancipation of that discipline from the lingering effects of the rationalistic attack on the theological interpretation of history. It confronts the anti-historical mentality, so dominant since Trent — with its tendency to isolate dogma from the living fabric of history —, with a bold affirmation of the need for examining the Church in its concrete and contingent development. The neglect of the study of Church history in seminaries and the curious lack of chairs of ecclesiastical history in Catholic universities point only too clearly to a need for some kind of reappraisal.
Above all the Handbuch aims at implementing the conviction that theology is an activity within the historic organism of the Church, and that Church history must not only provide the necessary framework and documentary material for this activity, it must also communicate the life and the mind of the Church as well.
John P. Dolan
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
A AB Abhandlungen der Deutschen (till 1944: Preussischen) Akademie der Wissen
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AAG Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Gottingen (down to Series
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AAH Abhandlungen der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, Phil.-hist.
Klasse, Heidelberg 1913 seqq.
AAM Abhandlungen der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Phil.-hist.
Klasse, Munich 1835 seqq.
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ACO Acta Conciliorum Oecumenicorum, ed. by E. Schwartz, Berlin 1914 seqq.
ActaSS Acta Sanctorum, ed. Bollandus etc. (Antwerp, Brussels, Tongerloo) Paris 1643 seqq., Venice 1734 seqq., Paris 1863 seqq.
ACW Ancient Christian Writers, ed. by J. Quasten and J. C. Plumpe, Westminster,
Md.-London 1946 seqq.
ADipl Archiv fur Diplomatik, Schriftgeschichte, Siegel- und Wappenkunde, Mun
ster-Cologne 1955 seqq.
Aegyptus Aegyptus, Rivista Italiana di Egittologia e Papirologia, Milan 1920 seqq.
AElsKG Arthiv fur elsassische Kirchengeschicbte, publ. by the Gesellschaft fur elsassisdie Kirchengeschichte, ed. by J. Brauner, Rixheim im Oberelsass 1926 seqq.; since 1946 ed. by A. M. Burg, Strasbourg.
AGG Abhandlungen der Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Gottingen (after Series
III, 27, 1942: AAG), Gottingen 1843 seqq.
AH Analecta Hymnica, ed. by G. Dreves and C. Blume, 55 vols., Leipzig
1886-1922.
AHVNrh Annalen des Historischen Vereins fur den Niederrhein, insbesondere das alte Erzbistum Koln, Cologne 1855 seqq.
AkathKR Archiv fur katholisches Kirchenrecht, (Innsbruck) Mainz 1857 seqq.
AKG Archiv fur Kulturgeschichte, (Leipzig) Munster and Cologne 1903 seqq.
Altaner B. Altaner, Patrology, Freiburg-London-New York, 2nd imp. 1960.
ALW Archiv fur Liturgiewissenschaft (formerly ]LW), Regensburg 1950 seqq.
AnBoll Analecta Bollandiana, Brussels 1882 seqq.
ANF Ante-Nicene Fathers (Buffalo Collection) 1804-86.
AnGr Analecta Gregoriana cura Pontificiae Universitatis Gregorianae edita, Rome
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XUl
ANL Ante-Niccnc Christian Library (Edinburgh Collection) 1866-72.
AnzAW Anzeiger der Oesterreicbiscben Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vicnna 1864 seqq.
AOG Archiv fur osterreichische Geschichte, Vienna 1865 seqq.
APhilHistOS Annuaire de l'institut de Philologie et d'Histoire Orientales et Slaves, Brussels 1932 seqq.
APraem Analecta Praemonstratensia, Tongerloo 1925 seqq.
ArSKG Archiv fur schlesische Kirchengeschichte, publ. by K. Englebert, 1-V1, Breslau 1936-41, VII ff., Hildesheim 1949 seqq.
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BHL Bibliotheca hagiographica latina antiquae et mediae aetatis, cd. socii Bollan
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ChQR The Church Quarterly Review, London 1875 seqq.
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CIL Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, ed. by the Berlin Academy, Berlin 1863
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CivCatt La Civilta Cattolica, Rome 1850 seqq. (1871-87 Florence).
CIP Clavis Patrum Latinorum, ed. by E. Dekkers, Steenbrugge, 2nd ed. 1961.
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CSCO Corpus scriptorum christianorum orientalium, Paris 1903 seqq.
CSEL Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum latinorum, Vienna 1866 seqq.
CSL Corpus scriptorum latinorum Paravianum, Turin.
CT Concilium Tridentinum. Diariorum, Actorum, Epistularum, Tractatuum nova
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DA Deutsches Archiv fur Erforschung des Mittelalters (1937-43: fur Geschichte
des Mittelalters, Weimar), Cologne-Graz 1950 seqq. (cf. NA).
DACL Dictionnaire d'archeologie chretienne et de liturgie, ed. by F. Cabrol and H. Leclercq, Paris 1924 seqq.
DBS Dictionnaire de la Bible, Supplement, ed. by L. Pirot, cont. by A. Robert,
Paris 1928 seqq.
DDC Dictionnaire de droit canonique, ed. by R. Naz, Paris 1935 seqq.
Delehaye OC H. Delehaye, Les origines du culte des martyrs, Brussels, 2nd ed. 1933. Delehaye PM H. Delehaye, Les passions des martyrs et les genres litteraires, Brussels 1921. Delehaye S H. Delehaye, Sanctus. Essai sur le culte des saints dans l'antiquite, Brussels, 2nd ed. 1954.
DHGE Dictionnaire d'histoire et de geographie ecclesiastiques, ed. by A. Baudrillart et al., Paris 1912 seqq.
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1961.
Dolger Re g Corpus der griechischen Urkunden des Mittelalters und der neueren Zeit.
Reihe A, Abt. 1: Regesten der Kaiserurkunden des ostromischen Reiches, ed. by F. Dolger.
DomSt Dominican Studies, Oxford 1948 seqq.
DOP Dumbarton Oaks Papers, ed. Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass. 1941
seqq.
DSAM Dictionnaire de Spiritualite ascetique et mystique. Doctrine et Histoire, ed.
by M. Viller, Paris 1932 seqq.
DTh Divus Thomas {before 1914: Jahrbuch fur Philosophie und spekulative
Theologie; from 1954 Freiburger Zeitschrift fur Theologie und Philosophie), Fribourg.
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DVfLG Deutsche Vierteljahresschrift fur Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte, Halle 1923 seqq.
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Eranos Eranos-Jahrbuch, Zurich 1933 seqq. EstB Estudios Biblicos, Madrid 1941 seqq.
EtB Etudes Bibliques, Paris 1907 seqq.
EThL Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses, Brugcs 1924 seqq.
Euseb. HE Eusebius, Historia Ecclesiastica (to 324) ed. by E. Schwartz (GCS 9, 1-3) Berlin 1903-9.
Evagrius HE Evagrius Scholasticus, Historia Ecclesiastica (431-594), ed. by J. Bidez and L. Parmentier, London 1898.
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FF Forschungen und Fortschritte, Berlin 1925 seqq.
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GCS Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller der ersten drei Jahrhunderte, Leip
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Qn Gnomon. Kritische Zeitschrift fur die gesamte klassische Altertumswissen
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GuL Geist und Lehen. Zeitschrift fur Aszese und Mystik (to 1947, ZAM), Wurz
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Hamack DG A. von Harnack, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte, 3 vols., Tubingen, 4th ed. 1909 seq. (photographic reprint, Tubingen, 5th ed. 1931 seq.).
Harnack Lit A. von Harnack, Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur, 3 vols., Leipzig 1893-1904.
Harnack Miss A. von Harnack, Die Mission u. Ausbreitung des Christentums in den ersten drei Jahrhunderten, 2 vols., Leipzig, 4th ed. 1924.
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HAW Handbuch der Altertumswissenschaft, founded by I. von Muller, newly ed.
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HDG Handbuch der Dogmengeschichte, ed. by M. Schmaus, J. Geiselmann, A.
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HE Historia Ecclesiastica.
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H] Historisches Jahrbuch der Gorres-Gesellschaft (Cologne 1880 seqq.), Munich 1950 seqq.
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G. Bornkamm), 23 parts, Tubingen 1906 seqq.
HO Handbuch der Orientalistik, ed. by B. Spuler, Leiden 1948 seqq.
HThR The Harvard Theological Review, Cambridge, Mass. 1908 seqq.
HZ Historische Zeitschrift, Munich 1859 seqq.
IER The Irish Ecclesiastical Record, Dublin 1864 seqq.
IKZ Internationale Kirchliche Zeitschrift, Berne 1911 seqq.
IThQ The Irish Theological Quarterly, Dublin 1864 seqq.
JA Journal Asiatique, Paris 1822 seqq.
JbAC Jahrbuch fur Antike und Christentum, Munster 1858 seqq.
JBL Journal of Biblical Literature, published by the Society of Biblical Literature
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Jdl Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archaologischen Instituts, Berlin 1886 seqq.
JEH The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, London 1950 seqq.
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JLH Jahrbuch fur Liturgik und Hymnologie, Kassel 1955 seqq.
JLW Jahrbuch fur Liturgiewissenschaft, Munster 1921-41 (now ALW).
JOByzG Jahrbuch der osterreichischen Byzantinischen Gesellschaft, Vienna 1951 seqq.
JQR The Jewish Quarterly Review, Philadelphia 1888 seqq.
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JSOR Journal of the Society of Oriental Research, Chicago 1917-32.
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Karst G J. Karst, Litterature georgienne chretienne, Paris 1934.
Katholik Der Katholik, Mainz 1821 seqq. (General index for 1821-89).
KIT Kleine Texte, ed. by H. Lietzmann, Berlin 1902 seqq.
Konig H Christus u. die Religionen der Erde. Handbuch der Religionsgeschichte, ed. by F. Konig, I-III, Vienna, 2nd ed. 1956.
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LQ Liturgiegeschichtliche Quellen, Munster 1918 seqq.
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M AH Melanges d'archeologie et d'histoire, Paris 1880 seqq.
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MG Monumenta Germaniae Historica inde ab a. C. 500 usque ad a. 1500; indexes
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Moricca
MSR
MThZ
Muratori
Museon
Le Museon, Louvain 1881 seqq.
NA Neues Archiv der Gesellschaft fur altere deutsche Geschichtskunde zur Be
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NAG Nachrichten von der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Gottingen (tili 1940,
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NBollAC Nuovo Bollettino di archeologia cristiana, Rome 1895-1923 (Continuation of BollAC).
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NovT Novum Testamentum, Leiden 1956 seqq.
NRTh Nouvelle Revue Theologique, Tournai-Louvain-Paris, 1879 seqq.
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GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO CHURCH HISTORY
/. The Subject Matter, Methods, Ancillary Sciences, and Divisions of Church History, and its Relevance for Today
The Subject Matter
CHURCH history treats of the growth in time and space of the Church founded by Christ. Inasmuch as its subject matter is derived from and rooted in the Faith, it is a theological discipline; and in this respect it differs from a history of Christianity. Its theological point of departure, the idea of the Church, must not however be understood as though it were based on the structure of the Church as revealed in her dogma: a kind of preconceived pattern which history must follow and demonstrate, limiting or hindering the empirical establishment of facts based on historical sources. It refers solely to the Church's divine origin through Jesus Christ, to the hierarchic and sacramental order founded by Him, to the promised assistance of the Holy Spirit and to the eschatological consummation at the end of the world: the very elements, in fact, in which her essential identity consists, namely her continuity in spite of changing outward forms. The image of the "ship of the Church", sailing fully rigged and unchanged over the ocean of the centuries, is less apt than the comparison made by Vincent of Lerins wherein he compares it with the growth of the human body and of the seed which is sown, a growth "which involves no injury to its peculiar qualities nor alteration of its being" (Commonitorium, c. 29). As the grain of wheat germinates and sprouts, produces stalk and ear, yet always remains wheat, so does the Church's nature manifest itself in changing forms during the course of history, but remains always true to itself.
The historical character of the Church rests ultimately on the Incarnation of the Logos and Its entry into human history. It rests, above all, on the fact that Christ willed his Church to be a society of human beings, the "people of God" under the leadership of men: the apostolic college, the episcopate and the papacy. Thus He made her dependent on human actions and human weakness; but He has not left her entirely to her own devices. Her suprahistorical, transcendent entelechy is the Holy Spirit, who preserves her from error, produces and maintains holiness within her, and can testify to His presence by the performance of miracles. His presence and working in the Church, like those of grace in the individual soul, can be inferred from historically comprehensible effects, but belief in them is also necessary; and it is in the co-operation of these divine and human factors in time and space that Church history has its origin.
The understanding and interpretation of Church history depend then ultimately on the notion which a writer holds of the Church. To the philosophers of the Enlightenment, the Church appeared as a "natural society which exists alongside many others in the State"; according to their view the Church is indeed "founded by God, but God's spirit did not dwell in her": rather is she dominated by men. J. Mohler opposed this anthropocentric conception with his own theocentric view, and defined Church history as "the series of developments of the principle of light and life imparted to men by Christ, in order to unite them once more with God and to make them fit to glorify him". Later, at the close of the nineteenth century, the fashion in historical writing required that Church history should be merged in secular history, that the ecclesiastical historian should become a profane historian, and Albert Ehrhard then introduced the term "historical theology". He defined the task of the general Church historian as "the investigation and presentation of the actual course of the history of Christianity, in its organized manifestation as a Church, through all the centuries of its past, in the whole of its duration in time and in all aspects of its life".
The beginning and end of Church history rest on a theological basis. It does not begin with the Incarnation, or even the choosing and sending forth of the apostles, but with the descent of the Holy Spirit on the primitive community at the first Pentecost;5 and it ends with the Second Coming of our Lord. Within these chronological limits it has for its subject all the manifestations of the Church's life. These may be divided into external and internal factors: the former being the spread of the Church through the whole world, her relations with the non-Christian religions and the separated Christian communions and her relations with the State and society; the latter being the development and establishing of her dogma in the struggle against heresy, aided by the science of theology, the proclaiming of the Faith by preaching and teaching. To these internal activities must be added the fulfilling of her sacramental nature by the celebration of the liturgy and the administration of the sacraments, together with the preparation for these by pastoral care and their effect in works of Christian charity. Finally, there is the development of the Church's organization as a supporting framework for the fulfilment of the offices of priest and teacher, as well as the irradiation by the Church's work of every sphere of cultural and social life.
That the conception of the Church is fundamental for the definition of the subject and purpose of Church history is clear if we compare the notions of the Church as defined by non-Catholic ecclesiastical historians. Church history cannot be conceived in the Hegelian sense as the dialectical movement of an idea (F. C. Baur), for the Church is not only a divine idea but also an historical fact. Its subject is not merely the "Church of the Word" (W. von Loewenich), the "history of the interpretation of Holy Scripture" (G. Ebeling), "the history of the Gospel and its effects in the world" (H. Bornkamm), or the Church as we find it in the New Testament (W. Delius): all these definitions being derived from the Protestant idea of the Church. Of the more recent definitions by Protestant historians the nearest to ours are those of K. D. Schmidt, for whom the Church is "Christ continuing to work in the world, His Body which is led by the Holy Spirit to all truth and whose history is wholly God's work, but also wholly man's", and of J. Chambon, who speaks of "the history of the Kingdom of God on earth". These later definitions safeguard the character in Church history as a theological discipline, but they are still influenced by the underlying Protestant conception of the Church, inasmuch as this is determined in the case of Schmidt by the writings of Luther, and in that of Chambon by the Calvinist doctrine of the Church.
The Methods of Church History
In fulfilling its task, Church history makes use of the historical method, whose application to the subject as defined above, namely the Church of faith which is also the visible Church, suffers no limitations arising from the subject itself. But it can sometimes lead to tensions between faith or theological postulates (which are identified with faith), on the one hand, and positively or apparently established historical fact, on the other; and this may confront the ecclesiastical historian with difficult decisions. The scientific honesty of Church history is not thereby affected: it is both theology and historical science in the strict sense; and the application of the historical method to it is carried out in three stages.
Firstly, like all history, Church history is bound by its sources. It can reveal about events and conditions in the past only what it finds in its sources, correctly interpreted: so much and no more. The sources (monumental and written remains, literary sources) must be sought out, tested for their genuineness, edited in accurate texts and investigated for their historical content. The first object of historical research thus conducted is the establishment of dates and facts which form the framework of all history. Without the knowledge of these, every further step (the tracing of origins, the determining of intellectual relationships and the evaluation of information) becomes unreliable or sinks to the level of mere conjecture. Only through the accessibility of the sources and by their critical study has Church history since the seventeenth century developed into a science. On this level of research, Church history is indebted for many important results to scholars outside the Church who do not acknowledge its character as a theological discipline. Even the denominational point of view is hardly noticeable here.
