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 so 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
Theodoretin the fifth century, andTheodorusandEvagrius 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(^76) These Greek historians have been best edited by Henri de Valois (Valesius), in Greek and Latin with notes, in 3 folios,
Paris, 1659-73; also Amsterd., 1695, and, with additional notes by W. Reading, Cambridge, 1720. Eusebius has been often
separately published in several languages.
(^8) Νικηφόρου Καλλίστου τοῦ Ξανθοπούλου Ἐκκλησιαστικῆς ἱς τορίας Βιβλία ιή. Edited by the Jesuit, Fronton le Duc
(Fronto-Ducaeus), Par. 1630, 2 fol. This is the only Greek edition from the only extant MS., which belonged to the King of
Hungary, then came into the possession of the Turks, and last into the imperial library of Vienna. But a Latin version by John
Lang waspublished at Basle as early as 1561.
A.D. 1-100.