The full solution of the mysteries of history is reserved for that heavenly state, when we shall see no longer through a gloss darkly, but face to face, and shall survey the developments of time from the heights of eternity. What St. Augustine so aptly says of the mutual relation of the Old and New Testament, "Novum Testamentum in Vetere latet, Vetus in Novo patet," may be applied also to the relation of this world and the world to come. The history of the church militant is but a type and a prophecy of the triumphant kingdom of God in heaven--a prophecy which will be perfectly understood only in the light of its fulfilment.
[6] The German poet, Friedrich Rückert, thus admirably enjoins the duty of condensation: Wie die Welt läuft immer weiter, Wird stets die Geschicte breiter Und uns wird je mehr je länger Nöthig ein Zusammendränger: Nicht der aus dem Schutt der Zeiten Wühle mehr Erbärmlichkeiten, Sondern der den Plunder sichte Und zum Bau die Steine schichte Nicht das Einzle unterdrückend Noch damit willkühlich schmückend, Sondern in des Einzlen Hülle Legend allgemeine Fülle; Der gelesen Alles habe, Und besitze Dichtergabe, Klar zu schildern mir das Wesen, Der ich nicht ein Wort gelesen. Sagt mir nichts von Resultaten! Denn die will ich selber ziehen. Lasst Begebenheiten, Thaten, Heiden, rasch vorüberziehen."
§ 7. Literature of Church History.
Stäudlin: Geschichte u. Literatur der K. Geschichte. Hann. 1827.
J. G. Dowling: An Introduction to the Critical Study of Eccles. History. London, 1838. Quoted p. 1. The work is chiefly an account of the ecclesiastical historians. pp. 1-212.
F. C. Baur: Die Epochen der kirchlichen Geschichtschreibung. Tüb. 1852.
Philip Schaff: Introduction to History of the Apost. Church (N. York, 1853), pp. 51-134.
Engelhardt: Uebersicht der kirchengeschichtlichen Literatur vom Jahre 1825-1850. In Niedner's "Zeitschrift für historische Theologie," 1851.
G. Uhlhorn: Die kirchenhist. Arbeiten von 1851-1860. In Niedner's "Zeitschrift für histor. Theologie," for 1866, Gotha, pp. 3-160. The same: Die ältere Kirchengesch. in ihren neueren Darstellungen. In "Jahrbücher für deutsche Theol." Vol. II. 648 sqq.
Brieger's "Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte" (begun in 1877 and published in Gotha) contains bibliographical articles of Ad. Harnack, Möller, and others, on the latest literature.
Ch. K. Adams: A Manual of Historical Literature. N. York, 3d ed. 1888.
Like every other science and art, church historiography has a history of development toward its true perfection. This history exhibits not only a continual growth of material, but also a gradual, though sometimes long interrupted, improvement of method, from the mere collection of names and dates in a Christian chronicle, to critical research and discrimination, pragmatic reference to causes and motives, scientific command of material, philosophical generalization, and artistic reproduction of the actual history itself. In this progress also are marked the various confessional and denominational phases of Christianity, giving different points of view, and consequently different conceptions and representations of the several periods and divisions of Christendom; so that the development of the Church itself is mirrored in the development of church historiography.
We can here do no more than mention the leading works which mark the successive epochs in the growth of our science.
I. The Apostolic Church.
The first works on church history are the canonical Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the inspired biographical memoirs of Jesus Christ, who is the theanthropic head of the Church universal.
These are followed by Luke's Acts of the Apostles, which describes the planting of Christianity among Jews and Gentiles from Jerusalem to Rome, by the labors of the apostles, especially Peter and Paul.
II. The Greek Church historians.
The first post-apostolic works on church history, as indeed all branches of theological literature, take their rise in the Greek Church.
Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea, in Palestine, and contemporary with Constantine the Great, composed a church history in ten books (ejkklhsiastikh; iJstoriva, from the incarnation of the Logos to the year 324), by which he has won the title of the Father of church history, or the Christian Herodotus. Though by no means very critical and discerning, and far inferior in literary talent and execution to the works of the great classical historians, this ante-Nicene church history is invaluable for its learning, moderation, and love of truth; for its use of sources, since totally or partially lost; and for its interesting position of personal observation between the last persecutions of the church and her establishment in the Byzantine empire.
Eusebius was followed in similar spirit and on the same plan by Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret in the fifth century, and Theodorus and Evagrius in the sixth, each taking up the thread of the narrative where his predecessor had dropped it, and covering in part the same ground, from Constantine the Great till toward the middle of the fifth century. [7]
Of the later Greek historians, from the seventh century, to the fifteenth, the "Scriptores Byzantini," as they are called, Nicephorus Callisti (son of Callistus, about a.d. 1333) deserves special regard. His Ecclesiastical History was written with the use of the large library of the church of St. Sophia in Constantinople, and dedicated to the emperor Andronicus Palaeologus (d. 1327). It extends in eighteen books (each of which begins with a letter of his name) from the birth of Christ to the death of Phocas, a.d. 610, and gives in the preface a summary of five books more, which would have brought it down to 911. He was an industrious and eloquent, but uncritical and superstitious writer. [8]
III. Latin Church historians of the middle ages.
The Latin Church, before the Reformation, was, in church history, as in all other theological studies, at first wholly dependent on the Greek, and long content with mere translations and extracts from Eusebius and his continuators.
The most popular of these was the Historia Tripartita, composed by Cassiodorus, prime minister of Theodoric, and afterwards abbot of a convent in Calabria (d. about a.d. 562). It is a compilation from the histories of Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret, abridging and harmonizing them, and supplied--together with the translation of Eusebius by Rufinus--the West for several centuries with its knowledge of the fortunes of the ancient church.
The middle age produced no general church history of consequence, but a host of chronicles, and histories of particular nations, monastic orders, eminent popes, bishops, missionaries, saints, etc. Though rarely worth much as compositions, these are yet of great value as material, after a careful sifting of truth from legendary fiction.
The principal mediaeval historians are Gregory of Tours (d. 595), who wrote a church history of the Franks; the Venerable Bede, (d. 735), the father of English church history; Paulus Diaconus (d. 799), the historian of the Lombards; Adam of Bremen, the chief authority for Scandinavian church history from a.d. 788-1072; Haimo (or Haymo, Aimo, a monk of Fulda, afterwards bishop of Halberstadt, d. 853), who described in ten books, mostly from Rufinus, the history of the first four centuries (Hist oriae Sacrae Epitome); Anastasius (about 872), the author in part of the Liber Pontificalis, i.e., biographies of the Popes till Stephen VI. (who died 891); Bartholomaeus of Lucca. (about 1312), who composed a general church history from Christ to a.d. 1312; St. Antoninus (Antonio Pierozzi), archbishop of Florence (d. 1459), the author of the largest mediaeval work on secular and sacred history (Summa Historialis), from the creation to a.d. 1457.
Historical criticism began with the revival of letters, and revealed itself first in the doubts of Laurentius Valla (d. 1457) and Nicolaus of Cusa (d. 1464) concerning the genuineness of the donation of Constantine, the Isidorian Decretals, and other spurious documents, which are now as universally rejected as they were once universally accepted.
IV. Roman Catholic historians.
The Roman Catholic Church was roused by the shock of the Reformation, in the sixteenth century, to great activity in this and other departments of theology, and produced some works of immense learning and antiquarian research, but generally characterized rather by zeal for the papacy, and against Protestantism, than by the purely historical spirit. Her best historians are either Italians, and ultramontane in spirit, or Frenchmen, mostly on the side of the more liberal but less consistent Gallicanism.
