ments and editions of older writers, distinguishing credit is due among the Italians to MURATORI, ZACCAGNI, ZACCARIA, MANSI and GALLANDI. The most genial and free-minded among the Italian church historians, is PAOLO SARPI, (1623) from whom it is to be regretted that we have only a history of the Council of Trent.

§ 5. (2) French Historians.

The first merit, among the Catholic writers in this department, belongs collectively to the French, whose free position over against the Roman See has here been in their favor. The defence of the Gallican church freedom indeed served itself to call forth, in part, the most interesting and thorough investigations. In this view wrote first Bishop GODEAU, of Vence, in popular form, (1635) coming down however only to the end of the 9th century, then the far more learned Dominican NATALIS ALEXANDER (Noël), whose work, in twenty-four volumes (1676-86) comes down to the year 1600. He defends, in direct opposition to Baronius, the rights of the Church and of the secular princes against the Popes, and declares the reformatory councils of Pisa, Constance and Basel to be œcumenical; justifies still however the cruel persecutions of the Albigenses, and is full of zeal against the Protestant heretics. Innocent XI. prohibited this work, in 1684, under pain of excommunication; but thirty years later, Benedict XIII., also a Dominican, set it free again. In the year 1690, CLAUDE FLEURY, confessor of Louis XV., who lived however as an anchoret at court, began the publication of his Histoire ecclesiastique, which reaches in twenty volumes to the year 1414, and was continued by FABRE, though with no inward vocation, down to the year 1595. Fleury writes diffusely and in the spirit of a monk, but with taste and skill, in mild temper and strong love for the Church and Christianity, and with a view always to edify as well as to instruct. He follows the order of time, though not slavishly, prefacing some of his volumes with general characteristics. He also defends antiquity and the Gallican ecclesiastical constitution, without however surrendering at all the credit of the Church, its general tradition, or the necessity of the Pope as its head. His principal concern is with doctrine, discipline, and practical piety. The spirited and eloquent bishop, BOSSUET, in his universal history, (Discours sur l'histoire universelle, 1681), which reaches from the creation to Charlemagne, exhibits religion and the Church as the soul and centre of all history. The Jansenist TILLEMONT pursued a new plan, composing a church history of the first six centuries, in sixteen volumes, (1693-1712), from original sources purely, with the most

accurate and conscientious fidelity, and adding his learned investigations in the way of notes.

In addition however to these general works, great service has been rendered to the science by the learned monastic institutions of France, in single departments of church history, costly editions of the fathers, and other auxiliary apparatus. Special mention here is due to the St. Maur Benedictines, D'ACHERY, RUINART, MABILLON, MARTÈNE, DURAND, MONTFAUCON, 3 and to the Jesuits SIRMOND and PETAU (Petavius), who by his celebrated work de theologicis dogmatibus (1644-50) forms an epoch in dogmatic history.

§ 6. (3) German Historians.

Among the Catholics of Germany, an independent and free interest in church history began to show itself first in the Josephine period, but still more through the stimulus of Protestant theology; so that the most has been done there for the science recently. General works, though in part unfinished, have been furnished by ROYKO, DanneMAYR, the well known convert, Count STOLBERG, 4 RITTER, LOCHERER, HORTIG, ALZOG, DÖLLINGER; valuable monographs, by HURTER, 5 HEFELE, and others. The fullest inward call must be allowed in

3 In the congregation of St. Maur, a complete system of studies prevailed. The general was authorized, in extensive literary enterprises, to assign their parts to the different members according to their talents and tastes, so that one collected material, another arranged, a third manufactured, a fourth finished off, a fifth took charge of the press, etc. Each was required to labor, without regard to his own credit, for the benefit of the world only, and the honor of the order. In many cases, the authors are not even named. By this coöperation of different scholars, who were at the same time free from all secular cares, and favored with wealth and the most ample literary helps, vast works were produced, such as an academy of sciences even could hardly undertake. The best edition of the church fathers, Cyprian, Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Athanasius, Basil, Chrysostom, Gregory the Great, Bernard of Clairvaux, etc., we owe to the diligence of the St. Maurists, which was not equalled, in a literary respect, by the Jesuits.

4 HASE says of him strikingly, that he has written and composed (gedichtet) the history of the Jewish nation, as well as of the ancient Church, with the zeal, the unction, and unreserved devotion of a proselyte, but with a heart also full of enthusiasm and love.

HURTER, it is true, when he wrote his learned and skilful work, (in four volumes) on Innocent III., was nominally still Reformed antistes in Schaffhausen ; but the Roman Catholic tendency already shows itself, beyond all mistake, in his unqualified praise of his hero, and of the age to which he belonged, as also in his strongly marked partiality for a brilliant hierarchy and pompous ceremonial. It

favor of the ingenious and pious MÖHLER, († 1838), the greatest Roman Catholic theologian since Bellarmin and Bossuet. He has helped his Church again to self-consciousness, and breathed into it a new polemic zeal against Protestantism; although he betrays himself in truth throughout the influence, which the study of Protestant theology, especially that of Schleiermacher, and the whole modern culture, have exercised over his own idealistic apprehension and defence of the Roman dogmas and usages. He wrote indeed no church history; but his larger works (Symbolik, Patristik, Athanasius M.), and shorter tracts, (as that on Anselm, the Pseudo-Isidorian Decretals, Gnosticism, Monasticism, etc.,) have to do almost all more or less with the historical sphere, particularly with the history of doctrines, and in freshness of spirit and vigorous animated style surpass all the writers now mentioned.

III. PROTESTANT HISTORIANS.

§ 7. General character of Protestant Historiography.

