Church

CHURCH. - "It is the community of all the faithful, united by the profession of the same faith, by participation in the same Sacraments, under the authority of the legitimate pastors, especially of the Roman Pontiff, vicar of Jesus Christ on earth" (St. R. Bellarmine, De Ecclesia militanti, 2). The term c. also indicates the building where the faithful gather.

A) THE C. AS COMMUNITY OF THE FAITHFUL

I. THE THEOLOGY OF THE CHURCH.

I. THE PROBLEM OF THE CHURCH

Jesus Christ could have manifested his nature and the divinity of his mission by the interior instinct of the Spirit alone; but he willed that our faith in him and in the Church should be sustained by the preaching of the Apostles, by the external miracles that accompanied it, and by the interior vocation of Grace. Therefore the problem of the Church resembles the problem of Jesus, which our intelligence cannot fully resolve without taking into account the facts that history critically records, with the duty of investigating their nature in order to understand their whole meaning, and with the mysterious and always necessary help of Grace to grasp the presence and the design of God in events.

By this criterion we must determine whether the Church is the work of God and imposes itself upon men as a reality originally and essentially divine, or whether it is a construction of men that would have usurped unjustified divine titles. In the second case the Church cannot speak, out of a pseudomystical dream, of a wholly spiritual, charismatic Church that does not touch earth so as not to be defiled; but whoever adheres to the reality of the facts is compelled to acknowledge the composite nature of the Church, made of men but with treasures of Grace for the sanctification of sinners, vulnerable in its human element, but divine in its soul and especially in its Founder and Head, always influential and indefectible; exposed to all the winds of passions and persecutions, yet always renewing itself in the rebirth of that spirit which gives it life.

The sophistry maneuvered by human misunderstandings has deceived many scholars and reformers, who, leaning on the politics of governments, have broken off some sector of the Church's external organism on the fiery stone of nationalisms; but heresy places itself outside the Kingdom of God, disowning the authority that makes the Church divine, and schism causes the branch of the national church to wither miserably, a branch that is born of pride and dies in aridity. Thus there arise the churches of men in contrast to the one Church of Jesus Christ; one witnesses the ever-renewed and ever-failed effort of these churches that attempt to justify themselves in the field of science and religion, changing methods and systems, slaves of nationalisms and of themselves.

As the Jews did not recognize Jesus Christ because he did not correspond to their national ideologies of a conquering and oppressive king, so these modern schismatics do not recognize the true Church of Jesus Christ, because it does not correspond to the arbitrary picture of their partisan and proud nationalism. In the name of freedom they make themselves slaves of political power, instead of conforming their conduct to the Gospel, forcing the Gospel to justify their claims and their weaknesses; and thus the problem of the Church, like the problem of Jesus, involves the responsibility of the intelligence, the rectitude of the will, the necessity of Grace. The rationalist, the schismatic, the naturalist violate the rights of science, of freedom and of Grace, and remain outside the way of salvation.

The theology of the Church has a twofold aspect: the first apologetic and defensive, which tends to bring out the divine value of the Church, its scientific titles to our rational recognition, against heretics and deniers; the other more strictly theological, which investigates the intimate life of the Church in its sacramental characters, in its work of sanctification and expansion, in its social and mystical dynamism, in its conforming to Jesus Christ and in its radiating into the world.

Science is not enough to recognize the divinity of the Church, but it is needed: faith includes good will and freedom, but finds its pedagogy in science; Grace constitutes the supreme reason of the believer, who begins by honestly taking account of the facts, proceeds by penetrating their profound meaning, and finally understands and adheres to the revelation of God by virtue of its testimony, known and demonstrated.

This is the process of faith, this is the spiritual itinerary of all those who find the Lord and can say the words of the dogmatic formula: "I believe in the holy Church."

II. BIBLICAL AND THEOLOGICAL CONCEPT OF THE CHURCH

To understand the nature of the Church in its essential elements, one must consult the Gospel, the Acts of the Apostles, the Letters of St. Paul, and the Fathers of the 2nd century.

The first word and the first concept that presents itself to our consideration is that of Church. In profane usage this word means a gathering of people, a convocation of an assembly; in the Old Testament it is used as a translation of the Hebrew qāhāl, and stands to signify a class of persons indiscriminately; in the New Testament the meaning becomes precise and is consecrated in the sense of the society of those who follow Jesus Christ, taking on local and universal aspects according as one speaks of a family, a city, a region, or the whole world.

When Jesus says: "upon this rock I will build my Church" (Mt. 16, 19), no one finds the phrase obscure, for it already had its commentary in the language of the Divine Master, who signified his own under the metaphor of a flock, of a sheepfold, of a true society. The meaning of this word became ever more defined in the evangelical catechesis and in apostolic practice, in the affirmations of the Redeemer and in the facts that gave concrete form to that doctrine up to the day of Pentecost. If we wished to give a merely sketched definition of the Church, we could say that it is the "society of the faithful of Jesus Christ."

The Gospel also designates the Church by the name of "Kingdom." This word has a greater extension and embraces the whole work of divine Providence in the world. "Kingdom of God" expresses possession, dominion of God, without restriction of time and space, whereas the Church means a special form or a singular aspect of the Kingdom of God.

With this concept of the "Kingdom of Heaven," the work of Jesus inserted itself into the psychology and the aspirations of the Jewish people, and lent itself magnificently to all those purifications and ascensions that the Gospel presents to us dramatized in the contrast between the teaching of Jesus and the obstinate Jewish incomprehension.

Kingdom of God is the truth that shines upon the mind and penetrates the heart of the faithful who adheres to the Master's magisterium; Kingdom of God is that society that is built around him and is expressed under the figure of a banquet, of a city, of a vineyard; Kingdom of God is not only that which unfolds within the framework of time in the condition of wayfarers, but also in that otherworldly, eschatological phase, in that eternal banquet of the elect, who will enjoy God in beatitude.

All this has in the Gospel an extremely rich documentation that modern biblical theology brings out ever better, pressed as it is also by rationalistic falsifications, which tend to break the synthesis between the interior, social and heavenly elements of the Kingdom of God.

The Church, in its precise concept, is that special form of the Kingdom of God which is realized in the fullness of time, as the saving work of Jesus, in its spiritual and social aspect, which labors in time but with extra-temporal intentions and purposes. It is a kingdom altogether exceptional, but it has its constitutional doctrine, its means of social transformation, which are the Sacraments, its peaceful soldiers, who are the faithful, its hierarchy composed of apostles (= bishops), priests and ministers, its goals of perfection and salvation, and also a visible history, which is the history of the Church. It is not confused with civil society as though it were a cumbersome duplicate, nor does it estrange itself so much from the world as to wander in the abstract: but one can see in the Acts of the Apostles what the presence of this Kingdom of God, which is the Church, means in the civil society of the 1st Christian century, which makes of the present life a conquest of future goods and makes one walk upon the earth with one's gaze fixed on the light of the divine sun.

But another fruitful concept for expressing the meaning of the Church is that of the "(Mystical) Body of Christ" (v.).

In St. Paul there is also another phrase to delineate the intimate value of the Church. He says that Christian marriage symbolizes the union of Christ with the Church, and he invites the wife to be subject to her husband in all things as the Church is to Jesus Christ, and then he invites the husband to love his wife as Christ loves the Church even to sacrificing himself for her, to sanctify her, to render her pure and glorious, without wrinkle and without blemish, holy and immaculate (Eph. 5). These words exalt especially the intimate relations between Jesus Christ and the Church to the point of considering her intimately and mysteriously as his bride. From this union holiness blossoms forth in every abundance of works and virtues.

The Apostle further considers the Church as a well-built and compact edifice, which lives and grows as a temple both sanctified and sanctifying, having Jesus Christ as its cornerstone, the work of the Apostles and prophets as its foundations, and all the faithful as living stones, who are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God (Eph. 2, 19-22). It is therefore the city walled upon the mountain, the mysterious fortress, which rises above the waves of the sea of life, amid the agitations of men, a beacon to navigators and the pillar of truth. No one knows and describes the Church like this persecutor of yesterday, who becomes its Apostle and martyr today and forever. It is well to keep in mind that the Church is society, Kingdom of God, bride of Christ, temple of holiness.

III. ORIGIN OF THE CHURCH

All acknowledge that from Jesus Christ the religious movement called Christianity takes its beginning; but not all agree in acknowledging that Jesus Christ is the immediate institutor and founder of the Church, conceived as a society, that is, a hierarchical moral organism for the purposes of salvation.

Some modern critics, failing to recognize the complex nature of the Kingdom of God preached in the Gospel, affirm that the first Christians all lived in expectation of a kingdom that did not come to pass, but that in its place the Church emerged through the work of men.

Others, persuaded that Jesus Christ restricted his work to a simple moral, interior and individualistic renewal, deny that he had the intention of founding a social organism, affirming that each person is the priest of himself.

Nor has there been lacking even those who wished to seize upon the pretext offered by those supernatural and temporary phenomena of which St. Paul speaks in 1 Cor. and which he calls charisms. In the first Christian generation the outpouring of the Spirit produced exceptional and often miraculous effects with regard to the spread of Christianity and the building up of the Church.

St. Paul is explicit on this point, but some moderns have fastened upon the charismatic Church either to say that it ceased to live when the charisms came to an end, or to conclude that the true Church of Jesus Christ is not the juridical and hierarchical one, which today is called Catholicism, but a spiritual and mysterious church composed of the elect whom the bond of the Spirit unites without doctrinal determinations and without interventions of authority. This church, without soul and without body, can also appear without defects, convenient for everyone, because it has value for no one.

Catholic doctrine teaches that Jesus Christ immediately instituted his Church as a true social organism, which was perfected slowly, but does not derive its essential elements from any other source. The proofs of this truth are in the Gospel. In the first place there is a true identification between the Church and the social kingdom preached and founded by Jesus. Besides an intimate aspect and an eschatological phase, the Kingdom of God takes concrete form in time with the Apostles, with the doctrine of Jesus Christ, with the Sacraments as means of sanctification, with St. Peter as the depositary of supreme authority. It is through the Church that God is known and glorified, souls are transformed and eternal life attained. Jesus founded no other kingdom than this. Whoever fails to recognize the Church fails to recognize Jesus Christ and the Gospel. The fact is undeniable.

A second argument can be formulated by gathering together the elements scattered throughout Jesus' preaching. He founds a true society that gathers a multitude of persons to attain a well-determined purpose, with a program and means suited to its realization, with a central authority of government. The entire Gospel teaches nothing else but the duty for all to follow the Divine Master, accept his doctrine, practice his law in the Church governed by the Apostles with a view to eternal life. Jesus Christ conferred the power to forgive and to teach, instituted the sacrifice and promised the Spirit, so that we might all become children of God in the

His mystical Body. The Spirit indeed descended upon the Apostles on the day of Pentecost, which can therefore be considered as the birthday of the C. Now the C. of Jerusalem is precisely the society founded by Jesus, in its primitive form, but with a well-determined doctrine, in its distinction and independence from the Synagogue, in the government so distinct and authoritative of the Apostolic College, with its determinations in the form of a council.

That external circumstances contributed to better determining its character and its movements there is no doubt; but that this C. arose through the work of men and was not truly the continuation of Christ's redemptive work, this is absolutely false.

The C. founded by St. Paul are not autocephalous, they do not constitute a federation of independent organisms, but are members of a single moral body, they are the C. of Jesus Christ which grows and expands and progresses unto perfection, unto eternal life. Precision of doctrine, unity of government, coherence of life with the teaching of the Divine Master, Baptism of the Holy Spirit and the Eucharistic Table are the essential and vital elements of this divine and human society which extends throughout the world united and compact.

The apostolic writers of the 2nd century are dogmatic and ecclesiastical more than many later writers.

The Doctrine of the Apostles speaks of the C. which gathers into the Kingdom of Christ from all the ends of the earth; St. Clement of Rome speaks of the C. of Rome and of that of Corinth with a concept so unitary that it allows every indiscipline and every schism to be struck down (end of the 1st century).

St. Ignatius of Antioch tells the Ephesians to look to the bishop as to Jesus Christ, that the deacons are not ministers of the Table but of the C. He praises their union with the bishop, which is like the union of the C. with Jesus Christ, and of Christ with God. All those who return to the unity of the C. are of God and live according to the Savior. All the letters of St. Ignatius prove the immediate origin of the C. from Jesus Christ (beginning of the 2nd century).

St. Polycarp, in the Letter to the Philippians, greets the C. of God sojourning at Philippi, admonishes the deacons to keep themselves undefiled as ministers of God and of Christ, not of men, and emphasizes the duty of submitting to the priests as to God and to Jesus Christ (V, 2, 3).

St. Justin, in his Dialogue, tells the Jews that the promises made to the Fathers have passed to the C., which was born from Jesus Christ, that the faithful of Christ are a single C., which arose from him like a new world through faith and Baptism (middle of the 2nd century).

St. Irenaeus, in the work Adversus haereses, clearly affirms the duty of obeying the priests who have the succession of the Apostles, that to the C. is entrusted the mission of preaching. The phrase is classic: where the C. is, there is the Spirit of God (end of the 2nd century).

One must conclude that those critics who deny the immediate foundation of the Catholic C. by Jesus Christ put themselves in contrast with the most reliable historical documentation, are carried away by their arbitrary ideology, and in order to deny the faith are forced to deny reason.

Some pretend to be scandalized because in the C. there are sinners, one fights against the capital vices and not all are saints from the first day. They forget that Jesus Christ came to seek sinners, and all men are such; the danger is not in recognizing them as needing forgiveness and rebirth, but in believing themselves just without even having the awareness of their own guilt, and without understanding that the C., founded by Jesus Christ, is precisely the kingdom of justification for wayfarers.

IV. PURPOSES OF THE CHURCH

The Vatican Council expressed well the essential purposes of the Church when it said that "the eternal Shepherd and bishop of our souls, in order to make the saving work of the Redemption perpetual, decreed the founding of the Church in which, as in the house of the living God, all the faithful might be unified in the bond of faith and charity" (Denz-U, 1821).

This doctrine has its historical demonstration in the Gospel. Jesus Christ affirms: "As the Father has sent me, so I send you" (Jn. 20:21) to preach the Gospel to all men, to forgive their sins, to regenerate them in the laver of life, to make them partakers of every Grace in the Eucharistic Communion, to make of all the faithful a royal priesthood and a Church without wrinkle and without blemish.

To this end Jesus Christ promises to remain among the disciples and with the disciples until the end of the world; for the same purpose he sends the Holy Spirit who will be the soul of the Church, the invisible and invincible support until the end of the world.

The whole Gospel documents this thought, which, translated into theological language, means purification of souls, renewal of hearts, sanctification of society. The Apostles consider themselves ministers of Christ, dispensers of his mysteries, builders of a new world, which will be the kingdom of Christ, his Mystical Body, will still be he living and working in the society of souls that possess him. He in the act of justifying sinners in the mysterious infusion of his blood through the Sacraments.

This evangelical doctrine does not permit us to abandon ourselves to the dream of an invisible Church, made up of saints and predestined, almost souls wandering in a sky of dreamed charity; but it does not tolerate either that extrinsicist one, which sees nothing else in the Church than the juridical and hierarchical organism that would too much resemble the reprobate Synagogue and a body without a soul. The Church is founded so that sinful humanity may become redeemed and justified humanity. Faith is enough to enter the Church, but faith is not enough to remain in it as one ought. Whoever does not transform himself places himself outside the Mystical Body, passing from legality, which does not justify, to incoherence, which condemns, and sometimes to perdition.

To this doctrine of the purpose of the Church is connected the other of the necessity of belonging to it as a condition of salvation. Not only did Jesus Christ say to the Apostles: "Whoever despises you, despises me; and whoever despises me, offends him who sent me (Lk. 10:16)"; but he added: "Whoever believes will be saved; whoever does not believe will be condemned" (Lk. 16:16; Mt. 10:14). St. Ignatius martyr says frankly to the faithful: "Do not be deceived: whoever lives cut off from the society of the faithful and from the doctrine of Christ does not win the heavenly inheritance" (Ad Philadelph., 3, 3). Origen (3rd cent.) formulates the saying, which has remained classic: "Outside the Church there is no salvation" (Hom. in Iesu Nave, 3, 5), a phrase that must be understood of those who culpably remain outside the Church, while even sincere desire is enough to make one belong to it morally.

Therefore the Church is an instrumental cause of sanctification, insofar as it teaches the doctrine of Jesus Christ, communicates his Grace in the Sacraments and renews souls, disposing them for the final phase of the Kingdom of God which is eternal life. Its function is divine, it is exercised in this world in function of the other, militant, today, in the first phase; glorious, tomorrow, in the supreme and final phase. This is not a chance purpose, born of circumstances, almost as an arbitrary expedient; but, in contrast to the weakness of men and with supernatural means that only God could give, the Founder has indeed established a renewal of souls as a necessary condition of salvation for eternity. In a simple man there would not have been the capacity to think of such a vast and lofty horizon, and much less the capacity to bring it about.

The efforts of some critics to reduce this finalism of the Church to a natural minimum contrast with history and remain merely arbitrary and false.

V. CONSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH

1. Hierarchy

Just as by various paths an attempt has been made to deny the immediate institution of the Church by Jesus Christ; especially in the Protestant world, an attempt has thus been made to obscure the true constitution of this divine society, in order to arrive at that individualist subjectivism which is in full contrast with the Gospel.

Some deny that Jesus Christ willed in his Church a ministerial and jurisdictional power, such that there is a true distinction between clergy and laity, with the obligation to respect or obey the orders of an authority which would be of divine origin. Then, forcing and exaggerating the meaning of the words of St. Peter (1 Pet. 2, 1), who calls the Christian people a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation and a people of acquisition, they concluded that all Christians are priests. Others, confusing the nature and function of the charisms mentioned by St. Paul and which flourished in the primitive Churches as a supernatural and varied outpouring of the Holy Spirit, affirmed that upon the disappearance of those charisms, which were of a transitory character, the hierarchical grades were substituted by the work of men.

The Catholic doctrine, on the other hand, formulated more clearly at the Council of Trent, teaches that in the Church, by divine institution, there exists a hierarchy composed of bishops, priests and ministers.

Leaving to the relevant entries the more detailed description of the individual themes, it can be documented from the Gospel that Jesus Christ did not intend to initiate an amorphous and individualist movement without a constructive hierarchical ordering, but a true society, called the Kingdom of God, the Church, the Mystical Body, the House of the Lord.

No one can deny that Jesus Christ revealed his doctrine to the Apostles and invested them with divine powers with regard to the sanctification of souls and the government of the Church. «You did not choose me, but I chose you» (John 15, 16); «As the Father has sent me, so I send you» (John 20, 21); «Whoever listens to you listens to me; and whoever rejects you rejects me» (Luke 10, 16); «All power has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and instruct all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you all days, until the end of the world» (Matt. 28, 18-20).

Here a power of teaching, of ministry and of government is clearly indicated and conferred, with the promise of a protection that will never fail.

The conduct of the Apostles practically comments on the words of Jesus. The Apostles found the individual Churches as a dilation of an organic whole, which is the Church of Christ, and govern them in his name and as his ministers; they transmit their powers to others who are to succeed them, in such a way as never to permit initiatives that cannot be justified by the teaching and the power received from the Divine Master. They teach, they celebrate the mysteries of Grace, they govern the peoples conquered for the Gospel, they punish the rebellious, they work miracles in proof of the divine mission they carry out, they die in testimony to the revealed truth and out of love for the Savior.

At the end of the 1st century a rebellion breaks out in the Church of Corinth. Some audacious young men depose the elders and put themselves in their place. The matter is referred to the bishop of Rome, who in the person of Clement intervenes with the Letter to the Corinthians, accusing them of injustice against those venerable priests who by legitimate succession were at the government of that Church, and against whom no one had the right to rise up.

The Apostolic Fathers of the 2nd century, and especially the bishop and martyr St. Ignatius of Antioch, describe the hierarchy of the Church with the clarity of today's theologians. They are learned and holy persons, who give authoritative testimony of what they narrate and of the fidelity of what they carry out. Heresy, always in arms against them, has not been able to catch them in fault, and here emerges an irrefutable argument from prescription. How was that hierarchy born if it does not correspond to the teaching of Jesus? To suppose that at the beginning of the Church the enthusiasm of the disciples triumphed and the power of the Apostles did not function, as if everything were charismatic and nothing jurisdictional, is to falsify history.

The Epistles of St. Paul are too well documented to deny the value of his testimony and of his pastoral practice. Bishops succeed the Apostles with the characteristic of being able to transmit priestly powers, and of residing in a see of their own, whereas the Apostle had as his diocese all the Churches he founded. One may raise questions about the details of the presbyteral college and ask how the monarchical episcopate practically manifested itself; but that the hierarchy of the Church goes back to the Apostles and is of divine origin is not only a dogma of faith but a truth historically demonstrated.

Man is always sociable, and only in society does he more easily attain his perfection in every field. Providence which, in the economy of its gifts and its demands, takes into account the native disposition of its creatures, provides for our religious needs, making us citizens of a spiritual homeland which is the Church, in which we more surely know the true and practice the good than if we were abandoned to our individualism. God confers on us the honor of a collaboration in his work of sanctification, the priest becomes «adiutor Domini» and savior of his brother, the faithful person feels himself drawn near to God through the ministry of a fellow traveler.

The hierarchy ensures the connection of all those who compose the Mystical Body of Jesus Christ, and the multitude of the faithful feels itself compacted and spiritually incorporated into the supreme Priest. In the Church there is no place for pride; honor flourishes in humility. We all receive from Christ the truth and Grace, but we help one another in the conquest and the application of his merits. The hierarchy does not substitute itself for the freedom of love, but cooperates with it as the physician cooperates with the health of the sick. One does not live in the Church with a rubricated legalism, nor does the life of the spirit flourish in a disdainful solipsism. The life of the spirit necessarily has three aspects that call to one another: adherence to the source, which is love for Christ, progressive interior renewal of the soul, luminous and joyful discipline in the society of the faithful. The union of these three aspects expresses the convergence of all the virtues of the Christian life. This is the mission of the hierarchy.

2. Social perfection of the Church

The hierarchical constitution of the Church gives rise to the question of its social perfection, because to the myopic gaze of the critic it seems a cumbersome duplicate of civil society, and to the pride of rulers it seems to be part of the State.

Heresy, which easily forms an alliance with tyrants, almost always arises with a nationalist stamp, and always ends by misrecognizing and denying the true constitution of the Church.

When we Catholics speak of the perfection of this divine society, which bears the name of the Church, we intend to maintain that it has in itself all the means necessary for the attainment of its end, which is the sanctification of souls and salvation, and that it does not depend juridically on any other.

As a supernatural society it presupposes everything that man possesses naturally in the individual and social sphere, but this does not compromise its perfection. Just as the human organism does not cease to be relatively perfect, although it needs light, air and food; just as the State is a perfect society in its own order, even though it needs international commerce; so the Church must be recognized as perfect, in the sense that it possesses the means necessary for its life or has the right to take them where they are, without depending in this on any other authority.

To demonstrate this doctrine it is enough to consult the Gospel, from which it follows that Jesus Christ founded the C. independently of civil society, invested it with an autonomous power, and commanded that it be exercised without rendering account to the lords of the world: "You will be hated and persecuted for my name's sake: do not be afraid, for I have overcome the world" (Jn 16:33; cf. Mk 13:9; Lk 21:12). The Jews and the pagans immediately turned to persecution against these unarmed missionaries of the Gospel, who had only one answer to give: "We must obey God rather than men" (Acts 5:29), and did nothing other than render to God what is God's, while acknowledging to Caesar what is Caesar's.

The whole history of the C. is a combat to win recognition for the rights of God against the claims of man, in defense of the freedom of the Gospel against the enslavement of every human tyranny.

In ch. 15 of the De regimine principum St. Thomas gave the philosophical and theological reason for this independence of the C. in the face of civil power. The essential finalism of social life determines the hierarchy of institutions. "Those to whom the care of the ultimate end belongs must have subject to them those to whom the care of intermediate ends belongs... Thus the smith makes the sword so that it is suited to battle, and the builder must design the house so that it is suited to dwelling." It follows that civil power, ordered to the human common good, is subject to ecclesiastical power, ordered to the spiritual good, to the ultimate end. This reasoning clashes with the sophistry of the passions and of all the cupidities of men, but it is perfectly logical, founded on the nature of man, on the basis of the absolute primacy of God.

To say that the C. has no territory of its own, has no arms with which to enforce its right, and that its members are citizens of the State, means to misconceive the spiritual character of the C. itself, which is not a duplicate of civil society, but surpasses and goes beyond every temporal and human finality; and while its mission is the attainment of an absolute and eternal good, it tunes more highly the same social activity, which it does not invade, but presupposes and transcends, requiring that civil powers not deny what is connected with the spiritual good.

The misconstrued and slandered indirect power of the C. comes down precisely to these three propositions: "1. The supernatural end must not be impeded for the sake of the temporal end; a good, in order to be such, must preserve the hierarchy of ends, must not oppose the higher good; 2. the society that pursues the temporal end must help that which tends toward the supreme destinies of man; 3. the latter therefore has the right to demand from civil society what, by indirect connection with the spiritual, is necessary to men for the higher good. In other words, C. and State must cooperate for the good of the same subjects in what interests them most of all" (A. Ottaviani, Luce di Roma cristiana nel diritto, Vatican City 1943, pp. 39-40).

Even a non-Catholic State can and must recognize the authority of the C., not only because it in no way clashes with what is legitimate and reasonable in the defense of civil power, but also because the C. has titles that must be recognized by all, has a mission beneficial to all, and everyone has the obligation to take account of it and to adhere to it. Every persecution carried out against the C., even before violating the rights of Catholicism, is a violation of the rights of reason, beginning with the trial held against Jesus Christ, down to that of the last persecuted believer.

3. Indefectibility of the C

The question is not new whether the C. is changeable in its constitution or can fail at some period of history.

There are two accusations in this field: one, from many who complain because they do not see the C. marching at the head of all modern errors and reproach its static quality or fixity in traditional positions; the other from those who reproach the C. for its too many mutations, so much so that it can no longer be recognized as that primitive one founded by Jesus Christ. The extremism of these recriminations calls to mind the perennial traditional modernity of the Kingdom of God, whose characteristic is indefectibility.

By indefectibility is meant the fact of the duration of the C. without interruption until the end of the world, the substantial immutability of doctrine, of the means of sanctification and of the hierarchy, and an unfailing intrinsic vitality, founded on the promises of Jesus and the presence of the Holy Spirit. This uninvited stability of the C. is an object of faith and, at the same time, a motive of credibility, because it is humanly impossible to explain the life of the C. in the world without a positive intervention of God to sustain it. This teaching is founded on the words and on the presence of the Savior. For "founded on the rock, the gates of Hell shall not prevail" (Mt 16:18); "I am with you always, until the end of the world" (Mt 28:20); "I will pray to the Father, and he will give you the Paraclete, the Spirit of truth, who will remain with you forever" (Jn 14:16).

After these words so clear from the Gospel, it is no longer necessary to invoke the testimony of the Fathers, who express this intrinsic invincibility of the C., despite its natural weakness, and the perennial incarnation of the capital vices in the army of persecutors, who change their armaments but preserve their guilty spirit.

The problem, which is always reborn in the history of men, finds in theology its straightforward solution. St. Thomas, resolving the question whether the C. of the Apostles is the same as the C. of today, answers in his discreet Latin: "Dicendum quod eadem numero est Ecclesia quae tunc nata et quae nunc est, quia eadem fides et eadem fidei Sacramenta, eadem auctoritas, eadem professio." And all the mutations that can be pointed out mean that "est alius status Ecclesiae nunc et tunc, non tamen est alia Ecclesia" (Quod., XII, q. 13, a. 19).

Against the claims of Montanus, of the Manichaeans, of Joachim of Fiore, of the Jansenists, of the Modernists, he demonstrates that the New Law must last until the end of the world and cannot change "secundum diversitatem legis," because "nullus alius status praesentis vitae potest esse perfectior quam status Novae Legis," which "immediate in finem ultimum introducti." Our attitude toward the New Law can change "secundum quod homines diversimode se habent ad eamdem, vel perfectius vel minus perfecte." At one time the laws are better observed, at another they are neglected, but "stultissimum est dicere quod Evangelium Christi non sit Evangelium Regni," "non est expectanda alia lex quae sit Spiritus Sancti" (Sum. Theol., 1a-2ae, q. 106, a. 4).

This doctrine indicates the secret of the C.'s fidelity to the content of the divine revelations in that attitude which is founded on the tradition and transmission of the divine message without arbitrary reworkings or manipulations; but it also speaks of that generous effort to understand ever better the treasure of revelation in that dogmatic progress which is the triumph of the soundest theology, and in the ardor of an ascetic life that expresses the coherence of love with the truth known, a flowering of Grace in the practice of all the virtues.

St. Thomas also sets down the fundamental principles for rightly understanding this progress of sacred science, saying that "quantum ad substantiam fidei non est factum eorum augmentum per temporum successionem"; but "quantum ad explicationem crevit numerus articulorum quia quaedam explicite cognita sunt a posterioribus, quae a prioribus non cognoscebantur explicite" (Sum. Theol., 2a-2ae, q. 1, a. 7).

