Columbia ^utbcv-sittp iutl)cCitt)of31ctuPark LIBRARY CHRISTIAN HISTORY Three Great Periods fxxfii Pcriob EARLY CHRISTIANITY BY JOSEPH HENRY ALLEN Author of "Hebrew men and Times," "Our Liberal movement in theology," &c. Cujus omnis religio est sine scelere ac macula vivere Lactantius BOSTON ROBERTS BROTHERS 1 88:; 50965 Copyright, 1882, By Joseph Henry Allen. Unive:;stty Press: John Wilson and Son, Camuridge. PEEFACE rriHESE volumes, of wliich the first was originally -*- published under the title "Fragments of Chris- tian History," were prepared in the regular course of duty in the department of Ecclesiastical History in Harvard University. Taken together, the two em- brace the entire development of Catholic Christianity, coming down to the eve of the Eeformation. Their plan requires for its completion a third volume, re- viewing certain modern phases of religious life and thought, whicli is now in preparation. The series thus contains a general view, or outline, of the course of study indicated in the Introduction, which I have attempted to fill out in the University lecture-courses. Taken in connection with " Hebrew Men and Times," which serves as preface, and "Our Liberal Movement in Theology," which serves as sequel, it gives a simi- lar outline of the great religious tradition that has come down to our own time. IV rREFACE. The series is far, indeed, from being such a history as its subject might well demand from the scholar- ship of the present day ; not even such -as I might possibly attempt, with a longer prospect of working time. It is but a slender gleaning in a wide field, which has been well reaped by stronger hands. Far enough from taking the place of larger and more learned works, it can serve, at best, as a key or guide to younger students through a region which has its special difficulties to the modern explorer. It can, at best, make a little clearer to other minds a point of view which has been of increasing interest to me in the studies of the last thirty years, and in the labors of the last five. At all events, it exhibits, as fairly as I can give, a view of the subject which I have never seen properly worked out. In whatever way we regard tlie origin and early growth of Christianity, whether as si)ecial revelation or as historic evolution, it appears to me that the key to it is to be found, not in its specula- tive dogma, not in its ecclesiastical organization, not even in what strictly constitutes its religious life, but in its fundamentally ethical character. In either way of understanding it, it is first of all a gospel for the salvation of human life. It is not a Creed, Mliie-h perishes ; but a Force, whicli persists. And to this primary notion of it everything else has been subordinated to a degree that astonishes me I'UEFACE. V more and more as I look into its original documents. A motive so intense and so profound — however crude and misinformed — as to dominate the reason and imagination for nKjro than a thousand years, and to create a civilization which liad (we may say) every great quality except tliat of a voice for its own inter- pretation, — which stifled thought in the interest of morality, which reduced Art after its rich classic de- velopment to a bald symbolism, and made a free science or literature in;ipossible, — whatever else we may think of it, is certainly an amazing and unique phenomenon in human history. From Constantine to Dante that is, substantially, the fact w^e have to study. The chapters which follow are designed as a contribution to the rio-lit understandinsf of it. o o These volumes are very far from claiming to be a history. Yet just as little are they a compilation. The judgments they express are such as have been ripening during thirty years of reasonable familiarity with most of the phases of the subject I have at- tempted to present ; and they rest, in all cases, upon the acquaintance I have been able to make with the original sources of the history. I was so fortunate as to begin tliese studies within reach of the Con- gressional Library at Washington, which is (or was) excej)tionally rich in the earlier authorities ; and to continue them as nart of ray stated labors here, with the far ampler treasures of the University Library at VI PREFACE. command. Of course I liave availed myself, where I could, of modern expositors and standard histori- ans, — of which due acknowledgment is made in the notes. My constant autliorities, however, have been the volumes of the Fathers, of tlie early historians, and especially of Migne's Patrologia, both Greek and Latin. I have endeavored to keep true to the maxim which ought to govern such an exposition : that it should include the secular as w^ell as the relioious side of events ; that it should deal primarily with intellectual and moral forces rather than speculative opinions or institutional forms ; and that it should rest at all points directly on original authorities, wherever these are accessible. A brief Chronological Outline lias been added to each volume, not as sufficient for the uses of tlie student, but in order to make the bearing of allusions and events more distinct to those who are not other- wise familiar with the ground. To the student the standard historians, especially Gieseler and Neander, to tlie general reader Milman's histories and Green- wood's Cathedra Petri, may be recommended to fill in the sketch which is here attempted. lUit it cannot be too strongly urged tliat some ac([uaintance with Catholic liistorians, such as those indicated in my brief list of authorities, is indispensable, if not to a kn()\vl(Ml-_r(; of the facts, at least to an apprehension of the spirit and inutive, of the earlier time. Xo such PREFACE. Vll list is given for the period since the Reformation ; when, ecclesiasticisni having been defeated, an un- derstanding of the forces in the field must be sought not so much in the special historians of this depart- ment, as in the wider study of modern