But, in the second stage, the causal connexion of the facts related, research into the motives of individuals and consequent judgments on ecclesiastical personalities, the assessment of spiritual and religious movements and of whole periods: all these go beyond the mere establishment of facts, and are based on presuppositions and standards of value which cannot be derived from history itself, yet cannot be separated from it. The recognition of human freedom of decision prevents the creation of determinist historical laws. Historical causality must remain open to the intervention and co-operation of transcendent factors; the possibility of extraordinary phenomena (such as mystical phenomena and miracles) must not be excluded a priori. The concepts which Church history has created or adopted for grouping together facts and religious or intellectual currents are based on judgments of value, especially when terms such as "Golden Age", "Decline", "Abuse" or "Reform" are used. The standards for judging persons and events must not be those of our own time, but must be adapted to the period in the Church's historical development with which we are dealing. Human failure and human sin are not in this way made relative, nor is human responsibility removed. There are historical guilt and historical merit; but the judgment of history is not a sentence pronounced upon the Church's past.
The historian's philosophical and religious point of view will demand respect at this second stage, that of historical presentation, if he is at pains to achieve the highest degree of objectivity and impartiality. Conflicts with philosophical systems, such as historical materialism, Spengler's biological view of history, or sociological schools of historical writing, are not part of the Church historian's task. It is, however, inevitable that these will influence not only judgments but also the selection of material and the literary form. The forms of presentation most frequently used today are the biography, the monograph and the essay. The biography seeks to understand a person of historical significance both as an individual and as a point of intersection of the forces at work in his period; if it is to achieve anything more than a statement of the bare facts and dates, personal utterances must also be included, derived from such sources as letters and diaries. The monograph, confined to a particular time and place, may deal with a period (as Duchesne and Lietzmann treated of the primitive Church, and H. von Schubert of the early Middle Ages), a single country (as Hauck wrote on the Church history of Germany, G. Villada on that of Spain, and Tomek on that of Austria) or a diocese; with institutions such as the papacy and the religious orders, events such as the General Councils, or religious and intellectual movements (as Borst wrote on the Cathari, and Maass on Josephinism). Alongside the strictly scientific monograph, the essay has in recent times become of increasing importance. It aims in the most concise and perfect literary form to interpret the essential character of historical persons and events, and to make this knowledge available to a wider reading public, but dispenses with sources and bibliographical references.
Yet, in the third and final stage, Church history as a whole can be understood only as the history of salvation: its ultimate meaning can be apprehended only by the eye of faith. It is the abiding presence of the Logos in the world and the fulfilment, in the "people of God", of Christ's community, in which ministry and grace work together. It is the growth of the Body of Christ: not a continuous falling away from the ideal of the early Church, as some would have us believe; nor yet a continuous progress, as the men of the Enlightenment imagined. The growth of the Church is sometimes hindered through internal or external causes; she suffers sickness, and experiences both reverses and periods of renewed vitality. She does not appear as the Bride without spot or stain, as those who believe in a purely "spiritual" Church in all ages have fondly thought her to be, but covered with the dust of centuries, suffering through the failures of men and persecuted by her enemies. Church history is therefore the theology of the Cross. Without injury to her essential holiness, the Church is not perfect: semper rejormanda, she is in constant need of renewal. Although she is never to be superseded in the world of space and time by a "spiritual" church, she retains a provisional character and awaits perfection. When that goal is attained, in the Parousia, the path she has travelled during the course of history will be fully illuminated, the true meaning of all events will be understood and the finally valid judgments of human guilt and merit will be made. Only at the end of the world will the history of the Church, profane history and the history of salvation merge into one.
Ancillary Sciences of Church History
Church history makes use of the same ancillary sciences as general history, just as it makes use of the same methods. Chronology, epigraphy, palaeography, diplomatics, the use of archives and libraries, heraldry: all these are of practical importance; and so too in a wider sense are geography, cartography, and statistics. For a detailed treatment of these sciences, see the bibliography at the back of the book.
The Divisions of Church History
The divisions of Church history cannot be based on abstract historico- philosophical categories, any more than on the divine plan of salvation, whose details remain unknown, though its outlines are given in Revelation. They cannot be dependent on the relationship between the Church and her milieu, for "the Catholic Church is not identified with any civilization".6 Any division into periods which corresponds with the facts and facilitates our understanding of them must take into consideration this truth: the inward and outward growth of the Church, brought about by the Holy Spirit in co-operation with human free will, is achieved by her constantly coming to terms with civilization. In her spreading over the whole earth and in her penetration of mankind and civilizations, peoples and societies, the Church makes use of the historical circumstances and she adapts herself to them: Church history is something midway between universal history and history of salvation.7
Division into periods became a problem only when the patterns of medieval historiography and the annalistic method of the Centuriators and Baronius had been superseded. The usual threefold division into Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and Modern Times, popularized since the seventeenth century by Cellarius (Christoph Keller), was adopted comparatively recently, by Mohler,8 and has never become universal. A division that is convincing in all respects and generally accepted has not yet been found. If one considers primarily the unity of the Church and regards as epoch- making the breaking away of sects which followed the councils of the fifth century, the Greek Schism, and the Protestant Reformation, one
e "The Catholic Church does not identify herself with any civilization": Pius XII in his address to the Tenth International Congress of Historians on 7 September 1955. 7 O. Kohler in H] 77 (1958), 257.
s K. Heussi, Altertum, Mittelalter und Neuzeit in der Kircbengescbichtc (Tubingen 1921), 18 f.
ignores no less important events inside the Church, her expansion and her relations with civilization. The end of the old Canon Law (discussed by R. Sohm) and the rise of the papacy after the eleventh century are, from the constitutional point of view, the great dividing line; but all other viewpoints cannot be left out of account. The fourfold division adopted in this book seems to embrace the whole phenomenon of the Church throughout the changing ages, and to take into consideration both internal and external factors of development.
1. The expansion and formation of the Church in the Hellenistic Roman world.
2.
Growing outward from her native Jewish soil, the Church spread within the area of Hellenistic-Roman civilization over the whole Roman Empire and beyond its frontiers in the East, officially unrecognized and repeatedly persecuted until the time of Constantine, and then during the fourth century as the Church of the Empire. Her hierarchical system of government was organized with reference to the divisions of the Empire, the ecumenical councils were imperial councils; the primacy of the bishop of Rome did not infringe the extensive autonomy of the eastern patriarchates. After the rise of the Greek apologists in the second century, Christianity came to terms with the culture and religion of the East and the Hellenistic world, made use of Greek philosophy at the first four councils in the formulation of her trinitarian and christological dogmas, and employed forms of expression taken from Antiquity in her worship and art. As a consequence of the christological disputes, the national churches beyond the eastern frontiers of the Empire separated themselves from the imperial Byzantine church, while Germanic Christian kingdoms of both Arian (Ostrogothic and Visigothic) and Roman (Frankish) observance were formed in the western Empire. The rise of the specifically Roman Church of Gregory the Great and the Arab invasions of the seventh century marked the turning-point: the flourishing churches of North Africa and Syria withered away, and the Germano-Roman West became estranged from Byzantium.
3. The Church as the entelechy of the Christian nations of the West: A.D. 700-1300.
4.
While the Greek church concentrated on the preservation of the traditions of primitive Christianity, the acceptance of the Catholic faith of the Roman Church by the Franks and the Anglo-Saxons, the consequent "germanizing" of Christianity and the alliance of the papacy with the Frankish empire in the eighth century created the only possibility of permeating with the Christian spirit the Germano-Roman nations (to the community of which were now added the converted western Slavs), encircled as they were by Islam and only loosely connected with Byzantium, and of passing on to them the treasures of ancient civilization.
The prevailing form of government in the feudal structure of society, which the Church found already existing and did not itself create, was the theocratic kingship of the renewed Western Empire, until, from the mid-eleventh century, the papacy, revitalized by the Gregorian reforms, rose through repeated conflicts with the secular power (most notably in the Investiture Controversy and in the struggles with the Hohenstaufen emperors Frederick I and Frederick II) to a position of dominating power and arbiter of the West, creating the Roman Curia as the instrument of the Church's central government. But the Church, as a result, became increasingly involved in power-politics and thus entangled with "the World". A more individual and highly subjective piety drove liturgical, objective devotion into the background; scholastic philosophy and Canon Law projected a Christian system of thought and order, not uniform indeed, but complete in its main outlines, which was developed at the universities.The mendicant orders of the thirteenth century took up the idea of poverty and devoted themselves principally to pastoral work in towns. Russia's attachment to Byzantium, as well as the Eastern Schism, increased the isolation of the West; the Crusades enlarged its horizons; the Mongol invasion made possible a temporary breach in the encircling wall of Islam and missionary attempts in the Far East. Boniface VIII, in conflict with Philip the Fair, formulated a theory of the papacy that was conditioned by the times, but was defeated by the catastrophe of Anagni.
3. The break-up of the western Christian world; reforms and Reformation; the transition to world-wide missionary activity.
The universalism of the two highest powers faded before the rise of the national states of western Europe. The unity of the Church, threatened by the Schism, was restored at the Council of Constance. Philosophical unity was lost through Nominalism, and the Church's monopoly of education through the spread of Humanism. Within the feudal social order the bourgeois culture of the cities and the beginnings of Capitalism confronted the Church with new problems which were never satisfactorily solved. The Church, so much in need of reform, became herself a problem, as the writings of Marsiglio of Padua and Wycliffe and the Conciliar Movement bear witness. The "Reformers", Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin, claimed to bring at last the long-demanded reform, and separated all northern Europe and part of central Europe from the papacy. After the Council of Trent the Church opposed the Protestant Reformation with a Catholic Reform, renewed her religious life and was even able in the Counter-Reformation to win back lost territory. Missions in newly- discovered America and Asia enlarged the sphere of her activities. With the dying-down of denominational conflicts the secularization of the
European mind began; the papacy was unable to assert itself against the absolutist states. Western thought was no longer guided by the Church in the period of the so-called Enlightenment; and Revolution and secularization broke the external forms inherited from feudal times.
4. The world-wide Church in the industrial age.
The development of the Church in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries shows three recognizable tendencies. One trend involves the separation of the Church from the laicized State, the accentuation of the contrast between Christian and modern thought, together with an evolution to constitutional and democratic forms of government, the encouragement of lay activity at all social levels by means of modern methods of influencing the masses (as through trades-unionism and the press) and the taking up of the social question by the Church. A further tendency is seen in the intensification of religious life by means of the liturgical movement, the lay apostolate and new forms of pastoral work, and new religious orders. And, in a third context, the definitions of the First Vatican Council concerning the primatial power of the pope assured the latter's position within the Church, while the loss of the Temporal Power marked the beginning of an increase in his religious and moral authority over the Church's members. Through the world-wide missionary activity, which in the nineteenth century followed colonial expansion and in the twentieth began to detach itself from colonialism and European connexions, the Church became in fact a world religion and was forced to come to terms with the others (most notably with Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam) and with atheistic Communism. At the same time she began to encourage efforts towards the re-establishment of Christian unity.
The Relevance of Church History for Today
Church history is not the Church's cabinet of antiquities; it is her understanding of herself and therefore an integral part of ecclesiology. He who studies the development and growth of the Church in the light of faith enters into her divine-human nature, understands her as she is, not as she ought to be, learns to know the laws by which she lives and himself gains a clear view of her from within; his ?entire Ecclesiam becomes sentire cum Ecclesia, and he will stand fast in every crisis. A prerequisite of this pragmatic way of writing Church history must of course be a strictly scientific investigation and an impartial presentation of the facts. If these tasks are carried out, Church history can and must draw conclusions that will be important for the understanding of the present day and modern problems. The history of the general councils throws light upon the present council, for this is but the most recent link in a long chain. The student of earlier attempts at reunion gains a view of ecumenical strivings which is balanced and free from illusions. The history of religious orders is more than the history of individual orders: these are branches on the tree of the Church, witnesses to the element of grace that is active within her and responses to the questions that face her in every age. When missionary history is concerned with the problems of adaptation and europeanization, it is making an important contribution towards a definition of the relations between civilization and the Church. Church history makes clear the original meaning of ecclesiastical institutions and opens the eyes to the need for reform: the question of the liturgy is an example of this.
In any case: "We cannot understand the Church at the present day if we have not first understood the whole of the Christian past."9 To limit Church history to what is at present alive in the Church, or what is thought to be so, would be a form of pragmatism which, though indispensable as a principle of teaching, is unacceptable as a foundation for research and for the presentation of facts, inasmuch as it would endanger the scientific character of historical writing. Nevertheless, Church history is constantly being faced with the problems of the present day, as in the discussions about an ecumenical council or in the questions raised by the ecumenical movement. The value of Church history for religious education lies in the fact that it opens up the rich possibilities of the Christian life, and faces squarely the problems of the human element in the Church, of power, of sin and failure. But it can only achieve its object if it is presented in its entirety, not merely in summaries of religious history or in extracts of an apologetic nature. In its completeness it is the Church's most effective apologia; without it a purified love of the visible Church is hardly conceivable.
The ecclesiastical historian must have not only, like every historian, "a love of history" (J. G. Droysen), he must also bring to his task "Christian feeling and a Christian spirit";10 that is, he must first have the Faith in order to explain it, and then he becomes "the interpreter of the working of the Holy Ghost upon earth".11 He does not passively let the Church's past move before his eyes like a cinema film, because he is conscious that, as its interpreter, he is taking an active part in it. His relation to Church history is determined by his point of view within the Church; his faith is not prejudicial to his inner freedom in the search for truth and his will to judge impartially men and events. His metahistorical standard excludes relativist writing, but not the writing of true history.
• J. A. Mohler, op. cit. II, 287. 10 J. A. Mohler, op. cit. II, 282.
11 J. Sporl, Grundformen hochmittelalterlicher Geschichtsanschauungen (Munich 1935), 20.
II. The Writing and Study of Church History
The Writing of Church History: its Beginning in Antiquity
"THE sense of history, which was comparatively active when the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles described the work of Christ and his apostles, remained almost without expression in the period when the Church was developing out of Christ's revelation and was acquiring its historical character, in the midst of struggles and persecutions" (Altaner). Amid a flood of apocryphal writings and legends, the genuine and ancient Acts of the Martyrs bear witness to this historical sense, in such sources as the Martyrium Polycarpi, the Acts of St Justin Martyr and of the Scillitani. So also do the historical accounts which the apologists, like Hegesippus and Irenaeus, inserted to support their proofs of Christianity. Somewhat later, attempts were made in the "World Chronicles" of Sextus Julius Africanus (f post 240) and Hippolytus of Rome (f 235) to fit the historical facts of the Incarnation and the rise and growth of the Church into profane and Old Testament history. The World Chronicle of Eusebius of Caesarea (f 339), published in 303, was, in the free Latin version by Jerome, to set the pattern of this type of Christian historiography for more than a thousand years.
But it was Eusebius's Ecclesiastical History ('ExxXTjanaemx-/) i<TTopia) which made him the "Father of Church History". Published in its original form in seven books before the Diocletian persecution, it was afterwards continued down to 324 to include later events and enlarged to ten books. At the outset the author states his plan as follows: "I have decided to give an account in writing of the successors of the holy apostles and of the times that have gone by from the days of our Redeemer to ours; of the great and numerous events in the history of the Church, of all the excellent leaders and heads of the most respected congregations, of all those who have served the Word of God whether by speaking or writing; of the number and the times of those persons who, out of a desire for novelty, have allowed themselves to be led astray by the worst of errors, and have then proclaimed themselves as guides to a new wisdom which is no wisdom, like ravening wolves who rush without pity on Christ's flock; furthermore, of the fate that befell the Jewish people after their crime against our Saviour, and of the numerous grievous attacks to which the Word of God was exposed at the hands of the pagans; of the heroes who again and again fought for the Faith amid tortures and bloodshed, and finally of the witnesses to the Faith in our own days and of the ever- gracious, ever-loving mercy of our Redeemer."
In accordance with this programme (and making use also of the uncanonical sources Philo and Flavius Josephus), Eusebius describes in roughly chronological order the activities of Jesus and the apostles as well as the post-apostolic period: these matters are dealt with in Books I—III. Following these, Books IV—VII contain lists of bishops of the apostolic churches of Rome, Antioch and Jerusalem; but they also give an account of the heresies that arose, of the great ecclesiastical writers, and of persecutions by Jews and pagans. Books VIII and IX are devoted to "the persecution of our days"; and Book X to the victory of Christianity under Constantine. This last part has a supplementary account of the martyrs of Palestine and the laudatory life of Constantine by the same author. Eusebius in his history of the Church was "still unable to give an account that showed clearly the relation of cause and effect" (Altaner). However, by getting away from the eschatological viewpoint, he was the first to venture on a "solitary and untrodden path", to demonstrate in the history of Christ's chosen "people of God" the victory of God over the Devil and to "edify his readers" (III, 24). Because of his transcription of numerous documents and the excerpts he gives from writings now lost (such as those of Papias), Eusebius's work is by far the most important historical source for the first three centuries. The documents and the lists of bishops are fitted into the chronological framework of the emperors' reigns; the literary form follows the example of profane history, but it is written with "no mean skill" (E. Schwartz); its original contribution is its metaphysical basis.