The C. is thus necessarily traditional and progressive. The invisible presence of the Founder in its organism is the source of those inexhaustible riches of thought and love that always have efflorescences of light and of conquest. The Holy Spirit inflames a pontiff, raises up a saintly reformer, and at once a new Pentecost blazes forth. It is not the heretics who reform, although they may serve as the occasion for precious rebirths; it is not the revolutionaries who make the C. advance toward Tabor, but it is the irrepressible spirit of Jesus, which invisibly blazes and renews the heaven of the C. and of the world.

Friar Girolamo Savonarola admonishes that "it is unreasonable that a better (religion) should have to come, because since one can neither find nor think of a better end, nor better and more certain means of attaining to this, nor a more perfect life, nor greater and more marvelous things than those that the Christian religion foretells, no other religion can come that could surpass it" (Trionfo della Croce, ed. Ferretti, Florence 1913, p. 391).

VI. POWERS OF THE CHURCH

From what has been said above, the great mission of the Church emerges, which is that of continuing the work of Jesus by applying the Redemption to souls throughout the whole world, in every age.

Three are the characteristics of the Savior that clearly emerge from the Gospel: he is divine Teacher, eternal Priest, peaceful King.

As teacher, Jesus revealed the mysteries of God, promulgated the laws of sanctification, presented himself to the world as the revealer of the Father's will. This characteristic is strongly marked throughout the New Testament. As priest, Jesus Christ abolished all the ancient sacrifices, replacing them with his own, giving his life in redemption, founding a new priesthood with new precepts and superhuman virtues. As king, Jesus Christ founded a perfect, well-organized society that lives by his life, in faith and in love, constitutes a renewed humanity, which renders to God that honor and that glory that sin had compromised in the world. The characteristics and powers of the Church correspond to those of its Founder, and are the power of magisterium, the power of ministry, the power of government.

1. Power of magisterium

The Church is a living teaching. The mandate to teach all nations is affirmed immediately in the apostolate, in the catechesis of apostolic times, in the spread of Christianity, in the councils, in the missions. It is a duty and a right that the Church exercises by promulgating the divine Revelation, keeping it uncontaminated in the face of the manipulations of rationalism and heresy, defending it against deniers and aggressors.

The CIC expresses this power effectively: Christ the Lord entrusted to the Church the deposit of the faith, so that, with the permanent assistance of the Holy Spirit, it might guard the revealed doctrine holily and faithfully expound it. It is the duty and right of the Church to teach all nations the evangelical doctrine independently of any civil power; all are obliged by divine law to know and embrace the Church of God. With divine and catholic faith one must believe all that is contained in Scripture and Tradition and that is proposed as revealed by the Church, whether the Church does so with solemn magisterium or with ordinary and universal magisterium (cann. 1322-23).

That of the definitions issued by general Councils with the Pope, or even by the Pope alone when he speaks ex cathedra, is called solemn magisterium; and that of pontifical encyclicals, of the ordinary documents of the Congregations and of the episcopal body is called ordinary magisterium.

The Apostles immediately considered themselves as missionaries, as envoys of Christ to the nations to proclaim the Gospel, the truth that frees from sin and from every tyranny, ambassadors of God to men. St. Paul has so vivid this awareness of being a faithful teacher of divine truth that he dares to say to the Galatians: "If even an angel from heaven should preach to you a Gospel other than mine, let him be anathema" (Gal. 1, 8). To Titus he commands "to speak and to exhort and to reprove with all authority" (Tit. 2, 15).

The author of the Letter to Diognetus, in the 2nd century, speaks like the Vatican Council: "It is not an earthly invention that has been entrusted to them, nor do they consider that it is a mortal invention that they guard so jealously, nor that they have been invested with the administration of human mysteries... Since he revealed and made manifest to us, through his beloved Son, what had been prepared for us from the beginning, he at the same time placed everything within our reach, and allowed us to share in his benefits, to discover and grasp realities that none of them could ever have dreamed of... Having become a disciple of the Apostles, I have become a teacher of the nations. To those who have accepted to enter the school of truth, I conscientiously impart what has been transmitted to me... It is by virtue of the Son of God that the Church grows in richness, confers intellectual light, reveals mysteries, rejoices in the joy of the faithful" (Ad Diognetum, 7, 8, 11).

This magisterium is first of all traditional, in the sense of fidelity to the genuine content of its divine source, to the deposit entrusted to the Church and transmitted to the faithful. From this treasure of wisdom, ancient and new truths always emerge, because it is inexhaustible in its richness, which mirrors the substantial truth of the Word. It is an infallible magisterium, because the very indefectibility of the Church would fail if, by hypothesis, it could teach what is false. The invisible presence of Jesus Christ as influential head in the organism of the society that is the Kingdom of God, the presence of the Holy Spirit sent on the day of Pentecost as support and soul of the work of Jesus, guarantees the Church against every defection, beginning with the doctrinal field (v. INFALLIBILITY).

2. Power of ministry (power of order)

Together with the power of magisterium, one must recognize in the Church the power of ministry, which is a sacramental power, conferred with the validly administered sacrament of Order, ordered to the worship of God and to the sanctification of the faithful.

If the magisterium teaches the truth, indicates the path to be followed, the supernatural ideal to be attained, impossible by human strength alone; the ministry confers Grace and therefore the strength to actualize those doctrines in life, beginning from faith up to the heights of transforming charity and heroic holiness.

This power includes first of all the Sacraments (v.), which are "the chief means of sanctification and salvation" (CIC, 731) entrusted by Jesus Christ to the Church. Besides the practice of the Sacraments, one must consider the obligatory observance of the evangelical precepts that imply the whole of Christian morality. The ten commandments of the Old Testament acquire in the New a new breadth and greater understanding and express the coherence of the whole of life with the divine faith.

This divine legislation takes systematic form in the theological treatises De virtutibus, and is actualized in the concrete conduct of every day, in the practice of the theological and cardinal virtues. They are not programs but actualizations of a saving law, an ascent of souls along the paths of justice, a flowering of Grace in the ascending degrees of the virtues, of duties, of the beatitudes.

It is not enough to believe, one must love supernaturally, and invest with this love all individual and social virtues, considering ourselves as citizens of a single Kingdom which is that of Christ, of a Mystical Body, as the Church is, so as to counter proud and revolutionary nationalisms with the royalty of the children of God.

It is easy to fall short of the height of this divine life, to tear virtue to shreds in order to clothe oneself with it more comfortably, to seek pale analogies in the history of religions and in the virtues of the pagans for a foolish syncretism. In truth "what the soul is in the body, this are the Christians in the world" (Ad Diognet, 6).

3. Power of government

From the indefectible hierarchical constitution of the Church there necessarily follows the third power, that of government, of jurisdiction, which makes the will of the disciples converge according to the requirements of the common good.

Catholic doctrine teaches that "potestas iurisdictionis seu regiminis ex divina institutione est in Ecclesia" (CIC, 196); "Romanus Pontifex, beati Petri in primatu successor, habet supremum et plenam potestatem iurisdictionis in universam Ecclesiam tam in rebus quae ad fidem et mores tam in iis quae ad disciplinam et regimen Ecclesiae per totum orbem diffuse pertinent" (CIC, 218). "(Episcopis) ius et officium est gubernandi dioecesim tum in spiritualibus tum in temporalibus cum potestate legislativa, iudiciaria, coactiva ad normam sacrorum canonum exercenda" (CIC, 335). "Nativum et proprium Ecclesiae ius est, independens a qualibet humana auctoritate, coercendi delinquentes sibi subditos poenis tum spiritualibus tum etiam temporalibus" (CIC, 2214).

In the history of the Church there have never been lacking those who denied or diminished this power of jurisdiction in the Church, whether to gratify the excesses of the State or to diminish the social efficacy of the Church in the civil order. But Jesus Christ explicitly entrusted this power to the Church, both with the words: "whatever you shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven" (Mt. 18:16); and in the command to teach all with authority the practice of his precepts (Mt. 28:20).

The Apostles founded churches, which they governed either directly or through representatives, as is documented in their letters, especially the pastoral ones.

Moreover, if the Church is a true society, distinct and not subject to any civil power, it cannot lack this power of government, without which no society can be conceived.

The legislative power was clearly exercised at the Council of Jerusalem, when the abolition of the Mosaic observances was at issue, as is narrated in Acts 15. St. Paul, in 1 Cor. 7:12, promulgates that law which goes under the name of the "Pauline privilege."

The evangelical laws, applied in different times and in different countries, bring about a variety of adaptations, which can be seen exemplified in the CIC. Too many laws can be a defect, but without legislation there is death. Fundamental concepts that govern the life and practice of souls in the infinite demands of faith and perfection require a code, a legislator always vigilant and intelligent who, between stasis and revolution, ensures the progress of good.

The judicial power is necessarily connected with the first: the magistrate is the law living and operating in society. Jesus Christ indicated this power when he outlined, in a few strokes, the process of correction that goes from private admonition to the tribunal of the Church with the consequent sanction (Mt. 18:15).

St. Paul gives an example of the exercise of this power over the incestuous man of Corinth (1 Cor. 4:18) and when he instructs Timothy on how to behave with the accusers of priests (1 Tim. 5:19). The bishop is necessarily a legislator, a judge.

The coercive power accompanies the judicial one. Law is coercive, in the sense that it obliges in conscience when it is rightly interpreted, and imposes corresponding sanctions. The sanctions of the Church conform to the spiritual and supernatural nature of the Church, and are therefore especially of a moral and spiritual character. St. Paul also exercised the coercive power, showing by his example how the citizen of the Church must be kept awake to the faithfulness of his commitments, not only by the profound sense of his moral responsibilities before God, but also by the threat of ecclesiastical penalties (v. PENA).

It must be admitted that ecclesiastical authority has the right to inflict temporal penalties as well, though always with a view to a spiritual good. Why should a heretic not be deprived of the freedom of propaganda, when he should attack the faith of Christians? Why should a bad priest or a bad Christian not be punished also in a sensible manner, when justice and the common good demand it?

The Church, a spiritual society directly ordered to the ultimate end, has the right to ask and to receive from the State all those material goods that are necessary for the fulfillment of its mission; and to make honest use of those means, even material ones, that the wisdom of its government suggests.

In this delicate sector of ecclesiastical law the possible trespasses are two: that of one who would exaggerate the coercive right of the Church, to the point of intruding it unduly into ground not its own, and that of one who denies to the Church every right, even indirect, over temporal goods and over sanctions of a temporal order. Theology well sets the boundaries, within which faith and reason preserve the hierarchical finalism of the two societies.

VII. THE RECOGNITION OF THE TRUE CHURCH

Many churches exist today in the world that call themselves Christian: which of these is the true one? For an instructed Catholic the question is not difficult: he finds it in his Catholicism; but for a rationalist who seeks the way of faith, for a Protestant or schismatic who wishes to orient himself in the religious field and not fail in his relations with God, the matter is very different. The Vatican Council teaches that we have the duty to embrace the true faith and to persevere in it constantly: «for this reason God instituted the Church with manifest marks so that all may recognize it as the guardian and teacher of revelation» (Denz-U, 1793).

1. The marks

What are these marks or seals that make us recognize the true churches?

For the Orientals, in general, the sufficient and necessary mark would be the fidelity of doctrine to the ancient teaching, to the ancient Church of the Fathers and of the first seven ecumenical councils. But this fidelity is not more a mark of the true Church that is sought; in a certain sense it can be found even in a schismatic church, and finally it is not possible to know authoritatively whether a doctrine, newly proposed, corresponds and is conformable to the doctrine of the true Church of Christ (R.-M. Schultes, De Ecclesia catholica praelectiones apologeticae, Paris 1926, p. 165).

Protestants propose two different marks, which are the sincere preaching of the word of God and the legitimate administration of the Sacraments.

But there is no doubt that in order to understand when and by whom the word of God is sincerely preached and the Sacraments well administered, it is necessary to know the true Church, so that such marks are more obscure than what they ought to make known. The apologists never constructed a defense of the institution starting from the doctrine taught; but, on the contrary, they understood that the doctrine was true because it was taught by legitimate authority.

That the Protestant marks do not help to find the Church of Jesus Christ is proved by the tangle of the reformed churches and is documented by Bossuet in his History of the Variations and in his polemics with the minister Jurieu.

Catholics present four marks that are traditional: unity, holiness, catholicity and apostolicity, and they reason: the Church of Jesus Christ must bear these imprints, these evident properties. Where we find them we will recognize the true Church of Jesus Christ; where they are lacking we will understand that we are off the road.

We find them hinted at in the Gospel, used variously by the Fathers and ancient writers, presented in series in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed (381), explained by St. Thomas in the opuscule on the Creed of the Apostles, strongly illustrated by Pius IX in the encyclical to the English bishops (1864).

These marks are evidently connected with the nature of the Church, of which they are evident properties; they are connected among themselves in such a way that one cannot exist without implying the other; and they are easier to know than the Church itself, so much so that they serve us as signs or seals of its existence and of its nature.

2. Use of the marks

Of these marks a twofold use can be made in order to recognize the true Church. One is that indicated by the Vatican Council, and which so pleased Cardinal Dechamps. It is formulated thus: «The Church by itself, that is by its admirable propagation, its eminent holiness and inexhaustible fecundity in every work of good, its catholic unity and its invincible stability, is a great and perpetual motive of credibility and an irrefragable testimony of its divine mission» (Denz-U, 1794).

In this argument the starting point is taken as the unity of faith, of its worship and of its government, its invincible constancy in the defense of the sacred patrimony throughout the world and its inexhaustible fecundity in every abundance of good, its propagation from the origins down to today, against all the obstacles of force, of sophistry and of wickedness.

Once this fact is established in all its breadth, the question arises as to how the few disciples of the Lord arrived at this result. If one recognizes that the work of the Church was continually accompanied by miracles, so that «to the internal helps of the Holy Spirit there must be added the external arguments of Revelation, that is the divine facts and especially the miracles and prophecies which, evidently manifesting the infinite knowledge and omnipotence of God, are most certain signs of divine revelation and suited to every intelligence» (Denz-U, 1790), then one has the invincible argument of the divinity of the Church.

But even setting aside other miracles and remaining within the fact of the Church persecuted and victorious, poor and beneficent to the whole world, united and compact, despite heresies and schisms and persecutions, it must be said that this fact alone is a motive, an argument that induces every honest intelligence to believe in the divinity of the Church. When a historical effect that lies before our eyes transcends and contrasts with the natural efficacy of the known cause, one must conclude that God has intervened. This is precisely the fact of the Church, in the splendor of its properties and its resplendent goals.

Such an argument was always present to the Christian conscience. St. Thomas in the Summa contra Gentes (I, 6) illustrates it thus: «This so marvelous conversion of the world to the Christian faith is a most certain indication of past prodigies. Thus a repetition of them becomes useless, since they appear luminously confirmed in their effects. It would then be the greatest of portents if the world had been induced to believe truths so bold, to perform things so difficult, to hope for rewards so high, without miracles, following the word of simple and ignorant men. And yet, even in our times, God does not cease to work prodigies in confirmation of the faith, through his saints».

There is another way of studying and using the marks in order to arrive at understanding which is the true Church of Christ, in right and in fact. One must seek in the Gospel and in the primitive Christian sources the essential properties, the genuine imprint, the visible marks of the Church as Jesus Christ willed and established it, since one cannot even think that the true Church does not have an unmistakable and recognizable face, if one wishes to follow the Savior. With this portrait well fixed and clear in the mind, one can and must examine the various Christian confessions that history presents in every age, in order to understand that Church which bears the imprint of Jesus and which are the churches either counterfeited, or mutilated, or masked, and which have thus lost every right to appeal to Jesus Christ.

Reading the Gospel, it leaps to the eyes that Jesus

Christ impressed upon his Church a seal of unity, so that it might be in itself undivided and well distinct from every other. Unity therefore in the content of the faith, unity in the means of sanctification, unity in the government of this society destined to render perennial in the world the salvation wrought by the Savior. The Divine Master who said that every divided kingdom, every divided city, is destined to perish, could not but imprint his work in this way (v. UNITÀ).

Holiness is the perfection of love of God, which turns one away from sin and unites one intimately to the Lord. It can remain intimate and secret in the soul, but it can shine forth in the triumph of all the virtues and in the splendor of miracles (v. SANTITÀ).

Catholicity is a property of the Church insofar as, manifesting itself as one, it presents itself as numerically conspicuous and recognizable throughout the world. The Apostles are sent to all nations (Mt. 28, 19) and the presence of the Savior is promised to them until the end of the world (v. CATTOLICITÀ).

The apostolicity is a property of the C. [Church] insofar as in the uninterrupted succession of its Pastors it traces back to the Apostles and proceeds from them in the identity of faith, worship and government. It is on St. Peter that Christ founded his C. (Mt. 16, 18); it is to the Apostles that he made the promise of his presence until the end of the world (Mt. 28, 19); it is upon the Apostles that the Holy Spirit descended at Pentecost, and in the Apostles were communicated the powers to teach, to forgive, to save, etc. (v. APOSTOLICITÀ).

These four notes, in the breadth of theological teaching, are certainly infallible marks of the C. of Christ, and that religious Confession which possesses them unaltered and most strongly put into practice can certainly proclaim itself the Christian one, and claim its legitimacy. One can formulate a discriminating criterion thus: wherever heresy and schism break the unity of teaching, nationalize religion, dry up the sources of heroic and prodigious holiness, break the succession and the apostolic mission, there is no true C. of Christ but a construction of men, even if made with the stones of a ruined Christian building.

By this criterion it is easy to understand how the dissident Eastern c. cannot claim the titles of the true C. of Christ. Having separated itself from the Catholic C., of which it had been an honored part for ten centuries, it lost the hierarchical unity that ensures the unity of faith and worship, it placed itself in contradiction with itself by denying that Roman primacy which in several preceding councils it had acknowledged. However much it may have preserved the sacraments, and however many of these dissidents may be in good faith, one cannot deny that the effort of a most solemn worship contrasts with the poverty of Christian practice, which does not flourish in heroic holiness. In the matter of catholicity the heterodox Eastern c. has failed. Restricted almost exclusively to the Slavic peoples and subdivided into a series of patriarchates and sects, which do not even form a federation, this which was the glorious Eastern C. killed itself with schism, and the wretched life it leads proves that it has been wrenched from the source. Apostolicity is compromised. As for the Sacrament of Order, the hierarchy of this c. traces back to the Apostles; but with its rebellion against the supreme Pastor it has lost the apostolic mission, it has lost the power of jurisdiction, it is like a suspended priest, who continues to celebrate to the offense of God and of the C.

By the same path one can easily recognize how Protestantism is not at all the Christian C., insofar as it is an organized movement of secession from the Catholic C. in the 16th century.

It lacks doctrinal and hierarchical unity, by force of that free examination which justifies every individualism and every oddity. The so-called Lutheran reform was a radical deformation of the C. of Jesus Christ, to the point of overstepping into various forms of nationalism, false doctrines, denied sacraments, unrecognized hierarchy; it is a general subversion. Holiness in members of good faith can exist in contrast to heresy and schism, but not by virtue of the presumed reform, which presents no other spectacle than that of a boundless proliferation of sects, of a propaganda that flourishes neither in great virtues nor in miracles. Catholicity has no place because there is nothing organic and vital whose universality can be sought. Individualism is exalted as a triumph of liberty, but here it is arbitrariness and bewilderment, nothing else.

Apostolicity is radically denied. The apostolic succession is lacking, every connection with the C. of Christ is lacking, which is counterfeited and denied in infinite ways. The strong German intellect displays its inventive and complicated skill in fashioning paradoxical systems and constructions, which are well understood when they come undone.

Continuing the inquiry, one arrives at the Roman Catholic C.

VIII. ROMANNESS OF THE CHURCH

At this point a question arises that seems most serious, namely how Christianity became Catholicism. The simplest answer would be to say that true Christianity has always been Catholicism, and if a historical problem presents itself, it is precisely that of becoming aware of the different ways and the proximate cause of those movements of people who, detaching themselves from Catholicism and grouping together in a spiritless way among themselves, called themselves Christian confessions.

But among the churches of the world there is the Roman Church with a primacy evident in the eyes of all, and to investigate with a pure eye what is hidden under this name of the Romanity of the Church is precisely the secret of all ecclesiology.

From the methodological point of view at least, it is advisable not to consider Romanity as a mark of the Church, so that all may be persuaded that the true Church will bear the four preceding marks impressed upon it, but only one who has found and recognized this Church in concrete terms will be able to understand that it is Roman. Therefore, more than a means of investigation, this Romanity is a result, a conquest, and it cannot be taken as a starting point.

Secondly, Romanity does not mean a prestige that the capital of the Roman Empire would have projected onto the episcopal see of Rome, conferring on it a primacy that would then have imposed itself on the whole Church. This is the thesis of E. Renan in the volume Conférences d'Angleterre (Paris 1880), in which he developed and falsified the theme of the relations between Rome and Christianity. With varied erudition A. Sabatier colored the same concept in Les Religions d'autorité et la religion de l'esprit (Paris 1899) and A. Harnack in Das Wesen des Christentums (Leipzig 1900). In Italy this error echoed in the words of N. Tommaseo, who in the volume Roma e il mondo dared to affirm that «the schism and the abuses multiplied in the Church gave the bishops of Rome an influence that, without this, they would never have acquired». Alfredo Oriani in Il Matrimonio sang the same opinion again: «without the real unity of Rome, the ideal unity of Christianity would have been broken. Rome alone was able, by transforming it into Catholicism, to keep it one».

Against this inconsistent theory Loisy himself rebelled in L'Évangile et l'Église (Paris 1902), declaring that if «the importance of the city contributed to the importance of the Roman see..., one cannot say that it created it».

When that heretical expression was repeated in the Italian Parliament, Pius XI, in a letter to Card. Gasparri (30 May 1920), authoritatively recalled that «the mandate to the universal nations is anterior to the calling of St. Paul; anterior to this is the mandate of St. Peter to the gentiles; universality is already found by right and in fact at the very beginnings of the Church and of apostolic preaching; this, through the work of the Apostles and apostolic men, soon became wider than the Roman Empire, which, as is well known, was by no means the whole known world; if one wished only to recall the providential utility prepared for the diffusion and organization of the Church in the organization of the Roman Empire, it would have been enough to recall Dante and Leo the Great, two great Italians, who in few and magnificent words stated and carved the substance of what countless others later restated with more or less abundant erudition, often strewn with inaccuracies and errors, especially due to sudden Protestant and Modernist reflexes».

The title of Roman given to the Church in so many pontifical documents from St. Gelasius I (495) down to the encyclical of Pius XII on the Mystical Body does not give a nationalist color to the Church, does not mark a limit but indicates a center, which is the principle of a solid and harmonious organism. Only a myopic and passionate glance can twist the meaning of this Romanity to express a narrow nationalist and partisan spirit, whereas in the best traditional and serious usage, when one says Roman Church one means Catholic Church.

In a positive sense, one must affirm that the marks of unity, holiness, catholicity, apostolicity belong only to the Roman Church, and that consequently the Romanity of the Church is the concrete and historical realization of the unmistakable features of the Church of Christ. It is easy to observe how the constitution of Catholicism is unitary and compact in a perfect manner. Unity of doctrine without deviations, unity of sanctifying ministry without arbitrary individualisms, unity of government and of universal jurisdiction are imprints so distinct in the Church of Rome that it is often accused of compression and authoritarianism. Instead, there is dogmatic progress and holy freedom of the children of God only in the Catholic Church; and dead water, mortal staticity in the heretical and schismatic churches which, withdrawing from religious power, fell under political power. By opposing the apostolic mission they lost contact with Jesus Christ.

The holiness of the Roman Church is made evident not only in all its doctrinal and practical content, but in the efficacy of intimate and divine transformations that flourish in the heroic virtue of its saints and its missionaries, in the charism of miracles, which often accompany the heroic degrees of love and find their scientific recognition in the processes of canonization.

However intimate holiness may be and not always nor easily recognizable, the Christian sense of the Church nonetheless recognizes the saints to the point of anticipating their proclamation, and Providence takes it upon itself to break the silence of men and of tombs in order to surround with glory the brow of so many who lived in the world unknown and often despised.

Universality in space and in time is recognizable in the Roman Church with the most evident proofs. Although it is not a physical catholicity in the sense that the Church occupies every point of the earth, nevertheless it shines throughout the whole world in such a way that it is easy to know it and come into contact with it. None of human powers has been able to confine it within the sphere of national interests or bend it to partisan ends.

Acclimatizing itself with every people, it has not made itself the slave of any: its missions are the commentary on the command of the divine Master: «go and preach to all nations». Even numerically it counts followers in a proportion vaster than all the churches that call themselves Christian. Expansion does not compromise unity; the latter facilitates expansion. In Rome the Congregation and the Athenaeum of Propaganda Fide are the most eloquent symbol of this universality not only by right, but also in fact. On the paths of explorers and conquerors the missionary preaches the faith and stirs up love, and by his merits he often makes one forget the wrongs of those who, by force, opened the way for him. The harshest modern ideologies bring out all the more the benefit of the catholicity of the Church.

Apostolicity is the most evident mark of the Roman

Church. It does not say only conformity to the ancient Church but continuity in the hierarchical succession of the Apostles down to our bishops, all united to the Pontiff, as he is united to Jesus Christ. This succession from St. Peter to today and the union of the other churches with the Roman one are enough to confound all those who walk along crooked paths. St. Irenaeus says it explicitly: «To this Church (the Roman) because of its higher primacy it is necessary that every other church agree, because in this one the apostolic tradition is preserved» (Adv. haer., III, 3).

The argument of the succession of the bishops of Rome, from St. Peter down to Pius XII, is the fulcrum of the uninterrupted apostolic tradition, the center of unity and of diffusion, the driving force of every renewal and progress. The marks, therefore, of the Church of Christ, recognized in the study of the sources, are found in practice in the one Roman Church, which, consequently, is the one true Church to which all must belong. The primary meaning of the Romanity of the Church is precisely this: the historical realization of the marks, and therefore the synthesis of the distinctive characters of the Mystical Body of Christ. In a theological sense, the Romanity of the Church is the correspondence and identity of the Catholic Church of today with the Church founded by Jesus Christ, made evident by the perennial realization of the four fundamental marks.

The Romanity of the Church means further the primacy of St. Peter and of the Roman Pontiffs in its perennial and universal historical framework.

If St. Peter had not died as bishop of Rome, after having exercised in that city his office of Prince of the Apostles, Rome would certainly have been an illustrious see, the center of a great diocese like Milan and Paris, but nothing more; and the Catholic Church could not be called Roman, just as today it cannot be called Parisian or Milanese. It is not the greatness of Rome as capital of the empire that gave St. Peter the primacy of jurisdiction over all the Churches, but it is this primacy of St. Peter which, transmitted to his successors in the Roman chair, brought it about that the bishop of Rome was the bishop of all the Churches, and that Rome became the center of the Christian world, by virtue of that infallible magisterium and that unfailing and sovereign ministry which Jesus Christ conferred upon St. Peter and his successors.

Rome, capital of the Christian world, did not Italianize the Church, but helped to place the bark of St. Peter at the center of the seas and continents, channeling toward the whole of Christendom the rivers of all nations. The authority of the Roman Chair ensures the unity of the Church, which we have seen broken every time that peoples or individuals withdrew from that magisterium; it has made its universality compact by discarding heretical and dissident fragmentations, and, by preventing it from evaporating into the indeterminate, it has made glorious the holiness of the Church, which is the coherence of human freedom with revealed truth, with the never-polluted sources of supernatural life; and finally it has guaranteed the apostolicity of the Church in that succession which runs from St. Peter to Pius XII and in the linking of every episcopal see with this Roman one. The perennial stability of the government of the Church is assured only by the continuity of the succession of the bishops of Rome.

That the consular roads benefited the mission of the Apostles and of the preachers of the Gospel, that Roman law was treasured in the formation of canon law, that classical literature and philosophy influenced the literature of the Fathers and Doctors, that the Latin language became the official language of the Church, and that the Roman Empire itself, after attempting to kill the Church in blood, was converted to the Gospel by a miracle of the highest moral order — all this is part of the history of the Church, it is a Latin and Roman coloring on the mantle of the Catholic Church; but it must not be confused with the Church, which is Roman not only because of what it found in Rome or may have assimilated from the culture and from the ordering of the Empire, but is Roman principally because of what it brought there and inserted there, namely the revelation of the mysteries of God, the sources of Grace, the promulgation of love, and that apostolic succession which unites us with certainty to Jesus Christ in faith and in the whole of life.

One understands how the first Christian apologists fixed upon the Roman See to make the defense of all the Churches, and how Tertullian exclaimed: "If you go to Italy, you have Rome, from which authority comes to us. Happy Church of Rome, to which the Apostles entrusted the whole doctrine sealed with their own blood!" Fra' Girolamo Savonarola in his book Trionfo della Croce echoed St. Leo the pope thus: "Since, therefore, the Roman bishops are successors of Peter, it is manifest that the Roman Church is the mother and mistress of all the others, and that all Christian faithful must unite in the Roman Pontiff as in their head. Therefore whoever departs from the unity of the Roman Church, without doubt departs from Christ. But all heretics depart from this doctrine, because they do not wish to abide by the determinations of the Roman Church, but obstinately to follow their own fantasies; hence they are not Christians, as they falsely claim to be."

It follows logically that adherence to the Roman Church is not an act of more or less obligatory conformism before men, but is obedience to Jesus Christ living in his one true saving Church. And the problem of the separated Churches is not solved by a more or less dreamed-of federalism, but by being inscribed once more in that trunk from which, on an ill-fated day, they separated.

