The Church and the Barbarians / Being an Outline of the History of the Church from A.D. 461 to A.D. 1003

Produced by Al Haines
1906
While there is a general agreement among the writers as to principles, the greatest freedom as to treatment is allowed to writers in this series. The volumes, for example, will not be of the same length. Volume II., which deals with the formative period of the Church, is, not unnaturally, longer in proportion than the others. To Volume VI., which deals with the Reformation, will be allotted a similar extension. The authors, again, use their own discretion in such matters as footnotes and lists of authorities. But the aim of the series, which each writer sets before him, is to tell, clearly and accurately, the story of the Church, as a divine institution with a continuous life.
It has seemed to me impossible to deal with the long period covered by this volume as briefly as the scheme of the series required without leaving out a great many events and concentrating attention chiefly upon a few central facts and a few important personages. I think that the main results of the development may thus be seen, though there is much which is here omitted that would have been included had the book been written on other lines.
Some pages find place here which originally appeared in The Guardian and The Treasury , and a few lines which once formed part of an article in The Church Quarterly Review . My thanks are due for the courtesy of the Editors. I have reprinted some passages from my Church of the Sixth Century , a book which is now out of print and not likely to be reissued.
I have to thank the Rev. L. Pullan for help from his wide knowledge, and Mr. L. Strachan, of Heidelberg, of whose accuracy and learning I have had long experience, for reading the proofs and making the index.
S. JOHN'S COLLEGE, OXFORD, Septuagesima , 1906.
{1}
The year 461 saw the great organisation which had ruled and united Europe for so long trembling into decay. The history of the Empire in relation to Christianity is indeed a remarkable one. The imperial religion had been the necessary and deadly foe of the religion of Jesus Christ; it had fought and had been conquered. Gradually the Empire itself with all its institutions and laws had been transformed, at least outwardly, into a Christian power. Questions of Christian theology had become questions of imperial politics. A Roman of the second century would have wondered indeed at the transformation which had come over the world he knew: it seemed as if the kingdoms of the earth had become the kingdoms of the Lord and of His Christ. But also it seemed that the new wine had burst the old bottles. The boundaries of the Roman world had been outstepped: nations had come in from the East and from the West. The {2} system which had been supreme was not elastic: the new ideas, Christian and barbarian alike, pressed upon it till it gave way and collapsed. And so it came about that if Christianity had conquered the old world, it had still to conquer the new.