six volumes of Latin Christianity

The whole of the closely-packed six volumes of Latin Christianity are possibly beyond the limits of many general readers. But we can point to those parts which may be best selected from the rest. The Introduction in the first book, and the General Survey which forms the fourteenth book at the end of the work, are the parts of the whole of the widest general grasp. To these we may add the chapters which treat of the greater Popes: Leo the Great in Book ii., Gregory the Great in Book iii., Hildebrand in Book vii., Innocent the Third in Book ix., Boniface VIII. in Book xi. — the chapters on Theodoric, Charlemagne, the Othos, the Crusades, St. Bernard, St. Louis — those on the four Latin Fathers, Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine, and Gregory, the monastic orders of St. Benedict, St. Dominic, and St. Francis—the Conversion of the Barbarians, and the Reformers and Councils of the fifteenth century. As is natural and fortunate, the Dean is strongest and most valuable just where Gibbon is weakest or even misleading.

Auguste Comte recommended as the complement of Gibbon

In his Library, Auguste Comte recommended as the complement of Gibbon, the Ecclesiastical History of the Abb6 Fleury. But it seems in vain to press upon the general reader of English a work in French so bulky, so unfamiliar, and so far removed from us in England to-day both in date, in form, and in tone. It was published in 1690, more than two hundred years ago, and is in twenty volumes quarto, and only in part translated into English. It contains an excellent narrative, which was warmly praised by Voltaire. But it is entirely uncritical; it is of course not on the level of modern scholarship; and as the work of a prelate under the later reign of Louis xiv., it is naturally composed from the theological and miraculous point of view. The Abbe gives us the view of the Catholic world as seen by a sensible and liberal Catholic divine in the seventeenth century. The Dean has painted it as imagined by a somewhat skeptical and Protestant man of the world in the nineteenth private turkey tours.

When we pass from Mediaeval to Modern History, we are confronted with the difficulty that modern history is infinitely the more intricate and varied, and that, as we advance, the histories become continually more and more devoted to special epochs and countries, and are minute researches into local incidents and chosen persons. The immediate matter in hand in this essay is to direct attention to great books of history, meaning thereby those works which take us to the inner life of one of the great typical movements, or which in manageable form survey some of the great epochs of general history. Such surveys for the last four centuries are exceedingly rare. There are many valuable standard works, which are supposed to be in every gentleman’s library, and which are familiar enough to every historical student. But they form a list that can hardly be compressed into one hundred volumes, and to master them is beyond the power of the average general reader to whom these pages are addressed. We can mention some of them: though they are hardly ‘great books,’ and neither in range of subject, in charm, or in insight, have they the stamp of Herodotus or Gibbon.