Eusebius was followed by three continuators who all treat more or less of a common period. Socrates (f 439), a lawyer of Constantinople, groups the ecclesiastical events of the years 305-439 around the great emperors; he uses good sources, is less involved than his predecessor in theological conflicts, and is therefore more impartial; above all, he is more lenient towards heretics. Sozomen, who was also a lawyer of Constantinople and who knew Socrates, was superior to the latter in literary skill but not in reliability or critical powers; in his presentation of events in the period 324-425 (dealt with in detail only to 421), his own point of view is kept entirely in the background. Theodoret of Cyrus, on the other hand, writes as a supporter of the Antiochian school and is often silent about the defects of his heroes; but, a versatile writer, he could describe events perceptively and vividly. In his account of the years 323-428 he has included many synodal decisions and letters, as well as other documents, though he is sometimes cursory and inexact in his chronology. Evagrius Scholasticus (f 600), with his Ecclesiastical History, is the successor to the three continuators of Eusebius already mentioned.
He relates from a strictly orthodox but truthloving point of view the christological disputes of the period 432-594.
The three continuations in Greek of Eusebius's History were put together and extended to 527 by Theodorus Lector, whose work, however, only survives in an epitome. The later Byzantine chroniclers (such as Theo- phanes Confessor and Xantopulos) borrowed from his work. The chronicle written by the Monophysite John of Nikiu is important for the seventh century; it is written in Coptic but survives only in Ethiopian. The later Byzantine historiographers, although in the first place treating of State history, also recorded the theological disputes, particularly Georgios Pachymeres (t 1310) and Nikephoros Gregoras (f 1359-60).
The Latin Church meanwhile took over from the Greek historians. A Latin version of Eusebius's Ecclesiastical History was made in 403 by Rufinus of Aquileia, who added two more books, for which perhaps (according to Heseler) the lost history of the Church by Gelasius of Caesarea served as a pattern. Cassiodorus arranged for the monk Epiphanius to translate into Latin the three continuators of Eusebius and, on the model of an already-existing Greek work by Theodorus Lector, to combine them into an Historia tripartita. Rufinus's version and the Historia tripartita became the basic ecclesiastical histories of the Middle Ages. The various subjects dealt with by Eusebius soon came to be treated separately. Between 374 and 377 Epiphanius of Salamis collected together eighty heresies in his "Medicine Chest" (Ilavapiov). In 392 Jerome published the first catalogue of Christian writers, comprising 135 names, which was augmented c. 480 by the semi-Pelagian Gennadius, and in the seventh century by Isidore of Seville and Ildefonsus of Toledo. In the fourth century, lists of bishops began to be compiled, not with traditional dates but with regnal years worked out by reckoning backwards: such were the list of bishops of Jerusalem given by Epiphanius (66, 19 f.) and the catalogue of Roman bishops in the chronicle of 354; the earliest version of the Liber Pontificalis (down to Felix IV, 526-30) dates from the sixth century.
In both East and West the collecting of synodal canons concerning ecclesiastical discipline began in the second half of the fourth century. The oldest extant Greek collection is the systematically arranged collection of Johannes Scholasticus, compiled c. 550. In the West, that of Dionysius Exiguus dates from 500, and was the first of a long series of similar collections.6 The oldest Acts of an ecumenical council to be preserved are those of Ephesus (431), Optatus of Mileve, between 330 and 347, collected documents to serve as a history of the Donatist heresy; and in 417 Augustine edited an account of the origins of the Pelagian dispute. To the second half of the sixth century belongs a collection made at Rome of letters of popes and emperors, which is known as the Collectio Avellana from the place where it was found.
Christian biography of the pre-Constantinian period was aimed primarily at edification. Examples of this kind are the Life of Cyprian by Pontius, that of Antony by Athanasius, that of Macrina by Gregory of Nyssa, the Vita Ambrosii by Paulinus and the Vita Augustini by Possidius. In the monastic biographies of Palladius which appeared in the East and in the Historia Lausiaca, the historical account is overshadowed by demonism and miracle seeking.
The influence which Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History exercised on later histories of the Church through Rufinus' version and the Historia tripartita has been noted above. In a similar fashion Eusebius' World Chronicle, in Jerome's version, influenced later histories of the world and of salvation. Of less worth were the short "World Chronicles" of Sulpicius Severus (down to 400) and Prosper of Aquitaine (to 455); the Chronicon of Isidore of Seville (to 615) attained a higher reputation. But far more important for the historical thought of the Middle Ages than these collections was Augustine's De civitate Dei in twenty-four books, written in the period 413-26. Herein, the City of God, equated with the Church as a sacramental fellowship, is in incessant conflict with the Civitas terrena, which is not identified with any particular State, not even the Roman. The struggle between faith and disbelief is in this context the main theme of world history, conceived as the history of man's salvation. Like Augustine's De civitate Dei, the almost contemporaneous Historiae adversus paganos of Paulus Orosius provide an apologia for Christianity; he seeks to prove that Christianity is not responsible for the disasters of the age.
The history of the world and of salvation is usually divided according to one of two basic plans, though these show many variations. With reference to Psalm 89:4, which says that a thousand years are as a day in God's sight, and by analogy with the six days of Creation, history had been divided in Jewish Messianic writings into six millenia, which the Messianic kingdom was to follow as the seventh. Justin Martyr and Irenaeus had taken over this division and interpreted it chiliastically: the
• PL, 67, 139-316; for all older collections, C. Turner's Ecclesiae occidentalis monumenta juris antiquissimi, 3 vols. (Oxford 1899-1913) is still fundamental; cf. also E. Schwartz, "Die Kanonessammlungen der alten Reichskirche" in ZSavRGkan 25 (1936), 1-114.
world will be consummated in as many "days" as were spent in its creation; after the year 6000 the thousand-year reign of Christ on earth will follow. Hippolytus and Lactantius converted the eschatological schema into a chronological one, which forms the basis of Jerome's World Chronicle and was also known to Augustine. Here, moreover, we find a parallel with the six ages of man (infantia, pueritia, adolescentia, juventus, gravitas, and senectus) and the threefold division from the viewpoint of human salvation: ante legem, sub lege, and sub gratia. The doctrine of the six ages of the world (aetates mundi) was bequeathed to the Middle Ages by Jerome and Augustine via Isidore of Seville and Bede's De sex aeiatibus mundi.
The second schema divides world history according to the four empires: the Assyrian-Babylonian, the Persian, the empire of Alexander and the Roman Empire. This schema also is of non-Christian origin (it was used in the time of Augustus by Pompeius Trogus); but it was incorporated into Christian thought by Jerome with reference to the prophet Daniel (2:36ff.): the christianized Roman Empire will, as the last of the world- empires, remain until the end of the world. Sleidan clung to this view as late as the sixteenth century.
The Writing of History in the Middle Ages: Christian History, not Church His'tory
Eusebius's Ecclesiastical History found no imitators throughout the Middle Ages, even though the expression "Church history" occurs occasionally from the twelfth century onwards. During the transitional period the subjects of Christian historical writings are not the Church as such, but the christianized Germanic peoples and, later, monasteries, bishoprics, and saints. The medieval chronicler and annalist, in so far as he is not continuing the chronicle of Jerome, usually augments his account of contemporary events with information taken over uncritically from earlier authors, intended to serve as general historical background. He is concerned with world history and religious history, but not Church history. Three historians of the transitional period stand out: the Roman Gregory of Tours (f 594) with his History of the Franks (to which is appended a short history of the bishops of Tours), the history of that people being regarded as the victory of the True Faith; the Visigoth Isidore of Seville (t 636), with his Chronica Majora down to 615 (and in a second version to 625), famous also for his literary history, the
Etymologies, and his History of the Visigoths; the Anglo-Saxon Bede the Venerable (f 735) with his Historia Ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, in which he shows how his people "became the Church of Christ".® Through his De sex aetatibus mundi and his method of calculating Easter, Bede became "the teacher of the whole of the Middle Ages" (Levison).
The "Christian era" established by Dionysius Exiguus in the Easter table of 532, which fixed Christ's birth in the year 754 ab urbe condita as the central point of time, marks in the field of chronology the triumph of the school which saw human history as the history of salvation. World history begins with man's creation by God, follows the human race in its God-directed course under the Old and New Covenants, and finally relates the history of the Kingdom of Christ on earth, in which the Christian State and the Church form one body containing both good and evil men, until at the end of time the Lord will separate the former from the latter and the New Jerusalem will become a reality. The amalgamation of the concept of the Kingdom of God with the Church had for its result that the Middle Ages did indeed produce Christian history, but not Church history in the modern sense of the term: "Ecclesiastical historiography takes up the whole historical field" (Zimmermann). By the climax of the Middle Ages this kind of historical writing had developed three literary forms: the world chronicle, annals, and biography.
The numerous world chronicles not only draw their material about early periods from the chronicles of Eusebius and Jerome, and their continuators, but also retain the view of history established in the post- Constantinian "imperial" Church: the regnal years of the emperors form the chronological framework into which the succession of popes and other secular or ecclesiastical events are fitted. The closer they come to the author's own period, the more frequent are the events narrated from personal knowledge and the higher the value of the chronicles as sources. The Chronicon of Regino of Prum provides a typical example:10 starting from the birth of Christ, it is a mere compilation to the reign of Louis the Pious; but from there till its conclusion in 906 it becomes a good source for the late Carolingian period. The Chronicon Augiense of Hermann the Lame of Reichenau (f 1054),11 which reflects the many-sided knowledge
• Ed. C. Plummer, 2 vols. (Oxford 1896), I, 73: "nostrum gentem ... Christi fecit Ecclesiam"; W. Levison: "Bede as Historian" in Aus rheinischer und frankischer Fruhzeit (Dusseldorf 1948), 347-82.
10 Ed. F. Kurze (Hanover 1890); H. Lowe, "Regino von Prum und das historische Weltbild der Karolingerzeit" in Rhein. Vierteljahresblatter 17 (1952), 151-79, new offprint in Lammers (ed.), Ausgewahlte Aufsatze und Arbeiten aus den Jahren 1933-1959 (Darmstadt 1961), 91-134.
" MGSS V, 67-133; R. Buchner, "Geschichtsbild und Reichsbegriff bei H. von R. in A KG 42 (1960), 27-60.
of its author, is pre-eminent for its careful use of older models; and in its later part it develops into a history of the Empire. Sigebert of Gembloux takes pains in his prosaic and summary chronicle (finished before 1105) to arrange the events of imperial and ecclesiastical history in correct chronological order, and bases his work on a wealth of source material. Frutolf of Michelsberg and Ekkehard of Aura make use of him in their chronicle, one of the masterpieces of medieval historiography, which extends to 1106 and 1125, and contains valuable information on the Investiture Dispute. Otto of Freising (f 1185), the greatest German historian of the Middle Ages, does indeed indicate in the title of his work that Augustine, not Eusebius through Jerome, was his master. For him the Empire is only "the shadow of a great name"; he believes in the realization of the Chitas Dei in a Christian empire, and addresses himself with his eschatological outlook more to the religious reader than to the enquiring historian.
The primary concern of the annalists, when they were not officially employed in writing State annals, was the recording of events, whether known by tradition or from personal experience, which affected their own diocese or abbey. If through family or personal relationships they were involved in matters of more general importance, their range of vision was widened, as in the case of Thietmar of Merseburg (f 1018). Diocesan annals were compiled in episcopal cities which, through their schools, took part in the flourishing intellectual life of the age of the Saxon and Salian emperors, as did Hildesheim, Magdeburg, Liege, and Trier. But few of these can be ranked as histories, save perhaps the history of the church of Rheims by Flodoard (f c. 966) and the Gesta Hamma- burgensis ecclesiae pontificum by Adam of Bremen (f 1081), the best part of which is the biography of Archbishop Adalbert of Bremen. Obit books and necrologies, in which dates of death are noted in the calendar, owe their origin to the desire to include founders and benefactors in the community of prayer and sacrifice; and the lists kept in many monasteries, such as Fulda and St Blasien, show a continuous record of the deaths of inmates and benefactors.
In the Vita or biography, which is usually but not invariably the life of a saint, the main purpose is edification. The Vitae of extraordinary men are designed to serve as examples of virtue, and their nearness to God is demonstrated by miracles. Virtues and miracles are therefore their main theme. This tendency, together with the use made of classical or Christian models (including Suetonius, Sallust, ajid Sulpicius Severus), by no means excludes concrete facts with definite literary intentions. Ruotger, in his Life of Bruno of Cologne (written in 967-9), portrays a bishop of the Empire as he ought to be; abbot Norbert of Iburg, in his Life of Bishop Benno of Osnabruck (written between 1090 and 1108), does not conceal his subject's human weaknesses, so that the reader may therefore pray for the soul of the abbey's founder. The Life of Anselm of Canterbury by Eadmer (composed soon after the saint's death in 1109) is based on information supplied by Anselm himself and on an intimate knowledge of his personality: his holiness is illustrated not by miracles, but by his constant fidelity to the monastic ideal. From the thirteenth century, hagiographical literature came under the influence of the collections of exempla compiled with a view to preaching. Such is the Life of Engelbert of Cologne by the Cistercian Caesarius of Heisterbach, which shows a clear relationship with the same author's collections of exempla. The Vitae of the great founders of orders, such as St Francis of Assisi, owe their origin to the desire of the orders to possess a model picture of their founders.
The reform movement of the eleventh century and the Investiture Dispute seem to have provided a new impulse to the writing of Church history, perhaps even to mark a turning-point. The struggle for the independence of the spiritual power, against lay domination, once more made the Church as such a subject for historiography. In the literature of reform the primitive Church appears as the ideal towards which the Church of the present, her clergy and monks, must strive: that is, not merely the primitive Church of apostolic times, but the "ancient Church"; and even the phrase "Church history" reappears. In the prologue to his Historia ecclesiastica, the second version of which was finished in 1110, Hugh of Fleury promises to lead the reader to the hidden secrets of the Church concealed in history; but his title hides merely a further compilation of sacred and profane history. Neither does the work of Ordericus Vitalis, bearing the same title and ending with the year 1141, by any means fulfill its author's claims, in spite of its originality: Ecclesia Dei means for him both the whole Church and individual churches; the gesta Dei happen in her and to her, not through her. For John of Salisbury (fll80), the keenly observant secretary of Thomas Becket and later Bishop of Chartres, the history of the Church, whose beginnings are related in the Acts of the Apostles and whose growth Eusebius has described, is already a history of the priesthood and thus of the papacy, as it was also for the Dominican Bartholomew of Lucca (f 1326) writing two centuries later. The latter's Historia ecclesiastica nova identifies the kingdom of Christ with the reign of the Roman pontiffs: for the contemporary of Boniface VIII and John XXII the dualism of the two kingdoms no longer existed. But Bartholomew's work, again, was no real Church history.
The germ of a new method of writing Church history which appeared in the creative twelfth century never in fact developed. On the contrary, the Church became at that time the subject of "historical theology". Rupert of Deutz (t 1129) associates creation, redemption, and sanctification with the three persons of the Trinity; sanctification occurs through the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, who works in the Church. Like Rupert, Gerhoh of Reichersperg, who followed in his wake, is not interested in reporting facts but in interpreting them and finding their symbolic relationships. Anselm of Havelberg (11158) developed an interpretation of the Apocalypse which he found already existing. He divided the history of the Church into seven parts: the white horse of the Apocalypse is the primitive Church, the red horse the age of persecutions, the black horse the attacks of heretics, the pale horse signifies the false brethren, rendered harmless by the monks; the subsequent periods belong to the final age which will precede the end of the world. The Holy Spirit renews the world by means of the monks. He is the principle of progress in the Church. From Anselm it is but a step to Joachim of Floris (f 1202), the Calabrian Cistercian abbot, who in his commentary on the Apocalypse divides the history of salvation into three periods: the age of the Father, or the Old Testament, in which the Law ruled; the age of the Son, or the New Testament, in which faith and grace rule, and the imperfections of which will be removed in the third age: the approaching age of the Holy Spirit, who will bring the fullness of grace and the dominion of love. Instead of the present, imperfect, Petrine Church there will appear at a time which can be calculated from Holy Scripture (about the year 1260) the perfect Johannine Church of the Spirit, in which the eternal gospel will be proclaimed. The Church of the present is not the final form of Christ's Church; it can and will be superseded by a church of the Spirit.