literature, science, philosophy, and life. In conclusion, I would say that the view I have attempted to present claims a special interest and value, as vindicatiug for historical Christianity a sig- nificance often denied or overlooked in the current thought of our time. This significance belongs to it as an exhibition of the highest and most varied forms of the religious life yet known, and is absolutely independent on any theory of its origin, or on the truth or falsity of any of its creeds. J. H. A. Cambridge, Massachusetts, December 31, 1882. CONTENTS. Introduction : Study of Christian History . . ix I. The Messiah and the Christ i II. Saint Paul 21 III. Christian Thought of the Second Century 47 IV. The Mind of Paganism 71 V. The Arian Controversy 100 VI. Saint Augustine 122 ^^VII. Leo the Great 146 VIII. MONASTICISM as A MORAL FORCE 1 65 ViX. Christianity in the East 185 "Y^" X. Conversion of the Barbarians 204 XI. The Holy Roman Empire 227 XII. The Christian Schools 249 ¥ Chronological Outline 275 Index 279 INTRODUCTION. ON THE STUDY OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY. AMONG those who accept Christianity as a revela- tion, in the most definite sense the>' are able to give that word, there are two contrary- wa3s of regmd- ing it. One considers it as an interpolation in human things, — a " scheme of salvation " introduced at a defi- nite time, completely apart from anything that went be- fore, except as the wa^' may have been prepared for it by a series of special providences. The other considers it as a manifestation of the Divine life common to humanity, coming in the fulness of time, and as much prepared for by all that went before as a crop of fruit is ripened by the sunshine and showers of the whole season. One sees it as a communication from without; the other, as a development from within. In the illustrations I shall attempt to give of it, I shall frankly take the lat- ter view. As soon, however, as we begin to follow up this view, we find ourselves quite outside the limits of " ecclesias- tical history" as usually defined. Our field is, in fact, as broad as civilization itself: only that we deal not so much with its external foi'ms, its institutions and events, but with its governing and directing forces in the X INTRODUCTION. thought, heart, and conscience of its representative men. What we call the history of dogma is really a ver}' curious and instructive chapter in the development of speculative thought, — that record of intellectual effort and error, opening out from Thalcs all the way down to Hegel or Comte. What we call ecclesiastical polity is really one of the most interesting chapters in the devel- opment of social or political institutions, — those wav- marks, guides, and buttresses of the structure of civili- zation itself. What we call church ceremonial is really the most skilful, the most subtile, the most effective ap- peal to human imagination, as one of the chief governing principles of conduct, — reaching all tlie way from sim- ple decoration of altar or vestment to the splendors of form, color, and vocal or instrumental harmony in a great cathedral, or the tender impressiveness of a Catholic procession. What we call hierarchical domi- nation — resting on the terrors of eternity, and ever at war with the powers of the world — is really the form authority came to take in the struggle, by which the expanding life of humanity has been lifted so many degi'ees above the savage or the brute. What we call canon law is really the summing up of several centu- ries' effort, by rule and precedent, to construct a code of moralit}', and with it to create a new social system, amidst the wreck of ancient society, or in presence of the brutal disorders of barbarian invasion. We allow for the error, the false ambition, the priestly cunning, the ecclesiastical tyranny, just as we allow for the violences, the vices, and the shames tliat run through all the record of human alfairs. They are incidents in that wider, that universal •' struggle for existence," which is tlie api)oint('d means wlicreby Divine Providence at- tains its ends. THE STUDY OF rilRISTIAN HISTORY. xi Now, histoiT sliows lis nianv well-defined and easily distinguishable ty[)es of civilization, — K.UTptian, Classic Pagan, Mahometan, Indian ; and among these types the Christian civilization is to be reckoned, — as we hold, the highest and most developed hitherto. Our [)resent business is to see, as clearly as we can, just what this is in itself. In the study of comparative religions, which is one of the boasts of our day, we should at least make sure of one of the things to be compared. And this will be best done, as it is done in natural history, by patient, detailed, accurate study of its facts and fea- tures. These, it is true, are found in what is some- what intangible, — in the thoughts and lives of a great many men, scattered along through a great period of time. But, if we will think of it, the scientific method of study — that is, of comparison and judgment, as opposed to the method of heaping up mere multiplicity of facts — is the true one, as Saint Paul himself sug- gests, when he speaks of his new converts as olive-shoots, grafted upon a hardy stock. It is no disparagement to pine, beech, or maple, to claim that the olive has a natural history of its own. Again, as already hinted, this history is to be studied, in the main, on its ethical or ideal side, and not merely in the record of its facts and dates. Christianity has been not merely a type, shaping men's lives uncon- sciously, Hke the t3'pe, or law of growth, of any oi*ganic product. This it has been also, in the highest, the di- vine, which is also the purely scientific sense. But not only this. It has been vividly conceived in the thought of its believers as the true and only solution to the great mystery of the universe. It has been adoringly received in faith, as the symbol of the holiest the heart can love or