The French Jesuits have lately given a very conclusive attestation of the truth of what the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland lately asserted respecting the concentration of Propagandism in the British dominions. A recent article in Gazette de France-a very strenuous advocate of popery and Carlism-proves two very important points; 1st, that the see of Rome appears to regard England as wor. thy at present of absorbing all her attention, and as calling for her undivided efforts; 2ndly, that the continental leaders of popery feel it indispensable to keep up the drooping spirits of their rapidly dimi nishing adherents, by holding out to them the delusive expectation of England becoming actually a popish country. Now, though in one sense we may smile at the 235 latter idea, it merits a more serious consi- Pinder's Sermons on the Book of Common Spain, and the Seat of War in Spain. By H. B. Hoskins's Visit to the Great Oasis of the Lybian Hours at Naples. By Lady E. S. Wortley. 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Ir is much to be regretted that the noble and admirable pamphlet or tract, entitled, Thoughts and Hints to Conservative Electors," did not arrive early enough to be noticed except here. Its high tone of principle, and its noble sentiments, ought to be brought home to the heart of every Englishman at this momentous period of our national existence. The following have been received:-" Aliquis," and the Poems signed "E. A. H." Can" Bathoniensis" authenticate the statement that a person, with the sort of reputation which the individual to whom he alludes has hitherto enjoyed, as a dissenting teacher, degraded himself by talking in his pulpit of the Church of England as the tad-pole, of which the Church of Rome is the frog? This would at least be curious, and might advantageously be printed or written on the title-page of his works; but there would be little use in publishing the epigrams "Bathoniensis" has been kind enough to send. The papers of " Scrutator" have been delayed for the reason assigned in the private letter to him. A multitude of books for review must necessarily stand over, from press of matter and other causes. THE BRITISH MAGAZINE. SEPT. 1, 1837. ORIGINAL PAPERS. A BRIEF ACCOUNT OF THE ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORIANS. NO. II. In the conclusion of my former paper, I remarked that I had brought down the series of ecclesiastical historians to the period of the middle ages. The council of Chalcedon synchronizes very closely with those changes in the political and social condition of the west of Europe which have generally been regarded as defining the limit of ancient history. The Roman empire of the west was already but a name. The German tribes had already effected permanent settlements in its fairest provinces. A few years more made the change complete. The date of the council of Chalcedon is 451. The year 476 witnessed the deposition of Augustulus; and in 486, the victory of Clovis established the Franks in Gaul. We cannot find a later era for the commencement of the middle ages. In the convulsions which ended in the breaking up of the ancient system, literature and the arts remained with the empire. Valour and success were on the side of its enemies; but taste and learning, scared by the rudeness of the strangers, fondly clung to the venerable remains of Roman civilization. While society in the west assumed that picturesque and romantic form which imparts the charm of interest and beauty to the darkest periods of the Dark Ages, the east remained what it had been for more than a century. The eastern empire had, if I may so speak, no middle age. The long narrative of its fortunes is but a continuation of ancient history. In its protracted decline, it retained the feelings and manners of antiquity. While the west was displaying all the wildness of an early state of society, and was passing through the light and adventurous season of youth to the firmness and intelligence of manhood, the eastern portion of Christendom was living a long old age, dignified even when exhibiting the most decided marks of senility, and still retaining-marvellously retaining the peculiarities, good and evil, of the brighter days of the Christian empire. VOL. XII.-Sept. 1837. 21 A student of Byzantine history is glad to have an opportunity of insisting upon this fact. But it is absolutely necessary for me to notice it here. For otherwise, as I intend to pursue, for the most part, the order of time, in deducing the succession of the ecclesiastical historians, by exhibiting together the writers of the east and west, I might contribute to perpetuate a very serious error. The Greeks and Latins of the middle ages were only contemporaries. For the rest, there is not a greater difference between the climate of the Baltic and that of the Ægean, than there was during the middle period of history as to everything that related to the spirit of the time, on the Rhine and on the Bosphorus. At the council of Chalcedon, the church assumed that position, between naturalism and enthusiasın, which exposes her alike to the hostility of the rationalist and the fanatic. She renewed her protest against Nestorianism, while she solemnly condemned the more spiritual error of Eutyches and Dioscorus. He who watches over her preserved her from erroneous views of what it is not, perhaps, too much to call the characteristic doctrine of Christianity-the doctrine of the Incarnation. And she was enabled to raise a bulwark against the spirit of delusion, which by God's blessing has proved impregnable. The result, however, of the council of Chalcedon was not peace. The controversy respecting the doctrine which had led to its convocation, was continued in various forms, and with no ordinary energy and learning, for upwards of two centuries. And it was not till the sixth general council (680) had declared the sense of the church against the Monothelites, that the incarnation controversy can be regarded as terminated in the eastern church. The controversial spirit of the time, however, did not tend to discourage the cultivation of church history. The various contending parties were desirous of defending the conduct of their friends, and of conciliating the good opinion of posterity. And accordingly we are able to name not fewer than five independent writers who recorded the events which took place between the fourth and fifth general councils. The ecclesiastical history of HESYCHIUS is known only from an extract which was read before the second council of Constantinople,* and a casual allusion made to it by the author of the "Paschal Chronicle."