Joachim's view of history determined not only the historical interpretation of the Franciscan spiritual writers such as Ubertino of Casale and Peter John Olivi, who saw in Francis of Assisi the proclaimer or at least the precursor of the "eternal gospel"; his influence is traceable even in such a lively historian as Salimbene of Parma. And for Bona- venture himself the actual purpose of studying history is "not the understanding of the past, but prophecy about what is to come". Late medieval
(jbNfcKAL INTRODUCTION 1U LMURLH Н15ШК1
studies of the Apocalypse frequently follow Joachim's lines of thought.ss Nicholas of Cusa draws a parallel between the historical life of Jesus and that of His mystical body the Church: to every year of our Lord's life corresponds a period of fifty years in the history of the Church. As the Precursor appeared in Jesus's twenty-ninth year, so will the Holy Spirit awake in the Church about the year 1450, and the kingdom of God will be spread by saints throughout the world; but then, corresponding to the thirtieth year of our Lord's age, will begin the passion of the Church and her persecution by Antichrist.
These systems of historical theology had their origin in the unsatisfactory condition of the Church of the time, which was so much in need of reform; and, with the Church's past in mind, they developed into the so-called theory of decadence: namely, that the history of the Church is that of a continuous falling away from the ideal state of the primitive Church. Sometimes this theory is expressed in the form of a division into periods: the Golden Age of the martyrs was succeeded by the Silver Age of the great Fathers of the Church, the Bronze Age of the monks and finally by the contemporary Iron Age, in which moral decay provokes the judgment of God. The theory of decadence does not, like the theologies of history and the apocalyptic interpretations, involve the undervaluing of historical facts; apart from reforming works, it is to be found in the writings of such important historians as Dietrich of Niem and Thomas Ebendorfer. But knowledge of the Church's historical past was hardly increased between the thirteenth century and the end of the fifteenth. Writers were content to recapitulate what already existed, as did Vincent of Beauvais (f 1264) in his Speculum bistoriale, or to reduce it to synoptic form, as did Martin of Troppau (f 1278) in his tabular chronicle of emperors and popes, which had many continuators and was translated into several languages.52 These two, as well as Bernard Gui (f 1331)" and Antoninus of Florence (f 1459), belonged to the Dominican order. The latter's chronicle had for its purpose the promotion of virtuous actions by historical examples.34 The numerous compendia of papal history show new and individual characteristics specifically for the popes of the period.35 The strong nationalistic tones, already audible in Matthew Paris30 and Alexander of Roes37 grow louder in the French biographies of the popes of the Avignon epoch and the years of the Great Schism. Catalogues of bishops and abbots were compiled, and the great orders wrote their chronicles.
The literary history of the Church, whose ancient standard works (by Jerome, Gennadius and Isidore of Seville) had been continued in the twelfth century by Sigebert of Gembloux and Flonorius of Autun, was little advanced by the catalogue of Henry of Brussels (formerly ascribed to Henry of Ghent) or by that of Arnold Geylhoven of Rotterdam (t 1442) more than a century latex-, or by other works of that kind.38 Only the list of writers compiled by the Benedictine abbot Johannes Trithemius (f 1516) is based on extensive researches, but it is disfigured by many errors and confusions.39
esp. 113 f. and 120. One of the few critical editions of late medieval papal and imperial chronicles is that of Andreas of Rcgensburg: Chronica Pontificum et Imperatorum Romanorum, ed. G. I.eidinger (Munich 1903).
33 For Gui's Flores chronicorum, the Catalogus brevis Pont. Rom. et Imperatorum and the Tractatus de temporibus el annis generalium et particularium conciliorum, all written in the second decade of the fourteenth century, cf. HistLittFrance XXXV, 139-232; DHGE VIII, 667 ff. (G. Mollat).
34
35 R. Morfay, St Antonin (Tours-Paris 1914), 322ff.; B. Walker, The Chronicles of St Antonin (Washington 1933).
36
55 Excerpts from the Actus Romanorum Pontificum of Amalricus Augerii are in Baluze and Mollat, Vitae paparum Avenionensium, I 89 ff., 183 ff., and 405 ff.; for Ebendorfer's Chronica Pont. Rom., sec Lhotsky, op. cit. 59 ff.
38 Chronica Majora, ed. H. R. Luard, 7 vols. (London 1872-84); R. Vaughan, Matthew of Paris (Cambridge 1958).
37 A. von R., Schriften ed. and trans., H. Grundmann and H. Heimpel (Weimar 1949); Heimpel, "A. von R. und das deutsche Selbstbewu?tsein des 13. Jh." in AKG 26 (1935), 19 ff.; idem, "Uber den Pavo des A. von R." in DA 13 (1957), 171-227, reprinted in Lammers, op. cit. 350-417.
M P. Lehmann, "Literaturgeschichte im Mittelalter", Erforschung des MA I, (Stuttgart 1941), 82 ff.; F. Pelster, "Der Heinrich von GcY\t zugeschriebene Catalogus Virorum Illustrium und sein wirklicher Verfasser" in HJ 39 (1919), 234-64; Lehmann, "Der Schriftstellerkatalog des A. G. von Rotterdam" in Erforschung des MA (Stuttgart 1961), 216-36; A. Auer, Ein neugefundener Katalog der Dominikanerschriftsteller (Paris 1933); T. F. Bonmann, Die literaturkundlichen Quellen des Franziskanerordens im MA (Fulda 1937).
" De scriptoribus ecclesiasticis, completed in 1494 and printed in the same year at Mainz; for the sources, see I. Silbernagl, /. Trithemius (Regensburg 1885), 61 ff.; H. Jcdin, "Fra contemporanei del Tritemio" in Benedictina (1948), 231-6.
The great events of ecclesiastical history did of course find their historians. Dietrich of Niem, Ludolf of Sagan, and Martin of Alpartil wrote of the Schism and John of Segovia of the Council of Basle. But for the period after the thirteenth century the scope and value of their work are swallowed up by the rapidly swelling stream of documents, letters, deeds, and other records of the most varied kinds, as well as liturgical books and rubrics. The papal registers have been preserved from 1198 onwards, albeit with some gaps; the register of petitions, which begins with Clement VI, comprises 7,365 volumes, down to the pontificate of Leo XIII. The collections of documents and regesta of the German bishoprics and provinces, as well as of the cities that were ever increasing in importance, became more and more extensive, and are augmented by lists of property, copies of deeds, account-books, and tax-lists. Letters and collections of letters make possible the writing of genuine, vivid biographies; and the admittedly still sporadic reports of ambassadors (like those of the Aragonese ambassadors at the Curia and of the participants in the Councils of Basle and Constance), and the acts of the councils and imperial diets give us a glimpse into the conduct of ecclesiastical affairs.
The Flowering of Church History from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century
The contribution of Humanism to the revival of Church history was the result of the Humanists' cry: "Ad fontes!" By making the sources (and first of all those for the history of the early Church) flow again, they broke the drought of the late medieval compendia. As regards the earlier period, the papal biographies of Bartolomeo Platina (f 1481) were no more than a stylistic rewriting of the Liber Pontificalis. Lorenzo Valla's criticism of the Donation of Constantine marked a new beginning, which could however be further developed only when the art oi printing had begun not only to multiply single works by the Fathers and by later ecclesiastical writers, but also to produce collected editions. In the preliminary work of this kind questions of authenticity arose, the feeling for literary form was awakened, authors began to enter into the language and spirit of the early Church and learnt to know her institutions. Although Erasmus was by nature a philologist, not an historian, we cannot leave him out of account in connexion with the revival of the historical sense. It was from his circle that the earliest editions of the ancient Christian histories issued. Beatus Rhenanus edited in 1523 the Latin version of Eusebius's Ecclesiastical History and the Historia tripartita;45 in 1544 the works of Eusebius and Theodoret were published in the original Greek. About the same time there appeared the still very imperfect editions of the councils by Merlin and Crabbe. Sources which had hitherto been employed only in derivative form and at second hand (such as Gratian's Decretum) were now directly accessible. That they were used for the writing of a history of the Church was, it must be admitted, a result of the Reformation.
Luther's historical view of the Church was determined by his conviction that the true, biblical, doctrine of salvation had been falsified through the guilt of the papacy and by Aristotelean scholasticism, and that a thorough reform of the Church was possible only by a return to that doctrine of salvation and a laying aside of "human ordinances". This view, which gave quite a new turn to the theory of decadence, demanded a Church history that would justify it. The Historia ecclesiastica,48 written by the strict Lutheran Matthias Flacius (actually Vlacich, 1520-75) with the help of Johannes Wigand and other collaborators, and generally known because of its divisions and place of origin as the Magdeburg Centuries, sought to prove by a wealth of systematically arranged references to sources that Lutheranism, and not the papal Church, was in agreement with the doctrine of the early Church. In 1556 this work was preceded by a catalogue of witnesses to evangelical truth in papal times. This powerful attack at once provoked a series of replies, partly inadequate
ed. W. Schwalm (Leipzig 1928). For later medieval discussions of its authenticity, see D. Laehr, "Die Konstantinische Schenkung in der abendlandischen Literatur des ausgehenden MA" in QFIAB 23 (1931-2), 120-81; Jedin, Studien uber Domenico de Domenichi (Wiesbaden 1958), 264-8.
45 Auetores historiae ecclesiasticae (Basle 1523) contains only the Latin versions of Eusebius' Church History by Rufinus, the Historia Tripartita and texts from Theodoret; a new and improved ed. was published at Basle in 1544.
" Fourteen vols. (Basle 1559-74): the last, incomplete, cd. was published at Nuremberg 1757-65; W. Preger, M. Flacius lllyricus und seine Zeit, 2 vols. (Erlangen 1859-61); P. Polman, "Flacius lllyricus, Historien de l'Eglise" in RHE 27 (1931), 27-73; M. Mirkovic, Matia Vlacic llirik (Zagreb 1960).
and partly unfinished, (by Conrad Braun, Wilhelm Eisengrein and Peter Canisius); then came Bigne's systematically arranged collection of early ecclesiastical writers, and finally the epoch-making Anuales ecclesiastici of the Oratorian Caesar Baronius (f 1607), based on lectures delivered by him in the Oratory of Philip Neri, and giving in twelve volumes the history of the Church down to Innocent III. He makes use of a vast amount of source material, some of it quoted verbatim, but makes no attempt at a division into periods. Baronius was fully aware that he was producing something new; he wrote his Annales with an apologetic purpose: "in defence of the antiquity of hallowed traditions and of the authority of the Holy Roman Church, especially against the innovators of our time". His work was continued down to Pius V by the Pole Abraham Bzovius (f 1637), further and better continued by the Oratorians Odoricus Raynaldus (f 1671) and Jacob Laderchi (f 1738), and remained till the nineteenth century the standard text of Catholic ecclesiastical history, which somewhat unjustly overshadowed other not less important achievements in the field of historical research.
A decisive factor in dissociating Church history from profane and from purely religious history was the disruption of Christian unity, which led to a more sharply defined understanding of the idea of the Church. The true Church of Christ, recognizable by certain signs, was opposed by a false church; but she must be historically proved to be the true Church. The apostolicity of her doctrine, the continuity of her teaching office and the antiquity of her institutions must be demonstrated by reference to genuine sources. Thus, controversial theology had from the beginning an emphasis on tradition and history. Evidence was sought and found in the Fathers and in the ancient liturgies for the sacrifice of the Mass and the Real Presence, for the papal primacy and the authority of councils; original texts were published, sometimes for the first time, with a definitely apologetic purpose.53 Guglielmo Sirleto (| 1584) provided the legates at the Council of Trent, Cervini and Seripando, with patristic material to serve as a basis for the Tridentine definitions,54 the Augustinian Hermit, Onofrio Panvinio (f 1569) collected material for the history of the popes, the college of cardinals and the churches of Rome.55 After the rediscovery of the catacombs in the pontificate of Gregory XIII, Antonio Bosio (t 1629) founded Christian archaeology.56 The need for information about theological writers of ancient and modern times gave a new impetus to the study of ecclesiastical literary history. The printing of the ancient catalogues of authors by Suffridus Petri (1580) was followed at short intervals by the Epitome of Angelo Rocca (1594), the comprehensive Apparatus sacer of Antonio Possevino (1606) and Bellarmine's booklet De scriptoribus ecclesiasticis (1613), destined to serve practical ends; the Belgian Albert le Mire ("?" 1640) extended the catalogue of Trithemius. At the end of the seventeenth century the Jansenist Louis-Ellies du Pin produced the Nouvelle bibliotheque des auteurs ecclesiastiques (1684-91), which with its continuations formed by far the most complete work of reference for the history of ecclesiastical literature; the Histoire generale des auteurs sacres et ecclesiastiques (23 vols., 1729-33) by the Benedictine Remi Ceillier concludes with the thirteenth century.
Although the predominantly apologetic tendency of the period sometimes prevented the acceptance even of results definitely established by
Protestant criticism (as with the proof adduced by Blondel of the forgery of the Pseudo-Isidore), the publication of extensive groups of sources led inevitably to the improvement of the historico-critical method, and so to the establishment of Church history as a science. The earlier histories of the councils had already taken their material from sources anterior to the medieval collections of canons, and now the Editio Romana (1608-12) for the first time published Greek texts. Subsequently the Jesuit Hardouin (t 1729) produced the best, and J. D. Mansi (| 1769) the most comprehensive, edition of the "general and many provincial councils. These works were paralleled by the collections of national councils made by Sirmond for France, Aguirre for Spain, Hartzheim for Germany, and Wilkins for England.57
The collections of saints' Lives, the publication of which was intended to stimulate and defend the worship of saints, followed a comparable line of development from an initially uncritical accumulation of material to a critical outlook. Luigi Lippomani (f 1559), supported by G. Hervet and G. Sirleto, wrote a preliminary compilation; and the Carthusian Laurentius Surius (t 1578), basing his work on this but far surpassing it, published "authenticated lives of the saints";58 then the Jesuit Heribert Rosweyde drew up in 1607 a project of publishing the ancient Vitae Sanctorum in their authentic texts, not as rewritten by the Humanists, nor based on manuscripts accidentally discovered but on manuscripts systematically sought out. In spite of Bellarmine's warning, Rosweyde's fellow-Jesuits Johannes Bolland (f 1665) and Gottfried Henskens ("j" 1681) began to carry out this plan in 1643, arranging the Acta Sanctorum according to the calendar.5® Against literary attacks and the Spanish Inquisition,
" Details of the great eds. of the councils are in Quentin, J.-D. Mansi et les grandes collections conciliaires (Paris 1960); see also S. Kuttner, L'Edition romaine des conciles generaux et les actes du premier Concile de Lyon (Rome 1940). The most important national collections are: Concilia antiqua Galliae, ed. J. Sermond, i vols. (Paris 1629), ¦with supplement by P. Dalande (Paris 1666); Collectio maxima conciliorum omnium Hispaniae et novi orbis, ed. J. Saenz de Aguirre, 4 vols. (Rome 1693): 2nd ed., J. Catalanus, 6 vols. (Rome 1753-5); Concilia Magnae Britanniae et Hiberniae, ed. D. Wilkins, 4 vols. (London 1737); Concilia Germaniae, ed. J. F. Schannat and J. Hartzheim, 11 vols. (Cologne 1759-90). For the collection of decrees and canons of the general and provincial councils ed. by the Augustinian C. de Wulf, of Louvain (Louvain 1665, Brussels 1673), cf. A. Legrand and L. Ceyssens Augustiniana 8 (1958), 200-36 and 328-55.
M P. Holt, "Die Sammlung von Heiligenleben des L. Surius" in NA 44 (1922), 341-64. 51 The first two vols, of the Acta Sanctorum, covering the month of January, bore the title: "Acta Sanctorum, quotquot toto orbe coluntur vel a catholicis scriptoribus celebrantur, quae ex antiquis monumentis latinis, graecis aliarumque gentium collegit, digessit, notis illustravit Johannes Bollandus; operam et studium contulit Godefridus Henschenius." For the whole work, cf. Peeters, L'?uvre des Bollandistes (Brussels, 2nd ed. 1961).
GENERAL INTROUUC i IUIN ,
Daniel Papebroch (t 1714), Bolland's outstanding successor, defended the method employed by the Bollandists in his Responsia of 1696-7. Fifty-two folio volumes issued from the Museum Bollandianum in Antwerp down to the time of its suppression in 1788.