worship. It has been earnestly, humbly, obediently xn INTRODUCTION. accepted b\' the conscience, as the sovereign law of life. In eacli one of these three ways it has l)een held with fanaticism and intolerance. But in each of these three ways, also, it has been held humbly, reverently, pionsl}', valiantly, and has thus been a great power to move the world. The right place to study it is not in its errors, ignorances, bigotries, and crimes. It must be studied in its great and brave sincerities, as witnessed bv its glorious martyr-roll, blood-stained, fire-scorched ; by its record of heroic names, from tliose who bore the fixith like a flag l)efore the des[)otisms of Rome or the barbarisms of Germany and Scandinavia, down to the last mission- ary who died for it in field or hospital ; in the lives of its great patient thinkers, the prayers of its saints, the glad, tender, or triumphant strains of its choruses and hymns, the fidelity of many generations of humble, trustful, victorious lives. These are what it is tlie his- torian's chief business to set forth. These are what we mean when we say it should be studied fust of all on its ideal side, and not in that which is false, cruel, turbu- lent, and base. Again, when we speak of a type of civihzation, or a type of mental life, we mean not something that is fixed and still, as a crystallographer or a dogmatist might understand it. The life we speak of pours in a gener- ous flood from its unknown source to its unknown future. Scientific criticism in these days does not si)are anything from its rigid search. Of course it rationalizes upon the origins of Christianity, as it d(jes upon everything else. But, for our [)re.sent [)ur[)us(', we have notliing to do with any of its speculations. Our business is with the stream ilsclf. Theology assumes for its [)ostulate, that the origin of all life is in (Jod, — that is, in a source that 1s everywhere present and always giving forth, in- THE STUDY OF CHRISTIAN IIlSTOlfY. XIU exhaustible, infinite, essentiall}' one with perfect wis- dom, justice, and love. Just how these attributes of the Infinite Life were embodied for their earthly- manifestation in the person of the Founder of Christianity, has been the most fruit- ful ground of speculation and controversy. l>ut, ante- rior to all these speculations, it is well for us to have as distinct a conception as we can of that large historic life which we denominate Christian. And this, not b}' theoretical distinctions or abstract definitions, but by seeing it "manifest in the flesh": that is, not merely in the "one greater Man" (as Milton calls him), of whom that phrase was first used, but (as Leo the Great interprets) in all of the innumerable company who have received and have worthily shared that hfe. Accordingly, the right study of Christian history con- sists mainly in the study of moral forces : that is, forces which bear on men on the side of character and conduct. Of itself, state it as simply as we will, this means a great deal. Conduct, sa^'S Matthew Arnold, is at least three quarters of human life ; and when to this we add character which it springs from, and aspi- ration which makes its ideal, and the education of con- science which gives its law, we have pretty nearly mapped out the whole field of practical religion as opposed to the purely theoretic. Now we want a phrase which denotes sharply that characteristic of religion most important to consider as affecting human life. Such a phrase, for example, is " enthusiasm of humanity," which we find in Ecce Homo^ as best describing the religion of Jesus and his disci- ples. But it seems to me that the higher and broader phrase etiiiq.\.l passion denotes better the quality 1 mean. Whatever else religion may include, at any xiv INTRODUCTION. rate it moans this. A strong and victorious religious movement takes place, when the ethical passion I speak of is l)len(led with the mode of thinkhig dominant at a given time. Indeed, a better definition could liardly be oiven of an historical rehgion than the coincidence of these two, originating with some crisis in human af- fairs. The passion itself is the essential motive force : its association with one or another form of dogma seems almost pure accident. I do not, of course, claim that this noblest of the passions is peculiar to Christianity among the religions of the world. In its elements, it certainly is not. In de- gree, at least, I think it is, — certainly in that line by which, through Puritanism up to primitive Christian- ity, we trace our own spiritual descent. As to this, however, we need assume nothing at all. Christianity at all events has shown itself in the world primarily as a moral force. It is this quality in it that we have first of all to keep in view in the ditferent phases of it we shall meet. Its creed, its symbols, its institutions, are what they are in the history of mankind because they are expressions of that force. They are superficial; the ethical passion they embody is fundamental. It shows itself in many ways : with Paul, in earnest contrition and conviction of sin ; with Howard, in the deep sense of evil and sutlering among men ; with Savo- narola, in tlaming wrath against hypoerisy and injustice ; with mystic and monastic, in rude austerities or ecstatic fervors. It appears in the patient pondering of moi-al problems, with the Schoolmen ; in willing and brave self-sacrifice, with the Pilgrims ; in endurance of perse- cution, with the .Miirlvrs; in heroism of battle, with the Covenanters; in recoil from a eorrupt society, with the Anchorites ; in rapturous visions of a reign of holiness, THE STUDY OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY. XV with the Saints. In all these shapes that intenser form of moral emotion which we rightly' name the ethical passion may a[)pear : its characteristic being, not merely that conscience, as against pleasure or gain, is taken for the law of life — which it has in common with the