It is useful here to recall the cardinal titles of the Roman churches. By this means all the cardinals, even those from distant regions, come officially and juridically to constitute the Roman clergy. According to a method in force in the primitive Church, this clergy, in a period of vacant see, assembles to elect its bishop, the bishop of Rome. The newly elected, precisely because he is bishop of Rome, is immediately the successor of St. Peter in the primacy of jurisdiction and the Vicar of Jesus Christ. He may be swept away by the strangest events: one day a slave at Avignon, another day a prisoner of a despot like Napoleon; but he is always bishop of Rome and, precisely as such, immediately and necessarily bishop of the universal Church.

St. Thomas expresses this fact by saying that Jesus Christ "ut suam potestatem magis ostenderet, in ipsa Roma, quae caput mundi erat, etiam caput Ecclesiae suae statuit, in signum perfectae victoriae, ut exinde fides derivaretur ad universum mundum" (Sum. Theol., 3ᵃ, q. 35, a. 7, ad 3; De regimine principum, I, 14).

St. Catherine wrote to Gregory XI urging him to return to his obligatory see (Lett., 106), and of Rome she said: "Here is the head and the beginning of our faith" (Lett., 362); "Consider that this land is the garden of Christ blessed and the beginning of our faith" (Lett., 347).

The bold phraseology of the woman of Siena finds its justification in the theological reasoning of Melchior Cano (De locis theologiae, VI, 7), which may be summarized thus: "Either the Roman Pontiff is the one whom Jesus Christ left to continue the mission of Peter, or the promise of the Gospel has failed. But do we not see the promise of the Lord fulfilled every day in the Church of Rome? All have assailed this citadel of truth, all weapons have been aimed against her, but the Pontiff was not conquered, and his authority could not be transferred to others. Whoever departs from Rome becomes a dissident in the eyes of the whole Church. If the Roman Pontiff were to fail in his dogmatic teaching, in the government of the souls that the Supreme Pastor has entrusted to him, how could we recognize Christian truth, where seek the secret of the Kingdom of God, the factual proof that the Revealer has not deceived us? To this Romanity is linked the apostolate, so true is it that the separated Churches are no longer called apostolic; to this Romanity the characters of the true Church of Jesus Christ are invincibly attached in history."

In practice, whoever comes to Rome to visit the Palatine, the Forum, the Capitoline, is a traveler investigating the memorials of men; but whoever enters Rome to see Peter and to assure himself of the doctrine that comes from Christ is the Abercius of all times, the pilgrim who seeks to orient himself not only in the ways of the world, but especially in the ways of God.

The Church militant has here the center of its combats: «Roma, catholicae unitatis centrum» (Leo XIII, Letter to Card. De Lucis); «As the seat of Peter is the center of the Church, so the center of Christianity is the city where that seat was established» (V. Fornari, Vita di Gesù Cristo, III, Turin 1930, p. 143). Whoever draws near to Christian Rome, watered by the blood of the martyrs, just as Abercius saw it «beautiful with a golden robe and golden sandals», feels in his soul something like a jubilation of moral resurrection and becomes like a noble freedman of revealed truth, experiences as his own the honor of the Church, that of always suffering for the very cause that put his Master to death» (Lacordaire).

IX. DUTIES TOWARD THE CHURCH

1. Every intelligent person finds himself before the Church in an attitude very similar to that which he adopts before Jesus Christ. If the Church has no divine rights to assert, that is, if she is not invested by God with superhuman powers over humanity, then humanity has no religious duties to fulfill, and the whole apology of the Church and the whole criticism of primitive Christianity are erudite and insignificant skirmishes.

If the Church has the mission of continuing and applying to the nations the Redemption wrought by Jesus Christ, she cannot lack the characteristics and the proofs by which to make herself recognized and to legitimize her work. At the same time every enlightened and honest intelligence must be able to give an account of those proofs and to understand the duty and the honor of recognizing and embracing them.

The Church is a living magisterium, an operating ministry, a supernatural social organism; to understand it there is need of intelligence, uprightness and Grace. And the harmony of these three gifts of God is not easy, when one considers that we can do nothing to merit faith, while we can do much to forfeit it. But it is at least the duty of all to give an account of what the Church is in her intimate structure, not to judge her without having known her, and not to believe that they have known her by a superficial glance at the defects of men. Even the history of heresies and schisms can be precious for recognizing the truth, but the foolish man boasts more of his errors than of the humble and beneficent recognition of the true.

2. From the solution of the preceding question is born either the duty of obeying the Church or of repudiating her.

To have the right to repudiate the Church one must demonstrate that she is false, that she is a construction of men and not a divine work, that the heroic virtues of the saints are natural, that the miracles are not authentic, that this history of twenty Christian centuries has no value.

Until an intelligent person has made this demonstration, no hostility or indifference can be legitimate and reasonable. But no one has been able to make it up to today, however much strong intellect and aggressive will have not been lacking; no one will be able to make it "because of the contradiction which does not allow it."

Once the truth of the Church and her divine mission in the world are recognized, on the other hand, everyone has the duty to obey Jesus Christ and to carry out his commandments. No society justifies its titles so luminously, none has such great sanctions: it is a question of salvation or of perdition: "Whoever listens to you listens to me; and whoever despises you despises me. And whoever despises me despises the one who sent me" (Lk. 10:16).

Nor is the duty restricted to the external discipline of one who would wish to save the juridical aspect without the interiority of the soul: here duty, love and freedom are fused; what is done for love is accomplished with freedom, what is done without love has no value before God.

Pharisaic legalism and mystical arbitrariness are radically denied; self-enclosed individualism as well as pantheistic corporatism are anti-Christian.

3. The Church does not interpose herself between God and us, as something we must overcome in order to draw near to the divinity, but she puts us in contact with God, inserting us spiritually into the Savior as the branches into the vine. From this union is born the sanctification of souls throughout the whole redeemed world; and to assure ourselves of the realism of this insertion we appeal to the apostolicity of the Church as a guarantee against pseudo-mystical individualisms. Having arrived at this point, our life in the Church is an adherence of faith on the basis of the authority of the Revealer, it is a practice of love in the fulfillment of the New Law of freedom, it is a royal and divine conduct according to the formulation of the first Pope: "You are a chosen race, a holy people, a royal priesthood, a people won for proclaiming the virtue of Him who has called you out of darkness into his shining light" (1 Pt. 2:9).

Mariano Cordovani

II. THE CHURCH IN THE PATRISTIC TEXTS AND IN PALEOCRISTIAN MONUMENTS.

The apostle Paul greets the Church as ἁγία and ἄμωμος, espoused to Christ as a chaste virgin (Eph. 5:27). Christ is the spouse of the Church, writes Irenaeus (Fragm. 30 in H. Jordan, Armenische Irrenäusfragmente, Leipzig 1913). The Church is the virgin mother, we read in the letter of 177 of the faithful of Lyons (Eusebius, Hist. eccl., V, 1, 45; V, 2, 6). Clement of Alexandria affirms that the Church is virgin and mother, without stain as a virgin, loved as a mother who has her children around her and nourishes them with holy milk (Paed., I, 5-6). "Sponsa Christi" Tertullian often calls her (De exhort. cast., 5, 1; Adv. Marcionem, V, 18; De monogam., 6, 1; De fuga, 14; De pudic., 1, 8); Christ Jesus is the "vir ecclesiae" (De cor., 14); the Church is the "mulier Christi" (Adv. Marc., V, 12). Hippolytus too will repeat it (In Gen., fr. 7; In Daniel., 14; De Antichristo, 16). So too St. Cyprian (Ep., 74; De habitu virgin., 3; De Eccl. unitate, 6).

The expression of the second letter of St. John "electae dominae et natis eius" (II Io. 1) was thus taken up by Tertullian: "domina mater Ecclesia de uberibus suis" (Ad martyres, 1).

Cf. F. J. Dölger, Domina Mater Ecclesia und die «Herrin» im zweiten Johannesbrief, in Antike und Christentum, 5 (1936), pp. 211-17.

This concept of the Church as mother is the one most often encountered in Christian literature. Thus Irenaeus (Adv. haer., III, 38, 1), Clement of Alexandria (Paed., I, 5; 3, 15; Stromata, IV, 21, 130), Origen (In Gen. hom., 10, 1), Tertullian (De praescr. haeret., 42, 10; De carne Christi, 7; De monog., 7; De pudicit., 5, 14; Ad martyr., 1; De orat., 2; De Baptismo, 20; De anima, 43). Cyprian (Ep., 10, 1; 15, 2; 16, 3; 41, 2; 44, 3; 45, 1, 3; 46, 1, 2; 47; 48, 3; 52, 2; 59, 13; 73, 19, 24; 74, 6; 75, 14). He repeats that "habere non potest Deum patrem qui ecclesiam non habet matrem" (De eccl. unit., 6; Ep., 74, 7). Later Ambrose (De obitu Valent., 75), St. Augustine (De cath. rudib.; De Symb. ad cat., 2, 13; In ep. ad Parth., 3, 1), St. Jerome (Ad Eustoch., Ep. 22, 13), Ennodius will come (Ep., I, 9) to confirm the same concept.

Origen writes that "nos sumus ecclesia Dei" (In Is. hom., 2, 1) "de gentibus congregati" (In Cant. Cant. hom., 2, 3; 45, 22). Tertullian will call the Church "corpus Christi" (De monog., 13), Cyprian declares that the "Ecclesia in episcopo et clero in omnibus stantibus est constituta" (Ep., 33).

The famous epitaph of Abercius (v.) repeats the Pauline concept (II Cor. 11:2) and designates the Church as a chaste virgin, «Παρθένος ἁγνή»; «she is accustomed to set out as food the greatest pure fish from the spring and offers it to her friends to eat every day, having an excellent wine which she mixed with water together with the bread».

To designate the whole of the ancient Christian community, the well-known inscription of Caesarea in Mauretania (Cherchel) says: «ecclesia fratrum» (CIL, VIII, 9585, 20958). St. Augustine also explains the name Church in the material sense of a building frequented by the assembly of the faithful: «ecclesia dicitur locus quo Ecclesia congregatur. Nam Ecclesia homines sunt de quibus dicitur ut exhiberet sibi gloriosam Ecclesiam» (Eph. 5:27). «Hoc tamen vocari etiam ipsam domum orationum idem apostolus testis est» (I Cor. 11:22; Quaest. in Heptateuchum, III, 57; PL 34, 703).

The same doctor then shows that in his time ecclesia was a synonym for basilica: «sicut ergo appellamus ecclesiam basilicam, qua continetur populus qui vere appellatur ecclesia, ut nomine ecclesiae, id est populi qui continetur, significemus locum, qui continet» (PL 33, 863).

In the general meaning in ancient Christian epigraphy, the most common attributes for the Church are those of sancta, sacrosancta (E. Diehl, Inscriptiones latinae christianae veteres, III, Berlin 1930, p. 346); one also finds florens (ibid., no. 1024), veneranda (ibid., no. 1051); more often catholica or catolica in opposition to the heretical ones (CIL, III, 8259; VIII, 5176, 9710, 2371, 20905; X, 7972). It is then sometimes called mater in the same sense indicated by ancient Christian literature. Damasus uses the verse «tempore quo gladius secuit pia viscera matris» precisely to indicate the bloody period of persecution in his poems in honor of Sixtus II, of Tiburtius, of Hippolytus, of the 62 martyrs of the Via Salaria Nova, and of St. Saturninus (A. Ferrua, Epigrammata Damasiana, Vatican City 1942, nos. 17, 31, 35, 43, 46). An inscription in the Christian Museum of the Lateran of a «Magus puer innocens» reproduces some passages of St. Cyprian and among these the following: «Quam te laetum excipit mater ecclesia de hoc mundo revertentem», taken from the treatise De lapsis, 14 (O. Marucchi, I monumenti cristiani del Museo Pio Lateranense, Milan 1911, pl. LII, no. 31; L. Bayard, Note sur une inscription chrétienne et sur des passages de st Cyprien, in Comptes rendus de l'Acad. des inscr. et belles lettres, 1913, pp. 63-64).

On the architrave of the basilica of St. Lawrence in Damaso one read the verse: «cunctis porta patet quia porrigit ubera mater» (G. B. De Rossi, Inscriptiones christianae, II, Rome 1888, p. 332, 5); but more solemnly it is declared in the poem of Sixtus III in the Lateran baptistery: «virgineo fetu genetrix ecclesia natos quos spirante Deo concipit, amne parit» (F. J. Dölger, Die Inschrift im Baptisterium S. Giovanni in Fonte, in Antike und Christentum, 2 [1930], pp. 252-57).

The inscription «Ecclesia mater Valentia in pace» is read in a tomb mosaic discovered in a chapel of Thabraca; it represents a Christian basilica in all its details (P. Gauckler, Mosaïques tombales d'une chapelle de martyrs à Thabraca, in Fondation E. Piot. Monuments et mémoires, 13 [1906], p. 177).

The Church has sometimes also been recognized as symbolized by the orant. Thus some recognize it in the female figure below the scene of the Ascension in one of the panels of the wooden door of St. Sabina in Rome, while others recognize the Madonna in that figure. But every doubt is removed in two depictions of the Ecclesia Mater in two Exultet rolls, placed to illustrate the words sung by the deacon: «Laetetur et mater ecclesia... et magnis populorum vocibus haec aula resultet».

In the central nave of the hall the mater ecclesia is represented, as the inscription says, above the head of the young woman dressed like a queen; from the right aisle the populus approaches acclaiming, from the other, supporting the sacred books, the clerus advances. This scene of the end of the 11th century, already pointed out by G. B. De Rossi (Roma sotterranea, I, Rome 1864, p. 348), was illustrated by J. Wilpert, Die Darstellung der Mater Ecclesia in der barberinischen Exultetrolle, in Röm. Quart., 13 [1899], pp. 23-24 and pls. I-II. See its reproduction at cols. 1517-1518). The same representation is repeated in another Exultet, formerly of the monastery of Montecassino, now in the British Museum.

In ancient Christian literature, from the time of Hippolytus (De antichristo, 59), the symbolism of the ship of Peter representing the Church was widespread. Thus St. Ambrose (In Lucam, IV, 68; PL 15, 1633), St. Augustine (De util. cred., 9, 11; PL 40, 714), the still uncertain author of the Opus imperfectum in Matth., 23 (PG 56, 755), Maximus of Turin (Serm., 94; PL 57, 722, 755).

A fragment of a Christian sarcophagus of the 4th century found at Spoleto, today in the Christian Museum of the Lateran, offers the representation of the Church under the figure of a ship: the pilot on the right in tunic and pallium, seated on a chair, makes the gesture of command with his right hand; his name is inscribed beside him: Iesus. The artist represented the scene narrated by St. Luke (5:3): the Lord, sitting in the boat, taught the crowds and then ordered Peter to move away from the shore: «duc in altum et laxate retia vestra». But the artist has ingeniously placed the evangelists at the oars as sailors with their names «Marcus, Lucas, (Joh)annes». In the lost part there must have been the fourth sailor: «Mattheus» and then the owner of the ship «Petrus», who to the Lord's command had answered: «... in verbo autem tuo laxabo rete», and his attitude must have been that of drawing from the water the net full of fish, as in homogeneous fragments from Cagliari and St. Sebastian.

For the first time in Christian art the two Churches ex circumcisione and ex gentibus are found personified in the apse mosaic of St. Pudentiana of the end of the 4th century; two women are about to crown respectively the apostles Peter and Paul (Wilpert, Musaici, pls. 42-44); the two female figures are found again, shortly afterwards, on the inner entrance wall in St. Sabina; each accompanied by the identifying inscription: on the left «ecclesia ex circumcisione», on the right «ecclesia ex gentibus». A drawing by G. G. Ciampini (Vetera Monumenta, I, Rome 1690, pl. 48) shows that in his time above the «ecclesia ex circumcisione» stood St. Peter and above the «ecclesia ex gentibus» St. Paul.

In the scene of the Adoration of the Magi in the triumphal arch of St. Mary Major, the second female figure seated on the right on a throne, with a figured scroll in her left hand, has received various interpretations; among these it should be remembered that G. B. De Rossi considered it the «ecclesia ex circumcisione»; L. De Bruyne instead the «ecclesia ex gentibus», placing it in correlation with the Magi.

At the foot of the triumphal arch of St. Mary Major the two cities of Jerusalem and Bethlehem, indicated by their names Bethleum and Hierusalem, personify the two churches of the Jews and of the Gentiles. The same representations of the two cities will later be found in the facade of the apse of St. Sabina, in the apse of Sts. Cosmas and Damian in Rome, at St. Vitalis and St. Apollinaris Nuovo in Ravenna.

In the center of the triumphal arch in St. Mary Major, at the sides of the throne with the «insignia Christi», stand the apostles Peter and Paul each supporting a book. De Bruyne has emphasized how both in St. Sabina and in St. Mary Major the books held respectively by the «ecclesia ex circumcisione» and by St. Peter are in characters proper to Hebrew, while those held by the «ecclesia ex gentibus» and by St. Paul are in current cursive script, allusive to the Western one (Nuove ricerche iconografiche sui mosaici dell'arco trionfale di S. Maria Maggiore, in Riv. di archeologia crist., 13 [1936], pp. 254, 260-63).

Both in the Gospels and in the Apocalypse the lambs are the faithful; therefore in the allegory of the lambs issuing from the two cities, Jerusalem and Bethlehem, so often represented in the Roman mosaics, the concept of the universality of the faithful coming both from the « ecclesia ex circumcisione » and from that « ex gentibus » is implicit.

Later, with the apse of Sts. Cosmas and Damian (Willpert, Musaici, pl. 102), the representation of the Church triumphant will begin. In the Middle Ages the Church is for the most part represented in the portals of churches in contraposition to the Synagogue, which is depicted with bandaged eyes. - See Tavy. XC-XCI.

BIBL. H. Leclercq, Eglisc, in DACE, IV, coll. 2220-38; K. Künste, Ikonographie der christl. Kunst, II, Freiburg im Br. 1926, pp. 163-64; J. C. Plumpe, Mater Ecclesia. An Inquiry into the Concept of the Church as Mother in Early Christianity, Washington 1942.

Enrico Josi

III. THE HISTORY OF THE CHURCH

I. IN THE APOSTOLIC AGE

On the fiftieth day after the resurrection of the Savior, having received the promised Holy Spirit, the twelve Apostles, with Peter at their head, began the ministry to which Christ had called them: "You shall be my witnesses to the ends of the earth" (c. A.D. 30). Witnesses, that is, of his doctrine and of his works, of what they had seen and heard from him, and therefore executors of his commands: to forgive sins, to renew the august mystery of the last supper, to preach the good news to all. Therefore the day had to begin with an act of proselytism, and three thousand persons on that very day formed the first nucleus which, together with the Apostles, constituted the C.

It began in Jerusalem and with the Jews, at the foot, one might say, of Golgotha. It began with baptizing and with gathering in houses to celebrate the new Sacrifice, the one that repeated the Sacrifice of the Cross. Yet at first the Temple was not abandoned: the Temple in which the true God had been worshiped. The Apostles went there to pray, to make Christ, the Son of God, known, training themselves ever more in controversy against the Jews, and thus becoming the object of the first contradictions, which soon turned into persecutions.

The apostolic work unfolded among Palestinian Jews, whether Sadducees or Pharisees, among Jews who had traveled through all the civilized regions and particularly among those who had been in direct contact with the Greek world (Hellenists), but who were often also more fanatical in their original nationalism than the former; they also listened to the few proselytes who had, so to speak, naturalized themselves as Jews, and also to the many sympathizers who, while remaining Gentiles, did not feel estranged from the seduction of Mosaic and prophetic teaching. However, the Gentiles were not for some years the immediate object of missionary care: the first to receive the new word were to be the Jews; and in this environment, and particularly from among those who had seen and heard Christ, the first co-workers of the Apostles were formed, the first missionaries; the zeal of one of them, Philip, carried the preaching also into Samaria; others pushed on gradually toward Damascus and Antioch, preaching however only to Jews. But it was also necessary, in obedience to Christ, to win the Gentiles as well. It was Peter who first, moved by a special divine command, admitted to Baptism in Caesarea of Palestine a first group of Gentiles, overcoming the prejudices of his countrymen, without for this reason obliging them to submit to the observance of the Mosaic law. But even the unknown missionaries of Syria were beginning to do the same. It was for this reason that the Apostles sent to Antioch a trusted man of theirs, Barnabas, who went to Tarsus to fetch Saul, a Pharisee miraculously converted while he was on his way to stir up at Damascus a persecution against the faithful. With him he organized the new community of converted Jews and Gentiles, and there they were called Christians.

Saul, soon called Paul, without abandoning the conversion of the Jews, took as his specific task that of evangelizing the Gentiles, undertaking a series of journeys which, through Asia Minor and Achaia (Corinth), led him as far as Rome.

However, among the converted Jews in Palestine and outside it, a current had formed that demanded adherence to the Jewish law for all new believers. It was necessary that Peter and the Apostles together with Paul and the envoys of Antioch, gathered in Jerusalem, should solemnly sanction the right to Christian liberty (A.D. 52); yet a part of these converted Jews remained irreducibly attached to their intolerance, thus forming the party of the Judaizers, which under the name of Nazarenes and Ebionites continued in its opposition to the new C., until, amid the schisms and wars that convulsed the Jewish nation, it obscurely died out. The better part, on the other hand, quickly merged with what some like to call the great C.

While James, called the Less, remained constantly in Jerusalem, where he was put to death by the fanatics shortly before the destruction of the city, the other Apostles dispersed among the peoples of the East; Peter, however, after a stay in Antioch and the surrounding regions, moved toward Rome, where he was put to death like Paul as a consequence of a legal provision issued by Nero in 64, by which the profession of the Christian faith was held illegitimate. Thus after the Jewish persecutions began those of the Empire. In vain, however; Christianity had already organized itself: the Apostles had established representatives in the cities where there were groups of believers, and these, with the name of bishops, remained their successors with the task of continuing the work. The communities had at their head a college of elders and servants (presbyters and deacons) who were subject to the envoy of the apostle; a common center of mutual relations: Rome, where the successor of Peter exercised from the very beginning a supremacy that encountered no opposition except from those who broke away from ecclesiastical unity.

However, the major urban centers from which missionary propaganda sprang most vigorously, Antioch, Thessalonica, Ephesus, Corinth, and soon also Edessa and Alexandria, and where Christian penetration was also broader and more robust, likewise exercised a supervision over the provinces around them, thus creating the first steps toward provincial or metropolitan organization.

There is also found in this age a traveling personnel that brought its contribution alongside the hierarchy of the individual places with its exhortations, its testimonies, its knowledge, its virtue, and formed a channel of concord and communication between the different places through which these people passed.

The diversity of language and custom did not fail, however, to influence the life of the Christian communities. The communities that arose in the principal centers around the Mediterranean can first of all be distinguished into two circumscriptions: the Hellenistic East, the Latin West, including in the latter the whole valley of the Danube. In the two circumscriptions two languages are spoken: Greek and Latin. Hellenistic civilization influenced, without absorbing them, the neighboring peoples of inner Syria, Arabia and Armenia (Antioch) and of Nubia and Ethiopia (Alexandria); Latin civilization, much more laboriously, reached out toward the semibarbarous regions of the north and toward Africa (Carthage), holding its own against the tribes of the desert and the mountains. Hence the two principal Christian literatures in the Greek language and in the Latin language.

II. THE FIRST HETERODOX SECTS

In the first centuries the new C[hurch] sustained two struggles: the first against what St. Paul already calls ψευδοξόνυμος γνώσις "false knowledge," and which preoccupies St. John the Evangelist because of the dangers it presents with its alluring propaganda. These are conceptions of Eastern theologies that appropriate Christian concepts to varying degrees; they are philosophical speculations of the Alexandrian school which, through a contaminated Platonism, fasten upon revealed and moral doctrines in order to adapt them to their own systems. Syncretisms acute and extravagant in our eyes, but which claimed to explain creation, suffering, sin.

Such heterodox conceptions will assume the common name of Gnosticism, over which then in the 3rd century Neoplatonism will gain the upper hand, with attempts at mysticism in open contrast with the supernatural conception of Christianity. To this movement, proper to an aristocracy of intelligence, is also added that of an exaggerated spiritualism on an encratite basis which issues in the systems of Montanism, Marcionism and Manichaeism. It is a full-scale assault. To these struggles engaged from without are added those that arise within: with heretical and schismatic little churches, such as that of Novatian in Rome in the middle of the 3rd century against Pope Cornelius, which acquired followers not only in the West, but also in the East.

III. THE STRUGGLE WITH THE EMPIRE

The second struggle, from the very first decades of the C[hurch], was with the Empire. It took on different aspects over the first three centuries. Nero's enactment, which relegated Christianity among the illicit religions, continued to be in force throughout the 2nd century. The concern of the better emperors was to prevent any popular uprising provoked by fanatics or by interested parties, to keep the persecution within legal forms, and at the same time to avoid massacres by granting impunity to apostates. Access to public offices and to the higher ranks of the military remained closed to Christians, with the constant danger of an accusation before the tribunals; while it depended on the zeal of the magistrates to second the public spirit, always unfavorable to Christians and easily inflamed against them, because of the calumnies that circulated. It was especially Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher emperor, who aggravated the application of the laws. At the beginning of the 3rd century Septimius Severus particularly targeted the catechumens and the neophytes with the aim of discouraging new affiliations to the C[hurch]. Maximinus Thrax, out of hatred for Alexander Severus, who had shown a kind of tolerance, directed his severity above all at the bishops and the clergy with the intent of disorganizing the communities. Decius took an apparently indirect route: he imposed on all citizens participation in the sacrifices that were to be made to propitiate the divinities amid the disasters that endangered the Empire; refusing to do so was considered a capital crime. The persecution thus became general and total. But, despite many defections, especially among the rich and powerful Christians, the C[hurch] was not shaken by it and immediately rebuilt itself. Valerian renewed the edicts against the clergy and forbade assemblies as well, under penalty of death. Finally, after a period of legal tolerance, Diocletian and his colleague Maximian issued, beginning in 303, a group of edicts that ranged from the confiscation of the c[hurches] and the sacred books to the punishment of all those who refused to abandon Christianity. The persecution was subject to various vicissitudes and, especially in the East, had longer aftereffects. Imperial legislation on the matter came to an end with an edict of tolerance in 311 by Galerius, confirmed in 313 by Constantine and Licinius in a very benevolent sense. After this the Empire not only ceased to persecute, but, except for a brief period of malevolence under Julian the Apostate, inaugurated a period of protection which, with the progressive disfavor toward paganism, led Christianity to become the religion of the State. Paganism, having lost all importance, was reduced to being the religion of those who did not know how to detach themselves from the traditional life.

IV. PEACEFUL RELATIONS WITH THE EMPIRE

Certainly the change in relations with the empire contributed enormously to accelerating the pace of conversions to Christianity. The spiteful isolation of the upper classes and the turbid and immoral attachment to vice and superstition among the others continued to maintain, as before, in the civilized world a spirit of reaction against Christianity; but the truth now struggled with greater force than before against indifference and prejudices. Even cults that in the preceding age had enjoyed favor and diffusion, such as that of Isis in the Hellenistic world and that of Mithras in the East, and then in a large part of the provinces of the Empire, and others of lesser importance, soon lost popular favor. Christianity, on the other hand, not only deepened its conquests where it had barely begun them, but extended them into new countries, establishing ever more numerous communities, especially on the extreme fringes of the West, where it had remained backward in comparison with the East. It is no wonder, therefore, if among these new adherents, not sifted by rigorous selection, there came to be found in excessive number individuals endowed more with vices than with virtues, imperfectly stripped of a sensual paganism and of philosophical and juridical preoccupations that ill combined with the purity of the Gospel.

Thus the struggle is now fought against the enemy ensconced within; while political upheavals, civil wars and, particularly in the West, barbarian invasions make the education of Christian generations more difficult.

V. THE GREAT THEOLOGICAL CONTROVERSIES

Already in the 3rd century, once the theological fancies had been overcome that had given Christ either a purely apparent body or a momentary sojourn in a real body, the problem had presented itself of how Jesus could properly be called Son of God, once it could not be denied that he was human. This problem was necessarily complicated by the other, of how the divine Trinity was to be conceived, whether as a threefold subsistence or simply as a manner of speaking. Against the modalists, who went so far as to deny a real distinction among the divine persons, it had seemed a good polemical measure to make use of terms known to the ancient Platonic-Philonic philosophy, in themselves imperfect and therefore dangerous, above all attributing to the divine Word, in the manner of the Gnostics, attributes far removed from the Johannine conception; that is, placing it, as a demiurge, as intermediary between the unbegotten Father and creation. Despite every good intention to the contrary, the Son-Word came to appear plainly inferior to the Father and his creature. At the beginning of the 4th century Arius, a priest of Alexandria, having adopted such a way of conceiving things, became its propagator, but his bishop Alexander drove him out of the Church, without however being able to prevent numerous bishops of the Hellenistic East from immediately setting themselves up as his supporters, throwing the intellectual milieu into an uproar. Constantine, who at this moment had become master also of the East, intervened to restore peace and allowed himself to be induced to convene a great ecclesiastical assembly of bishops for this purpose. And so, with the consent of Pope Sylvester, the bishops gathered at Nicaea in Bithynia around his legates and, with the Emperor present, there was held the first Council called ecumenical, because all the Christian regions were represented there (325). From it issued a formula that completed the Apostles' Creed, in which it was said that the Word was homoousios (consubstantial) with the Father, not inferior to him.