Working concurrently with the Bollandists as critical investigators of ecclesiastical sources were the Maurists: the Benedictines of the French congregation of St Maur. They also continued what had been begun in the sixteenth century: replacing the editions of the Fathers, which had become largely a Protestant monopoly, with Catholic editions printed at Rome, Louvain, and elsewhere.60 After the turn of the century there followed at short intervals bilingual editions of the Greek Fathers, mostly printed at Paris.61 The Jesuit Dionysius Petavius (Denis Petau, f 1652), himself the editor of Epiphanius of Salamis, opened the way to historical proof in systematic theology, and was the founder of scientific chronolgy.62 These not insignificant achievements were however far surpassed by the Maurist editions, the fruit of exemplary co-operation: especially the edition of Augustine by Thomas Blampin (f 1710) and Pierre Coustant (1721), which appeared in the years 1679-1700; and that of Chrysostom by Bernard Montfaucon (f 1741), which had been preceded in 1667 by an edition of the works of Bernard of Clairvaux by the greatest of the Maurist scholars and the founder of palaeography, Jean Mabillon (t 1707). Mabillon and his pupil Edmond Martene (f 1739) became the initiators of the scientific study of the liturgy with their De antiquis ecclesiae ritibus (1700-2). The extensive journeys undertaken by the Maurists to visit libraries in France, Belgium, Germany, and Italy led to the discovery of numerous hitherto unpublished sources.63
To the Bollandists and Maurists Church history owes the principle that every historical statement must be based upon authentic sources, edited according to the strict rules of philological criticism. All historical research stands upon their shoulders, and the texts which they produced are to some extent still in use. They share this distinction with the great editions of early texts made by Italian scholars of the eighteenth century, such as L. A. Muratori (f 1750), the incomparable editor of medieval Italian sources, and the brothers Pietro and Girolamo Ballerini. Besides these
80 An ed. of Augustine appeared at Louvain in 1577, of Jerome at Rome in 1565-72, and of Ambrose also at Rome in 1579-87.
61 Basil the Great, Gregory Nazianzen, Gregory of Nyssa, Epiphanius of Salamis, and Chrysostom; further details will be given later, in Volume IV. M P. di Rosa, "Denis Petau e la cronologia" in AHSI 29 (1960), 3-54. *' The first of these collections of unpublished works, so characteristic of the period, was J.-L. d'Achery's Spicilegium (Paris 1655-77). This was followed by the Mart^ne-Durand Thesaurus anecdotorum (Paris 1717) and Amplissima collectio (Paris 1724-33). Equally excellent were the accounts of journeys: e.g., Montfaucon's Diarium Italicum (Paris 1702; new imp. 1962).
there are the authors of the great statistical works on papal and diocesan history and on that of the religious orders, which appeared in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Dominican Alphonse Chacon (Giaconius, t 1599) in his posthumously printed Vitae et res gestae Pontificum Romanorum et S. R. E. Cardinalium (1601-2) created the first reference work on papal history, subsequently continued by Agostino Oldoini. The Italia sacra of the Cistercian Ferdinando Ughelli (f 1670), a collection of lists of bishops of the Italian dioceses, admittedly uncritical as regards the earlier period, was the model for the Gallia Christiana of the brothers St Marthe, which far surpassed it. Martene and his collaborators were commissioned by the assembly of the French clergy in 1710 to revise this work,60 which in turn encouraged the Spanish Augustinian Enrico Florez to compile his Espana Sagrada,07 the Jesuit Farlati to compile his Illyricum sacrum, and abbot Gerbert of St Blasien to resume earlier projects for a Germania Sacra.69 Like the latter, the project of an Orbis christianus, embracing the whole ecclesiastical hierarchy, conceived by the prefect of the Vatican Archives, Giuseppe Garampi (f 1792), did not get beyond the preliminary stages.
More perhaps was done for the history of the religious orders. The Annales ordinis Minorum of the Irish Franciscan Luke Wadding (f 1657), and the supplementary catalogue of Franciscan authors prompted other orders to bring out similar comprehensive historical works,12 foremost among them being Mabillon's Annales OSB, which were preceded by the Acta Sanctorum OSB. The Dominicans received from the hands of J. Quetif and J. Echard the best catalogue of their authors, and from P. Ripoll and A. Bremond the most comprehensive bullarium. The Franciscan Helyot attempted for the first time a general history of the religious orders. When one further considers that at the same time many dioceses and monasteries were producing well-documented histories, and that reference works, excellent in many respects, were being written, especially in Italy, as a contribution to the biography of ecclesiastical personages, one cannot but ask the question: what use did historiography make of all these sources and aids to historical research which were accumulated during the course of two centuries?
Writers of Church history were not in a position to keep pace with this widening horizon and improvement in methods of research. The attitude which regarded Church history as equivalent to the history of man's salvation, which still persisted and found its last classic expression in Bossuet's Discoursneed not have been an impediment. On the other hand, it is undeniable that on the Protestant side the separation of ecclesiastical from profane history, first made by Melanchthon, unintentionally promoted its secularization while contributing to its independence. The Pietist viewpoint represented in Gottfried Arnold's Unpartheyiscbe Kirchen- und Ketzerhistorie (2 vols., 1699-1700), namely that personal piety, not dogmas and institutions, was the real subject of Church history, seems hardly to have any effect on Catholic writing. Even after the end of the wars of religion, when eirenic tendencies were gaining ground, the dispute with Protestantism went on: the monographs of the Jesuit Louis Maimbourg provide an example of this tradition.7' The history of the Council of Trent by the Servite Paolo Sarpi attracted far more attention than any controversial work, because under the appearance of a sober, factual account it was a large-scale attack on the post-Tridentine papacy. The reply of the Jesuit Pietro Sforza Pallavicino, based on far better sources and skilfully written, was intended as an historical apologia. The impulse to comprehend and organize Church history as a whole was lacking in the education of the time. The same Jesuit general Aquaviva, who in 1609 was considering a plan to establish courses for advanced students in ecclesiastical history, especially the history of the councils, had excluded the subject from the normal curriculum in his Ratio Studiorum, which dominated higher education for two hundred years. At Rome, Church history was indeed studied in private circles, but only in 1714 was a chair of ecclesiastical history founded at the Roman College. The works dealing with the subject which had been appearing since the middle of the seventeenth century in France, the dominating country at that time in intellectual matters, were not the product of instruction: They served more or less to justify Gallican ideas of the Church. By far the best achievement were the Selecta historiae ecclesiasticae capita et ... dissertationes, by the Dominican Alexander Natalis (f 1724): a collection of 230 topics, mainly on points of doctrine and arranged according to centuries. These were placed on the Index on account of their Gallican views, but were nevertheless republished in 1699 without significant corrections, under the title Historia ecclesiastica veteris novique Testamenti, and there were eight subsequent editions. The Memoires of L. S. Lenain de Tillemont (f 1698), pieced together like a mosaic of selections from early sources, were confined to Church history down to the year 513; Claude Fleury (f 1723) brought his twenty-volume Histoire ecclesiastique (1691-1720) down to the Council of Constance. Its critical acumen and pleasing style assured the success of the work, but its Gallican tendencies called forth a reply from the Dominican G. A. Orsi, whose Istoria ecclesiastica (1747-62) covered only the first six centuries. Nevertheless, it had many continu- ators and was still being reprinted in the nineteenth century. To these many-volumed works the Breviarium historiae ecclesiasticae usibus aca- demicis accommodatum by the Augustinian Gianlorenzo Berti (f 1766) formed a modest exception: yet it marks a turning-point because it was intended for instruction.
Church History as a Theological Discipline
The introduction of Church history into the curriculum of the universities had begun in Protestant Germany. During the period of reconstruction after the Thirty Years' War, the University of Helmstedt had received its own chair of ecclesiastical history in 1650, and nearly all the other Protestant universities of Germany had followed suit. In the numerous textbooks of Church history written for academic instruction,86 biblical history, especially that of the Old Testament, was gradually superseded by specifically Church history. Slowly, too, the division into centuries yielded to one based on periods. The pedagogic aim and the polemic attitude remained: the latter found expression mainly in dealing with and passing judgments on the Middle Ages. The Compendium Gothanum, designed for instruction at the grammer school (or Gymnasium) in Gotha, was published in 1666 by Veit Ludwig von Seckendorff, who, like his later continuators E. S. Cyprian and C. W. F. Walch, was outstanding as an historian of the Reformation. One-third of this work was still devoted to the Old Testament, and the division by centuries was likewise retained; but the beginnings of a division into periods is also discernible: the Primitive Church is treated as one period, and further divisions are made at the times of Constantine, Charlemagne, and Luther. The Summarium historiae ecclesiasticae (1697) of the Leipzig professor Adam Rechenberg distinguished five periods corresponding with phases of the Church: Ecclesia plantata, from the first to the third century; Ecclesia libertate gaudens, from the fourth to the sixth century; Ecclesia pressa et obscurata, from the seventh to the tenth century; Ecclesia gemens et lamentans, from the eleventh to the fifteenth century; and Ecclesia repurgata et liberata, of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
But it was Johann Lorenz Mosheim (f 1755), the "father of Protestant Church history",87 who paved the way for a scientific view of Church history as a whole. In his Institutiones historiae ecclesiasticae antiquioris (1737), he defined it as "the careful and true narration of all external and internal events in the society of men which takes its name from Christ, for the purpose of recognizing the workings of Divine Providence through the connexion of cause and effect in its foundation and preservation, in order that we may learn piety and wisdom". Without excluding God's action in the history of the Church, man is placed at its centre, and the Church is examined in its development as a human community, according to laws valid for history in general. Mosheim's view of history and his
" The titles of the works mentioned here are in E. C. Scherer, Geschichte und Kirchengeschichte an den deutschen Universitaten (Freiburg 1927), 493-9.
87 K. Heussi, Johann Lorenz Mosheim (Tubingen 1906); for more recent discussion, cf. RGG, 3rd ed. IV, 1157 f. (M. Schmidt).
marked pragmatism lead on to the Enlightenment, which makes its appearance in the Historia religionis et ecclesiae Christianae (1777) by his pupil Johann Schrockh. And in this "enlightened" form Church history was transplanted to the Catholic universities, after the mid-eighteenth century, firstly to those in the Habsburg empire.
The curriculum prescribed by the empress Maria Theresa in 1752, which had been drawn up by the Jesuit Gerhard van Swieten, regarded "spiritual history" as a compulsory subject. In what spirit instruction was to be imparted appears from the directive to teachers inspired by abbot Rautenstrauch (1775): it was to be pragmatical, that is "useful and profitable for practical application"; it was to show "the true limits of the spiritual and temporal powers" (in a sense, of course, that gave supremacy to the State), and to deal mainly with the early centuries and with more recent times (but not with the Middle Ages); the teacher was to "discuss" ecclesiastical matters, in order thus to sharpen his pupils' judgment and to influence them morally.
Other German Catholic universities followed the Austrian example: Ingolstadt, Heidelberg, Mainz, and Bonn. Since Berti's Breviarium did not follow the prevailing autocratic tendency, anti-Roman and "enlightened," Joseph II introduced the Protestant textbook by Schrockh. Later, after Archbishop Magazzi of Vienna had protested, this was replaced in 1788 by the Institutiones historiae ecclesiasticae Novi Testamenti by the Swabian Matthias Dannenmayr which appeared in a German edition as Leitfaden in der Kirchengeschichte (4 vols., 1790). Dannenmayr's book was moderately "enlightened", but decidedly anti-Roman. It divided Church history into five epochs, the divisions being made at the reigns of Constantine, Charlemagne, and Gregory VII, and at the time of Luther, and dealt with each according to a uniform scheme: expansion, organization, authors, doctrine, heresies, liturgy, discipline, and councils. If one ignores the basic attitude due to Schrockh's influence, the author's attempt at an intellectual mastery of the subject and the boldness of his frequently quite acute judgment must be acknowledged. Similar "guides" and "introductions" for students were produced under different titles by Alioz (1791), Aschenbrenner (1789), Batz (1797), Becker (1782), Gmeiner (1787), Gollowitz (1791), Jung (1776), Lumper (1788), Pelka (1793), Pronat (1779), Sappel (1783), Schmalfufi (1792-3), Schneller (1777), Wiesner (1788) and Wolf (1793-1803). The Christliche Religions- und Kirchengeschichte (4 vols., 1789-95) by Kaspar Royko and the Geschichte der Christlichen Religion und Kirche (2 vols., 1792-3) by Milbiller, the latter of which appeared anonymously, were decidedly rationalistic. More moderate successors with an "enlightened" point of view continued to write in the nineteenth century: thus, Die gro?en Kirchenversammlungen des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts by J. H. von Wessenberg appeared as late as 1840. In England J. Milner and in America the Unitarian J. A. Priestley turned away from the Enlightenment history, the former with his History of the Church of Christ (1794-1809), the latter in his General History of the Christian Church (1802-3).
However dangerous the intrusion of the Enlightenment was, and even of Rationalism, the introduction of Church History into theological instruction and the consequent need of many new textbooks contributed to the opening up of a new view of Church history, under new auspices indeed and on a different basis. In marked reaction against the Enlightenment with its delight in passing judgments, its Caesaro- papism and its contempt for the Middle Ages, Romantic writers strove to feel their way lovingly and with faith into the Church's great past, especially in the hitherto-despised Middle Ages, and they discovered the greatness of the papacy. Chateaubriand's Genie du Christianisme (1802), and Joseph de Maistre's Du Pape (1819), however uncritical they were in their reporting of facts,80 opened the eyes of contemporaries to the great religious tradition and the cultural achievements of the Church, to which Rationalism and the anti-Romanism of the age of Enlightenment had blinded them. In England Sharon Turner in his History of England from the Norman Conquest to 1509 (1814) could speak of the Middle Ages as that period "in which our religion, literature, language, manners, ^ws, and constitution have been chiefly formed". Friedrich Leopold, Count Stolberg (fl819), in his Geschichte der Religion Jesu Christi (15 vols., 1806-18) revived the opinions of Augustine and Bossuet, to whom the history of the Church meant that of man's salvation. He even returned to pure chronography, renouncing any division into periods: he was writing a history of the religion of Christ, not of the Church. But since he recognized its ultimate significance to be the "firmer grounding of the Faith by the help of history",91 his book became "an epoch-making work for the reawakening of the serious study of Church history and especially for the revival of Christian feeling" (Janssen). Stolberg's basic religious attitude was shared by Theodor Katerkamp, a member of the Munster circle, in his Kirchengeschichte (5 vols., 1823—4); but he had more regard than the former for the natural causes of events. The historical writers
S. Merkle, "Die Anfange franzosischer Laientheologie im 19. Jh.", Festgabe Karl Muth (Munich 1927), 325-57.
" L. Scheffczyk, F. L. zu Stolbergs Geschichte der Religion Jesu Christi (Munich 1952), 133.
.jtiir-ixrvL in I RUUUL HUN 1 <J U1URLH HIS 1 OK Y
of the Enlightenment had looked upon the Church as an institution useful to the State in raising the standard of morality and popular education; now her transcendent, supernatural essence, her independence from the State and her universality were being rediscovered.
Church History as an Historical and Theological Science in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
The re-establishment of Church history as a theological and historical science was the work of Johann Adam Mohler (1796-1838). Under the influence of the "pectoral theologian" Neander in Berlin, and even more under that of Johann Sebastian Drey (f 1853), the dogmatician of the Tubingen school, and in opposition to the German idealism of such writers as Hegel and F. C. Baur, Mohler discovered the essential historicity of Christianity as an organic development from supernatural revelation. He forsook the "spiritual" idea of the Church expressed in his early work Die Einheit der Kirche (1825); and by his definition of the Church (discussed in Section I, above), he restored to Church history its universality,which it had lost through the Enlightenment and Josephinism. The scientific work of this author, who died so young, was certainly fragmentary; but his successor at Tubingen, Carl Joseph Hefele (1809-93), completed in his Conciliengeschichte (7 vols., 1855-74) the most lasting achievement of German historical science in the ecclesiastical field. Though now outdated in many details, Hefele's work has not yet been superseded;92 and his successor, F. X. Funk ("j" 1907), showed himself by his researches into early Church history to be the keenest critic produced by the Tubingen school.93
Whereas Mohler had treated of the general history of the Church only in lectures, published posthumously by P. Grams in 1867-8, Johann Joseph Dollinger (1799-1890) made three attempts to write a general Church history: the first was his version of Hortig's Handbuch der Christlichen Kirchengeschichte (1828); the second a Lehrbuch (1836) of his own conception; and the third his two large-scale monographs, Heidentum und Judentum als Vorhalle des Christentums (1857) and Christentum und Kirche in den ersten drei Jahrhunderten (1860): but neither of these were finished. Denominational differences, which had been blurred by the Enlightenment and more sharply emphasized again in Mohler's Symbolik, inspired Dollinger's Reformation (1846-8). At the height of his activity
" S. Losch, ThQ 119 (1939), 3-59; A. Hagen, Gestalten aus dem schwabischen Katholizismus II, 7-58.