Stoics ; ])ut that conscience,' so obeyed, becomes a source of enthusiasm, a ground of faith and hope, an in- spiration of the will. As what Mr. Arnold calls '' the lyrical cry " is not only a maik of genuine poetr}', but makes the tone of true devotion, and so is the voice of religion in the way of emotional fervor, appealing to the Infinite ; so the ethical passion 1 have named is the very heart of true religion on its manward side, and is the chaiticteristic we have chiefly to seek and verify in the study of its history. This suggests, again, the direction our study should take : namel}', that its field chiefly lies in the lives and thought of individual men. A great deal has been said of the philosophy of history, and of the study of histor}' as a science. But, in much of this discussion, what is after all the chief glory, interest, and value of historical study is apt to be overlooked. Histor}' studied as science tends to degenerate at once to anthropolog}' ; studied as histor//, its great value will be found in its appeal to imagination, its widening of the sympathy, and its education of the moral sense. Of course, we want to know all that can be given in the wide view and nice distinctions of philosophy, in the accurate terms and orderly- arrangement of science. And we need not dis- pute whether either of them is or is not a more valuable study than history proper in itself. But, in respect of our immediate purpose, they only serve as a framework for the picture ; the}' merel}' outline the conditions under which the stud}' of history is to be had. Xvi INTRODUCTION. This is the study of human life itself, — its action and its passion ; of hfe on its personal, suffering, dramatic, rejoicing, heroic side ; of its sin and holiness, its error and its strenglh, its struggle and its grief. Nothing, in fact, is more diamatic than the life shown us in the field we enter, as soon as we pierce beyond the veil that distance of time or strangeness of dialect has thrown about it. The true way to know the men whose lives are the history we would learn, is to come as close to them as the barriers of time, distance, and language will allow ; to seek always the original sources first, at least under the briefest guidance and exposition ; never to satisfy ourselves with dissertations, abridgments, com- pends, or " standard historians " ; to listen to each man's words, so far as we have ability or opportunity, in the tongue he learned from his mother, and talked with his own kinsfolk, and wrote with his own pen. A single page, read in that way, brings us nearer to the man, gives us better (so to speak) the feel of his pulse, the light of his eye, and the complexion of his face, than whole chapters of commentary and paraphrase. We have all learned, long ago, that faith is a very different thing from opinion. Yet we do not always reflect how wrongly men's historical judgments are colored by their opinions, or how shallow and poor those judgments often are, from the mere lack of power to comprehend — we might even say pardon — any very strong and sincere conviction at all. Thus of Gibbon — so masterly in grasp, so unwearied in research, so sub- tile in suggestion, our Indispensable daily companion and guide in a large part of the field we have to nivesti- gate — tlie instances are rare in which he has not done wrong to the topic or the character he was treating, and let down tlie moral tone of a great man or a great event, THE STUDY OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY. XVll siu-h as the roeoiil fairly gives, b}' his strange incapacity of historic sym[)atliv. So that, in a veiy large part of it, — not onl}' in his famous chapters on earl^^ Chris- tianity, hut in his treatment of each critical epoch or heroic life, — his woi'k, indispensable for its outlines and its f\icts, is a masterl}' and very perfect model of what our study of the history ought not to be. Again, we must be clear of that besetting sin of theo- logians, a controversial motive. We are not pledged, in any sense, to uphold one set of opinions, or disparage others. Our true business is to understand, if we can, the men who held them, and wli}' the}' held them. The world of thought and belief has so shifted in all its bearings, that we can never be quite sure we have the mind of the early age ; while the world of passion and motive remains fundamentall}' the same. Very good men have held in honest}' of heart opinions wholl}' false and shocking to us. Their thin ghosts do not flit before our bar for judgment. Nay, wlien those men lived, they were drawn b}^ the tragic and terrible logic of their opinions to acts in our view inconceivabh' hateful. In all history there is perhaps nothing quite so awful as the religious wars, the infernal tortures of Inquisition and dragonnade, the frightful persecutions of mere opinion, deliberateh' inflicted, for centuries, in the name of faith ; so that the ver}' phrase " act of faith," translated into Spanish, is perhaps of all human phrases ghastliest in its suggestion. I have no more the will than the power to exclude these horrors from our held, lor the sake of a serener view. Humanit}' does well to hate the name and curse the memor}' of them. But our task, even for these, is to see them in their causes ; to trace how thc}- were linked in fatally with the train of o})inions and events ; to see how bad men could have found means to xviii IXTEODUCTIOX. bring thorn to pass, and how good men could possibly have been led to consent to them as a pardonable alter- native from soinetlung worse. A very large part of our history is the record of con- troversies, in which we have no occasion whatever to take sides as partisans. Our business is rather to see, if we can, how each side was an element in the necessary evolution ; and how a gain in mind, morals, or society is brought al)Out, iiot by sudden victories of the truer opinion, but by the very obstinate contlict itself, in which each party