scholarship as having succeeded in building up a great historical school, is it enough for it to have established, with whatever zeal and success, the isolated facts? Ought not these facts to be grouped and interpreted, set in vital relation to one another, summed up as parts of a single whole?

The criticism, ten years ago, might have been just its edge was turned on the day when Mgr Duchesne put before the world the first volume of his 'Histoire ancienne de l'Église.' Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that the atmosphere of the Roman communion does at times exercise a blighting effect on the higher branches of historical investigation; and before the close of this paper we shall find that the experiences of Mgr Duchesne give legitimate reason for the preference of Roman Catholic scholars for the humbler spade-work of textual, literary, and archæological research.

A Breton by birth, of the little town of Saint-Servan in the diocese of Saint-Brieuc, the abbé Louis Duchesne first came into note, in the years that followed the Franco-German War, as the most brilliant pupil of the then recently founded École Française at Rome. There he became the disciple of de Rossi, and ultimately his colleague in an edition of the Hieronymian Martyrology for the Acta Sanctorum'; there too he laid the foundations of the deep acquaintance with the materials, archæological and documentary, for the better knowledge of early Christian Rome, which went to produce his monumental edition of the Liber Pontificalis.' About the same time as the publication of his ' Étude' on that book, and after an expedition of research to Greece and Asia Minor, he joined the teaching staff of the new Catholic University at Paris in 1877 as Professor of History. Five years later appeared the lithographed edition of his course of lectures under the title of 'Les origines chrétiennes.' There never was any doubt, from the first, of the severely critical character of Duchesne's work; and though de Rossi had familiarised the Roman world with the advantages of a scientific archæology, it was still some way from recognising the necessity of a scientific study of history. One cardinal of Curia communicated from Rome the 'remarks of three theologians

6

and canonists' on the Étude': another took alarm at the treatment of the history of dogma in the Origines,' and added that the particular views of Newman-also at that time a cardinal-were not of a character to be followed, still less to be adopted in the teaching chair. In France the sensitiveness of orthodoxy was particularly noticeable on the subject of local traditions about apostolic or primitive founders. With us the Reformation has made so complete a breach in the continuity of such traditions, that there is no one to feel personally concerned over the genuineness, for instance, of St Joseph of Arimathea's visit to Glastonbury. But when Duchesne, in the Bulletin Critique' for March 15, 1885, poured ridicule on the claim of the Church of Sens to have been founded by two of the Seventy disciples, Savinian and Potentian, the then archbishop of that see was hotly desirous of delating him to Rome. Criticisms of the Professor's soundness were on two occasions met by the grant of a year's dispensation from the duties of the chair; and Duchesne profited by the compulsory leisure to complete his edition of the Liber Pontificalis,' the preface to the first volume of which (1886) contained an expression of thanks to the ecclesiastical authorities 'qui m'ont accordé, pour ce travail, bien des facilités, et notamment le loisir relatif sans lequel je n'aurais pu le conduire au point où il est arrivé.'

This great work, completed in 1892, at once established Duchesne's reputation on an inexpugnable basis. The Rector of the University, Mgr d'Hulst,* though he had supported Duchesne loyally throughout, had at the outset exercised the privilege of looking over his writings in proof before publication; but, as he wrote in 1892, aujourd'hui il est un trop gros personnage.' Most of the French bishops were now friendly; Cardinal Richard, Archbishop of Paris, made Duchesne an honorary canon of Notre-Dame. Leo XIII, himself a man of scholarly tastes and of genuine appreciation of learning, was sensible that danger lay as well in blind antagonism

*Vie de Mgr d'Hulst,' tome I (1912), par Mgr Baudrillart, recteur de l'Institut catholique de Paris. Attention was called to this interesting biography in an article by Mgr Batiffol in the 'Constructive Quarterly' for June, 1913; and we have drawn on it for many details.

to the critical movement as in unqualified adhesion to it. Perhaps too the movement was going ahead so fast as to leave Duchesne rather in the lurch; what after all, it might be said, were the malicious touches which Duchesne could throw into his portrait of this or that saint and doctor of the Church, compared with the open hostility of the younger critics to the whole body of traditional teaching about the Bible and even about the Gospels?

Anyhow when, in 1895, the Government of the Republic nominated Duchesne to the headship of the École Française, there was nothing lacking either in the warmth of the regret that accompanied him from Paris or in the warmth of the welcome that awaited him in Rome. Here in the atmosphere most illuminating to the historian of Christianity, where the Church of primitive times confronts the Church of to-day for comparison or contrast, and the catacombs jostle St Peter's, Duchesne's talents found congenial room, and assuredly they were not hid in a napkin. Secure in the enjoyment of a distinguished and independent position, and exempt as a foreigner from all relation to the problem of temporal allegiance which divided Roman society, he was an accepted guest in 'white' and 'black' circles alike; while in Cardinal Mathieu, who came from Toulouse to represent in the Sacred College the French element, he had a fellow-countryman for companion and friend at court. Probably he had never felt more than a tepid satisfaction in the 'lower criticism,' in the drudgery of texts and collations and recensions; at any rate he was by this time devoting himself more and more to historical study proper. He had served his apprenticeship in material and method; the master-craftsman must now elaborate his creative work.

