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(^9) We omit the inferior continuations of the Polish Dominican, Abr. Bzovius, from 1198 to 1565, in 8 vols., and of Henr.
Spondé, bishop of Pamiers, from 1197 to 1647, 2 vols. The best of the older editions, including the continuation of Raynaldi
(but not of Laderchi) and the learned criticisms of Pagi and his nephew, was arranged by Archbishop Mansi, in 88 folios, Lucca,
1738-57. A hundred years later, a German scholar in Rome, Augustin Theiner, prefect of the Vatican Archives, resumed the
continuation in 3 vols., embracing the pontificate of Gregory XIII. (a.d. 1572-’84), Rome and Paris, 1856, 3 vols fol, and hoped
A.D. 1-100.