lights toughly, whether for the gold or the silver side of the shield of truth. AVe have our own battles to fight; and we cannot afford to revive the passions of those ancient ones. A word of the periods into which the history naturally falls. The main points of departure — the nodal points, so to speak, marking most visibly the coincidence of the spiritual and secular evolution — are most conveniently taken at the end of the eighth century, and at the end of the fifteenth. The three periods so given, consid- ered in reference to the type of Christian civilization before spoken of, may be called the period of its struggle for existence, of its dominance in a definite historic form, and of its differentiation or expansion. The first ex- tends from the origin of Christianity, through the time of its conflict with Classic paganism on one hand, and Barbaric paganism on the other, down to the founding of the Christian empire of Charlemagne. The second extends through what is called the Middle Age of Euro- pean history, the period of feudal society, of the cru- sades, of the Holy Apostolic Chui-ch dominant under the great popes and the Holy Roman Empire dominant under the great im[)erial houses, down to and ineluding the revival of art and learning, and the period of the great THE STUDY OF CHRISTIAN HISTORY. xix discoveries which initiated the broader life of the mod- ern world. The third begins with the controversies of the Protestant Reformation, and follows its results in the liberalizing of thought, the development of speculative philosoph}' and scientific criticism, the vast growth of natural science (far more important to us in its effect on men's habit of thought than in its wealth of fact or its practical skill) , the great movements of modern so- ciety and politics of the revolutionary period, in which we are living now. Naturally and rightly, these last are of vastly greater consequence to us than anything in the past. ]\Iore- over, they are precisely the issues to which the great evolution of religious life in the past has conducted us. But no stage of it need be followed in the spirit of dogmatists, pedants, or archaeologists. The life- stream whose course we are endeavoring to trace flows through channels, takes on forms and qualities, that enter deeply into the spirit of our own life. Not only, then, the echoes of the past are to be heard, but its footsteps traced, and its spirit felt, and its lessons heeded, on the spot where we stand, and in the moment of time when we breathe. For us, its earliest tradition is still alive. The record contained in so many ponder- ous volumes is not an antiquarian curiosity, like those title-deeds lately turned up in bricks and tiles of Neb- uchadnezzar's time ; but is like a merchant's ledger, which lies always open to record the transactions of to-day. The antiquarian may learn facts and dates ; but fiicts and dates are not history. They are at best the "raw materials," which must be "cooked"" (as our friend in the story-book sagely says) before the}' are fit food for the human mind. It is the ver}' business XX INTIIODUCTION. of history to turn dead facts into live truths ; to assort, co-ordinate, arrange them, find out their bearing on one another, and their relation to the hfe they cover, — often, it is true, as tombstones cover the forms once warm with eager hfe. It is not that we disparage facts. On the contrary, tlie mind in search of truth hungers and thirsts for them. But one must not be mistaken for the other. A hundred thousand facts will very likely go to the making of a single truth. And for method, the simplest is the best: that is, to fix a few marked lives and dates, '' as nails in a sure place." A very few, well fixed, will give us the lati- tude and longitude of our facts, and save them from being mislaid or lost. I once watched an artist be- ginning to draw a portrait. He measured with a straight stick one or two dimensions, marked them on his panel, took rapidly the liearings with his eye, made a few swift strokes ; and, almost in less time than it takes to tell, my mother's face, dim and faint, began to be shadowed out under his trained hand, which hours and days of patient skill would be needed to complete, l)utwith features and expression already there. In some such way, if not with an artist's skill, yet with his patient accuracy, we may so outline this vast and magnificent field of our inquiry as never to lose from memory the features and expres- sion of that life which we accept as a continual and yet unUuished revelation in the ilesli of the Universal Lil'e. AUTHORITIES. Besides the references in the margin, some mention of a few of the chief authorities may be useful to the student or general reader. These are of three classes, — Original Docu- ments, accessible, in general, only in large libraries ; Standard Historians, whose works, in English, may be procured easily and at moderate cost ; and Encyclopaedias. Of original documents the most serviceable are — The Fathers : especially the " Ante-Nicene Christian Li- brary " (Clark, Edinburgh, 22 vols.), to which are added in the same style several of the writings of Augustine, including the De Civitate Dei; and the "Library of the Fathers" (Parker, Oxford, 17 vols., one of the fruits of the Tractarian movement), including several volumes of Chrysostom. To these should be added the Greek Ecclesiastical Historians — Eusebius, Socrates, Sozomen, Theodoret, and Evagrius — coming down to near the end of the sixth century (Bagster, London, 6 vols.). Several brief compends of the Fathers have been prepared for English readers, of which the most useful promises to be that compiled by the Rev. George A. Jackson (Appleton, New York). Below the date of Augustine, and before the period of the Reformation, there is little accessible in English except a por- tion of the works of Anselm, and some of the mystical writers of the later Middle Age. For the greater part of this interval, of