The Arians, however, did not submit, and, having succeeded in gaining the favor first of the emperor Constantius, then of Valens, they kept the East agitated with councils, formulas, and persecutions against the Catholic champions, especially against St. Athanasius of Alexandria, succeeding in having even Pope Liberius condemned to exile, and attempting to draw the West along with them too, by installing the Arian bishop Auxentius at Milan. Such a dissension, which endangered the compactness of Christendom for the first time, came to an end thanks to the intervention of the emperor Theodosius. A Council held at Constantinople in 381, which was afterwards regarded in Catholic tradition as ecumenical, condemned the heterodox formulas, returning to that of Nicaea, and proclaimed that the Holy Spirit, a creature of the Son according to the Arian concept, was consubstantial with the Father and the Son; thus the Trinitarian doctrine that had been admirably set forth by St. Gregory Nazianzen and St. Basil obtained the definitive victory.

Another theological problem soon presented itself for solution in the East. Arius had not explicitly treated of the union of the divine person of the Word with the humanity of Christ. Apollinaris, bishop of Laodicea in Syria, struggling against the Arians, came out with the proposition that the Word took the place of the human soul in the person of Christ; in this way Christ would no longer have been consubstantial with our human nature. Such a doctrine, skillfully presented, found credit in Alexandria, but was immediately opposed in Syria, where instead the teachings of Diodore, bishop of Tarsus, began to prevail, teachings that led to wholly opposite conclusions, according to which in the humanity of Christ the Word would have dwelt as in a temple, would have operated as in an inspired prophet; consequently the Virgin Mary could not be proclaimed Deipara (Theotokos) but only Christotokos. This consequence, publicly proposed by Nestorius, bishop of Constantinople, met with the resolute opposition of Cyril, bishop of Alexandria, who, in full agreement with Pope Celestine, condemned it (428) and then in an ecumenical Council that gathered at Ephesus in 431 had the doctrine and the person of Nestorius condemned, setting forth the true Catholic doctrine of the single divine person in Christ. Nestorius, defeated for the moment, later found defenders who succeeded in establishing an independent Church in Mesopotamia still existing in our own days.

After the death of St. Cyril (444) a tendency developed among his disciples that was to lead to the worst consequences. Indeed Eutyches, a Constantinopolitan monk, favored at the court of Theodosius II, undertook to defend the principle that in the divine person of Christ one had to recognize a single operating nature (μία φύσις, whence the name of Monophysites to designate the adherents of this doctrine); and since the divine nature of the Word could not be subject to change, the integrity of the human nature had to be sacrificed in the divine union: to what extent, Eutyches did not say, but he saw no other way to explain the divinity of Christ. He immediately met with the opposition of Flavian, bishop of Constantinople, in agreement on this with Pope Leo I, but he had on his side Dioscorus, Cyril's successor in the see of Alexandria. Eutyches and Dioscorus, supported by the court, held a council at Ephesus, which because of the violence and injustices committed was called a "robber council": Flavian and Pope Leo were condemned and the doctrine of Eutyches approved (449). When Theodosius II died, however, and Marcian succeeded him, a truly ecumenical Council gathered at Chalcedon (451), presided over by the legates of Pope Leo, in which his doctrine was fully approved and Dioscorus and Eutyches condemned. This time too the whole West was in agreement with Leo; in the East, on the other hand, the fanaticism of those who proclaimed themselves followers of St. Cyril rebelled. There followed indeed long years of discord, and through the work of heretical monks fierce and bloody struggles raged especially in Egypt and Syria, during which, in the face of the unchanging constancy of the Apostolic See in upholding the truth, there stood the continual shifts of imperial policy to impose a religious peace founded on equivocation. The consequence was that when in 519 the Byzantine East accepted a dogmatic formula proposed by Pope Hormisdas, Monophysite Churches had by then become firmly established in Egypt and Syria; Armenia too was gradually dragged into the heresy, and religious unity in the East could never again be reconstituted. It was a calamity also for the fabric of the Empire, and to remedy it the Empire resorted to the most desperate attempts, not excluding that of force, or to the most unfortunate compromises.

Indeed the emperor Justinian, in the hope of winning over the Monophysites, had the Three Chapters condemned in the fifth ecumenical Council (the second of Constantinople) (554), that is, persons and writings particularly odious to them, forcing Pope Vigilius to sanction this condemnation and thereby provoking a resolute opposition in the West that was the origin of long dissensions especially in Italy. Then, later, the emperor Heraclius with the same aim favored (around 640) the spread of the Monothelite doctrines championed by the patriarch Sergius, according to which one had to recognize in Christ a single theandric will and operation; and only in the sixth ecumenical Council (the third of Constantinople) in 681 did peace return with the definitive condemnation of Monothelitism, without however succeeding in extinguishing Monophysitism.

During this long period there were also discords in the West: the first was that of the Donatists, which remained limited to Africa and, having arisen as a consequence of the conflicts that had matured toward the end of the Diocletianic persecution, kept all the churches of the region in turmoil and, despite the zeal of St. Augustine, lasted until the Vandal invasion. In Spain there were the disputes provoked by the doctrines of Priscillian at the end of the 4th century. From the Breton monk Pelagius and his disciple Celestius spread the doctrines that denied the nature of original sin and the necessity of Grace for the spiritual life. These doctrines, which occupied the activity of St. Augustine in the last decades of his life, found followers not only in Africa but also among the clergy of southern Italy (Julian of Eclanum), in the metropolis of Aquileia and in Dalmatia, but left no trace after the middle of the 5th century. The troubles stirred up in Italy in the second half of the 6th century by the schism of the Three Chapters lasted until beyond the 7th century in the Milanese metropolis and until the end of that century in that of Aquileia.

VI. THE CHURCH AND THE BARBARIANS IN THE WEST. CHARLEMAGNE

The solid organization attained by the Church during the Constantinian period enabled it in the West to withstand victoriously the onslaught of the barbarian invasions that raged for centuries within the provinces of the Empire: the Vandals succeeded in establishing themselves in Africa, unleashing there a cruel persecution, the Visigoths in southern Gaul and then in Spain, the Burgundians in eastern Gaul, the Rugians in Noricum, the Ostrogoths in Italy, establishing there ephemeral kingdoms infected with Arian heresy. The Franks who descended into Gaul became Christians at the end of the 5th century and held stable dominion there. The Lombards, who descended into Italy in 568, were converted toward the end of the 7th century. A special task of the pontiffs, particularly of St. Gregory the Great, was to keep free from Lombard dominion in Italy that central territory which was under the influence of the two capitals: Rome and Ravenna; to defend it at a critical moment they appealed for the intervention of the Franks; thus Stephen III invoked the help of Pepin, Adrian I that of Charlemagne. Thus the Lombard kingdom fell, the Papal State was constituted, and Charlemagne at Christmas of the year 800 was crowned emperor with the office of protecting the Roman Church. Thus began that Holy Roman Empire around which the political and religious life of the West unfolded during the Middle Ages.

While the provinces of the empire that had fallen under the dominion of the barbarians were being reorganized into civilization, the work of Christian civilization also began among those peoples who had remained outside the direct influence of Roman civilization. The first to be won were the Scots, inhabitants of Ireland, through the work of St. Patrick in the 5th century, and the inhabitants of northern England. Through the initiative of St. Gregory the Great, at the end of the 6th century, provision was made for the conversion of the Anglo-Saxons settled in Britain. Through the work of St. Willibrord the Frisians came to Christianity. By mandate of Gregory II St. Boniface preached the faith in Hesse and Thuringia in the 8th century. In the following century St. Ansgar began the evangelization of Denmark and Sweden; from there the faith spread into Norway, into Ireland, and, toward the east, into Finland and Livonia. In all these places the Catholic hierarchy was established and monastic institutions were promoted.

Monasticism, which arose first in Egypt at the beginning of the 4th century as a profession of a chaste, poor and solitary life, had spread widely throughout the East under the two principal forms of eremitic and cenobitic life. The West too did not remain extraneous to this movement; but it was especially at the beginning of the 6th century that it, through the work of St. Benedict and with a cenobitic organization, began to profess a Rule which, joining together prayer and manual labor, under an austere discipline of obedience to the abbot, created, beginning with Montecassino, an ever vaster network of foundations in which Christian piety, love of knowledge, and charity toward one's neighbor contributed largely to the growth of the new Christian civilization. With admirable spirit of adaptation, in fact, the Benedictine Rule not only found a way to expand in countries already civilized, and in those of new conquest, but also to assume those tasks and adaptations that the progress of the times imposed.

VII. IN THE DANUBE VALLEY. ISLAM

It was in fact a matter of building up the Christian civilization of the new Europe, since missionary propaganda had necessarily to turn not only toward the north but also toward the East, aiming first of all at the Slavic populations that crowded beyond the Elbe and the Julian Alps from the Baltic to the Balkans. On the Elbe the contacts of the Slavs with the Germanic kingdom established under Louis the Pious were harsh, plagued by repeated invasions and insurrections, and only after struggles lasting for centuries did the Germans succeed in imposing their predominance and in establishing the Catholic hierarchy there. Through the work of the two sees of Salzburg and Aquileia, from the 8th century onward the Slavs of the Drava and the Sava were gradually converted. In Dalmatia and the western Illyricum, especially among the Croats, the missionaries of the coastal cities labored greatly from the 7th century onward. During the 9th century the two great apostles Cyril and Methodius, in full accord with the popes, evangelized the great Moravian kingdom that had arisen in Pannonia. During the 10th century the Christian kingdoms of Bohemia and Poland were constituted. From Moravia the disciples of St. Methodius carried the Gospel to the Bulgarians, who for two centuries had been pressing beyond the Balkans upon the Eastern empire. Byzantine missionaries from Constantinople and Thessalonica evangelized the Serbs, who, adopting the Byzantine rite, preserved the national language in the liturgy, as happened among the Bulgarians. The same happened among the Russians of Kiev, whose evangelization took place toward the end of the 10th century. The Hungarians, who like the Bulgarians were not Slavs, supplanting the Moravians in the center of Illyricum, constituted a kingdom that became Christian through the work of King St. Stephen and under the direct influence of the Pope at the end of the 10th century.

Meanwhile, however, a new terrible assault was unleashed from the East against the whole of Christian civilization, through the work of Muhammad, who, having conquered the national sanctuary of Mecca in Arabia, gave religious and political unity to the Arab tribes of the country, imposing upon them a monotheism of which he presented himself as the prophet. The caliphs (lieutenants) who succeeded him after 632, keeping alive the fanaticism kindled by Muhammad and proposing to extend their dominion with the new faith over the whole East, soon conquered Syria with Damascus (636), Jerusalem (637), and the Persian kingdom of Mesopotamia. In 641 they conquered Egypt and subsequently, within a few decades, the whole of North Africa; then from 711 they began the conquest of Spain, whence with their expeditions into Provence they placed Frankish dominion in serious danger. Toward 830 Sicily fell into their power, and, threatening not only the Ionian regions of Italy, they repeatedly attempted to establish themselves in central Italy, plundering Rome and the neighboring territories. Constantinople with the whole of Asia Minor found itself in even greater danger, where, however, with varying fortunes, the Byzantine emperors succeeded in resisting the invasion.

But the entire southern coast of the Mediterranean was lost to Christian civilization, while the dissident churches of Syria and Egypt went plunging into a rapid decline, and the assaults against the islands and the northwestern coasts contributed unfortunately and effectively to the disorder of Europe in the 10th century and to its progressive detachment from the East.

VIII. THE BYZANTINE SCHISM

The Church of Constantinople had succeeded, from the 4th century onward, in making its direct supremacy felt not only over Thrace and Asia Minor, but also over what remained of orthodox Christianity in Syria and Egypt (Melkite Christians) and over the eastern Illyricum (Thessalonica and Greece). The evangelization extended under its influence in Serbia, Bulgaria and Russia (Kiev) had enlarged its jurisdictional zone. Its importance was increased by the fact that it was founded in the capital of the Empire; and since the latter proclaimed itself ecumenical, it too claimed the qualification of ecumenicity: Church and Empire conceived of themselves as closely linked, thereby placing themselves in contrast with ancient Rome, which had fallen under the dominion of the barbarians. Constantinople went so far as to recognize in Rome only a primacy of honor and to demand that the whole of Christian life should conform to Eastern customs. A first strong clash on this matter occurred in 726, on account of the edicts of Leo III the Isaurian against the veneration of images (iconoclasm), which were not accepted in the West. The Second Council of Nicaea (ecumenical VII, in 787) resolved the controversy in accordance with the positions of Pope Adrian I against the edicts of Leo III renewed by his son Constantine V Copronymus; but the long conflict did not cease until 842, through the work of the patriarch Methodius, who resumed relations with Rome. A few years later the dissensions were renewed, when Pope Nicholas I refused to recognize as legitimate patriarch Photius, imposed by Michael III after the iniquitous deposition of the legitimate patriarch Ignatius (861). There thus arose a new schism, aggravated by the proclamations issued by Photius (866) against Western customs, against the insertion of the Filioque in the Creed and against the doctrine that the Holy Spirit proceeds as from a single principle from the Father and the Son. A political upheaval that brought Basil the Macedonian to the throne caused the fall of Photius, deposed at the ecumenical Council VIII (IV of Constantinople, in 867) and the rehabilitation of Ignatius; but, owing also to political turmoils, the mutual relations between Rome and Constantinople became ever more rare and distrustful, until in 1054 they burst into open revolt on account of the aggressive spirit of the patriarch Michael Cerularius, who, openly stirring up accusations by then long-standing, insisted particularly against the Western use of unleavened bread in the Eucharist. In this way there was constituted in the East that Church which proclaimed itself orthodox by its own authority in comparison with the Latin Church, accused outright of being heretical.

The Crusades promoted by the pontiffs beginning with Urban II in 1096 with the intent of liberating the sepulchre of Christ from the power of the Muslims and at the same time of protecting the Eastern empire, did not achieve their purpose; the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem created in 1099 and then the Latin empire of Constantinople that arose in 1204 did not last and embittered relations with the East ever more; one understands how a union with the Church of Constantinople celebrated at the Second Council of Lyon (1274) ended a few years later with a new resurgence of animosity and distrust against the Latins.

IX. THE CHURCH AND THE GERMANIC EMPIRE; THE NEW FORCES

After the fall of the Carolingians (887) and the discords that followed, the Western empire was established by Otto I of the Saxon house in 962 with a purely Germanic character. When the Saxon house died out, that of Franconia succeeded it in 1024 with Conrad II, and during his government the feudal system reached the height of its organization not only in Germany, Italy and Burgundy, but soon also in France and England and then also in the other nations as they rose to civilization. Bishoprics and abbeys acquired political powers over broad territories and had a direct part in public and social life, and the emperors arrogated to themselves the right to give them investiture not only lay but also ecclesiastical.

The very election of the Roman pontiffs was left at the mercy of the emperor, creating an immediate danger for the freedom of ecclesiastical life. This in turn, on account of the harshness of the times, had been growing corrupted through the spread among the clergy, together with ignorance and coarseness, of simony and corruption; this forced the pontiffs to engage with the Empire in a struggle that was called the struggle of investitures, because these were held to be the most dangerous abuse and the chief cause also of the other evils. The struggle had as its principal champion Pope Gregory VII (1073-1083) and came to an end under Callistus II with the Concordat of Worms and with the First Lateran Council (the first ecumenical council held in the West in 1123), thanks to which the Church was guaranteed its freedom and its good relations with the State were secured. A series of disciplinary canons was also begun for the good government of the Church in the face of the new needs that were manifesting themselves. The series was continued in the Second Lateran Council (1139) held to extinguish the last consequences of the schism stirred up by the antipope Anacletus II in 1130, and in the Third Lateran Council assembled in 1179 at the conclusion of the struggle begun in 1154 by the emperor Frederick Barbarossa against the pontiffs Adrian IV and Alexander III.

These struggles could not fail to have special consequences against the very fabric of the Church. The misconduct of too many ecclesiastics, while it aroused contempt toward them, caused many to turn their sympathies toward a current of errors which, linking itself to the old Manichaean tradition, presented itself with an organization of its own of initiates and simple believers in opposition to that of the Church and was called the Cathar or Albigensian heresy, finding numerous supporters especially in northern Italy and southern France. Another reaction of fanatics, without going as far as the Cathars, claimed to reform the Church outside the Catholic hierarchy, appealing to the right of free preaching under direct divine inspiration, with the practice of poverty: these were the Arnoldists, who took their name from Arnold of Brescia, and the Poor of Lyon or Waldensians, disciples of Waldo. Against these heretics were directed in particular the solicitous efforts of Innocent III and of the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 and then of Gregory IX and of the tribunal of the Inquisition promoted by him for the purpose of seeking out the errors creeping about, calling their defenders and abettors to penance and punishing the obstinate.

This work was effectively flanked by the new Orders of friars called Mendicants, because they could possess nothing either individually or in common. The initiator of this new form of religious organization was St. Francis of Assisi (d. 1226), a preacher of poverty and peace under the guidance of the Roman Church, while contemporaneously with him St. Dominic of Osma (d. 1221) initiated into an austere life of poverty and study the religious whom he directed especially to preaching against the heretics. To the Franciscans and the Dominicans there were added in that same century the Hermits of St. Augustine, the Servites of Mary, the Carmelites; while the reforms of the monastic Orders continued to flourish, such as that of the Cistercians, begun at the beginning of the preceding century, of the Sylvestrines, and the older ones of the Camaldolese, the Avellanites, the Vallombrosans and others.

It was precisely in this age that, having organized themselves under the patronage of the Church, the Universities of Paris (philosophy and theology) and of Bologna (law), the first systematic treatise writers on the sacred sciences appeared, and Scholasticism reached its complete maturity, whose most distinguished representatives were St. Albert the Great, St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Bonaventure of Bagnoregio. And under the guidance of the popes the two great Mendicant Orders began a new missionary activity directed toward the mysterious regions of Persia, India and China, which was cut short all too soon by the political vicissitudes of those regions.

A new struggle between the Papacy and the Empire, which culminated in the excommunication launched against Frederick II at the Council of Lyon in 1245 and ended with the fall of the Hohenstaufen family in 1254, reduced Europe to a complex of nationalities over which Germany no longer had more than a theoretical superiority. The profession of the Catholic faith remained a common bond; however, the dignity and authority of the Roman pontificate seemed to be weakened when Boniface VIII (d. 1303) had to endure the violence of Philip the Fair, king of France, and when Clement V, his successor, did not move from France, where he was when he was elected. At Vienne in the Dauphiné he convened an ecumenical Council in 1309, and his successors fixed their seat in Avignon, to the great disgust of all Christendom; only in 1377 did Gregory XI return to Rome; but the following year, upon Gregory's death, over the election of Urban VI, the French cardinals provoked the great Western Schism by setting up against him the French antipope Clement VII, whom they elected at Fondi. Christendom was divided into two obediences, which then became three in 1409 when, in order to extinguish the schism, a third pontiff was elected. To restore unity, at the initiative of the emperor Sigismund the Council of Constance was convened in 1414, within which the new pontiff Martin V was elected in 1417 and universally recognized. The schism, however, had loosened the bonds of ecclesiastical discipline, greatly widened the gravest abuses and created the conviction that a superiority over the pope belonged to the Council. Its effects were seen in the Council of Basel, convened in 1431, which in 1438 rebelled against Pope Eugene IV and dared again to set up against him another antipope in Felix V. Meanwhile in England the rebellion of John Wycliffe (d. 1384) had arisen, which in turn gave incentive to that of John Hus, which for long years bloodied Bohemia and the neighboring regions with reckless attempts at reform and with the taking root of a fanatical religious nationalism that was preparing the way for a deeper fracture of the spiritual unity of Europe.

X. THE TURKISH PERIL AND THE SCHISM OF THE WEST

During these events, an extremely grave danger was looming ever more from the East. Toward the end of the 14th century the Turks of Asia Minor crossed into Europe, occupied Thrace and, pushing through Serbia and Bosnia, endangered Hungary, reaching with their raids as far as the Julian Alps. The Byzantine Empire invoked the aid of Europe; at the Council of Florence of 1438-39, through the work of Eugene IV, a union of the Eastern Church with Rome could be brought about; but the lack of concord among the Western princes did not permit effective action against the Turks despite the repeated efforts of the popes: in 1430 Thessalonica fell, in May 1453 Constantinople, and the Empire ceased to exist. In the following years war broke out again in Hungary, while the Aegean islands fell one by one: last of all Rhodes in 1522, defended in vain by the Knights of St. John. In 1481 the Turks had attempted an enterprise in Apulia against Otranto and were threatening Friuli. The constant and untiring care of the popes down to the first decades of the 18th century was to ward off the Turkish danger both by sea and by land, and it did not cease until that danger appeared to have been averted.

Such a danger did not in any way prevent the evolution of Christian civilization. The reawakening of culture and in particular of good letters, the progress of the sciences, the new discoveries created that movement which was called the Renaissance, but disciplinary reforms and good morals did not keep pace with it. The Fifth Lateran Council (1512-17), which had set itself such a program, did not succeed in its purpose, thus in some way justifying the recriminations that were being raised everywhere, especially beyond the Alps. The preaching of indulgences for the building of St. Peter's in Rome (1517) provided the pretext for Martin Luther, an Augustinian friar, for a rebellion against the Church and the spread of new doctrines on original sin and justification; other doctrines concerning the nature of the Sacraments were taught by Ulrich Zwingli in Switzerland, by John Calvin in Geneva and by others in the Rhenish cities; all of them agreed in abolishing the Catholic hierarchy and placing religious ordinances in the hands of the princes and the city councils. The rebellion spread from Germany to the northern countries, from Switzerland to the Netherlands and Scotland, and seriously endangered Catholicism in France, Poland and Hungary. In England Henry VIII proclaimed himself head of the Church, maintaining the local hierarchy; but under Edward VI and Queen Elizabeth the English Church inclined toward Calvinist doctrines. The Catholic unity of Europe remained shattered, and it seemed at first that Catholicism was being confined to Italy, Spain and part of Germany.

XI. THE CATHOLIC REFORMATION

To reassert sound Catholic doctrine and provide for an effective reform, Paul III convened the Council of Trent in 1545, which, through various vicissitudes, lasted until the end of 1563, giving rise to that complete reorganization of discipline and with it to that reflowering of Christian life which was improperly called the Counter-Reformation. Those congregations of regular clerics were established which set themselves special spiritual and charitable tasks, first that of the Theatines, then of the Barnabites, of the Somaschi, of the Camillians, and particularly important that of the Jesuits.

Meanwhile the discovery of new lands opened the field to an immense missionary activity sustained particularly by the Franciscans, the Dominicans and the Jesuits, thanks to which the faith was firmly organized in South and Central America and in Mexico and spread widely in India, in the Philippine Islands, in the Moluccas, and reached Japan and China.

The multiplication of sects among the Protestants and the disorders they provoked offered an occasion for princes to arrogate to themselves the right to intervene ever more in religious matters; and since, after the Treaty of Westphalia (1648), many Catholics found themselves included in Protestant territory and vice versa, even Catholic princes claimed not only to settle the questions of the Protestants, but also to regulate the status of Catholics independently of the pope. Thus there was an increase of the tendency known by the name of "Caesarism" or "Febronianism" in Germany and of "Gallicanism" in France, which aimed at creating national Churches very weakly connected with their center: Rome.

XII. THE RECENT AGE

Nor is that all: the weariness with religious debates, provoked among Protestants by resurgent controversies and among Catholics by the Jansenist and jurisdictional struggles, was followed by a discrediting of Christianity itself and by the rise of systems which, appealing to philosophy, claimed to direct society by purely natural principles. This tendency, which had its principal origin in England, whence at the beginning of the 18th century it spread throughout Europe, took the name of Encyclopedism in France from the famous Encyclopédie published there by a group of unbelievers, and of Illuminism (Aufklärung) in Germany.

These principles then had their practical application with the French Revolution (1789) under the trinomial: liberty, equality, fraternity; and they could no longer be checked either by Napoleonic autocracy or by the Holy Alliance of the reactionary period that followed (1815).

The religious opportunism that sometimes poorly concealed political and social preoccupations, while showing itself powerless to repress the spread of the irreligious and revolutionary principles preached as the rights of science, of the liberty of peoples, of the elevation of the lower classes, continued to hamper the freedom of the Catholic Church under the pretext of preventing its abuses. Concordats were concluded on the model of the Napoleonic one of 1801 with the aim of defining the practical relations between Church and State on bases that respected the substantial rights of the Church and of its Head; but it was the complete laicization of the State that was aimed at in the most advanced countries of Europe, in order to prepare in that way, under the auspices of science and progress, the apostasy of humanity from the revealed Word.

The reaction to this disintegrating activity against Christian civilization, which had not been lacking in the pontiffs of the 18th century, became more active especially with Gregory XVI and culminated in the Vatican Council (1869-70), which, after having targeted the most radical errors, in the foresight of not being able to carry to completion the work begun, hastened to proclaim the infallibility of the Supreme Pontiff in the field of faith and morals, as if to bind Catholicism ever more tightly into a disciplined body in the struggle against its adversaries.

The capture of Rome (20 Sept. 1870) and the end of temporal power, at the moment when an immense war seemed about to mark the end of France, were hailed by many merely as the completion of Italian national unity, by others instead as a powerful blow against the vitality of the Church. There was in fact a heightening of anticlericalism: Masonic and vulgar in the new Kingdom of Italy, political and cultural in Germany with the movement of the Kulturkampf and of the Old Catholics. In France the laicism of the Second Republic came in 1905 to the denunciation of the Concordat of 1801 with the consequent separation from the Church and the almost total suppression of the religious Congregations. Therefore, in the spasmodic development of modern society which claimed it must do without every supernatural element, there seemed to be no more room for a revealed religion such as the Catholic one; and of this state of mind what was called modernism made itself the interpreter in the Latin nations, which, in the attempt to seek a coordination with the new ideas, came to undermine the fabric of traditional teaching.

Almost contemporary with the condemnation of modernism (encyclical Pascendi of 1907), a movement for the union of the Church was organized, provoked by the growing disorder of the non-Catholic Christian confessions, with the aim of fixing certain common doctrines that might serve as a mutual bond and thus prevent their total dissolution. But the arbitrariness of the origins of those confessions and of their functioning, and the compromises between their doctrinal tendencies, could not lead to an effective understanding. The schismatic Eastern Churches gave it a participation more apparent than real. Catholicism, without reproaching the dissidents with the crime of keeping alive discords originating from murky passions, continued on its way, all the more so since, despite the spirit of the century, its kingdom was expanding and taking root in distant regions such as North America and Australia, new institutes were arising from its bosom, ancient religious Orders were flourishing again into new life. The missions among the infidels, reduced almost to ruin at the beginning of the 19th century, although harassed by the overbearing political forces of the Protestant missions, took on vigor ever more profound after Gregory XVI set about reviving their spirit.

Nor did the many ills of various kinds provoked by the great wars of this century have the power to strike deeply at its doctrinal and hierarchical fabric. None of the recent defections had the power to create movements comparable with the great errors and schisms of the past. Recent attempts to create, above it, a climate of union, that is of catholicity, among all the separated Christian communities, by means of mutual dogmatic and hierarchical compromises, seemed to find the Catholic Church indifferent; but it, convinced that the «unum ovile» cannot be composed without the «unus pastor», can do nothing else but open its doors to all those who, leaving aside useless recriminations or nationalist preoccupations, set out on the path of seeking serenely and humbly the Christ always at work in the institute founded by him, and defended and enlightened by his charisms.

Pio Paschini

IV. THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF THE CHURCH

I. DEFINITION

The historiography of the C. sets as its aim the investigation and the reasoned and scientific reconstruction of the events that the C. itself has passed through in the various countries during the centuries of its existence. It presupposes that Jesus Christ founded the C. as a true visible society of all believers destined to last until the end of the ages, and it conducts its investigation by making use of the scientific methods of the most enlightened modern criticism, keeping constantly in mind the supernatural nature of its origin and of its purposes, which are those of leading all men to eternal life.

II. TASK

Almost as a continuation of the biblical sciences, the history of the C[hurch] has the function of "preparing the real historical basis necessary for the entire edifice of theological science." First of all it deals with external development, that is: 1) with the spread of Christianity over the earth: in the sphere of Hebrew, Hellenistic-Roman and then Germanic civilizations, over the successive course of the centuries and across the five parts of the world (history of missions); 2) with the various attitudes that the C[hurch] has maintained toward converted peoples, toward States and toward their leaders (policy of the C[hurch], relations between State and C[hurch]); 3) with the attacks and persecutions to which it has been subjected by forces hostile to it, the struggles sustained and the limitations suffered in the face of non-Christian or schismatic confessions. Of even greater importance is the history of internal development, deriving from the structure given by Christ and from the forces and laws that he placed within it, and it comprises: 1) the enunciation of doctrine and theology (if on the one hand dogma is in its essence immutable, its formulation on the other hand can change and develop: history of dogma and of theology); 2) the organization of the C[hurch] (history of its monarchical-hierarchical constitution and of its law); 3) worship and liturgy; 4) customs and ecclesiastical discipline; 5) the cultural activity of the C[hurch] in relation to the sciences, the arts, literature and secular culture; 6) the charitable activity of the C[hurch], in relation to the various arising needs, individual, national and social, as a result of wars, famines, oppressions of the weak, persecutions, etc.

