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, andAngelo 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 theto bring the history down to the pontificate of Pius VII., a.d. 1800, in 12 folios; but he interrupted the continuation, and began,
in 1864, a new edition of the whole work (including Raynaldi and Laderchi), which is to be completed in 45 or 50 volumes, at
Bar-le-Duc, France. Theiner was first a liberal Catholic, then an Ultramontanist, last an Old Catholic (in correspondence with
Döllinger), excluded from the Vatican (1870), but pardoned by the pope, and died suddenly, 1874. His older brother, Johann
Anton, became a Protestant.(^10) A portion of Fleury’s History, from the second oecumenical Council to the end of the fourth century (a.d. 381-400), was
published in English at Oxford, 1842, in three volumes, on the basis of Herbert’s translation (London, 1728), carefully revised
by John H Newman, who was at that time the theological leader of the Oxford Tractarian movement, and subsequently (1879)
became a cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church.
(^11) Discours sur l’histoire universelle depuis le commencement du monde jusgu’à l’empire de Charlemagne. Paris, 1681, and
other editions.
A.D. 1-100.