just eleven hundred years, the great collection, indispensable to the uses of the student, is — MiGXE : Patrolofjia, Greek and Latin, a complete library of Christian literature, ecclesiastical and philosophical. The Greek writers, with Latin translation in parallel columns, fill 161 vols., large octavo, and extend to the destruction of the Greek Empire in 1453. The Latin writers embrace nearly fifteen hundred names, from Tcrtullian to Innocent III. inclu- sive, and are contained in 221 vols., foui- of which consist of Xxii AUTHORITIES. full and elaborate Indices. The plates of a large part of this splendid collection were destroyed by fire, but will soon be replaced, if they have not been already. (Paris, 1844-1864.) Of later writers of ecclesiastical Latin, the comj)lete works of Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventura, and Duns Scotus, with single writings of Roger Bacon, Raymond Lully, and Occam, may be found in the Harvard College Library. Among original authorities may also be included — Mansi : a complete History of Councils, in 31 vols, folio, down to and including the Council of Florence, 1439 (Florence, 1759-1798). Baronius: Annals of the Papacy in 19 large folio vols., down to the election of Innocent III. in 1198 (Lucca, 1738- 1746). This great work is continued by — Ratnaldus : 15 vols., extending to the election of Pius V. in 1566 (Lucca, 1747-1756). All of the above have been constantly in use in the prepar- ation of the following chapters. The curious student will also desire to know something of the Catholic historian Fleury, the Jansenist Tillemont (both translated into English), and the great work of the Magdeburg " Centuriators." He may even find advantage in exploring the wealth of Catliolic legend in the prodigious tomes of the Bollandist Acta Sanctorum on one hand ; or, on the other, in the Momimenta Germanica of Pertz, which gives here and there the most entertaining glimpses we can find into the obscurity of the Dark Ages. Portions of this latter are conveniently included in several volumes — as the Momimenta Carolina (Charlemagne), and the Momimenta Gregoriana (Hildebrand) — edited by Jaffe (Berlin, 1864-73). Of the more recent standard historians the most useful to the ordinary student are — GiESELER : 5 vols., four containing the completed history do^vn to 1648, and the fifth consisting of Lectures edited since the author's death. The special value of this work consists in the citiitions from original authorities in the Notes, which make at lea.st three quarters of the bulk of the entire work, and render it far more serviceable to a student of theology than any of the others. The best edition, in English, is that pre- AUTHORITIES. XXlll pared by H. B. Smith (Harper, New York). An excellent translation of the first three volumes, hy Francis Cunninj^ham, was published in 183G (Carey, Philadelphia), from the third German edition. In the first volume, however, important changes have been made in the later revision. Neander : 5 vols., translated by Joseph Torrey, carrying the history down to 1430. This is heavy and confused in nar- rative, and has no perspective of political events, or the general course of Christian civilization ; but it is, on the other hand, of the highest value to the student of speculative theology and church life (Crocker & Brewster, Boston). ScHAFF : of which the first volume of a new recast has just been published, covering the first century. This promises to be a very labored and bulky history, of chief value in the study of Christian antiquities and dogma (Scribner, New York). Alzog : the best recent Catholic historian, in 3 thick vols., fair and moderate in spirit (Clarke, Cincinnati). The most interesting and abundant resource for the early legendary history of Christianity is the French Catholic work of RoHRBACHER (Paris, 29 vols. 8vo), of which a new and im- proved edition in 12 vols. 4to is now in course of publication (Palme, Paris). To Catholic authorities may be added the charming volumes of Ozanam, and Count Montalembert's " Monks of the West" (7 vols.), which has been translated into English (Blackwood, Edinburgh). There is also publishing (Fischbacher, Paris) an excellent history in French, from the point of view of liberal Christian scholarship, by Professor Chastel, of Geneva, to be completed in 5 vols. Kenan's great work on the Origins of Christianity, in 7 vols., extending through the reign of Marcus Aurelius, is too well known to need further notice. Robertson (in 8 vols.) is one of the most useful of the recent histories, coming down to the time of the Reformation. And, for the first ten centu- ries, a compact and excellent text-book, well illustrated, may be found in a single volume, prepared by Philip Smith (Harper, New York). The single-volume histories of Haase and of Kurtz are convenient for reference, but too limited and technical in their aim to help much in the study attempted here. XXIV AUTHORITIES. To ecclesiastical historians proper should be added the fol- lowing, of more general and popuhir interest : — MiLMAN : History of Christianity to the Downfall of Pagan- ism (3 vols.), and History of Latin Christianity to the Pontifi- cate of Nicholas V., 1447 (8 vols.). For admirable scholarship, fluent narrative, and literary feeling, this makes the best of church-histories for the general reader. The narrative is often crowded and confusing in the later portion, the political view is comparatively feeble and dim, and as a history of thought the work is disappointing (Sheldon, New York). Gree>'wood : " Cathedra Petri, a Political History of the Great Latin Patriarchate," extending to the close of the Great Schism, about 1420. An exceedingly vigorous and able narra- tive of events in their political bearing chiefly, very full and invaluable for the times especially of Charlemagne, Hildebrand, and Lmocent III. In the later portion it is simply a brief summary. Allowance has often to be made for