,s Kirchengeschichtliche Abhandlungen und Untersuchungen, 3 vols. (Paderborn 1897 to 1907).
he was indisputably the most learned ecclesiastical historian of his time, surpassed in depth of thought only by John Henry Newman. The influence of his school at Munich reached beyond Germany to France and England (to such as Lord Acton); but he came into conflict both with neo-Scholasticism and with the Roman Curia: first on the question of the Temporal Power, and then on the doctrine of Infallibility. Failing to submit on this issue to the Vatican Council, he was excommunicated.
This catastrophe resulted in a severe setback for historical studies in Germany, but it could not in the long run prevent their further progress. The theological foundations were laid, and constructive work continued with the opening up of new sources and with specialized research, both closely connected with the mighty flowering of historical science in the nineteenth century. The first step was to make the great editorial achievements of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries more accessible. The enterprising abbe Migne (f 1875) reproduced in his two patrological series only the texts already available at the time; A. Tomasetti's new edition of the Bullarium Romanum (named Taurinense after Turin, its place of publication, 1857-72) was but a re-impression of Cocqueline's work (1739—44). The Viennese Academy of Sciences in the Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum latinorum (from 1860) and the Berlin Academy in Griechische Christliche Schriftsteller der ersten drei Jahrhunderte (from 1897) produced new texts of the Fathers on improved philological principles. The editing of medieval and more recent historical sources in the best texts attainable, a task recognized and promoted as a national obligation, was to the advantage of Church historians. In the Monuments Germaniae Historica (founded in 1819 and taken over by the Imperial goverment in 1874) there appeared such important documents as the Letters of Gregory the Great and St Boniface, the Libri Carolini, the Register of Gregory VII and the Chronicle of Otto of Freising. Textual and literary criticism, initiated by the Bollandists and the Maurists, were vastly improved by the collaborators in the Monumenta. In documentary research Theodor Sickel took over and improved the methods of Delisle and his Ecole des chartes; M. Tangi, E. von Ottenthal and Paul Kehr, above all the last named, applied them to the study of papal documents.
For more recent times there was an enormous increase of source-material from the great national collections, as a result of the opening of state archives following the July and March revolutions: the Collection des Documents inedits sur Vhistoire de France (from 1835), the Coleccion de documentos ineditos (from 1842) and the Calendar of State Papers (from 1856). At the same time the Vatican archivist Augustin Theiner (f 1874) began to edit, in extensive Monumenta, sources for the history of the Papal States, Ireland, and the western and southern Slavonic peoples; and the convert Hugo Laemmer (f 1918) gave some idea of the riches of the
Roman archives and libraries for the history of the Reformation and the Counter-Reformation.94 The throwing open of the Vatican archives for research, by Pope Leo XIII (in the Regolamento of 1 May 1884), marked a new epoch and led to the foundation of numerous national institutes of history at Rome.95 It also made possible such large-scale undertakings as the publishing of nuncios' reports from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Concilium Tridentinum of the Gorres Society, the pioneering researches of the Dominican H. Denifle (| 1905)96 and the Jesuit Franz Ehrle (f 1934),97 and finally the Geschicbte der P'dpste of Ludwig von Pastor (f 1928), the most detailed work of Church history produced in the past century.98 Like the Geschichtc des Deutschen Volkes by his teacher Johann Janssen (f 1891), Pastor's work was the outcome of the defensive attitude into which German Catholicism had been driven since the outbreak of the Kulturkampf.
The rapid increase of source material, the constant improvement in methods and aids, and the growing number of scientific monographs and separate investigations did not discourage the work of synthesis in the nineteenth century, as they had in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, if only because academic instruction required textbooks and manuals of Church history.
The many-volumed Histoire universelle de l'Eglise catholique by R. F. Rohrbacher (29 vols., 1842-9) was intended for a wider public, but the academic historians were obliged both to keep pace with research and to compete with the numerous and in some respects excellent Protestant works of this kind: the Church histories of J. K. L. Gieseler (5 vols., 1824-57), F. C. Baur (5 vols., 1853-63), K. R. Hagenbach (7 vols., 1869-72), and W. Moller and G. Kawerau (3 vols., 1889-1907). The earlier editions of the Handhuch of J. J. Ritter (| 1857) were still composed under the influence of G. Hermes (3 vols., 1826-35); the leading work of the middle of the century, Johann Alzog's (fl878) Universalgeschichte der Christlichen Kirche, was based on Mohler's lectures. After the first Vatican Council Alzog's study was superseded by the Handbuch der
*4 For A. Theiner and the authors Ritter and Alzog of textbooks mentioned below, see Jedin, "Kirchenhistoriker aus Schlesien in der Feme" in ArSKG 11 (1953), 243-59; for Laemmer, see J. Schwetcr, H. Laemmer (Glaz 1926): an inadequate study; for principal works, LThK VI, 767 f.
96 K. A. Fink, Das Vatikanische Archiv (Rome, 2nd cd. 1951), 155-67.
97
9,1 A. Walz, Analecta Denifleana (Rome 1955); for principal works in LThK III, 227.
98 Obituaries by H. Finke, H J 54 (1934), 289-93; K. Christ, ZblB 52 (1935), 1-47; M. Grabmann, PhJ 56 (1946), 9-26; bibliography in Miscellanea F. Ehrle, I (Rome 1924), 17-28.
99
100 Diaries, letters and memoirs, ed. W. WUhr (Heidelberg 1950); also A. Schniitgcn, AHVNrh 151-2 (1952), 435^15; A. Pelzcr in RHE 46 (1951), 192-201; obituary by P. Dengel, H] 49 (1929), 1-32.
101
Allgemeinen Kirchengeschichte by Joseph Hergenrother (f 1890), who was raised to the cardinalate in 1879. Passing through several revisions, the last complete edition being published by J. P. Kirsch (4 vols., 1911-17), this work survived into the twentieth century. Specially written for academic use were the textbooks, first published in 1872-5, of F. X. Kraus," who was also important as an art historian and archaeologist, and of Alois Knopfler (1895), and F. X. Funk (1866). Both these scholars were of the Tubingen school, though the former taught in Munich. Their books went through many editions and were the most useful textbooks of their time; but they were very insistent in a critico-positivist way on the exact reporting of facts. In this respect the instructional works of Heinrich Bruck (1874), of the Mainz school, and of Jacob Marx (1903), a professor at Trier, show a marked contrast in their strict ecclesiasticism. At present, the Kirchengeschichte (3 vols., 12th ed. 1951, 1948, and 1956) of Karl Bihlmeyer (| 1942), based on Funk and revised since his death by H. Tuchle, is the best general account of moderate size, distinguished by its concise formulation and its wealth of bibliographies. There is also an Italian edition by J. Rogger in four volumes. The second volume in English appeared in 1963 translated by V. Mills and F. Muller. Like most of the preceding textbooks, Bihlmeyer's work took over from profane history the customary threefold division into Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Modern Age, although this in comparison with many textbooks of the Enlightenment represents a backward step. Die Katholische Kirche im Wandel der leiten und Volker by A. Ehrhard100 and W. Neuss (4 vols., 1959) and the Geschichte der Kirche in ideengeschichtlicher Betrachtung by J. Lortz (21 st ed., 1962—4) are aimed at a wider public. The Geschichte der Papste (6 vols., 2nd ed., by G. Schwaiger since 1954) by F. X. Seppelt spans the whole of Church history, as does the same author's one-volume Papstgeschichte.
Only after the turn of the century, when Church history in France had received a new impetus, especially from the fundamental researches and publications of Louis Duchesne (|1922) and Pierre Batiffol (t 1929) on Christian antiquity, did there appear in that country also textbooks on the German model, such as those of L. Marion and V. Lacombe (1905) and of C. Poulet (1926), and comprehensive manuals, like F. Mourret's Histoire generale de l'Eglise (9 vols. 1909 21) or the Histoire de l'Eglise under the editorship of A. Fliehe and V. Martin, planned in twenty-four volumes but not yet completed (since 1935). An Italian version of this
" F. X. Kraus, Tagebucher, cd. H. Schiel (Cologne 1957); with a remarkably complete bibliography, 765-88.
,0° A. Dempf, Albert Ehrhard (Colmar 1944); J. M. Hoeck, "Der Nachla? Albert Ehrhards und seine Bedeutung fur die Byzantinistik" in ByZ 21 (1951), 171-8.
project was begun in 1938. The English version is published in lour volumes (1942-8). In Italy textbooks have been written by L. Todesco (6 vols., 1922-30), A. Saba (3 vols., 1938-43), and P. Paschini (3 vols., 1931); and in England by Philip Hughes (3 vols., 1934-47).
In the many textbooks and general accounts, which it would be both impossible and unnecessary to enumerate in full, we can see that the idea of the Church's historical character has been generally accepted and that Church history has been recognized as a theological discipline. Having become a science, it is subject to those tendencies which are commonly observable in the science of our time. The pre-eminence of research has led to the founding of numerous periodicals and series of publications dealing with ecclesiastical history, to the collecting of the results of work in institutes and the training in seminars of future researchers. Progressive specialization has resulted in the separation of large fields of study from general Church history and in their becoming independent. As a reaction against specialization and also against the positivism of the nineteenth century, there has been since the second world war a marked tendency towards a theology of history and ecclesiology.
The upsurge of research made the foundation of special periodicals and series of publications necessary. The Zeitschrift fur Kirchengeschichte, founded by the Protestant theologian T. Brieger in 1876, which at first concerned itself mainly with researches on the Reformation period, was joined in 1887 by the Romische Quartalschrift fur Christliche Archaologie und Kirchengeschichte, which published work on Roman archaeology and newly-discovered source-material in the Vatican archives, under the direction of Anton de Waal (t 1917), H. Finke and S. Ehses. The Historisches Jahrbuch of the Gorres Society also contained numerous contributions to Church History. The Revue d'histoire ecclesiastique, founded at Lou vain by Alfred Cauchie in 1900, became an indispensable organ of research, since, besides containing essays and critiques, it also published a complete bibliography of all the works important for the study of Church history. In Italy, in spite of the collaboration of such eminent scholars as G. Mercati and P. Franchi de' Cavalieri, the Miscellanea di Storia Ecclesiastica (1902) and the Rivista storico-critica delle Scienze teologiche (1904) had to close down as a consequence of the Modernist Dispute. On the other hand, the Zeitschrift fur Schweizerische Kirchengeschichte (1907) and the Revue d'histoire de l'Eglise de France (1910) continued to appear, playing an influential part in the growth of historical studies of the Church in Switzerland and France. In North America, P. Guilday, who had been trained at Louvain, founded the
Catholic Historical Review (1917); and Holland had possessed the Neder- lands Archief voor Kerkgeschiedenis since 1900. Periodicals for diocesan history had been established in Germany since the nineteenth century, like the Annalen des Historischen Vereins fur den Niederrhein, bes. das alte Erzbistum Koln (1855) and the Freiburger Diozesanarchiv (1865); and the number of these increased in the twentieth century, as by the Archiv fur Elsassische Kirchengeschichte (1926), the Archiv fur Schlesische Kirchengeschichte (1936) and the Archiv fur Mittelrheinische Kirchengeschichte (1949). Even before the first world war, several of the greatest orders had started periodicals for the study of their own history: Among these were the Studien und Mitteilungen aus dem Benediktiner- und Zisterzienserorden (1880), the Revue Mabillon and the Analectes de l'ordre de Prcmontre (both 1905), the Archivum Franciscanum historicum (1908), and the Archivo Ibero-Americano (1914).
The results of research which were too extensive for the periodicals were published in series: H. Schrors and M. Sdralek had been editing their Kirchengeschichtliche Studien since 1891; and from these Sdralek branched out into his Kirchengeschichtliche Abhandlungen. The Veroffentlichungen des Kirchenhistorischen Seminars Munchen (1899) and the Forschungen zur Christlichen Literatur- und Dogmengeschichte (1900), edited by
A. Knopfler, were of a similar character; the latter included A. Ehrhard as one of its editors. The preponderance of Reformation history at that time found simultaneous expression in the founding of three series of publications: Erlauterungen und Erganzungen zu Janssens Geschichte des Deutschen Volkes (1898) by L. Pastor, Vorreformationsgeschichtliche Forschungen (1900) by H. Finke, and Reformationsgeschichtliche Studien und Texte (1905) by J. Greving. These had been preceded by Harnack's Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der Altchristlichen Literatur (1882). In addition to the periodicals, numerous series of publications edited by ecclesiastical universities, faculties and religious orders assembled the results of research in the field of Church history.
B.
These developments were made easier by the steady improvement of scientific aids. While the Series episcoporum (1873) of the Benedictine
C. Gams was based only on printed sources, the Hierarchia catholica (from 1898) of the Franciscan Conrad Eubel and his successors drew upon the newly opened Vatican archives for their historical statistics of the episcopate. The Nomenciator litterarius of the Jesuit Hugo Hurter (5 vols., 3rd ed., 1903-13) was unable to replace the old lexica of writers of the religious orders, but went beyond du Pin and Ceillier. Works of such exhaustive learning as U. Chevalier's Repertoire (first published 1877-86), his Topo-Bibliographie (1894-1903) and P. Jaffe's Regesta pontificum Romanorum (1851, 2nd ed. 1885-8) had not been at the disposal of earlier generations of students. Excellent bibliographies, such as Dahlmann-Waitz's Quellenkunde der Deutschen Geschichte (9th ed., 1931) for Germany, made information about early works readily available. The historical content of theological encyclopedias was continually being augmented, as can be seen if we compare the second edition of Wetzer and Welte's Kirchenlexikon (1822-1901) with M. Buchberger's Kirchliches Handlexikon (1904-12) and the Lexikon fur Theologie und Kirche (1930-8, 2nd ed. from 1957). On the Protestant side, the copiousness and completeness of the Realencyclopadie fur Protestantische Theologie und Kirche (3rd ed. by A. Hauck, 1896-1913) have not been surpassed, even by the excellent but differently planned Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart (3rd ed. from 1957). The Dictionnaire de theologie catholique (1902-50) has been joined by the Dictionnaire d'archeologie chretie>rne et de liturgie (1924-53) and the Dictionnaire d'histoire et de geographie ecclesiastique (begun in 1912 but not yet completed).
D.
The rise of Modernism and the circumstances of the first world war hindered but did not interrupt the growth of historical enquiry. Hitherto, Germany, France, and Belgium had been the foremost countries in promoting its advance; now the reorganization of ecclesiastical studies by Pope Pius XI was of great importance in extending its influence beyond their frontiers. The constitution Deus Scientiarum Dominus of 24 May 1931 enjoined theological faculties and ecclesiastical colleges to establish seminars for the provision of methodical training. At the Gregorian University a faculty of Church history was set up in 1934 to train teachers and archivists, especially for Italy, Spain, and Latin America. About the same time the Jesuits, Dominicans, Augustinians, and Capuchins established institutes for the study of the history of their orders, to which were entrusted the editing of sources and the publication of periodicals. Several new periodicals have appeared during and since the end of the second world war: Traditio (from 1943) in America; the Rivista di storia della Chiesa in Italia (from 1947) in Italy; Hispania Sacra (from 1948) in Spain; and the interdenominational Journal of Ecclesiastical History (from 1950) in England.
The specialization of research has led to the independence of certain disciplines and their separation from general Church history, as is shown by the establishment of special professional chairs and periodicals and the writing of specialized textbooks. History of ecclesiastical literature, which had been incorporated in the theological curriculum along with Church history in the eighteenth century, has been deepened in method and narrowed down in time to patrology, in the study of which the German Protestant school, represented by Adolf von Harnack's Texte und Unter- suchungen zur Geschichte der Altchristlichen Literatur (from 1882), has distinguished itself, the results of its work being collected in textbooks and manuals. In Germany the lead was taken by Otto Bardenhewer's Geschichte der Altkirchlichen Literatur (5 vols., 1913-32) and B. Altaner's Patrologie (6th ed. 1960, Eng. tr. Patrology, 1960); in France by the Patrologie of F. Cayre (3 vols., 3rd ed. 1945-55), to which is attached a history of theology (Eng. tr. A Manual of Patrology), and in the English- speaking world by J. Quasten's Patrology (3 vols., 1950-60). The Bulletin d'ancienne litterature of the Revue benedictine gave information about new publications, as from 1959 onwards did the Bibliographia patristica, based on international co-operation; the Vigiliae Christianae (from 1947) are devoted mainly to linguistic research. The history of medieval theological literature became partly the province of Middle Latin philology (as in the work of L. Traube, M. Manitius, P. Lehmann, and E. R. Curtius) and partly that of Scholastic research, flourishing since the turn of the century (as exemplified in the work of H. Denifle, F. Ehrle, C. Baeumker, M. Grabmann, B. Geyer, and A. Landgraf). For such extensive fields as that of medieval biblical interpretation and the history of preaching, research is still only at the beginning; and for this aspect the contribution of F. Stegmuller should be noted. A concise but comprehensive Geschichte der Theologie seit der Vaterzeit (1933) has been written by M. Grabmann.
