Another element which entered into the his torical attitude and methodology of the Patris tic period was Neoplatonism. With its thesis of the superiority of the emotions and intuition to reason and intellect and its advocacy of "un bounded credulity," it fitted in admirably with the Patristic mental reactions and became an integral part of the psychic complex of the Patristic and medieval historians and philoso phers. Augustine flirted with it in his youth and it loomed large in his later philosophy. Its great medieval impulse came mainly from the philosophical and literary activities of Erigeni. Along with the allegorizing tendency it served to make quite impossible any sceptical and crit ical attitude towards the sources of historical knowledge.
Not only were these two standards for the use and interpretation of historical documents erected, but there were also delimited two sharply defined fields of history, the sacred and the profane, the first relating to religious and the latter to secular activities. It is needles9 to remark that an incomparably greater its= portance was attached to sacred history and that the working of a miracle was considered much more significant than the making of a conStitlit tion. The «Fathers» were willing to devote the most extended labor to the allegorical explana tion of dubious and contradictory statements in scripture, but it is impossible to imagine one gathering and analyzing the contents of 158 oonstituuons. It is only fair to state, however, that the evident decline of historical scholarship in the Patristic period cannot be wholly as signed to the Christian attitude towards his torical data and problems. Though there were the reasons enumerated above why the Chris tian historiography was bound to be less sound than its pagan counterpart, it cannot be denied that the period of the "Later Roman Empire» was one of general intellectual decline, and the lapse of the ideals of the height of classical culture affected pagan, as well as Christian, writers.
4. Systematic Ecclesiastical History in the Patristic The most creditable per formances in the realm of Patristic historiog raphy were achieved in the field of syste matic history of the Christian Church. Though the 'Weltanschauung> of the writers marred their perspective and warped their interpreta tion, the resulting damage to historical scholar ship was least in this department. While the anti-pagan bias, the lust for the miraculous, the pious credulity of the writers and the Christian philosophy of history were all in evidence, the very nature of the subject made their operation less disastrous here than in the synthesis of the history of antiquity; attention was centered almost entirely upon ecclesiastical matters and the writers dealt in a large degree with their co-religionists of the immediate past who scarcely received the reverence accorded to per sonages who had figured in scriptural events the Church Fathers, like the makers of the American constitution, were not always canon ized by their own generation.
The earliest semi-narrative sources of the history of the foundations of Christianity are to be found in the 'Epistles' of the 1st century and in the 'Synoptic Gospels,' written probably in the last quarter of the century. Of the former, the most important, naturally, are those of Paul, the great organizing missionary and theologian of the early Church. Of the Gos
pels, the earliest and most reliable is the straight-forward narrative of Mark, written about 70 A.D. The 'Acts of the Apostles,' the remaining canonical historical work of the Apos tolic period, was written by the author of Luke about 100 A.D. The «Apologists" of the 2d and 3d centuries are also valuable sources of infor mation, though their writings were highly con troversial. The first, and the most erudite and scholarly systematic ecclesiastical history of the Patristic period was the work of Eusebius of Caesarea (c. 260-340). His 'History of the Christian Church,' which, in 10 books, brought. the story to 324, was a work of massive erudi tion and relatively high impartiality, but was compiled without literary skill and was most superficial in its analysis of the underlying causes of the great social and religious move ments. Though he was not a profound thinker, Eusebius was a real scholar and the literature he examined in the execution of his work was enormous. Many of the most important docu ments he used were copied in extenso in his history; this makes the work a most valuable source book which contains the only extant por tions of some highly important early Christian writings. A vast gulf exists between the level of the histories of Eusebius and Orosius.
The 'History' of Eusebius was continued by the historians Socrates, Sozomen and Theodoret in the 5th century. The whole was combined and translated into Latin under the direction of Cassiodorus (477-570) in the 6th century, and the narrative was continued to 518. This product of Cassiodorus and his disciples, known as the 'Historic tripartita,> was the general manual of church history throughout the middle ages. Though confused, incoherent, inaccurate, and annalistic, it was certainly superior to the companion text-book on secular history by ()rosins. The greatest defect in the early Church histories was their failure to analyze the deeper forces and the more significant events in the great religious movement which they were describing.' This was due in part to the belief that Christianity was being advanced through divine favor and in part to the fact that the writers all succumbed to the tempta tion to treat primarily of wonders, miracles, martyrs and saints.
Christian biography was founded by Jerome's 'De viris illustribus,> a brief sketch of the lives of all who had contributed to the body of Chris tian literature, and by the biographies of the earlier saints and hermits. Jerome's work was continued by Gennadius (c. 495), a priest of Marseilles, and by Isadore of Seville in works of the same title. Isadore's compilation was, in turn, supplemented by that of Iktephonsus of Toledo (d. 667), and the process of addition continued through the mediaeval period to cul minate in the collection of 963 biographies in the 'Liber scriptorum ecclesiasticorum> of Johannes Tritbremius (1462-1516), abbot of Sponheim. The astonishing credulity of even the most learned of these early biographers, and their zeal for «miracle-mongering» can best be appreciated by a perusal of such a work as Jerome's 'Life of Paul the First Hermit' or Athanasius' 'Life of Saint Anthony.)