the author's vehement hostility to the political system of the papacy, and as a history of thought, or of civilization at large, the work has little value. The author is a jurist, not a theologian. (Dick- inson & Highani, London: G vols., 1856-1872). Symonds : Rennaissance in Italy, just completed, in 5 vols., is not only a brilliant and interesting work in itself, but is in- dispensable for the study of the two centuries preceding the Reformation (Smith, Elder, & Co., London). The historical student will also desire to consult the most elaborate work of GfroRER on Hildebrand (7 vols.), and Rad- mer's great history of the House of Hohenstaufen (6 vols.). For the development of speculative thought in its bearing on theology the most serviceable work is that of Ueberweg, especially valuable for its full bibliography and literary details, of which a translation has been prepared by Professor Morris (Scribner, New York, 2 vols.). For the period including and following the Reformation the most valuable resource will be found in works of general his- tory, philosophy, and literature. Special ecclesiastical histories of thid period — except of single groups of events, as of the times of Luther, the Council of Trent, and the School of Port Royal — are mostly delusive and unsatisfactory. AUTHORITIES. XXV Of Encyclopocflifis and similiir works of reference may be mentioned the following : — Herzog : this great work is now publishing in an enlarged edition (TIerzog-Plitt), to fill about 25 vols. (Hinrich, Leipzig). It is invaluable not only as a library of ecclesiastical learning, but as a critical and authoritative exposition of leading systems of philosophy. A condensed translation is announced, under the editorship of Professor Schaff (Scribner, New York, 3 vols.), the first volume of which is lately published. McClintock & Strong : a Biblical and Ecclesiastical Cy- clopaedia, complete in 10 vols. The great number of titles, in- cluding ecclesiastical biographies, and the very complete history of Protestant sects — to say nothing of the biblical, dogmatic, and expository material — make this, doubtless, the most con- venient existing work of general reference for the field it covers (Harper, New York, 1874-1881). Smith : Dictionary of Christian Antiquities (2 vols.), and Dictionary of Christian Biography (first eight centuries: 4 vols., of which two are already published, including the letter H). These works are on the same scale of completeness, thor- oughness, and ample learning, with the well-known series of Classical Dictionaries prepared under the same editorship (Murray, London ; Little, Brown, & Co., Boston). EARLY CHRISTIANITY. I. THE MESSIAH AND THE CHRIST. OUR first task, in approaching the study of Chris- tianity as an event and a vital force in history, is to see it on the side of Judaism, out of whose soil it sprang; and to trace — at present in its purely historical or human aspect — the connection between the old religious order and the new. This is best seen in the transition, in religious history, from the name Messiah, with all that it denotes as the cul- minating of the old dispensation, to the name Christ, with all that it denotes as the inspiration of the new. No revolution that we know in the afAiirs of man- kind, especially in its spiritual history, has been so significant as that suggested in the connotation of these two titles, of which each is a literal translation of the otlier. One brings before us the passionate, ever-baffled, and finally most disastrous hope of a perishing people, — the narrow, intense, fierce patriot- ism, that had its boundaries sharply defined in the little state of Palestine ; the other, a world-wide spiritual 2 THE MESSIAH AND THE CHRIST. empire, seated on the deepest foundations of faith and reverence, and showing the ideal side of a manifold, rich, powerful, and proud civilization, which has as yet no ascertainable limit of duration. While the name Messiah is at best the title of a hoped-for prince who might do for Jerusalem what the empire of the Caesars did for IJonie, — tliat is, estab- lish it as the seat of enduring dominion founded on " righteousness " in the Jewish sense of that word, as the other was built upon the Eoman Law, — the name Christ has come, by successive changes and enlarge- ments of its meaning, to be the title of the spiritual or ideal leader of humanity. Xay, so instant and so marked was this transition, as soon as the name had passed from the local dialect into that Greek which was the tongue of all known thought and culture, that Paul (who did more than all other men to bring it about) already uses that name to mean, not simply the Person, however exalted and revered, but a Force purely spiritual and ideal, — " Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God." It belongs more properly to an appreciation .of the life and work of Paul to consider this transition as it looks to the future, and opens the way to the new, large development of a religion of Humanity. It is our immediate task to consider it as it looks to tlie past, ajid connects itself with the history of a i)ecu- liar peo])lo. That wondciTul ^lessianic ho])e, which in the ways of histury was tlie indispcnsaltlc ]tn'})aratiun for the advent of a g()S})el })reaclied to every creature, emer- ges amidst the desperate struggle of a little colony THE CHRONOLOGICAL OUTLOOK. 