By a process similar to that which has taken place in the case of history of Christian Literature, Christian archaeology has detached itself from classical archeology. Gianbattista de Rossi (t 1894) raised it to the rank of a science and made it his object to render monuments, inscriptions, and patristic texts available to students of early Christian life. At first the area of interest of this kind was exclusively Roman, as in the extensive and important works of Joseph Wilpert (f 1940) on the paintings in the Catacombs and on Christian sarcophagi and mosaics. But the situation has now been remedied as a result of excavations in the Christian East by J. Strzygowski, C. M. Kaufmann, and others, and by a detailed study of the relations between Classical antiquitiy and Christianity, in the work of F. J. Dolger (f 1940)106 and T. Klauser's Reallexikon fur Antike und
Christentum (from 1941). The Bollettino di archeologia cristiana, founded by de Rossi in 1863, became in 1924 the Rivista di archeologia cristiana. At the same time Pius XI established the Pontifical Institute for Christian Archaeology, of which J. P. Kirsch ("f" 1941) became the first director.
The College of Bollandists, refounded in 1837, flourished again under three outstanding directors: Charles de Smedt (f 1911), Hippolyte Dele- haye (t 1941) and Paul Peeters (f 1950). Hagiography acquired its leading periodical in the three "libraries": the Bibliotheca hagiographica: graeca, latina, and orientalis.
Patrology, Christian archaeology, and hagiography were the offspring of ecclesiastical history. A number of other special disciplines arose through reciprocal action with other sciences, especially when these had an historical orientation and therefore concerned themselves with certain spheres of the Church's activity. On the Catholic side, the history of dogma has been least able to detach itself from dogmatic theology. The incomplete essays of H. Klee, J. Schwane, and J. Bach in the nineteenth century have indeed been followed by many not insignificant individual researches and in 1905-12 by a history of dogma in the ancient Church by L. J. Tixeront; but there has been no general account comparable to the Protestant histories of dogma by A. von Harnack, R. Seeberg, and F. Loofs. The Handbuch der Dogmengeschichte of M. Schmaus and A. Grillmeier (from 1951, Eng. tr. Herder History of Dogma, from 1964) is concerned with the history of individual dogmas only.
In the study of Greek Orthodox literature and liturgy, Leo Allatius (f 1669), Joseph Assemani (f 1768) and his nephew of the same name, followed in the nineteenth century by cardinals Angelo Mai (f 1854) and J. B. Pitra (| 1889), all did meritorious work. But only after Karl Krumbacher (f 1909) had established Byzantine studies as an independent discipline did Albert Ehrhard write, at Krumbacher's instigation, the first history of theological literature in the Byzantine Empire (1897); and this was superseded only in 1959 by H. G. Beck's Kirche und Theologische Literatur im Byzantinischen Reich. During the pontificate of Leo XIII, who was himself interested in questions concerning the Eastern Church, were founded the first periodicals dealing with the history of other Eastern churches as well as the Byzantine: the Revue de l'Orient chretien (1896), Echos d'Orient (1897) and Oriens Christianus (1901). The latter was founded by Anton Baumstark (f 1948), whose Geschichte der Syrischen Literatur (1922) together with the Geschichte der Christlichen Arabischen Literatur (5 vols., 1944-53) by Georg Graf became the standard works on Eastern Christian studies. The Pontifical Oriental Institute established in 1917 has been publishing Orientalia Christiana periodica since 1935; and since 1951 the Ostkirchliche Studien have been appearing in Wurzburg.
In liturgical studies, the publication of sources by E. Martine, Eusebius Renaudot's Collectio liturgiarum Orientalium (1716), and L. A. Muratori's Liturgia Romana vetus (1748) had paved the way towards overcoming the symbolic explanation of the liturgy. The Enlightenment's desire for liturgical reform was unfavourable to liturgical history; even more so was the nineteenth-century degeneration of liturgical study to that of mere rubrics. Only by the pioneering researches of L. Duchesne, P. Batiffol, S. Baeumer, E. Bishop, A. Franz, J. Braun, C. Mohlberg, and J. Jungmann did the historical view of the liturgy prevail, while at the same time the source-material was extended by the Bradshaw Society (from 1890), the Analecta hymnica (from 1886) of M. Drevcs and C. Blume, which were later followed by the editions of the Ordines Romani and the Pontificale Romanum by M. Andrieu (| 1956), and the survey of the French liturgical manuscripts by V. M. Leroquais (f 1946). The Jahrbuch fur Liturgiewissenschaft founded in 1291 by Odo Casel, and renamed the Archiv fur Liturgiewissenschaft since 1950, gave its annual reports an almost complete survey of new works in this field. At the University of Notre Dame a programme of liturgical studies was introduced in 1947 which has produced a series of scholarly volumes entitled Liturgical Studies to which L. Bouyer, J. Dani?lou, and J. Jungmann have contributed. In other liturgical periodicals, such as Ephemerides liturgicae (from 1887), the historical viewpoint now dominates. This has had considerable influence on the development of the liturgical movement, in consequence of which liturgical science has now become an independent theological discipline.
In the study of Canon Law history, development was otherwise. This subject could build on the great achievements by Thomassin and Benedict XIV; in the nineteenth century it was aided by the school of legal history and reached its peak in the Protestant canonist Paul Hinschius (f 1889) and his pupil Ulrich Stutz (f 1938), who founded in 1908 the leading organ of the history of canon law: the canonistic section of the Zeitschrift der Savigny-Stiftung fur Rechtsgeschichte. For the history of the sources and literature of canon law Johann Friedrich von Schulte (f 1914) wrote what is still in spite of many defects an indispensable work of reference: Die Geschichte der Quellen und Literatur des canonischen Rechts (3 vols., 1875-80). This branch of study was promoted at the same time by Fried- rich Maassen (| 1900), later by Paul Fournier (f 1935), and most recently by Stephen Kuttner, who founded an institute for the history of medieval Church law at Washington in 1955. Among systematic studies of canon law, besides the classic Kirchenrecht (6 vols., 1869-97; new impression, Graz, 1959) by Hinschius, the textbook by the Tubingen canonist
J. B. Sagmuller (f 1942) is noteworthy for its painstaking regard for legal history: the final complete version of this work was the third edition in 1914; the fourth edition remained unfinished after the promulgation of the new Codex Juris Canonici. Still unsurpassed is the Verfassungs- geschichte der Deutschen Kirche im Mittelalter by Albert Werminghoff (2nd ed., 1913). The outlines by A. M. Koniger (1926), I. Zeiger (1940-7), and Bertrand Kurtscheid (1941-3) were intended for academic instruction; the best general accounts in German are by H. E. Feine, a pupil of Stutz, (4th ed., 1964) and W. M. Plochl (Vienna, I 2nd ed., 1960; II 2nd ed., Vienna 1962; III 1st ed., Vienna 1959).
The history of Missions became an independent study only after missionary science had been born. In Protestant Germany the way was prepared by Gustav Warneck (| 1910). The first occupant of a Catholic chair for missionary science (1914) was the Church historian Joseph Schmidlin (f 1944), who occupied himself from the beginning with missionary history in the Zeitschrift fur Missionswissenschaft (1911) and in the series Missionswissenschaftliche Abbandlungen und Texte, which he founded. His Katbolische Missionsgeschichte (1925) was the first convenient textbook on the subject. The establishment of further chairs and of a missiological faculty at the Gregorian University in 1932 by Pius XI was followed by the appearance of other textbooks: by P. Lesourd (1937), F. J. Montalban (2nd ed. 1952), T. Ohm's Wichtige Daten der Missionsgeschichte (2nd ed. 1961), and A. Mulders's Missionsgeschichte (1960); and by longer works: the Histoire universale des Missions catholiques (4 vols., s. d.), edited by S. Delacroix, and K. S. Latourette's A History of the Expansion of Christianity (7 vols., 1937-47). In the Bibliotheca Missionum (22 vols, so far since 1916), founded by R. Streit, missionary history received an almost complete bibliography, which has been supplemented since 1935 by the current Bibliografia missionaria of J. Rommerskirchen and others. Numerous periodicals, such as the Revue d'historie des Missions (1924) and the Neue Zeitschrift fur Missionswissenschaft (1946), and series of publications like the Studia missionalia (1943) of the Gregorian University, all these help research, which is always facing new problems arising from missionary methods: baptismal practice, the question of the vernacular, adaptation to native customs, and a native clergy.
How important the introduction of a new discipline into the theological curriculum can be for the development of a special science related to Church history is demonstrated by the history of asceticism and mysticism which has been built up during recent decades. Ascetic and mystical theology was made a subject on instruction by the constitution Deus Scientiarum Dominus (1931); a corresponding chair at the Gregorian University had already been established in 1919. In the meantime there had appeared H. Bremond's Histoire litteraire du sentiment religieux en France (12 vols., 1916-38) and P. Pourrat's La spiritualite chretienne (4 vols., 1918-28). Periodicals treating the subject from an historical angle were founded: such as the Revue d'ascetique et de mystique (1920) and the 2eitschrift jiir Aszese und Mystik (1926; since 1947 under the title Geist und Leben); from their beginnings, such periodicals as these dealt with the subject historically, but other and older publications to an increasing degree treated the subject in a similar way: an example of this kind is the Etudes carmelitaines (from 1913). The Dictionnaire de spiritualite has been since 1937 an excellent work of reference. The great religious orders are working on their own traditions of asceticism, producing editions of their classics such as the writings of Ignatius or Teresa of Avila, publishing these works both in monographs and in general accounts, as in J. de Guibert's La spiritualite de la Compagnie de Jesus (1953). Much preliminary work has to be done towards carrying out the task of writing a general history of Catholic piety; in this connexion may be mentioned the study of religious folklore by L. A. Veit (f 1939), G. Schreiber, and others.
Although the specialized sciences mentioned above have become independent and belong at the same time both to neighbouring theological disciplines and to other branches of learning (as do also the history of Christian art and that of Church music, which we have not touched upon), dogma, law, liturgy, and Missions belong particularly to the realm of general Church history. The latter must continue to study and write about these if it is to fulfill its task. It is the mother-science; they the daughters; together they constitute historical theology.
As in all branches of science, the progress of knowledge in Church history is effected by special research, which has become so extensive that no scholar is in a position to survey the whole field. General accounts such as that in the Fliche and Martin series and in the present manual had therefore to be shared out among several authors. If we talk about a "reaction" to this development, we do not mean that special research could or should be abandoned. The "reaction" is not directed against research, but aims beyond it. It seeks to escape from the practical positivism which predominated at the turn of the century, and to offer more than merely an exact exposition and interrelation of facts. It tends towards pragmatism inasmuch as it judges events ecclesiologically, as by Y. Congar, H. Lubac, J. Danielou, and K. and H. Rahner, or ecumenically as by J. Lortz. It tends towards a theology of history inasmuch as it relates the history of the Church to that of man's salvation, and thus leads back to the attitude which prevailed till the seventeenth century, but has since been pushed into the background by research into sources and narration of the course of history. Finally, it discusses the problems in the writing of history which have been raised by E. Troeltsch and F. Meinecke and the historicity of the Church as such. Only the future will tell if, and how much, these new ways of looking at things broaden and deepen our knowledge of the history of the Church.
Church History in England and America in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries108
In England as on the continent the status of ecclesiastical history in the nineteenth century was largely determined by the reactions of the Romantic movement to the rationalism of the Enlightenment. Enlightened historians of the eighteenth century, Hume, Robertson, and Gibbon, studied and wrote history because they found it a useful teacher of private virtue and correct public policy. Hume in The History of England from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution of 1688 (1761) conceived the medieval Church as a corrupt political monolith, and consequently interpreted the dissolution of the Church in the sixteenth century as something politically and economically advantageous to the State. Gibbon regarded his classic The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (1776-88) as a chronicle of the triumph of superstition and barbarism and described the Church as the great obstacle to progress and the advance of learning during the Middle Ages. Yet in spite of his rationalism he was the first of the English historians to appreciate fully the importance of the element of continuity in history.
The romantic historians, on the other hand, cultivated an appreciation for the Church's past by approaching its history in unprejudiced fashion and attempting to judge it according to its own standards. As a result their work was characterized by an enthusiasm for the past and a concern for historical continuity. By seeking the roots for the social organization of modern England, they succeeded in making the Middle Ages a respectable period of investigation and thus prepared the way for the scientific study of ecclesiastical history. The publication of source material was supported by Parliament. In the late eighteenth century the House of Commons established the Records Commission to calendar, restore, and publish manuscripts. In 1822, under the editorship of Henry Petrie, keeper of the records in the Tower of London, work began on the Monumenta Britannica Historica which was to collect the medieval sources of national history but the first volumes did not appear until 1848. Nine years later the Treasury approved the Master of the Roll's proposal to publish critical editions of the rare and valuable sources of British history from the invasion of the Romans to the reign of Henry VIII.
1,9 Additional part written by the editor of the English edition.
Probably the most widely read ecclesiastical history in the first half of the nineteenth century was Joseph Milner's (1744-97) History of the Church of Christ (1794-1809). Newman said in his Apologia pro vita sua that reading Milner's Church history awakened his interest in patristic Christianity. Milner's intention was to provide an antidote for histories of the Church like Mosheim's which he thought too much concerned with recording its failures, heresies, and disputes. "The terms 'church' and 'Christian,"' said Milner, "in their natural sense respect only good men. Such a succession of pious men in all ages existed, and it will be no contemptible use of such a history as this if it proves that in every age there have been real followers of Christ." The Bible, which gave man a glimpse of himself as 'he really is—a creature fallen but retaining elements of his original glory—opened the meaning of history for Milner. As an Evangelical vicar he knew through the experience of conversion what the Fall and Redemption meant, and, consequently, he could appreciate the significance of continued failure in the world. If the Fall of man was apparent in secular history, the Redemption of man was equally apparent in Church history: God is operative among His people. The guide-line which enabled Milner to cut neatly through Christian Church history was the fact that he wrote about no special institution, but about the invisible collectivity of believers which Evangelicals recognized as the Church. Milner's principle of including only those believers who accepted the doctrine of justification by faith alone as Evangelicals understood it turned the book into a polemical rewriting of ecclesiastical history. But although the History of the Church of Christ was intended to provide an interpretation satisfactory to Evangelicals, Milner was not averse to praising good in the Roman Church when he saw it.
Joseph Strutt (1749-1802) is typical of the growing interest in ecclesiastical history that was fostered by romanticism and nationalism. More interested in social antiquities than political theories, he delved into the Anglo-Saxon medieval past, examining in great detail the religious and cultural aspects of early English ecclesiastical history. His The Regal and Ecclesiastical Antiquities of England from Edward the Confessor to Henry the Eighth provided a font of information that was to stimulate a more critical interest among later historians. During the 1830's and 1840's this interest bore fruit in the appearance of the Caxton Society, the English Historical Society, and the Camden Society. At Cambridge the work of the "Ecclesiologists" gave an impetus to the study of church architecture and hymnology and laid the groundwork for the English liturgical revival. The publication of The Symbolism of Churches and Church Ornaments by J. Neale and W. Webb in 1843, a translation in part of the Rationale Divinorum Officiorum of William Durandus with selections from Hugh of Saint Victor, was a milestone in the increasing interest in the history of the liturgy. Neale was also the first English historian to produce important works on the eastern churches.
August Pugin (1812-52), a convert to Catholicism, was probably the most well known of the gothic revivalists. In 1850 as Professor of Architecture and Ecclesiastical Antiquities at Oscott College, he published An Earnest Appeal for the Revival of Ancient Plain Song which voiced an appeal for a return to historical sources similar to the works of Chateaubriand and Gorres. He constantly berated his co-religionists for their lack of historical perspective and was appalled by the parodies of the liturgy he witnessed in Rome and Cologne. An interest in the historical origins of the liturgy continued throughout the nineteenth century in the editions of Feltoe, Wilson, and Bradshaw.
Easily the most significant English Church historian in the first half of the nineteenth century was John Lingard (1771-1851). The Antiquities of the Anglo-Saxon Church (1806), which Lingard intended to be an apologia for the Roman Catholic Church in England, was a pioneer accomplishment in scientific history. It was the product of extensive research in and careful exegesis of Latin and Anglo-Saxon sources, a remarkable achievement in itself, since neither the Rolls Series nor any other printed collections were then in existence. Lingard recounted the birth of Christianity in Britain, gave a detailed survey of the life and practices of the Anglo-Saxon Church, and concluded with an account of the Danish invasions, the consequent decay and later revival of Church discipline, and a final, somewhat unsatisfactory section of the Anglo-Saxon missions. In order not to offend non-Catholics, Lingard avoided direct reference to the Mass, referred to the Pope as the Bishop of Rome and to priests as presbyters. Throughout he dismissed evidences of the miraculous in the Anglo-Saxon Church as lately-acquired popularizations and he refrained from canonizing anyone.
