abundant marks of the care and diligence with which the author collected his materials. The general plan is similar to that adopted by the earlier labourers in the same field. It differs only in admitting a larger portion of merely civil history. Evagrius is credulous doubtless, and perhaps prejudiced, but he is at the same time accurate and inquisitive; and inferior as he is in the art of historical composition to his eminent contemporaries, Procopius, Agathias, and Theophylact, he is justly regarded as having rendered good service to the History of the Church.

While the East was thus fertile in historical works, the West, unfavourably as it was situated for literary pursuits, did not totally neglect the cultivation of Church-history. An important work is due to the period on which we are now engaged; I mean the celebrated TRIPARTITE HISTORY1, or Latin arrangement of the works of Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret. It is itself a striking proof of the melancholy condition of those unhappy times, that upwards of a century elapsed before the writings of

shows that he was not so intimately acquainted as he ought to have been with the history of the doctrine of the Incarnation.

'Historiæ Ecclesiasticæ, quam Tripartitam vocant, ex tribus Græcis anctoribus Sozomeno, Socrate, et Theodoreto, ab Epiphanio Scholastico versis, per Cassiodorum Senatorem in Epitomen redactæ libri xii. This is the title as it stands in the first volume of the Benedictine edition of Cassiodorus. A notice of the earlier editions of the Tripartite History is given by Walch. Bibl. Theol. iii. 116.

those historians were circulated in the language of the Western world, and that the translation, which was at length published, was not the natural growth of native curiosity, but was due to the piety and public spirit of a wealthy individual. Marcus Aurelius Cassiodorus was descended from a senatorian family, and, as the minister of the great Theodoric, enjoyed the highest honours in the Gothic kingdom of Italy. After retiring from the world in the year 537, he devoted his talents to the spiritual and mental improvement of the inmates of a monastery which he founded in Calabria. Deeply sensible of the importance of Church-history, and anxious to wipe away the reproach that the Greeks possessed historical treasures which were inaccessible to his countrymen', he employed Epiphanius Scholasticus, an Italian eminent for his acquaintance with the Greek language', to translate the continuators of Eusebius into Latin; and he afterwards himself digested the three narratives into one connected

1 Post historiam Eusebii apud Græcos Socrates, Sozomenus, et Theodoritus sequentia conscripserunt; quos a viro Epiphanio disertissimo in uno corpore duodecim libris fecimus, Deo auxiliante, transferri, ne insultet habere se facunda Græcia necessarium, quod vobis judicet esse subtractum. Cassiodor. Instit. Divin. Lect. cap. xvii.

2 The moderns, however, have not been so well convinced of the competency of Epiphanius, as his noble employer. "Epiphanium Scholasticum," says Fabricius, "interpretis officio non optime functum esse, ac linguam utramque ex æquo ignorasse, plerorumque post Rhenanum est judicium." Bibl. Lat. ii. 653.

history'. Though, as we have already seen, he was not the first to attempt a harmony of this kind, it does not appear that he was aware that any thing of the kind had been done before. He has therefore all the merit, if here it can be regarded as a merit, of originality. But, in truth, the design was a proof of the degeneracy of literature. It has been well observed that the appetite for abridgments, and I may add compendious ways of obtaining learning, marks the decline of civilization. The different fate of the works of Theodore the Reader and Cassiodorus, affords a striking evidence of the different state of intellectual culture in the East and West in the sixth century. The one attracted little notice, the other was received with eagerness and preserved with care yet Cassiodorus deserves to be named with respect for having supplied his contemporaries with a work well suited to their actual wants. And small as is the value of the Tripartite History to those who possess, and have the power of reading, the works from which it was compiled, it is of great importance in a historical view of the condition and progress of Ecclesiastical History, as having, with the translation of Eusebius, which had been made by Rufinus, supplied the West, for nearly a thousand years, with all it knew of the fortunes of the ancient Church.

The active opposition of the North African divines to the measures of Justinian respecting "the Three Chapters," led to the further examinaAppendix, Note R.

1

2

tion and elucidation of an interesting portion of Church-history. Not to mention the controversial work of Facundus of Hermiana', which was to a certain extent historical, LIBERATUS DIACONUS, archdeacon of Carthage, wrote an account of the troubles which had been occasioned by the errors of the Nestorians and Eutychians to the year 553. His work is for the most part compiled from original documents, and though written in a rude style, and with little regard to the rules of historical composition, is valuable for the information which it affords on the controversies respecting the Incarnation.

But though there were few Latin writers who handled the pen of history, during the whole of this period, a number of contemporary annalists were engaged in recording the events which befell the Church and state. We still possess the Latin chronicles of Idatius, Prosper Aquitanus, Marcellinus Comes, Marius Aventicensis, Victor Tununensis, and Joannes Biclariensis; which all throw more or less light on the history of the Church.

1 Facundi Hermianensis Ecclesiæ Episcopi Provinciæ Africanæ, pro Defensione Trium Capitulorum Concilii Calchedonensis, libri xii. ad Justinianum Imperatorem. Ap. Sirmondi Opera, tom. ii. col. 297-586.

2 Breviarium Causæ Nestorianorum et Eutychianorum collectum a sancto Liberato archdiacono Ecclesiæ Carthaginensis regionis sextæ. Ap. Concil. tom. v. col. 740-780. It was published in a separate form by Garnier; Paris, 1675.

3 Appendix, Note S.

4 Prosper, Victor, an anonymous continuator, and the Abbot

SECTION II.

FROM THE PONTIFICATE OF GREGORY THE GREAT, A.D. 590, To THE DEATH Of charlemagne, A.D. 814.

THE CONDITION OF HISTORY IN THE MIDDLE AGES-ST. GREGORY OF TOURS-ST. ISIDORE OF SEVILLE-THE VENERABLE BEDE

PAULUS DIACONUS-THE IRON AGE OF BYZANTINE LITERATURE -JOANNES MALELAS-THE PASCHAL CHRONICLE-GEORGIUS SYNCELLUS-THEOPHANES-NICEPHOrus.

CHURCH-HISTORY was scarcely less affected than other branches of knowledge by the peculiar circumstances which characterised the middle ages. In the long interval between the end of the sixth century and the revival of classical literature, no distinction was generally recognized between civil and Ecclesiastical history. The few works which were composed in imitation of the ancient models, were the lucubrations of students and antiquarians -exotics produced by artificial culture, and exhibiting, for the most part, little of the freshness and vigour of an indigenous vegetation. Those, which were the natural and spontaneous growth of the period, had all more or less of an Ecclesiastical

of Biclaro, form a series, ending with the year 590. They are printed in the first volume of Basnage's edition of the " Antiquæ Lectiones" of Canisius, pp. 264-341. Idatius and Marcellinus Comes are to be found most complete in Sirmond's Works, vol. ii. col. 227-296. Edit. Venet. 1728. Marius Aventicentis is in the first volume of Du Chesne's Scriptores Rerum Franc.