*

The Origines du culte chrétien,' the first book of Duchesne's that became familiarly known in England, had appeared in 1888; and, if it is only a sketch, it is at the same time the most successful attempt yet made to popularise the results of the liturgical researches which

'Les documents du texte ainsi établi sont produits au bas des pages, dans l'énorme appareil de variantes que j'ai cru devoir publier. On trouvera qu'il y en a trop, et l'on sera de mon avis.'

are a marked feature of modern ecclesiastical scholarship. Less known here, the Fastes épiscopaux de l'ancienne Gaule' (1894, 1899) ruffled violently the susceptibilities of devout Catholics, both cultured and ignorant, across the Channel, because in these volumes the author took up and developed in rigorous fashion, and on a comprehensive plan for the whole of France, the view he had earlier expressed about the antiquity of the Church of Sens and its neighbours. With Savinian and Potentian went overboard the other 'apostolic ' founders, St Martial of Limoges, St Front of Périgueux, St Ursin of Bourges, and, most famous of all, Lazarus, Mary Magdalene, and Martha of the churches of ProThe cause of historical truth needed the demonstration; but-though Rome was not to be drawn into any guarantee of these patriotic legends-the resentment in France was neither slight nor ephemeral, even in quarters where we should hardly have looked for it.

vence.

The French Academy, a stronghold of the Orleanist opposition under Napoleon III and of the conservative opposition under the Third Republic, has habitually found place among its forty Immortals for a representative of the clergy. Cardinal Perraud of Autun was followed by Cardinal Mathieu; at Mathieu's death Duchesne's eminence as a scholar and writer marked him out for the succession. But the inheritance was not easily won; his candidature was distasteful to the reactionary element in the Academy; and it was only after a prolonged adjournment, and then only by the barest majority, that he secured his chair. At his formal reception, early in 1911, he made the customary éloge of his predecessor-a charming portraiture of friend by friend-and was welcomed in turn by M. Étienne Lamy. The welcome was a brilliant exposition, 'empreint d'une ironie discrète que l'on a goûtée,' of the critical temper in a historian and of its drawbacks-especially of its drawbacks. We seem to catch the note of an old and deepseated dislike of culture for learning in the skilful pleading which M. Lamy puts into the mouth of the grasshoppers of the affronted Midi. They are supposed to remonstrate with the new Academician for the brutal havoc he has wrought upon their past:

'Maître, et vous tous, épigraphistes ou paléographes, qui demandez aux signes laissés par les morts sur la pierre ou le parchemin la preuve de la certitude, vous avez fondé le règne du document, ne préparez pas sa tyrannie. Nous ne possédons ni écriture, ni archives, et, néanmoins, nous sommes sûres que, depuis l'ère de la première cigale, notre chant n'a pas changé. Ne daterait-il que de l'heure où quelque scribe, réveillé par lui, le nota? La multitude humaine, illettrée comme nous, a aussi des chants très anciens, qu'elle se transmet, ses traditions et ses légendes. Vous leur demandez de faire leurs preuves, comme si leur existence n'était pas quelque chose. Rien ne naît de rien, et la tradition porte témoignage en faveur des faits qu'elle suppose. Sans doute, il arrive qu'elle les déforme; c'est pourquoi il est nécessaire de la contrôler et c'est à quoi servent les documents. Le passé a deux témoignages: la tradition et l'écriture. La tradition est la voix des peuples dans les siècles d'ignorance, elle est la seule mémoire ; . . . si elle peut se tromper, elle ne veut jamais tromper. L'écriture est la déposition de témoins isolés qui passent, si nombreux que soient les textes, la voix intermittente d'une minorité; et cette minorité, plus que la multitude, est capable de calculs et de mauvaise foi. Il n'est donc pas contraire à la bonne méthode de contrôler aussi les documents par les traditions. Ne l'auriez-vous pas un peu oublié dans vos doctes rigueurs? . . . Pour des cigales, ce n'est pas trop déraisonner.'

But we have been inverting the chronological order of our story; for, before the events of which we have just spoken, the three volumes of the 'Histoire ancienne de l'Église' had appeared.

Comparison with the histories of Bigg and Gwatkin is rendered difficult, and perhaps rather unfair to the English writers, by the larger scope of Duchesne's work. Planned to cover the first six centuries, down to the death of Gregory the Great, it extends so far to the end of the fifth century; and it is only in the second and third of the three volumes, corresponding respectively to the fourth and the fifth centuries, that Duchesne really gets into his stride. His special gifts as a historian come into freer play as the material becomes more comprehensive and more complex. One cannot decide whether to admire most his vast learning, or the sureness of selection which picks out the one necessary fact among twenty, or the illuminating summaries which give the