3 ill Judtca to defend its altar and temple from the stranger, and saves that struggle from despair. AVe need not go over here the story of that time which we call the I\IaccakT?an period. It is, or should be, toler- ably familiar. AVe can at best attempt to make rea- sonably clear one or two points of view, which may help us understand its bearing on the impending revolution. Standing at the date of the gospel history, we seem to have fairly firm ground on an island in the great ocean of tlie past, or at least to be swinging at a toler- ably sure anchorage among its restless waves. The prophecy of Malachi, with its abrupt menace of '' the great and dreadful day of the Lord," — the last head- land laid down on the chart tliat most of us have sailed by, — is four hundred years away : about as far as from us the conquest of the Eastern Empire by the Turks, the Wars of the Eoses, the break-up of feudal- ism in France under Louis XL, the revival of letters and arts in Italy, a few years before the discovery of America by Columbus. A few dates like these may serve to help our sluggish imagination, and show what we mean by historical perspective. Near mid- way, again, to wliere we are standing, is the glorious revolt of the ^laccabees, another point in tlie per- spective to be fixed as firmly as we may : not quite as far away as the Commonwealth in England, and the Thirty Years' War in Germany. In other words^ to the contemporaries of Jesus tlie hero of the strug- gle was somewhat nearer tlian Oliver Cromwell is to us, and the visions of Daniel were about as near as Paradise Lost. 4 THE MESSIAH AND THE CHRIST. I am probably not mistaken in thinking that this comparison of dates startles us a little by bringing the events so close. But, in fact, they are much closer than that. If our daily walk took us past Whitehall, or a stroll into the next village to the hillside where Hampden fell, the events of that time would come incomparably nearer to our imagination. How was it, then, with the Jews of Palestine in the time of Jesus, wdio had no other memories, who knew no other landmarks, w^hose only science and only dream lay within the strict limits of the inter- pretation of the Scripture that embodied, confirmed, and illustrated their one only hope ? Herod's wife was great-grandchild of the hero's nephew; and Herod's handiwork was tliere, unfinished, before their eyes. The aged Simeon might as a child (to take the average of several learned guesses) have known the writer of Enoch, and he the w^riter of the visions of Daniel. Three generations might thus touch hands across the whole space that separates the Old and the New.* The chasm is apt to look abrupt and impass- able, like the gorge at Niagara; still, it is not so very wide but that w^e may fly a cord across, and that shall carry a strand, and that a cable, and the gulf is bridged. Looking now a little more carefully at tlie point of time wliich we have succeeded in briuging so near, we see that the stream of national, or rather race ♦ Tlius I recollect as a cliild t^oing to sec an old man who had been an officer in tlie " French and Indian War " (175G-17()3) ; and he, by fair possibility, might have known some one who had seen the execution of Charles I. THREE STREAMS OF JEWISH LIFE. 5 life, flows in three pretty well defined channels, — in fact, ever since the time of the earlier dispersion and the return of the pilgrim colony to Jerusalem, almost six hundred years ago. In Egypt that stream is widening out towards the placid lake of speculative philosophy, wliich we call the new phitonisni of Pliilo, — a great reservoir, which was pumped abundantly long afterwards into the sluiceways of Christian the- ology, to spread and dilute the river of the water of life till it could float the heavy-laden bark of St. Peter. Eastward in Babylon the stream loses itself, as it were, in wide marshes, where it breeds in course of time that monstrous growth of water- weed and tangle, with flowers interspersed of rare and curious perfume, which we call the Babylonish legend, or the later Talmud. "With either of these our subject has very little to do. The learning which interprets the schools of Jewish thought in Alexandria has been thoroughly worked up, so as to be easily accessible and (I was going to say) cheap ; though it can never lose a certain charm of its own in the blandly-flowing discourse of Philo, or a very real interest to one who .cares to trace the sources of Christian theology.* The more remote and intricate study of the Eastern branch has still less present concern for us : it belongs really to the strange and curious history of modern Judaism, — a * Though Philo is called a Jew, and uses the Jewish scriptures as the text of all his fluent expositions, his cast of thought is so entirely Platonic or Grecian, that Ewald (in a conversation 1 had with him some years ago) insisted that he was to be counted as no Jew at all, but a Greek, quite outside the line of Hebrew development. 6 THE MESSIAH AND THE ClIKIST. side-slioot, which has grown, independent of the main trunk, into a vigorous, persistent, fantastic life of its own. So our subject narrows down to the course of the central stream, what we may call the Palestinian life of the Jewish people. This is, from the outset down, intensely national, patriotic, local, — yet none the less intensely confident in itself, disdainful of all life or thouglit outside, and buoyed tlirough great tides of disaster by an immeasurable hope. Indeed, that great miracle of patriotic valor, tlie achieving of a real though brief independence by the Maccabees in the face of the splendid monarchy of Syria, miglit almost justify any extravagance of hope. We call that hope Messianic. In a certain vague large way it dates back to the elder prophets of Judah, Isaiah and Micah, who give not only hints, but splen- did pictures and symbols, of the Lord's reign in right- eousness and peace. When the flood of conquest had flowed over the state of Judah, in the long Captivity of Babylon those superb strains of proi)hecy had been composed,* whose only fit interpretation yet is in the gorgeous and tender harmonies of Handel's Messiah. But now the prophecy l)ecomes distinct, vivid, per- sonal Intelligent criticism is well agreed in setting the visions of Daniel at tlie precise period of time we are dealing witli: in fact, it narrows the date of tlieir composition within some ten years, from 168 to * Isaiah xl.-lxvi., the "Great Unknown" of the Cnptivity (Ewald), sonu'tiines spoken of as the yoiin<:cr I