From the twilight of the ancient world into the dawn of modern historical consciousness, a succession of masterful, if varied, narratives has sought to illuminate the epoch from Constantine to Gregory the Great. Each work bears the stamp of its author’s confession, temperament, and scholarly method, offering, in concert, a prism through which the fourth to sixth centuries of the Church may be studied in all their theological, political, and cultural complexity.
Roman Catholic and Ultramontane Perspectives
Cardinal Caesar Baronius († 1607), representing the Ultramontane school, compiled his monumental Annales Ecclesiastici (vols. iii–viii). While its ponderous chronicle may weary the modern reader, its meticulous reference to original documents renders it a treasury for source material. Far more biographical in spirit, Louis-Sébastien Le Nain de Tillemont († 1698), leaning toward Jansenism, produced his Mémoires (vols. vi–xvi)—a painstaking and conscientious series, particularly valuable for its minute fidelity to detail.
Enlightenment and Skeptical Appraisals
Edward Gibbon († 1794), in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (from chapter xvii onward), combined unrivaled mastery in the use of sources with consummate literary artistry. Yet his skepticism and lack of sympathy for the spiritual genius of Christianity lend his portraits an ironic distance, making his history as much a monument of Enlightenment rationalism as of historical craft.
Protestant and Evangelical Narratives
Johann Matthias Schröckh († 1808), a moderate Lutheran, produced the expansive Christliche Kirchengeschichte (Theil v–xviii), whose simplicity of style conceals a thoroughness and trustworthiness still to be valued. August Neander († 1850), in his Allgemeine Geschichte der christlichen Religion und Kirche (Hamburg, vol. iv–vi, 2nd ed. 1846 sqq.; English translation by Torrey, vol. ii), offered profound and genial insight into the organic development of Christian doctrine and life. His work, however, is less secure in political and aesthetic analysis and is occasionally prolix and loosely arranged. Johann Karl Ludwig Gieseler († 1854), in his Kirchengeschichte (Bonn, i.2, 2nd ed. 1845; English translation by Davidson, revised by H. B. Smith, New York, vols. i–ii), achieved a critical and reliable treatment in his notes, though the main text remains concise, even to dryness.
Confessional Polemics and Independent Voices
Isaac Taylor, an Independent, challenged Tractarian tendencies in his Ancient Christianity, and the Doctrines of the Oxford Tracts for the Times (London, 4th ed. 1844, 2 vols.), a spirited anti-Puseyite polemic. Böhringer, of the German Reformed Church, contributed to ecclesiastical biography in his Kirchengeschichte in Biographien (vol. i, parts 3–4, Zurich, 1845 sq.), ranging from Ambrose to Gregory the Great.
English Historical Syntheses
Carwithen and Lyall authored the History of the Christian Church from the Fourth to the Twelfth Century, originally in the Encyclopaedia Metropolitana (1849), later published separately (London and Glasgow, 1856). J. C. Robertson, in his History of the Christian Church to the Pontificate of Gregory the Great (London, 1854, pp. 166–516), provided an Anglican interpretation of the formative centuries. Henry Hart Milman’s History of Christianity from the Birth of Christ to the Abolition of Paganism in the Roman Empire (London, 1840; New York, 1844, Books III–IV) and his later History of Latin Christianity (London, 1854 sqq.; New York, 1860) extended the narrative to the pontificate of Nicholas V, with the first volume surveying the early centuries before Gregory I and subsequent volumes devoted to the medieval Church.
Continental Scholarship of the Nineteenth Century
K. R. Hagenbach’s Die Christliche Kirche vom 4ten bis 6ten Jahrhundert (Leipzig, 1855) formed the second volume of his popular Vorlesungen über die ältere Kirchengeschichte, offering accessible scholarship from a Reformed perspective. Albert de Broglie’s six-volume L’Église et l’empire romain au IVme siècle (Paris, 1855–66) brought refined French Catholic erudition to the age of the ecumenical councils. Ferdinand Christian Baur’s Die Christliche Kirche vom Anfang des vierten bis zum Ende des sechsten Jahrhunderts in den Hauptmomenten ihrer Entwicklung (Tübingen, 1859) provided a critical and philosophical analysis, emblematic of the Tübingen School’s dialectical method. William Bright, in A History of the Church from the Edict of Milan, a.d. 313, to the Council of Chalcedon, a.d. 451 (Oxford and London, 1860), brought Oxford’s theological rigor to bear on the high doctrinal controversies. Arthur Penrhyn Stanley’s Lectures on the History of the Eastern Church (London, 1861; New York, 1862) painted vivid portraits of Greek and Russian ecclesiastical life—rich in character studies and picturesque events, though not intended as a full chronological history.
