V. The Mediaeval Sections of the General Church Histories.
(a) Roman Catholic: Baronius (see above), Fleury, Möhler, Alzog, Döllinger (before 1870),
Hergenröther.
(b) Protestant: Mosheim, Schröckh, Gieseler, Neander, Baur, Hagenbach, Robertson. Also Gibbon’s
Decline and Fall of the Rom. Empire (Wm. Smith’s ed.), from ch. 45 to the close.
VI. Auxiliary.
Domin. Du Cange (Charles du Fresne, d. 1688): Glossarium ad Scriptores mediae et infimae
Latinitatis, Paris, 1678; new ed. by Henschel, Par. 1840–’50, in 7 vols. 4to; and again by Favre,
1883 sqq.—By the same: Glossarium ad Scriptores medicae et infimae Graecitatis, Par. 1682,
and Lugd. Batav. 1688, 2 vols. fol. These two works are the philological keys to the knowledge
of mediaeval church history.
An English ed. of the Latin glossary has been announced by John Murray, of London: Mediaeval
Latin-English Dictionary, based upon the great work of Du Cange. With additions and corrections
by E. A. Dayman.
§ 2. The Middle Age. Limits and General Character.
The Middle Age, as the term implies, is the period which intervenes between ancient and modern
times, and connects them, by continuing the one, and preparing for the other. It forms the transition
from the Graeco-Roman civilization to the Romano-Germanic, civilization, which gradually arose
out of the intervening chaos of barbarism. The connecting link is Christianity, which saved the best
elements of the old, and directed and moulded the new order of things.
Politically, the middle age dates from the great migration of nations and the downfall of the
western Roman Empire in the fifth century; but for ecclesiastical history it begins with Gregory
the Great, the last of the fathers and the first of the popes, at the close of the sixth century. Its
termination, both for secular and ecclesiastical history, is the Reformation of the sixteenth century
(1517), which introduces the modern age of the Christian era. Some date modern history from the
invention of the art of printing, or from the discovery of America, which preceded the Reformation;
but these events were only preparatory to a great reform movement and extension of the Christian
world.
The theatre of mediaeval Christianity is mainly Europe. In Western Asia and North Africa,
the Cross was supplanted by the Crescent; and America, which opened a new field for the
ever-expanding energies of history, was not discovered until the close of the fifteenth century.
Europe was peopled by a warlike emigration of heathen barbarians from Asia as America
is peopled by a peaceful emigration from civilized and Christian Europe.
The great migration of nations marks a turning point in the history of religion and civilization.
It was destructive in its first effects, and appeared like the doom of the judgment-day; but it proved
the harbinger of a new creation, the chaos preceding the cosmos. The change was brought about
gradually. The forces of the old Greek and Roman world continued to work for centuries alongside
of the new elements. The barbarian irruption came not like a single torrent which passes by, but as
the tide which advances and retires, returns and at last becomes master of the flooded soil. The
savages of the north swept down the valley of the Danube to the borders of the Greek Empire, and
southward over the Rhine and the Vosges into Gaul, across the Alps into Italy, and across the