With the Reformation of the sixteenth century commences a new era, as for the Church and theology in general, so also for our science in particular; yea, we may say that church history first became a free and independent science only by its means. The historian before was, so to speak, of one growth with his subject; but now he raised himself by reflection above it, and instead of accepting on mere authority whatever was catholic as at once true, and condemning everything noncatholic as false, began to subject the whole development of the Church itself to critical trial, making the word of God and common reason the measure of judgment, without regard to Papal decrees. This involved the possibility of a negative tendency, the contempt and rejection of all history, such as we meet with in Rationalism and among Sects; but at the same time the possibility also of such unprejudiced inquiry and free conviction, as should reconcile the subject in full with the objective course of God's kingdom, causing him to see in it the rational and necessary evolution of its inward sense or plan; and to this result the most important recent labors in church history, would seem continually more and more to lead.

is plain everywhere, that with the author, in his blind infatuation for the Middle Ages, the dome of St. Peter stands higher than the manger of Bethlehem, and the decretals of the Popes than the word of God. His dissatisfaction with the moral insecurity of the present age, and the politico-religious distractions of his own country, decided and justified to his conscience finally a transition which was inwardly complete long before.

It required considerable time however to bring the Protestant science here to a clear perception of its mission, and it had itself to pass through different periods, which fall widely asunder from one another in the view taken of its object and proper method. We may distinguish five such periods, the orthodox-polemic, the unchurchly pietistic, the pragmatic-supranaturalistic, the rationalistic, and the scientific. Among these, the first and fourth are related to each other as extremes, the second and third as stages of transition from the position of church orthodoxy over to that of rationalism, while the fifth seeks to unite the advantages of all before, without their errors; falling itself again, however, into different schools, which makes it difficult to bring it under any general character.

§ 8. (1) The Period of Polemic Orthodoxy.

This embraces the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Reformers themselves did nothing directly for church history, save only as they gave it new interest and roused a new spirit of inquiry; which however must be allowed to be itself a very great merit. They were mainly occupied with the settlement of points of faith and the exposition of the Scriptures. Argument from the Scriptures alone, however, could not permanently satisfy. As the Catholics appealed continually to the Fathers, and declared the Reformation to be a novelty, which had no ground whatever in the past, it became an object with the Protestants to wrest the historical argument out of their hands, and to draw ecclesiastical antiquity to their own side. For that pure Christianity had disappeared from the earth, and again come to light only in the sixteenth century, they could not admit, in face of their Lord's promise to be with his church to the end of the world; and they wished to be counted also, not heretics, but true catholics. It was an apologetic interest, then, and their conflict with Rome, that urged the Protestants into the study of history. Of course their first productions bore throughout, directly or indirectly, a polemic character.

The Lutheran church takes the lead; here too, not the moderate and irenical school of Melanchthon, but that section which set itself stiffly against all attempts to come to an agreement with the Catholics and the Reformed, and which came to its symbolical expression afterwards in the Form of Concord. MATTHIAS FLACIUS, one of the most zealous controversialists of his age, composed, A. D. 1552 and onwards, while settled at Magdeburg, in connection with several rigid Lutheran divines, (Wigand, Judex, Faber, Holthuter,) and younger assistants, the celebrated Centuriae Magdeburgenses, as the work is called, making use of

published and unpublished sources for the purpose, with the liberality of princes and cities to support his undertaking. This work, which forms an epoch, exhibits in thirteen volumes as many centuries of the Christian era, each century in sixteen sections, with the express design of justifying the Reformation and confuting the Papacy. The Centuries found such approval, that for a hundred years after, it was counted sufficient to compile text-books out of their material and in their spirit. In the dogmatic works of the seventeenth century however, particularly in GERHARD'S Loci theologici, and in QUENSTEDT's Theologia dogmatico-polemica, we find collected, under the same controversial view, a vast mass of material for dogmatic history, which is still in part of great worth; while among works treating of single periods, the most important place belongs to SECKENDORF's History of the Reformation.

In the Reformed church, JOHN H. HOTTINGER of Zurich, proposed to furnish a counterpart to the Centuries. His work shows great knowledge, particularly of the East, also order and love for truth, but is unequal, five volumes being given to the sixteenth century alone, and drags in much foreign matter according to the taste which then prevailed, the history for instance of Jews, Pagans and Mohammedans, notices of remarkable natural phenomena, as foretokening the fortunes of the church, earthquakes, locusts, famines, floods, monstrosities, eclipses of the sun and moon, etc. FREDERICK SPANHEIM, of Leyden, grounded his Summa historiae eccl. (A. D. 1689) on an accurate use of sources, and searching criticism, having in view also the confutation of Baronius. The two Frenchmen, JAMES BASNAGE,7 minister at the Hague, and SAMUEL BASNAGE,8 minister in Zütphen, wrote with controversial reference, the first to Bossuet, the last to Baronius, both proposing to show, but especially James, that the true church of Christ has never failed, and that it has had true witnesses at all times.

With far better success, however, the Reformed church, the French especially, cultivated during the seventeenth century, in controversy with the Roman Catholic theologians, particular parts of history, shedding light on patristic antiquity, the course of the Papacy, and the period of the Reformation, with profound learning and keen penetration, though not indeed without some controversial bias. Such monographies, still of great value in part, reflect credit on the names of HosPINIAN and HEIDEGGER among the German Swiss; BEZA, DU PLESSIS MORNAY, PETER DU MOULIN, DAVID BLONDEL, JEAN DAILLÉ

In 9 voll. Tig. 1655—67.

7 Histoire de l'église depuis Jésus Chr. jusqu'à présent. Rotterd. 1699. Annales politico-ecclesiastici, etc. 1706, 3 voll. (reach only to A. D. 602).