+ Fabricius supposes it to have been written in the reign of Theodosius II., and Cave § most strangely places the writer in the year 601. But the tone in which he speaks of Theodore of Mopsuestia furnishes, I think, satisfactory evidence against the early date; and it was, of course, by an oversight that our distinguished countryman placed him lower than 553. He probably wrote towards the end of the fifth century. JOANNES EGEATES, a presbyter of the Eutychian party, wrote his *It is an account of the life and opinions of Theodore of Mopsuestia. We have it in a Latin version (Concil. Constant. II., collatio v.) in the fifth volume of the Councils (Labbe) col. 470. Bibl. Græc., vol. vi. pp. 113, 245. + Chron. Pasch., p. 295, E. Edit. Venet. Hist. Liter. ad ann. Ecclesiastical History in the beginning of the sixth century. It consisted of ten books,† and began with the rise of the Nestorian controversy. According to Photius, who had read the first five books, which ended with the year 477, it was written with clearness and elegance; and, violent as may have been the prejudices of the writer, the student of church history has great cause to regret the loss of a work of this nature, written by a professed Monophysite.§ BASILIUS CILIX, who is generally supposed to have been Bishop of Irenopolis, in Cilicia,|| is represented as having entertained the opinions of Nestorius, though he does not appear to have withdrawn from the communion of the church. His Ecclesiastical History, which was comprised in three books,** began with the reign of the Emperor Marcian, and was probably continued to the end of that of Justin I. Photius++ tells us that he was not an elegant writer, and complains that his work was rather an unwieldy collection of original documents than a lucid historical composition. But this censure of the critic does but make us the more regret that we do not possess a writer who would have contributed so large a supply of the real sources of history. THEODORUS LECTOR,‡‡ a reader of the great church of Constantinople, applied himself with industry and success to the cultivation of church history, in the early part of the sixth century. His first§§ work on the subject was an original history, in two books, of the period between the council of Ephesus (431) and the reign of Justin I. (518), which was held in great esteem by succeeding writers. It has * I have no hesitation in assigning a lower date than is usually given to Joannes Ægeates. Cave, (ad ann. 483,) it would seem against his own judgment, has followed Vossius, in placing him in the reign of the Emperor Zeno. But as he certainly gave an account of Xenaias of Hierapolis (Concil. vii. 369), and mentioned the elevation of Severus to the see of Antioch (Nicephorus Callisti, lib. xvi. cap. 29, p. 700), he could not have written earlier than 513. † Τῆς ἱστορίας αὐτοῦ δέκα τυγκάνουσι τόμοι, ὡς καὶ αὐτὸς ἐκεῖνος ἐπαγγέλλεται ὧν ἡμῖν τοὺς πέντε γέγονεν ἀναγνῶναι, περιέχοντας ὡς ἔφημεν) ἀπὸ τῆς Νεστορίου βλασφημίας μέχρι τῆς τοῦ aiрETIKOU Пléтρоv Kabaιpiσεws. Phot. Biblioth. Cod. 41, p. 11. Edit. 1601. † Ἔστι δὲ οὗτος τὴν φράσιν σαφὴς καὶ ανθηρός, διέρχεται δὲ τὴν τρίτην σύνοδον, τὴν ἐν Ἐφέσῳ, λεπτομερῶς, ἀλλά καὶ τὴν μετὰ ταύτην ἐν αὐτῇ συναγελασθεῖσαν, τὴν ληστρικὴν λέγω ἂν οὗτος θειάζει, καὶ τὸν ταύτης ἡγεμόνα Διόσκορον, καὶ τοὺς σὺν αὐτῷ. διέξεισι δὲ καὶ τὴν ἐν Χαλκηδόνι úvodov, diaσipwv Taúτny. Biblioth. Cod. xli. p. 11. He gives much the same character of another work of the same author. Cod. lv. p 21. We find him often quoted as 'Iwávvns ó diakpivóμevos, a title equivalent to John the Monophy. site. Fabr. Bibl. Græc. vi. 113. Cave, Hist. Lit. ad ann. 497. Fabr. Bibl. Græc. vi, 114. This, however, is not the opinion of Le Quien, (Oriens Christ. ii. 899,) who thinks Basilius Cilix to have been a different person from the Bishop mentioned by Suidas. Phot. Bibl. Cod. cvii. ** Photius was acquainted only with the second book, which included the period from the death of Pope Simplicius (483) to the accession of Justin (418.) But the author himself, he tells us, made mention of a first and third. Bibl. Cod. xlii. p. 12. We have no positive information at what period the third book concluded; but I suspect from a remark of Nicephorus Callisti (lib. i. cap. 1, tom. i. p. 35, D.), that at the death of the author it was still imperfect. Η Ἔστι δὲ ὁ συγγραφεὺς οὐ λίαν τὴν φράσιν ἀπηκριβωμένος, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἀνωμάλως ἔχων πρὸς ἑαυ τόν. κέχρηται δὲ μάλιστα ταῖς παρ ἀλλήλων τῶν ἐπισκόπων στελλομέναις ἐπίστολαῖς, εἰς πίστιν (ὡς φησιν) ὧν αὐτὸς γράφει· αἱ καὶ πολύστιχον ποιοῦσι τὸ βιβλίον, καὶ ἐν πλήθει λόγων ὀλίγην συναγαγεῖν ἱστορίαν. διό καὶ τὸ σαφές τῆς ἱστορίας τῶ πλήθει περικόπτεται τῶν παρεντιθεμένων. Bibl. Cod. xlii. p. 12. 1 Fabr. Bibl. Græc. vi. 128. As the Ecclesiastical History of Theodore was a complete work, while his tripartite arrangement was left unfinished, I cannot but regard the former as having been first written. This, however, has not been the general opinion. The two have sometimes been regarded as forming one work. |