III. METHOD

The method of the history of the Church is determined by the common norms of historical research, always taking into account the supernatural character of the subject. The history of the Church must therefore be reconstructed with a critical method: on the most direct, reliable and trustworthy sources; sifting them, investigating their authenticity and credibility and measuring their value comparatively. It must be objective, that is, impartial, with the most rigorous respect for the truth. Finally, it must be pragmatic-genetic, that is, it must follow the facts in their genetic development, must reveal their internal connections, investigate their causes and effects (avoiding, of course, the dangers of a naturalistic determinism), bring to light the motives of the agents, identify the psychological forces that in individuals or in collectivities contributed to those facts, draw out and, as far as possible, reconstruct their line of development. Such pragmatism, moreover, is in no way an obstacle to the critical rigor of scientific inquiry, because it rests on reality and truth, and the Catholic scholar aims at a representation free from extraneous preconceptions and in harmony with the truth.

IV. SOURCES

Sources are divided with respect to their origin into divine (Holy Scriptures) and human; as to their value, into direct and indirect sources; with regard to their content, into monumental (archaeological remains and intact monuments) and literary (traditions); finally, with regard to the position of the authors, into public and private. All these sources have been collected by numerous scholars and critically illustrated. Gathered in large collections, they are easily accessible to all. Only the principal ones are noted here.
A) MONUMENTAL SOURCES. - 1. EPIGRAPHY: G. B. de Rossi, Inscriptiones christianae urbis Romae VII saec. antiquiores (I-II, 1, Rome 1861-88); Suppl., ed. G. Gatti (fasc. 1, ibid. 1915); Nova series, ed. A. Silvagni (2 vols., ibid. 1922-1935); E. Diehl, Inscriptiones latinae christianae veteres (Berlin 1924-31); Inscriptiones latinae (ibid. 1912 [50 plates]). - 2. ARCHAEOLOGY: G. B. de Rossi, La Roma sotterranea cristiana (3 vols., Rome 1864-77); G. Wilpert, Le pitture delle catacombe romane (2 vols., Rome 1903); id., Die römischen Mosaiken und Malerien der kirchlichen Bauten vom IV.-XIII. Jahrhundert (4 vols., Freiburg 1916); id., I sarcofagi cristiani antichi (4 vols., ibid. 1929-36); Corpus Basilicarum Christianiarum Romae, ed. R. Krautheimer (fasc. I, ibid. 1937; fasc. II, ibid. 1939, in the course of publication in Italian and in English); Realenzyklopaedie der christlichen Altertümer, ed. by F. X. Kraus (2 vols., Freiburg im Br. 1882-86); DACL, directed by F. Cabrol and H. Leclercq (Paris 1907 ff.). - 3. LITURGY: L. A. Muratori, Liturgia Romana vetus (2 vols., Venice 1748); J. A. Assemani, Codex Liturgicus Ecclesiae universae (13 vols., Rome 1749-66; anastatic ed., Paris-Leipzig 1902; new reproduction, ibid. 1922 ff.); G. M. Drewes and Cl. Blume, Analecta hymnica medii aevi (25 vols., Leipzig 1886 ff.); U. Chevalier, Repertorium hymnologicum (6 vols., Brussels 1892-1920); F. Cabrol et H. Leclercq, Monumenta Ecclesiae liturgica (Paris 1902 ff.); E. Renaudot, Liturgiorum orientalium collectio (2 vols., ibid. 1916); Liturgiegeschichtliche Quellen, collection directed by K. Mohlberg and A. Rücker (Münster in W. 1918 ff.); Liturgiegeschichtliche Forschungen, collection directed by F. J. Dölger, K. Mohlberg, A. Rücker, (ibid. 1919 ff.); Jahrbuch für Liturgiewissenschaft, directed by O. Casel (ibid. 1921 ff.); J. Braun, Liturgisches Handlexicon (Ratisbon 1924). - 4. ACTS AND ANCIENT PONTIFICAL DOCUMENTS: Epistolae Romanorum Pontificum... a s. Clemente I usque ad Innocentium III, ed. by P. Constant (the only volume published, Paris 1721, stops at 440); Epistolae Rom. Pont... a s. Hilario usque ad Pelagium II, ed. by A. Thiel (the only volume published, Braunsberg 1868, stops at 523); Corpus iuris canonici, ed. Aem. L. Richter (Leipzig 1839; 2nd ed. by Aem. Friedberg (2 vols., ibid. 1879-81)); Regesta Pontificum Romanorum a condita Ecclesia ad annum post Christum natum 1758, ed. Ph. Jaffé (Berlin 1851; 2nd ed. edited by F. Kaltenbrunner, P. Ewald, S. Löwenfeld (2 vols., Leipzig 1885-88)); Regesta Pontificum Romanorum inde ab anno 1798, edited by A. Pottinast (2 vols., ibid. 1874-1875); completing Jaffé: J. v. Pflugk-Hartung, Acta Pontificum Romanorum (up to 1798; 3 vols., 1881-88); Bullarium diplomatum et privilegiorum sanctorum Romanorum Pontificum Taurinensis editio, edited by A. Tommasetti and by a group of Roman theologians and canonists (24 vols. in 4to, Turin 1857-72 [reaches up to 1740]). A Continuatio from Clement XIII up to Gregory XVI (1846) was edited by A. Barbèri, A. Spezia and R. Segreti (19 vols., Rome 1835-57); another Continuatio from Benedict XIV up to Pius VIII (1830) was published in 10 vols. at Prato in 1843-67; P. Fr. Kehr, Regesta Pontificum Romanorum: Italia Pontificia, I-VIII, Berlin 1907-1935; Germania Pontificia, I-II, edited by A. Brackmann, ibid. 1910-35; Regesta Pontificum Romanorum medii aevi inde a saec. XIII edita sunt... a Schola Gallica Romae et ab Instituto historico Belgii in Urbe (Bibliothèque des Ecoles françaises d'Athènes et de Rome, Paris 1884 ff.); Analecta Vaticano-Belgica (1st series, 17 vols., Rome-Brussels 1906 ff.); AAS, Commentarium ufficiale (Rome 1909 ff.); Codex iuris canonici Pii X iussu digestus Benedicti XV auctoritate promulgatus (ibid. 1917); Codicis iuris canonici fontes, edited by card. P. Gasparri (8 vols., ibid. 1923-38); Codicis iuris canonici interpretationes authenticae (1917-1930, Rome 1935). - 5. COUNCILS: J. D. Mansi, Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio (31 vols., up to 1439, Florence and Venice 1759-98); anastatic ed. with the acts of the other Councils up to the modern age (55 vols., Paris 1901 ff.); Ed. Schwartz, Acta Conciliorum Oecumenorum, 431-879 (Berlin 1914 ff.); Concilium Tridentinum..., ed. of the Goerresiana Society (13 vols., Freiburg 1901 ff.); Collectio Lacensis, Acta et decreta SS. Conciliorum recentiorum (7 vols., for the Councils from 1682 to 1879, Freiburg im Br. 1870-90); F. Walter, Fontes iuris eccl. antiqui et hodierni (Bonn 1862); Ph. Schneider, Fontes iuris eccl. novissimi (Ratisbon 1895); E. Eichmann, Quellenammlung zur kirchlichen Rechtsgeschichte und zum Kirchenrecht (3 vols., Paderborn 1912 ff.); Ecclesiae occidentalis monumenta iuris antiquissima, ed. C. Furner (Louvain 1930 ff.). - 6. SYMBOLS AND PUBLIC CON-

FESSIONS OF FAITH: C. W. F. Walch, Bibliotheca symbolica vetus (Lemgo 1770); H. Denzinger, Enchiridion symbolorum definitionum et declarationum de rebus fidei et morum, 21st-23rd ed. edited by G. B. Umberg (Freiburg im Br. 1937; 24th ed., Barcelona 1946). - 7. MONASTIC RULES: L. Holstein, Codex regularum monasticarum et canonicalium (4 vols., Rome 1661; ed. enlarged by M. Brockie, 6 vols., Augsburg 1759); Aub. Miraeus, Regulae et constitutiones clericorum in congregatione viventium (Antwerp 1638); B. Albers, Constitutiones monasticae (3 vols. I-II, Montecassino 1900-03; III, Leipzig 1907). - 8. CONCORDATS: A. Theiner, Codex diplomaticus domini temporalis S. Sedis (3 vols., Rome 1861); A. Mercati, Raccolta di concordati in materie ecclesiastiche tra la S. Sede e le autorità civili (1880-1914, ibid. 1919); A. Perugini, Concordata vigestia notis historicis et invidicis declarata (ibid. 1934). - 9. CIVIL LAWS: Theodosiani libri XVI, ed. Th. Mommsen and P. M. Meyer (Berlin 1905 ff.; new ed. by P. Krüger, ibid. 1926); Corpus iuris civilis Iustin., ed. Krüger, Mommsen and others (4 vols., ibid. 1912-20); MGH, Leges (5 vols. in-fol., Hannover 1835-80).
B) LITERARY SOURCES. - 1. BIOGRAPHIES OF THE POPES: Liber Pontificalis, ed. L. Duchesne (2 vols., Paris 1886-92); ed. Th. Mommsen (MGH, Berlin 1898); Vitae Pontificum Romanorum ab ex. saec. IX usque ad finem saec. XIII, ed. Watterich (2 vols., Leipzig 1862); C. Cecchelli, Iconografia dei Papi, S. Pietro (Rome 1938); G. Ladner, I ritratti dei Papi nell'antichità e nel medioevo (Monumenti di antichità cristiana, 2nd series, 9, Vatican City 1941). - 2. MARTYROLOGIES, ACTS OF THE MARTYRS AND LIVES OF THE SAINTS: Martyrologium Hieronymianum, diplomatic ed. by G. B. de Rossi and L. Duchesne (Acta SS. Nov., II, I, Brussels 1894 ff.); H. Delchaye, Commentarius perpetuus in Martyr. Hieronym. ad recessionem H. Quentin, in Acta SS. Nov., II, II (Brussels 1931); H. Delchaye and the Bollandist Associates, Martyr. Romanum scholis historicis instructum, in Propyl. ad Acta SS. Decembris (ibid. 1940); H. Quentin, Les martyrologes historiques du moyen âge (Paris 1908); Acta SS. Martyrum orientalium et occidentalium, ed. St. E. Assemani (2 vols., Rome 1748). - 3. HAGIOGRAPHY: cf. s. v.; as for the collection of the Bollandists, cf. s. v.; Bibliotheca hagiographica graeca (Brussels 1894, 2nd ed. ibid. 1900); Bibliotheca hagiographica latina antiquae et mediae notatis (2 vols., ibid. 1898-1901; anastatic ed., ibid. 1949; suppl., ibid. 1911); Bibliotheca hagiographica orientalis (ibid. 1910); all three published by the college of the Bollandists. - 4. FATHERS AND WRITERS OF THE C.: M. de la Bigne, Maxima bibliotheca veterum Patrum (27 vols., Lyon 1677 ff., with 2 vols. of indexes [the Greek ones are given only in Latin translation]); the Greek text was published in the Bibliotheca veterum Patrum of A. Gallandi (14 vols., Venice 1765 ff.); J. P. Migne, Patrologia. Series latina (217 vols., Paris 1844-1855; vols. CCXVIII-CCXXI, indexes, ibid. 1862-64); Series graeca (down to the Council of Florence, 166 vols., ibid. 1857-66); Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum latinorum, ed. by the Academy of Vienna (Vienna 1866 ff.). The Greek Christian writers of the first three centuries were published by the Academy of Berlin, Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller (Leipzig 1897 ff.; cf. also Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristl. Literatur, ed. by O. Gebhardt, A. Harnack, C. Schmidt [ibid. 1883 ff.]; and Studi e Testi, published by the Vatican Library [Rome 1898 ff.]); I. S. Assemani, Bibliotheca Orientalis Clementino-Vaticana (4 vols., ibid. 1719-28); Patrologia Syriaca, edited by R. Graffin (Paris 1894 ff.); Patrologia Orientalis, directed by R. Graffin and F. Nau (ibid. 1903 ff.); Corpus script. christian. oriental., edited by F. Chabot, I. Guidi, H. Hyvernat, B. Carra de Vaux (ibid. 1903 ff.); SS. Patrum opuscula selecta, ed. H. Hurter (54 vols., Innsbruck 1868-92); Bibliotheca SS. Patrum, ed. F. Vizzini (Rome 1902 ff.); Florilegium Patristicum, ed. G. Rauschen... (Bonn 1904 ff.).
C) NATIONAL HISTORICAL TEXTS AND MATERIALS. - 1. ITALY: L. A. Muratori, Antiquitates Italicae medii aevi (6 vols., Milan 1738-42); to which must be added: G. M. Battalino and G. Calligaris, Indices chronologici ad Antiq. Italicas medii aevi et ad opera minora L. Muratori (Turin 1895-96); L. A. Muratori, RIS (25 vols., Milan 1723-1751; new critical edition under the direction of G. Carducci, V. Fiorini, P. Fedele, ed. N. Zanichelli, Bologna, printed at Città di Castello 1903 ff.); Historiae patriae monumenta edita innu regis Caroli Alberti (for Piedmont, 17 vols., Turin 1836-84); Fonti per la storia d'Italia (Rome, from 1887); Regesta chartarum Italiae (ibid. from 1907). - 2. FRANCE: Recueil des historicus des Gaules et de la France, publ. by M. Bouquet (Paris 1738 ff.; new ed. edited by L. Delisle, ibid. 1869 ff.); Collection de documents inédits sur l'histoire de France (ibid. 1835 ff.). - 3. GERMANY: Monumenta Germaniae historica, inde ab anno Chr. 500 aequ ad annum 1500 (Hannover and Berlin 1826 ff.). - 4. ENGLAND: Rerum Britannicarum medii aevi scriptores (98 vols., London 1858-93). - 5. SPAIN: Colección de los crónicas y memorias de los reyes de Castilla (77 vols., Madrid 1779-87); Colección de documentos inéditos para la historia de España (105 vols., ibid. 1842-93); J. Villanueva, Viaje literaria a las Iglesias de España (22 vols., Madrid and Valencia 1803-97).
D) HISTORICAL SOURCES IN GENERAL, BIBLIOGRAPHY, ANNUAL REPORTS, ENCYCLOPEDIAS AND REFERENCE WORKS. - A. Pothast, Biblioteca historica medii aevi (2 vols., 2nd ed., Berlin 1896); U. Chevalier, Répertoire des sources historiques du moyen âge: Bio-bibliographie (2 vols., 2nd ed., Paris 1905-1907); Topo-bibliographie (2 vols., Montbéliard 1894-1903); Histoire littéraire de la France (35 vols., Paris 1733-1921); E. Calvi, Bibliografia generale di Roma (I [476-1499], Rome 1906; Suppl., ibid. 1908); Bibliographie of the Revue d'histoire ecclésiastique, 1900 ff.; Kirchenlexicon oder Enzyklopädie der kath. Theologie, 3rd ed., edited by J. Hergenröther and Fr. Kaulen (12 vols., with index, Freiburg 1882-1903); L'ThK, ed. by M. Buchberger (10 vols., ibid. 1930-38); DHG published by A. Baudrillart, A. Vogt, U. Rouziès, R. Aigrain, P. Richard (ibid. 1909 ff.), from the IV vol. (1930) it is directed by A. Meyer and E. Van Cauwenberg; The Cath. Enc. (15 vols., with an index vol., New York 1907-1914; Suppl., I, ibid. 1922); H. Hurter, Nomenclator literarius theologiae catholicae (5 vols., Innsbruck 1903-13); R. Streit, Bibliotheca Missionum (11 vols., Münster in W. 1916 ff.); M. Grabmann, Die Gesch. der kath. Theol. seit dem Ausgang der Väterzeit (Freiburg in Br. 1933, Italian version, Milan 1937). Also Bibliografia storica nazionale, Rome 1942 ff.

V. AUXILIARY SCIENCES

Particularly necessary are: philology (v.), paleography (v.), diplomatics (v.), epigraphy (v.), numismatics (v.), geography (v.), chronology (v.), statistics (v.).

VI. PARTITION

The vastness and variety of the subject matter and the progress of research have meant that within the whole of the history of the C. [Church] special disciplines have gradually taken shape, each of which has its own particular treatment. Thus it is customary to keep distinct: patrology, the history of theological literature, the history of dogmas, the history of the liturgy and of institutions, and the history of the missions.

Furthermore, within the general history of the C. itself, certain topics have given rise to special treatments, such as: the history of the Popes, of the councils, of the saints, of monasticism, of religious Orders and Congregations; separately, too, Christianity in individual regions and dioceses is treated, as is the life of individual institutions, such as parishes and monasteries, or even of personalities of particular prominence. The whole of these parts has its arrangement in relation to the general history of the C. with respect to subject matter and to chronology, since chronology in the historical field is always a fundamental element.

Particularly debated is the chronological partition into historical epochs and periods. In general history the division into three great epochs: antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the modern age, was introduced for the first time in the 17th century (Ch. Cellarius, Historiae antiquae, mediae, novae nucleus, Jena 1675-76). In the history of the C. it has been in use from the 19th century onward. Although very generic, and with limits that cannot be well determined, this threefold partition is, for practical reasons, maintained. A general agreement on distinguishing the different ages of the C. has not yet been reached. Nevertheless, there is agreement in distinguishing as the first era Christian antiquity, that is, the age of the rise of the C., of the first preaching, and of its first establishing itself in the face of the pagan-Roman state and of heresy. This age is divided into two great epochs, the first up to the edict of Constantine (Milan 313); the second up to the barbarian invasions.

The second era comprises the medieval age, on whose limits the opinion of historians is divided. It embraces approximately the time that runs from the evangelization of the barbarians, through the development of the new civilization, up to the pseudo-reform of Luther (16th century).

The Renaissance closes the Middle Ages and opens the modern age, which can be divided into two epochs: one up to the 18th century, the other from the 18th century to our own days.

VII. HISTORIANS OF THE CHURCH

1. Christian antiquity

a) The narration of the history of the Church begins with the Gospels, particularly with the Gospel of Luke, and with the Acts of the Apostles, which, based on direct sources, give us the history of the founding and the spread of the young Church. Historical notices are found in the fragments of Papias's work on the Sayings of the Lord, in the Authentic Acts of the Martyrs, and occasionally also in the apocryphal writings, in the Hypomnemata (commentaries) of Hegesippus of Jerusalem (ca. 170 A.D.), in the Chronicles of Julius Africanus and of Hippolytus of Rome, of which more or less extensive fragments are extant (cf. A. Harnack, Die Überlieferung und der Bestand der altchristlichen Literatur bis Eusebius, Leipzig 1893).

b) Eusebius, bishop of Caesarea in Palestine (d. 339-40; v.), rightly considered the father of Church history, composed a Universal Chronicle, which begins with the birth of Abraham and ends to the year 303 (continued by St. Jerome down to 378), and the well-known Historia ecclesiastica, in ten books, which runs from the origins to the year 324. In it are found: the life of Christ, the dawn of the Church, the persecutions from Nero to Galerius, the victory of Constantine the Great, and it constitutes a milestone, both as a pragmatic exposition of the history of the Church and as a collection of very rich documentary material. Because of the great number of documents reported in full or in extract, this work is of incalculable value; the best edition, with the Greek text and Rufinus's version, is that of Ed. Schwartz-Th. Mommsen in the Corpus Berolinense (9, 3 vols. Leipzig-Berlin 1903, 1908, 1909). Eusebius also wrote on the martyrs of Palestine and a Life of the emperor Constantine (4 books, in an encomiastic tone). The history of the Church by Eusebius was continued, from the 5th century onward, by three authors, the so-called synoptics, who wrote almost contemporaneously: Socrates, whose work in 7 books runs from 305 to 439 (ed. in PG 67); Sozomen, whose history in 9 books covers the period from 324 to 425 (ed. in PG 67); Theodoret, bishop of Cyrrhus (d. 458), whose history in 5 books runs from 320 to 428 (PG 82; new ed. edited by L. Parmentier, Leipzig 1911). Theodoret also wrote a history of the monks and of the heretics. In the 6th century there are three other Greek historians of the Church. The first is Theodore the Lector, who continued the history of Socrates down to the reign of the emperor Justin I (527): PG 86. The second is Zacharias, of whose work only 19 chapters survive, preserved in a Latin translation (PG 85, 1149 ff.). The last is the Antiochene lawyer Evagrius. His History of the Church, in 6 books, runs from 431 to 594 (PG 86), and is especially important for the history of the Nestorians and the Monophysites. Of the History of the Church of Philostorgius, who was a zealous Arian and died after 425, only fragments remain: it was in 12 books, from 300 to 425 (new ed. by J. Bidez, in the Corpus Berolinense, 21, Leipzig-Berlin 1913). Besides these general histories, mention should be made of the heresiological works of St. Epiphanius (d. 403), of Theodoret of Cyrrhus and of Leontius; the Alexandrian Oriental Chronicle, which extends down to 628; the Lives of the Saints, and the Byzantine Chronicles, which together with political history also treat the history of the Church.

c) Alongside the Greek authors, the Syriac and Armenian ones must also be placed. Of the History of the Church of John of Ephesus, a Monophysite bishop (d. 586), fragments still remain (the part running from 561 to 585), which constitute an important source for the profane and ecclesiastical history of the Eastern Empire in the 6th century. Among the Armenians the most renowned writer is Moses of Chorene, whose history of Greater Armenia, completed in 482, describes among other things also the evangelization of that country. In this history are found the well-known letters of Abgar.

d) The Latin West in the matter of the historiography of the Church remains inferior to the East. Its historians of the Church depend on the Greeks, and their works are nothing but translations or compilations. St. Jerome translated a part of the Chronicle of Eusebius into Latin (PL 27; Corpus Berolinense, 24, 34, Leipzig-Berlin 1913, 1926), continuing it down to 378; and with the De viris illustribus he gave the first example of a Christian literary history. Rufinus of Aquileia translated, in 403, abridging it, the History of Eusebius, not without errors, and continued it in two books down to the death of Theodosius the Great (395: PL 21). This part, however, as has recently been demonstrated (cf. Th. Mommsen, Die lateinische Übersetzung des Rufinus, Leipzig

1903), is nothing but a reworking of the History of the Church by Gelasius, bishop of Caesarea in Palestine (d. 395), which has been lost. His contemporary Sulpicius Severus wrote in 403, in a classical style and not without critical acumen, a Historia vel sacra Chronica, in 2 books, which runs from the creation of the world to the end of the 4th century (CSEL, I), and beyond this, a Life of St. Martin of Tours. More a profane than an ecclesiastical historian was the Spanish priest Paul Orosius. His Historiarum adversus paganos libri VII (PL 20), composed at the inspiration of St. Augustine, extend from the universal flood to the year 416, and have as their purpose to refute the pagan accusation that the Christian religion was responsible for the ruin of the Western Empire and for the evils that had struck it at that time (CSEL, V). The same intent moved St. Augustine in the composition of the De civitate Dei, in 22 books, written between 413 and 426 (PL 20). With this work St. Augustine is the first Christian philosopher of history, and his thought exercised an enormous influence on the historical conceptions of the Middle Ages. The Historia ecclesiastica tripartita (PL 69-70) of M. A. Cassiodorus (477-580) is nothing but an extract from the first three continuators of Eusebius of Caesarea, but it was the most popular manual of Church history throughout the Middle Ages. The first part of the Liber Pontificalis, a bare and not always accurate history of the Popes in biographical form, goes back, as is likely, to the 6th century, and more precisely to the pontificate of Boniface II (530-532); the compiler made use of the so-called Catalogus Liberianus of the popes contained in the Chronograph of 354 of Dionysius Philocalus. From the 6th century onward the Liber Pontificalis becomes a contemporary source, since it was gradually continued throughout the Middle Ages as an unofficial or quasi-official account of the individual pontificates. The edition of L. Duchesne also contains the Lives composed later down to Martin V (d. 1431). The life of the first bishops of Ravenna was composed by Agnellus (v.) of Ravenna (9th century) in the Codex Pontificalis Ecclesiae Ravennatis (new ed., RIS, II, 1).

2. The history of the Church in the Middle Ages

While in the ancient period Greek writers have the pre-eminence over Latin ones, in the medieval period, on the other hand, the former pass into second place.

a) Among the Greeks one may recall the Chronography of Theophanes the Confessor (down to the 9th century, with ample later continuations); the historical works of Leo the Deacon (10th century), of Anna Comnena and of others. In general, however, the Church history of the Greek authors proceeds together with that of the Byzantine Empire. The most notable ecclesiastical historian of the Greek Middle Ages is Nicephorus Callistus, librarian of the church of St. Sophia in Constantinople around the middle of the 14th century. His principal work, in 18 books, reaches down to the death of the emperor Phocas (610). It is written with care, but not without inaccuracies and fables; it also contains a list of the Byzantine emperors and patriarchs. Precious historical works were composed in this period in the Church of Syria, where the Ecclesiastical History, already mentioned, of John of Ephesus found learned continuators. The Annals (583-843) that go under the name of the Monophysite patriarch Dionysius of Tellmahre are only one quarter his own work, but it is a useful source of the ecclesiastical and profane history of the first half of the 9th century. The Chronicle of the Monophysite patriarch of the Jacobites, Michael the Great Qindasī (1126-99), from the 6th century onward constitutes one of the best sources of the history of the Eastern Church, especially for the period of the Crusades, of which the author was an eyewitness. This work has been preserved both in an Armenian translation of the 13th century (French trans. by V. Langlois: Chronique de Michel le Grand, Venice 1868) and in the Syriac original and in an Arabic version edited by J.-B. Chabot, Chronique de Michel le Syrien, 3 vols., Paris 1900-10. The greatest Syriac historian is, by general judgment, Gregory Abū 'l-Farāg, also called Bar Hebraeus (d. 1286). Among his numerous works the first place is occupied by a great Chronicle of the world, in three parts, of which the first has a profane character, the second treats of the Jewish high priests and the supreme pontiffs, then limiting itself almost exclusively to the history of the Antiochene and Jacobite patriarchate, which one of his continuators carried down to 1493; the third work is a history of the Church of the Chaldean Orthodox, Nestorians and Jacobites, from the apostle Thomas down to 1282, and continued by another hand down to 1469 (Gregory Bar Hebraeus, Chronicon ecclesiasticum, ed. J. B. Abbelos et Th. Lamy, 3 vols., Louvain 1872-77). Important notices on the history of the Greek Church are found in the long array of profane and imperial Byzantine historians, from the year 500 down to 1500. The best edition is the Corpus scriptorum historiae Byzantinae, 49 vols., Bonn 1828-55; cf. also PG.

b) The medieval historians in the West never saw or wrote history as history alone, but in it and through it they always aimed at religious, ethical and theological ends. Under the influence of the De civitate Dei of St. Augustine, they discerned above all in the course of history the struggle between the two kingdoms of good and evil, and, animated by eschatological and apocalyptic hopes, they almost always based themselves on the same historical division into six ages and four kingdoms or monarchies. In a summary outline of the historiography of the Church in the Latin Middle Ages one may distinguish three fundamental categories: α) works on the history of individual peoples without any separation between profane and ecclesiastical matter; β) general histories of the Church; γ) annals, chronicles and biographies.

c) The first author of the first category who stands on the threshold of the Middle Ages is Jordanes (Jordanes and also Jornandes), who wrote, at the invitation of Pope Vigilius, De summa temporum vel origine actibusque gentis Romanorum, a kind of world history from Adam to 551, and De origine actibusque Getarum, in which he abridges the work of the same name by Cassiodorus in 12 books, and inserts many precious notices on the history of the Church (ed. in MGH, Auct. antiquis., V, 1; RIS, I).

The father of the history of the Franks is Gregory of Tours (d. 594), with his Historia Francorum in 10 books (PL 71; critical ed. by W. Arndt and B. Krusch, in MGH, Scriptores rerum Merov., I, Hannover 1884), with the fifth of which begins the history of his own time from 575 to 591, narrated on the basis of his personal experiences and his memories. Gregory lacks the mastery of the material and the capacity to give a pragmatic representation of it, but in compensation he strives to be faithful and truthful.

A history of the Visigoths (PL 83) down to 621 was written by Isidore of Seville (d. 636), an encyclopedic writer of the last age of antiquity, of whom one must recall the Chronica maiora, later abridged in the Chronica minora (PL 83).

The father of English historiography is St. Bede, called the Venerable (d. 735), of whom we possess the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum, in 5 books (PL 95; ed. with English translation, in 2 vols., by F. E. King, London 1930). The part before 596 is nothing but a compilation from Paul Orosius and from the Cro-

and by Prosper of Aquitaine and Gildas. The original and major part of the work is devoted to the evangelization of Britain carried out on the initiative of Gregory the Great by Bishop Augustine (596-731).

The history of the Lombards was narrated by Paul of Warnefrid (more commonly called Paul the Deacon), a Lombard of noble origin, who lived for a long time at the royal court in Pavia. Having retired to Montecassino, he wrote the history of his people in 6 books, down to the year 744, which is the sole source for the religious and secular history of the Lombards. After his death (799), his work was continued by an unknown author down to the year 774 and, in the 9th century, as regards the duchy of Benevento, by the monk Erchempert, who carried the narrative down to the year 889 (PL 95; critical edition by G. Waitz, in MGH, Script. rer. Langob., pp. 234-264). During a brief stay at the Frankish court, Paul also wrote, at the request of Charlemagne, the Gesta episcoporum Mettensium (MGH, Scriptores, II, p. 260 ff.).