In 1819, when the first three volumes of Lingard's History of England were published, many Protestants were attracted to this Roman Catholic priest who could write history with such candour and truth. Lingard did not share the romantic fervour of his co-religionists for things medieval and was hardly of a "pro-Catholic" predisposition. As could be expected, Catholics rankled when they read about St Joan of Arc's "mental delusion".
His treatment of the Reformation was aimed at dispelling misconceptions and commonly accepted misstatements. He admitted the need for reform in head and members during the fifteenth century and made no apologies for the wordly popes of the Renaissance. He frankly stated in his interpretation of the Reformation, founded on a careful examination of the sources, that it was a revolution based in contemporary political upheaval. The secular power in England triumphed over the spiritual power >«r«"V UUV...V.. . >••*- '
Reformation more directly in Luther and Calvin than in a calm reading of Scripture and Church history, he asserted that it had broken the historical tradition of English institutions.
Although Newman (1801-90) cannot be strictly regarded as an historian, he, nevertheless, as the greatest figure in the Oxford Movement, contributed to the study of ecclesiastical history in England. He found the neglect of ecclesiastical history in England, even among Anglican divines, a sign that Protestants must realize that they were not representative of the Christianity of History. "It is a melancholy to say it", he wrote, "but the chief, perhaps the only English writer who has any claim to be considered an ecclesiastical historian, is the unbeliever Gibbon."109 He spoke equally well of the Romanticist, Walter Scott, as a writer who "has contributed by his works in prose and verse, to prepare men for some closer and more practical approximation to Catholic truth." The subject of ecclesiastical history was in fact a field that in a certain sense projected him into the public eye in England. Patristical studies, especially the Alexandrians, formed the background of all his theological thinking. His first important work was to have been a history of the councils. But he "lost himself in a task for which a lifetime had been insufficient". The result of this effort was his Arians of the Fourth Century (1833) which however gives sparse notice to the councils. Yet the main thesis of the work, that Antioch rather than Alexandria was the source of Arianism and that its underlying philosophy was Aristotelian rather than Platonic, evoked the praise of Dollinger. He reached conclusions through conjecture and without critical apparatus that were later arrived at by continental scholars, notably Neander.
Newman's contribution to the Library of the Fathers, a pioneering effort in patristics, was the Select Treatise of St Athanasius and has been described as among the richest treatises of English patristic literature. He also published in the British Magazine between 1833 and 1836 a series of essays entitled Church of the Fathers which appeared in 1840 as a one-volume work. It was a most effective instrument in the propagation of Tractarian opinions. A further historical project that was never completed was a series of essays on the three periods of Christian education, ancient medieval, and modern, represented by the three great founders of religious orders, Benedict, Dominic, and Ignatius, and subtitled the poetic, the scientific, and the practical eras. It was, however, in his famous Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (1845) that Newman presented his theory of antecedent probability and confirmed his philosophy of history as an attempt to grasp the sacred meaning of
"" J. Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (London 1846), 5.
the promise of Christ "I am with you all the days even to the consummation of the world."
Henry Hart Milman (1791-1868) gave nineteenth century Englishmen their best look at the medieval history of the Church. The History of Christianity under the Empire (1840), which cautious clergymen made it a point to ignore, served as an introduction to Milman's later compact survey of the medieval Church from Theodosius down to the eve of the Reformation. The History of Latin Christianity down to the death of Pope Nicholas V (1854-5) is a masterpiece of Victorian literature. The author traces the modifications of Christianity, by which it accommodated itself to the spirit of successive ages and portrays the genius of the Christianity of each successive age, demonstrating the reciprocal influence of civilization. The same attitude through which Milman de-emphasized the miraculous in his History of the Jews (1829) led him to focus attention on the secular activity and life of the Church in his later works. He was not interested in theological controversy, and as a consequence he avoided the anti-Catholic polemic so common among Protestant scholars of his time. Froude termed the History of Latin Christianity "the finest historical work in the English language" and Gooch praised him as an historian who did not write for the edification of his readers but portrayed the Church as an institution rather than as an influence.110
Along with Milman, William Stubbs (1825-1901) is accredited with the introduction of German historical methodology in England. He made his first important contribution to the study of Church history in the Registrum Sacrum Anglicanum which traced the succession of bishops through the centuries. In 1863 Stubbs, who had criticized the Records Commission for publishing too many sources of only secondary importance, was commissioned as an editor for the Rolls series. Through the magnificent contributions he made during the next twenty-five years, he inaugurated the critical study of medieval sources in England. His classic, the Constitutional History of England down to 1485 (1873-8) had a wider range than the title indicated. It was, in effect, a history of England from Julius Caesar down to the accession of the Tudors.
In 1866 Stubbs became professor of Modern History at Oxford. His inaugural lecture indicates his efforts to emanicipate "the history of the Church as a whole" from its theological heritage. By this Stubbs meant that Church history was beginning to be considered as a discipline independent from theology. Ecclesiastical history was broadened to a more universal study, and freed from its former restriction to the first Christian centuries and the general councils. It became 'the study of the Church as a whole as the life of the Christian Church itself, the whole history
1,0 G. P. Gooch, History and Historians in the Nineteenth Century (Boston 1962), 499.
of the body of which the modern nations claim in their spiritual character to be members". Stubbs considered this study of universal Church history as one with the study of Modern History:
"The study of Modern History is, next to theology itself ... the most thoroughly religious training the mind can receive. It is no paradox to say that Modern History, including Medieval History in the term, is coextensive in its field of view, in its habits of criticism, in the persons of its most famous students, with Ecclesiastical History. We may call them sister studies, but if they are not really one and the same, they are twin sisters, so much alike that there is no distinguishing between them."
Lord Acton (1834-1902), the first Catholic to hold the chair of Modern History at Cambridge, with Stubbs would not separate ecclesiastical and profane history, but for different reasons. Acton perceived that the only unifying element in history was the conception of freedom and his fondest plan, which he never realized, was to write a universal history of human liberty. The Church, in Acton's vision of world history, cannot withdraw from the confusion of modern politics with the excuse that its kingdom is not of this world. The Church is incarnate in the temporal, political order, so that its history is a part of this world's experience. "Religion", wrote Acton, "had to transform the public as well as the private life of nations, to effect a system of public right corresponding with private morality and without which it is imperfect and insecure." The Church's role in history binds her to work on and influence temporal order, and as a consequence, her history has universal significance.
In Acton's political theory the Church is a guardian of free conscience and a barrier against political despotism in any shape, whether it be absolute monarchy or rationalist democracy. The Church was the only force powerful enough to ensure human freedom against the rise of omnipotent States. Acton was critical of the Reformation and the establishment of Protestant States because it weakened the institution whose mission included the preservation of human freedom.
The other side of the coin — the tendency of churchmen in authority to curtail freedom of conscience — was impressed upon Acton through bitter personal experience. In 1859 at the age of twenty-five Acton became the editor of the Rambler, a liberal Catholic journal which insisted thematically in every issue that scientific truth could not but vindicate the true religion. If unsavoury truths in the history of the Church are covered up, Acton said, the authority of the Church confuses its heavenly goal with a perverse attachment to earthly power and property. When it became apparent thet the Rambler was about to be suppressed, in 1862
Acton began publishing it under a new name, The Home and Foreign Review, but he did not change the editorial policy. The journal collided head on with the hierarchy in 1863 by supporting Dollinger, Acton's mentor, in his plea made at a Munich Catholic Congress for the Church to end its hostility to historical criticism. The Pope's response was a demand for prior censorship of Catholic writing in Germany. With disaster portending for the Home and Foreign Review, Acton closed it in April, 1864, rather than provoke a showdown with the hierarchy in which he would either have to suspend his principles or disobey authority.
Acton never wrote his History of Liberty or any other complete, systematic work, but his vision of history in general and his appreciation of truth and free conscience in particular commend themselves as standards to the writer of ecclesiastical history. "It is the duty of the historian", wrote Acton in an appendix to a letter to Mandell Creighton, "to extricate himself from the influence of social groups, political parties, Church, and the like, which tend to interfere with conscience." This is an accurate summary of Acton's opinion on his own situation. The condemnation of the final heresy by Pius IX in the Syllabus of Errors, reads like a declaration of Acton's principles: "The Roman Pontiff can and ought to reconcile himself to, and agree with, progress, liberalism, and recent civilization."
The attitude towards the historical interpretation of the papacy was the point of difference between Acton and Mandell Creighton (1843-1901). As a curate of Bishop Lightfoot in the Northumberland village of Embleton, he began to write A History of the Papacy from the Great Schism to the Sack of Rome (1887-94). "It would fill a void", said Creighton of his book, "between Milman, which becomes very scrappy towards its close, and Ranke's 'Popes', and my object is to combine the picturesqueness of the one with the broad political views of the other."112 Creighton's interest in political and diplomatic technique gave the History of the Papacy a broader scope than the title indicates, for he used the papacy as a focal point to study the changes in European history during the sixteenth century. On Creighton's request Lord Acton reviewed the first two volumes which appeared in 1882 and praised Creighton for his "sovereign impartiality". What Acton found lacking was concern for the force of ideas in history, and what he objected most to was the favourable verdict on conciliarism. Creighton finished the next two volumes in 1887, three years after he was appointed first Dixie Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Cambridge and two years after he became the first editor of the English Historical Review. Again he requested Acton's review and when Acton responded with a severe critique, naked of all the usual, softening academic amenities, he found himself in the unenviable position
118 Quoted in Gooch, op. cit. pp. 349, 350.
of an editor who requested, received, and was about to publish a condemnation of his own work. Acton's objections were two. In the first place he criticized Creighton's evading moral judgments on the papacy, and secondly, he thought Creighton's attention to life and action was a superficial substitute for thought and law. He was also critical of Creighton's remarks in the preface, indicating his willingness to explain away the questionable activities of the popes. Neither Acton nor Creighton were surprised with evil when they found it in history, but Creighton was more tolerant of weakness and less quick to judge. For example, he did not cover up the vices of Pope Alexander VI, but he salvaged what he could of the Pope's reputation by praising him for not adding hypocrisy to his sins. Acton would not yield his stand that the office could not absolve the man; the exchange of letters between him and Creighton concerning Acton's review occasioned Acton's famous dictum "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." Acton toned down the language but did not alter the content of his article.
Downside Abbey has given England a number of ecclesiastical historians. William Bernard Ullathorne (1806-89), monk of Downside and Bishop of Birmingham for thirty-eight years, wrote a small octavo History of the Restoration of the English Hierarchy which he published in 1871. The first of several abbots of Downside who made significant contributions to the study of Church history was Francis Neil Gasquet (1846-1929). Gasquet was forty years old when he began to research the history of monasticism in England during the Tudor period. He was the first scholar to treat the papers of Cromwell methodically and the first to use the records of the Court of Augmentations and the pension list of Cardinal Pole. Working seven or eight hours daily in the British Museum, the Public Records Office, and with private collections, in three years he produced Henry VIII and the English Monasteries. Edward VI and the Book of Common Prayer followed in 1890.
In 1900 Gasquet published The Eve of the Reformation which grew out of the article he had submitted to Lord Acton for the Cambridge Modern History. Acton returned the article because Gasquet's standard ofi impartiality was somewhat different from his and the difference was never settled. Although he was a gifted antiquary credited with many discoveries and with recognizing the value of wills, library records, inventories, and bishops' registers for historical interpretation, Gasquet was not only a careless scholar, but he also lacked the fidelity demanded of an editor. "Towards the end of his life, indeed," observed David Knowles, "Gasquet's capacity for carelessness amounted almost to genius." "In his transcription of the Acton correspondence ... Gasquet consistently omitted or even altered without indication passages of phrases which might ... cause personal offence or exhibit Acton's critical or petulant attitude toward venerable ecclesiastics. Thus he would print 'Newman' where Acton had written 'old Noggs', and the forthright remark 'Pius IV was an ass' appears in the anodyne form 'Pius IV was no good'."113
Because of his friendship with Gasquet, Edmund Bishop (1846-1917), although not one of its sons, will always have his name associated with Downside Abbey. Before Bishop became a Catholic in 1867 he had served a year as literary secretary to Thomas Carlyle (1864). He demonstrated his gift for scholarship in his discovery, transcription, and analysis of the Collectio Britannica which consisted in some three hundred papal briefs from the fifth to the twelfth centuries previously unknown. Bishop, unable to have them published in England, edited them for the Monumento. Germanica Historica and won praise from Mommsen himself. He was a student of early and medieval Church history and his knowledge of the western liturgies far surpassed that of any of his contemporaries. His interest in liturgical studies went beyond the textual and ritual to a much broader dimension. He was, in effect, an historian of Christian social and religious life. His natural equipment for research, especially his vast memory, helped him make his works a treasure-house for other scholars, including his friend Gasquet. Some of these works were collected and published in 1918 under the title Liturgica Historica.
In 1919, Dom Cuthbert Butler, another abbot of Downside, published Benedictine Monachism, which was not merely a history, but a fully appreciative mystical, ascetical and constitutional study of the Benedictine spirit. In his discussion on Cassian's Conference on Prayer and the chapter "Is Benedictine Life Contemplative?", he raised the question which became the topic for his next book, Western Mysticism which appeared in 1922. In 1930 Butler published the History of the Vatican Council which has not made so favourable an impression. The book's weakness has two sources. On one hand, it grew out of Ullathorne's letters, which are not of first importance because the Bishop, not one for theological or diplomatic warfare, was not attuned to subtle undertones or overtones in the council wrangling. Moreover, he was not by training an historian of political and intellectual life and could not deal adequately with the complex cross-currents of the mid-nineteenth century. It remains, however, the only satisfactory history of the Council in English.
Dom David Knowles, former Professor of Medieval and Modern History at Cambridge is the finest scholar of Downside. The Monastic Order in England which he published in 1940 begins amid the tenth century, because it was then that St Dunstan founded anew Anglo-Saxon monasticism which disappeared during the Danish invasions. In the first half of the book Knowles studies the influence of various continental
118 D. Knowles, The Historian and Character (Cambridge 1963), 256.
houses on monastic foundations and reforms in England, noting especially the distinctions between Cluniac attitudes of withdrawal from the world and the tendency of Norman monasticism to fit itself into society. The second half studied the internal life and structure of the monasteries. In the first two volumes of the Religious Orders of England Knowles continued the history of the Benedictine revival down to the end of the Wars of the Roses. Volume III, The Tudor Age, appeared in 1959, thirty years after he began his initial research. It is the history of the decline and deep-rooted decay of monasticism in England before the destruction by Henry VIII. Mention must also be made of two other contemporary English Church historians, H. O. Evenett, whose study on Charles Guise, The Cardinal of Lorraine and the Council of Trent is a substantial contribution to the Counter-Reformation period, and Philip Hughes. The latter's History of the Church, 3 vols. (1934—47) and his The Reformation in England, 3 vols. (1950-4) are standard works in English-speaking lands.
The first history of the Church to be written and published in the United States was the six-volume A General History of the Christian Church (1802-3) by the Unitarian J. A. Priestley. The author held high regard for Fleury whom he used extensively and for Mosheim although he criticized the latter for his "artificial and unnatural" division by centuries. He particularly deplored the artful insinuations of Gibbon. Milner and Mosheim continued to be read by American Protestants but were gradually replaced by translations of Gieseler and Neander. P. Schaff's History of the Christian Church (1882-1910) is typical of the strong German influence on American Protestant historiography during the later nineteenth century.
The layman, John G. Shea (1824-92), may be regarded as the foremost Catholic Church historian of the nineteenth century in America. Although lacking in formal professional training, he nevertheless produced work of a highly scientific nature. His four-volume History of the Catholic Church in America (1886-92) was the first comprehensive work of this kind. Since most of the documentary material relating to the early Church in America, deposited in the archives of the Propaganda de Fide, has not been utilized, there is as yet no adequate "History of the Church in America". Peter Guilday (1884-1947), who studied under A. Cauchie at Louvain, directed most of his research into the colonial period. The Life and Times of John Carroll Archbishop of Baltimore (1922) set the pattern for subsequent Catholic historians in America who have concentrated for the most part in writing biographies of the hierarchy. Guilday's An Introduction to Church History (1925) and Church Historians (1926), the latter a collection of essays on Eusebius, Orosius, Mohler, Lingard, Pastor, and others, were the first attempts to stimulate an interest in the serious study of ecclesiastical history among American Catholics.
