Ecclesiastical history of the Catholic Church

Approach, traditional Catholic view

The Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913 defines ecclesiastical history as the scientific investigation and methodical description of the temporal development of the Church, considered as an institution founded by Jesus Christ and guided by the Holy Ghost for the salvation of mankind. It covers the life of the Church in all its manifestations from its beginning to the present day among the various divisions of mankind reached by Christianity. While the Church remains essentially the same despite changes over time, these changes help exhibit more fully her internal and external life.

Its branches include the history of missions, ecclesiastical polity, heresies and their opponents, relations with non-Catholic religious associations, dogma, theology, ecclesiastical sciences, liturgy, ecclesiastical art, the Catholic hierarchy, constitution and canon law, religious orders, discipline, religious life, and Christian civilization. Critical treatment of sources requires palaeography, diplomatics, and criticism. The ecclesiastical historian cannot exclude the possibility of supernatural factors, as the assumption that God cannot intervene in nature and that miracles are impossible has not been and cannot be proved, and would make a correct appreciation of facts in their objective reality impossible.

This distinguishes the believing Christian historian from the rationalistic and infidel historian who rejects even the possibility of divine intervention.

Traditional periodization

The first period covers the foundation of the Church and the development of fixed standards of ecclesiastical life within the limits of Graeco-Roman civilization. The second period sees the Church as a major force in the new Romanic, German, and Slavic states of Europe, the secession of Oriental Christendom from ecclesiastical unity, and the final overthrow of the Byzantine Empire. The third period involves the collapse of religious unity among Western European nations, the reformation from within of the Catholic Church faced with Protestantism, and immense geographical expansion through missionaries in South America, part of North America, and numerous in Asia and Africa.

The close of the first period is disputed: some take the pontificate of Gregory the Great in 590 or the end of the 6th and middle of the 7th century; others the Sixth General Council in 680, the Trullan synod of 692, or the end of the 7th century; still others close it with St. Boniface, the Iconoclasts, or Charlemagne. For the West, Kraus regards the beginning of the 7th century as the close; for the East, the end of the same century. The division between the second and third periods is crowded with events: the Renaissance, the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks, the discovery of the Americas, the appearance of Luther and the heresy of Protestantism, and the Council of Trent.

Protestant historians regard Luther's appearance as the beginning of the third period; a few Catholic authors, such as Kraus, close the second period with the middle of the 15th century.

Auxiliary sciences

Historians of the Catholic Church rely on several specialized fields to interpret different types of evidence. Some of these fields focus on specific source materials: epigraphy studies inscriptions, palaeography examines handwriting, and numismatics analyzes coins. Working with original languages often requires general or author-specific dictionaries. Palaeography offers a systematic method for reading and dating handwritten manuscripts, a discipline first put on a scientific footing by Mabillon in his 1681 work De re diplomatica.

Closely linked to palaeography is diplomatics, which provides techniques for critically assessing the form and content of official documents like charters and privileges, determining their authenticity, and using them correctly. Historical methodology guides the scholar in treating all known sources critically and weaving research results into a coherent narrative. Bibliography is the practical skill of locating relevant literature on a given church history topic.

Chronology teaches how to identify and precisely fix dates found in sources; early foundational work in this area came from Scaliger, Petavius, and the authors of Art de vérifier les dates des faits historiques. Ecclesiastical geography helps identify the locations of historical events, while ecclesiastical statistics presents the Church’s development and the current state of its institutions through synoptic tables and figures. Epigraphy serves as a guide for reading and methodically using Christian inscriptions on monuments.

Christian archaeology and the history of fine arts teach the scientific study of monuments created under Christian influence. Numismatics, the study of coins, is relevant to church history for certain periods because popes and many bishops who once held secular power minted their own coinage. Finally, sphragistics, or the science of seals, examines the seals and stamps used to authenticate letters and documents.

Historians

The peoples among which Christianity first spread possessed a highly developed civilization and a literature rich in works of history. Chronicles were compiled in the 3rd century by Julius Africanus and by Hippolytus of Rome, some fragments of which survive. Ecclesiastical history properly so called appears only during the 4th century. Eusebius, a fourth-century Bishop of Caesarea, is sometimes called the Father of Church History; his major work is the ten-book Church History, covering Christian history from the death of Christ to the 323 victory of Constantine over Licinius, and is heavily partial towards Constantine.

About the middle of the 5th century, Socrates Scholasticus, Hermias Sozomenus, and Theodoret all wrote continuations of Eusebius's Church History; Theodoret's continuation is most thorough, drawing on the writings of Socrates and Hermias as well as other historical documents. Theodoret also wrote a History of the Monks, which together with the 420 Historia Lausiaca is a principal source for the history of Oriental monasticism, and his Compendium of Heretical Falsehoods, together with the Panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis, offers material on early heresies.