For national and local ecclesiastical history, special mention is due to Flodoard of Reims (d. 966), archivist of his church, who wrote a Historia Ecclesiae Remensis, from its origins to 948, a work that for the history of the Church and of the French State is very valuable for the documents it contains (PL 135; MGH, Scriptores, XIII).

To the category of national historians also belongs Adam of Bremen, from 1069 canon and "scholasticus" of Bremen, who shortly after 1072 wrote a Historia ecclesiastica or Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae pontificum, in 4 books, and a history of the Scandinavian Church and in particular of the bishoprics of Bremen and Hamburg, from 788 to 1076. A source of the first order, this work constitutes the primary foundation of the history of the Nordic countries (MGH, Scriptores, VII). About half a millennium later Albert Krantz, canon of Hamburg (d. 1517), wrote a history of the Church of northern Germany (Bremen, Hamburg, Lower Saxony and Westphalia), in 12 books from 780 to 1504, entitled Metropolis seu historia de ecclesias sub Carolo-M., in Saxonia instauratis (Frankfurt 1576).

β) Among the authors who in the Middle Ages attempted the narration of the general history of the Church, the first to be remembered in chronological order is Haimo, bishop of Halberstadt from 840 to 853, author of a Breviarium historiae ecclesiasticae, in 10 books, in which the history of the Church in the first 4 centuries is summarized. The work is nothing but an extract from Rufinus and from the Historia tripartita, but it is written, for its time, in good language. Almost contemporaneously Anastasius, the learned librarian of the Roman Church, wrote a Historia ecclesiastica seu Chronographia tripartita, which is a compilation of the histories of Theophanes, Nicephorus, and George Syncellus. The work is not, from the chronological point of view, as orderly as the Historia tripartita of Cassiodorus: the extracts of the three Byzantine authors stand rather side by side without cohesion: most of the material is taken from Theophanes (Corpus script. histor. Byzantinae, 40, Bonn 1841). Besides this work Anastasius translated into Latin the Acts of the Councils: VI (680-81), VII (787) and VIII (870) (Mansi, XII and XVI). Around 1142 Orderic Vitalis, abbot of St-Evroult in Normandy, wrote a Historia ecclesiastica in 13 books, from Christ to 1141; a work that reveals a great love of truth and rich experience, and is especially important, besides for the ecclesiastical events of that period, for the history of the Normans and of the Crusades (PL 188; new ed. by A. Le Prevost, 5 vols., Paris 1838-55). Vincent of Beauvais O. P. in the 31 books of his Speculum historiale (down to 1244), which constitutes the fourth part of the Bibliotheca mundi, the great encyclopedia of the 13th century, collected much material, but also many fables (of the many editions one may consult that of Venice in 1591). James of Vitry (d. 1240), regular canon, preacher of the Crusade against the Albigensians (1213) and of that for the Holy Land, bishop of St. John of Acre and cardinal, has left us in his Historia occidentalis and also in his letters precious information on the University of Paris and on the religious Orders of his time, especially on the origins of the Franciscan Order, on circumstances of the history of Italy and of the Curia of Innocent III, on the spiritual and moral situation of the crusader state and on the events of Damietta. His Historia orientalis, on the contrary, being a simple compilation, has less value as a source. His Vita Mariae Oiniacensis is an important contribution to the history of mysticism and piety at the beginning of the 13th century (cf. Ph. Funk, Jacob von Vitry, sein Leben und seine Werke, Leipzig 1909). The famous inquisitor Bernard Gui O. P., besides a Practica inquisitionis haereticae pravitatis (ed. C. Douais, Paris 1886; G. Mollat, 2 vols., ibid. 1926-27), composed a Catalogus seu Chronicon summorum pontificum usque ad Ioannem XXII, a kind of history of the popes, of particular value for the period of the Avignon exile. A contemporary and companion in order of Bernard was Bartholomew of Fiadoni (d. 1327, bishop of Torcello near Venice) who wrote a Historia ecclesiastica in 24 books from Christ to the beginning of the 14th century, later continued down to 1361 by Henry of Diessenhofen, a reworking of older works of scant critical value (RIS, XXI). Last for this age comes the Summa historialis, in 3 folio vols., of St. Antoninus (archbishop of Florence), which runs from the creation down to 1457 (Quétif-Echard, I, coll. 813-19; II, col. 311; F. G. Walker, The Chronicles of st. Antoninus, Washington 1933). Of scant originality, it diligently makes use of older works.

γ) It is in the field of chronicles and biographies that the Middle Ages exercised its greatest historiographical activity. Almost every bishopric, every city, every religious order, had one or more chroniclers: personalities and especially saints, one or more biographers. The concept of chronicle in that time is hardly distinguishable from that of annals; there are nevertheless chronicles in which the material is ordered and set out over more or less long periods of time, such as the years of reign of an emperor or of a pope. On the other hand, there is no lack here and there of chronicles which offer a relatively complete and unified narrative: such, for example, are the Annals of Lambert of Hersfeld. The model of all medieval chronicles was the chronicle of Eusebius, known in the West through St. Jerome. It is found reproduced either in full or in summary at the head of almost all the great medieval chronicles.

Among the chroniclers of greater value it will suffice to recall: for the Merovingian and Carolingian age: Fredegar and his continuators, Einhard, the authors of the Annals of Lorsch, of St-Amand, of Murbach, of Petau, of Salzburg, of Metz; for the 10th and 11th centuries: Regino of Prüm (d. 915, PL 132), Liutprand of Cremona (d. ca. 970) whose Antapodosis, however tendentious and scandal-mongering, constitutes one of the principal sources of his time, Hermann Contractus, monk of Reichenau (1013-54, PL 143), Rodulf the Bald, Glaber (d. ca. 1056) of the abbey of Cluny (PL

142), Ecchehard of St. Gall (d. 1060; Casus S. Galli), Bernold of Constance (d. 1100), monk of St. Blaise at Schaffhausen (PL 148), and above all, as one literarily close to him, Lambert, monk of Hersfeld (d. after 1078), who in his Annals takes a decided stand against Henry IV (MGH, Scriptores, III), the various authors of the Libelli de lite imperatorum et pontificum, saec. XI et XII conscripti (MGH Libelli, 3 vols., 1891-92-93); for the 12th century: Sigebert of Gembloux (1030-1112), Balderic, bishop of Dol (1047-1130, PL 162), William of Malmesbury (d. ca. 1145), Otto of Freising (d. 1158), the Chronica seu historia de duabus civitatibus, in 8 books (MGH, Scriptores, XX), William of Newburgh (1136-98), whose principal work is the Historia rerum anglicarum, and various composers of monastic libelli. One must remember Roger of Hoveden, who wrote the Annales regum Angliae, from 731 to 1201 (ed. W. Stubbs, 4 vols., London 1868-71), Alberic of the Three Fountains (d. after 1251), author of a chronicle of the world down to 1251 (MGH, Scriptores, XXIII), Burchard of Ursberg (MGH, Scriptores, XXIII), Matthew of Paris, Fra Salimbene da Parma, a Friar Minor, whose chronicle (MGH, Scriptores, XXXII) is also in the literary field one of the most vivid and singular works of the 13th century (cf. B. Schmeidler, Italienische Geschichtsschreiber des XIII. und XIV. Jahrhunderts, Leipzig 1909), Martin of Troppau (Oppaviensis) O.P., also called Martin the Pole (d. 1278), whose Chronica summonum pontificum imperatorumque ac de septem aetatibus mundi reaches to 1277 (MGH, Scriptores, XXII) and is a compendium of the history of the popes and emperors that enjoyed the widest diffusion and, although devoid of historical or literary value, contributed to the spread of many fables and was continued at various times down to the 15th century; Thomas of Pavia O.F.M., who wrote his chronicle around 1279; Paolino da Venezia O.F.M. (v.) bishop of Pozzuoli, one of the most important chroniclers of the religious Orders of the 14th century, and whose principal historical works are: Historiarum epitoma (a universal chronicle from the creation of the world to Boniface VIII), Satyrica historia, and a Chronologia magna or Compendium which constitutes the first attempt at a general vision of the history of the world. In the struggle between Louis the Bavarian and Pope John XXII there flourished a rich polemical literature (v. R. Scholz, Unbehaunte kirchenpolitische Streitschriften aus der Zeit Ludwigs des Bayerns, Rome 1911). To the 15th century belong: Ulrich of Richenthal, who wrote a Chronicle of the Council of Constance (ed. Buck, Leipzig 1895); Enea Silvio Piccolomini, who was later pope under the name Pius II, of whom there survives, besides other works of a historical-geographical character, a Historia Concilii Basileensis, in 2 books (Basel 1515); Giacomo Filippo (Foresti) da Bergamo, an Augustinian, whose Supplementum chronicorum, first published at Venice in 1483, was continued; Bartolomeo Sacchi called Platina (1421-81), who composed the widely circulated Liber de vita Christi ac omnium pontificum (years 1-1474, Venice 1479, new ed. in RIS, III, II), later continued by Onofrio Panvinio. Alongside the chronicles in this age, and likewise of unequal critical value according to their authors, stand the innumerable lives of saints and of famous persons. A magnificent overall picture of all these chronicles, annals and biographies, illustrated by a rich critical commentary, can be found in G. Wattenbach, Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen im Mittelalter bis zur

Mitte des XIII. Jahrhunderts (6th ed., 2 vols., Berlin 1893-94) and O. Lorenz, Deutschlands Geschichtsquellen im Mittelalter seit der Mitte des XIII. Jahrhunderts (3rd ed., 2 vols., ibid. 1886-87). For biographies see A. Potthast, Bibliotheca historica medii aevi, a guide to the historical works of the European Middle Ages, from 375 to 1500 (ibid. 1892). The Italian historians and chroniclers from 500 to 1500 were collected by L. A. Muratori in his monumental Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, of which the new revised and enlarged edition is in progress. Cf. U. Balzani, Le cronache italiane del medioevo, (4th ed., Milan 1909); U. Chevalier, Répertoire des sources historiques du moyen âge: Bio-bibliographie; Topo-bibliographie (4 vols., cf. above, no. IV, D).

3. The history of the C. in the modern age

Modern critical historiography of the C. has its origin in the age of Humanism and of the Reformation. The humanistic movement laid the foundations of historical criticism and applied new critical methods to annals, which in many respects lacked a critical sense, and led to a notable intensification of historiographical work. The invention of printing and a deeper knowledge of Greek letters in the West also contributed greatly to all this. A powerful impulse to historical studies came finally from the so-called Reformation of Luther. Protestant historiography arose entirely from the needs of confessional polemic, and had as a consequence a corresponding Catholic activity aimed at demonstrating, on the basis of historical sources, the traditional truths.

a) Works of the age of the Reformation. - The first great attempt to narrate the history of the C. from an exclusively Protestant point of view was made by the Centuriators of Magdeburg toward the middle of the 16th century. Its passionate character and its lack of objectivity are admitted even by Protestant scholars such as F. Chr. Baur (Die Epochen der christlichen Geschichtsschreibung, Tübingen 1853, p. 39 ff.) and provoked a whole series of works on the Catholic side. Of these the most important are the Annales ecclesiastici of Cesare Baronio (v.). The work had various continuations: first that of Abramo Bzovio O. P., who in 9 vols. carried the narrative from the year 1198, at which Baronio had stopped, to the year 1572: the work saw the light in Rome between 1616 and 1672. Shorter is the continuation composed by the convert and later bishop of Pamiers Enrico Sponde (Spondanus), who, having reduced Baronio's 12 vols. to 2 in-fol. (Paris 1639), added 3 more from 1547 to 1640 (ibid. 1641, Lyon 1678). From 1198 to 1565 runs the continuation of the Oratorian Odorico Rainaldi, published in 9 vols. in Rome between 1649 and 1677, and it is among all the other continuations the best. To Rainaldi were added Giacomo Laderchi and Agostino Theiner, both Oratorians, of whom the first reached in 3 vols. the year 1571 (Rome 1728-37), the second, in as many in-fol. volumes, the year 1585 (ibid. 1856 ff.). A critical revision of the Annali was made by the Conventual Antonio Pagi (d. 1699) in a work entitled: Critica historico-chronologica in universos Caesaris Baronii Annales, and was continued by his nephew and confrere Francesco (Antwerp 1705). It was inserted in G. D. Mansi's edition of Baronio in 38 vols. (Lucca 1738-59). New editions, with all the continuations, appeared at Bar-le-Duc and at Paris in 1864-83, in 37 vols. For a century Baronio's Annali, violently attacked by the Protestants (among others the Reformed scholar Samuel Basnage is remembered), constituted the basic work of Catholics, from which was drawn from time to time the material both for controversies relating to the history of the C. and for new studies concerning it.

b) The historiography of the C. in France. — A magnificent flowering of historical works on the C. occurred in France in the 17th and 18th centuries. Maurists, Oratorians, Jesuits, Dominicans and theologians of every persuasion vied in the publication and critical study of the sources, in promoting new auxiliary disciplines of history, in carrying through the investigation of individual problems and in the reworking of the entire history of the C. The series of great French ecclesiastical historians is opened by Antonio Godeau, bishop of Vence (1605-72), with his Histoire de l'Eglise, in 5 vols. (Paris 1653-78). It narrates in elegant form the history of the C. in the first eight centuries, and was translated into German and into Italian (by Speroni). A collection of the acts of the Councils was made by Filippo Labbe (Sacrosanta Concilia... Ph. Labbe et G. Cossarti, 18 vols., ibid. 1672). New paths were opened by Giovanni Bolland (d. 1665), initiator of the Acta SS., and by Luca d'Achéry O.S.B. (d. 1685). Other scholars followed in their footsteps, such as St. Baluze, who collected the lives of the Popes of Avignon (new ed. by G. Mollat, in 4 vols. with the addition of documents and notes, ibid. 1915-22), Du Cange, compiler of the famous glossary, and J. Mabillon O.S.B., creator of diplomatics and author of the Annales Ordinis S. Benedicti (6 vols., ibid. 1703-39). Luigi Maimbourg (d. 1686) wrote a whole series of particular historical works, such as the history of Arianism (ibid. 1673), and that of the Greek schism (ibid. 1677), the history of the decline of the Empire up to Charlemagne and of the struggle between emperors and popes from the Carolingian age up to 1356 (ibid. 1679), the history of the great Western Schism (ibid. 1678), of Lutheranism (ibid. 1680) and of Calvinism (ibid. 1682). Deeply elaborated is the work of the Dominican Natale Alexandre (d. 1724; v.), entitled Selecta historiae ecclesiasticae capita etc. in 24 vols., which reaches as far as the Council of Trent, and to which 6 further vols. on the sacred history of the Old Testament were later added. The work, however, was placed on the Index by Pope Innocent XI for its Gallican tendencies and for the lively opposition that it at times displays against Rome. The new edition, corrected by the regular cleric Roncaglia (9 vols. in folio, Lucca 1734), is not included in the Index. Another edition with notes was also edited in Lucca in 1749 by the celebrated archbishop G. D. Mansi. Continued by an anonymous author who added two further volumes to it, it was reprinted in Venice in 1778. For cultured people of every condition there was written the history of the C[hurch], from the Ascension of Christ to the year 1414, in 20 vols. by Claude Fleury (1640-1723), printed in Paris between 1691 and 1720. Unlike Alexandre, Fleury is an elegant and florid narrator; he therefore had many admirers, some censors (he was a moderate Gallican) and several continuators. Among the most eminent French historians must be numbered the secular priest Louis-Sébastien Le Nain de Tillemont (1637-98), with his Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire ecclésiastique des six premiers siècles (16 vols., Paris 1693-1712), in which the most important texts are coordinated, brought together and illustrated by a critical commentary. This work is in part completed by his other Histoire des empereurs et des autres princes qui ont regné durant les six premiers siècles de l'Eglise (6 vols., ibid. 1693-1712). A powerful work of critical research on the history of the dioceses of France was the one undertaken by Denis de Sainte-Marthe: Gallia Christiana in provincias ecclesiasticas distribuita (ibid. 1715-25), of which he composed the first three volumes and which others then continued; it was later published anew subsequently. L. Duchesne, Fastes épiscopaux de l'ancienne Gaule (3 vols., 2nd ed., ibid. 1907-15) composed "as it were a revision of the Gallia sacra as regards the most ancient age of the episcopal lists." A new series with the title Gallia christiana novissima was instead published by J. H. Albanès and U. Chevalier (ibid. 1895-1911). The bishop of Meaux, Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet (1627-1704), must be remembered for his Discours sur l'histoire universelle (ibid. 1681), a kind of compendium of world history from the origins to Charlemagne, which constitutes the first modern Catholic attempt at a philosophy of history. Historical in character is also his Histoire des variations des églises protestantes (1688), which constitutes an interesting and often profound inquiry into the history of the Waldensians, the Albigensians, the Wycliffites, the Hussites, the Lutherans and the Calvinists. Of far lesser value are the historians of the C[hurch] of the 18th century; they lack criticism, precision and study of the sources. First to be remembered is François-Timoléon, abbot of Choisy (d. 1724), who wrote a Histoire de l'Eglise (ibid. 1706 ff.) in 11 vols. in 4to. It is also worth remembering Gabriel Ducreux for his Les siècles chrétiens (9 vols., in 8vo, ibid. 1775). Very widespread, because of its easy readability, was the Histoire de l'Eglise (24 vols. in 12mo, ibid. 1778-90) of Bérault-Bercastel S. I. (1722-94), which had many translators and continuators. The historians of the first half of the 19th century likewise remained inferior to those of the 17th.

In France there are indeed very widespread historical works, but they are in general devoid of originality and of criticism. Toward the middle of the century, however, there was a notable improvement, especially in works of a particular character. Readers and translations were also had by the Histoire universelle de l'Eglise catholique (29 vols. in 8vo, 3rd ed., Paris 1842-49) of the abbot R. F. Rohrbacher (1789-1856), which from the origins reached as far as 1852. It was continued by J.-L. Fèvre up to 1872 (ibid. 1878-83). Of lesser value is the Histoire générale de l'Eglise of J. E. Darras (d. 1878), continued by J. Bareille and finished by J.-L. Fèvre: in 24 vols. in 8vo, it reaches as far as 1846 (ibid. 1862-89). Less extensive is the Histoire de l'Eglise (6 vols., ibid. 1870-89) of Vladimir Guettée. Among the recent French historians of the C[hurch] must be remembered: P. Allard, B. Aubé. True innovators in the various branches of the history of the C[hurch] were Louis Duchesne (1843-1922), Pierre Batiffol (d. 1929) and the Benedictine Germain Morin (d. 1946), who deservedly attained world fame. The best Catholic historians now collaborate on the Histoire de l'Eglise depuis les origines jusqu'à nos jours, directed by A. Fliche and V. Martin (Paris 1934 ff.). Particular mention deserves the school of Louvain (G. Kurth) and the Revue d'histoire ecclésiastique, founded in 1900 by A. Cauchie, the College of the Bollandists (v.) and the abbey of Maredsous with the Revue bénédictine and, for monastic history, Ursmer Berlière (d. 1932). Lastly, mention should be made of the DHG, in the course of publication, Paris, begun in 1909, but vol. I bears the date 1912 ff.

c) The historiography of the C[hurch] in Germany. — The first regular chairs of Church History were held in the Protestant universities, which, starting from the middle of the 17th century, became progressively more numerous. Johann Lorenz Mosheim (1694-1755) is normally considered the father of modern historiography of the C[hurch]. Especially for his four books Institutionum Historiae ecclesiasticae antiquae et recentis (Helmstedt 1755). But the most widespread history of the C[hurch] of this period is the Christliche Kirchengeschichte of his pupil I. M. Schröckh (d. 1808; 45 vols., Leipzig 1786-1812). In the 19th century A. Neander (d. 1850), under the influence of Schleiermacher, gave of the history of the C[hurch] an exposition full of feeling founded on a good knowledge of the sources, indicating in the C[hurch] of Christ the proof of divine power (Geschichte der christlichen Religion und Kirche, 5 vols., Hamburg 1825-45; the VI, ibid. 1852). In general, however, the anti-Catholic prejudice prevails in Protestant historians, which leads them even to the most unjustified accusations. But German historiography soon allowed itself to be overwhelmed by the rationalist critical tendency represented in particular by the Tübingen school, whose major representative was F. Chr. Baur (d. 1860). From it A. Ritschl broke away, who had among his disciples the most illustrious representatives of the more recent critical school, such as R. A. Lipsius, Hilgenfeld, and particularly A. Harnack. The principal field of this school is the history of the origins of dogmas and of ancient Christian literature (cf. the collection Texte und Untersuchungen and the periodical Neues Archiv). Of the Reformed Protestant tendency mention must be made of J. J. Herzog, founder of the Realencyklopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche, a work which in its third edition, directed by A. Hauck, has gathered and united together the various Protestant currents. A pupil of Ritschl may also be considered E. Troeltsch, author of Die Soziallehren der christlichen Kirchen (Tübingen 1912).

In the Catholic universities, on the other hand, the study of history was not cultivated until the course of the 18th century, because of the traditional orientation of the teaching that persisted in them. Only following the reform of studies carried out by Maria Theresa (1752-73) was the history of the Church, definitively separated from profane history, raised to the rank of an independent discipline. The works of L. A. Muratori contributed to promoting its development; however, rather than adhering to rigorous critical method, the majority of historians of the Church allowed themselves to be influenced by the atheistic or at least anti-Christian movement of the Enlightenment. Even the manual of M. Dannenmayr (d. 1805), Institutiones historiae ecclesiasticae N. T. (Vienna 1788 and 1806), reflects this tendency. At the beginning of the 19th century, on the contrary, in the atmosphere of the general Catholic restoration, and above all under the influence of Romanticism, the history of the Church was likewise treated with greater zeal and better method. Count Frederick Leopold of Stolberg (d. 1819) opened a new era with his Geschichte der Religion Jesu Christi, in 15 vols. in 8°, published at Hamburg and Vienna between 1807 and 1818. To the new impulse given by this work is partly to be attributed the Kirchengeschichte of Theodore Katerkamp (d. 1834), a work full of taste and mature judgment which in 5 vols. narrates the history of the Church from its origins to 1153 (Münster 1823-34). Among the authors who particularly acquired merit in deepening and perfecting the studies of the history of the Church among Catholics of the 19th century, mention must be made of J. A. Möhler (d. 1838), and above all Ignaz Döllinger (d. 1890), the greatest of the Catholic historians of the Church of the 19th century in Germany, whose Lehrbuch der Kirchengeschichte in 2 vols. (Ratisbon 1836; 2nd ed., ibid. 1843), is distinguished for learning and is a fundamental work. As a Catholic response to Ranke's history of the age of the Reformation, the same Döllinger wrote: Die Reformation: Ihre Entwicklung und ihre Wirkungen im Anfange des lutherischen Bekenntnisses (3 vols., Ratisbon 1846-48). The work Die Papstfabeln des M. A. (Munich 1863) instead marked the beginning of his later break with the Church. Alongside K. Riffel, J. I. Ritter, I. Alzog, P. Gams, mention is to be made of K. J. Hefele, bishop of Rottenburg (d. 1893), whose History of the councils, continued by J. Hergenröther and by A. Knöpfler, marks one of the greatest and most enduring undertakings of Catholic historiography of the Church in the 19th century (translated and extensively annotated by H. Leclercq, so far 10 tomes, Paris 1907-38). Cardinal J. Hergenröther (d. 1891) wrote among other things an extensive manual of the history of the Church in 3 vols. (Freiburg 1876-1880), recast a first time by Kirsch, and then a second time by the same and by others but still incomplete (Freiburg im Br. 1930 ff.); in its time it represented the last word of scholarship. At the beginning of the 20th century the historiography of the Church presents in all fields a renewed and lively activity of research. The most important among the German scholars already deceased are: F. Janssen (d. 1891), F. X. Krauss (d. 1901), H. S. Denifle O. P. (d. 1905), Fr. X. Funk (d. 1905), F. Greving (d. 1919), A. Knöpfler (d. 1921), L. Pastor (d. 1928), N. Paulus (d. 1930), Cardinal Fr. Ehrle S. I. (d. 1934), H. Finke (d. 1938), A. Ehrhard (d. 1940), K. Bihlmeyer (d. 1942), G. Schnürer and many others.

d) The historiography of the Church in Italy - In the age of Humanism, of the Renaissance and of the Counter-Reformation in Italy, studies of the history of the Church had a particular development, especially in the archaeological field (e.g. O. Panvinio and A. Bosio) and in that of specialized research. Besides the already mentioned Cardinal Baronio, who opened the way for all subsequent studies (cf. A. Walz, Studi storiografici, Rome 1940), particular mention is deserved by: the cardinals Noris, Bona, Sforza Pallavicino (1607-67); the latter with his Historia del Concilio di Trento (ibid. 1656-57) did far more than a confutation of the work of fra' Paolo Sarpi. F. Ughelli (v.) Cistercian abbot (d. 1670) in the 9 vols. of his Italia Sacra sive de episcopis Italiae et insularum adiacentium (ibid. 1644-62) set out to give, through a reasoned catalogue of the bishops, information about the Italian dioceses; a work which, although antiquated, still renders useful service, particularly in the second edition enlarged and corrected by I. Coleti in 1717-33 in 10 tomes, 8 vols. It served as a model for the analogous publications made in France and in Spain. In the 18th century Italy is again at the forefront in the field of the historiography of the Church, above all for critical research and editions of the sources, in which L. A. Muratori (1672-1750) distinguished himself. In the Antiquitates Italicae medii aevi (Milan 1738-42), Muratori collected his studies on the constitutions, the ideas, the uses and the customs of Italy from the 5th to the 18th century. In the Annali d'Italia, dal principio dell'era volgare sino all'anno 1749 (Venice 1747-49), which were continued by others down to our century, Muratori surpassed even the best annalists. Alongside these two great works stand very numerous minor studies and many editions, the most famous of which is that of the Rerum Italicarum Scriptores ab anno Christi 500-1500 (25 vols., Milan 1723-51; new ed. directed by G. Carducci, V. Fiorini, P. Fedele, ed. N. Zanichelli, Bologna, printed at Città di Castello 1903 ff.). In this work Muratori placed the Italian chroniclers of the Middle Ages at the disposal of scholars and was the model for other great national collections (cf. G. Bertoni, Il concetto della storia e l'opera storiografica di L. A. Muratori, Modena 1922). Immediately after the works of Muratori came the Sacrorum Conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio of G. D. Mansi (d. 1769), archbishop of Lucca (31 vols., Venice 1759 ff.), a very extensive collection of documents and information on all the councils up to the year 1439, richer than the previous collections of Labbe and of Hardouin. It is not to be denied that the precision is inferior to the collector's zeal of the prolific writer, but his work is still useful today. Other writers of the history of the Church were the brothers B. and G. Ballerini, A. Gallandi, F. Bianchini, F. A. Zaccaria, Scipione Maffei, the famous historian of literature G. Tiraboschi (1731-94), the two Orientalists educated in Rome, Leone Allazio and G. S. Assemani. The Dominican cardinal G. A. Orsi wrote a Historia ecclesiastica in 20 vols. (Rome 1746-61), continued by F. A. Becchetti O. P. (17 vols., ibid. 1770 ff.). The Oratorian C. Saccarelli composed a Historia ecclesiastica per annos digesta variisque observationibus illustrata in 25 vols. (ibid. 1770 ff.). The Augustinian L. Berti wrote a Breviarium historiae ecclesiasticae (Venice 1761, 1768, Vienna 1774, Augsburg 1762), 3 vols. of Dissertationes historicae (Florence 1753, Augsburg 1761, Prague 1768). Italian historiographical investigation of the 18th century was continued also in the 19th century. Research and editions of sources and texts in the field of ecclesiastical history and patrology come especially from the great libraries and archives, first of all the Vatican Library, the Vatican Archive, and the Ambrosiana, where a great scholarly tradition prevailed. The Cistercian abbot Angelo Fumagalli (d. 1804) wrote a classic book: Delle istituzioni diplomatiche. Gaetano Marini (d. 1815) worked in the same field: I papiri diplomatici. Agostino Theiner (d. 1874), an Oratorian, continued Baronius's Annali, 3 vols., published editions of sources for the ecclesiastical history of Hungary, Poland, Ireland, etc., works on the ecclesiastical state, Codex dominii temporalis Apostolicae Sedis, the history of Pope Clement XIV, Acta genuina Concilii Tridentini and other works. Also in the field of patrology and liturgy the librarians of the Vaticana and Ambrosiana conducted great historical investigations and produced editions. Cardinal Angelo Mai (d. 1854) published an immense quantity of unpublished texts concerning classical and Christian literature. Cardinal Mai's work was continued by G. Cozza-Luzi (d. 1905). In G. B. De Rossi (d. 1894) we have the creator of Christian archaeological science. Much material for ecclesiastical history is offered by the bulletins of local history of the individual Italian provinces starting from 1870 and particularly the Archivio della società romana di storia patria. Moreover, the numerous and able cultivators of local histories have brought most precious contributions. Particular mention then deserves the work of F. Lanzoni, Le diocesi d'Italia dalle origini al principio del sec. VI (a. 604; 2 vols., Faenza 1927); it is by now fundamental for the much-discussed period it covers. Among the numerous recently published works, one cannot forget the Italian version, directed by A. P. Frutaz, of the Storia della C. dalle origini ai giorni nostri published in French under the direction of A. Fliche and V. Martin (I, 2nd ed., Turin 1942; II-VII, ibid. 1938 ff.; in the original 10 vols. have appeared so far) for its numerous additions, bibliographical supplements and rich consultation indexes. One must also remember the Rivista di storia della C. in Italia, begun in Rome in 1947.

e) Spain. - Spain possesses an excellent source of information in the España sagrada of E. Flórez (Madrid 1747) which, with its continuators, reaches 51 volumes. Worthy of note are: Vicente de la Fuente (d. 1889): Historia eclesiástica de España, and the work of the same name, but more recent, by Fr. Z. García Villada, S. I.; the great editions of Faustino Arévalo (d. 1824), for example of the works of St. Isidore, etc.; and M. Menéndez y Pelayo (d. 1912) with his: Historia de los heterodoxos españoles (3 vols., 2nd ed., Madrid 1917). For Spanish ecclesiastical historiography cf. P. Kehr, Papsturkunden in Spanien. Vorarbeiten zur Hispania Pontificia (Berlin 1926).

f) England. - One may recall as historians of the C. G. Daniel (d. 1823), G. Lingard (d. 1851), who wrote a good work on the ancient history of the Anglo-Saxon C., and the famous editor J. Stevenson (d. 1895).