(a) Italians:
First stands the Cardinal Caesar Baronius (d. 1607), with his Annales Ecclesiastici(Rom. 1588 sqq.), in 12 folio volumes, on which he spent thirty years of unwearied study. They come down only to the year 1198, but are continued by Raynaldi (to 1565), Laderchi (to 1571), and Theiner (to 1584). [9]
This truly colossal and monumental work is even to this day an invaluable storehouse of information from the Vatican library and other archives, and will always be consulted by professional scholars. It is written in dry, ever broken, unreadable style, and contains many spurious documents. It stands wholly on the ground of absolute papacy, and is designed as a positive refutation of the Magdeburg Centuries, though it does not condescend directly to notice them. It gave immense aid and comfort to the cause of Romanism, and was often epitomized and popularized in several languages. But it was also severely criticized, and in part refuted, not only by such Protestants as Casaubon, Spanheim, and Samuel Basnage, but by Roman Catholic scholars also, especially two French Franciscans, Antoine and François Pagi, who corrected the chronology.
Far less known and used than the Annals of Baronius is the Historia Ecclesiasticaof Caspar Sacharelli, which comes down to a.d. 1185, and was published in Rome, 1771-1796, in 25 quarto volumes.
Invaluable contributions to historical collections and special researches have been made by other Italian scholars, as Muratori, Zaccagni, Zaccaria, Mansi, Gallandi, Paolo Sarpi, Pallavicini (the last two on the Council of Trent), the three Assemani, and Angelo Mai
(b) French Catholic historians.
Natalis (Noel) Alexander, Professor and Provincial of the Dominican order (d. 1724), wrote his Historia Ecclesiastica Veteris et Nova Testamentito the year 1600 (Paris, 1676, 2d ed. 1699 sqq. 8 vols. fol.) in the spirit of Gallicanism, with great learning, but in dry scholastic style. Innocent XI. put it in the Index (1684). This gave rise to the corrected editions.
The abbot Claude Fleury (d. 1723), in his Histoire ecclésiastique(Par. 1691-1720, in 20 vols. quarto, down to a.d. 1414, continued by Claude Fabre, a very decided Gallican, to a.d. 1595), furnished a much more popular work, commended by mildness of spirit and fluency of style, and as useful for edification as for instruction. It is a minute and, upon the whole, accurate narrative of the course of events as they occurred, but without system and philosophical generalization, and hence tedious and wearisome. When Fleury was asked why he unnecessarily darkened his pages with so many discreditable facts, he properly replied that the survival and progress of Christianity, notwithstanding the vices and crimes of its professors and preachers, was the best proof of its divine origin. [10]
Jacques Bénigne Bossuet, the distinguished bishop of Meaux (d. 1704), an advocate of Romanism on the one hand against Protestantism, but of Gallicanism on the other against Ultramontanism, wrote with brilliant eloquence, and in the spirit of the Catholic church, a universal history, in bold outlines for popular effect. [11] This was continued in the German language by the Protestant Cramer, with less elegance but more thoroughness, and with special reference to the doctrine history of the middle age.
Sebastien le Nain de Tillemont (d. 1698), a French nobleman and priest, without office and devoted exclusively to study and prayer--a pupil and friend of the Jansenists and in partial sympathy with Gallicanism--composed a most learned and useful history of the first six centuries (till 513), in a series of minute biographies, with great skill and conscientiousness, almost entirely in the words of the original authorities, from which he carefully distinguishes his own additions. It is, as far as it goes, the most valuable church history produced by Roman Catholic industry and learning. [12]
Contemporaneously with Tillemont, the Gallican, L. Ellies Dupin (d. 1719), furnished a biographical and bibliographical church history down to the seventeenth century. [13] Remi Ceillier (d. 1761) followed with a similar work, which has the advantage of greater completeness and accuracy. [14] The French Benedictines of the congregation of St. Maur, in the seventeenth and eighteenth century, did immense service to historical theology by the best critical editions of the fathers and extensive archaeological works. We can only mention the names of Mabillon, Massuet, Montfaucon, D'achery, Ruinart, Martène, Durand. Among the Jesuits, Sirmond and Petau occupy a prominent place.