“To the ancients reverence is due, and in particular to those who are commended by holiness of life as well as by learning and eloquence; yet they are to be read with discretion. The moderns have a right to fair play. Read them without prejudice, but not without discrimination. In any case let us avoid heated contention, the bane of peace and concord.”
Such was the spirit in which Erasmus strove to work: and some words of his good friend and fellow-worker, Beatus Rhenanus, tell us something of the effect of his work on his own age. “He was sufficiently outspoken on the subject of sacred learning: for, to use his own words in a letter to a friend, he saw that more than enough was made of scholastic theology, and that the ancient learning was quite set at nought. Theologians were so much occupied with the subtleties of Scotus that the fountain-head of Divine wisdom was never reached by them....We begin, God be thanked, to see the fruit of these warnings. Instead of Hales and Holcot, the pages of Cyprian, Augustine, Ambrose, and Jerome are studied by our divines in their due season.”
Only the briefest allusion has so far been made to the development of one great department of Christian learning-ecclesiastical history. The men of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries had in their hands not a few of the authorities which we account as of capital importance. They had the History of Eusebius in a Latin version: they had the Tripartite History, embodying Socrates, Sozomen, and Evagrius: they had Baeda, Gregory of Tours, and the Speculum HiMoriale of Vincent; and they had innumerable biographies of Saints. In spite of this, it will not be contended that a true and discriminating view of Church history, based on the best sources, was a possession of the Middle Ages. It is clear that highly incorrect views were current as to the development of doctrine, ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and liturgical usage. This could not fail to be the case when such documents as the False Decretals and the Donation of Constantine passed as genuine. And, on the other hand, when their spuriousness became an accepted fact, a reaction was inevitable. We have seen that the first attacks on them did not come from men who had broken with the Roman Church. It was Lorenzo Valla who exposed the Donation of Constantine; and Roman Catholics did not scruple to impugn the Decretals. Cusanus rejects the Epistles of Clement and Anacletus: Erasmus points out (in a Preface to Athanasius) the way in which a letter of Anteros was made up. Naturally, however, the attitude of the “Evangelical” critics towards the credentials of the Latin Church was a far more radical one. Everything, in their eyes, was corrupt. A return to primitive simplicity was essential: and the width of the chasm which separated the Roman usages of their day from those of the Apostolic age could easily be demonstrated by a categorical setting forth of the history and development of those usages from the beginning. With such an object the great compilation of the “Magdeburg Centuriators” was begun; and it has some claim to be looked upon as the first Church History compiled on critical principles. It was of course a Tendenzschrift; nothing else was possible; nevertheless, it brought together and laid before the world for the first time an enormous amount of information either dispersed or unknown before. A committee, whose composition varied from time to time, was responsible for the work. The period dealt with was divided into centuries, and the events, literature, doctrine, and other characteristics of each century were separately treated according to a regular plan. The twelfth century was the last that was reached. The moving spirit of the committee was Matthias Flacius Illyricus, who had already made himself a name as a controversialist on the Protestant side. His Clavis Sacrae Scripturae sums up the exegetical knowledge of his day. His book on the testimony of earlier ages against the papacy (Catalogus Testium Veritatls) gives proof of an enormous range of reading; and among our smaller debts to him may be reckoned the fact that he collected and printed as a supplement to that work a large mass of medieval Latin poetry, largely from a manuscript of English origin.
Whatever the merits or demerits of the Magdeburg History may have been, it speedily became a famous and influential book: so famous and so influential, indeed, that those whose position it attacked were compelled to issue a counterblast. A worthy champion was found in Cesare Baronio, Cardinal of the title of SS. Nereus and Achilleus. The twelve volumes of his Annexes Ecclesiastici, published between 1588 and 1607, cover the same period as the work of the Centuriators. The stores of the Vatican, of which after 1596 he was librarian, furnished an unrivalled stock of material, and his own previous studies, of which some fruit had already been seen in his edition of the Roman Martyrology, enabled him to use this material to advantage. That Baronius, like the Centuriators, was a partisan needs hardly to be said; his accuracy and critical instinct, moreover, leave much to be desired. Still, his erudition was enormous, his services to learning great, and his love of antiquity genuine and fervent. An eloquent witness of this love is the appeal to posterity inscribed in the Cardinal’s own titular church, whose ancient arrangements he had himself restored,preserving with a reverence uncommon in his day all that he could find of its original furniture.
A brief parenthesis may be allowed at this point on the application of the science of archaeology to things Christian. For more than a century had the remains of classical art and architecture been studied and treasured before it occurred to scholars that the Church possessed antiquities which merited consideration. Probably the first book entirely devoted to the consideration of Christian monuments was that of Onofrio Panvinio on the older Roman basilicas, published in 1554. Rome was thus the parent of Christian as of classical archaeology. In 1578 the reopening of the Catacombs began, and the discoveries of ancient paintings and inscriptions excited a keen interest, though it was not until 1632 that the first great work on “Roma sotterranea”-that of Bosio-saw the light. The study was carried on and developed during the seventeenth century chiefly by Italians: it is probably fair to say that no work of real importance in this department was done outside Italy before 1700.
To return to the wider field of Church history. In this, the Centuriators and Baronius may be regarded as pioneers. Theirs were, of course, not the only works of the kind that appeared, but they deserve special prominence in view of their large design and the extent of the new ground they broke.
We ought to glance briefly at the progress made in two subdivisions of this great subject. One is the study of the lives of the Saints. Most people have some idea of the character of the popular medieval collections of such Lives. The Legenda Aurea of Jacobus de Voragine was, of all, the most widely diffused both in manuscript and print, and it was one which made no pretensions either to completeness or critical selection. The later collections, that of Mombritius, for example, or the Catalogus Sanctorum, were of the same character, though of larger compass. Criticism of these ancient documents other than stricture could not well be expected from the Protestant side; save perhaps in the case of the Acts of some of the earliest martyrs. The first man who attempted seriously the task of collecting the best accessible texts of the Lives of the Saints was probably Aloysius Lippomannus, who was assisted by such scholars as Gentianus Hervetus, and Cardinal Sirleto. His copious employment of Greek authorities is a principal mark of his superiority to his predecessors. His collection filled eight volumes, and was a worthy beginning of the work which in later centuries was continued by Bolland, Papebroch, Surius, Ruinart, and a host of others.
The other department of Church history of which it was our intention to speak was the bibliography of Christian literature. Jerome had set the fashion of compiling notices of Christian writers and their works. Gennadius had supplemented his book, and the tracts of both had been widely read. The Middle Ages had, as we have seen, done something towards continuing the tradition in such works as the Catalogus Scriptorum of John Boston. It was natural that it should occur to the men