Lucchesio Spätling

V. CHURCH AND STATE.

Very difficult, as has already been seen above, were the relations between nascent Christianity and the Jewish national State; but they were no less difficult with the Roman Empire, as soon as the latter came to know of its existence. Like the other empires of antiquity, the Roman Empire could not admit a distinction between political and religious authority: this came only with Christianity. The empire was in itself a sacred thing, and sacred (Augustus) was its head: one swore in his name and his image was made an object of worship. It was of no avail for the first Christian writers to emphasize, in the footsteps of St. Paul, their own loyalism, because the teaching that one must obey God rather than men remained superior to every other human concern, while the empire did not admit laws of an order higher than its own.

A first definitive settlement of relations between the two parties came with the edict of Constantine and Licinius (313), which made a benevolent tolerance programmatic for the empire, a tolerance that soon changed into open favor. Proof of this was seen in the erection of sacred buildings, in copious donations of goods, in protection of persons, in the granting of real and personal privileges, to which corresponded a progressive disfavor toward the ancient cults. In the 5th century Christianity is in fact the religion of the Roman State, which was bending ever more each day toward Caesarism (v.). It was precisely in the face of this tendency that Pope Gelasius (492-96) launched a programmatic observation to the emperor of the East: «Two there are, august emperor, by which the world is governed: the sacred authority of the pontiffs and the royal power, and in these the weight of the priests is so much the more serious, inasmuch as they will have to render account even for the kings of men in the divine judgment. For you know well that, although you are superior to the human race in dignity, yet you devoutly bow your neck to the presidents of divine things and await from them the causes of your salvation» (PL 70, 42). These words and the whole content of the letter constituted thereafter throughout the Middle Ages the most explicit argument for the theoretical-practical formulation of the doctrine of the relations between C. and State. For if indeed it seemed that the new barbarian kingdoms tended to absorb the C. into the State in order to use it in the development of their institutions, and that the genuine juridical concept of mutual relations was obscured with the progress of feudalism, it is true nonetheless that the C. continued to affirm them to the point of making them triumph anew through the investiture controversy. To clarify them, recourse was had to similitudes and the corresponding explanations, such as that of the relations between soul and body, between moon and sun, and appeal was made to the two evangelical swords (Lk. 22, 38). The most effective formulator was this time Innocent III (d. 1216); indeed he wrote concerning a dispute between the kings of France and England: «We do not intend to judge concerning the fief that belongs to his judgment (king of France)... but to decree concerning the sin, over which the censure undoubtedly belongs to us, which we can and must exercise against any criminal sin to recall the sinner from vice to virtue, from error to truth, and especially when one sins against the peace that is the bond of charity» (c. 13, X, 2, 1). Therefore the pontifical authority extends over temporal things ratione peccati, that is, when morality is involved, whether in the theoretical or in the practical field. Innocent III also develops in this regard the similitude dear to the Middle Ages; indeed he wrote to Alexius emperor of Constantinople: «You should have known that God made two great luminaries in the firmament of heaven: the greater luminary to preside over the day, the lesser luminary to preside over the night; both great, but one greater, because by the name of heaven is designated the C. ... For the firmament of heaven, that is of the universal C., God made two great luminaries, that is, he instituted two great dignities, namely the pontifical authority and the royal power. But the one that presides over the days, that is over spiritual things, is greater than the one that presides over the nights, that is over temporal things, which is lesser; so that it may be known that as great as the difference between the sun and the moon, so great is the difference between pontiffs and kings" (c. 6, X, 1, 33). Naturally, in order to evaluate the papal assertion correctly, it is well to remember that he speaks according to the Ptolemaic system.

With the development of juridical ideas and with the decline of the medieval empire, the thought of the pontiffs takes on more vigorous precision. Boniface VIII (d. 1303) in the bull Unam sanctam, explaining the Gospel fact of the two swords, could write, repeating moreover what St. Bernard had already written (De consid., IV, 3): "Whoever should dare to deny that the temporal sword is in the power of Peter would pay little heed to the word of the Lord: Put thy sword back into its sheath (Mt. 26, 52). The two swords, the spiritual and the temporal, are therefore in the power of the C.: the first is wielded by the C., the second for the C., the first by the priests, the second by kings and warriors according to the will and permission of the priest. Therefore one of these swords must be subject to the other, the temporal authority must be subject to the spiritual authority" (c. 1, VIII, 1, Extr. comm.). Since the swords are two, the Pope recognizes the two authorities as distinct from one another, but when speaking of their mutual relations he recognizes the subordination of the one to the other, as moreover no one had dared to contest, though perhaps not using such vigorous phrases. In his turn Pope John XXII (d. 1334) could maintain that, the empire being in fact vacant, it fell to him to exercise its rights.

At this time, however, alongside the traditional conception of the theologians and jurists, two opposing currents developed: one of those theologians who accentuate the dependence of civil authority on ecclesiastical authority; it found adherents down to about the end of the 16th century; the other of those jurists who, like Marsilius of Padua (v.), claimed for the imperial authority, conceived according to classical criteria, superiority over the C. It was certainly this second current that, while adapting itself to the particular conceptions of individual treatise-writers, exercised the greatest influence on the movement of ideas in the following age; nor was the influence of Roman law certainly extraneous to it.

It is therefore understandable that when St. Robert Bellarmine, in the polemic against the Protestants and Anglicans, set forth his doctrine of indirect power, he encountered the opposition of the two opposing tendencies, so as to have against himself Sixtus V himself, to whom it seemed that he limited too much the rights of the C., and to arouse the wrath of the regalists of whatever confession they belonged to. Bellarmine's doctrine was in the end nothing but a more up-to-date exposition of the medieval doctrine.

Starting from the principle that the end of the C. (that is, of leading to eternal life by using the means assigned by Christ) is by nature superior to that of the State, which is to attain temporal happiness, he concludes that the State is subordinate to the C. However, since the two societies are both willed by God as sovereign, such subordination cannot be direct and absolute, but only accidental and indirect, and this implies that the attainment of the lower end must in no way hinder the attainment of the higher end, according to the saying of the Savior: "What does it profit a man if he gain the whole world, if he then suffer the loss of his soul?" (Mt. 16, 26); indeed the State, insofar as it is necessary, must furnish the C. with the means that are in its power for the attainment of its supernatural end, and correlatively the C. has the power to remove the obstacles that the State may place in its way, to demand from it that help of which it may eventually have need, indeed to settle by its own authority the conflicts that might arise on the part of the State itself. In this complex of rights of the C. with regard to the State consists precisely its indirect power over temporal things, which is not exercised for a temporal end, but for a supernatural end, and insofar as temporal things come accidentally to interfere in spiritual matters. In the end Bellarmine was doing nothing but expounding in other words the thought of Innocent III.

It must be borne in mind, however, that these accidentally spiritual things must be kept quite distinct from those that are called res mixtae, and that as such, though under a different aspect, are by their nature at once spiritual and temporal, such as the education of youth and marriage; these indeed, if they concern the State, concern directly and particularly the C. and are subject to it by direct power.

This doctrine, which was amply expounded also by Bañez and Suarez, was formulated at a highly critical moment. Since the time of the Councils of Constance and Basel, the interference of princes in ecclesiastical affairs had been active: the national spirit in relations with the supreme ecclesiastical authority grew ever stronger, complaints were publicly raised against it. The Protestant revolution did more: it recognized in princes the ius reformandi, which meant in practice the right to impose in their own territory the religious confession of their liking and to regulate its discipline. Less radical, the Catholic princes claimed to have the right to keep watch over the internal course of the C. in their State, and to defend themselves against what they considered abuses and pretensions of the Roman Curia, in practice limiting the freedom of the C.; the most clamorous episode was the proclamation of the liberties of the Gallican C. in 1682, in which every indirect power was forthwith opposed. Instead, those jurisdictionalist doctrines came to be taught which curtailed to the advantage of princes the freedom of the C., particularly in matters of ecclesiastical property, of benefices, of free communication with Rome, ever more widening the interference of the State in the government and discipline of the C. itself; it was therefore necessary to establish by means of negotiations and concordats (v.) the limits of the civil power that still proclaimed itself Catholic.

With the principles of the French Revolution it was intended to reduce religion to a purely private and personal affair and the C. to a de facto institution toward which the State, the sole authority in point of law, had to regulate itself by its own arbitrary will and according to its interests: indeed it, in the name of freedom of conscience, had to proclaim itself indifferent in matters of religion, reserving the right to combat it at the moment when it deemed it harmful. There was therefore proposed as an opportune and legitimate principle of government the maxim of the more or less radical separation of the C. from the State, a maxim which, if it can seem the lesser evil where different religious confessions contend for predominance and the government is not held by Catholics, cannot but appear insulting toward God where Catholicism has the preponderance, and therefore Pius X proclaimed it "most false and supremely pernicious" (epist. Vehementer nos, 11 Feb. 1906).

The doctrine of the C. in its relations with the State is sculpturally expounded by Leo XIII: "All that in the world is in any way sacred, all that regards the salvation of souls or the worship of God, or that is such by its own nature, or by the end to which it is directed (and here certainly the Pontiff intends to refer to indirect power), falls under the jurisdiction of the C. All the other things, moreover, that are comprised among civil and political matters, it is just that they be subject to the civil authority, since Jesus Christ commanded that there be rendered to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's" (enc. Immortale Dei, 1 Nov. 1885).

Mario Castellano-Pio Ciprotti

VI. POSIZIONE GIURIDICA DELLA C. FINO A GIUSTIDIANO
From the numerous literary sources, from imperial decrees and from archaeological evidence it emerges incontestably that in the pre-Constantinian age, certainly from the beginning of the 3rd century, there effectively existed an ecclesiastical ownership of immovable property, that is, of buildings of worship and of cemeteries no longer private, as in the first two centuries, but belonging to the Christian community.

Already Lampridius, in the biography of Alexander Severus (222-35) included in the Historia Augusta (ch. 49), recounts that in a property dispute between the guild of innkeepers ("popinari") and the Christian community of Rome, over the possession of a plot of land that had previously been part of the public domain and on which the Christians wished to erect a sacred building, the emperor rejected the claims of the innkeepers and decided the dispute in favor of the Christians. This imperial concession to exploit a plot of land already belonging to the domain is clear proof that the Roman public authority itself recognized in the Christian associations the capacity to dispose legally of real property. Such capacity is also confirmed by a rescript of the emperor Gallienus with which, around 260, he revoked the edict of persecution issued by his father Valerian and restored to the Christians the places dedicated to religious worship and the cemeteries (cf. Eusebius, Historia eccl., VII, 13). To the Christian community of Rome there belonged, for example, from the early years of the 3rd century, the cemetery of Callistus on the Appian Way, as clearly emerges from a passage of the Philosophumena (IX, 12); to the Christian community of Dura Europos there belonged the "domus ecclesiae" that has recently been excavated and that has also preserved a baptistery decorated with paintings certainly earlier than 256.

That being stated, the question naturally arises: under what legal form could a property of the Church not only be constituted but also be recognized by the State, when it is known that Christianity in the pre-Constantinian age was officially proscribed and from time to time even atrociously persecuted?

Various hypotheses have been proposed to resolve this question and eliminate this difficulty which, at least in appearance, seems almost insurmountable. Here are the principal ones:

1) De Rossi believed he had found the solution to it in a particularity of the legislation on associations. Immovable property would not have belonged directly to the C., but to certain associations of poor people whose main purpose was to procure for themselves a suitable burial ("collegia tenuiorum"). Such associations were formed in every city, nor for their existence was a special authorization from the public authority required. The Christian communities would easily have taken refuge under the shield of the right granted to such collegia.

2) Monti and De Roberti developed De Rossi's theory, maintaining however that the Christians organized themselves into «collegia tenuiorum» not as a subterfuge, but legally, since the Christian associations would have derived the justification for their existence from that general presumption of lawfulness in favor of all associations that si fossero costituite in seguito all'emanazione di un senatoconulto a vantaggio dei « tenuiores ».

3) Bandini, taking up a hypothesis timidly advanced by Mommsen and Liebenam, held that, since the "collegia tenuiorum" could assume the most varied forms and have purposes very similar to those of modern mutual aid societies, the Christian associations, although not funerary associations, were nevertheless considered legally lawful precisely because of this mutual aid purpose.

4) Duchesne has proposed two entirely different solutions: he held, that is, that the Church possessed immovable property either by tolerance or by recognition, that is, without any subterfuge, without any legal "fictio."

5) Waltzing developed Duchesne's theory of toleration: the Christian communities would not have had legal personality, they would have been "de facto" associations that developed almost on the margins of the law, following a tacit permission to live, and they would have enjoyed their property during periods of calm.

6) Krüger, on the other hand, took up Duchesne's theory of recognition by the State, which would have conferred on the Christian associations the special authorization they would have needed, since they were not « collegia tenuiorum ».

7) Marucchi, later followed by Neubecker, proposed a new solution: the Church would have owned immovable property through intermediaries. Certain private citizens would have held it in its name, and before the civil authority they would have been the owners.

8) Roberti has denied the problem altogether, since he did not admit that in the pre-Constantinian age the Church possessed movable and immovable goods legally registered in the name of the Christian communities. In any case, immovable property could not have belonged to the Church, since it could not be registered in the name of bodies not recognized by the State.

9) Volterra has proposed that the legal existence of the Christian associations was founded on the concession granted by the State to the legal communities that enjoyed full recognition throughout the Empire. Roman magistrates would have considered applicable to the Christian associations the edicts that granted the Jews the right of assembly and of association.

Despite their ingenuity, these theories do not appear to solve the problem exhaustively or to explain the attitude of the political authority toward ecclesiastical property.

The most plausible solution seems to be the one that comes from considering the Christian communities capable of constituting themselves freely like the other associations, given that — according to what Schnorr Von Carolsfeld has recently demonstrated — no general legal provision ever intervened, either during the republican period or during the imperial period, that limited to citizens the faculty of associating. The Christian communities therefore had no need to resort to subterfuges — such as hiding under the legal form of the "collegia tenuiorum" — nor to present themselves as mere "de facto" associations, as if they had developed on the margins of the law and were therefore tolerated by the State. Being able to associate legally, it is clear that they could enjoy all the rights of the collectivity and therefore also possess collectively, not corporatively, since, as Albertario has well brought to light, that figure of juridical person that is the "corporation" came to be determined only in post-classical Justinianic law. In the preceding age all aggregates of public and private law constituted only collectivities of natural persons and were never considered as abstract units, that is, as juridical subjects distinct and independent from the natural persons of whom they were composed.

It must nevertheless be noted that although Christian associations, in the eyes of the State, passed for simple aggregates of persons and in this respect could hold property, they were nonetheless animated by an internal corporate spirit and hinged upon foundations essentially different from those of other associations.

This inner corporate spirit, by which the Church considered itself a perpetual juridical person, did not appear explicitly in the first three centuries, but in the Justinianic period, so much so that the provisions contained in the Code of Justinian and in the Novels aimed only, as Roberti says, at "codifying a state of fact, what was in the Christian conscience a principle of law" (v. BENI ECCLESIASTICI; COLLEGIA FUNERATICA).

Giuseppe Bovini

B) THE CHURCH AS A BUILDING

I. CANON LAW AND ITALIAN LAW.

I. CANON LAW

The term church, in the sense of temple, denotes a sacred building dedicated to divine worship with the principal purpose of serving all the faithful for the public exercise of divine worship (CIC, can. 1161). This purpose distinguishes the church from the oratory, which is destined principally not to the use of all the faithful, but of a college, an institute, a family or a private individual (can. 1188).

Although the Apostles, in the earliest times, did not have churches properly so called, there is nevertheless no doubt that even in the apostolic age certain places were destined for the gatherings of Christians for the exercise of worship, as St. Paul testifies (I Cor. 11:22). Modest and hidden during the period of the persecutions were the so-called "domus ecclesiae," although there was no lack of true public churches, which were destroyed in the Diocletian persecution only to rise again splendidly afterward, above all through the work of Constantine. Many pagan temples were transformed into Christian churches, which at first had the form of a cross oriented toward the east and later the most diverse architectural forms.

The juridical discipline of churches was formed at first in a fragmentary and rudimentary manner; then from the 5th century some hint of a unified discipline begins, which extends gradually until the 13th century, when we already find a series of fairly stable principles, especially on the relations between the church and its founder, on opening for worship, on the office of worship, on violation, and on immunity.

Can. 1162 § 1 provides that a church cannot be built without the express consent, given in writing, of the Ordinary, which consent cannot be given by the vicar general without a special mandate. Before giving his consent the Ordinary must examine whether there are the necessary means for the construction and preservation of the new church, as well as for the support of the ministers of worship and the other expenses relating thereto; he must hear the opinion of the rectors of nearby churches; and finally he must ensure that, in the construction of the church, the proper rules of sacred art are respected, keeping in mind tradition and sound modernity, according to the principles of the CIC and the norms given by Pius XI (cann. 1162 §§ 2-3, 1164; cf. also AAS, 24 [1932], p. 536 ff.). The church, before the divine offices are celebrated in it, must be consecrated by the Ordinary with determined solemnities or at least blessed; cathedrals must be dedicated to divine worship with solemn consecration and, as far as possible, so must collegiate, conventual and parish churches; churches of wood or iron or other metal may be blessed, but not consecrated (can. 1165 §§ 1, 3, 4). Churches which it is reasonably foreseen may, through necessity of circumstances, be turned to profane uses cannot be either blessed or consecrated (cann. 1165 § 2). The underground parts are also considered as parts of the church, and therefore they cannot be adapted as cinemas or parish theaters (Decr. auth. S. Rit. Congr., 3546). With the consecration of the church an altar must also be consecrated, namely the high altar, if it was not already so; and another secondary altar, provided it is fixed, if the high altar had already been consecrated on the occasion of the blessing of the church itself (can. 1165 § 5). The consecration of a church in which the altar was not at the same time consecrated would, however, be only illicit and not invalid (Decr. auth. S. Rit. Congr., 3409, 1).

Churches, consecrated or blessed, like all sacred places, are exempt from the jurisdiction of the civil authority, since there the free exercise of its jurisdictional power is reserved to the legitimate ecclesiastical authority (can. 1160).

The church does not lose its consecration or blessing except in the case in which it has been entirely destroyed, or the greater part of its walls has fallen, or it has been reduced by the Ordinary to profane use (can. 1170). After consecration the church can no longer serve for the exercise of divine worship unless it has first been consecrated or blessed anew.

Distinct from consecration is the pollution or violation of a church, that is, the contamination of its sacred character, which occurs when one of the following acts has been committed in it in a certain and notorious manner: homicide, to which suicide is equated; injurious and significant shedding of blood (unless the homicide or wounding occurs in legitimate self-defense); impious and sordid uses; burial of an unbeliever or of an excommunicate after the declaratory or condemnatory sentence (can. 1172 § 1). In a church contaminated in one of these ways, the divine offices cannot be celebrated, the Sacraments administered, or the dead buried, before its reconciliation has been provided for according to the rites described in the approved liturgical books (cann. 1173 § 1, 1174 § 1). The effect is immediate and can interrupt the Mass, if it has not yet reached the Canon. If the church was violated by the burial of an unbeliever or of an excommunicate, its reconciliation cannot take place unless the corpse has first been removed (can. 1175). If the violation of the church is doubtful, its reconciliation can be carried out "ad cautelam" (can. 1174 § 2).

For the effects of the interdict in relation to churches, v. INTERDETTO.

The sacred character of the church entails, on the one hand, the prohibition of carrying on in them commerce of any kind (even if it has a pious purpose), and every other act that does not befit the holiness of the place (can. 1178); on the other, the right of asylum (v. astuto).

Entry into churches to assist at the sacred rites must be free of charge; no contrary custom is admitted (can. 1181).

There are various categories of churches: archbasilica is the Constantinian one of the Most Holy Savior, today St. John Lateran; patriarchal are St. Peter's in the Vatican, St. Paul Outside the Walls, St. Mary Major, St. Lawrence in Agro Verano; major basilicas or minor basilicas; cathedral churches (patriarchal or primatial, metropolitan or simple cathedrals); abbatial churches; collegiate churches; parish churches; regular churches; "ricettizie" churches (v. RICETTIZIE, CHIESE); palatine churches (v. PALATINE, CHIESE E CAPPELLE); etc.

The administration of the goods destined for the maintenance, repair and embellishment of the church, as well as for the exercise of divine worship in it, belongs, unless it otherwise appears by virtue of a special title or a legitimate custom, to the bishop and the cathedral Chapter, or to the collegiate Chapter, and to the rector, according as the church is cathedral, collegiate or of another nature (can. 1182 § 1).

As regards the preservation and restoration of churches, can. 1186, after referring to particular customs and agreements as well as to the obligations arising from civil laws, provides that the burden of repairing the cathedral church falls successively: on the goods of the fabric, that is, on the patrimony, whether or not constituted as a juridical person, destined for the maintenance of the church and the expenses of worship, saving the part necessary for the celebration of divine worship and the ordinary administration of the church; on the bishop and the canons in proportion to their revenues, after deducting what is necessary for their dignified support; on the faithful of the diocese. The burden of repairing the parish church falls successively: on the goods of the fabric, as above; on the patron; on those who receive revenues from the church, in the measure established by the Ordinary in proportion to the revenues received; on the parishioners.

Pio Fedele

II. ITALIAN LAW

The Concordat allows all "public churches open for worship" to be recognized by the State as juridical persons (art. 29, lett. a), an expression that has given rise to various doubts as to its scope; cf. also arts. 6-8 of the law of 27 May 1929, no. 848, and art. 10 ff. of the regulation of 2 Dec. 1929, no. 2262.

Churches, moreover, like all buildings open for worship, are exempt from requisitions and occupations, subject, in cases of grave public necessity, to prior agreement with the Ordinary, or at least, if there is absolute urgency, to immediate notification to him. Likewise, except in cases of urgent necessity, the public force may not enter churches, in the exercise of its functions, without having given prior notice to the ecclesiastical authority; nor may demolition of churches open for worship be proceeded with, for any cause, except by prior agreement with this authority (arts. 9-10 of the Concordat). Pio Ciprotti — Salvatore Marali

II. CANONICAL-LITURGICAL PRESCRIPTIONS. SUMMARY:

I. Blessing of the first stone

II. Blessing and consecration. — III. Anniversary of the dedication. — IV. Reconciliation. — V. Kinds of churches. For the historical part, v. DEDICAZIONE.

I. BLESSING OF THE FIRST STONE

Before building a c. [church], the first stone of the foundations is blessed, into which a small case with a parchment is inserted to commemorate the event. The CIC (can. 1163) declares that this blessing belongs to those who have the faculty to bless sacred places in general; hence the rite is described in the Roman Pontifical (De benedict. et impositione primarii lapidis), if the one blessing is a bishop, and in the Roman Ritual (8, 36), if he is a simple priest. The blessing of the water is not necessary, if already if holy water is already available and if the one blessing is a priest (Rit. rom., loc. cit.); it is required if a bishop officiates (Pontif. Rom., loc. cit.). After this rite, the blessing of the place where the cross had been planted on the site of the future high altar is carried out first, then the stone itself is blessed, on whose faces, after the blessing, the bishop carves the cross with an iron point. Then he intones an antiphon with a psalm, and the bishop, assisted by the mason, lays the stone in its place, saying a prayer and then sprinkling it. Finally, he again sprinkles all the foundations, or the place where they will be laid, and closes the rite with the Veni creator Spiritus, and, if desired, with the Mass of the patron saint of the future church. The custom of planting the cross in the place of the altar and therefore of the church is, at least in the East, more than a gesture of devotion an act of jurisdiction, which signifies on whom the new church will depend (v. STAUNOPEGION).

It seems that the popes, in order to take possession of a church, sometimes sent the first stone itself (Callistus II, Epist., 150: PL 163, 1218).

II. BLESSING AND CONSECRATION

The ordinary minister of the consecration of a church is the diocesan bishop; by privilege also a cardinal, even if not a bishop (CIC, can. 239 § 1 n. 20), ubique terrarum, and a blessed abbot (CIC, can. 323 § 2) by right in the place of his jurisdiction, and by delegation in any other place. A simple priest cannot be delegated. The consecrator and the one who requests the consecration, as well as the people for whom the church is consecrated, must precede the consecration itself with a day of fasting (CIC, can. 1166 § 2; Pontif. Rom.: De eccl. dedicatione). The consecrator, if he is a bishop or cardinal (CIC, can. 239 § 1 n. 24), even though he consecrates outside the territory of his jurisdiction, may grant a year's indulgence to all those who visit the church on the day of the consecration itself (CIC, can. 1166 § 3). At the end of the function the consecrator must celebrate Mass; if he should be too tired (Pontif. Rom., loc. cit.), another priest may celebrate it. To omit the Mass for other reasons, not arising suddenly, is forbidden without a special apostolic indult (Decr. auth. S. Rit. Congr., 2866). It is preferable that the rite take place on a holy day of obligation (CIC, can. 1166 § 2; Pontif. Rom., loc. cit.). The rite of blessing is found in the Rituale Rom. (8, 27) and consists in an external and an internal aspersion of the church, interspersed with the litany of the saints, which is sung while entering the church. It concludes with the Mass, which, however, is not prescribed to be said by the one giving the blessing. The minister of the blessing is a simple priest, but with the permission of the bishop.

At the moment of the consecration or blessing of a church, a title is given to it, that is, the name of the Saint, or of the Divine Person, or of the Mystery in whose honor it is consecrated, and which adheres irrevocably to the church, as long as its consecration or blessing lasts (CIC, can. 1168 § 1): Decret. auth. S. Rit. Congr., 402; 2719; 3059). The title may also be chosen with the laying of the first stone (cf. Pontif. Rom.: De benedictione et impositione primarii lapidis, Rit. Rom., 8, 26, 4), and may be changed at the moment of the blessing or consecration (A. Blat, Comment. textus I. C. I. III De rebus, Rome 1923, p. 23), because only this gives immobility to the title (S. Many, Praelectiones de locis sacris, Paris 1904, p. 55). The blessed cannot be titulars of a church without an apostolic indult (CIC, can. 1168, § 3). The feast of the title must be celebrated every year with a common octave (CIC, can. 1168 § 2; Decr. auth. S. Rit. Congr. 4025, 1; Brev. Rom.: Additiones et variationes in rubricis generalibus 9, 2) and, if it is the cathedral, throughout the diocese by all those who use the diocesan calendar, as a double of the first class with a common octave. The titular must also be remembered in the Oremus of the common commemorations or suffrages, in the place that his dignity entails (Brev. Rom. Rubricae generale, 35, 1).

III. ANNIVERSARY OF THE DEDICATION

Among the principal local feasts is to be considered the anniversary of the dication (not of the blessing) of the church (CIC, can. 1167). It is considered a feast of the Lord, a double of the first class with an octave, and finds a place both in the Missale Romanum and in the Breviarium Romanum under the title of Commune dedicationis ecclesiae.

The feast, perhaps inspired by the Encaenia of the Jews, is of very ancient date in the liturgical tradition. The first mention is found for the anniversary of the dedication of the Constantinian Martyrion in Jerusalem, which lasted eight days (Sozomen, Hist. eccl., II, 26: PG 67, 1008 ff.). St. Gregory of Nazianzus has a sermon εἰς τὴν κατὴν κυριακὴν (PG 36, 608 ff.). St. Augustine has three sermons in dedicatione ecclesiae (PL 38, 1471 ff.), and likewise St. Caesarius of Arles (S. Caesarii opera omnia, ed. G. Morin, I, II, Maredsous 1937, p. 852 ff.).

The Leonine Sacramentary (ed. Ch. L. Feltoe, Cambridge 1896, p. 106) gives the indication: Prid. Kal. Oct. N(atale) Basilicae Angeli in Salaria, in which is found the classic ancient expression that designates anniversaries: Natale (cf. St. Augustine and St. Caesarius, loc. cit.). Other dedications remembered in the sacramentaries: Natale S. Mariae ad Martyres (Sacram. Greg., ed. H. A. Wilson, p. 73); Dedicatio Natalis S. Nicomedis (Sacram. Greg. ibid., p. 82). It must be held, however, that many feasts of saints in Rome owe their origin to the dedication of their respective churches; such, for example, are May 1, Sts. Philip and James, Aug. 1, St. Peter in Chains, Aug. 5, St. Mary ad Nives, celebrated even today as the dedication of St. Mary Major.

In ancient times the anniversary of the dedication of a church gave rise to popular feasts and fairs, as is gathered from St. Gregory the Great (Epist., XI, 76; I, 56) and from the German word Kirmes (a contraction of Kirche = church and Messe = Mass, feast), which today is equivalent to patronal feast or fair.

IV. RECONCILIATION

While a desecrated church (v. above) becomes a sacred place again only through consecration, for a violated church reconciliation is sufficient for the purpose. The CIC, having established the obligation (can. 1174) to provide promptly for reconciliation, and after prescribing (can. 1175) the removal of the corpse, if the violation occurred through the burial of an excommunicate or an unbeliever, distinguishes the reconciliation of a consecrated church from that of a church that is only blessed. The reconciliation of a blessed church can now be performed by the rector of the church or by any other priest with his at least presumed permission (can. 1176), using the rite prescribed in the Rituale romano 8, 28. The reconciliation of a consecrated church, according to CIC, can. 1176 § 2, with reference to can. 1156, is also within the competence of a simple priest, provided he is delegated; in case of grave and urgent necessity the delegation is presumed, at least for the rector of the church, who however remains under the obligation to notify the local Ordinary of the reconciliation that has taken place (CIC, can. 1196, § 3). For such a reconciliation the rite is prescribed in the Pontificale romano: De ecclesiae et coemeterii riconciliatione. CIC, can. 1177 is an adaptation of the prescriptions of the Rituale romano 8, 28, and of the Pontificale romano, loc. cit. to what has been said above. The prescription of the diversity of lustral water required by the two books remains, notwithstanding the extension to the simple priest of reconciling a consecrated church.

V. KINDS OF CHURCH

Cathedral (v.), metropolitan, primatial, patriarchal is the principal c. of the diocese, in which is found the cathedra or throne of the bishop, the metropolitan, the primate, or the patriarch. Abbatial is the c. of the abbey where the abbot's throne stands. Collegiate is the one officiated by a Chapter distinct from that of the cathedral. Parochial is the principal c. of the parish, where the baptistery is also found. Regular, conventual, religious is the one that belongs to a religious family, or has been entrusted to it in perpetuity. Rectory is the c. officiated by a priest dependent on the Ordinary; often these c. are entrusted to confraternities and the chaplain is their rector. Finally, succursal is the c. that depends on another, called the mother church. See also BASILICA.

Handbuch der Kath. Liturgik, 2 vols., Freiburg im Br. 1932 (see index); L. Barin, Catechismo liturgico, I, 9th ed., Rovigo 1945, pp. 181-201; A. Coelho, Corso di liturgia romana, Turin 1936; D.-E. Roulin, Nos Eglises, Paris 1938; R. B. Witte, Das katholische Gotteshaus, Mainz 1939; G. P. Kirsch, Gli edifici sacri nell'antichità, in Fliche-Martin-Fruta, III, pp. 539-63.

Salvatore Marsili

III. ART.

I. ARCHITECTURE

The construction history of the building destined for worship, the church, offers us the means to gather, along certain great organic lines, the long and vast evolution of this centuries-old theme, and to verify through this experience the possible ways in which architecture has responded to its functional requirements.

The organic principles under which the developments of the church type can be summarized are the following: a) longitudinal, axial (basilical) buildings: symmetrical with respect to a single axis; b) central and semicentral buildings: symmetrical with respect to two or more axes; c) buildings resulting from the association of the preceding systems.

Group a includes buildings with several naves arranged along longitudinal axes converging toward the end of the sacred building: the sanctuary, the altar. Group b includes sacred buildings symmetrically composed around a single center. Group c includes churches that have a front part with longitudinal development of type a, and a part, generally constituting the choir, transept, or presbytery, of a form symmetrical in itself, of type b, and this often developing at the end and as the external conclusion of the building in the tiburium or the dome. The compositional variants relating to each of these primary fundamental conceptions depend, in a strictly constructive and technical sense, on the relationship between the resistant frameworks of support and of distribution of the loads and forces proceeding from the covering of the spaces; that is, those deriving from the two great possible methods of covering, the trabeated, acting by weight vertically on the support, rigid (cut stone, blocks) or elastic (wood, iron, reinforced concrete) and therefore generally roof or flat coverings; and that of the vault and dome, in stone, in masonry, in elastic materials, determining lateral forces and consequent opposing reactions in various ways and forms of buttressing. These two constructional systems are sometimes associated and composed with one another.

1. In a more detailed examination, the buildings of group a, whether with heavy covering or with thrusting covering, can in turn be grouped, as far as the constructional organism is concerned, according to certain types fundamentally constant for every epoch and every place.

These types are the following: 1) on the basis of a hall: either rectangular or variously symmetrical with respect to two axes; 2) expanded at the head in the form of a T; 3) in the form of a commissa, Latin cross; 4) concluded in the apse and the sacrarium. As variants of the perimeter there is 5) the movement of niches inserted into the thickness of the pier or projecting from the line of the wall in the manner of expansions functioning as chapels and as buttressing in the case of vaulted spaces. These are the forms of the most ancient churches, in which we still glimpse the architectural plasticity of pagan halls but which were built independently in every region of Christendom throughout the Middle Ages and then gradually also during the prevalence of Gothic taste, especially in Tuscany and the Veneto, with a persistence, in these latter regions, that is maintained through the stylistic transformations down to the 16th and 17th centuries. And this type can also include the entire development of the churches of the Baroque period, especially

CHURCH - Basilical, longitudinal plan schemes and association of longitudinal and central systems: a b c d f g h more properly medieval forms; m Byzantine form; e the scheme of the 16th-and 17th-century nave; o Cistercian scheme; n p medieval and Byzantine scheme; q typical Renaissance and Baroque form; s scheme of S. Maria del Fiore (Florence); r t 15th-century basilical schemes (Certosa and cathedral of Pavia; S. Sebastiano of Siena).

TAB.II

the northern ones which, starting from a Borrominian layout (Propaganda Fide, Filippini, Madonna dei Sette Dolori, S. Carlino alle Quattro Fontane), develop the plastic and spatial theme through curvilinear or mixed perimeters. 1) A volumetric and spatial complication of this fundamental type of church with a single hall is constituted by the Roman conception of the 16th-century church (S. Spirito, by A. da Sangallo, S. Caterina dei Funari by Guidetti, S. Marcello, S. Maria in Via, etc.) and this again in the expansion of a transept (S. Maria di Monserrato, S. Gerolamo degli Schiavoni). 2) In the simplest organic development are considered the churches that at the head expand by means of two transverse expansions to form, before the apse, a transept. These are primitive forms of the 5th-6th century, frequent in Upper Italy (tab. I: a, b, c). 3) The cycle of organisms that, both in plan and in external volume, are composed on the symbolic sign of the Latin cross has examples in the Renaissance (Madonna del Calcinaio at Cortona, S. Maria di Provenzale at Siena, S. Maria degli Angeli at Siena, S. Giovanni Battista at Pistoia; (tab. I: d). 4) Traditional and constructional reasons make the basilical forms with three or more naves typical of the church. There are nevertheless also known churches with two naves side by side, but as an exception, in the Illyrian regions. Within the framework of the basilical forms, however, certain variants are discerned (tab. I: e, f, g, h, i); these forms, which in section solve the problem of illumination by means of the stepping down of the naves from the center toward the sides, are repeated, as regards planimetry, also in buildings having naves of equal height (S. Maria dell'Anima and S. Giacomo degli Spagnoli in Rome, cathedral of Perugia, cathedral of Pienza). 5) Churches in which the organism with three naves develops into the form of a Latin cross. A typical example is the cathedral of Pisa and S. Ciriaco of Ancona; analogous developments occur in the Renaissance, as in Brunelleschi's S. Spirito (tab. I: p, r, t).

2. Similarly the buildings of group b (buildings with a central plan) must be considered in relation to the two possible systems of heavy and vaulted covering. They develop from the elementary geometric forms, composing unitary volumes, variously articulated by means of niches or lean-to chapels (tab. II). The fundamental schemes mentioned above are rendered more complex by means of concentric, annular, radial solutions. We place in the group of axially symmetrical buildings the oblong semicentral forms; such are the elliptical forms so rich in interpretations in the Baroque (tab. II: d, h). As for the round form, a reference may be constituted by the pagan Roman buildings subsequently transformed for Catholic worship (SS. Cosma and Damiano, S. Teodoro, S. Maria ad Martyres-Pantheon). But in the search for Roman sources carried out in the Renaissance by artists attracted by the renewed classical culture and by the fascination of Roman antiquity, it is certain that the inspiration for new inventions must have been solicited by some of these evocative buildings, all the more attractive for the problem given the aesthetic conclusion of the dome. Let the memory of Brunelleschi's rotunda of the Angeli suffice, and the Albertian choir of the Annunziata in Florence. To a recreated vision arising from the profound assimilation of ancient forms and structures must be reconnected the symmetrical conceptions of Leonardo and Bramante.

Already from the medieval period the developments of these annular forms, with ambulatory, connectable not only to the memory of the Holy Sepulchre but also to the form of St. Constance, have examples in St. Donatus of Zara, in St. Sophia of Benevento, in the cathedral of Aachen, in the church of Charraoux and in a series of analogous Eastern buildings (cathedral of Bosra, St. George of Ezra, Sts. Sergius and Bacchus of Constantinople), in our St. Vitalis, in the Milanese St. Lawrence and in the church on Mount Gerizim, with singular returns in the Renaissance, in the researches insisting precisely on the round form in the projects of Peruzzi and Sangallo for St. John of the Florentines, of Fra Giocondo, of Labacco and of the Sammicheli construction of the Madonna di Campagna at Verona. Similarly the simple volume unfolding from the octagon finds, beyond the typical baptisterial adaptation, a specific application to worship in the 15th century: St. Mary of the Peace in Rome, the Madonna del Pozzo at Empoli, the Umiltà of Vitoni at Pistoia and the 16th-century Madonna di Macereto. The construction of buildings that resolve the volumetric and spatial problem by superimposing on a cubic base a dome variously raised on a cylindrical drum (tab. II: a) takes on a Byzantine imprint instead. This form has Renaissance developments in the Pazzi chapel, in the sacristy of St. Lawrence and again in the 16th century in the Sangallesque St. Mary of Loreto and in St. Mary Porta Paradiso, in the cathedral of Montefiascone by Sammicheli, in the Vignolesque church of Isola di Bolsena, in St. Joseph by Richini up to the Baroque church of St. Mary of the Pianto by Longhena.

The symbolic appeal of the cross, on the other hand, largely favors the developments of churches in the Christian East, although it has its precedents in the martyria and in the memoriae, and an Ambrosian epigraph in the church of St. Nazarius in Milan reminds us: « Forma crucis templum est, templum victoria Christi, sacra triumphalis signat imago locum ». In the Western tradition, cross forms are found at Ravenna in St. Cross, at Salona in the basilica. Cruciform martyria are at Padua, in St. Prosdocimus and St. Mary Mater Domini, at Vicenza in St. Teuteria and Tosca, at Rome in the oratory of the Cross. The unitary composition that can be inscribed in the pyramidal form, through its unfolding from a base zone with a cruciform plan and then delineating itself in elevation volumetrically in the symmetrical arms of the cross and then converging in the concluding term of a tiburium or a dome, constitutes by its compact unity an aesthetic ideal of the Renaissance (tab. II: p, q):

S. Sebastiano in Mantua by Alberti, the Madonna delle Carceri in Prato by Giuliano da Sangallo, the S. Biagio in Montepulciano by Antonio da Sangallo the Elder, the church of the Innocenti in Siena, and so on throughout the whole Cinquecento the Raphaelesque vision of S. Eligio and of the Chigi chapel and the Bramantesque S. Maria della Quercia, and still in the 17th century SS. Luca e Martina show us this insistence (tab. II: 9). The analogous theme is repeated for the trilobate or quadrilobate forms (exedras set against a central cubic core) as a development of the concept of the triconch cells more frequent in the religious architecture of Africa but taken up again in Byzantine architecture (S. Nicola at Nona), and made more complex in the concentric and annular systems of Asia Minor (church of Koricos), of Amida (Mesopotamia), of Rusapha (Sergiopolis, Syria), of Adrianople, of Pastischa (Philippopolis); and to this embryo, which has its magnificent development in S. Lorenzo in Milan, is linked the Bramantesque conception of the Bramantesque and Michelangelesque S. Peter's. It even determines the Bramantesque law of the Consolazione in Todi, of the choir of the Grazie in Milan, and, in later forms, of S. Maria del Belvedere in Città di Castello by A. Gabrielli (1685).

The insertion of the cross within a square perimeter (tab. II: n, p, r, s) and the consequent organic developments, whereby from the cubic base perimeter one passes through the interposition of internal cores to the cruciform external developments and then to the external conclusion of a dome, is a problem solved in Byzantine sacred architecture (v. BIZANTINA, ARTE). It is transformed in the Romanesque period (S. Satiro in Milan, S. Giusto in Trier, S. Germigny-des-Prés), it is translated into Renaissance forms in many Venetian churches (S. Giovanni Crisostomo) and generally in the translation of the Bramantesque symmetry of S. Celso, of S. Biagio della Pagnotta in Rome, and in the derivations in the church of the Vergine in Macerata, of S. Maria Nuova in Cortona, down to the latest applications even of the 17th century, in which the primitive Bramantesque solution becomes decoratively richer and more fanciful (e.g., S. Geremia in Venice, S. Alessandro in Milan and the Annunziata in Genoa by Alessi). From this initial constructive unity arise by summation, in an axial sense, all the great Byzantine churches, of which S. Marco in Venice offers us the closest image. An organic core that, even in its varying exterior formal cladding, remains constant in the great Venetian architectural tradition also during the Renaissance: S. Salvatore in Venice, S. Giustina and the cathedral of Padua. This concept of a radiation of elements that depart from central cores and with these recompose a new unity belongs to the vision of the Renaissance and has its apex in the Leonardesque conceptions and their realization in certain especially Lombard buildings (Crema, S. Maria della Croce; Milan, S. Maria della Passione; Siena, S. Sebastiano in Vallepiatta), and is favored by the imagination of the Baroque (Piedmontese architectures deriving from Guarini, the Salute in Venice).

3. The two systems a and b combine and associate with each other in church buildings, constituting the typical basilica with tiburio and with its own dome characteristic of the Italian architectural tradition (tab. II: q, r, s, t). This form is already foreshadowed in the Cistercian organism when the tiburio rises at the crossing of the naves (Casamari, Fossanova, Ferentino, Vercelli, Chiaravalle), but it also has its beginnings in the Roman period (cathedral of Pisa, original project of the cathedral of Siena, cathedral of Piacenza, cathedral of Ancona) and in the Lombard churches of S. Babila, S. Nazaro, S. Sempliciano, S. Pietro in Cieldoro, in Pavia in S. Michele, in Parma in the cathedral. This type has its triumph in the cathedral of Florence and remains in the Roman churches of the Renaissance and even later (S. Maria del Popolo, the church of the Gesù by Vignola, S. Maria in Vallicella, S. Giovanni dei Fiorentini, S. Ignazio, S. Carlo al Corso). It must moreover be linked to the transformation of the Bramantesque plan of S. Peter's into a longitudinal form through the studies of Raphael and of Giuliano da Sangallo, and it is completed in the Palladian composition of S. Giorgio and of the Redentore. Finally, one must consider the buildings that result from an axial arrangement of spaces, each of which has for itself a symmetrical unity (S. Maria in Campitelli, S. Atanasio dei Greci, S. Maria della Scala in Rome, the Scalzi in Venice).

In this typology, in which are summed up, on the basis of essential planimetric lines and geometric volumetric hints, the experiences of two millennia of religious architectural history, there is apparently revealed an immobility of characteristic functional types in which is reflected the perenniality of Catholic ritual and therefore the form of a tradition within which, nevertheless, the religious spirit lives and is transformed and evolves with infinite variety in times and places. How this spirit has dominated matter, to graduate spaces, to make them vibrant with light, with colors, with plastic artifices, is to be studied in the variants that the history of art grasps in the great historical-artistic cycles. Splendid in every age has been the house of God. Splendid in form in the human artifice of the invention of architectural plastic forms; splendid in materials: such were the marbles and stones of S. Peter's, of S. Paul's, of S. John's in Rome, such in the churches of Constantinople, illuminated with color; splendid also when the Franciscan rule of simplicity reaches splendor of beauty in the consonance and harmonious synthesis of the parts and of every element in the whole of the composition. Then the mantle of glory will be given by Giotto.

Vincenzo Fasolo

II. HISTORY

On the architectural character of the most ancient Christian churches, see what has been said on this subject in the entry BASILICA as well as in the entry ECCLESIASTICAL ARCHITECTURE and — for the churches of the East — in the entry BYZANTINE, ART. Here, in any case, it is appropriate to recall how, from the 4th century and, with greater definiteness, from the 5th century, in church buildings, particularly in those of the central plan, some of the architectural characteristics destined to remain at the basis of the further developments of the art of the entire Middle Ages already appeared evident. That is to say, how in the architecture of the churches of that age, the exaltation of the plastic values proper to ancient art was replaced, in the arrangement of the architectural members and of the decoration, by a new search for luministic values and for picturesqueness.

Still at the beginning of the 9th century, in that reflowering of the arts connected with the restoration of the Western Empire, the architectural character of the churches remained substantially unchanged with respect to the most ancient models, despite a certain greater contrast of shadow and light that sometimes seems to prelude the rise of the Romanesque age. In that age, especially in Italy thanks to the Lombard builders, the architectural masses and the spaces were subjected to a process of rationalization that implied the construction of vaulted coverings. The supports then were articulated in increasingly complex forms of piers. Equilibrium governed the organism of the building to the point of making the matronea reappear with a function entirely different from that with which they had been used in the first centuries of Christianity; the relatively scant development in height and the concentration of forces within the powerful masses conferred an almost completely new character on the sacred constructions. If, however, this happened in the architectural environment dominated by Lombard taste, and the most significant models are at Milan in S. Ambrogio, at Como, at Pavia, at Parma, at Modena, etc., there is no lack of the most varied compromises between the Lombard novelties and the persistence of Byzantinizing themes in the Veneto region, whereas in Tuscany, Lazio and Campania the old traditional taste prevails; here, however, Romanesque solidity is characterized by a more attentive and original sense of proportion, while there is evident an awareness of those aesthetic values that had already been exalted during the classical period. In other words, during the Romanesque period in these latter regions there is a conscious return to forms proper to the first centuries of Christianity. The Lombard premise finds in France and in the other territories of central Europe its logical conclusion in the Gothic, which arrives, through a strengthening of Romanesque dynamism, at eliminating in the church all wall masses devoid of constructive meaning. Nevertheless, in Italy the imported models had only scant resonance.

Widely welcomed instead was the variety of Gothic proper to the builders of the Cistercian abbeys, numerous also in central Italy (v. CISTERCENSE, ARCHITETTURA). The originality of the Italian church in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries was therefore quite pronounced. Nevertheless, having in many cases discarded the vaulted roof — the example of S. Croce in Florence being typical — deprived the Gothic organism of its most characteristic element. Through the great wealth of forms that modifies fourteenth-century churches from region to region — one need only think of S. Maria dei Frari or the cathedral of Orvieto — the cathedral of Florence represents the grafting of a central plan onto a basilical body with three naves, where the dome represents the precise definition of an interior space opposed to the undefined space of the Gothic tiburium. In this sense the church of S. Maria del Fiore clearly anticipates aspects of the church buildings of the Renaissance; in these it is certainly not a matter of recognizing a pure return to ancient or proto-Christian classicism, but the new product of a creative faculty that interprets the data of tradition in a different sense with a view to a geometric determination of space. The airy Brunelleschian vision, in which the wall surface has purely the value of a limit, is enriched by Alberti with values of mass derived from a new deepening of classical Roman architecture. With the regained taste for a musical relationship of plastic masses, interest comes to prevail for construction on a centralized system, the highest aspiration of a Renaissance architect. And after S. Maria delle Carceri in Prato by Giuliano da Sangallo and the Bramantesque experience of the choir of the Grazie in Milan, it finds its highest expression in the projects by Bramante as well as by Sangallo and by Michelangelo for the construction of the Petrine basilica. The Bramantesque teaching, on the other hand, spreads and unifies the individual regional tendencies. And even when practical necessities advised building churches with a longitudinal development, with a single or triple nave and flanking chapels, it was the new attitudes of taste rather than those necessities that sacrificed the harmony of spaces and masses of the centralized system. Il Gesù by Vignola or the churches of Palladio therefore respond to the orientation of the taste of their time; in those buildings the interior space tends to be enhanced in perspective through the curvature of the apses and of the dome, while the chapels, subordinated to the central nave, soon take on the character of a real unity with it, a unity already achieved in Rome in S. Andrea della Valle.

Then, once the critical attitude has been overcome in the new creative freedom, centralized schemes return to express the supreme equilibrium of space and masses. And while a large group of architects remains attached to late-sixteenth-century schemes, the new word in church architecture belongs to Borromini in S. Carlino and S. Ivo, to Pietro da Cortona in S. Luca, to Bernini in S. Andrea al Quirinale, architectures linked to one another, even through the diversity of the means employed to achieve it, by a characteristic sense of the perspectival dilation of space. Outside Rome the same tendency found new vigor in the art of Guarini, while the church of the Salute in Venice, the work of Longhena, and then the very basilica of Superga by Juvarra are already outside that liveliest vein of architecture. Then that spatial unity which in the sacred buildings of the Baroque age had been achieved in the best moments as an expression of absolute stylistic coherence, tends to resolve itself unitarily into a series of architectural episodes linked to one another by a perspectival rationale. The seventeenth-century Roman church of S. Maria in Campitelli is perhaps the noblest example of such an intuition, which continues through a great part of the eighteenth century.

The rationalism of the 18th century is also reflected in architectural forms, initiating, on the basis of a particular interpretation of sixteenth-century models and particularly of the works of Palladio, taken as a model of classicism, a process of revision capable of giving a new interpretation of the church theme. The work of Vanvitelli, aimed at a simplifying clarification, leaves in the Annunziata and in the S.ma Trinità in Naples a new word, capable of opening other horizons to creative activity. But the cultural factor and the orientation toward antiquity, studied with an archaeological spirit and understood as an unsurpassed model, yet susceptible of imitation, produces, when it is understood in an absolute and irreconcilable manner, churches that do not differ externally from true pagan temples. In Italy such extremes were very rarely reached, since the force of tradition prevented them, together with a not negligible capacity on the part of the architects; the Gran Madre di Dio by Bonsignore in Turin, the S. Carlo by Amici in Milan, the S. Francesco di Paola in Naples, by partially reworking traditional themes, succeed in realizing a vision of their own not devoid of nobility. Far less happy and significant, from this point of view, were, shortly afterward, certain slavish imitations of medieval churches, which maintained a pronounced Nordic character for being more closely adherent to that style than our thirteenth-century buildings had been. Eclecticism on the whole produced, also as regards church buildings, more works of taste than creations worthy of the name, when they were not works that do not even deserve to be mentioned.

Modern architecture has certainly revolutionized construction systems, causing a great part of the traditional repertoire to disappear. The church, on the other hand, has practical necessities that require solutions not unlike those of many centuries ago; consequently the theme has often been simplified, and in this way medieval schemes too have been interpreted with a sense of modernity and with a diversity of materials. Even in this case, works have been erected that attest to an orientation of taste rather than a high creative individuality. On this subject see also what has been said at coll. 1829-30 of vol. I of this encyclopedia.

Guglielmo Matthiae

III. DECORATION

The decoration of churches is indissolubly linked to the evolution of architectural forms. However, it is not possible here to mention everything that over the centuries has been used to adorn the house of the Lord: furniture, fabrics, furnishings, sacred images, etc., although only those plastic and pictorial works which, closely connected with architecture, are an essential completion of it.

The mosaics and paintings that in the apses and along the walls of the most ancient churches depicted the Redeemer and the saints and narrated the events of the New and Old Testaments, clothing the structures of the buildings with their mantle of shining tesserae and vivid colors, contributed greatly, between the 4th and 7th centuries, to changing the very character of architecture. Those decorations, that is, substituting for the exaltation of plastic values, for the taste for the balanced contrasts of masses proper to ancient art, a new chromatic joy, an ever greater interest in luministic values, tend to annul the very logic of architectural structures and to create in the church a world of splendors, almost an earthly mirror of the Empire. The Oriental taste (v. BIZANTINA, ARTE) contributed to this new decorative conception, widely diffused after the 5th century also in Italy. In the centuries following the 6th, while architectural forms, also for the reasons just mentioned, accentuate their process of simplification and become ever more essential, the internal decoration of churches becomes poorer. Only in some cases are the apses covered with mosaics and inlaid marbles, while along the poorly lit walls the paintings line up ascetic images of saints or narrate with modest manner the events of Holy Scripture.

Sculpture, which in the most ancient churches had intervened extensively not only to depict sacred images and to adorn the architectural members of the building, such as capitals, architraves, frames of doors and windows, altars, ciboria, chancel screens of the schola cantorum, is reduced, between the 8th and 11th centuries, to the production of reliefs where the marble is laboriously incised, rather than worked, in relief with braided friezes and strangely stylized figurations. Figurations from which, beyond the human image, any illustrative or naturalistic intent seems banished, with monstrous and fantastic beings, with the sun, with the moon, with palms, with evangelical symbols, with doves and peacocks according to a clearly determined repertoire and a traditional symbolism.

Then, during the Romanesque period, between the 11th and 13th centuries, in that characteristic reflowering of the arts typical of the age, with the new magnificence of architecture, the decoration of churches also assumed aspects of greater splendor. And while in the apses mosaics return with greater frequency, variously reflecting the elements of taste and pictorial culture, the decoration of the walls, at times also executed in mosaic — one thinks of the churches of Sicily and of St. Mark's in Venice — acquires in the ordered disposition of the frames and in the logical succession of the scenes an organic arrangement connected with the new faculty and with the need to narrate with frankness and vividness, beyond the events of the New and Old Testaments and the lives of the saints, the actions of men. Then plastic decoration too is enriched with vigor, especially in those organisms where the articulations of the architectural members acquire new peremptory evidence. This prevailing character is maintained and increases in the 13th-14th centuries with the diffusion of the Gothic taste; then, and while the facades of buildings assume new importance, enriching themselves with spires and piers, with portals with enormous frames and very deep splays, with galleries and enormous traceried windows that occupy the fronts and the very tall towers that flank them, a crowd of statues of saints, patriarchs, prophets, kings, queens, heroes, bishops, the greater men of the lineage or of the city populate the exterior and interior of the church — pinnacles, niches and canopies. It is a crowd of images that, inserted into the stringent logic of the architectural members, expresses the sentiments of the people who gather beneath the high naves of the church and who in those images consecrate their own sentiments and aspirations, perhaps already recognizing themselves in them sub specie aeternitatis.

The new values of surface, space and mass exalted by the architecture of the Renaissance, the taste for smooth walls scanned in harmonious frames by pilasters and pillars, while on the one hand it seems to limit the tasks of decoration, on the other makes it more precious by placing in greater evidence its intrinsic worth as a work of art, until at the end of the 15th century and even more at the beginning of the next, painting and plastic decoration assume new prevalence on the exterior and interior of architectural structures, exalting with perspectival illusions a new sense of space that will subvert in the domes opened onto the boundless sky by Correggio in Parma every apparent structural logic.

On the other hand, painting, sculpture and architecture, through the work of Michelangelo himself in the Sistine Chapel and in the Medici Chapel, created perfectly unitary organisms. And truly the architecture painted by Michelangelo in the vault of the Sistine is more peremptory and solid — one does not say than the architecture imagined by Botticelli in the slender compartments that frame the biblical scenes below — but than that of Pontelli, builder of the smooth walls of the ample space.

Thus were laid by Michelangelo and by Correggio the premises for the further development of the concept of pictorial decoration. The one, within a solid architectural frame, which continues and completes the real one, imagines scenes and figures that act within the limits imposed by that logic; the other, annulling architectural reason, lets his images range freely in the open sky. The latter fact is truly important for art because it already realizes those modes that later, reduced to rules and precepts of foreshortening and aerial perspective, will mark the most evident and among the most seductive characteristics of church decoration of the Baroque age.

Then once again the whole environment will assume a unitary character. Painted and sculpted images will contribute with the lines of architecture to creating an illusory space and effects of fantastic scenographic perspective, so that after the prodigies of a Pietro da Cortona or a Gaulli, Fra Pozzo will not hesitate to mark on the floors of the churches he decorated the point from which his vertiginous aerial perspectives must be viewed for the illusion to be perfect.

But when Fra Pozzo was painting, while the Italian taste for perspectival decoration had already spread throughout Europe, often imported by the Italians themselves, a group of theorists and artists had long been advocating the return to sobriety and simplicity. Formal sobriety and decorative simplicity in opposition to Baroque excess and, consciously or not, in harmony with the new rationalistic spirit, fruit of the Enlightenment, which was then spreading everywhere.

With the new neoclassical fashion and the taste for an architecture whose elements are studied on ancient monuments in an archaeological spirit, it seems that in churches the decoration can only be that proper to the architectural members. Nor did the decoration of churches take on particular characteristics during the 19th century, except often for a precise intention of highlighting, through the richness of the material employed — especially marbles — the merits of a perfect workmanship. These latter characteristics are in some way connected with what today, in the best cases, is being attempted. Although it should be borne in mind that precisely in modern sacred architecture the need is once again and peremptorily felt for a unified conception whereby architecture, sculpture and painting, coordinated among themselves and under a single guiding hand, may contribute to the creation of the work of art. - See Plates XC-XCII.

Emilio Lavagnino